For those of you who have never published for the Kindle before it can be a bit of a pain, so we are going to take a quick look at the process that is involved in publishing your first E-Book.
Formatting
The first thing you will want to do is ensure that your book is properly formatted. Far to often people upload their book to kindle publishing and it results in cropped pages, pointless blank pages, or duplications of text.
You can download this template for Microsoft Word that comes with pre-defined margins and text locations to help you ensure you won’t run into the same issues.
Setting Up Your Account
Once you’ve got your book in order you’ll want to head to the Kindle Direct Publishing Site and either login with your existing Amazon Publishing Account (createspace) or sign-up.
The Dashboard
Once you are logged in you will be presented with your “Bookshelf” which is the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) dashboard you will see a list of your current titles, their status, and various other information.
At this time click “Add New Title” to start the publishing process
Adding a New Title
Section 1: Entering Book Details
In the book details section you first enter your books title (keep it short if possible to make it more kindle friendly).
Edition Number: If this is an edit of the book you will want to change the edition number
Description: This is the description that will be seen in the Kindle Book Store and when your book is pulled up in searches – try and be SEO savvy about it and include your desired keywords
Book Contributors: This is where you would put an author name
The other information is pretty straight forward. For those of you who do not have ISBN’s but would like to use one for broader search purposes I will be covering that in another thread.
Section 2: Verifying Your Publishing Rights
If the work is original you will want to select “This is not a public domain work and I hold the necessary publishing rights.” otherwise select that it is public domain.
While you can sell both public domain and private rights on KDP only the second option will protect your IP rights.
Section 3: Target Your Book To Customers
This section is pretty straight forward, select categories that relate to your books content and select keywords that would be used to find it. (These keywords are not only used in KDP but also passed into Meta-Information for use in Google)
Section 4: Upload Your Book Cover
In this section you have the opportunity to upload your own book cover (if you don’t a place holder sample is used – it’s not terrible but it isn’t favorable)
The requirements for your cover art are as follows:
• Image dimensions of at least 500 by 800 pixels.
• A maximum of 2000 pixels on the longest side is preferred
• Ideal height/width ratio of 1.6
• Save at 72 dots per inch (dpi) for optimal viewing on the web
• RGB color mode
Section 5: Upload Your Book File
Here is where you have the chance to upload your book file. It is best uploaded in .doc (not .docx as that has some transfer issues).
You also have the option to enable DRM or not. Enabling DRM will ensure that only users who have bought or rented your e-book have access to it. If you plan to profit from the sale of the ebook this is the best way to go. If you plan to profit from an affiliate method then do not enable DRM.
Section 7: Verify Your Publishing Territories
This section allows you to declare product availability (where you will sell your ebook) also if you have licensed rights to a product in a single country, region or territory section 7 would allow you to ensure you keep to your contract while using the exposure of KDP
Section 8: Choose Your Royalty
The choose your royalty section is one that confuses a great deal of people. So the best way to break it down is that 35% royalty means you get 35% of EVERY sale and can set your price as low as $0.99.
70% royalty means you get 70% of every sale in UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Spain. The minimum price of your book must also be $2.99
In both royalty situations you are charged for the delivery cost. Which depends on the size and graphics involved in your books.
Section 9: Kindle Lending
The last section is Kindle Lending, it gives you the option to allow buyers to loan their copy of the book to family and friends for up to 14 days. During which time the original buyer can not access the content as it is on loan.
Once again whether you enable this or not is something that depends on your monetization method. If you are monetizing through affiliate methods feel free to enable it. If sales are how you are monetizing then do not enable it.
Publish
You are now finished creating your first e-book and can hit save and publish. It will take roughly 48 hours before the book is published. Now it’s time to start advertising that book!
When ever we talk about SEO, we divide it into on site and off site SEO. Off site SEO mainly contains backlinks and social signals. Specially, to boost your ranking in SERP’s you need to get quality links from other authority sites. We all know the importance of search engine traffic and that getting high quality backlinks to your blog is one of the best ways to improve your blogs rankings and get better search engine traffic and results, this post will be listing 101 ways by which you can get quality backlinks to your blog.
Though before we move ahead, here are things that you need to keep in mind. In 2012, Google launched Penguin update, which is targeted to get rid of sites using spammy or paid ways to build links. Also, many ways which I mentioned in the article are not so good ways to get quality backlinks, so I will strikethrough such ways and you can ignore them.
