Marc's Blog

Episode 10: How Lise Cartwright Starting Making $3-4K Within Her First Six Months As A Kindle Author

October 5, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Join us on Episode 10 of the show, as Lise delivers some valuable insights on how to achieve success in the Kindle Marketplace FAST.

Lise is an established Kindle Author, having published over 20 books, and turning over $3-4K in her first 6 months alone.

We discuss why it’s so great and also so important to do something you love, and how to be successful at it. Lise makes sure that people are aware that her intentions and motivations are to help people, and she is making a living from it. You’ll learn why it’s important to diversify your income and how to leave the jobs you didn’t want to do in the past, having a clear, motivated idea of what to do going forward.

Today’s show is really an inspiring lesson of why it’s important to be genuine, how to offer your value in a big way, and to really just enjoy what you are doing.

To learn how to get a strong start in the Kindle Marketplace, you won’t want to miss this episode!

Links from show:

www.hustleandgroove.com – Lise’s side hustle training

www.lisecartwright.com – Lise’s Personal Site

www.stevescottsite.com – Steve’s Personal Site

Learn:

– How to keep a strong discipline

– How to be motivated

– To enjoy what you’re doing and do what you enjoy

– How to build a strong readership/list of readers

– Why cross promotion is important

– Lise’s advice for people trying to breakthrough

– Lise’s tips for driving kindle publishing sales

5 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Instagram

September 30, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Ever get random blog traffic? It’s a mixed feeling of excitement and the question, “What can I do to get more traffic from that source?” I was recently surprised by Instagram traffic to my blog.

I followed targeted people on Instagram to grow my account, and I noticed that Instagram brought 10 people over to my blog that same day. Ten visitors a day adds up to 3,650 new visitors each year. I’m not doing cartwheels over an additional 10 visitors, but neither am I discounting the potential power of Instagram to increase my blog traffic.

In fact, I am doing cartwheels precisely because those visitors came from Instagram. At the time, my last Instagram post was two months old, and the one prior to that was almost a year old. I attracted 10 people to my blog via an inactive Instagram account. Imagine if it was an active account.

That’s why I was doing cartwheels.

Now I’m dreaming of the day my monthly Instagram traffic surpasses my monthly Twitter traffic. One-thousand daily visitors from social media alone has a nice ring to it. Today my blog is consistently getting more traffic from Instagram, and that traffic is growing.

Want to get blog traffic from Instagram? Follow these five tips:

#1: Link To Your Blog In Your Bio

This is how I got my initial 10 visitors. I followed people, they followed me back, and some of those people decided to check out my blog. I was also experimenting with a second method (but more on that in a second).

Linking to your blog in your bio is perhaps the easiest way to increase traffic. It takes a few seconds and requires little to no effort. All you do is edit your bio and add a link to your blog.

It’s that easy!

#2: Grow A Targeted And Active Audience

There are many ways to grow an audience on Instagram. Many sites out there offer myriad ways to grow your Instagram fans, particularly those encouraging you to buy followers.

That method doesn’t interest me. In fact, buying followers will not give you an authentic picture of your account activity and most will be bot accounts. At one point, I used a point exchange site to build up my Twitter audience during its infancy stage (I stopped when my account had 1667 followers), but I did nothing like that for my Instagram account.

I am more interested in methods that will actually result in an audience of people who are interested in my pictures and ready to engage with my posts. And you should be too.

Build a targeted and active audience by hanging out where the targeted and active people hang out. How? First, find an influencer in your niche with a big audience. Next, visit the influencer’s account and look at his or her latest post and who has engaged with, or liked it. Finally, follow all of those people.

It’s that easy. People liked the picture because they were interested in that topic (your niche). These people are likely active and engaged on the platform, so this simple follow strategy will help you build your own audience.

#3: Post Pictures Of Your Latest Blog Post

The day I received 10 visitors from Instagram to my blog I did not include an image from my latest blog post. But if I had, I would have easily doubled my visitors. Posting pictures of your latest blog posts on Instagram is a creative way to use the platform to increase your blog traffic.

