Coffee Break Blogging

Sometimes we do have constraints that bump right up against our lack of skills. Common for many in this business is lack of technical skills. And this is often coupled with the habit of comparing yourself to others where you see other good looking blogs and you try like hell to make your own look that good despite not having the skillset to do it. You have two options here: Do it by yourself. Hire somebody to do it. Now, going the “do it yourself” route is a viable option for some, but I see some people basically grinding their entire progress to a halt over it. In the “real world”, you hire people all the time. You probably hire somebody to fix your car, or to do major repair work around the house. You hire them because they’re the expert and you want the result quickly. So, WHY is it that we lose this perspective when it comes to the Internet?

In our last issue, we met Bob. Bob set out to start up his own online business, but ended up drowning in information and left himself overwhelmed and confused on what to do next. And when we left Bob last time, I talked about how Bob needed structure and order… and he needed to implement “just in time learning”. He needed self-imposed tunnel vision in order to weed out any incoming information that took him off his goal or simply was talking about something which isn’t yet relevant to Bob. Let me give you a classic example… Let’s say our friend Bob here has a niche in mind. He’s even started his site up for it. He’s written a few blog posts, perhaps. But, his email list is still practically non-existent and he has yet to make his first buck online. So, Bob is still in the early phases here. But, Bob is subscribed to some “guru” who is pretty big into podcasting. Bob listens to that podcast. Loves it, in fact. The host of that podcast even publishes income reports and Bob finds it motivational. So, the “guru” launches a course all about podcasting. And it sounds freakin’ awesome to Bob. But, let’s back up here. And let’s talk a little sense into Bob, shall we?

Information overload and overwhelm are two of the biggest constraints to people looking to build their online business. But, here’s the rub… Most people are doing it to themselves voluntarily! Let’s look at a typical person who is trying to start and grow an online business. Let’s call him Bob. So, Bob wants this. He has visions of making enough money online so that he can walk out of his day job. He is under no illusions that it will be an overnight thing. He knows it will take a lot of work. But, Bob needs to figure out what to do. So, he goes out and starts searching for and reading various articles and “gurus” in the world of online business. He subscribes to several email lists. He puts a bunch of RSS feeds into his phone so he can keep track of different sites. He registers for some webinars. But, Bob is confused. He feels like he is understanding the theory behind things. He can start to use some of the terminology from the world of online marketing. But, he’s still personally confused on what HE should be doing. He tries to solve it by buying a few courses. Being on all these peoples’ lists, he sees things for sale. They look awesome. Certainly, the ad copy on those pages makes each of those things seem like the best thing ever. So, he picks up a few. He also picks up some tools. He picks up a couple WordPress plug-ins and some online services. Every time he buys one of those things, he feels like he did something concrete to grow his business. But, there’s still this nagging feeling… He’s still confused. He’s still feeling overwhelmed.

For #ASKBMA this week, I'm talking about what to do when you've been blogging for awhile, but it isn't working. Carl is in the personal development niche and is having a problem figuring out his unique selling proposition (USP). Also on the agenda... - Black Friday 2018 - The latest on The Daily - An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. - What's new inside THE LAB Quick Links: - BLACK FRIDAY - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/blackfriday/ - THE DAILY - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/daily/ - PODCAST - http://www.coffeebreakblogging.com - THE LAB - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/lab/ - ASK BMA - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/ask/ That's our weekly update for 11/21/2018. See ya next week! And Happy Thanksgiving!

When we focus on what we don’t have, it will often lead to more of that. See… You get what you validate. And, when you validate your shortcomings by focusing on them, you’ll just magnify them. I’m about to get a little “woo woo” on you here, but I personally believe this… As beings, we imbue the world around us with energy. It is like we’re literally painting our environment with energy. That energy can either be positive or negative. And that “painting” is driven by our attention. Not only that, when we give something our attention, we’re also giving it power. We’re validating it. We’re imbuing energy into it, merely by focusing our spiritual energy on it. That energy has a quality to it, however. It can either be positive or negative. There are those people who, when they put their attention on things, things tend to go right. There are also some people who tend to screw up anything they get involved with. There are lot of different scenarios here, but all of it is summarized by simply saying that we imbue things with energy and that the nature of that energy has a lot to do with the effects. Positivity or negativity toward things is a learned skill. You might have a natural tendency toward one or the other, but you have control over it. You can train yourself to be more of an optimist by taking time each day to list one or more things you are grateful for. Being grateful is literally injecting beauty into the world. One might not think of gratitude as imbuing their world with positive energy. Many think of it as merely “being thankful for” something. But, it is so much more than that. It is something to strive for. And something to be aware of the next time you find yourself being rather negative about your own situation. When you’re doing that, ask yourself… What reality are you postulating for yourself right then?

