Marc's Blog

5 Reasons Why Most People Don’t Make Enough Money

November 20, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Money. It’s something that we think about. Some of us think about it too often, but we all think about it one way or the other. Many people aspire to earn full-time incomes and have financial independence.

Sure enough, not everyone earns a full-time income. And not all of the people who make a full-time income do so with a smile. Making a full-time income by doing what you love to do involves putting in the work. However, there are common pitfalls that prevent most people from making enough money. Here are the big five:

#1: They Only Want The Money For The Sake Of Having It

Don’t think about having money for the sake of having money. Instead, think of what the money you are after would give you. Think about the financial independence, the ability to buy more things, and the ability to use your money to make the world a better place.

Most people don’t establish a strong WHY for making the money. Making money for the sake of making it isn’t good enough. Financial independence is a start, but you can dig deeper. What would financial independence allow you to do that you can’t do now?

The deeper you go, the more fuel you will add to the fire. Soon enough, you will approach your work with more motivation than before.

#2: Money Is At The Forefront Of Everything

The moment you put money at the forefront of everything else is the moment you don’t get as much of it. Some people in the desperate scramble to make revenue may create subpar products and charge high prices for them. They want the money immediately, so quantity and high prices seem like the logical option—at least on the surface.

Providing value is more important than having a quantity of products. Building the relationship between you and your customers in which you focus on helping the customer is more valuable than building the relationship just for the sake of making money.

If you only engage with your audience to get their dollar bills, then they will catch on. If you engage with your audience because you actually care for them, then the people in your audience will be more likely to buy your products.

#3: Doubt

It is too common for people who aren’t making money to doubt themselves. They blame their lack of expertise and/or certain circumstances that prevent them from making money. Blaming in this regard results in you staying in the pit of despair for a longer period of time.

Doubting yourself will hinder your progress and keep you in that pit longer. The only way to get out of that pit is by climbing out of it. Just ask The Dark Knight.

#4: They Aren’t Putting In The Right Work

Whether willing or unwilling, the people who don’t make enough money often are not putting in enough productive work. We are good at putting in work, but productive work is a different story.

Most people like to believe that all work is productive. However, that is not the case. Certain work that you do is just busy work that takes time out of your day. As my social media audience grew larger, continuing the growth became busy work. My social media audience was growing but my income was not changing.

As a result, I focused all of my attention on Twitter and eventually outsourced most of the activity on all of my social networks.

Now I focus more of my time on creating and marketing my training courses.

In our constantly busy lives, we put in a lot of work. Creating the distinction between busy work and productive work allows you to identify where you need to spend your time.

Spending time on one activity means sacrificing some of the time you could have spent on another activity. This is the economic concept of an opportunity cost. You could be losing out on the opportunity of a lifetime because you are not utilizing your time wisely.

Sometimes, we know what we must do to move forward, but we don’t find the time to make it happen in our schedules. Don’t be that person.

#5: Exploration Without Commitment

If your strategy is to pursue shiny object after shiny object, then prepare for disappointment. Many people fall prey to shiny object syndrome in which they do a lot of exploration but don’t commit to anything.

It’s like shopping at Macy’s for two hours without buying any clothing. It’s like spending two hours looking for the best trails in your area but then not running on any of those trails. Basically, it’s a waste of time.

You need to do some exploration to find the right opportunity for you. However, you must also drop the anchor when you find an opportunity that appeals to you.

You don’t have to drop the anchor many times, but you have to drop it eventually. I don’t drop the anchor often. The first time I truly dropped the anchor was when I decided to focus most of my time on Twitter. Over 250,000 followers later, I am happy that I temporarily ditched all of my other social media accounts.

In Conclusion

For better or for worse, we think about money. If we could earn a dollar every time we thought of money, some of us would be millionaires just for that.

We want money, but in order to get what we are looking for, our thinking pattern must change. Instead of making money just for the sake of making money, go deep and ask yourself what the money would do for you.

As you go deep and motivate yourself to make more money, remind yourself that money is a good servant but a bad master. Don’t let the thought of making money become the forefront of everything that you will do. Your work will be less enjoyable and you will think more about what you don’t have than what you actually have. When we focus on what we do not have, we get discouraged.

