Get your own product, ASAP.

They tell you this because having your own product does a lot of nice things for your business. For instance, you’ll get all the profits of what you sell, instead of just a fraction and you’ll have total control over testing and tracking.

This allows you to monetize your site for YOUR product, instead of other peoples’ products, which helps with how Google views your site. Once you establish an audience of actual buyers, you can start upselling, which is where the real money is.

If you want to learn more about the power of upsells and other expert level marketing tactics, check out Web Domination.

Bottom line is this… it’s good to have a product. But you probably knew that already. Trouble is, you’ve got no time.

Or do you?

If you can clear even three days time from your calendar – basically a long weekend – I’ll show you how to have a rockin’ first product ready to sell by the end of day three.

Sound good? Then let’s go:

Step by Step Guide to Launching Your First Product in 72 Hours or Less

Here’s the high-level view of what we’re gonna do:

1. Define your audience and find out what they need/want in a product. Estimated time: 3 hours.
2. Create an outline of the product’s content and figure out the easiest way to create and deliver that product. 2 hours, 5 hours total.
3. Write the sales letter. 3 hours, 8 hours total.
4. Create the landing page and product images, or hire them out. 3 hours, 11 hours total.
5. Pound out that content. 6 hours, 17 hours total.
6. Make that first round of content better and lay it out in the form its going to be delivered in. 4 hours, 21 hours total.
7. Hook up the checkout and landing page. 3 hours, 24 hours total.
8. Create your first ads and promotions. 4 hours, 28 hours total.
9. Begin finding people to promote it for you. 2 hours, 30 hours total.

Here are the terms of engagement:

• You’ve got 3 days.
• You’re gonna work 10 hours of each day. That’s 30 hours all in. If you want to go crazy and work 15 hours for two days straight, have at it.
• You can do this with zero budget, but having even $100 will help.
• You’re probably not going to be able to create a high-ticket product in this timeframe (though it’s possible). But you will have an awesome $7 starter product, and you can probably pull off something that’s worth $30 or so.

Let’s get started.

Define Your Audience & Find Out What They Need/Want In A Product.

(3 hours, 3 hours total)

Ever heard the saying, “Begin with the end in mind”? That’s what we’re doing. When this is all done and you’re spending your own hard-earned money to promote it (much less the 30 hours of non-refundble time you’re about to invest) we want to be sure you’re going to have a winner. That’s why this research matters. Don’t just run with the first idea that pops into your head. DO NOT create the 17^th version of the same product everybody else is pushing.

You need to have pen and paper, or a spreadsheet open while you’re doing this research, because you’re actually drafting your product right now.

Make a list of people’s most common questions and issues/problems in your niche. You want at least 15 of these questions/issues, with room for notes after each issue.

Now head over to these places:

• Niche forums
• BuzzSumo
• Amazon reviews
• Social media
• Blog comments

Spend at least 30 minutes on every one of these sources, or your research will be skewed. Everyone knows to scour niche forum sites to see what people are asking, but Amazon reviews for products (and Kindle books) are also a treasure trove of insight. So are blog comments and social media, especially Facebook pages and groups.

If you don’t know BuzzSumo, it’s a free tool that lets you see what the most-shared content is for a search term or a website url. It will give you some great insights into what goes viral, but not necessarily into what people will pay for.

BuzzSumo can show you the most shared content for a url or for a search phrase. It will also show you who the most influential sharers were.

That’s the real secret to having a great product – a product that people aren’t just interested in, but that they will buy. Just answering the same old how-to questions available elsewhere will get you nowhere. You’ve got to solve the problems people have not been able to answer elsewhere, AND solve problems that people are willing to pay to have solved. That Excel table mentioned above will give you some very interesting insights after you’ve spent a few hours filling it out. Don’t cut corners here.

Create An Outline Of The Product Content

(2 hours, 5 hours total).

Take that Excel doc, choose the one problem or group of problems that popped out as best, and start blocking out your product. You can do that by creating an outline, or by writing out index cards, or however you like. By the end of these two hours you should have a very ugly draft of your product’s content. Remember, you were collecting “content” for your product as you were researching what people want to know.

Next, ask yourself: Should your product be videos? Text? Audios, like interviews? Consider two things for this question:

1) Which format is your audience most likely to want?

2) Which format is easiest for you to create?

Write The Sales Letter

(3 hours, 8 hours total).

What? We’re going to write the sales letter before we create the product? You bet we are.

Writing the sales letter will make you sit down and essentially write what is a love letter to your buyers. It will force you to decide what parts of the product will be most important to them, and it will give you a clear idea of what you’re promising them, so it’s ingrained in your head when you make the product. This will keep you focused on creating the product your sales letter describes.

