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How to Make More Sales Being Contrary

Here’s something I’ve been playing with, and my results have been pretty good, too. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing…

How toMake More Sales Being Contrary

A few months ago a friend was launching a big product with lots of cash prizes for the top affiliates. I knew there would be tons of affiliate competition, with every affiliate trying to out-do the others with bigger and better bonuses.

How to compete?

I decided not to.

Instead, I thought about what every affiliate’s bonus pages would look like: Highly polished, slick, professional, lots of graphics, videos, etc.

Odds are they would all start to look very much alike, right?

So I thought… What if I did something different?

What if my page looked like something you might get in the mail – black and white sales letter, using the Courier typewriter font, very old-school looking…

And what if, instead of a highly polished professional photo of myself, I used one where I just woke up? Or one where I just finished exercising, or just finished the yard work?

In other words, I looked like the guy next door and not some slick marketer.

Taking this thinking to the next level, I decided I didn’t want to spend time or money on creating a bonus. Everyone else was doing that, so why should I?

Instead, I would hold a live class. The homework would be to go over the program before class. Then in class we would implement, step-by-step, what was in the program. And I would record the whole thing, so people could just follow along.

In case you’re wondering – it worked beautifully. My sales were a very decent 5 figure number, and my commissions were half that plus bonuses.

And one more thing – I cheated, too. I had my virtual assistant run the class for me. She got to learn some great new skills, and I put less than 2 hours into the entire project.

The takeaway: When you have a lot of competition, it’s time to stop directly competing and find another way.

If they are using tons of graphics and slick videos, you go with a 1980’s black and white typewriter look.

If they are offering bonus packages filled with 5, 10 or 20 products, you offer no products (I offered hold-your-hand training, which in my opinion is worth far more anyway.)

You get the idea.

Do you know what would work even better than that?

MAILING the actual letter. Yup. Talk about old school. If you collect real addresses of your BUYERS, you might consider doing this on big ticket items.

I know marketers who do this. They are few and far between, and they are KILLING it. They only mail to buyers, which greatly improves their conversions. They use a service to send out the mailers for them. And they make more on one of these mailings than most successful marketers earn in 6 months.

Which brings me to my second idea… if you don’t already have the mailing addresses for your buyers, start collecting those now.

When you have a sizable portion of them (at least 200, preferably 500) approach a marketer with a product your list would love. Make sure there is plenty of profit in that product. Take the sales letter, adapt it to a black and white mailer (cheap to produce) and send it to your buyers.

See what happens. Tweak, rinse and repeat.

You can easily DOUBLE your income using this method.

Know why? Again, because it’s contrary. It’s different. Almost no one is doing it.

Your customer gets maybe a half dozen pieces of mail in a day. Two are bills. Two are sales flyers from local businesses. One is a catalog.

And then there’s that mysterious white envelope. Yeah, it’s going to get opened. Yes, it’s going to get read.

Wow! They’re surprised. Someone they know from ONLINE is sending them REAL MAIL.

They don’t throw it out. Instead, they open their browser, type in the URL and ORDER THE PROGRAM.

Sure, not everyone does, but… enough do.

Believe me, I’ve seen this work time and time again. Which is why I’m about to start sending out sales letters via snail mail (Shhh, don’t tell anyone!)

Are You Denying Your Readers the Netflix Experience They Crave?

Pssst… I know you’ve probably never done this, but I have. I’ve sat down and binge watched a whole bunch of episodes from one series on Netflix, and yes, I enjoyed it.

Are You Denying Your Readers the Netflix Experience TheyCrave?

There, now that I have my confession out the way, I have to tell you what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Why is it that we binge watch shows on Netflix, but we dole out content to our readers like it’s bread crumbs? And scarce bread crumbs, at that?

Think about it – you want to learn something new. Maybe you want to learn everything you can about video marketing.

So you start looking, and you find a great article on a website about this exact thing. The site even offers to send you an entire email course on video marketing and you sign up.

Problem is, you want the rest of the course NOW. So you keep searching, and you land on other sites and read other articles and watch other videos.

And you forget all about that first site you were at.

A day later you get an email – installment #1 of your course. But you already learned everything you needed the other day. You’ll look at it later…

Yeah. Right. You never read those emails, do you?

I’ve done the same thing plenty of times. Yet I still parse out my content to readers as though they are doing absolutely nothing but sitting there, waiting for the latest installment…

When in fact they’ve probably forgotten all about me.

Or what about those product launches where they dole out one video every three days? “Watch this fantastic video to discover blah blah blah.” And you watch it, and you LOVE it, and you want to see the rest of the videos. Except they’re not online yet.

“The next video will be available in X days.” You don’t want to wait “X” days, you want to see it NOW.

And when it’s finally available, you’ve forgotten all about it. The ironic thing is, if they had all of the videos online when you were interested, you would have watched all of them right away. And if they were done well, you might have bought the product they promoted at the end of the last video, too.

But by the time the product is launched, you don’t even remember what they were talking about.

Been there, done that. Many times, too.

And then there’s the simple article on your website. You do one article about video marketing, one article about content marketing, one article about SEO, etc.

The reader finishes the article they’re interested in and looks for more on the same topic. There are no more. And so they leave.

Whoops.

Mind you, all three of these techniques worked great a few years ago. And I’m not saying they don’t work now. But I guarantee they are not working nearly as well as they used to.

And we can thank Netflix for that, and the internet, and the proliferation of ‘what you want, when you want it’ in just about every niche imaginable.