Also, when you are building backlinks, you need to keep quality of links and anchor text variation in your mind. Also, instead of creating lots of backlinks to your homepage only, start working on building links to internal pages. You can start working on resource pages like “WordPress guide” and build links to them. This way, you can also target Single or double word Keywords easily.
Some of the link building methods, which you should ignore:
Before, I start with my 101 list, here are some of the link building methods that you should ignore:
Avoid site wide link from footer (WordPress themes or plugins)Avoid buying exact anchor text link (Keep a proportion of 40%-20%–20%-10%-10% for anchor text variation)Avoid buying bulk links from sites like FiverrDon’t opt for link networks (Build my rank was one of such private link network, which got penalized)Avoid BlogRoll linksArticle directory links are not that effective anymoreSo, these are something which you should keep in mind when starting with quality backlink building campaign. Out of all the existing method, guest posting is the best way to get quality link and more over, it will help you to drive traffic to your web page.
Smart Blogger guide to build quality Links to your Site:
1. Submit Guest Post to Other Blogs (List of Blogs to guest post)
2. Comment on dofollow blogs – here is a list of dofollow blogs to get you started
3. Start Relevant Threads in Forums and Link to Your Blog Posts
4. Link to Your Blog in Your Forum Signatures (Only high quality forums)
5. Social bookmarking is also considered as backlinks and you should target following network: Google plus, Twitter, Facebook, Digg and delicious.
6. Make Use of Discussion Boards by Linking to Your Blog in threads. Quora is one such HQ discussion board.
7. Make Use of Blogging Communities by Submitting Your Blog Posts to Them, some great places to start are Blog Engage and MMO Social Network
8. Ask Questions related to your blog in Answer Sites like Yahoo Answers and Link to Your Blog in your questions
9. Answer Questions in Yahoo Answers and Cite Your Blog as the Source
10. Interlink to your blog and other posts on your blog when writing on your blog.
11. Exchange links with other bloggers in your niche. Make sure to form link pyramid and keep it natural.
12. Submit Your Blog to Top Blogging directories (Again quality mattes here)
13. Submit your blog to top web directories
14. Submit your blog to top niche directories
15. Ask your friends to link to you
16. Submit your blog posts to all social bookmarking sites you know
17. Submit your blog to your top social networking sites
18. Submit your articles to stumbleupon
19. Submit your blog to digg, it is dofollow and Google crawls most of its submissions
20. Work on making your blog go viral on top social bookmarking sites, this alone can bring you tons of quality backlinks from authority sites.
21. Submit your rss feed to feeder sites
22. Make use of press releases, you can get a list of press release sites to get started
23. Submit your rss feed to rss directories, here is a list of rss directories to get started.
24. Most forums have a website review forum, review your blog on this forums.
25. Release a free theme and include a link to your blog in its footer. (Not recommended)
26. Release a free wordpres plugin and include a link to your blog in it.
27. Release a software or compile your ebooks to .exe and submit them to top software sites like brothersoft
28. Convert your blog posts to pdf and submit it to document sharing sites, here is a list of document sharing sites for you to get started.
29. Review top companies and products and they might link back to you
30. Do a weekly link love post and link to many bloggers, they will most likely return the favor. Take advantage of outbound link SEO.
31. Interview top bloggers and ask them to help you share it on their favorite social networks and their fans will link to your interview.
32. Provide testimonials for marketers and also provide your link when doing so, they will most likely link back to you.
33. Make use of web 2.0 sites like squidoo to promote your blog
34. Submit your blog posts to blog carnivals.
35. Write high quality content and you will get strong backlinks
36. Write controversial posts
37. Write news posts and try to be one of the first people to write it.
38. Submit your blog to css directories.
39. Ask other bloggers to interview you.
40. Write linkbait posts.
41. Write top list posts because they can go viral easily.
42. Write a post comparing some top gurus in your niche.
43. Write a post featuring some upcoming bloggers and why you like them, they will most likely link to it.
44. Trade articles with other bloggers in your niche.
45. Submit your site to Dmoz, many other directories use this directory and that alone is enough qaulity backlinks for you.
46. Submit your blog to .edu and .gov forums and blogs, Google so much loves backlinks fom this sites and regards them as authority.
