Author Archive | Ross Guthrie

Let’s say you write and sell a fairly successful monthly newsletter. How can you get your subscribers to bring you new subscribers? Or maybe you have a growing membership. How do you get your current members to bring you more paying members? The answer might be as simple as giving your existing members certificates to GIVE to their friends…

In the case of the newsletter, let your subscribers give away 1-6 months for free. Limit the number of gift subscriptions they can give away to keep the perceived value high. Make the gift certificates look like they were paid for by your current subscribers, so that when they give them out, it appears they’re giving a valuable gift (which they are.) This also makes it more likely your subscribers will give the certificates out because there is a sense of pride in the giving of the gift.

When the gift recipients sign up to get their free subscriptions, you can offer them the chance to subscribe for a longer period of time at a reduced rate. Some will accept your offer, others won’t. Those who opt only for the free subscription will receive your offers to renew before their subscription ends. If you’ve provided a great value to them, some will subscribe. And when they do, you can then offer them certificates to give to their friends as well.

Remember, since your newsletter is delivered electronically, it costs almost nothing to give out gift subscriptions. And even if your newsletter is printed and mailed, the cost is still low compared to the number of new subscribers you are likely to get using this simple method. Of course, you’ll want to track your numbers to be sure it’s profitable.

Memberships can work the same way. Let your current members give away limited-time memberships to a small handful of the people they think will appreciate it the most.

You might even do special promotions using this method. For example, you give out certificates in late April for Mother’s Day with instructions to give them to moms who would enjoy the subscription or membership. Or prior to Christmas as gifts, and so forth.

If your membership or newsletter delivers a high value, using your current customers to bring in more customers can be the easiest, fastest and most cost effective way to get a continuous stream of new, happy customers into your business.

Therefore, instead of only thinking about how many of your paid newsletter subscriptions or memberships you can sell, start directing your creative juices to finding ways you can leverage your existing subscriber and customer base’s enthusiasm for your services to start GIVING AWAY everything you have to offer. As you do this, your business and influence can start growing exponentially, and with less overall effort and advertising investment on your part.

Let’s say you have a product for brick and mortar businesses on how to get more customers. If you take the exact same information that is in your product, but customize it for a specific niche, you can charge more AND make more sales.

For example, you customize the info for chiropractors and market it exclusively to chiropractors. Sales will actually be easier to make for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s easier to reach your audience when you are being specific. Second, chiropractors will see the info is just for them, and be far more likely to buy than if it was generic. So it’s easier to reach your audience, and easier to sell to them when you find them.

But perhaps the biggest benefit of all is that you can sell your product for more money because it is geared specifically towards chiropractors. And you can do this in multiple niches: Contractors, lawyers, accountants, dentists, etc.

Let’s use another niche – weight loss. You have a generic product on how to lose weight, which means you are competing against every other weight loss product out there. But if you focus your product just for men over 60, or just for college women, or just for people in cold climates who can’t get outside to exercise, you’ve created more opportunities to target and sell your information. And you can continue to customize your info as many times as you can find markets. If you can reach your specific audience, you can do this.

This could be a business all on its own. You can go to any product owner and strike a deal where you take their info and customize it and then sell it. If you do, be sure you negotiate for a high percentage of the profits, since you will be doing the customizing and the work.

Or better yet, simply buy rights to the information and then you can keep all the profits for yourself.

First, the bad news: If you’re telling customers that you’re only selling “X” number of your digital product, they’re going to think you’re a scammer.

Think about it. Back in 2000, you could tell people you’re only selling 1,000 copies and they would believe you. But it’s 2024, and people have seen this tactic so many times, they not only don’t believe you – it makes them question everything else you say.

Plus, how shortsighted can you be to limit how much money you make? Let’s say you put out a truly great product, but to create scarcity and make sales you decide to limit either the number of products sold, or the time during which you will sell them.

You make the sales, you pull the product, and your income goes to zero. That could be a big long-term loss for you.

Or worse yet, you claim you will pull the product but you don’t. Or you say you “may” stop selling, but you don’t. Or you stop selling for 2 days or 2 weeks or 2 months, and then you open it up again.