Making money does require putting in the work, but it also requires approaching money-making with a different perspective from the traditional one.

Which of these reasons resonates with you the most? Did I miss any reasons why people don’t make enough money? Have any tips to share? Sound off in the comments section below.

What To Outsource In Your Twitter Strategy

November 18, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Twitter, just as all social networks, is a double-edged sword. Twitter can provide many opportunities, but it can also take up too much of our time. Small business owners constantly want to utilize social networks like Twitter but rarely have enough time to do so.

Twitter is the main reason I became a digital marketing expert. Once I got comfortable with Twitter, it was easier to get comfortable with the other social networks. In addition to the comfort, most of the interviews and guest blogging opportunities came directly from people who first saw me on Twitter.

Then time became a factor. During my junior year of high school, I had so little time for my business that the only thing I could focus on was Twitter. I saw the growth of my audience and was happy. However, I wasn’t fully utilizing the revenue generating opportunities.

Many small business owners find themselves on the seesaw with social media activity on one side and revenue generating activity (quicker revenue versus long-term revenue and social proof you get from social media) on the other side.

No matter how much you try, you won’t perfectly balance on the seesaw. Unless you have freelancers working for you.

The most significant decision I have made for my business in 2015 was outsourcing my workload. The only thing I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers. Virtually everything else I do on Twitter is outsourced.

This one decision has saved me an enormous amount of time. I want you to see similar results. Here’s what you need to outsource in your Twitter strategy:

#1: Prewritten Tweets

Many Twitter users find themselves tweeting the same type of content. Some Twitter users find themselves tweeting the same tweets in a cycle. If you are not one of these two Twitter users, you may find it difficult to schedule any tweets at all.

Regardless of which type of tweeter you are, outsourcing that work solves the problem. All of my tweets are scheduled by someone else. That saves me 15 minutes per day. 15 minutes per day may not seem like a lot, but the crumbs add up.

We all want to be successful on social media. Therefore, it only makes sense to look at successful social media accounts. Take a look at The Huffington Post’s account. Arriana Huffington does not publish the tweets that show up on @HuffingtonPost.

All of the top brands have social media management teams. However, you don’t need to be as big as The Huffington Post to outsource your tweets. You can find a freelancer on a place like Fiverr or UpWork. Then tell the freelancer what types of tweets you want them to write and publish on your account. Be specific.

Then you can devote your time towards other areas of your business. If you find yourself tweeting multiple on-the-fly tweets, you can potentially anticipate those tweets (i.e. if you know you will tweet affiliate links for the next three weeks) and tell the freelancer to schedule the tweets.

#2: Audience Growth

Imagine gaining hundreds of Twitter followers every day without being on Twitter every day. Just a year ago, I thought this was impossible. I thought I would have to put in all of the work to grow my Twitter audience.

Then I hired a freelancer and told him what to do. Now that part of my strategy is automated. This decision allowed me to save an extra 30 minutes per day.

Remember how those small crumbs add up. Now I’m saving 45 minutes per day (and Twitter isn’t the only thing I outsourced so I save more time than 45 minutes).

Learn how to grow your audience and examine how your freelancer grows your audience. That way, you are bound to achieve rapid audience growth without putting in any time.

#3: Account Problems

One of my CSV files had a bug where apostrophes were replaced by question marks. Here’s what happened:

Original Tweet: 5 Ways To Boost Your Blog’s Traffic

With The Bug: 5 Ways To Boost Your Blog??s Traffic

I told my freelancer (the one who schedules my tweets) about the problem. I proposed some ideas about why the problem occurs and then my freelancer was on it.

I no longer worry about these issues because I have a team around me putting in the time to fix these issues.

#4: Engagement

Engagement is the one thing on this list that I will never outsource. For some people however, it may be a good idea to outsource the interaction between your account and your followers. That depends on the amount of interaction your account receives each day and if you feel comfortable with someone interacting with them for you.

If you don’t interact with your followers because you don’t have the time, then outsource this part of your Twitter strategy. It’s better for your Twitter interaction to get outsourced than it is for no interaction to happen at all. Be very careful with this one. Make sure you set very clear expectations with this one.