47. Make use of groups like Google Groups and Yahoo Groups
48. Create a Wikipedia Page For Yourself and include your link in the resource section.
49. Submit your blog to technorati and build more links to increase your ranks, this alone can help you get many high quality backlinks.
50. Write posts that have “the ultimate” in the title, each of these type of post I wrote got over 20 backlinks each.
51. Start a blogging contest and make linking to your blog one of the requirements.
52. Sponsor blogging contest and you will get a lot of backlinks from this.
53. Donate to charity sites, many of them will link back to your site.
54. Build a great tool and many people will link to your tool and your blog.
55. Do a big product launch.
56. Make the news at any cost.
57. Release your own firefox extension and have a page dedicated to it, many people will link to it!
58. Blog about celebrities.
59. Render your services to top people in your niche, for example, the fellow who designed Darren Rowse’s theme was credited at the footer.
60. Write 101 posts, they tend to get more social and natural link love.
61. Design a top bloggers award and give it to as many bloggers as you can in your niche, they will link back to you.
62. Contact your theme designer and tell them to use your website as an example in their portfolio, they will most likely include a link back to your blog.
63. Creat manuals and long tutorial posts on your blog, this type of post do recieve lots of backlinks.
64. Create a great ebook or membership site and make linking to your blog the requirement to get it.
65. Submit your resume to resume directories while linking to your blog in your resume.
66. Write how to posts, they also tend to get more backlinks.
67. Write posts that starts with numbers e.g. “7 ways to…”, these type of posts do tend to get backlinks.
68. Submit your images to image directories and include a link to your blog in its copyright notice and as a requirement to use it. Ex: How to use Flickr to drive traffic
69. Join blogging contest and you will most probably get backlinks if you win.
70. Have a “link to us” or “spread the word” page on your blog while asking your readers to link to you – it is important to make it easy for them by putting your direct html code there using your desired anchor text.
71. Submit your website to local business directories, backlinks from these sites are regarded by Google as authority.
72. Write on about.com and link to your blog in it, this will likely be crawled and used by a lot of websites thereby increasing backlinks to your blog.
73. Make effective use of april fool.
74. Do very costly jokes on your blog but indicate it is a joke underneath the post (tricky? ahah!), e.g., “Apple has bought Google for $260Billion”, something like this will get tons of links and retweets before people even know that it is a joke.
75. Create niche specific tutorials, which are not only unique but help the community. Such tutorial articles get lots of backlinks.
76. Create viral youtube videos and inlude links to your blog in the video and its description.
77. Create Lots of Websites and Interlink Them to each other. (Avoid private blog network)
78. Offer lots of free downloads on your blogs.
79. Update your blog regularly because this will make more people trust your website and it will also make you rank for more keywords which means more traffic and eventaully more backlinks.
80. Write a great post with a lot of pictures in it – let the post be pictures only.
81. Write a post comparing various companies and services and which is the best, the best comapny will most likely link to it.
82. Compare different top products and link to them, people will most likely link to it e.g. You can comapre a mac with a PC.
83. Get a collection of high quality paid things and make them available for free (make sure you are not violating the copyright of the owner in any way!)
84. Create a directory for your blog and make it important to reciprocate links with you by giving those who link to you higher placement and giving them free featuring on your homepage.
85. Beta test a lot of products and give your review and tips on improving the product, the owner might just link to you.
86. Run surveys on your blog and publish the results for everybody to see, if the survey is good and helpful you will definitely get a lot of backlinks to your blog.
87. Write a list of the “top 10 myths” or “top 10 mistakes” about something.
88. Position yourself as an authority in your niche and try to get attention from the media.
89. Offer to speak at events and seminars related to your niche, don’t forget to mention your blog while introducing yourself, this will most likely help you get some backlinks.
90. Have a special writing style that attracts people.
91. Be transparent on your blog.
92. Get listed in top padi Directories like the Yahoo Directory and the BOTW directory
93. List your product on Ebay or Amazon and include a link back to your blog.
94. Create a podcast and submit it to Itunes, link back to your blog from it.
95. Create web apps and submit them to app directories such as Go2Web20
96. Write a great and very useful whitepaper and ask your blogging friends to help you distribute it around the web, make sure you inlcude a link to your blog in the whitepaper.
97. Run a contest giving people physical products for free, make linking to your blog a requirement to join.
98. Try to know whcih stories are hot at the moment and make sure you blog about them.
99. Blog about very important events such as the independence day and the likes.
100. Start your affiliate programme.
101. Create a news section on your blog with regularly update news in your niche and you will begin to get links fast.
Bonus!