Man, they appear to be doing so well. What’s wrong with me?” This is a pretty common thought to a lot of people. You may see somebody in a bigger house than you have… then look at your own and wonder what went wrong. You may see somebody else with a nicer car and wonder why you’re driving around such an average vehicle. Or, let’s make this even more common… You’re scrolling through Facebook and seeing pictures of people’s parties, their vacations, their fancy meals. They seem to be living the high life. What’s wrong with YOU? It has actually been proven through experiment that such use of social media actually helps further depression. People are unhappier due to social media, in a lot of cases. On top of the comparisons, it doesn’t help one bit that social media is being used these days to divide people and stir them up. But, that’s another discussion… But, if you’re the kind who makes a habit of comparing yourself to others, then you’re more likely to find unhappiness breeding in you when you are active on social media. But, let’s bring this back into the world of online business… When you want to make money online, one of the first things you often do is search the internet for how to make money online, or how to make money blogging. And you come across people who are talking about it. And often they talk about how much money they make. Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income, publicly posts his monthly income reports. It is a popular feature of his site, and many others have done the same. I actually used to do the same thing, but have long since stopped. Why is that? … because I believe it leads people into making comparisons between themselves and me, or themselves and Pat – or whoever. You get inspired by the money, then the next move is to try to do what they have done instead of charting your own path. Instead of doing what you need to do, you’re instead left trying to copy somebody else. And if you don’t get the forward movement, it is pretty deflating. Plus, income reports put the emphasis on the income and not what actually creates that income… which is delivering value to others. Comparing yourself to others will almost naturally lead to an attitude of “lack”. Your attention and your focus is on what you DON’T have. And you will inevitably get more of what you focus on. The ironic thing is that, most of the time, these comparisons are based on an outright LIE.

You ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption? FANTASTIC movie. Hard to believe it was made 24 years ago now. Anyway… If you recall, Morgan Freeman’s character was in prison and he was afraid to leave prison. He saw what happened to some of his fellow prison mates when they were released. Free from the structure of the prison, they lost themselves and committed suicide in many cases. There’s that sad scene where the old man was released from prison, felt completely lost in the regular world without the prison rules, and ended up hanging himself. But, I thought about that. And I saw some parallels to people who are trying (or simply want to) gain freedom from a traditional 9-to-5 job. While there are negatives to having a 9-5 job, the truth is that it is actually easier than trying to build a business. With a job, you live within the confines laid out by somebody else. You play by their rules. You do what you’re told. You do it well enough and out pops a paycheck. There’s a kind of order to it. It is an order laid out by somebody else, so there isn’t that responsibility of having to drive the ship. Once you go into the uncharted territory of your own business, then you’re on your own. You’re like a pioneer. All of a sudden, the rulebook is gone and you’re the creator of your own rules. You have nobody to impose discipline on you but yourself.

One thing I know from all my time in the business is that there are a lot of things that people just do. Almost out of habit. Because it is considered normal and they see everybody else do it. They might not ever question whether it makes much sense, but they will just do it in another case of “follow the leader”. After all, if the “big guys” do it, it must be right. You see a lot of it in the world of podcasting. I got to thinking about the intros. Everybody seems to want to get some intro for their podcasts that sounds like a radio show. They hire somebody to record it, or maybe they cheap out and go to Fiverr. Either way, it is considered normal that you have to get an intro to make your show official. But, why?

The other day, I was reviewing somebody’s front-end offer. The central portion of the landing page for it was a video of him talking. And I noticed something… He was not portraying any confidence in his offer. In fact, he was practically apologizing for making it. He started off by saying he wasn’t trying to make a quick buck, saying it wasn’t a scam, etc. I mean, who puts forth a good offer by leading off with the fact that it isn’t a scam? I call this “selling from your heels”. It is delivering a sales message while leaning back, almost propitiating to your prospect for even making the offer. What do you do when you're seriously nervous about trying to make a sale?

My relationship with Twitter has changed a few times. Like a lot of bloggers, I used it. Built up a following, and used it to interact with others in my marketplace. But, like a lot of people, I felt Twitter got to be super noisy. And my enthusiasm for the platform dropped. To be honest, I slowly shifted away from actually using Twitter. I barely ever used it… and almost all the posts that I made were automated. Essentially, I was link-dropping my latest stuff to Twitter and otherwise forgetting my profile exists. And even though I was dropping those links out to over 14,000 followers, the results were a reflection of exactly the energy I was giving it. In other words… damn near zero. Twitter was almost zilch as a traffic source to the Blog Marketing Academy. It seemed as if Twitter shifted. It seems like it has gotten really political. It seems as if Twitter is more of a platform for people in the media, politicians, celebs, etc. A place for them to vent off over things which, frankly, they should probably just shut up about.  And then, those tweets end up becoming the basis for entire “news” stories. It works for reporters. Trump likes it.  But, for the rest of us, not so much. But, recently, I decided to give Twitter another “go”. Only this time, quite differently.