Most of my blog post images are 300×300 pixels, but I can quickly and easily resize them to 400×400 pixels so that they are optimized for Instagram.

#4: Post Pictures Made To Spread

If I share a motivational quote on Instagram, it doesn’t usually result in a direct increase in my blog traffic. If anything, I’ll receive an indirect increase in traffic because some curious people will click on my blog link.

These types of posts are designed more for spreading power than traffic power. The stronger your image’s spreading power, the more people that image reaches. Motivational quotes happen to perform very well on virtually every social network. These pictures normally get a lot of engagement and attract followers.

This means my blog post images are seen by a larger audience. Motivational quote pictures motivate others and increase my following, which brings more attention to the blog post images that drive my traffic.

#5: Make Those Pictures Awesome

Each picture you put on your Instagram profile needs at least 10 minutes of care and attention (with the exception of random pics taken in the moment). I hire a freelancer to choose and edit my blog post pictures, and it looks like I’ll be hiring another freelancer for the motivational quote pictures as well.

If you want to create the pictures yourself, use Canva. It’s a free tool that makes image editing a breeze.

In Conclusion

While ten visitors in one day doesn’t look like much, Instagram is attractive because of its potential to bring in serious traffic and revenue.

Instagram users are active and engaged, so if you aren’t already using the platform, start now. You don’t need many followers to get dozens of likes for each picture you post.

The potential Instagram has to transform your business is huge. However, the only way Instagram will transform your business is if you take action.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for business? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Have any Instagram tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

September 2016 Monthly Performance Report

September 29, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Most of September was about adjusting to college life. With that said, I still made progress for my business and changed up some of my goals. Here’s my month in review:

My YouTube Goal

Earlier, I set a goal of getting 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. At this stage, me accomplishing that goal seems unlikely. I took a three week hiatus from YouTube to adapt to my new life in college.

I’ll have more to say about YouTube the following month. Right now, it’s too early to tell what my target is. Before I know for sure, I must see how much work I can reasonably do each day to grow my YouTube channel.

Speaking Tour In June

I’m really excited about this one. The reason I couldn’t go all-in as a public speaker was because of my conflicting school and running schedules. I have very little room to squeeze in speaking gigs throughout the school year, and I don’t want to spend all of summer making up for what I couldn’t do.

So I have decided to apply to a bunch of events that take place in June. My goal is to get at least three event organizers to have me as a speaker. I even put together a public speaker video, so you know I’m serious.

I finished the video but have to make some minor adjustments. It will be out in the first week of October.

I am very excited about traveling to different places while doing what I love. Once I have times, dates, and locations, I’ll let everyone know.

Guest Posts

My blog traffic has been down lately. It’s been happening all across the board to people who use Twitter as a primary blog traffic search. I reached out to one of my mentors to see if he was affected, and it turns out his Twitter traffic has been down too.

He then suggested that I write guest posts again, so that’s exactly what I am doing. So far I have written three guest posts that are in the process of getting published. I’ll have more about that in October.

Unlock Your Potential

While most of September was focused on adapting to my life in college, I made progress with Unlock Your Potential. I am happy to say that the book is over 30,000 words, and it is coming along very nicely.

It will definitely be finished by the end of the month. At that stage, I’ll send it over to my publisher.

My Podcast Is Rocking

In case you didn’t know, I finally got around launching my podcast. So far, the podcast features eight episodes, and many are in the works right now. I am very grateful for all of the support I have received from my guests and fellow listeners.

Yes, I say fellow listeners because I’m in it to learn too. The more people I interview, the more dedicated I become. I implement my goals at a much faster pace and end up adding other goals to my arsenal.

A lot of my heroes are coming on my future episodes. I am especially excited about those episodes. Who are these guests? The suspense builds!

Books I Read

This performance report hasn’t been reading like my prior performance reports in the summer. However, this is the bright spot. I read several books this month:

#1: Triggers by Mark Reiter and Marshall Goldsmith

#2: Driven To Distraction At Work by Ned Hallowell

#3: Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz

The first two books focus on personal performance. I took a special focus on personal performance this month because with my new schedule, I needed a new mindset to get my work done.