102. Join the better business bureau
103. Take note of newspapers and magazines that are willing to feature experts in many fields and try to write about your niche while linking back to your blog
How To Create Information Products And Make Money Online
I’ve decided to outline the exact method that is used by the gurus to quit their day job and become a full time internet marketer. This works in any niche, although I’ve had the best success in competitive, popular niches like SEO, weight loss and make money online.
Attention! This is not a get rich quick scheme but rather a very sustainable and long-term business idea!
Before I go any further, please note that I’m definitely NOT saying that this is the best or only way to make money online. There are hundreds of different methods and systems out there that people use with success. What I WILL say, however, is that I’ve personally tested many of those methods, and found them to be either extremely competitive, unsustainable, or simply not worth it given the amount of time and/or financial investment required.
This is the only business model I’ve had solid, consistent, sustainable success with from day one. It’s also the exact same business model most 6, 7 and even 8 figure internet marketers use. Again, it’s not the best or only way to make money online, but it works, and if you’re struggling, and you implement this strategy, I can practically guarantee that you’ll succeed.
The basic concept. I’ll get into more detail soon, but first it’s important to understand the general concept of what works, and that is:
Sell high quality information products and coaching services to people who want to buy and can afford them, that help people to improve their quality of life, relationships and/or financial situation, do it honestly and ethically, and target repeat buyers.
That simple business model, system or method, whatever you want to call it, is EXACTLY what most successful internet marketers do. As you can see, it’s not rocket science, but it definitely works.
Now here’s exactly how to do it, step by step:
First thing’s first, the product and market are everything. I’m a firm believer that if you want to be successful online, you need your own product. But you can also be an affiliate by promoting complimentary products and services on the back end, as long as they help people.
Why do you need your own product? Quite simply, if you’re serious about scaling your business, you want to build a huge list of repeat buyers, and the quickest and easiest way to do that is with paid traffic. And you’ll need a front end offer to pay for that traffic.
The good news is, if you don’t have the time or money to create one yourself, you can always license someone else’s. There are hundreds of products on ClickBank that are good, but simply aren’t making the owners any money because they don’t know how to get traffic. You could license any one of those products for pennies on the dollar, simply by asking.
Now, in my experience, your product and market will either make or break your business. If you screw this up, you’ll be fighting a permanent uphill battle that you’ll never win. If people don’t want what you have to offer, or there’s no buyers in your niche, how can you ever expect to make any money?
The good news is, getting this part right is easy. First, let’s start with picking a niche, since I know a lot of people find this hard.
Niche selection. Before I say anything else, I am a HUGE advocate of targeting a niche you’re passionate about. If you don’t care about what you’re selling, or you don’t care about your customers, it will come through in everything you do. And you’ll find it very, very difficult to remain motivated during the tough and/or boring times (which are sure to follow).
Having said that, you also need to make sure to target a profitable niche, filled with repeat buyers who want what you have and can afford to buy it. It’s no good being passionate about mowing the lawns, because NO ONE will buy your information. So the key is to find a balance: make sure you care about your niche, but also make sure there’s money to be made.
To find a profitable niche, head on over to the Clickbank marketplace. Look through all the different categories until you find one you’re passionate about. The key is to make sure that there’s lots of products in your niche (at least a few hundred) and that lots of these products have a decent gravity, preferably more than 30.
Now, I know that gravity is not a sure fire indicator that a product is selling well to the general public. But if it’s maintained a decent gravity for several years (you can always use The Wayback Machine to make sure), then it’s a very good sign.
Now, if you see that there’s lots of products in your niche that have been doing well for years, then you’re on to a winner.
Market research. Once you’ve picked your niche, you need to create a product. Or, if you don’t have the time or money, you need to license someone else’s. But before you do ANYTHING, you need to be 100% sure that your product is a guaranteed winner. How do you do that? Very simple.
First off, visit a popular forum in your niche and make sure it’s BUSY (people are posting regularly). Google “niche” + “forum” to find one. For example “make money online” forum or “weight loss” forum.
Now, go through the “introduce yourself” and/or “general discussion” type threads. In my experience, people have no problem sharing intimate details about their most frustrating and desperate problems on forums, especially when they’re brand new. And this information is GOLD.