In Conclusion

Outsourcing your Twitter strategy will open up more time that you can repurpose towards other areas in your business. When you choose to outsource your Twitter strategy, the only thing you must do is make sure your freelancers are doing their work.

In the beginning, never assume that you and your freelancers are on the same page. It is usual for miscommunications to occur in the beginning until you and your freelancers get into a groove. Look over their work and make sure they are doing a great job.

What are your thoughts about outsourcing your Twitter strategy? What do you want to start outsourcing? Do you have any ideas for other parts of the Twitter strategy that you believe should get outsourced? Sound off in the comments section below.

What Makes An M.V.P. Social Media Post

November 16, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Ever view social media as a giant maze? Maybe you wonder what types of posts get more attention or the small changes you can make to give your posts an edge. Yes, there are specific changes you can make such as crafting 70-100 character tweets and creating a call-to-action at the end of your posts. I discuss specific ways to strengthen your tweets in this free eBook.

But how do you write an awesome post every single time? I’m not just talking about a post that gets engagement. I am talking about a post that is so powerful and attention grabbing that people crave your content. I am talking about a post that makes your audience beg for more.

I am talking about the M.V.Ps—Most Valuable Posts—of social media. Those are the posts that we desperately want more of. We know them when we see them, but how can we craft M.V.Ps of our own?

True to the acronym M.V.P., the first method starts with an M, the second method starts with a V, and the third method starts with a P.

Message

The message of your post all comes down to the purpose of that social media post. Are you trying to make your audience laugh? @MLBMemes does a great job at that (if you are a baseball fan) Are you trying to provide them with information? That’s my aim with social media.

Your desired message must be tailored to your audience. Knowing your audience allows you to realize what type of reaction is a good one. If @MLBMemes started to tweet social media articles, people would get thrown off. If I tweeted MLB memes too much, then sure enough my followers would get thrown off too.

So once you know what type of message to craft, how do you craft it?

The answer depends on the social network you are utilizing. On Twitter, brevity wins in large part because you can only use a maximum of 140 characters.

For the most part, brevity wins. Have a short intro to the article or picture you are sharing and then let the article or picture tell the story. For other social networks like YouTube, you have to tell the story within the post.

The best way to understand how to craft your message is by examining how other people within your niche craft your message. When I needed to learn how to use Twitter, I looked at how Jeff Bullas and Kim Garst used the platform. I tweeted in my own style and combined that style with how they sent their tweets.

Combining my style with their styles is the reason I tweet the way I do.

Sure enough, there are plenty of blog posts you can read that let you know more of the specifics. However, the best way to learn how to do something is to see an example and then implement based on that example. Observing results in learning. Then it’s just a matter of doing.

Value

I love this word. I could have used quality but value does more justice (and it allows me to stay consistent with the acronym).

First off, let’s start by defining value from a social media strategy perspective. Valuable content is NOT awesome content. Valuable content is awesome content that resonates with your audience. That is an important distinction.

I come across many blog posts that I believe are valuable. The blog posts that I believe are valuable could easily be defined as meaningless in the eyes of someone else. Since I am learning how to play the piano, I am learning about the different symbols and their meanings.

I’ll Google something like “piano symbols and their meanings.” If I find an article that does a good job at explaining several of those symbols, I continue reading it for a while. It’s something I want to learn more about.

However, if I were to tweet that article to my Twitter followers, I wouldn’t get much of a reaction. If I branded myself as a pianist and singer in the making, then I would get more attention. However, I brand myself as a digital marketing expert. People who follow me want digital marketing advice.

While the piano article is valuable to me, it wouldn’t be valuable to my audience.

Understanding that distinction allows you to put more of your time and effort into the right direction. It also allows you to create M.V.Ps.

The truth about M.V.P.s is that only a certain audience sees a certain social media post as an M.V.P. If you don’t know anything about baseball, then you won’t find any of @MLBMemes’ tweets as entertaining. I don’t know much about basketball which is why I am indifferent to the NBA memes that dominate the web.