In both books, I learned the importance of creating a structure. A structure does not restrict you. Rather, it informs you on when you should complete specific tasks. For instance, Wednesdays are my off-days, so that’s a good time for me to do videos, podcast interviews, and the bulk of my business work. The weekends are great for me too.

I am currently in the middle of reading a copywriting book and an SEO audiobook.

Blog Posts I Wrote

5 Ways To Find Time For Freelance Writing: Freelancing is an interesting side hustle that some writers explore. If you are looking to find some extra revenue writing about topics you enjoy, this blog post will help you out.

10 Social Media Trends To Pay Attention To: Social media is rapidly changing and 2017 is just around the corner. You’ll want to capitalize on these 10 social media trends before everyone else does.

How To Integrate Live Streaming With Your Social Media Strategy: In a word, live streaming is HOT! If you want to discover how to integrate live streaming with your social media strategy, well that’s the name of the blog post 🙂

7 Twitter Analytics Insights That Will Grow Your Business: Twitter Analytics is a cool part of Twitter that not enough people are utilizing. In this blog post, I reveal how the information from Twitter Analytics can take your Twitter reach to the next level.

Podcast Episodes I Published

I am going to relish every moment of writing this portion of the Performance Report. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know how much this means to me. So I will take my sweet time 🙂

Episode 1: Successful Podcasting With Jeffrey Shaw — I couldn’t be any happier to have had Jeffrey Shaw as my first guest. I give him A LOT of credit for helping me start the podcast. He made a last minute change to his schedule just so I could interview him before anyone else.

The truth is I assumed that it would be a great idea to interview someone with a podcast first. Jeffrey knows the process I went through from start to finish. At one time, he was just getting started. I enjoyed our Creative Warriors interview a lot (that’s his podcast).

So there’s the background information. The episode itself is about building a successful podcast. It’s great for anyone considering a podcast, on the verge of getting started, or ready to take their podcast to the next level.

Episode 2: Building A Kindle Empire With Nick Loper — Nick is a side hustler who is the epitome of the Swedish proverb “Many little streams make a mighty river.” He makes money doing a lot of different things. One area he mastered is building a Kindle Empire. You’ll get a lot of great nuggets on how to take your Kindle publishing to the next level.

Episode 3: Growing Your Blog With Brian Lang — I read Brian Lang’s guest post on ProBlogger and instantly knew he had to be a guest on my podcast. We talked about growing a blog and tackled some of the fears that hold bloggers back.

Episode 4: How To Get 100,000 Monthly Blog Visitors With Neil Patel — If you know Neil Patel, you know that every blog he touches turns into gold. He knows how to focus his maximum efforts in the right areas to virtually ensure success. We touched upon getting those visitors within this episode.

Episode 5: Growing and Maintaining Multiple Businesses With Jeet Banerjee — TEDx speaker Jeet Banerjee stopped by to share how he manages multiple successful businesses at the same time. Just like me, he got started as a teen and is now crushing it in his 20s.

Episode 6: How To Make Six Figures Writing Kindle Books With Steve Scott — I’ve been following Steve for a while and got a change to interview him for my podcast. He’s written dozens of Kindle books that allow him to make six figures in “passive” income. I only put it in quotes because we’re all doing work to get that income, but the point is Steve is making money in his sleep.

We talk about some ways to crank out those books and market them for maximum success.

Episode 7: How To Make Thousands Of Dollars Per Month By Freelancing With Gina Horkey — Gina has a story that resonates with many people. She pursued freelancing as a way of making extra money, but she didn’t want this side hustle to get in the way of her family time. What she did and how she ended up crushing it get revealed in the episode.

Episode 8: Becoming A 10% Entrepreneur With Patrick McGinnis — The concept of a 10% entrepreneur amazed me because it explained why I am a successful entrepreneur even though I’m a student-athlete. The less time you have, the more seriously you take every minute that you are given. We talk about that and much more within this episode.

Episode 9: Mastering The Launch With Tom Morkes — Tmorkes (I don’t know if that’s his official nickname, but I’ve seen it floating around) knows a lot about successful launches. He has launched his own products and the products of people like Jeff Goins, Neil Patel, and more. This episode is jam-packed to the gills with advice on crushing your first (or next) launch.