If you just have to bounce back to your ugly product draft to give it some more details, because you had an awesome idea while you were writing the sales letter, you may do that.

Hint: Use the same words your audience used to describe their problems, especially if you found people repeating the same problem or question. It is okay to lift whole sentences from your research. I don’t advise lifting whole paragraphs, but phrases and sentences are okay.

Create The Landing Page

(3 hours, 11 hours total).

If you’ve got the budget, install OptimizePress and create a high quality landing page. If you want to head over to AwesomeWeb and get a cover made for you, that’s good too. If you’ve got no budget, use your favorite free landing page plugin. There’s a decent 3-D ebook cover creator here.

Spend at least half an hour of this time reading a few posts about how to make a good landing page. OptimizePress is a great resource, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Just don’t spend too much time, OK? We are in execution mode right now, not learning mode.

There are some great paid landing page creators, like LeadPages, but there are also some pretty good free plugins.

Pound Out That Content

(6 hours, 17 hours total).

“Holy %^&$!”, you say. “I can’t create the product in six hours!”

Oh yes you can. Because you already have 5 hours of work put into creating your ugly draft. And because – surprise – you’re not going to get this perfect.

No, you are not going to publish a perfect product. You are going to publish a product that may need an update. Because you are going to tell your buyers you want to hear from them. You will actively solicit their feedback.

If they don’t like something about your product, or if they want something more from your product, fabulous. You will make it for them. That way you will know you’re creating content for paying customers, instead of what you think (hope) they will pay for. So chuck all that perfectionism aside, brew up some coffee, do whatever you gotta do to crank it out, and start just making that ugly draft better.

Tip: If you have trouble diving in, consider using the Pomodoro technique. It’s where you work uninterrupted for 25 minutes, then take a break for 5-10 minutes, and then go back to another super-focused work session. There are Pomodoro apps for computers and smartphones. Some are free. It’s an effective way to just drop the anxiety and the second-guessing and freakin’ get down to work.

Make That First Round Of Content Better & Lay It Out In The Form It’s Going To Be Delivered In.

(4 hours, 21 hours total).

You’ll need a break after that marathon six-hour session. Maybe, perhaps, a night’s sleep? Then come back and just make what you’ve got a little better. Maybe re-read your sales letter, and make sure you’re delivering on the promises there. And hey, you might find yourself tweaking the sales letter, too. But remember – you’re on the clock. You’ve got four more hours to make this baby worth buying. So do it.

Hook up the checkout and landing page. (3 hours, 24 hours total).

Three hours may be more time than you need, but sometimes this phase of things gets tricky, so I wanted to give you some extra time to figure out a new shopping cart. Frankly, I love PayPal buy buttons. You can set up the whole checkout process in less than 20 minutes with a PayPal button if you know what to do.

If you’ve got extra time, go worry over your landing page a bit more. Have you, say, checked how it looks on a smartphone yet? On your buddy’s smartphone? Could you talk them into trying to place an order, and see what their impressions of your product are? You don’t necessarily have to do what they say, but a second pair of eyes can be helpful.

You don’t have to set up a fancy checkout cart for your new product. PayPal buttons are free to use (minus the sales fees, of course), can be customized with any button image you want, and take about 15 minutes to set up.

Create Your First Ads & Promotions

(4 hours, 28 hours total).

Again, this may be more time than you’ll need, but you will want at least:

• 3-5 versions of ppc copy
• A solo email promo
• Possibly a 3-5 email autoresponder sequence
• 3-4 banner ads or display ads

You probably won’t have time to get all those done in 4 hours, but pick two or three and give them your best shot. If you’ve got some budget, this is a great time to have a designer pull a few key sentences and phrases from your sales letter, add your images, and make you a bunch of nice ads.

Begin Finding People To Promote It For You

(2 hours, 30 hours total).

Extra credit would be to set up an affiliate program, say through SamCart. Or you can pitch 3-5 blog owners in your niche and offer them all the email addresses of people who buy via their promotion, while you keep the sales. Or you can start thinking about where you could best advertise this new product. Maybe you just want to add a finishing touch or two to your product’s content.

Whatever you do, give yourself some applause. Not only did you create a product in 30 hours, but now you know how to do it again.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my free report containing 115 content creation ideas!

The post Step by Step Guide to Launching Your First Product in 72 Hours or Less appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Mike is I believe the Ultimate Internet Lifestyle Entrepreneur – generating a substantial 7 Figure Income each year while hanging out on the Ski Slopes or sailing in the Caribbean.