And your credibility goes out the door.

So how do you create scarcity of digital products without losing sales and credibility?

You need to have a legitimate reason for creating the scarcity. For example, if you’re selling PLR, then obviously you can’t flood the market with thousands of copies or the PLR will lose its value.

But most products can be sold forever without causing the buyers a problem. So in that case, what do you do to create scarcity? You use the second method, which is…

… Bonus packages. And the good news: It’s easy, it’s highly effective, and done correctly it can create sales for you for a long time to come.

Here’s how it works:

Go to other marketers who sell products that compliment yours. These should be products that have only been sold and have never been given away. Otherwise they lose their value.

Ask these marketers if you can do a deal: You get to give away their product to your next 50 / 500 / 1,000 customers or all of your customers during the next week / two weeks / month. In return they get a percentage of your profits, along with the email addresses of all the buyers.

Not many marketers will say no to this offer. They get paid for sales they’re expending no effort to make. PLUS they get the email address of every buyer so they can sell them more products later.

And the best part is, you can repeat this as many times as you like, always offering new products as your limited bonuses. Maybe you offer the “XYZ” product to early bird buyers during the first 10 days only. Then during the next month you offer the “ABC” product, and the month after that, the “DEF” product and so forth.

True, in theory you could offer this bonus forever, except that in reality the owner of the product you’re giving away has the final say on how many copies you can give out. And as you tell your customers, you have to follow their rules or you can’t give away any of their products.

See how this works?

Added bonus for you: You’re creating alliances with these product owners. If you treat them right you’ll be able to do more deals with them in the future as well.

Bottom Line: By using REAL scarcity in this manner, you can continue to sell your product for a long time to come. And your customers will respect you for it, too.

Long story short – people buy based on the benefits, and then they justify their decision based on the features. That’s why you need both to sell.

No one buys a lawn mower because it has a big engine – he buys it because he can cut his lawn in half the time and spend twice as much time golfing. He buys it because he can cut even the tallest grass without stalling out and making himself look like an idiot for not cutting his grass sooner. And he buys it because something this big and powerful can only make him look bigger and more powerful to his neighbors and his wife (or so he hopes).

But when he’s bragging about his new mower to their next door neighbor, he’s talking about how much horsepower that baby has, how it’s made out of the same metal as the space shuttle, and how a team of 4 inspectors go over the entire mower three times before it leaves the factory.

These features are his justification, and they’re nearly as important as the original benefits that made him buy in the first place. They’re the reason he can justify the thousand dollar purchase to himself and to his wife, and justify why he doesn’t return it for something smaller and cheaper they can actually afford.

Now let’s put this whole features and benefits thing on steroids…

Features are useful, but by themselves they won’t sell a thing. Benefits are terrific, and by themselves they will sell stuff. But without the features, you’ll get a lot of buyer’s remorse and refunds.

BUT… if you add EMOTION to the equation, you put your entire selling process on steroids. That’s because while people think in terms of logic (or to be more accurate, they believe they are thinking in terms of logic) it’s their emotions that weigh in most when it’s time to make a decision.

Emotion SELLS.

Thus, the more you can tap into your prospects’ emotional wants, the more they will respond to your offers.

And the best way to get at their emotions is to go all the way.
Don’t stop with just the obvious stuff, dig deeper.

Let’s use an example: You’re selling a weight loss product. You could say, “Take this pill, lose weight.” Losing the weight is the direct benefit of taking the pills. But that’s what everyone in the marketplace is saying. Plus, you’re not tapping into your prospect’s emotions, are you?

Instead, dig deeper and find the indirect benefits. What happens when they lose weight?

• They have more energy
• Stamina increases
• Higher self esteem
• More confidence
• Better dates with sexier people
• More outgoing and social
• Looks better
• Feels better
• Stronger
• Better able to take on life’s challenges
• Less jealous of others (now they’re jealous of YOU)
• Happier
• Healthier
• Live longer
• And so forth.

NOW you’re tapping into the REAL emotions behind losing weight.

