Sales

The Three Types Of Products You Need To Make A Six Figure Income

August 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Every time I look at the extra money I could potentially be making, I look towards ads. Then, I quickly realize that there is a better way, and ads are not the answer to making six figures every year. The answer to making money with a blog and more money in general is with products. By having more products available to your potential customers, the more likely they will become returning customers. There are three products you need to sell. Having these three products available will guarantee that you get more returning customers and bigger commissions.

The inexpensive product. Depending on the product you are selling, the price of that product can be anywhere from $1 to $49. You want this product to be one that generates a high volume of sales so people read your content and become interested in what you have to say.
The subscription based product. This type of product generates a recurring revenue because members pay on a monthly basis. If you have 10 members who are each paying $100 every month, you would be making $1,000 every month. You need to have a recurring revenue strategy added to your business plan so you can rest assured that a product is going to bring in more money.
The high-priced products. A high-priced product gets less sales than an inexpensive product but brings in more commission. It is easier to make $1,000 every month selling a $500 training course than it is to sell a $10 book. You only need two sales for the training course while you need 100 sales every month for the book. High priced products make it easier for you to reach certain goals with less sales, but in order to have a high-priced product, you need to put in an immense amount of work and effort.

These three product options will satisfy your potential customers. Many of them will look for a low-priced product. That’s when the inexpensive book or training course comes in. In addition, others will want a subscription based product that gives them value so they can avoid an expensive product. Finally, there is the high-priced product for anyone who has enough money in their pockets to get the best product you have ever launched (it has to be your best one). Having these three products and creating more in the process will allow you to make six figures every year. That definitely beats advertising!

Are You Guilty Of These Five Twitter Mistakes?

August 1, 2014 by Marc Guberti 14 Comments

Twitter is growing, and its growth shows no signs of stopping. Even as it Twitter continues to grow, mistakes are still being made at a regular basis. Some of these mistakes make you look like a newbie while others hinder your growth and make you look like a robot. Out of all of the mistakes people make on Twitter, there are five mistakes that show up the most.

Not engaging with your followers. You need to engage with your followers to build strong connections. Your audience gets to know you better if you interact with them. If you do not engage with your followers, then some people will think you are a robot. Here are some ways to engage with your followers.
Not having a good avatar. If your bio picture is not a picture of you or your company’s logo, then you do not have a good avatar. Your avatar is how people see you on Twitter, so make that avatar something that people would be happy to see. If you are looking for an avatar, just take a good selfie of yourself with your phone and use that for your avatar.
Tweeting too much. Many people send out 10 tweets within 1 minute. That is too many tweets to send out in a short amount of time, and some people will get irritated to see the same person on their timeline 10 times in a row. That may result in some people in your audience unfollowing you.
Not tweeting enough. I always got confused when the blogger contradicted himself/herself, but this contradiction makes sense. People hear that tweeting too much results in unfollows, but that kind of tweeting refers to sending out too many tweets at once. You can schedule tweets throughout the day so your followers read your tweets at a comfortable rate. I send out one tweet every 20 minutes. Ever since I made the move, I have gotten more engagement and followers.
Not sharing enough of you the right way. “The right way” is in Italics for a reason. Many people promote themselves just for the sake of promoting themselves. Readers want value and won’t click on a link just because it’s your blog post. Your content needs to be the type of valuable content that your targeted audience wants to read. In addition, if your content is valuable for your targeted audience, they will want more of your content. In this case, you can tweet links to your blog posts all day long, and your followers will be grateful for the value.

Twitter mistakes are made too often. If you are making these mistakes, then you need to get them fixed as soon as possible. Are you guilty of these mistakes?

5 Ways To Get More Returning Customers

July 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Customers

For the typical brand, 90% of the sales it gets is from returning customers. In the remaining 10%, 9% of the sales come from satisfied customers who told others about you (word of mouth marketing) while the final 1% are completely new. With these statistics in mind, the key to a brand’s success is not getting more customers. Instead, getting more returning customers is what allows a brand to become successful. This is the part when brands and entrepreneurs ask how this can happen to them. Here are five tips to help you pull it off.