A quiz is a unique type of lead magnet to grow your list. Typically, creating an online quiz has been a real technical challenge. But, one of the more recent tools offered from Thrive Themes is the Thrive Quiz Builder. With Quiz Builder, you can create different kinds of quizzes. And here’s the best part… You can use them to create segmented email lists, offer them different lead magnets depending on their answers, and more. One of the biggest challenges can simply be coming up with an idea for a quiz. From a marketing perspective, the aim is to have a quiz which gets them to look at the problem that you solve with your business. It can help raise them on the customer awareness scale from being unaware to problem aware. Quizzes which give them a score on something they can improve can work well for this. The fact that you can build a simple assessment or quiz using a drag-and-drop interface like this is just amazing to me. Thrive Quiz Builder really is an amazing tool for that.

Mobile traffic is a really big deal these days. So many people are browsing our sites on mobile devices so it is VERY important that your site is mobile responsive to work on smaller screens. When I look at my own stats as of this writing, about 38% of my traffic over the last 30 days was on a mobile device. And, almost all of that was on a phone of some kind – not a tablet. We’re talking small screens. So, the question is… do your opt-in forms adjust properly and work well on such small screens? A sidebar opt-in will usually be pushed way to the bottom of the screen on a mobile device, since sidebars usually just get kicked to the bottom. Your opt-in rate will be garbage. If you use an exit pop or some other popup, the trigger settings might not work right on mobile. Plus, there’s little that’s more annoying than having an opt-in completely takeover my iPhone screen when I’m on a site. It is interruption marketing at it’s finest. So, you may want to change up your opt-in strategy for mobile devices. Display different forms that are more likely to work correctly on small screens.

Today, let’s talk about placement of your opt-in forms. We’ve already talked about running split tests on your opt-in forms. But, one of the things you definitely should be testing is placement of your opt-in forms. Most blogs have a primary lead magnet placed right in their sidebar. However, the sidebar is usually one of the worst performing locations for your opt-in.​ Typical conversion rates for this location are like 1%-2%. And frankly, that sucks. Most bloggers put that thing in the sidebar simply because they see everybody else doing it. So, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind. Definitely experiment with opt-in form placement. Don’t just fall back on your sidebar because that’s what everybody else does. To grow your list effectively, you can’t just do the bare minimum. Your action item for today is… Set up a different form of opt-in placement than you are running right now and test it out.

For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering: - Using other people's Youtube videos in your content. Is it OK? - Her email list isn't growing. What's she missing? - Offering private discounts to people who ask? Also on the agenda... - The latest on The Daily - An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. - What's new inside THE LAB Quick Links: - THE DAILY - PODCAST - THE LAB - ASK BMA That's our weekly update for 11/1/2018. See ya next week!

All of us – and yes, you – have people who come to our blog who end up leaving without opting into our list. Sometimes it is because they’re not interested. Sometimes they just never saw your lead magnet. Sometimes, they’ve got such short attention spans that they could have the most awesome, relevant free download staring them in the face and they don’t see it. But, once they back away and leave, is that it? You’ll never see them again? Not necessarily. Bring in retargeting (sometimes called remarketing). You know it, even if you don’t think you do. Because we’ve all experienced going to some website to check it out. Then, we just happen to see their ads all over the place. It is like they’re FOLLOWING us! You might see an ad for them in your Facebook news feed. You might even see banner ads showing up on other websites you visit. That’s retargeting. And it is usually much cheaper to do this kind of paid advertising than going out to new people. Usually. In effect, you’re capturing traffic that bounces off your site and your circling back to give them another opportunity to connect with you.

Today, I’m going to share another strategy to build your list much more effectively. In fact, it works very, VERY well. It will, however, cost you a bit of money. But, the way I see it, if you’re one that is seeking to avoid any form of spending, you’ve already cut yourself off at the knees. My list growth trend was rather flat while I was out traveling in the RV all summer. I didn’t really have any major list building campaigns in effect. The business was just… coasting. But, as you can see, when I got back, I started things up again and you can clearly see the spike. Now, there’s a few things I did, but most of that spike is due to a single ad campaign that I re-started on Facebook. Specifically, it is an ad for one of my more popular lead magnets: The 90 Day Online Business Startup Plan. This episode covers how this worked, and what the specs of my campaign were.