Looking Back At August

The focus in August was on my YouTube channel. My changing schedule impacted the way I viewed my goals. Right now, the YouTube goal is undetermined. I spent most of September laying out the ground work for a strong end of the year.

I intentionally read more personal performance books so I could perform at my best even under a changing schedule. The podcast, affiliate marketing, and my book Unlock Your Potential are the three main constants mentioned in the prior performance report.

October Goals

Since September was largely preparation for a strong October, I am giving myself ambitious goals for the upcoming month.

#1: Get 1,000 Daily Visitors For My Blog

Guest posting and a bigger email list will help me big-time with this goal. I get a few hundred daily visitors and am looking to expand this number. I will continue listing this as a goal until it gets accomplished.

#2: Get Three Speaking Gigs For June

I want to travel to different places while doing what I love. I can’t go all-in with public speaking, but getting a minimum of three speaking gigs for June is my goal.

Getting those three speaking gigs would make it easier for me to get more speaking gigs in the future when I have more time available.

#3: Launch TSMD

I had this goal for the prior month, but it’s been taking longer than expected to get the videos edited. I am actually on the clock to get this launch done because I promoted the course in an upcoming summit in the middle of October.

I have spent countless hours working on TSMD, and I know that it’s going to help a lot of people master social media.

#4: Read 10 Books

Reading one book every three days is an ambitious goal, but I believe in my ability to get it done. To clarify, reading books also includes listening to audiobooks. Furthermore, I skim through many of the books that I read.

As you read more business books, you come across the same advice again and again. Why read insights that you already know? I want to get straight to the meat and bones of each book that I read.

#5: Finish The Unlock Your Potential Manuscript

My biggest goal for the month is to get the wheels rolling with Unlock Your Potential. I want to submit it to my editor so she can spice it up and then we get it out to the world. I’ll have to write anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 words for the book this month to accomplish my goal.

In Conclusion

September was a month filled with adjustments. I changed my structure three times and had certain high-stress moments. On certain days, I felt completely unproductive and disappointed with myself.

The personal performance books helped me get through this phase and prepare for a stronger October. I’ve had to pause certain projects to pursue others with greater intensity. Outside of the business, my physical strength hasn’t been better. That’s what being on a team in college will do to you 🙂

Thank you for reading my month in review.

Episode 9: Mastering The Launch With Tom Morkes

September 28, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Today Marc is joined by Tom Morkes, the CEO of Insurgent Publishing. Tom started exclusively providing free content for his audience and used that relationship to successfully launch his products and the products of others. Tom has helped launch products such as Hustle by Neil Patel and Patrick Vlaskovits, The 7 Day Startup by Dan Norris, and a whole lot more.

Marc and Tom sit down to hear Tom’s journey, driven by the idea that he wanted to do creative work and not be dependent on anyone. Traveling freely with a full-time income from digital products struck a cord with Tom.

Starting with a simple eBook, Tom made sure he created something of value, and through referral, grew his business exponentially. We are lucky to have Tom share some of his best insights and motivations with us. Listen in to figure out how to crush it with your next launch.

Key Links from the Show:

www.tommorkes.com – Personal Site – Free courses

http://insurgentpublishing.com/about/ – Tom’s company

Learn:

– To weigh the upsides vs. the downsides of a venture

– to develop a skill set to make your company peerless

– Tom’s advice from breaking through

– 3 tips for product creation and launches

– Why recruiting affiliates is so important

– To always validate/beta test a product

7 Twitter Analytics Insights That Will Grow Your Business

September 23, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Photo credit: techcrunch.com

Imagine a way to get valuable insights about your growth, your audience, and the world at large. That’s Twitter Analytics in a nutshell.

For a while, I only used Twitter Analytics to track my statistics. I tracked my tweets and optimized them based on engagement rates. And while I continue to use Twitter Analytics for that specific purpose, now I use it for other purposes too.