Take it one step further, and put them directly into the picture. Don’t tell them they’ll have more confidence. Instead, ask him to imagine what it will be like when his confidence is so high, he can walk into a room of beautiful women and ask the most gorgeous one on a date, and she’ll say YES.

Or ask her what it will feel like when every eye in the room turns towards her – knowing all the men want her, and all the women wish they were her.

Now THAT’s tapping into emotion.

And that will get you the sale every time.

You may have noticed that Internet marketing goes through phases where everyone seems to be jumping on the same bandwagon. That wagon might be the latest, greatest social network. It might be paid newsletters or membership sites or video marketing or…

You get the point. There are times when it seems everyone is coming out with a new product that does basically the same thing as the previous dozen products, and they’re all competing against each other for customers.

This is when you can be a copycat or smart cookie. Let’s say the newest, greatest thing is $10 a month paid newsletters. (Yes, I know that was a number of years ago, but this is just an example.)

The copy cats observe that courses on how to write and sell little newsletters for small prices to lots of people are selling like hotcakes. And because they’re copycats, they create their own courses and jump into the selling fray. The competition gets stiffer and stiffer and soon underhanded techniques are being used, prices are being slashed, and everything is downhill from there.

Just like the copycats, the smart cookies watch to see what’s happening in the market. But instead of jumping in like everyone else, they sit back and ask, “What do these people need that I can provide?”

In the case of the paid mini-newsletters, there are now tons of customers who bought or are about to buy the newsletter courses who are going to need:

• Membership software
• A list of profitable topics
• A list of places to find their prospects
• Content for their newsletters
• Sales copy for their sales letters and sales videos
• Etc.

And this is what the smart cookie does. She doesn’t try to compete with the dozens of people selling the “how to” courses on mini-newsletters. Instead, she looks to see how she can complement what everyone else is doing.

In this manner every customer of ANY product teaching how to run these newsletters becomes her target prospect. She’s not competing with the course sellers. In fact, she’s often working hand in hand to provide their customers with exactly what they want and need to make their new businesses work.

The customers are happy. The people selling the courses are happy. And she’s rolling in the dough because she took a step back from the fray and asked, “What can I do to complement this trend, rather than compete in it?”

Next time you notice a trend, don’t compete. Instead, find ways to help both the sellers and the customers of this trend, and watch your bank account grow as you fulfill customer’s needs and desires.

I see new marketers all the time who have a goal of $100,000 per year or even a million dollars per year. And how are they getting their traffic? They’re happily submitting articles, writing blog posts and commenting in forums and blogs.

Now, if your goal is to earn an extra $1,000-$2,000 per month, then these methods are great. But if you want to earn far more, you’ll want to change the way you get traffic.

No one that I know of is making large sums of money using only these methods. Instead, they are doing either SEO, PPC, Facebook Ads, or creating their own products and affiliate programs.

Or they have a HUGE list. But how do you get a huge, responsive list? Generally by using SEO, PPC or some kind of advertising.

So the real questions to think about when it comes to not only traffic but also any issue regarding your business is:

A) What is your goal?

B) Is what you’re doing going to get you to that goal this year?

And if it’s not – look for another method.

I will say there are of course always exceptions to the rule. If you’re really good at a particular marketing strategy like blogging, or direct sales using Facebook chats and other social networking engagements AND you sell products that can pay you high commissions, it IS possible to build a 6 or 7 figure income with free marketing.

But for the average person, paid advertising can be a faster path to the higher income tiers. Either way, choose a strategy that works within your current budget and commit to learning how to execute that strategy at the highest level possible if you are in the online marketing game to make a serious and life-changing income.

Let’s say you run across an affiliate program for a product with recurring payments, such as a membership site or software. Because it’s recurring payments, you sell it once and you get paid over and over again, for months or possibly even years. Everything else being equal, these are always the best types of products to promote because the income just keeps coming and coming.

Naturally you want to make as many sales of these as possible, so the question becomes: Other than your usual methods of promotion, how can you get more subscribers to this affiliate program?

Try an old school method that still works – creating a viral report.