Create a stay in touch checklist. Is there a customer who really enjoys your brand or comes back? Put that person on a stay in touch checklist. Frequently send emails to that person and interact with that person on your social networks. It is also important to interact in a way that builds a strong connection. Don’t suddenly show up to the people on this stay in touch checklist when you come out with a new product. The connection needs to be strengthened well before the new product comes out.
Get people to subscribe to your blog. Someone who is subscribed to your blog will be more likely to buy one of your products than someone who is not subscribed to your blog. Subscribers see you often in their inbox, and being seen often creates a level of trust. This level of trust combined with valuable content will be sufficient to make people want to buy your products.
Get people to follow you on your social networks. The bigger your social media audience is, the more people will want to join that audience. We have a natural tendency to join the things that are popular. In addition to growing your audience, social media encourages word of mouth and engagement. You will be able to talk with the customers who have already bought your products. Some of my book reviews are only there because I asked my followers who bought my book if they could leave a quick review.
Have your wow factors in place. Your wow factors give your potential customers a reason to buy from you and a reason for customers to come back. Your wow factors are credentials that make people marvel at what you have done. If you do not have any wow factors, then you need to go get some.
Host giveaways, sweepstakes, and discounts. If you can give some of your customers a free prize, those customers will share it with their friends. Word of mouth will allow your message to spread and make the 9% of the customer pie larger. In addition, your product will get some extra exposure, and some of the people who did not win the sweepstakes or get the giveaway award will end up buying the product anyway. In addition to hosting giveaways and sweepstakes, you need to have discounts in place. Lowering the price of your product will result in a higher volume of sales, and some of the customers who already bought one of your products will get attracted by the discount.

If you are able to master the process of getting returning customers, then your brand will thrive. There is no such thing as overnight success, but as you get more customers, the numbers in the customer pie will get larger. Right now, 90% of your customers may only refer to nine people, but if you implement these tactics, 90% of your customers may eventually be able to mean thousands. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips to get more returning customers? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Remove Yourself From The Competition With Blue Ocean Strategy

July 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

It has become an imperative to make yourself stand out from the competition. Removing yourself from the current competition and tapping into a new market is one of the best ways to stand out and get more attention. However, the idea of finding an entirely new niche sounds daunting. Luckily, I had the privilege of reading Blue Ocean Strategy which has been sold over two million times. Blue Ocean Strategy goes into detail about how different businesses were able to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of these businesses differentiated themselves with the same rubric. These are the components of the rubric that will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition:

Reduction. What are certain aspects of your niche that can be reduced. Do the people in your niche push out too much content? Do they post too much on Facebook? Find something that you can reduce that your competitors overuse.
Elimination. There will be some aspects of your niche that can be completely eliminated. Blue Ocean Strategy goes into detail about Cirque du Soleil eliminating the need for animals and rings in their performances.
Raising. There are some aspects of your niche that can be raised. McDonald’s and most of the other fast food restaurants do not focus on providing healthy food options. Elevation Burger on the other hand, focus on providing healthy food options, and their slogan, “Ingredients Matter” enforces this message.
Creating. There are going to be some things that no one in your niche would think about doing. This is where the creation process comes into play. In order to make the creating process easier, look at what different niches do and see how you can apply concepts from different niches into your niche.

That is the rubric you need to create something that stands out from the competition. This plan will allow you to get out of the red oceans and go into the uncontested blue oceans. If you want to learn more about leaving your competition and creating an uncontested market space, then Blue Ocean Strategy is the right book for you.

Why It’s Good To Unselfishly Give Away Valuable Information

June 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Giving Valuable Information Away

There are some blogs with over 1 million words of quality content. There are also some people who have uploaded thousands of minutes of videos on YouTube. Free information has become more accessible than ever, but some people wonder if offering valuable information for free is a good thing. Some people believe that they should provide decent information for free and then provide the valuable information in their paid products.

However, it is more important than ever for us to give our readers valuable information for free. There are numerous blogs that already give quality information for free. These blogs have set the standards for their niche. If bloggers are not able to deliver as much valuable information for free as the top blogs do, then those bloggers will not be able to keep up.

The most visited blog posts in your niche are the ones that provide the most value. Most of the blog posts on Google’s first page have well over 1,000 words of content. These blog posts also have good pictures that further support the main point of that blog post. The reason the most valuable blog posts get visited the most is because people are looking for value, not for something that anyone could have written. It sounds so simple, but it was worth mentioning.