A lead magnet squeeze page is like an island unto itself. It won’t have any top nav menu. No sidebar. No links to social media profiles. At most, it will have the typical boring links to your privacy policy and terms of service in the footer. At the top, it might have your logo. Also, most of the time, you would hide this squeeze page from your top blog navigation menu. You don’t HAVE to. You may want to try including it there. But, often these squeeze pages will just sit there and the only traffic it will get will be when you specifically link to it. So, where might you use this thing? Well, I could give you a bunch of ideas today. However, this whole list building challenge is about specificity. I don’t want to give you a ton to do all at once… otherwise it is more likely you won’t do it. So, today, let’s just talk one simple strategy. This strategy isn't so much about building your list... as it is about keeping your existing subscribers engaged.

In case you’re wondering, here’s some fairly typical opt-in rates for various types of forms: Typical blog sidebar opt-in form will typically not convert much better than 1%-2%. A contextual opt-in form inside a blog post (aka content upgrade) can convert anywhere from around 5% up to 12%. I’ve had them go as high as 30%, but usually that’s a temporary fluke. But, it happens. A dedicated landing page can convert anywhere from 30% up to 50%. Sometimes even higher. I’ve got one right now which seems to be converting at about 88%, but again, it might even out. I have found 50% to be a good, rough average. So, in this case, a squeeze page is the equivalent of using the electric drill compared to a screwdriver. It is simply FAR more efficient and converts far better than you’ll almost EVER see on a blog, regardless of location. Why is this? Well, the answer is pretty simple...

Here's our weekly update for 10/25/2018. For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering: Transitioning from single products to a membership Daily blogging and building up to 25k subscribers BEFORE you monetize? Whuh?! How many blog posts do you need to launch? Also on the agenda... The latest on The Daily An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. What's new inside THE LAB Sneak peak at what's coming up with the next training course Quick Links: THE DAILY PODCAST THE LAB ASK BMA MEMBERMOUSE New Blog Post: Pricing Strategy: The Non-Marketer’s Guide To Figuring Out What To Charge For Your Digital Products

Building your email list is always a marathon, not a race. It is a constant effort and something that you’re always doing. And, if all you do it throw up an opt-in form with a single lead magnet and then waiting it out, you’re just not doing it right. We’ve already talked about how you can magnify your list building power by creating additional lead magnets and/or content upgrades. But, what about the actual opt-in forms? How do you improve those and make them work better? Split testing. Now, decent chance you already know about split-testing. Thing is… Do you actually do it?

If you’ve not yet read my flagship blog post on The Redwood Strategy, I recommend you do now. It should be very clear that I’m big on the long-term use of a blog post. I like to build leverage… not a hamster wheel. In that post, too, you will see a content upgrade. A content upgrade is simply a lead magnet which is highly specific to a single blog post. As of this writing, that content upgrade is converting at 11.27%. This is a simple, concrete action you can take to more effectively build your list. Pick one post. Preferably one already getting some traffic. And make a content upgrade for it.

This week's (and the first) Weekly Update. :) On the docket this week... The latest on The Daily An update on the Coffee Break Blogging podcast. Is it coming back? What's new inside THE LAB #AskBMA For #ASKBMA this week, I'm answering: Third party landing page creator (like LeadPages) versus Wordpress landing page builders. Which is better? Should you put your customer downloads behind a login, or send it via email? Thrive Themes and SumoMe? Should you use a pop-up on your site to build your list? What (in my experience) works even better than a popup but isn't so annoying? Quick Links: THE DAILY - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/daily/ PODCAST - http://www.coffeebreakblogging.com THE LAB - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/lab/ ASK BMA - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/ask/ Thrive Leads - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/go/thriveleads Thrive Architect - http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/go/architect 

“Subscribe to our Newsletter” is quite possibly the dumbest call to action ever to litter the internet. It might have worked back in the 90’s when “You got Mail!” made people feel special. But, today? Ha! Today, you need to give people a damn compelling REASON to subscribe to your email list. And that reason is simply an opt-in offer, otherwise known as a lead magnet. Now, for most of you, I would imagine the concept of a lead magnet is nothing new. However, ask yourself this… Do you have only one or two lead magnets? If so, then time to get busy. Because… The more lead magnets you have, the easier it is to grow your list.

It has been a long time since we've done a new episode of Coffee Break Blogging. I've had many people ask if I had any plans on bringing it back. With this short episode, I explain what happened. And, what's coming.

Do you run a service business? Are you a consultant or a coach? If so, then you’ve likely thought about the issue of how to scale. The idea of trading time for money is something many people grow allergic to. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, however every service provider eventually starts to look ahead at how to evolve the business beyond that. How can you scale a service business? How can you turn it into a product? How can you begin to set things up so that it isn’t simply a trade between time and money? In this episode of Coffee Break, I’m talking specifically to people who run service businesses. We’ll be discussing 7 specific strategies to begin executing so that you can begin to scale a time-based business. This isn’t a transition one just jumps into. And I’m not going to recommend you just jump into the world of membership sites and online course creation. There are certain systemic things you need to be doing internally to strategically AIM your business toward more systematization and productization. It is a myth that the kind of marketing and revenue generation strategies we discuss around the Blog Marketing Academy somehow don’t apply to service businesses. They most certainly do.

