Podcasts about coolcastplayer

How can you make money off of your podcast? Ravi and Bijay talk about what expectations should one have from monetizing their podcast along with busting some myths regarding creating an audience for an audio show. They also talk about effective ways to create a loyal audience and what not to do.  Apart from that, they discuss methods to successfully monetize your podcast and some practical ways Ravi has marketed his podcast in the past. Ravi Jayagopal is the co-Founder & co-Developer of DigitalAccessPass.com and also the creator of CoolCastPlayer.com. He also has his podcast SubscribeMe.fm where he talks about making, marketing & monetizing online digital content with membership sites, online courses and recurring subscriptions. For brand partnerships, collaborations and sponsorship opportunities, send us an email at hi@wyn.studio Podcast Unfiltered is a WYN Studio production. Find us at http://wyn.studio. Contact Us Ravi: Insagram Bijay: Instagram  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys welcome to the 9th episode of the Teen Whisperer Show. In today’s episode we have ourselves with Ravi JayagopalHe is the Creator at Coolcastplayer.comPodcast Host, SubscribeMe.fm at SubscribeMeCo-Founder & Co-Developer at DigitalAccessPass.com Membership Plugin For WordpressCreator at 1001TrueFans.comTopics Covered:1.Your journey of starting to subscribeme,fm?2.About dope?3.How to start all of the platforms that you have?4.Writing books as a podcaster.5.S3 media vaultIt’s a highly informative and fun filled podcast. Hope you guys get much value from it. Until next time this is Jeffrey.You can connect with James by using the below linkshttps://www.facebook.com/ravijayagopal https://www.instagram.com/RaviJayagopal/?fbclid=IwAR2SFd9PYR7sgFrpesbvZtCFU1myB6Ss_tgyZLM57yoMv2O9ZmFmhlQXQYc https://subscribeme.fm/?fbclid=IwAR1-UJI7nOfRs1oEXF-YrDha6swzM73g3h12sLrX259TYal7kNKOoxhDxgU You can connect with Jeffrey by clicking any of the following linkshttps://www.instagram.com/jbdigitally/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyboopathyj/

Ravi Jayagopal is a Business Coach, 6-time Author, Speaker, Podcaster- Subscribeme.fm and Cuttothechase.fm (2 shows), full-time Entrepreneur, Digital Marketer, Online Course Creator, WordPress Plugin Creator & Evangelist, an Amateur Ventriloquist. He has been selling online since 1997 and has created and sold several information products. But before all of this, Ravi made that leap and moved to the US as a computer engineer during the internet boom and also faced the struggle of a highly-skilled Immigrant , resettling with his family while building a business on the side. Soon enough, his several business ideas have become wildly successful and he shares openly so many secrets to succeeding abroad.  His advice is so good that it can be applied to your career and business too! On the podcast, Ravi shares how he moved to the US from India in 2000, worked at various high-tech jobs, all while building a business on the side, hustling nights and weekends, sleeping 5 hours a day while managing a family and a full-time job (a highly paid one, in New York). In 2010, he was able to quit his job and become a full-time entrepreneur, and move to San Diego, CA with his beautiful wife, 2 precious kids and a male dog inexplicably named Vanilla! He is also the Co-founder & Co-Developer of DigitalAccessPass - or DAP - a premium membership plugin for WordPress, and other popular WordPress plugins like CoolCastPlayer and S3MediaVault.When you put in a lot of hardwork, you make your own luck "Once you have an idea for a product, try to observe if there's a market for it. This is because you might be passionate about something for which there's no market for".

In this episode I am talking to Ravi about his journey and some of the struggles that he has had in his life. We also talk about his success that he has had in the content creation game. Ravi also shares some tips and strategies to building an audience from scratch through social media and podcasting. Ravi Jayagopal is a full-time Entrepreneur, 7-time Author, Speaker, Podcaster, Business Coach, Digital Marketer, and also an Amateur Ventriloquist. He has been selling online since 1997. He has created and sold a wide range of products like WordPress Plugins, Online Courses, E-books, Real Books, Kindle books, Audiobooks, Premium Podcasts, T-Shirts, Agency Services and even Desktop Software. His podcast is https://SubscribeMe.fm where he talks about Digital Marketing, creating Membership Sites and Online Courses, how to Create, Sell and Deliver Digital Content, Content Marketing, Creating Audio, Video and PDF's and Reports and Kindle books. He is the Co-Founder & Co-Developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, arguably the best membership plugin for WordPress. He is also the creator of other popular WordPress plugins like CoolCastPlayer.com, the prettiest Podcast Player Plugin for WordPress. Go to SubscribeMe.fm where you can listen to his podcast, check out his products and services, and contact him.    Here is where you can find me: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Nowheretogobutup --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/no-where-to-go-but-up/message

In this episode I am talking to Ravi about his journey and some of the struggles that he has had in his life. We also talk about his success that he has had in the content creation game. Ravi also shares some tips and strategies to building an audience from scratch through social media and podcasting. Ravi Jayagopal is a full-time Entrepreneur, 7-time Author, Speaker, Podcaster, Business Coach, Digital Marketer, and also an Amateur Ventriloquist. He has been selling online since 1997. He has created and sold a wide range of products like WordPress Plugins, Online Courses, E-books, Real Books, Kindle books, Audiobooks, Premium Podcasts, T-Shirts, Agency Services and even Desktop Software. His podcast is https://SubscribeMe.fm where he talks about Digital Marketing, creating Membership Sites and Online Courses, how to Create, Sell and Deliver Digital Content, Content Marketing, Creating Audio, Video and PDF's and Reports and Kindle books. He is the Co-Founder & Co-Developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, arguably the best membership plugin for WordPress. He is also the creator of other popular WordPress plugins like CoolCastPlayer.com, the prettiest Podcast Player Plugin for WordPress. Go to SubscribeMe.fm where you can listen to his podcast, check out his products and services, and contact him.    Here is where you can find me: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Nowheretogobutup