Now comes the point when you define value in your niche. A valuable video or blog post within your niche is something that triggers the desired reaction. If you want your audience to laugh, then that’s the reaction you are looking for. If you want your audience to acquire more knowledge by thoroughly reading the blog post you promoted, then that’s the reaction you are looking for.

The best way to identify value in your niche is by seeing what works. Look at what the highly regarded experts post. Better yet, see which posts get the most attention from the people within your audience. Just search for some keywords relating to your niche and look through the posts that get the most engagement.

That’s what your audience likes. Mimic it while adding your own style.

Picture

With a sea of tips that specifically apply to certain social networks, it is difficult to come across tips that apply to all of them. Social media is constantly changing and more options become available as the days go by.

In a constantly changing atmosphere, it is difficult to find the constants (had to do it). One constant that will always remain is the impact of pictures. Social media posts with pictures get more than twice as much engagement as social media posts without pictures.

All of the social networks have adapted over the years based on this fact. It’s the reason why we don’t see those pic.twitter links anymore and why you can’t be a player on Instagram and Pinterest unless you post pictures.

When you promote one of your articles on your social networks, the picture you use in your article is just as important as the content as itself. The human mind registers a picture 60,000 times faster than plain text. The picture matters.

The best free tool to create awesome pictures without any help is by using Canva. Canva is a free tool with an arsenal of options to improve your pictures. I used to use Canva until I hired someone with more expertise to create the pictures for me.

For some of the pictures I created with Canva, you can tell that some of them were rushed. I didn’t have much time to begin with because of my school schedule. To make matters worse, I was in my junior year. So I handed that responsibility over to a freelancer who creates awesome pictures. I didn’t create the picture in this blog post. My freelancer did.

Pictures are essential to getting and keeping attention. If you don’t create good pictures, then don’t give yourself that task. Pay someone else to get the job done right. You save time and get an awesome picture. Some freelancers charge $1 per picture.

When you share one of your articles on social media, make sure you include that picture within your social media post. In my experience, my tweets with pictures get more engagement than my tweets without pictures.

In Conclusion

At first glance, any goal you go after will look impossible. That includes the M.V.P. status. When you stare straight into your goal and observe the examples around you, that goal becomes easier. In some cases, that goal even becomes child’s play.

I love using sports analogies of some of the best athletes, so I’ll do that again here. At some point in his life, it was difficult for LeBron James to make a shot in basketball. Now he makes the shots that most of us would never even attempt.

All writers start off struggling to write the 250 word essay. Some of these same writers became bestselling authors.

You may struggle with crafting awesome social media posts now. You may be intimidated because you only took the first glance. However, when you stare this goal straight in the eye and take action, this goal will soon become easy for you. Soon enough, you’ll be crafting and publishing M.V.Ps left and right.

What are your thoughts on the M.V.P. method? Do you have any suggestions for crafting better social media posts? Sound off in the comments section below.

What To Do On The Day You Create A Social Media Account

November 13, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Just a few years ago, this blog post would have been unnecessary. I am talking about the time when MySpace fell to Facebook. Social media wasn’t a buzzword yet. In those days, it was just Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Those were the three top social networks.

Less than a decade ago, comparing those top three social networks with any other social network was like comparing a boulder to a pebble.

Now we’ve got Pinterest, Instagram, Blab, and Periscope, just to name a few. Each of these social networks is #1 at something. In one blog post, you can discover how much better Pinterest is than Facebook. In another blog post, you can discover how much better Facebook is than Pinterest. They have different qualities and millions of users.

For us, this means three things:

Brace yourselves. More social networks are on the way!
New opportunities
You have to create accounts for those social networks

The third thing is what this blog post is about. How many times have you heard that you need to start using Instagram? How many times have you heard that you need to start using Pinterest? If you haven’t heard it yet, how many times do you think you will get told to start using Periscope?

Whether you use these social networks or not is up to you. What isn’t up to you is that if you want to use a social network, you must create an account for that social network. After you verify your email address and have your account set up, here’s what you need to do:

Make Your Account Look Nice Right From The Start

There are few Twitter avatars worse than the egg. There are few Pinterest avatars worse than the white pin in the red background. There are few Facebook avatars worse than the faceless person in the blue-gray background. These are all default pictures that make your account look bad.