In the report, teach how to do whatever it is that the product does. Teach the method in detail, step-by-step. Leave nothing out. Then at the end, let the reader know that they don’t have to do any of what you just said. Instead, they can get the same results a whole lot faster and easier by subscribing to the affiliate program.

Simple, right? First you show how complicated it is to do it by hand. Then you give them an easy way to get the same result – by subscribing. And you give your affiliate link.

And by the way, this is the ONLY affiliate link you put in the entire report.

Now then, here are few tips to make this work:

– Create a report good enough to sell. This should be high quality.

– Make the report short enough that readers can easily finish it in one sitting. You want every reader to reach the end so they see the affiliate link.

– Whenever possible, focus on telling your reader what to do, but not how to do it. This way they’re more likely to take the easy way out and subscribe to your affiliate program, rather than figure out details for themselves.

– Give your report an absolutely KILLER title that makes people want to read it and share it.

– Leave your name off of your report. This will encourage others to share it with their lists.

– Give anyone and everyone who has the report the right to distribute the report exactly as it is with no alterations. They can use it as a bonus, as a list building incentive and so forth.

– If you’ve written a sales page for the report, let others use the sales page and put their own name on it. Yes, they can absolutely charge for the report if they like, so long as they leave your affiliate link in place.

The idea is to get as many people as possible sharing your report. The more your report is distributed around the net, the more chances you have to make sales.

This is a very old school method that can still be quite effective if you follow these steps. And of course you can repeat this method as many times as you like.

Imagine if you have a dozen of these reports, each with an affiliate link to a recurring payment program. You let other marketers give your reports away as bonuses and whatnot. And you let marketers sell them and keep all the profits.

Thousands upon thousands of copies can be distributed using these methods. And even if only 1 out of 100 who get the report subscribe for a few months to your programs, you’ll still make out like a bandit.

Ready to avoid a big mistake and increase your bottom line? Do you have download pages? You know, pages where people pick up their product after buying it from you?…

If so, have you TESTED those download pages? Odds are it never even occurred to you. But why not? You test everything else, so why not test your download pages, too?

Oh-oh, let’s back up.

Any virtual real estate you have – including download pages – can be selling something for you. In fact, download pages can be the PERFECT place for promotion because your customer just made a purchase. This means they’re already in a buying mood. And who buys products? BUYERS do. If you’re not promoting something on your download pages, you are missing out on what might be thousands of dollars of revenue a month, depending on how much traffic those pages get.

So how do you best promote a product on your download page? Forget flashy banners and things that look like ads. Simple is better, which is why adding a link to your list of download links will usually give you the best results. For example, if your download page has a list of videos, at the end of the list you will place a link in the same font and the same color offering them their customer discount on the product you’re promoting.

But don’t take my word for it – test it out for yourself.

When they click this link they are led to a slightly altered version of your regular sales page. At the top of the page is a line or two letting them know that because of their purchase, they are entitled to a special discount on this product today.

Of course, you’ll want to remember to give them that discount, too.

So what should you test on your download page? The links you use, the placement of links and the pages you send them to. Remember to promote a product that is in some way directly related to the one they bought for best results.

Making this one simple change can potentially add thousands of dollars to your bottom line each and every year. Now that’s a great return on the investment of your time.

…yet it’s a technique most marketers aren’t even aware of yet. And it’s as easy as turning video PLR snippets into lists and cash. Here’s how it works…

Find some good, solid PLR videos that instruct on how to do something. They should cover the step by step method to achieve a goal. They don’t need to be fancy but they do need good information that people want.

Once you’ve got your videos, watch them to find the “good” parts. These are the little 2-3 minute segments that teach something especially useful most people don’t know. Really you only need one of these segments, but if you find several, that’s even better.

Copy that segment into a file of its own. You can use most any video program to do this. Basically you make a copy of that video, then cut out everything you don’t want, leaving that 2-3 minute segment.

Place that video segment on its own page on your website. Once you’ve gotten this far, you’ve got choices on what to do next – LOTS of choices. You can…

1. Add a lead capture form to build your list. “To get the entire 30 minute video series for free, just let us know where to send it.” Drive traffic to your lead capture page from social media, guest blogging, paid traffic and so forth.

