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Episode 41: How To Generate Revenue On Shopify With Dan Rusu

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Shopify is a site with great revenue potential in the ecommerce. For this episode, Dan Rusu and I discuss how people can get started with their very own Shopify stores. Dan is the owner of Lighting Shoes, an E-commerce site that uses Shopify.

 

Google AdWords has been the ignitor to Dan’s successful business. We discuss how he uses AdWords, some of the challenges he faced along the way, and how to buy and sell websites just as Dan bought Lighting Shoes and made some changes so he could make a profit.

 

Learn:

—How to use Google AdWords to get the right traffic to your site

—How to increase the conversion rate, click through rate, and traffic to your site

—Finding a quality distributor

—How to buy and sell websites the right way

 

Quotes from this episode

 

“‘…doing something you’re passionate about, or at least being in a niche or industry that you’re interested in, ‘cause otherwise a lot of things just turn into a grind”

 

“Most of the time you’re gonna have to grind something out”

 

Key Links from the Show:

 

Lighting Shoes – Dan’s Shop

 

Website Brokers

 

Flippa 

 

 

3 Recommended Books:

 

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr Stephen Covey

 

How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie

 

Prayer Can Change Your Life by William R. Parker

Episode 41: How To Generate Revenue On Shopify With Dan Rusu

by Leave a Comment

Shopify is a site with great revenue potential in the ecommerce. For this episode, Dan Rusu and I discuss how people can get started with their very own Shopify stores. Dan is the owner of Lighting Shoes, an E-commerce site that uses Shopify.

Google AdWords has been the ignitor to Dan’s successful business. We discuss how he uses AdWords, some of the challenges he faced along the way, and how to buy and sell websites just as Dan bought Lighting Shoes and made some changes so he could make a profit.

Learn:

—How to use Google AdWords to get the right traffic to your site

—How to increase the conversion rate, click through rate, and traffic to your site

—Finding a quality distributor

—How to buy and sell websites the right way

Quotes from this episode

“‘…doing something you’re passionate about, or at least being in a niche or industry that you’re interested in, ‘cause otherwise a lot of things just turn into a grind”

“Most of the time you’re gonna have to grind something out”

Key Links from the Show:

Lighting Shoes – Dan’s Shop

Website Brokers

Flippa 

Top 3 Recommended Books:

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr Stephen Covey

How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Prayer Can Change Your Life by William R. Parker

6 Instagram Hacks to Grow Business in a Month

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This is a guest contribution from Lale Byquist

One of the fastest growing social networks is Instagram. Everyone knows about it and almost everyone uses it.

But: Do we truly know the power of it? 

While most people believe that Instagram is a website for sharing private photos only, proficient marketers use it as an effective tool for growing business.

insta_main

Source

Although most brands know reasons for using Instagram, there are some stats to prove that this social media platform is in a high demand for modern businesses:

In other words, if you want to grow a business, you’re in the right place.

Creating an effective marketing strategy that includes running Instagram account takes a lot of work. However, if you know and follow recent trends, you can achieve success faster without wasting time or effort.

Here comes a list of tips that will help you grow a business in a month:

1. Create Business Profiles

Instagram takes care of its users and its team has announced a new tool that allows brands to understand their followers better. Now brands can create business profiles that give an opportunity to analyze insights: impressions, reach, profile views, website and email clicks. It also helps to understand what works best for your audience.

business account

Source

Switch your account to business as it allows you to analyze statistics which means understanding your subscribers’ needs better so that you can get more followers on Instagram by suiting their expectations.

2. Fulfill Contact Info

If you want to increase the number of subscribers, give them reasons for doing it! Obviously, people pay attention to eye-catchy content, but they want to know who you are as well, so fulfilling your contact info is a must: add a description, website, phone number, address, and any other information that can help people learn more about your company.

Moreover, you can increase blog traffic from Instagram which helps to turn followers into customers and, therefore, grow your revenue. The only one thing you need to do is to help followers understand more about your company, its values, and how they can make the most out of using your products/services.

3. Use Paid Ads

When it comes to business promotion, get ready to spend money. You want to deliver your message to the target audience, right? If so, you need to use Instagram to target your posts, and it costs money. Using paid ads has become an important element of any social media marketing, and Instagram rolled out this service to help brands grow their business faster.

Three main benefits of using paid advertising on Instagram:

It has great targeting: choose your audience to reach the right people with your ads.

It grabs fans’ attention: people spend an average 192 seconds on the site after watching Instagram ads.

It pays off: Michael Kors posted one of the first paid ads and it earned 16 times more followers than their unsponsored posts.

Any other proof needed? 75% of Instagram users take action after seeing an advertised post.