The avatar is the first thing you must change when you create a social media account. But what you choose for your avatar is just as important as changing the default.

The best avatar to use is the avatar that you have been using for your other social networks. All of my social media profiles have the same avatar picture, and that is by design. People remember a face easier than they remember a name.

Since I use the same avatar on all of my social networks, it is easier for my Twitter followers to make the connection when they see my YouTube channel. If my Twitter avatar pictures was of a rainforest and my YouTube avatar was of a volcano, it would be difficult for people to identify the two accounts with the same person.

That’s why I use the same avatar for my social networks. However, I don’t just use any avatar. I use an avatar that shows me. I don’t get a cool picture of nature from Google and make that my picture. I want people to see a face behind the content. When people see a face and associate that face with your content, those people will have an easier time remembering you and your content.

Some social networks also allow you to provide a background picture. Your background picture should let people know more about you from a personal or professional standpoint. In my background pictures, I lean towards the professional side.

While it is possible for you to use Google and get a picture, virtually none of those pictures will be the one that perfectly defines you. There are two ways to get a picture that perfectly defines you (okay fine. Close to perfect):

Create the picture yourself using Canva (a free tool on the internet that I’d recommend to anyone)
Hire a freelancer to create the picture for you (you can get a freelancer to do the job for $5 on Fiverr)

Before you create the picture or hire a freelancer, make sure you know the dimensions of a background picture. The social networks are not uniform. The dimensions for a background picture on Facebook are completely different from the dimensions for a background picture on Twitter.

Not all social networks utilize a background picture. However, if the social network you create an account for includes a background picture on your profile, make sure the background picture is nice. Since you just created the social media account, you would be fine if it took you 1-7 days to come up with an awesome background picture. Even beyond the seven days, it isn’t the end of the world if you don’t have an awesome background picture.

But the avatar is paramount. Changing the avatar must be one of the first steps you take after you create a new social media account.

Writing The Bio

An effective social media bio lists all of your accomplishments and workload that you fit into that bio. The best social media bios are typically sentence fragments—a bunch of words separated by commas. No conjugations (and, or, but) and definitely no period at the end of your bio.

This blog post explores more methods to crafting an effective social media bio.

Send Out A Massive Amount Of Posts

When you have no audience, you won’t annoy anyone if you post five times per minute. For some social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, you can easily send valuable posts. All you do is post a relevant, valuable article, and then you’re done. Publishing 20 of those types of posts in one day would give your new followers content to look at when they go to your profile.

Think about it this way. Would a Twitter account be more attractive if it had 0 tweets or if it had 1,000 tweets?

Create A Strategy

Once you get more comfortable with the social network you are on, the next step is to create a strategy. How will you achieve growth? What type of growth are you looking for? What type of experience will you provide for your audience? How will you build relationships on that social network?

Those four questions form a strategy. Getting better answers to those questions requires that you learn more about the social network you are using. Social media experts like to write blog posts about the newer social networks since they’re hot.

I wrote a few about Periscope right when it came out. I wasn’t alone. I have read numerous blog posts about Periscope (FYI: if you want to learn about Periscope, then Kim Garst is your gal).

To learn more about the social network you are using, you must read numerous blog posts about it. The more knowledge you absorb, the stronger your strategy will be.

In Conclusion

Creating an account on a social network can be an exciting experience. The powers of socializing and opportunities increase with every social network that gets created. Periscope defied the rules by giving anyone the power to live stream. I like to think of a Periscope account as your own TV channel.

It’s exciting to think about the opportunities, but to fully utilize those opportunities, you must learn from the experts and experiment on your own. The experts become experts by experimenting and then discovering what works.

Remember when it was just Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? The party’s gotten a lot bigger since then.

What do you advise we do when we create new social media accounts? Did one of these tips resonate with you the most? Which social network did you most recently create an account on? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Easily Profit From Affiliate Marketing

November 11, 2015 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Affiliate marketing alone presents its set of advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is you get to earn a commission by promoting products that other people created. Sometimes, the product creators will even provide you with copy that converts well.