Do you know what are some things that will NEVER EVER show YOU the money? Likes and Loves and Wows and Sad Faces on your posts, Comments, asking me to respond to your post with a GIF showing you how I feel, asking your followers to guess which one of the 10 concerts that you've never been to, asking me to post the 8th photo from my camera roll. If you publish any kind of audio on your website, in the member's area, or you have a podast, and want the best audio player and podcast player for your WordPress site, check out CoolCastPlayer.com , a pretty and powerful podcast player for WordPress. And to listen to older episodes of this show, visit https://CutToTheChase.fm

In today's world of non-stop marketing and promotional messages hitting you in the face from morning to night, everyone has a free report, everyone has a free webinar, everyone is an expert, every 20 year old is a life coach, right? The noise out there is getting absolutely ridiculous by the day. So one of the ways in which you can stand apart from all of the empty-noise-makers, is to give people a quick win - deliver instant gratification. We humans are inherently wired to want things RIGHT NOW. Not next week, not tomorrow, not even in an hour. Like, RIGHT NOW. And nothing has made delivering things RIGHT NOW like the Internet, right? Yet why is it that marketers make it so difficult for their potential audience to get to the meat of their content? Listen to the show for the rest. Check out http://CoolCastPlayer.com , a pretty and powerful podcast player for WordPress. And to listen to older episodes of this show, visit https://CutToTheChase.fm

At some point in your life, you're going to want to sell your business. It could be because you just want to cash out and retire and enjoy your retirement traveling the world, or because you have a bigger calling in life that you have always put off, or maybe you just want to chill and watch sports and go to your grandkids' basketball and soccer games and hang out with your family. Whatever the reason may be, most people will want to sell their business at some point. And one of the first things that a prospective buyer looks at, is not just how much you earned last year, or last quarter or last month. What they really want to know is if there is a way to PREDICT how much money your business is going to bring in next month. Listen to the show for the rest. Check out http://CoolCastPlayer.com , a pretty and powerful podcast player for WordPress. And to listen to older episodes of this show, visit https://CutToTheChase.fm

There's a difference between working ON your business, vs working IN your business. Artists don't necessarily make great marketers. Skilled Technicians don't necessarily make great CEO's. Which is why, according to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start a business fail within the first 18 months. A whopping 80%. Gone! Simply taking the work you were doing for someone else, bringing it home and doing it for yourself, doesn't make you an entrepreneur. Check out http://CoolCastPlayer.com , a pretty and powerful podcast player for WordPress. And to listen to older episodes of this show, visit https://CutToTheChase.fm

Every year I read/listen to the book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. For me, this is the same as a football go saying, We need to get back to the basics. It reminds me of what my goals are as a content creator. In the book, Michael talks about making good content isn't really good enough anymore if you really want to get noticed. You need to make content that makes people go WOW. Then this response is followed by them telling a friend. Two Podcasts Episodes That Made Me Go WOW! Episode 100 of the Story Behind Podcast - Emily Create this Episode as a Musical. I had numerous people ask me if I had heard it. This episode too more than four days to assemble. Carey Green on episode 81 of Podcastification did an episode comparing Skype, Ringr, Zencastr, Zoom, and Cleenfeed. Carey said that including research, recording, setup, editing, show notes, probably 8 to 12-ish hours, all done in chunks over the course of a month. Carey also runs Podcast Fast Track (audio editing and show notes) Seth Resler who works for Jabs Media did an article on if there is or isn't a discovery problem in podcasting (read it here). While he had to do a little work to take all the answers and put them into an article that was easily read, he also pointed out, "It took years, because the only reason that the podcasting leaders that are quoted in that article responded to me at all is because I've invested years in the podcasting space, not just learning about the craft, but also building relationships at conferences and trade shows, and establishing my own credibility by writing, speaking, and hosting webinars about podcasting. This Doesn't Mean Your Next Episode Should Take 14 hours Please dont read this and think, "I need to spend at least 10 hours per episode. That's not my point. My point is that it takes some planning, it takes some strategy, it takes knowing your audience, and it takes some practice to create WOW content.  Here are the ingredients to wow content ( Adapted for podcasting from Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World). Surprise. Wow content should exceed expectations.  - The Stacking Benjamins has great information but also is pretty funny. Anticipation.  Anticipating a wow experience is almost as good as the experience. David Hooper's latest episode of the Red podcast had a huge teaser at the end.  Resonance. A wow experience touches the heart. It resonates at a deep level. It might even cause goosebumps or tears. Dictionary.com shows resonate as "to produce a positive feeling, emotional response, or opinion." Transcendence. A wow experience connects you to something transcendent. Michael states, "You experience purpose, meaning, or even God. " Dictionary.com shows, "to rise above or go beyond; overpass; exceed," and "to outdo or exceed in excellence, elevation, extent, degree, etc. ; surpass; excel." Clarity. A wow experience creates a moment when you see things with more clarity than ever before. I've had people tell me I do a really good job of explaining things. Presence.  A wow experience has you experiencing the NOW. You are fully present. Universality. A wow experience is experienced by everyone in the same way.  Evangelism. A wow experience has to be shared. The minutes the content is done, you're already thinking of the people you need to tell. Longevity. You can experience it time and time again without growing tired of it.  Privilege. You're glad to be associated with it. I wanted to add a few things of my own. Scarcity/Uniqueness. You can't get it any place else Bravery. People that have the courage to stand up and tell the truth Intimacy. When someone shares intimate details of their life, this somewhat ties into Michaels surprise, but it makes people uncomfortable. Other Things To Consider With Your Content Managing your audience expectations. If you set the bar too high, you might leave the door open to disappointing your audience. What about Passion? Audio Quality? Microphones?    Mentioned In This Episode Podcasting in Six Weeks Starts January 6th Join Now Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Jim Collison From the Average Gut Network Ask the Podcast Coach Jonathon Oaks Trival Warfare Ravi from Subscribeme.fm and Coolcastplayer.com Darwin Dave Dealing with My Grief Master Kuldrin from Kuldrin's Krypt SP from Better Podcasting Alan Two Chairs No Waiting Epodcast Productions (edit and show notes ) The Audacity to Podcast David Hooper Red Podcast Podcast Talent Coach Podcast Review Show Harry Durran - Podcast Junkies Pat Flynn Smart Passive Income Episode 598 Because of My Podcast Segment Gallon Smashing Pranks on YouTube Brother Love Congressional Dish John Lee Dumas The Heroes Journey Podfest.us Podfest Multimedia Expo in Florida  Social Media Marketing World Bernie The Cat Show Let Me Help Start Your Podcast Podcasting in Six Weeks Starts January 6th School of Podcasting Self Paced Online Classes One on One Consulting