In this episode of Coffee Break, we're taking a little side road off the usual fare and discussing the issue of money itself. Specifically, Bitcoin. The reason I think this topic is important is because we have to understand the very medium we deal in when it comes to generating money with our business. Most of us deal in the US dollar and we tend to think that higher quantities of dollars is automatically better. But, when you look at the nature of the dollar itself and it's colossal lack of purchasing power over the last few decades, we see that more isn't necessarily better. We run our businesses - or seek to build them - in order to provide purchasing power to ourselves. So, we discuss Bitcoin here as something new. We'll discuss the cryptocurrency and its advantages. Plus, we're talking about 6 specific reasons why I think all business owners (but, especially online businesses) should be considering accepting Bitcoin payments as a payment option on their checkout pages.

For the longest time inside The Lab, my private community was running inside of a closed Facebook group. My thinking was this: My members most likely are already on Facebook They find it easy to use It saves me hassle Notifications will mean they see conversations As I now sit here a couple years later, I realize I was mistaken. In this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, I share with you 7 specific reasons why I decided; after a couple years of having my member community on Facebook, I switched to a privately hosted forum for our Lab Community. I also recommend that anybody else looking to have a private community inside of their membership site should set up from the start on a private forum that you own and control. Make time for this episode... and learn from my mistakes.

Every blogger on the face of the earth wants more traffic. But, what are the most effective ways to get it? What are the best promotion strategies that are working in 2017? In this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, we dive into the world of blog promotion yet again... this time covering the top 10 most effective strategies for promoting your blog. What Works... What Doesn't. We are most definitely leaving behind the content "hamster wheel" that most bloggers run on to try to promote their blog. You know the one. It goes like this: Post a new blog post. Share it on social media. Rinse and repeat as often as you possibly can. Simply put... this technique doesn't work. Not anymore. Content volume shouldn't even be a thing in your mind at this point. What IS working are things such as: The Redwood Strategy Paid Advertising Guest Posts Guest Podcast Interviews Facebook Live Building Your List Link Building (correctly) Content Worth Sharing Product Launch Webinars I discuss each of these strategies in much more detail in this episode of CBB.

In this informal episode of Coffee Break Blogging - and the first episode in some 6 months - I cover the question of... What happened? This episode is primarily an internal look at the Blog Marketing Academy itself, this podcast, and some general news. I discuss: Why the podcast was originally discontinued Why I'm bring it back now What I've been working on behind the scenes

Continuing our topic of webinars, this episode is a walk-through of a general layout for a 60-minute webinar. You can download the reference for this episode at: http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/webinarplan We talk about a general plan for: Introduction (10 minutes) The Content (40 minutes) The Close (10 minutes) And we'll be discussing a lot of tips and strategies for how to execute each section of your webinar.

In just about any webinar you will ever do, the guts of it will be a content-rich presentation of some kind. How do you put this together? In this episode of CBB, we're talking specifically about the content portion of the webinar... that 30-40 minutes of "pure content" that you will deliver to educate your attendee and provide a transformation that they can walk away with whether they buy from you or not. How do you determine what the topic of your webinar should be? What should be in the webinar? How can you build in trust and likability? How do you make the slides? How can you help increase the chances that they will stay until the end of your webinar? These - and more - are all discussed in this episode of Coffee Break.   So today, we are going to continue talking about webinars; because the last couple of episodes we have been talking about webinars and various aspects of them, today specifically, I want to talk about how to plan out the actual content portion of your webinar.

In this episode, we get into specifics on how to set up an evergreen webinar. This one is chocked full of tips and advice on how to properly set up an evergreen recurring webinar. We'll be discussing: Tips for the presentation of your webinar for recurring use How to set the schedule of your evergreen webinar How to set up the registration landing page (and how I personally do it) How to set up the video recording itself so it plays properly How to handle the questions, chat, and the fake attendee list Setting up the pre-event and post-event emails What happens AFTER the event is over Tips for how to present the offer on your webinar This is a highly tactical episode of CBB, going into a lot of the internal details of running a webinar on automatic so that it is literally going 24/7.   Okay, so today we are continuing on our series here about doing webinars. At the last two episodes here, we talked about various aspects of webinars. In the last one, I talked about doing a live webinar versus doing a pre-recorded or Evergreen Webinar.  