The main disadvantage is that relying too much on affiliate marketing makes you dependent on other people creating products and putting you in their affiliate networks.

For most of my journey, I haven’t given affiliate marketing much thought. I started off as an Amazon Associate, and after making only 4-6% commissions for each product sale, I thought affiliate marketing would never be my cup of hot chocolate (I not a big fan of tea).

Then, I randomly got an email from an affiliate marketer. This affiliate marketer gave me the opportunity to promote a copywriting training course and get 40% of the commission for every sale. Since the course was high-end, each sale I got as an affiliate brought in over $100.

I was immediately sold and decided to give affiliate marketing a second try. Now, it’s slowly growing into a big part of my business. As I started to explore affiliate marketing, I paid more attention to other affiliate marketing promotions. I noticed that many of the people who created successful products of their own were also affiliate marketers. How does that happen?

The answer is that it can take a very long time to create a product. For some people, it takes them several months just to create a new product that is bound to perform well. Mega training courses for instance can have over 10 hours of video with complementary PDFs, quizzes, and other interactive activities.

And for many successful products, the time spent towards marketing usually exceeds the time spent towards creating the actual product. Call it crazy, but that’s how it works.

While these people are creating their products, how do they make money? The revenue they generate usually comes from their old products but also through affiliate marketing.

I am an ambitious teenager but schedule conflicts are part of the norm. I anticipate on creating one mini training course on Udemy every week. Sometimes I accomplish that goal. At other times, the amount of homework and upcoming tests prevents me from reaching that goal.

When it comes to product creation, time will not always be on your side. As an affiliate marketer, time is always on your side. Even if you don’t get many sales from one of your affiliate offers, you can always search out the next affiliate offer.

Now that you know why affiliate marketing can potentially bring in revenue, I am going to share with you how you can generate revenue from a powerful affiliate marketing strategy.

#1: Get The Right Affiliate Offers

Most people are introduced to affiliate marketing for the first time when they become Amazon Associates. It’s one of the largest affiliate network known to mankind, and you have millions of products to choose from. The only problem is that most people only get a 4% commission rate for their efforts.

The reason I went back to affiliate marketing was because I started to make real money. I’m not talking about the 4% rate that Amazon provides. I am talking about making over $100 just for making one sale. Sell 10 of those products every month and you make over $1,000 every month. The math is as simple as that.

When you have a lower commission per sale, you need more sales to reach the same milestones. If you get a $5 commission for each product you sell, you would have to sell 200 products to make $1,000. For the product with the $100 commission, you only need to sell 10 of those products. In most cases, it is easier to get 10 sales of the same product than it is to get 200 sales of the same product, regardless of price.

The best part about some affiliate networks is that you may be provided with email blasts, social media posts, and sales pages that convert well above the average sales page. I was an affiliate for Ray Edwards’ Copywriting Academy course. As a part of his affiliate network, I was provided with email blasts that were designed to convert far beyond the average.

Basically, he knows more than me about getting sales. I promoted his videos and webinars that led up to the course. Then I promoted the course itself. His sales pages are some of the most optimized sales pages out there. Getting some of my visitors to that sales page resulted in more revenue for Ray and me. The best part is that the people who bought the course are going to learn a lot about copywriting and making more sales.

And I did no work. I just copied and pasted a few messages and sent them out accordingly. Ray put together the entire product, the entire sales page, and everything else along with it. In the end, Ray made far more revenue than me from his product launch, but I got my fair share too.

#2: Promoting Your Affiliate Links

The way you promote your affiliate links depends on where those affiliate links lead your visitors. When promoting Copywriting Academy, I had links to videos and webinars that required an email address in order for the visitor to gain access to the video/webinar.

I tweeted these links but never tweeted the link to the sales page (Twitter isn’t the place to promote the sales page of a product, especially high-end products. People rarely go on Twitter thinking “What will I buy next?”).

Most of the clicks I got from my affiliate links were directly from Twitter. In the end, over 5,000 people clicked on the link and over 100 people opted in. The final result was one sale and I made over $100 from that one sale.