Welcome to Episode #60 of the SubscribeMe show from SubscribeMe.fm, where I talk about creating membership sites & online courses, how to make, market and monetize digital content, the world of WordPress, and tools, techniques and tips that you can use to create a long term, profitable online business. I'm Ravi Jayagopal. I'm the creator of CoolCastPlayer.com, a pretty yet powerful audio player and podcast player plugin for your WordPress site. In today's episode, I'm going to give you a few reasons for both why you SHOULD and why you should NOT start a podcast. You know how in shows and movies, someone walks up to a main character and says "I have both Good news and bad news", and the main character always says, "give me the bad news first". So that's what I'm going to do here as well, because, you know, you are the main character in this show. So, first... Reasons why you should NOT start a podcast. Audio is actually easier than video - at least, most forms of face-on-camera videos, because if you're going to be in the video, then you have to think about your clothes, hair, shaving, or makeup, lighting, are you going to do it indoors or outdoors. If you're doing it outdoors, are you going to use just natural sun light, if yes, then if you shoot for an hour or two, then you'll see the lighting differ in the final output because of clouds and the position of the sun itself changing, all of the outdoor noises that you have to consider because I don't know about you, but the second I walk into my backyard to shoot a quick 3 minute video, it feels like the entire universe conspires against me. And my neighbor, who probably hasn't mowed his lawn in weeks, comes out of the blue and starts his lawn mower or leaf blower. Another neighbor down the street starts doing some construction work, all of the kids come out to play, especially the cute little ones with such high-pitched screams that only your dog can hear it. Of course, your mic picks up EVERY thing, including the A/C unit in your own backyard going off all of a sudden. But think about how many talking-head or face-on-camera videos a typical person creates over their lifetime. Probably not too many, unless they're doing the occasional sales video for their web site. That number is however tripling by the day thanks to Facebook Live and Instagram and Snapchat and what not. But still, that's still a very small percentage. Of course, there are those casual screencast and how-to videos which are actually easier to produce than a typical podcast, because of the long-term commitment that a podcast brings. So don't compare audio to the much harder selfie videos. We're going to compare creating audio - or a series of audio files - as in, a podcast - we're going to compare creating a podcast all the mostly written-word blog posts and Facebook posts and Instagram posts and Medium posts that you would create. So podcasting, in spite of what some people would have you believe, is actually way harder compared to most other form of content generation. And then I also talk about all the reasons why you SHOULD start a podcast... like today! (listen to the show for the rest) Listen online at http://SubscribeMe.fm/

Welcome to Episode #59 of the SubscribeMe show from http://SubscribeMe.fm, where I talk about creating membership sites & online courses, how to make, market and monetize digital content, the world of WordPress, and tools, techniques and tips that you can use to create a long term, profitable online business. I'm Ravi Jayagopal. I'm the creator of http://CoolCastPlayer.com, a pretty yet powerful audio player and podcast player plugin for your WordPress site. Asking how long your videos in your online course should be, is very similar to asking... How long should your sales page be? How long should your podcast be? How long should your blog post be? How long should a movie be? I just have one simple answer to this: There is no such thing as "too long" - only "too boring". And as much as I would like to take credit for that line, it's not from me, and unfortunately I don't remember who originally said it. But it is such a great truth, that it applies to pretty much every type of content produced in every single format - whether it is Video, Audio, Blog Post, or Sales Page. And that's what I talk about on today's episode. (listen to the show for the rest) Listen online at http://SubscribeMe.fm/