But it was not always this way – as Mike reveals in this interview (Podcast, Video or Transcript) it took him over 2 years to break through, quit the day job and make that 7 figure income.

In a way I find Mike’s story even more inspiring than the so called ‘over night successes” that went from nothing to Millionaires in 90 days.

Mike is now a best selling author -selling circ 500000 copies of an eBook about ABS – in English, Spanish, German and French – but as you will see in this interview, Mike was almost ready to give up not so long ago.

Props to my Dad (Barry Dunlop) for grabbing this interview with Mike when they were both in the Banff Gondola taking a ride to the top of the Canadian Rockies for the best views in Banff National Park Alberta Canada. Also I note that Mike Geary gives my friend Ryan Lee a nice thumbs up and word of thanks in the video.

Enjoy – I look forward to your comments.

To Our Success

Michael

PS: Make sure to watch the Bonus Video at the end, only 40 seconds, but it sums up rather neatly I think, what Mike Geary and the Internet Lifestyle is all about

Click Here To Listen To Mike Geary Podcast

Confessions Of An Internet Marketing Superstar

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Transcript:
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Barry Dunlop: How did you get online? What was your first effort online in business?

Mike Geary: I had a fitness background; I was a personal trainer. I was researching just some training articles online back in 2004, and I saw an advertisement on how to make money on the Internet as a fitness professional, and publishing online and doing all this Internet marketing.

So I thought about it for a while and finally bought the product. It was about a $300 product. And I’ve got to give props, it was a Ryan Lee product. Ryan Lee is a great guy, I’m good friends with him now. That’s what started it all.

That was the basic stuff of learning how to publish online and make websites and info products and build newsletter lists. All that stuff. That’s what started it, that’s what got the wheels spinning. And I immediately started writing my first product, “The Truth About Six-Pack Abs, ” which I just knew there was a demand for that because I was a personal trainer and that was 90% of the questions I would get would be about abs and weight loss.

So it didn’t work for a couple of years. I got the product done, and that was the easiest part. It took a couple of years to learn the marketing; that was the challenging part. But then it was definitely once you get over this hump and learn the marketing, then it gets easier, and that’s when my business exploded a few years ago.

Barry: So the key there, Mike, was not to give up.

Mike: Exactly.

Barry: You still had a day job then, I assume?

Mike: I had a day job for about two or three years while I was trying to build up the Internet business, and I was finally able to quit that day job when the Internet business sort of exploded.

Barry: If you were to go back to where you were at the beginning, what was the thing that made the big difference from year two to three? What was the thing that eventually made the big breakthrough? What item of knowledge did it take?

Mike: I can be honest and say that I was about to give up, after about a year. I had made the product, made the website, and I kind of had these false hopes that I would just build it and they would come. I had built the website and I would just start getting these massive amounts of sale and everything would take off.

I didn’t realize that actually you had to work really hard to drive traffic and get exposure for your site. So it took a while to learn that. And because I didn’t give up, a couple of years later things started taking off.

I think the biggest shift for me was changing my mindset. I’d love to say that is was a specific miracle technique that I learned that just exploded everything. To be honest, there were a few things, like search engine optimization, pay-per-click. There were some individual tactics that I learned, that really did take things to the next level.

But what started all that was changing my mindset about I can do this, and really thinking a lot bigger and getting that shift from thinking small and thinking about exchanging dollars for hours and thinking big and selling my product to the entire world.

Barry: And as we said earlier, something like a half a million copies have been downloaded?

Mike: Yeah. Between my English version, probably 300,000 copies. And now I have Spanish, German, and French versions too. I haven’t kept exact tabs on it, but probably close to 500,000 copies now of my product. For a self-published product.

Barry: Wow. And an important distinction to make there is – and it’s very gracious of you to say – you were almost ready to give up.

Mike: Yeah. It’s a little frustrating after a year and you’ve only made like two sales. [laughs]

Zach Johnson: How many things did you try that didn’t work? How many products did you learn about search engine optimization and you’re trying to get out there and things didn’t work? Probably took some perseverance to go through.

Mike: For that first year, year and a half, I was trying article marketing and trying a little bit of pay-per-click, and I couldn’t get it to work. Trying to get some search engine optimization. But that takes time, especially search engine optimization. And it just took some time to really learn how to get it to all come together. Make the sales copy work, get the traffic, and make it all come together and make it a success.

Because you’ve got to have every piece of the puzzle. If you can get traffic but you can’t convert it, then you’re missing a piece. If you have great conversions but you don’t know how to get traffic, you’re missing a piece. Partnerships.

Barry: Was there anybody in particular who taught you what you needed to do? Was there any material that you bought, or mentors or masterminds?