Two takeaways:

That commission for one product sale is way better than any Amazon affiliate link.
Not bad for my first try

Some people make six figures from affiliate marketing alone. While you shouldn’t rely on affiliate marketing for your income, it can still be quite profitable.

#3: Repurposing The Commissions

I believe in making a profit and having a high net income. I also believe in efficiently spending money. I don’t buy many things for myself with my own money. When I spend money, I spend it on my business.

I spend it on online advertising. AdWords and Facebook ads in particular. My goal is to grow my audience exponentially. Spending money on online advertising helps with that.

YouTube is the next social network I am taking seriously. I want to leverage that platform and create videos more often. Eventually, I want to have more videos on my YouTube channel than blog posts on this blog. Oh, and I want this awesome YouTube trophy.

When I identified YouTube as the next social network to work on, I knew that my current approach wasn’t working. At just 2,500 subscribers, I knew I needed to make massive changes to get to 100,000 subscribers. It’s still a goal of mine, but I am taking action—by investing in online advertising.

I decided to run an ad with AdWords and see what that would do to my channel views. I started off at a budget of $3/day. Not much, but I just wanted to see what types of results I would get.

The results were awesome

YouTube Views From AdWords

I was getting targeted views, and I was paying $0.01 for one view. My video promoting my writing course suddenly went from getting zero views to getting over 300 views every day.

I only repurposed $3/day from my revenue, and I am growing my platform.

But if you frequently visit this blog, then you know the most important platform of all. The email list. Entrepreneurs are spending more time and money trying to master online advertising because it can be highly profitable.

Consider this: Every email list has a certain number of subscribers on it. When you make money from your email list, each subscriber, when averaged with the others, results in a certain amount of revenue. If you have 100 subscribers and make $200 from a promotion, each subscriber (on average) results in $2 for you.

Let’s say that rate of making $2 per subscriber remains constant, and you discover a method where you can spend $1 to get one new subscriber. No matter how much money you spend, you are going to make a profit. This dream of exponential profits inspires people to invest their time and money into online advertising.

POWER TIP: Have Your Own Affiliate Program

Ever notice an opportunity that was right there the entire time? That’s what recently happened to me. Udemy has become the main focus in my business strategy, and it’s paying off. Since I made that decision, my revenue from Udemy has significantly increased.

It didn’t take much of an investigation to determine most of the revenue I made came from my own promotion. What I didn’t initially realize is that affiliate promotions also contributed to my revenue increase.

The great thing about Udemy is that they have an affiliate program set up for you. All you have to do is give people the affiliate links to your courses and then they can start promoting them. Your affiliates get paid without your involvement, and you get a slice of the pie too.

So I decided to let people know about Udemy’s affiliate program. In all of my courses, I included a document with affiliate links to my courses. My students now have the option to promote my courses, make money for themselves, and then some of that money comes back to me.

Don’t think you have to make all of the sales by yourself. It’s okay to have a team of people who help you. Even if that means sharing some of the money.

In Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is huge. It’s not the holy grail, but it is valuable nevertheless. If you find yourself struggling to create products at a rapid pace, affiliate marketing gives you a product to promote.

I didn’t put together the Copywriting Academy course. But I made money by promoting the course as an affiliate. That’s affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Are you a part of an affiliate program? Do you have any affiliate marketing tips for us? Want to promote one of my courses? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Craft An Excellent Pitch

November 9, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Being an entrepreneur doesn’t require a job application. However, it does involve sending numerous pitches to people. Whether you send a pitch to the media or a pitch to a prospective customer, you will send numerous pitches.

Since entrepreneurs send so many pitches, it only makes sense to master them.

What To Know About Pitches

When entrepreneurs send pitches, they usually pitch to the media and high profile entrepreneurs. They pitch a product promotion, a potential interview on a notable television show, or something else.

Most people understand why entrepreneurs send pitches. Few people think about the receiving end of the pitch. All pitches have one thing in common:

Someone is going to read the pitch

And chances are this person reads through dozens of pitches every day. For this person, reading through pitches can quickly become annoying. Just to get an idea, envision yourself reading the college essays of all of the students applying to Harvard within a few months.