In the last 2 episodes, I talked about Membership models 1 through 4. So if you didn't hear part 1 or part 2, I recommend that you start with those first. You can go to subscribeme.fm/26/ the number 26, and subscribeme.fm/27/ to hear Part 1 & 2. In fact, just go to the main site - subscribeme.fm and you'll see a big beautiful podcast player with the full playlist of all past episodes. And this beautiful podcast player is powered by CoolCastPlayer.com, officially the prettiest podcast player on the planet. Membership Model #54. Magazine Model This is one of the most interesting membership models, and back in 2009, I gave it this name because back in the day, like Dave Jackson from schoolofpodcasting would say, we used to get people asking how they can set up content access similar to a real-world magazine subscription. So if you are old enough to have ever subscribed to physical magazines - I say that because the funny thing is, I don't know if my kids have ever seen a magazine in my house - well, we did buy a sports illustrated a few years ago when Lebron James won his first championship. And then the People issue with Steve Jobs on the cover when he passed away - Rest in peace, Steve! I remember, as a kid, I used to wait every week for this magazine delivery guy, who charged a fixed fee every month - I think it was like 20 rupees or something - which in today's exchange rate would be 30 cents. He brought this massive travel bag full of magazines, and you could pick out any 5 you wanted. And you could keep any of them for as long as you wanted, but you could only ever check out 5 magazines. So if you returned 5 magazines, you could pick out 5 more. If you kept 2 and returned 3, then you could pick out 3 new ones for the week. Ring a bell? That's actually how the DVD portion of Netflix works. The crazy thing is, while I'm talking about outdated paper magazines, even DVD subscriptions are well on their way to becoming extinct! So, with Netflix, you can check out a maximum of 3 or 4 DVD's, depending on which plan you are on. And then when you return one, you get the next one in your queue automatically mailed to you. So I was thinking about this guy in India, this was back in the early 80's. He had a couple of these gym duffel bags, and he hung them from the handlebars of his bicycle, he wore slippers, his bicycle was all beat up and his clothes had seen better days. And YET, he had the entrepreneurial mindset and the passion and the determination to sign up for a bunch of magazine subscriptions himself, and then he basically lent them out to others. Sure, it would be a gross copyright violation today - you can't buy a DVD for personal use and then turn around and lend it to someone else for money. So just put that aside for a second, and you'll realize what an impressive thing this guy did. So I guess that was probably my earliest recollection of a membership model. I was really inspired by this man when I remembered him when writing notes for today's episode, and I hope it inspires you too. Think about how a real world magazine subscription works: You subscribe to a magazine - let's use the example of the famous "Star" magazine, which, by the way, my wife Veena used to love to read many years ago. So once you subscribe to a physical magazine, you get a new edition mailed to you every week. And if you cancel your subscription, you will not get any newer editions, but you can keep the ones you already got in the mail, because obviously, you've already paid for those. And most importantly, you only get access to the magazine editions from the time you subscribe, and if you wanted older editions from the archives from before you subscribed, then you have to buy them separately. So in the early years of DAP, one of the requests we got was to be able to duplicate this content model, where you deliver digital content as if it were a monthly magazine. Only those who are currently subscribed during a month, get access to that month?s content, and keep access to that content going forward. So, for example... (listen to the show for the rest) Shownotes at http://SubscribeMe.fm/28/

Welcome to episode #25 of the SubscribeMe show from SubscribeMe.fm. I'm your host Ravi Jayagopal. This is THE podcast to listen to, if you want to learn about creating digital content, marketing it, selling it, and then delivering it. I am the co-founder & co-developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, easily the best membership plugin in the industry, fondly known as DAP. Membership sites aren't just for subscriptions that charge you month after month for life, until you cancel. That's just ONE way to create a membership. And membership sites aren't just for protecting content for ongoing members. There are essentially 9 different ways to add a membership component to your web site, and I'm going to discuss all 9 of them in this multi-part series. And today's episode is part 1 of this series. So be sure to check out the next couple of episodes as well, for the full story. Here are 3 (of 9) ways in which you can monetize your content: Membership model #1.    One-time Products with Lifetime Access Membership model #2.    One-time Products with Fixed-term Access, like say 1 month, or 1 year of access, with Renewal Membership model #3.    Recurring Subscriptions with a Fixed-term So let's dive right in to Membership Models... Membership Model #1: One-time Products with Lifetime Access In this, you create a one-time product where your buyer or member pays you just ONE TIME and gets life-time access to the content. They are never charged again for updates, so make sure you’re not giving away lifetime access to something that needs a lot of updates and support. For e.g., a lot of plugin developers get overambitious or desperate, depending on how you look it, and in order to start getting an immediate flow of sales, they over-commit on things like “Lifetime Updates” or “Lifetime Support” – sometimes, both! It is incredibly hard to continuously develop software for many months, leave alone many years. And then, if everyone is paying you just once, and you still have to continue updating the software, introducing new features, making bug-fixes and then also support them via email or support tickets for as long as they continue to