When it comes to your paid products, people see your paid products as products that are slightly better than your free content. If your free content is really bad, then your potential customers will only think that your paid product is slightly better. In this case, slightly better is not good enough to get the sale. Even if your product goes well beyond expectations and is much better than the free content you provide, your potential customers will only believe that your products are only slightly better than your free content.

If your free content provides value to the reader, then that reader will be more likely to buy your product. In this case, your slightly better product translates to the potential customer as something that is an incredible necessity. Some people can’t even imagine you writing better content than you are already writing, but your products tell people that there is better content of yours available–at a price. In this case, unselfishly giving away a lot of valuable information leads to more sales for the products that you already have.

Some of the valuable information you have can be given out for free, but only if people give you their email addresses. By offering a free prize that people will love, you will get more blog subscribers. Even if it takes you an entire hour to come up with your free prize, hundreds and eventually thousands of people will thank you for offering that free prize. The people who receive your free prize will be more likely to buy your products and eventually become returning customers.

In addition to getting more sales, there is another benefit of unselfishly giving people valuable content for free. Offering valuable content for free will allow you to establish a presence on the web and get more traffic. Creating a blog where you give people valuable content allows you to give yourself a home on the web. Giving yourself a home on the web is one of the most important way to build long-lasting connections with potential customers who may end up buying one of your products (and come back for more).

Getting more traffic will allow you to become more popular, and as you optimize your blog, you will also be able to turn more of that traffic into sales. You can’t make more money unless people know about you, and offering valuable content for free is a great way to get more people to know about you. Some free content is so valuable that it has gone viral. It seems as if any free eBook Seth Godin writes goes viral. That’s because they are filled with free, valuable content that everyone in the marketing niche wants.

You may be thinking of ways to shorten your blog posts so you are not giving everything away. You may decide to only mention five tips instead of ten tips not because you only know five tips, but because you don’t want everyone else to know about the other five. Chances are someone already wrote a blog post similar to yours, and your tip that you think is a secret is really on someone’s blog post. People either think of ideas and strategies similar to yours or what you think is a secret about your niche is something that is well-known throughout your niche.

And now the big question comes up. Do you give everything away on your blog? Do you tell someone everything that you know about your niche? The answer is to tell people 80% of what you know about your niche. You can tell someone that much information about your niche for free and still make a lot of sales. The reason is that although the content on a blog is very focused, the content in a book or a training course is super focused. There are multiple topics that I write about on this blog. I touch upon social media, blogging, productivity, business, marketing, motivation, and a few other things as well. However, books and training courses are super focused on one of those topics and give you a strategy and order to implement everything.

If you are on the right pace towards becoming successful in your niche, then you are learning new things about your niche every day you can. That way, the definition of giving away everything changes every day. Everything becomes more as the days go by. You will have more valuable information to share with everyone, and that will only make the products you sell look a lot better.

The last big issue people have is that potential customers may look at your blog posts instead of buying your products. That’s exactly what you want the customer to do…and think that they are doing. As the potential customer visits your blog more often and sees your products on the sidebar, that customer will be gradually tempted each time they visit your blog to buy your products. I have said this numerous times, but it’s worth mentioning yet again that trust is built by being seen frequently. Your trust your best friend more than an acquaintance simply because you have seen one person more than the other. As potential customers stay on your blog for a longer period of time, they will finally decide that although your blog is incredible, the product must be more incredible. In order for you to make a lot of sales even though you are giving away valuable information for free, your product needs to be organized and represent an idea in a powerful way. That is how you will be able to nail the sale even when people can go on your blog to learn more about their niche.

In conclusion, unselfishly giving away valuable information for free is critical towards success. Chances are before you became successful in your niche, you read several articles on the web that contained valuable information. In fact, you still probably do that, and if you are not successful in your niche yet, reading articles with valuable information about your niche is a good starting point. Most people believe that a paid product is better than something for free. You get more features on a membership site if you give the owner of that membership site more money every month. HootSuite is a great, free tool, but when you use the paid version, you get more features. Paid products are associated as upgraded versions of what is already free. By providing free, valuable content for your readers, those readers will associate your paid products as enhancements of something that is already good.