Twitter Analytics can help you grow your business with valuable insights, even if you don’t have a big Twitter audience. Here are seven cool ways to use Twitter Analytics:

#1: Learn How Many People See Your Tweets

I look at impressions to identify how many people see my tweets on any given day — over 100,000 people! Not all impressions equate to clicks (I get a few hundred daily visitors from those impressions), but the statistic is nevertheless underrated.

The thousands of people who repeatedly see my tweets will begin to remember me and what I offer. While these people may not click on most of my tweets, they will click on some of them, and be brought over to my blog.

Why do most people not click? The answer is that not all of my tweets are relevant for everyone in my audience. I provide insights on social media marketing, which means I most often discuss various social networks.

So the majority of people who are only interested in Twitter won’t likely engage with my Facebook blog posts. And the people only interested in Facebook won’t care much about my Twitter blog posts. But they will remember me. And as I become more familiar, I build trust, and often a new subscriber.

#2: Discover Your Month-By-Month Trends

You can track your statistics month-by-month. The cool part about this history is that you can see which months you were dominating, and which months weren’t so good.

If you look deep enough into the analytics, you can also discover why you had a good or bad month. Twitter Analytics arms you with engagement rates, number of tweets sent, number of clicks, and a lot of other awesome information that can help you find a pattern.

These patterns identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current plan. Enhance the strengths and address the weaknesses so each month is stronger than the last.

#3: Identify Your Most Popular Tweets

This feature is really useful because you learn what is resonating with your audience. Twitter Analytics helped me realize that my audience wants more Twitter articles.

I recently looked at my most popular tweets and noticed an interest in the hashtags #blogging and #socialmedia. I am in the process of changing my tweeting pattern to ensure that I am sharing more articles about these topics.

Identify which of your tweets perform the best. Then give your audience more of that type of content. It’s that simple.

#4: Your Audience’s Top Interests

Your tweet engagement can tell what is interesting to your audience, but the Audience Insight feature of Twitter analytics lets you identify important insights.

According to this metric, my audience is most interested in technology, business, entrepreneurship and marketing. So I know I am providing my audience with what they want, and that the occasional article about technology is the icing on the cake.

#5: Your Audience’s Demographics

Twitter Analytics provides you with a lot of useful information. However, the more you delve into your audience demographics, the more valuable Twitter Analytics becomes.

For instance, I recently discovered that I have more male followers than female followers.

In the business I’m in, I shouldn’t have to target a specific gender; it’s not like I am selling a product or service that is exclusive to a particular gender. I like it when people of any gender visits my blog, but my demographic information tells me that it makes more sense to target women.

How did I reach that conclusion? Here’s where additional demographics come into play. Enter Alexa:

According to Alexa, more women visit my blog than men. Maybe it’s my charm, but I digress. If the ratio was reversed and 59% of my Twitter followers were female, that would mean more traffic. The closer I get that 50/50 ratio, the more traffic I will get from Twitter.

All of these stats are very useful. The income of each person in your audience will help you determine what type of product your audience wants (high-end or low-end).

Knowing where your audience lives helps you if you have a local business or are deciding which locations to target for public speaking.

Before you leave that Audience Demographics page, look at languages your audience speaks. What may look like funky math on Twitter’s end (108%) actually accounts for people who can speak multiple languages.

I’ve got some bilingual followers. That’s useful if I need to pass an exam in another language.

It’s more useful to me from a business standpoint. The first thing these analytics do is verify that I am doing a good job at targeting English speakers. Since I speak English, I want people who speak and understand English.

If all of my followers spoke and understood Chinese, rather than English, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with them. I might as well have bought fake followers (or start learning Chinese).

I have interacted with many people on Twitter. Some were Spanish speakers who tweeted in broken English or their first language.

When they communicate with me in broken English, I respond in English. When they reach out to me in Spanish, I respond in Spanish (a combined effort of five years of Spanish in school and Google translate). Language barriers exist, but you can use them to your advantage.

Translating one of your products into Spanish will help you reach an entirely new audience that you could never reach before. It’s the reason why bestselling books get translated into dozens of languages.

It’s also the reason why Kim Garst came out with a Spanish version of Periscope Profits.