use your software, and you're never ever going to get paid EVER again, that's a really tough proposition. And that's why you'll see a lot of software products that haven't priced themselves correctly, go out of business every single year. WordPress plugin developers for the internet marketing community, are notorious for over-promising, under-delivering, and then just disappearing from the face of the internet. But if your product is not a software product, and instead, is a digital information product, then it is easy to update your posts or pages or PDF reports over time without much effort. And information products don’t require much support in general - compared to software or services of course. So this model lends itself very well to “How-to” courses and training programs and reports and tutorials. It gives your buyers a sense of satisfaction that they don’t have to keep paying for updates, and it also doesn’t create too much overhead for you in terms of updates or support. But still, buy once and get lifetime access is still a bit scary for a lot of people. Which is where, this second model comes in. #2. One-time Products.. BUT with Fixed-term Access and Renewal In this, you create your one-time product with a fixed-term access - like access for 30 days, or 365 days, anything but NOT lifetime. And then, at the end of this fixed term, access to the content will... (a) Automatically expire and they have to manually pay a renewal fee to get further access to another extended period of time, or (b) Access to the content they already purchased never expires, but they don’t get access to future updates unless they renew. We've used this model with selling DAP itself. So you can purchase a 1site or a multi-site license of DAP, and you get 1 year of upgrades and support - the 1 year is the fixed term here. And then at the end of the 1 year, you can still continue using the version of DAP you already downloaded and installed, but you cannot get future upgrades and support, unless you renew for a fee. Now, in the case of DAP, renewal is much less than buying a new copy of DAP. So there's a built-in discount for renewals. You could do the same thing. Renewal is a fraction of the new product. So depending on how much work it is for you to create new versions of the product, or keep updating this existing product, you could charge anywhere from 33% to 75% of the cost as renewal. That way, they get a discount for renewal, and don't have to purchase it all over again, and you get a returning customer who is a lot easier to sell to, than finding a brand new customer. Membership model #3. Recurring Subscriptions with a Fixed-term With this, you are actually creating a recurring subscription product – but one that has a fixed-term of recurring payments – like it ends after 3 payments, or ends after 6 payments, or 12 payments. Basically, the payments stop after a set number of payments. You could also call this a Payment Plan or an Installment Plan. You could give two pricing options for the same product – the first one is a 1-time payment for lifetime or fixed-term access – for say 97 dollars. And the second option is, you offer a payment-plan for the exact same product in the form of “3 Payments of $37 each”. And because it is a payment plan, you can charge a little bit more in total. So if they took the one-time option, they would pay 97 dollars. Or if they took the payment plan, they pay $37 x 3 = $111 - which is basically 14 dollars more in total - compared to the one-time price of 97 dollars. In fact, you should intentionally make the sum-total of your monthly payments a bit more than the single-payment option, and this can help push your potential buyer towards the single-pay option when you explicitly tell them that “Save $14 when you take our Single-pay option”. Obviously, the more the savings on the single-pay option, the more easily you can make your single-pay option look better. But sometimes, for big-ticket items – like say a $2000 product, it may actually be beneficial to keep the sum-total of the payment plan close enough to the one-time option. Like in this case, it could be “One payment of $2000, or 3 payments of $697.” The difference between multi-pay and single-pay is $91. The difference is not too little, and they can still consider the one-time option. And it’s not too big, so they don’t pay too big of a penalty for taking the payment plan. Check out Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, a book about how we all make irrational decisions in a very predictable manner. In the book, he talks about many pricing-related experiments he conducted, with some very interesting conclusions about how people think. A couple of things to note about this fixed-term continuity program: a) You can charge the exact same amount each month - on Auto-Charge, or b) You can charge a different amount the first month - and label it a trial, which is then followed by same amount being charged on the subsequent months - again, all on Auto-charge So those were 3 of the 9 types of membership models. So what are membership models 4 through 9? You're going to have to come back for the next episode for that one. The show notes for this episode is available at subscribeme.fm/26/ . And when you get there, you'll see a beautiful online player with a large play button ON THE LEFT, which is key, because otherwise it will look like a banner ad or a header graphic. That's where, you will be able to play the episode directly from the web site, thanks to my podcast player plugin, called CoolCastPlayer. It is without a doubt the Prettiest Podcast Player on the Planet. It plays podcasts as well as regular MP3 files. And a super cool feature it has, is the ability to embed that player on a different web site. So this is going to be awesome if you have guests on your podcast, and you can simply send them a piece of code so that they can embed your interview on their web site. So check it out at CoolCastPlayer.com. Don't forget to join other SubscribeMe listeners and a network of folks all interested in the same thing: Membership sites and online courses. Join the group by going to subscribeme.fm/group/ and that will take you to my Facebook group. Thanks again for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Cheers!