Visitors watch the 2-3 minute segment and quickly learn something valuable. You’ve now earned a level of trust. And they are impressed and curious enough to give their email address in return for the rest of the video series.

Taking this a step further, you can monetize your lead capture page by adding an upsell to the sequence. Once they subscribe, you offer them another, related product. Done right this will make your list building profitable enough to pay for advertising.

And with a self-liquidating offer, you can build your list as fast as you like.

2. Promote your membership site. “This entire video series is just one of many in my XYZ membership. Click here to get more info / sign up.”

You’ll find it’s much easier to drive traffic to your membership sales page by promoting your free video clip. And you can add this into your autoresponder sequence to make more sales of your membership as well.

3. You can sell the actual PLR series. Placing a clip on a stand-alone page is a great way to promote your product. Be sure to rename the video series and give it an entirely different look with a new cover as well.

Visitors watch the clip, like it, and click the link to get the rest of the video series. This takes them to a short sales page with an attractive price tag.

Guaranteed, you will make more sales using this method than if you simply send them straight to the sales page without letting them view the segment.

4. Give the video series away when they purchase an affiliate product. “Would you like to get this entire video series for free? Simply click his link, purchase ABC product and the video series is yours.

They are then taken to the sales page for ABC product. Of course this works best when the affiliate product is directly related to the video series you’re giving away.

5. Give the video series away when they buy your product. “This entire video series is just one of the bonuses you get when you purchase my product.”

Again, letting them preview the video series greatly increases the perceived value and heightens their desire to see the rest of the video series. Thus it’s a much better enticement to get them to buy your product.

BIG BONUS TIP: This tip alone can put thousands of dollars in your pocket, and it’s super simple. Ready?

For options 2-5, you can add them into your autoresponder sequences to make additional sales on autopilot.

And you can repeat this with as many PLR video products as you like, too.

Just show a teaser video and then offer the full course when they join your list, join your membership, buy your product, etc. It’s such a simple technique, yet very few marketers have caught on to this yet so it’s still wide open. Go for it!

Let’s say you promote an affiliate product and it does pretty well, earning you some nice sales. The question is, now that you’ve found a product that is selling well to your list, how do you make even more sales? Here are 3 methods:

1. Send another email to those who opened your last email but didn’t click the link, and to those who didn’t open your last email. Offer them the same product, but with an additional 7 days of free email support from you.

This works if you’re familiar with the product, which you should be if you’re promoting it. The addition of real live support can often double your sales or better. And it can be fun making new friends with people on your list.

2. If it’s your product that you’re promoting, send out another promotion to those people on your list who didn’t click the link or open the email, offering the same product with a twist for more money.

The twist might be a special bonus, email support, a coaching call, etc. You can charge more because you’re offering more value. Again, some people will take you up on this offer who wouldn’t otherwise have purchased.

3. Send out the “bugging” email. This is the email that you again send to those who either haven’t opened your other emails or opened them and didn’t click the link.

Admit right up front that you are bugging them with your emails, but you have a very good reason for bugging them. You know this product can make a real difference in their lives. In fact, you’re so sure this product can make a difference that you’re willing to risk your friendship and their patronage just to get them to look at it. Because that is what friends do.

And if you think about it, that IS what friends do. If your friend knows you would be far better off if you only did ___, wouldn’t your friend bug you to do it? Of course. Your email list should be no different. Because you only promote the products you KNOW will help them, and because this product is a life-changer, you’re sending this email.

This technique flat out works – try it.

What NOT to do: Do not be the person who sends that annoying, “Frankly, we’re puzzled why you haven’t bought “x” product yet.” This conveys the message that you think they’re idiots for not buying it and is an instant turn off to any thinking person who receives the email.

Instead, always take the high road of, “I completely understand why you might be skeptical, which is why I’m throwing in free coaching, or which is why I’m offering email support to help you get started, or which is why I keep writing to you.”

By using any one of these 3 techniques, you can double your sales without a lot of effort. This means you can promote half as many products and yet make just as much money, or promote the same number of products and quite possibly double your income.