How To Make One Sale Every Day

June 17, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

One Sale Every Day

One of the most discouraging moments for any author, entrepreneur, or business is when your products stay on a sales drought. Some of these sales droughts last for a few weeks while others last for a few months. It is during these sales droughts when people learn the hard way that they “don’t just come.” It takes a lot of work to get the customers to come, and it takes even more work to make six figures from your products. When I was in my sales droughts at the beginning of my career, I would feel very accomplished if I could get closer to making 1 sale every day. This thinking got me from making 1 sale every two weeks to making 1 sale every week. Thinking the same way allowed me to pass a major milestone: getting one sale every day. While some people are getting hundreds of sales every day, and companies like Apple get millions of sales every day, it feels incredible when you get daily sales for the first time in your career.

Although having the right mindset is very important, you also need to know the how-to aspect of getting more sales. Having a good attitude is not enough, but it is going to be the main motivation you have when you do the work that will allow you to get daily sales. If you don’t have the right mindset, I highly recommend reading this blog post to acquire the right mindset and then go back to this one.

There are four big things that you need to know about the typical customer in order to get more sales:

Customers hunt for bargains. My training course used to be worth $47, and I offered a coupon for my blog subscribers that reduced the training course’s price to $20 (and I still do this). That was a $27 difference which accounted for a discount slightly over 50%. Then, I boosted the price of my training course to $100. I offered the same coupon on my blog that made the entire training course worth $20. However, this coupon had a stronger effect. Instead of making the training course a little over 50% off, the same coupon now made the same training course with the same videos 80% off. 80% looks a lot better than something that is “a little more than 50%.” When you give people a discount, make sure the discount either ends in a 5 or a 0 so it is easier for the average person to calculate the savings.
Customers love leaders. The most successful people just so happen to be the leaders. It’s not a coincidence. Leaders also happen to be the ones with a lot of credibility. That’s not a coincidence either. In order to become a leader, you need to boost your credibility and do things differently from your competition. By standing out, you will become more popular, and customers love buying from leaders who also happen to be very popular.
A higher priced product is associated with better quality. These products are associated with so much quality that they are worth multiple looks. As a member of HootSuite Pro, I decided to take a look at SocialOomph. It seemed interesting and cost more than four times as much as HootSuite Pro for the one year option. I went on SocialOomph five times before realizing that HootSuite Pro is the better of the two. In addition, the most expensive training courses happen to be the ones we hear the most about. More people talk about the training course worth $2,000 than they talk about the training course worth $500. It’s very easy to put both of these together. You can see a $2,000 training course and tell people that they can get a 75% discount by liking your Facebook Page. Customers would be very quick to click the like button and see the price get cut down to $500. Even if you planned on pricing your training course at $500 right from the start, originally pricing it at $2,000 suddenly makes the $500 look like a steal. In addition, $500 is still a high enough price to associate as a quality product created by a leader.
Customers get influenced by testimonials. Some people call them testimonials and other people call them reviews. Testimonials have a big influence on customers. In order to get good testimonials for your product, your product needs to be valuable. Displaying some of the top testimonials on your blog may be the difference between getting multiple sales and not making a single sale. It is important to realize that customers have become smarter over the years. Creating fake testimonials became a popular way to get more sales for a new training course. In order to prove that your testimonials are real, you need to link to the person’s social network or blog if you want to include that person’s testimonial.

Those are the four things you need to know in order to get more sales, but you need to know what to do with this knowledge in order to get more sales. The first thing you need to do is distribute your product for free so more people can get access to it. Implementing this part of the strategy will make your product more popular and get some testimonials along the way. You need to be simultaneously growing your presence on the web and social networks so you have more credibility. The person with 10,000 followers has more credibility than the person with 1,000 followers…unless the person with more followers gets caught for buying fake ones. After you offer some of your free products, you need to make it look as if your customer is getting a steal. If you intended on pricing a 40 video training course for $500, bump it up to $1,500 or $2,000. Then, offer a discount that lowers the price down to $500 if someone likes your Facebook Page. Not only is it a steal for the customer, but you get to make the same amount of money you would have made anyway. As you get more customers, you will have more testimonials to include on your sales page, and the more testimonials people read about your product, the more likely that person is to buy it.

Whether you are selling a book, a training course, or another product, implementing this strategy will allow you to get more sales. Implementing this strategy over time will allow you to get one sale every day. What are your thoughts on this strategy? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.