The "TOC Technique" will help you become a master at creating content for your membership site, for your online course, youtube marketing videos, writing sales copy, writing books, creating a product, writing Facebook posts and Tweets. And when I say "TOC", I mean T.O.C, as in Table of Contents. The show notes for this episode is available at http://subscribeme.fm/24/ . And that's where, you will be able to play the episode directly from the web site, thanks to my podcast player plugin, called CoolCastPlayer. It is without a doubt the Prettiest Podcast Player on the Planet. It plays podcasts as well as regular MP3 files. So check it out at CoolCastPlayer.com. Alright, let's jump right in... So what is this TOC technique and why is it such a big deal? I came up with this idea a few years ago, but had never given it a proper name that is easy to understand and implement, until recently. Back in 2007, I published my first book, called "No Business Like E-Business", which at the time, went on to become a category best seller, which was a pretty big deal for me, because it was a physical book, and I had no list back then. Well, I did have a small list, but I never promoted this book to that list. Never even told anyone other than a few of my close friends and relatives. So the fact that it become a category best seller, was incredibly gratifying. It initially took me an year to write most of it, then life happened, I took a couple of years break, then when I got back to it, from that point, it then took me another couple of years to rewrite it pretty much entirely. So roughly, it took me about 3 years to complete the book, writing at most a couple of pages a day, sometimes nothing at all for days and weeks together. At the time, I had a lot of things going on. I had a full-time job, I had my PHP scripts web site, mywebmasterinabox.com, which is now defunct by the way, but you can still see what it looked like back then, as it's still online. My son had just been born, my wife had taken an extended leave of absence from her job, I was the sole earner, I was in a really, REALLY bad situation at my job, with an insanely angry and verbally and mentally abusive boss, I could not leave my job because I had to keep a job to keep my green card application going, it was a complete mess. Those few years were probably the darkest years of my life, and if not for my sweetheart, my wife Veena and my precious kids, I don't know if I would be here today. It was that bad. And during this whole time, I was working in New York city. I would commute to the city by train every day. And at the time, I had a company provided laptop, which has some amazing stories attached to it, that I'll talk about in a future episode. So I had this laptop, but I didn't have a wifi card - don't know why. Never even thought about it. But that was the best thing that happened to me - that I didn't have wi-fi on the train. So I used to open up Microsoft word, and write my book. Initially, I started writing the book sequentially. Acknowledgement, Introduction, Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, etc. But this sequential process started burning me out pretty quickly. There were some things I just had no mood to write about. You know, stuff you know in your head, but you know it's going to take you hours and hours to put it into words, and some of these were boring topics to me. It's like trying to teach a rank newbie some new skill. You just wish they would get it already, right? So that's when, I said to myself, I'm going to start writing the entire table of contents first. Start to finish. I'm going to think of all the questions that someone new to an online business would ask, and then create the most exciting titles for the chapters and sub-chapters, and someone should simply look at the titles and get excited about buying this book. So I sat down and created what I felt at the time, would be an amazing set of chapters and sub-chapters, which would cover everything someone needed to know about creating an ebusiness. And once I had completed the TOC - as in TOC , as in table-of-contents, then every time I opened my laptop, I would just scan the titles and sub-titles, and I would just pick one that interested me at that moment, and I would dive right into that section, ignoring all other parts of the book. This is how film-making is done as well. They don't shoot the first scene of the movie first, and second scene of the movie next. The scenes are shot in a completely random order, depending on availability of the actors, location, etc. So I started writing my book in this controlled-chaos. And that's when I made the most progress. So I would choose any topic that I felt like writing about that day, and then if I wasn't able to complete that chapter, or felt that I needed to revisit and change or add more, then I would simply type in the letters "XXXX". So that way, I could come back at a different time, and just search for the word XXXX, and I could keep jumping to every section that I had left unfinished, and could either go on to finish one of them, or get started on a new one. I gave myself the permission to be free and chaotic and random and write in any way I felt inspired to. And I did the exact same thing when I recently published my latest book, "Subscribe Me". I started with the TOC - the table of contents. And this technique is so powerful, that it can be used for brainstorming and creating so many other things. In fact, this is a more powerful version of a mindmap in many ways. I've used this technique to write documentation for DigitalAccessPass.com, map out an email series, series of blog posts, series of FB posts, etc. So let me quickly give you a couple of examples: I've already told you how you can use it to write your book, really fast. For the rest, listen to the episode at http://SubscribeMe.fm/24/