As a Spanish student myself, I’m thinking of visiting the sales page often to refresh my skills. Everything is in Spanish—product benefits, testimonials, the refund policy, and just about everything else you can think of.

Kim Garst understands that she has an audience of people who speak Spanish. What can you do to tap into that additional audience?

#6: Consumer Behaviors

What are your Twitter followers interested in purchasing? Twitter Analytics has the answer.

Consumer Behaviors are broken into three sections:

Aftermarket Auto Buyers Type
Consumer Buying Styles
Consumer Goods Purchased

Most of us will be focused on the Consumer Buying Styles. But it doesn’t help me much to know that my audience prefers cheese, salty snacks, milk, fresh produce, and chocolate candy. I’m allergic to most of that stuff anyway.

I am more interested in the Consumer Buying Styles. The top two product styles for my audience are Premium Brands and Ethnic Explorers. Here’s what each of those product styles indicates:

Premium Brands—people shop for high-end products in the grocery store.
Ethnic Explorers—people have a wide range of international foods on their shopping lists.

What can I conclude about this data? My audience is interested in a variety of high-priced products. Many people associate high quality with high value, and that’s what my audience is after.

That means I can charge a higher price for a product, increase its perceived value, and get more sales. All I have to do is be sure my product is worth the price tag.

Before I conclude this part, I want to give a shout out to the 8% of my audience interested in dairy-free produce. I am allergic to dairy, as well as a host of other things (someday I will publish the complete list).

#7: Twitter Persona Groups

Regardless of your audience size, Twitter Persona Groups is the GO-TO feature of Twitter Analytics. Twitter has collected data that specifically applies to…

Parents
Millennials
Small businesses
People making less than $100K in income
Generation X
Baby boomers
Senior citizens
College graduates
Professionals
Adults 18-54
Business decision-makers

You can increase your targeting by filtering your search based on demographics, lifestyle, consumer behavior, and mobile footprint.

If you don’t know much about millennials, Twitter Analytics is your go-to place for learning more about them. Comedy and music understandably (from my perspective as a millennial) top the list. If you target millennials, ask yourself how you can incorporate music and comedy into your business.

In Conclusion

My 300,000 Twitter followers help me get the most out of Twitter Analytics, but you don’t need many followers to get started. Twitter Analytics provides useful data that you can tap into regardless of the size of your Twitter audience.

You can get information about your audience, or specific groups of people who use Twitter. The information is so vast that it may take you a few hours to consume it all.

By combining that information with your own knowledge and creative ideas, you can identify changes that will move your business forward.

What are your thoughts about Twitter Analytics? Do you use them for your business? Sound off in the comments section below.

Episode 8: Becoming A 10% Entrepreneur With Patrick McGinnis

September 21, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

On today’s episode, Marc is joined by Patrick McGinnis, venture capitalist and private equity investor. He is the author of “The 10% Entrepreneur” which is based on his ability to generate an income from a typical job and his entrepreneurial business at the same time.

Patrick joins Marc to discuss how he’s built a diverse portfolio of investments outside of his day job, and takes the time really go in deep about how and why he got there. Listen in to hear why the 2008 financial crisis was a bit of wake up call for Patrick, and in doing so, how he found pathways to more interesting and fun ventures. We’re fortunate to learn from Patrick’s experience, from his first steps all the way to his current investments. Find out why the “elevator pitch” is so important, and how to market a product that doesn’t even exist yet.

We even hear a story of a journey across South America that lead Patrick to his favorite inspirational quote. Tune in to find out how you too can be a 10% Entrepreneur.

Learn:

– The Elevator Pitch

– How to market a product that doesn’t exist

– Patrick’s 3 tips for budding entrepreneurs

– Why building a team is so important

– To use your 10% to do many different things

– Recommendations for creating a great pitch

– Patrick’s advice for breaking through

Key Links from the Show:

www.patrickmcginnis.com – Patrick’s Personal Site

https://twitter.com/pjmcginnis – Patrick’s Twitter

https://www.facebook.com/The10PercentEntrepreneur/ – Patrick’s Facebook