If I had to read that many essays (a few thousand assuming the work gets split up with other people), my head would explode.

The people who you are pitching to have been pitched to before. The higher up you go on the food chain, the more likely you are to send a pitch to someone like that person reading through the college essays of Harvard hopefuls.

How does someone read through that many pitches? The answer is that they don’t. If the pitch is long, it gets skipped over. The person reading your pitch doesn’t like your first sentence and then it doesn’t matter what you wrote after that.

Write For The Person Reading The Email

What does someone want from a pitch? The answer is clear and concise information. When I send a pitch, I am very careful about the words I use and how long my sentences are. If a sentence is too difficult to read, the pitch will get skipped—regardless of how good the pitch is overall.

Most of my pitches are just five sentences long. Important information is presented in a bullet point format. I know these people get numerous pitches every day. But I also know these people have lives. They aren’t robots reading emails. These are real people with families of their own who don’t want to spend all of their time reading emails.

Writing a short pitch allows me to get more attention when my email shows up in these people’s inboxes.

Start With Why

I send a pitch to the Huffington Post. I got a response and I’ll be a contributor for them soon enough. A few years ago, I would have sent a long pitch that focused on my credibility and what I have accomplished.

Luckily, I chose a different route. I decided to start with why. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek explains that people care more about why you do something than who you are and how you do it. What is the mission? What is the purpose of your work?

Once you identify why you do what you do, you can then establish your credibility. The entire pitch should be no more than 10 sentences with five sentences being the preferred amount. Writing any more than 10 sentences risks you losing the person reading your email.

Do Some Research

Depending on who you are pitching to and what you are pitching about, it is possible for you to do some research. Doing research allows you to identify what people are looking for. What types of stories does ABC want? Who is the ideal guest for 60 Minutes? What type of content finds its way on ProBlogger?

Conducting research in advance makes it possible to write a better pitch. Many blogs that offer guest blogging opportunities want guest posts that are different from the content already on the blog. If you pitch an article about getting more blog traffic from Twitter, but an article about getting more blog traffic from Twitter was just published yesterday, your pitch probably won’t get much consideration.

Even if you wrote a blog post better than the one ProBlogger just put up, the content is about a very similar topic. Imagine how much of a different reading experience ProBlogger would provide if EVERY article was about getting more blog traffic from Twitter.

If someone doesn’t have a Twitter account, then ProBlogger wouldn’t mean anything to them. That is exactly what ProBlogger wants to avoid.

So instead of pitching the article about getting more blog traffic from Twitter, consider pitching an article about getting more blog traffic from Facebook.

Being informed about what ProBlogger (or the person/media you are after) wants will allow you to construct a better pitch. Constructing a better pitch increases your chances of your pitch receiving attention.

Sending Out The Pitches

It takes time for people to read through all of the pitches they get in a given day. But if you send many pitches, it will also take time for you to send those pitches. After sending out numerous pitches, I discovered the two best ways to save time with sending pitches:

Outsource the work to someone else. That can easily be done with UpWork.
Use the same email. For most of my pitches, I use the same email. The only thing I change is the name of the person receiving the email (I don’t want to send an email to a John saying “Dear Jim” because that’s the easiest way to get your pitch ignored)

Figure out which of the two works best for you. Outsourcing the work would definitely save you more time, but before you outsource, you should get some experience with sending pitches. The more experience you have with sending pitches, the more advice you can give to the freelancer who does the work for you.

In Conclusion

Sending out the right pitches to the right people/media can result in a massive increase in exposure. Having a powerful story and effectively telling that story in a concise manner results in a successful pitch.
While pitches present great opportunities for gaining exposure, you should not view a successful pitch as your lottery ticket to success. A successful pitch isn’t the make or break point of your business.

They help you get more exposure. Before you start submitting pitches, make sure you are ready for that extra exposure. Would that extra exposure lead to the right message reaching more people? More sales for your product? More blog traffic and subscribers?

In other words, if your pitch was successful, would you achieve the results you desire from that successful pitch?

Right now, I want to hear from you. Have you sent pitches before? Which tips do you think our pitches can’t afford to live without? What do you think makes up a great pitch? Sound off in the comments section below.