Let's talk about the types of videos there are: #1: Sales page videos #2: Content Marketing videos #3: Native videos on Facebook & Twitter #4: Documentation and Tutorial videos #5: Members-only, private videos that are reserved just for members who have registered for free, or have paid for your online course For Sales page videos, content-marketing videos & tutorial videos that you post on your own blog, or for posting on online forums, and any public-facing videos that you are ok with people sharing with one another, or you actually WANT people to share it, use YouTube for all of those videos. Many years ago, in the early years of Youtube, for a while, it wasn't considered cool or professional to put a youtube video on your home page. And all that was before youtube became the 2nd largest search engine, after.... you guessed it, Google.com. Millions of people start their search on youtube, especially for do-it-yourself stuff, tutorials, product reviews. And for your video to rank high on youtube, say, when someone searches for "how to potty train a puppy", and you have an online course about puppy potty training, then you want your videos to come up high in the search results. And one of the factors that can help your video rankings, is the number of video views, among many other things. And the fastest way to rack up video views for your main sales videos and other documentation and tutorial videos, is to upload them all to youtube, then take the embed code for those videos and put them on your web site on your home page, in your documentation section, when you do content marketing on your own blog, and so on. So for all public-facing videos that do not need to be protected, use youtube. That will help your videos rank better not only on youtube, but also on Google.com searches, when google will sometimes show videos from youtube among the search results. So it helps your overall SEO efforst, where SEO stands for search engine optimization. Next, if you have private members-only videos, then do NOT, and I repeat, do NOT host them on Youtube. Now there's a common misconception that your videos are secure if you make them "Private" youtube - what that means is, there's a setting in youtube that will allow you to make the video private. And private videos will not show up in searches, in side-bars or in recommended videos that show up right after a video has finished playing on youtube. So just because it doesn't show up anywhere, doesn't mean it is fully protected from prying eyes. If you make your youtube video private, and then embed that video in your member's area, then once someone gets to that page, and sees that it's a youtube video, they will be able to click on the Youtube logo, and get directly to that video on youtube.com. And they can now share your quote unquote private video link with just about anyone on the web, or send the link by email, or post it on Facebook, and suddenly, your private members-only video is now public and out in the open. Next you might think... what if I used a video plugin that will hide the youtube logo from the video? You could, I guess. But that would be a violation of youtube's terms of service, and could get your account banned. So don't do that. So for private videos that you want to publish in the member's area, and make it available to only your members, make sure they cannot pass around your link, you have 2 options: Option 1: Amazon S3. S3 is fantastic for hosting private videos, and I have also developed a plugin called S3MediaVault.com, which will help you secure your S3 videos, and embed them in your member's area in such a way that it is secure, and cannot be viewed or shared outside of your web site. You should check out my last episode - at subscribeme.fm/22/ , where I talk a lot about Amazon S3, which is a super-cheap and fast option for hosting your media files. Option #2: Vimeo.com. Now, Vimeo is just like youtube in that, people can upload their videos, there's a common directory to search for and watch videos, it's social in nature, and so on. And vimeo also has a way to make your video private, which means your video will not show anywhere on vimeo.com or in recommended videos at the end of other people's videos. However, the one big difference between vimeo and youtube's private feature, is that vimeo has a setting where you can tell vimeo, allow this video to ONLY be embedded and played on www.mywebsite.com. It's called "whitelisting" - so this is the same thing that my plugin S3MediaVault does for S3. It whitelists your domain, so that your video can only play from your web site. One drawback of Vimeo.com is that even if you store your private videos on Vimeo and embed the private video code securely on your site, there’s still the question of other file formats – like audio, PDF, zip, doc, images, etc, none of which vimeo supports. So even if you use Vimeo for videos, you still need a solution for the other file formats, and I recommend Amazon S3 + S3MediaVault.com for that. Now, once you've ensured that your video can ONLY be played on your web site, then you now have to make sure that ONLY a certain group of people - like your registered free members, or your paid buyers, or your monthly subscribers - can even get to that page that has this private video. And that's where you need a membership plugin, like DigitalAccessPass.com. So 2 levels of protection: 1) Make sure your video only plays from www.yoursite.com, and 2) make sure only authorized members or buyers can get to that page. If you use Vimeo for this, then you need to sign up for their "Pro" package, because that's the one that has the whitelisting feature. And pro costs 199 dollars per year. So it's not really cheap. But  the advantage of Vimeo is that you can customize your player colors to match your web site look & feel, and you can get some video analytics. And you won't pay more than 199 a year, whether you have 10 view or 1 million views on your videos. So, to summarize: For public videos and videos that you would like to encourage sharing and liking and commenting, use Youtube videos. And for private members-only videos, you can use Amazon S3 and a plugin like S3MediaVault, or you can use Vimeo.com. And for protecting all NON-video files, you should absolutely use Amazon S3. Before you go... let me give you a REALLY sweet deal here, for my podcast player plugin, CoolCastPlayer.com. If you purchase a copy of CoolCastPlayer, then respond to the welcome email you get right after the purchase, and let me know that you are a listener of this show. And I'll give you free unlimited-site license of the S3MediaVault.com plugin for free. That's a 97 dollar value, and you can get it for free. S3MediaVault is a plugin that can protect your PDF, Audio, Video and other files stored in your Amazon S3 account. And S3MediaVault also comes with a built-in audio player and a video player, so you can embed secure audio and secure video on your web site, and make it available for members only or buyers only. So get a free copy of S3MediaVault with your purchase of CoolCastPlayer, but you must take action before Monday, March 14th. You can also contact me via the contact-us link at subscribeme.fm. So thank you for listening to my show. I know you have a lot of choices in podcasts these days, and I'm super thrilled and appreciative, that you chose to listen to my show. That means a lot to me. Stay subscribed to this show, and I'll do my darnedest best to bring you great content every week. Cheers and talk to you soon.