Invest in Instagram ads to attract high-quality followers and, therefore, succeed with running your brand profile.

4. Share Up-to-Date Content

Having an Instagram profile isn’t enough to grow your audience. You need to post interesting and unique content daily that gives something valuable to your followers. If you want to expand your audience and cause a buzz with your publications, posting up-to-date content is the biggest helper.

  • Post Instagram stories: a type of disappearing content that is available for 24 hours and doesn’t appear on a profile. It’s aimed at showing current events that are not so important to be on the main newsfeed.
  • Share breaking news: modern people crave for urgent information. When you share up-to-date content, you earn trust and loyalty which means attracting new fans to your brand profile as you help to follow the recent trends.

If you post current news, you earn followers’ trust and loyalty. Plus, you attract new people who want to stay up-to-date.

5. Backstage Photos are Booming

Instagram is a social network that puts visual content first. MDG Advertising found out that 67% of online buyers rated high-quality images as an important element to their purchase decision. It means that good visuals matter.

As most brands promote themselves online, and they know the importance of high-quality images, it’s a normal practice to buy stock photos.

It’s harsh, but true: Internet users are sick and tired of artificial content. Stock photos don’t look realistic to cause emotions and, therefore, you can’t convey.

What’s left? If you want to use visuals, create them! Unless you have a great content creation staff, take photos with your gadget! In fact, backstage photos are booming! If people choose your brand, they are interested in your staff and working process that shows them more about your company, its values, and a lifestyle.
Backstage content is exclusive, so sharing it with your followers has an impact on their loyalty as they become a part of a private community.

6. Get Influencers to Promote Your Business

While most marketers try to deliver their messages to the masses, targeting opinion leaders is a key to success.

To begin with, let’s find out who these people are. An opinion leader, or an influencer, is a socially active person who keeps up with the recent trends and news, and this person has won trust and, therefore, he or she gets asked for advice a lot. All in all, it’s a person who has an effect on the decision-making of other people. If influencers speak well of your brand, you’re about to win: a consumer to consumer communication is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions.

Influencer marketing has become an actionable tactic when it comes to business promotion.

Although it has many benefits, get ready for some pitfalls. For instance, collaboration with opinion leaders is a time-consuming task as you need to pick up credible people who have earned trust and loyalty from their followers who might be your target audience.

Once you’ve established good contact with an opinion leader who can promote your business, you’re one step closer to success.

How to collaborate with influencers? Tell them more about your product or service and name reasons for using it (how it can solve someone’s problems).

Give them a sample. To promote your product, they need to be sure that it works well.

Be beneficial to them: you need to pay for this recommendation or give your product for free.

For example, if you run a fashion business, send your item to an influencer and ask to tag your company so that other people can contact you fast.

influencer_promo

Source

Every opinion leader has an already existing audience that pays much attention to things, products, and services he or she promotes. Thus, it’s your chance to reach potential followers fast. Give it a try to measure the effectiveness of the results.

The Sum Up

Whatever happens, always put your customers first. Let’s draw an analogy: running a business profile on Instagram is like delivering a speech as you have to do your audience’s analysis to suits their needs. If you show what your product can do for them and how they can make the most out of using it, it’s more likely they will stay with you.

Every business owner dreams of making a business profitable. If you’ve decided to use Instagram as a marketing tool, try to use all tips and hacks to grow your business. All the above-mentioned hacks can help to achieve better results in a month only.

Bonus Takeaways

Interact with your followers and potential fans: like and comment on their content

Include a CTA in your posts: make your followers discuss the topic and involve other people

Use popular hashtags and geolocation to attract potential followers

Run contests to boost followers’ engagement

Add links to Instagram account on other networks

Although running an Instagram business profile is a long-term marketing strategy for growing your business, there are some tips for skyrocketing results in a month. Do you know other hacks that help to grow the business fast?

About the Author

LaleLale Byquist is a media communications student who runs PrsentationSkills.me website. She is fond of the digital marketing, so Lale studies a lot about it, and social media marketing especially. Feel free to contact her on Twitter or Facebook.

May 2017 Performance Report

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May represents a month of clarity in which I learned how to effectively allocate my time to achieve the results I desire the most. To achieve those results, I’m going through drastic changes in my professional and personal life. This performance report will break down those changes and some of the big projects I am working on.

 

5 am or 6 am…

From this point forward, I will either wake up at 5 am or 6 am. Here’s the reasoning:

Now that summer has started, I like to read for an hour upon waking up.

I also need to run in the morning because, since it’s summertime, it gets HOT really fast. I prefer running early in the morning.

I listened to The Miracle Morning audiobook.

To compensate for waking up earlier, I’m sleeping earlier and incorporating an afternoon nap…because I’m less productive during that time anyway. Then I wake up with renewed willpower.