Mike: Well, for me, for the first few years, to be honest, I never went to any high-priced events, I never bought any high-priced products. I bought dozens of individual low-priced e-books to learn a lot of different skills. And a lot of those $37 or $47 e-books, I learned a lot of really cool marketing techniques. And eventually I was able to kind of put them all together and start driving a lot of traffic.

Barry: It’s a good one, Mike, because so many people talk about the Internet lifestyle and they say things like, “Hey, six weeks later I’m a millionaire!” Or this happened or that happened. So I think it’s great.

And obviously, I think there’s more encouragement for people realizing that it took longer than a few weeks to get this to work. Because sometimes it does take a year or two. But the important to persevere.

And one very important distinction that I make to people is that having a day job is still a good bet. You don’t give that up until you’re ready to give it up, because it’s important as well.

Mike: But I can say that probably the best thing I ever did was quitting my day job.

[laughter]

Mike: Once I was confident enough that I was pretty consistent and making a good income online, the day that I quit my day job was probably the best day of my life. And I can say that the next month after I quit my day job was when I finally exploded my business. My business doubled the next month after I quit.

Barry: So some people, when they’re just at that point, getting both to work. If really want to take the Internet work further, they have to give up their day job.

Mike: That’s the point. I have a friend right now who started a website and has started to do pretty well with it in the water filter business. He told me he was finally at the point where he was making as much with the website and he was with his day job.

And I told him the best thing I ever did was when I got to that point was quitting my day job, because now you’re going to have 100% mental energy on what you want to do.

Barry: And focus.

Mike: And focus. So he’s doing that right now, he’s quitting his day job and going to focus on the online business.

Zach: Tell them now much money you invested in yourself the first year, two years, in failed attempts and failed pay-per-click campaigns before you made it.

Mike: I didn’t have much money to invest.

Zach: Most people don’t.

Mike: But like I say, I did make a small investments at a time, buying a lot of $50 e-books. I wanted to keep learning. And I can say there probably wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t learning more, that I didn’t buy a book or….

Barry: That is an important point, which often is – you have to keep learning. The biggest and best Internet marketers that I know – you think about Mike Koenigs, Frank Kern etc – those guys are learning all the time.

Mike: They’re still learning.

Barry: They don’t give up. And that’s why they’re at the top of what they’re doing.

Mike: Even though my business does well now, I haven’t stopped and just trying to ride the coattails and never work. I’m still learning every day.

More about Mike Geary at TruthAboutAbs.com

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BONUS VIDEO
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Mike Geary – enjoying the Internet Lifestyle and a Powder Day in the Canadian Rockies (Banff)

The post Mike Geary Interview – Confessions Of An Internet Marketing Superstar appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Today I want to share with you a very exciting new WordPress Theme and sales suite software I’ve been testing out over the past few weeks. This software has been specially designed to help you create amazing squeeze pages, sales letters, launch pages and even membership sites, all from inside WordPress with a very simple point and click interface. It’s called OptimizePress and in today’s post I’m going to discuss the unique features of this system in more detail and show you why I think it’s an essential for your business arsenal.

Many of you will know I recently launched my first digital product, Popup Domination. The product was a great success, but there was a lot of work involved in getting that product to market. One of the most important steps was creating the sales page and sales process for the product. I spent hundreds of dollars paying a designer to create all the pages I needed to get my product online.

Now if I had been using OptimizePress, all I would have had to do is get a simple header or logo made for my product (and even that isn’t critical) and the system would have done the rest. It literally makes it point and click simple to create all of the essential sales funnel pages needed, and makes creating great looking sales pages an absolute breeze.

Michael’s Video Review!

Check Out OPTIMIZEPRESS NOW, Click Here!

I’m now going to cover some the powerful features of OptimizePress so you can see all the amazing things you can use it for in your business…

Create Squeeze Pages To Build A List & Capture Leads

Although it’s a great idea to build a list from your existing sites and blogs with a popup like Popup Domination creates, often you might want to create a page which is focused on only capturing the name and email of your prospect. These “squeeze pages” are perfect if you’re launching a new product and want to capture the names of prospects in return for a free gift, or if you are driving traffic from other sites to your sales funnel, a squeeze page is a great place to send your traffic first.

With OptimizePress, you have the choice of 10 great looking squeeze page templates. Most of these templates have support for video, but you can also just use bullets or graphics. There are also a range of really cool templates that have a cool “fake video” effect which is designed to boost your optins and allows you to keep your video content for after your prospect has joined your list.