I am so pumped up today, because I just soft-launched my new plugin. It is the prettiest podcast player on the planet, and along with celebrating its beta launch, I'm going to tell you about the biggest lessons I have learned from publishing 21 episodes of this podcast. Let me tell you about my new podcast player plugin, and why it's different from anything else you've ever seen before. It's called CoolCastPlayer, and you can see it in action at CoolCastPlayer.com When I first launched my podcast back in September 2015, and wanted to publish my podcast feed and the episodes on my web site at SubscribeMe.fm, I quickly found out there's a huge need for a really good podcast player. Most of the players I came across were downright UGLY - and that's capital U, capital G, capital L and capital Y. UGLY as hell. And there was just one decent looking podcast player out there, but it did not have some key features that I wanted. But the design of the player was not very good, in that, it wasn't obvious that it was even a player. I went to the web sites of several big-name podcasters who were using that plugin, and I was actively looking to see how they were using it, and I skipped over the player many many times, because it looked like a banner ad. It did not even look like a player - just a colorful banner. And my biggest mindset that has helped me, and also hurt me, over the years, is that when I find a plugin or tool that I want to use in my business, and I find that the best of them have glaring holes in how they're designed or developed, then my mind starts spinning, and I start to wonder how I can create something better, and something that fits the needs of the market a lot better. And that's what led to me developing CoolCastPlayer. I will go into the full list of features later in this show, but for now, let me tell you that other than being optimally designed to get your web site visitor to both notice your player and click play on your podast episode, the biggest feature by far, is the "Embed" feature. I call it, "Install Once, Embed Anywhere". And I'll explain this in a second, as I get into my podcast myths-busted list. So let's go: 3 Biggest Podcasting Myths Busted: #1. The hardest thing for a podcaster, is the marketing of your podcast and getting new people to listen to your show. If someone tells you all you need to do get some traction is to get into iTunes' New and Noteworthy, then just laugh out loud and run away. My show stayed at the top of New & Noteworthy for my category, for an entire month. It was in the top 3 for most of the time, and moved between #5 and #10 for the remaining 8 weeks that your show gets on New & Noteworthy. It did diddly squat for me. And if you listen to the biggest podcasting veterans out there, you will hear them all say the same thing. New & Noteworthy does very, VERY little for your show. And focusing your efforts on that, is, like Dave Jackson of SchoolOfPodcasting says, trading a dollar for a dime. Complete waste of your time. #2. Do not launch with 3 episodes. Or with 5. Or with 8. When someone subscribes to your show on their iPhone or on their desktop using iTunes, then iTunes will ONLY download the latest episode. So DO NOT be fooled into thinking that if you launch with 8 episodes, then a new subscriber will result in 8 episodes. It won't. A new subscriber will only result in 1 download. And that is your latest episode. To hear the remaining 7 episodes, they would have to manually click on the little "Cloud" icon, and click "Download" in order to listen to your past episodes. So, when you launch with 8, you would have to make sure your 8th episode is pretty dang great, because that's the first one they're going to listen to. And as a new podcaster, if you launch with 8 episodes, your 8th episode is guaranteed to NOT be your best one, because guess what? You followed bad advice, and you created all episodes together, in the span of a few days, before you ever launched your show. Which means, you haven't heard your own episodes enough, you haven't gotten any feedback from your listeners, you haven't gotten the momentum of having been in the game for enough time, you haven't been able to learn from your mistakes, and you haven't been able to tone down your mistakes and amplify the best parts. Launching with 8 episodes is like, let's say you want to learn tennis. You can't schedule 8 tennis lessons on the same day. Just because you play 8 times in one day doesn't mean you're going to get better. You need practice. You need to go out and practice serving, and volleying. You need to watch film. You need to get in a few games with other people. You can NOT speed up the process. Whether it is having an entire day's meal all together in one sitting and starving the rest of the day, or trying to go out on 8 dates with the same girl on the same day, there are no shortcuts. When it comes to learning and honing your craft, or building relationships - which is what podcasting really is - building a relationship with your audience - you simply cannot fast forward through it like you would fast forward through a commercial. I will be getting into all of this in a new online course that I'm putting together, and that course is actually going to be free as a launch-special bonus when you purchase CoolCastPlayer during the beta launch. So if you shouldn't launch with 8 episodes, then what do you do? Simple. Launch with just 1 episode. What this allows you to do, is it lets you put your best foot forward, and focus ALL of your energy, ALL of your time and effort... and marketing on getting that ONE single episode out there, and getting the maximum number of people to listen to this one episode. Then let it sit for at a week. At least. THEN, go ahead and launch the 2nd one after a week. By this time, you would have gotten feedback about the 1st one, from your peers, from your friends... and your social network and your email list. And you get to hear your own voice and your own show multiple times. And the more you listen to it, even though you may initially hate your voice, you will get over it quickly, and you'll get some ideas as to what's going to work and what needs to be cut out of the show. That will help you improve your 2nd episode. Then a few days later, take the experience of producing your 1st and 2nd shows, and use THAT to produce your 3rd episode. And the biggest advantage of this staggered release of episodes, means that your show is getting better with each episode. And now, because you're picking up new subscribers with each episode, what that means is that each time you release a new episode, iTunes will automatically download your latest episode on the phones and devices of ALL of your current subscribers. So you hit publish on your latest episode, and a couple of hours later, you can see that you've gotten 300 new downloads. Now THAT is super exciting and can be really invigorating and inspiring for any podcaster. So launching with more episodes does not mean more downloads at launch. Your latest episode will get the most downloads, and then from there, the drop off is really huge. Even now, when I launch a new episode, let's say in the first few hours, my latest episodes gets 100 downloads. Then one of my older episodes - usually the previous one, will get about 20 downloads. That's like a 80% drop. And then the next highest one will be like 7 downloads. And it usually trickles all the way to my old downloads to just 1 or 2 new downloads. That's how big the drop-off is between the latest episode and the next highest one. But here's a really cool idea for you. Wait till you get to about 4 episodes in about 4 weeks. And now, you have a full month of podcasting experience behind you. You have asked for - and gotten a lot of feedback. You have learned about your own voice, the way you speak, what works, what gets your audience involved and excited, and so on. NOW is the time to drop the hammer. Over the next 15 days, launch 5 new episodes. Never launch them all together. Launch 1 new episode every few days. And for month 2, that will help you tremendously in exponentially increasing your downloads, because remember, when you stagger the episodes, then you will get WAYY more downloads, than if you launched them all together. So the increased downloads will help your show rise in iTunes' overall rankings, and the momentum will help you take it to the next level. What is that next level, is entirely up to you. But this little strategy will help you 10 times more than the bad advice out there. Finally, #3: It is a complete waste of time, money and effort if you are promoting the direct link to your show on iTunes or Stitcher. It is the biggest wasted call to action. iTunes is the hardest thing to navigate for those who are new to podcasts. The goal of promoting your podcast should be to get them to your web site and listen to your podcast episode, in the fastest way possible. I call this "2-Click Play". The first click brings them to your web site. The 2nd click should be on your Play button. There is simply no faster or more efficient way to get someone to listen to your podcast episode, than putting a online audio player on your web site. So the first click is your audience or your friends or your social network, clicking on a link in your email, on Facebook, or on Twitter. Give a sneak-peek about the content of your episode, and they click on a link that brings them to your web site. When they arrive there, they should be greeted by a podcast player that looks really good, looks like an audio player, with a nice, large play button that is just begging to be clicked on. And the 2nd click is on that play button, and a few seconds later, they're off and away, listening to your show. And if they like it, you tell them on the show where to go to subscribe. And of course, you have a couple of beautiful buttons right below the player that tells them where to go to subscribe to your show. THAT is how you get the fullest bang for your podcast marketing bucks, and that's how you get more people in the door to listen to your show, so that they can decide whether or not it is for them. And that is how you grow your audience, and not by sending them directly itunes where most normal people who are not already podcast listeners, will completely get lost. 2-Click play. I will get into more myth-busting tips about podcasting, in future episodes. Now, let me quickly tell you a few of the awesome features included in CoolCastPlayer.com, which I'm now officially calling the Prettiest Podcast Player on the planet. To see it in action, go to CoolCastPlayer.com, and you'll see both the episode player and the feed player demos. Here are some of its features... #1: It can play MP3 files hosted anywhere... like Libsyn, SoundCloud, Podbean, your own WordPress site, Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, PowerPress, BluBrry, etc. #2 It has an "Embed" feature. This allows your guests who you interviewed, and your web site visitors, simply grab a small piece of code from your web site, and then insert the episode - or even the entire feed - on their web site. This is similar to how you can grab the embed code of a youtube video and put it on a different web site. And if you remember, youtube grew big-time because of this viral feature. So allowing others to embed your show on their web site, will give your show a viral marketing aspect. Plus there's a whole bunch of other features: Like it's a WordPress plugin that is super easy to install, AND very intuitive to set up. Mobile Responsive: So it will look equally stunning on all screens. It works with PowerPress. It has social buttons and custom buttons to put below the player, it has a download icon and speed-it-up icon right on the player. You can fully customize the player colors to match your show's artwork or your web site colors. Plenty more features. Check it all out at CoolCastPlayer.com . Until the next time... if you have a podcast, don't promote your iTunes or Stitcher links. Bring them back to your web site, because there are plenty of reasons why you should do that, and I will talk about all of them in a later episode. Cheers!