There are two ways to do a webinar: doing it LIVE, or pre-recording it. Which should you do? In this episode, I walk through the basic process of doing both. First, I walk through the process of doing a live webinar, offering up a number of tips as well as some of the reality of what goes on behind the scenes. Next, I discuss the pre-recorded - or evergreen - webinar. Typically, after you have done a live webinar a number of times, you'll begin to think about automating it. What is different about it? What are some of the specifics that go into a pre-recorded webinar? Going evergreen on a webinar is the secret to scaling it and turning it into an automatic business builder. But, there's some things you need to know before going into it. And that's what this episode will cover. :-)  

Ever done a webinar before? If not, then after listening to this episode I hope you will consider doing so soon. :-) In this installment of CBB, we're discussing the benefits of webinars and 8 specific reasons why you should be doing them. This episode gives some "inside scoop" on my own personal history with webinars, starting all the way back in the days of my tech site. Then we discuss 8 specific reasons - with advice throughout - on why webinars are great for list building, relationship building and sales. Also why webinars are AWESOME for building leverage in your business and allowing you to make more income while spending less time doing it. This is the first of a multi-part series where we will be discussing webinars. Want a plan to get started? Check out the 6-minute webinar plan, which you can download in PDF at: http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/webinarplan   By the way, we are going to start a new series  starting from today. So for the next few episodes, we are actually going to be discussing the topic of WEBINARS and various ins and outs of doing webinars. Now, of course you have probably heard about webinars in the past. It is possible that you have actually done one before. But if not, I want to convince you that you should. :-)

Many people who create information products have looked to the potential of publishing on Udemy.com. And, sure, Udemy is an attractive place. They have a lot of traffic from people who are actively looking to learn things. Plus, they make it easy since they provide the platform and take care of all the headaches. But, SHOULD you publish on Udemy? And if you do, how should you go about it? In this episode, we'll talk about Udemy and the pros and cons of publishing courses on this popular platform. I also discuss the best ways to use Udemy to build your own business. If you've ever looked at the potential of earnings from Udemy, be sure to make time for this episode. But before we get started with our discussion for today, let me first tell you about a couple of changes I am going to make here in this podcast...  

You've probably heard it a number of times by now... "The money is in the list". Great. Cool. But, what does that mean? And why is it true? Does it mean you're just constantly pitching to your list? No, not at all. If you back up to the last episode (#148) where I once again gave the bird's eye view of how this whole business works, you'll see how the primary purpose of the email list is to move people through your sales funnels. Those funnels are like pipes.... and the more people you can keep inside those pipes, the more money you make. And the email list is literally the force which flows people through those pipes or gets them to re-enter those pipes. In this episode of Coffee Break, I walk you through how this works. What happens when people get onto your list? What do you do with your "general list"? Are you constantly pitching? Let me show you how this works.   So today let's talk about how to use your email list to move people through your profit funnel; your sales funnel. The whole purpose of the email list, really, is to keep people flowing through your blog profit funnels. Now the blog profit funnels; these are essentially your sales funnels. I would like to call them blog profit funnels, personally, because... You know, my whole business revolves around the blog and how everything tacks in to the blog, so I am fairly specific about the way that I define it. But at the same time, it is essentially a sales funnel. That is what it is.

Periodically, I feel I need to go back and revisit the "big picture" about how a blog actually makes money. See, most people who start a blog with the intention of monetizing it do it with certain expectations in mind. Usually, it has to do with talking "about" something they find interesting, building a big community and audience, getting famous and getting a following.... THEN monetizing using ads and affiliate products. That's cute.... but it rarely works. It is what most people try.... and it works for some, but definitely not most. In this episode, I revisit the TRUE function of the blog and how a blog actually fits into the scheme of things. This episode will provide a "bird's eye view" of the business model, where a blog fits into it and what the purpose is.... and you'll see how a blog actually makes money. If you understand this, you'll save yourself a lot of time and effort chasing unicorns. ;-)

In the 4th (and last) installment of this 4-part series, we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work. Today we discuss: Sense of Belonging / Community Current Events Scarcity Controversy Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be. Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it. In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them. And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)   So like I said, what we are about to do is Part 4 of our Conversion Triggers series where we have been talking about various psychological components that you could build into your offers, your emails, even your blog post in order to move people into action. Now if you want to catch up with us, it is the last 3 Episodes here of the podcast where we have been talking all about these various Conversion Triggers. What we are going to do in this one is quickly wrap up 4 more; and this will actually wrap up this particular series on Conversion Triggers.