We are no longer content to wait. We want our information NOW, while we are hot about the topic. Not later.

And your readers and viewers are no different.

So what’s the solution?

We give our readers and viewers the opportunity to binge all they want.

You’ve got an article on your site about generating targeted traffic? Good. Now write 5 more, all on different aspects or techniques of traffic generation, and link them all together.

When someone finishes any one of those 6 articles, they find links at the bottom that take them to any of the other 5 articles. They now have CHOICES on where to go next, and all of the choices are good ones because they are directly related to what they just chose to read.

They also find a link that takes them to your super-duper traffic generation product, too.

If your articles are good, they’ll keep clicking and reading. And if they are impressed enough, they will eventually click on that product link they keep seeing.

And you will make sales.

Your readers will be happy because they found everything they needed in one place.

You will be happy because they stay on your site longer, they’re more likely to subscribe to your newsletter, and you’re making sales.

What about those email courses – why not let the reader accelerate the process?

At the bottom of each email in the sequence, you can let them know that the next installment is coming tomorrow. Or, they want to see it now, simply ‘click here.’

In fact, if you want to use tracking for engagement analytics, you might accelerate the process for the reader. Did they engage with emails 1 and 2? Maybe it’s time to send them straight to email #5, and so forth.

The more engaged your reader is, the more options they should have to continue consuming your content.

As a marketer you have an excellent incentive to do this, which we’ve already hinted at.

When someone is hot on the trail of a particular topic, or looking to solve a particular problem, you don’t want to present them with your offer next week – you want to present it NOW. Because they’ve engaged with your content, they’re hot. They like you. They’re trusting you. They want MORE. So give it to them.

Let them know that as good as your content is, the REAL meat is in your product. And watch them bite. Go ahead… Give your readers the Netflix experience they really want!

Think You’re Not ‘Expert’ Material? I Do…

When you’re an expert, you command respect in your niche. People listen to you, they pay attention to what you say and most of all they buy your products.

ThinkYou’re Not ‘Expert’ Material? I Do...

Being the expert in your own niche is like writing your own ticket to freedom.

Granted, you’re never going to become “The Expert” in a massive field such as weight loss. But niche it down to “Weight loss for new mothers” or “Weight loss for brides-to-be” or Weight loss for video gamers,” and you can indeed become the expert in your niche.

I was reading Russell Brunson’s new book, “Expert Secrets,” and it starts out by giving some examples of just how easy it is to become an expert.

When Russell was in college, he tried internet marketing but failed. Then on spring break when he was bored out of his mind, he and a friend decided to build a potato gun.

The thing was, they didn’t know HOW to build a potato gun. It just sounded like fun. So they started doing some research.

They discovered things like the correct barrel-to-chamber volume ratio, the right propellants to use, the correct pressure for the pipes, how NOT to blow themselves up and a whole lot more. Armed with this information, they went to the store and bought their supplies. Then they spent the next few days building the gun, finding a place to shoot it and yes, shooting the gun itself.

They had a great time, and when Russell was in school the next week listening to the professor drone on, he thought about how he’d rather be shooting his potato gun. Then he wondered if there were other people who would rather be shooting a potato gun too.

Russell checked, and sure enough: the previous month there had been 18,000 searches for the term, ‘potato gun plans.’

Russell talked his friend into creating a DVD on how to source the items needed for building a potato gun, and how to build the gun itself.

Then he sold this DVD online. While he didn’t make a fortune, he did earn enough to get excited about online marketing and his new career was born.

Notice in the above scenario what Russell did to become an expert. He picked a topic he was interested in, researched it, experimented, did his own work, and created a video.

Not exactly hard work, was it?

Russell gives a few more examples of people who became ‘experts’ in the same manner:

Jacob Hiller always wanted to dunk a basketball, but he was lousy at it. So he started doing research to discover techniques to improve his ability to jump. Every time he found a technique that worked, he made a video.

At first nobody was paying attention, but after a while he had 100 followers, then 1,000 followers, and pretty soon he had 10,000 followers.

So he made a product and built a company that makes millions of dollars teaching people how to jump. Crazy, but true.

Jermaine Griggs had trouble reading sheet music, so learned to play piano by ear. Now he makes millions teaching others to do the same.

Liz Benny was an excellent social media manager, but it wasn’t until she began teaching others what she knew that she started making millions.

Robert G. Allen once said that he made millions doing real estate deals, but he made hundreds of millions of dollars teaching real estate.

Think of that – he made MILLIONS doing real estate deals, but he made HUNDREDS of millions teaching others what he learned.

Are you an expert at something that other people want to learn? Then as Russell says, you are just one funnel away from making millions.

But maybe you don’t have an expertise yet – that’s okay. As you can see from the above examples, every one of these folks learned to be an expert first and then built their business teaching others to do what they did.

Even Russell wasn’t born an internet marketing guru. He studied and practiced and worked to become what he is today.

And the same goes for me and every single expert making 7 figures on the internet.

One last thing – you might already be an expert, but you’ve got a voice inside your head saying, “Who am I to teach others? I’m nobody special.”

You are indeed special but you just don’t know it yet.
What you know comes easy to you because you’ve studied and practiced.

Yet to most people, what you know seems like something very difficult.

They need your help.

They WANT your help.

So ask yourself this question: Who are you to deny them the help they need and want?

Think about all the people you can help with your skill. By focusing not on the money you’ll earn, but instead focusing on helping others, you can build a 7-figure business you can feel great about.

And by the way, you can purchase Russell’s book, “Expert Secrets,” on Amazon.

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