 

My New Stance On Blogging

I’ve seen an interesting trend in the blogging world. As bloggers get more established, more guest contributors write the content and the blog owner doesn’t write content as often. I see some blogs getting updated with new content every day even though the blog owner has written less than three blog posts the entire year (we’re in May).

I understand the logic behind this decision. Out of all forms of content, it takes more time to produce a blog post than any other form of content.

As a productivity hungry individual, I see this phenomena and know I need to change my ways to save more time. At the same time, you’ve all been very supportive of my journey, and the blog allowed me to create a big impact in so many people’s lives.

Here’s my new publishing schedule:

  • Weekly podcast episodes
  • Weekly YouTube videos
  • Monthly performance report
  • Monthly blog post
  • Guest contributors provide at least two blog posts each month

I’m still providing an intense amount of free value, but I am doing it in a different way for the sake of saving time.

This additional time will go towards organizing more virtual summits, creating more training courses, and (finally) finishing another book.

 

Content Marketing Success Summit—A Few Weeks Out

It’s amazing how time caught up with my biggest project of the year. A little bit of me thought that somehow June 7th would never happen and we’d be in the world of June 6.1s and June 6.2s.

As some of you may know, I successfully got over 50 speakers for CMSS (first virtual summit for me). It’s possible that by the time it’s all said and done, I could have 60 speakers, but I am not applying additional effort to get the 60th speaker.

My focus on the summit are now…

  • Communicating with speakers and affiliates
  • Finishing training course videos
  • Doing a few technology checks
  • Setting it up to be a legendary experience for attendees

 

PVS Is Next

Uh, oh. Another acronym. What can this one possible stand for?

Productivity Virtual Summit (September 18th—25th)

I have already contacted and landed speakers for this summit. I am really early in the process because CMSS is still my main focus (I have registered a domain name though).

The goal for PVS is the same. Get over 50 highly sought productivity experts to share their insights to attendees.

The biggest difference I can see with the Productivity Virtual Summit and the Content Marketing Success Summit is that I’ll have a much larger affiliate army.

Here’s the thing with affiliates…I barely know how to find and recruit them. I also feel like I don’t have enough time (I know. Lame) and haven’t recruited a single affiliate on my own (unless you count speakers).

So how did I get dozens of affiliates for CMSS (not including speakers)?

My friend Matt McWilliams wrote a blog post, sent an email to his list, and tweeted a few times about my affiliate opportunity. You can see the post here.

This meant so much to me because Matt has connected me with countless individuals and opened the door to new opportunities that I couldn’t have achieved without knowing him. His efforts to get more affiliates for my virtual summit was a very humbling experience.

And I can’t possibly continue without thanking Tom Morkes for recruiting affiliates (in this case, speakers). He didn’t write a blog post, but he sent dozens of emails to people who he thought would be interested in speaking at CMSS.

I can’t thank those two and everyone involved in CMSS enough! I spent so much time putting the summit together, but I know that I don’t have a summit without the speakers saying yes and doing everything they can to spread the word.

So with that said, the Content Marketing Success Summit is going to be epic. My goal is to make the Productivity Virtual Summit epic-er.

 

Books I Read

Out of everything I did this month, I am by far the most proud of what I accomplished here. Reading the books I read significantly changed my mindset, and I feel a stronger bias towards action than ever before.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink

Tools Of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson

The Power To Get Things Done by Chris Cooper and Steve Levinson

Success Through A Positive Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone

Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

Stand Out by Dorie Clark

How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon

Marketing by Brian Tracy

Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard

Millionaire Success Habits by Dean Graziosi

The Way You Do Anything Is The Way You Do Everything by Suzanne Evans

Twitter Power by Joel Comm

The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success by Deepak Chopra

The Charge by Brendon Burchard

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

The Amazing Results Of Positive Thinking by Normal Vincent Peale

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Sales Management by Brian Tracy

Become A Better You by Joel Osteen

Success Is A Choice by Rick Pitino

Do Cool Sh*t by Miki Agrawal

The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy

Reaching Your Potential by Normal Vincent Peale

Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina

80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall and Richard Koch

I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

Affiliate Program Management by Evgenii Prussakov

 

May’s Blog Posts

3 Strategies To Get Out Of Your Inbox Faster

7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners

 

May’s Podcast Episodes

Episode 38: How To Grow A 7-Figure Podcast With John Lee Dumas

Episode 39: Using Webinars To Generate A Massive Profit With Jon Schumacher

Episode 40: Igniting Your Motivation and Productivity With Trevor Oldham

 

Review Of May 2017 Goals

#1: Contact 50 potential sponsors—this did not happen. If I pursue sponsorships for my Productivity Virtual Summit, I will outsource the outreach to a trusted freelancer.