In the third installment of what will be a 4-part series, again we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work. Today we discuss: Anticipation Status Social Proof Reference Points Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be. Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it. In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them. And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)

In the second installment of what will be a 4-part series, we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work. Today we discuss: Stories Simple & Easy Common Enemy Curiosity Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be. Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it. In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them. And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)

In the first installment of what will be a 4-part series, we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work. Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be. Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it. In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them. And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)   So first of all, I want to welcome you to 2016. This is the first episode of Coffee Break for 2016. I took a few weeks off for the holidays. Christmas, New Year's... spent a lot of time not in my office. And then last week; it is was just kind of an interesting week, getting back into the groove in terms of business. But then, there are some personal stuff going on; not bad, in fact, very good. We actually purchased another RV for the family, not that matters very much to you but it is a little time consuming on my part. And it did have something to do with why I didn't release a couple of podcast episodes last week and kicked off 2016 earlier. The new RV is definitely a huge improvement over the one we had before. And you know, sometimes we travel and I do business from there, not like actual business; it is an online business so I can run it from anywhere. So sometimes while we are traveling the country, I can just run the business right from there. It is a lot of good times. One of the things that define me is that I love to go out and do that kind of thing. Anyway, enough about that. What I would like to do now is we are going to jump right in to our topic here. And this is going to be the topic that we are going to talk about for the next few episodes; and it is about Conversion Triggers.

This will be our final Coffee Break installment for the year 2015. We'll be on a brief hiatus and then hitting the ground running in the new year. But, to that end, I thought it'd be a good idea to review where we've been this year, how things are moving along, and where I intend to take the show in the year 2016. In this episode, we will discuss: The original reasons I started Coffee Break Blogging Why I do solo shows and don't generally have interview guests A review of the "7 Stages To Building An Online Business" and where this podcast currently stands in the 7 stages What I'm looking to do with this show in 2016 What is going to happen after the 7 stages are done?

As we bring 2015 to a close here on Coffee Break Blogging, I wanted to take a break from the usual programming.... and just talk to the general idea of growing your online business. ... Especially if you feel you are lacking for time. I've gotten that feedback from many people - including some Lab members. Short on time, not enough time... and for this reason they put their business goals on hold and go put out fires. And I get it. Jobs, kids, family. Life can be a messy business sometimes. :) So, in this situation, how can we continue to make headway on our business and not put the whole thing on perpetual hold? In this episode, I share my thoughts on expanding your "sphere of influence". It is the idea of being able to spend time on those other things.... AND your business at the same time. I also share a few productivity tips - and the underlying reason for each - to help you make more headway with your business. Hope you find this episode helpful.   So today, we are going to take a little bit of a hiatus from what we have been talking about. We have been talking here about monetization, so to speak; about making sales, about generating revenue. And we are going to continue on that track. But here is what we are going to be doing… We are going to take a little break today, we are going to talk a little bit about how to make progress or how to grow your online business when you think that you have got no time. And I am injecting this in here for a couple of reasons: One is because I have been seeing these feedback coming from many different people; including some of my Lab Members. The other thing is that we are heading into the Christmas break here and so I am going to be taking a little hiatus, myself. The next episode is going to be kind of a little pit stop episode; so to speak, that will be more clear when we get there, and then we are going to take a little bit and come back in going full steam ahead in 2016 with Coffee Break Blogging. So we are going to have a lot of fun with that.

You can't sell something on the Internet without some kind of a sales page. Whether it is a written sales page or a video one, the components are primarily the same. So, this episode is going to give you a full grand tour of the major elements of a converting sales page. We'll discuss: The headline Opening text Stories Credibility Sub-headings Testimonials Proof it works The offer Risk Reducer The Close For each of these 10 components, we go into detail about how to do it and what you should be thinking about in each. If you are new to copywriting or making sales pages, then this Coffee Break episode is highly important for you.   So let's get in to our topic for today, and that is... A Sales Page. Specifically, we are going to talk and give you a grand bird's eye view of the 10 components of a converting sales page. Now what this episode is NOT going to be for you is a full breakdown of copywriting and sales conversions and all that... We couldn't possibly cover that in one episode if I tried. But what I am going to do is kind of walk you through the 10 big components; the 10 big things to keep in mind when you are putting together a sales page to sell your product. So let's jump right in because there is 10 of them; it is going to take us a little bit to do. :-)

When it comes to giving your product a name, this is something you want to put some thought into and not just "shoot from the hip". I've had some real doosies for product names. My first product was called "3 Day Money"... which is probably my worst product name of all time. But, even the Blog Monetization Lab itself used to be called "Inner Circle"... then the "VIP". :D What is wrong with these names? Well, in this episode, I boil it down to 3 things to keep in mind with your product names: Brand-ability Communicating the benefit Avoiding Confusions I explain each of these in this episode. I also talk about the exercise you should go through to arrive at an awesome product name. Lastly, I discuss 3 specific followup tasks you should do, both while considering a name, as well as after you've chosen one. Don't take the name of your product lightly. This episode of Coffee Break can help you avoid problems down the road in your marketing.   So let us go in and get into our topic of today... We have already talked about it in several episodes of the show; the process of creating a product. We talked about that in a few different episodes here. Again, you can go view the archives and go back and find that. But we need to talk about naming the product, as well, because what you call the product is an important part of the marketing of the product and it then has something to do with selling it. So we need to discuss how we name it. Do we just name some summary type of title that just kind of says what it is about or do we need to think about some other considerations there? At the end of the day, your product name needs to serve as a brand name for that product. The name of your product needs to be something that can stand alone. It does not mean that it needs to go out and be on a whole separate website or it needs to stand alone from you, but it needs to be able to exist as a brand unto itself. To show you some examples of kind of how I have screwed this up in the past; because I am not going to sit here and tell you that product naming has always been my thing, even to this day this is something that I struggle with. Now, it certainly helps that today, my main offer with my business is the Blog Monetization Lab. So, right now, I only really have one central product and it is fairly well named, actually. But I want to give you a little bit of background into some of the stuff that I kind of pulled in the past and you can kind of see what I am talking about here.