With the point and click interface, you can modify the pre-headline, headline (including choosing from a range of fonts), add a video (just enter your video URL or embed code) and much more with the really easy to use system. I had my first squeeze page online in less than 5 minutes after installing the theme, it really was that simple!

Build Awesome Sales Pages

The sales page is where it all happens. Your sales page needs to look great and make the most of your sales copy to ensure you maximise your conversions and convert as many visitors into buyers.

OptimizePress really steps things up a gear with the sales page building system. You can choose from a wide range of template styles including full width headers, headers with logo and plain templates, as well as designs with or without sidebars for your convenience. The next step is using the really powerful shortcodes system to completely customize the sales copy of your pages.

This is where you can add testimonial boxes, content boxes, order boxes and buttons and much more, all from the simple point-and-click menu. These elements not only make your sales pages look great, they really boost response rates. Adding these if you were doing this yourself or having a designer do it would cost you a lot more time or money.

The sales page system also makes it super easy for you to add your own video to your pages, again choosing from your own video (hosted on Amazon S3 or similar), or use a video from an external site like Youtube (there’s a box to just drop in the embed code). If you are using EZS3 or Easy Video Player, there’s also a box especially for codes from these systems.

There are also really cool extra features like the delayed order buttons to add extra power to the system for those people who are doing more advanced stuff with their sales funnels (delaying your order button to show at the end of your sales video can help boost response).

Create Landing Pages & Launch Funnel Pages

Doing a “product launch” is one of the most powerful ways to generate huge response to your product in a short period of time. Usually product launches consist of a number of videos in a “pre-launch” sequence, before the main sales video goes live. This type of event marketing can really boost your conversions.

With OptimizePress, you can create these product launch funnels, including essential features like facebook comments, social sharing icons and high impact video embedding, all from the simple admin interface.

At the moment you can do one-off launches but the creator of Optimizepress – James Dyson has told me that they are now also working on a perpetual launch feature that will have system that tracks your visitors through the funnel so that once they optin to your sales process on a squeeze page, they wont see that page again and will go straight to your launch content – meaning a better experience for your customers and meaning you can run evergreen launches when combining with your autoresponder service – very clever stuff!

Create Stunning Membership Pages

The latest addition to the ever-expanding feature set of OptimizePress is the memership templates module. This is probably the module I am most excited about – as it allows me to create the kind of membership pages I’ve been wanting to create for a long time.

With the membership templates, you can easily create awesome looking membership content delivery areas where you can deliver your video training, downloads and more, all from the same WordPress theme installation. All you need to do is plug-in your preferred membership script such as Digital Access Pass or Wishlist, and use that to secure the awesome membership pages you have created with the system.

OptimizePress also allows you to create and customize menus for your membership pages, and automatically creates cool looking module pages complete with content listings for the pages within each section – so your membership site looks awesome and makes it super easy for your members to view your content.

Why Im Choosing this Over other Products Out There

Some of you might have heard of some similar products on the market which have some similar features to OptimizePress. There are a few solutions out there, but here’s why I chose OptimizePress:

– It has an awesome feature set – including all the squeeze page templates, sales and launch templates, and now the awesome membership templates system.

– The support is first class. Everywhere you look people are talking about how good the support for OptimizePress is, and although James is a friend of mine, he has been fast to answer all the questions I’ve had.

– The product is still growing. James has even more awesome features planned for OptimizePress (like the perpetual launch feature) , so you’re getting really amazing value for money as this platform is likely to grow and open the possibilities for your business even more.

I love how easy it is to add all the features using this WordPress theme, check this screen shot of the WordPress area, choose colours, options, insert text etc.. I LOVE THIS!

Why You Should Purchase OptimizePress Today…

– Creating pages like this system can build will cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Trust me I’ve paid many designers to do just that in the past

– The combination of designs and styles means you can split test your pages easily and without paying for another design (just try a different template)

– James has created the templates in OptimizePress based on years of testing and designing for high-end marketing clients so these designs are proven to convert (and make you more money)

– By delaying putting up your own squeeze pages, sales letters and membership sites, you are costing yourself money – this system makes it easy so you can stop delaying and start making money.

I give OptimizePress my strongest recommendation. If you’re looking to create any kind of sales funnel for your business, want to build a list, or create a membership site, OptimizePress has you covered. The only downside is that it doesn’t include a blog system at the moment, but you really don’t need this as you should really look at building your blog on a separate site to your sales pages anyway.

Useful Links

– eCover Creator 3D – eCover Generator.
– OptimizePress – Squeeze Page, Sales Page and Membership Areas.

The post OptimizePress – How To Build A List, Launch A Product & Create Membership Sites With Ease appeared first on How To Make Money Online.