#2: Contact 50 potential affiliates—Matt McWilliams to the rescue (other than his help, I probably contacted three affiliates max)!

#3: Completely plan out the summit marketing—Done!

#4: Have blog posts and podcast episodes complete past June—Batching will get me there soon. I went all-in with the virtual summit and final exams competed with my time, attention, and energy as well.

#5: Confirm 10 speakers for my next summit—I’m making progress in this area already which is a big milestone.

#6: Read 15 books—I can now do that in a week.

#7: Identify a good coach—I have a coach in mind. I just have to decide how much I want to pay him. I will wait until CMSS concludes to see how my revenue looks after what is so far my biggest project of the year.

#8: Plan out a second podcast—I need to get thousands of daily downloads for Breakthrough Success before I start a second podcast. I don’t want to split my promotion time between two podcasts because I know that’s not a sustainable strategy. This is different from organizing two summits at the same time since the heavy weights from CMSS were taken care of by the time I started promoting PVS.

 

June 2017 Goals

#1: Make CMSS A Smashing Success—This is my most important goal for June. It will arguably be my most important goal of the year. This summit has the power to redefine my path and give me access to more opportunities than I can think of.

#2: Get 50+ Speakers For PVS—I want to conduct all of the PVS interviews in July, so while working on Content Marketing Success Summit related tasks, I will be gathering PVS speakers in the background.

#3: Schedule Content Past August—I will choose one day in the month to complete all videos and blog posts that would carry me past August. I would also have to reach out to potential podcast guests and contributors.

#4: Complete All Training Course Videos—Right now, that is a total of 77 videos, but I am sure that number will surpass 100 as I want to create superior training courses. Chances are I’ll batch them together for one day of the week and incorporate content dripping to give myself some extra time.

#5: Add 20+ Videos To TSMD—With all of the summit preparations, I have not given TSMD the attention that it deserves. My goal is to add over 20 videos to the portal because my members deserve them. My goal to make TSMD a superior social media membership site is still strong.

In Conclusion

All of my work for the past 4-5 months has led to my upcoming performance report. In that performance report, I will finally break down the Content Marketing Success Summit and the impact it has on my brand.

I also hope to talk about something other than virtual summits for the bulk of my performance report, but with PVS coming up next, there are no promises.

What are your thoughts on this performance report? Have any questions? Sound off in the comments section below.

Episode 40: Igniting Your Motivation And Productivity With Trevor Oldham

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Our motivation fuels our ability to accomplish our biggest goals. So how do we fuel that motivation as much as possible?

That’s what Trevor Oldham and I discuss in today’s episode. Trevor started as an entrepreneur before he was 10 years old. He’s now an ambitious young entrepreneur and host of the Become The Lion podcast show. He inspires others to pursue their dreams.

 

Learn:

—How to motivate yourself to work harder and smarter so you accomplish your goals quicker

—How to break your limiting beliefs

—How to get motivated again when you have cold streaks

—The morning routine of a lifetime

—Some secrets to success

 

Quotes from this episode:

 

“It’s really weird that people just get a job, accept it, and don’t think about it”

 

“You can only connect the dots looking backwards”

 

“You need to lay the foundation brick by brick.”

 

 

Key Links from the Show:

 

Become The Lion

 

Episode 39: Using Webinars To Generate A Massive Profit With Jon Schumacher

 

 

3 Recommended Books:

 

Outwitting The Devil by Napoleon Hill

Steve Jobs Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson

Win or Learn by John Kavanagh

Episode 40: Igniting Your Motivation And Productivity With Trevor Oldham

by Leave a Comment

Our motivation fuels our ability to accomplish our biggest goals. So how do we fuel that motivation as much as possible?

That’s what Trevor Oldham and I discuss in today’s episode. Trevor started as an entrepreneur before he was 10 years old. He’s now an ambitious young entrepreneur and host of the Become The Lion podcast show. He inspires others to pursue their dreams.

 

Learn:

—How to motivate yourself to work harder and smarter so you accomplish your goals quicker

—How to break your limiting beliefs

—How to get motivated again when you have cold streaks

—The morning routine of a lifetime

—Some secrets to success

 

Quotes from this episode:

 

“It’s really weird that people just get a job, accept it, and don’t think about it”

 

“You can only connect the dots looking backwards”

 

“You need to lay the foundation brick by brick.”

 

 

Key Links from the Show:

 

Become The Lion

 

Episode 39: Using Webinars To Generate A Massive Profit With Jon Schumacher

 

 

3 Recommended Books:

 

Outwitting The Devil by Napoleon Hill

Steve Jobs Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson

Win or Learn by John Kavanagh