So, you have that new product you'd like to bring to market. It could be a new ebook, a new course, a new membership site, etc. So, you start thinking about product launches. Launches are sexy - no doubt about it. You've like heard the tales of the huge pay days. The million dollar days. Hell, you'd be OK with a multi-thousand day, right? :-) And it seems as if some big product launch is the way to go. But, is it? Do you really need to do a traditional product launch? In this episode, I talk about the fun parts of a launch... as well as some of the realities of a launch. Behind the scenes, it isn't always as sexy as it can seem. When is a launch a good idea? When does it make sense? And when should you slow down and think a little longer term, and perhaps forget about a traditional launch? And how do you get started setting up an evergreen launch funnel? All this and more... in this episode of CBB.

For anybody who creates digital products for sale, there will inevitably come that concern of other people stealing it and making it available for free somewhere. It happens. How much should you really worry about it? Is it really that big a problem? And, what can you do to keep it from happening? In this episode, we'll talk about tools you can use to protect your paid content from getting stolen (at least easily). Keep in mind... if a person has the right tools and right knowledge, there is little you can do about this. Where there is a will, there is a way. :-) So, let's talk about what to do about it and to what degree you should let it occupy your thought process. So, let us get into that... Let's talk about Securing Your Product... Namely, how to keep people from stealing it.   Now, here is the thing... I know that especially when you are first getting started and you put products out there for sale that you want to prevent people who have not bought your product from being able to gain access to it. Now, I will be upfront with you, that I believe that many people who are first starting out tend to worry about this problem a lot more than they probably need to. I mean, the thing is... the nature of digital products is that it can be duplicated. There is not much that you can do about it at the end of the day. If it can appear in somebody's web browser and if somebody has the know-how, they can get it. They can download it; even if you try to keep them from downloading it, if they have the right knowledge and the right software, they can get it. Okay? So the first thing that I want to do is discuss the question of: Should you even worry about this? Should you put a lot of effort into keeping people from stealing your stuff?

There's always that tiny risk, yet many bloggers who are new to all this fear it almost out of proportion to the reality... You put your product out there, and somebody gets mad. "You've sold out!", they say. How do you deal with the haters, if they happen? There are two aspects to this that we discuss in this episode... The truths about the haters The truths about YOU. It goes both ways. So let's address this fear head on, in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging. Now, let us talk about our topic of today which is... HATERS.

We'll end off this multi-part series on pricing with a bird's eye view of the whole thing... So many bloggers out there don't have any product yet. They just use banner ads... or affiliate links. And, all this stuff about pricing doesn't yet apply to them. If that's you, then realize this... Until you make your first offer and name your price, you haven't even really gotten to the starting line. Your offer is the starting line. Give this episode a listen. It is important if you ever intend to make your blog the crux of a full-time income.

Figuring out your price for your product is usually a touchy subject. What if you price it too high and nobody buys it? What if you shoot too low? This is an episode you might want to have a note paper handy for before listening. In this episode, we'll discuss: The most common mistake product creators make when pricing their product How YOUR perception of value of your product can be different than your customers... The basis for determining your price How to survey your audience to find out what they'd be willing to pay How to ask them what they'll pay without directly asking 4 specific questions to learn price sensitivity Looking at the prices of your competition... and how to compete with them This is a meaty episode. Get ready. :-) So let us get in to our topic for today, which is pricing.

In the world of internet marketing, you very often see people price their products with prices that end in 7. $7.... $27.... $97... Why do they do that? Is there some hidden psychological reason for this? The answer is no, and this episode goes into it. We discuss: How the 7 prices got started How you never see an emphasis on 7 outside of the IM world Whether it makes any sense or not to test out incremental price changes When is the ONLY time it makes sense to make such tests? Let's put this into perspective. What we are going to be talking about today is going to be kind of informal but it is one that you guys have seen many, many times... And that is Prices that end in 7. Very, very popular in the whole internet marketing world. And you might wonder, is there any reason for it? Is there some deep reason you are unaware of why so many internet marketing prices end in the number 7?