What you’re looking for are the most popular threads, with the most views and replies. This is a good indication that the topics or problems being talked about are common and/or interesting and appeal to your target market. Now, copy and paste the titles and general questions being asked from each of these threads over to a Word document.
I suggest to go back through a years worth of threads. Yes, this is time consuming, but this information will benefit you for years to come. This is how you get inside your target prospect’s minds and figure out EXACTLY what they’re looking for (so you can sell it to them).
To make your life easier, I suggest is to separate the different threads into specific categories. So for example, if someone’s asking about how to get more traffic to their blog, put that in your “traffic” category.
Unfortunately, this process is a bit like gold prospecting, and you’ll have to sift through a lot of dirt to find the golden nuggets. But if you stick with it, what you’ll soon discover is that the exact same problems and frustrations come up over and over again. Different people, same struggles.
What you’re looking for are the most common, desperate problems that people struggle with in your niche. The more desperate people are to solve their problems, and the more common those problems are, the easier you’ll find it to sell your product.
Product creation. In terms of creating the product itself, there are two ways you can go. You can sell a “how to” ebook and/or video course for a one time fee (not recommended), or you can sell a membership subscription, where people pay a monthly fee to access regular, ongoing content.
I highly recommend the latter, because you’re building solid, consistent, passive income from day one. And if you’re in a popular niche, there’s no shortage of content that you can either create or license (interviews with experts, case studies, articles, videos, etc).
One other word of advice. If you’re just starting out, I highly recommend focusing on solving one problem per product. If you’re not sure what to write, then I recommend creating a case study on how you solved the problem(s). Or, if you’re building a membership site, then I recommend creating regular, ongoing case studies to keep your members engaged.
Creating your sales funnel. To create a winning product, you need a sales funnel in place that converts casual browsers into repeat customers. Once you’ve tested and optimized it for maximum conversions, it’s almost like having a license to print money.
In simple terms, you need:
1) A squeeze page to generate leads (email addresses)
2) A sales letter or video sales letter to convert leads into customers
3) And OTO’s (one time offers), affiliate offers, personal coaching and/or a done for you service to increase your sales and profits on the back end
Creating your squeeze page. Most people will tell you to offer something for free in exchange for your prospects email address. This is how the typical squeeze page works. In my opinion, and based on my actual experience, there’s a better way.
What I’ve found works best is to use a sneak peak of your product, or just explain what your product does, to entice people onto your list. That way, you’re not baiting and switching anyone, and you’re much less likely to attract freebie seekers.
For an example of a squeeze page that converts like crazy, even though I’m not giving ANYTHING away for free, check out my signature. As you can see, it’s just a quick video asking people to opt in to learn more. I’m not even using a headline, but it works.
Creating your sales letter. You don’t have to be John Carlton to write a sales letter that converts. I’m definitely not the world’s greatest copywriter (I wouldn’t even be so bold as to call myself a copywriter). If you get your niche and product right, the battle’s almost won … all that remains is to tip people over the edge.
This is just my opinion, but in my experience, most standard/typical sales letters don’t convert that well. What I’ve found works best is to immediately get to the point, tell people exactly what you have to offer, what it does, what problem(s) it solves and how (focusing on the key benefits and selling points). Also, it’s important to tell people that your product isn’t for everybody (no product or service is), so explain exactly who your product can and can’t help and why.
Use my video sales letter as an example. As you can see, it’s not complicated or fancy but I can tell you for a fact that it works. Just be honest and upfront with people about what you’re doing, what you’re after and how you can help them. But whatever you do, DON’T lie to people, don’t manipulate them and don’t try to be someone you’re not … because if you do, people will pick up on it, and your conversion rate will suffer as a result.
Finally, when you’ve made your pitch, offer your leads an ultimatum. Force them to make a decision on the spot. What I do is give people 24 hours to make up their mind. After that, if they’re still on the fence, I simply take them off my list. No point dealing with tyre kickers.
Crafting your back end. Unfortunately, you don’t make much money from your front end offer, especially if you’re paying for traffic. In fact, many top marketers lose money on the front end. So you need a profitable back end to make up the difference or to increase your sales and profits.
Luckily, this part is easy. What I do is upsell personal coaching and tools, products and services that people need to solve their problems. Also, since most of your customers are strapped for time, you can also upsell a done for you service (highly recommended) where you do everything for them for a fee.
Finally, get as much targeted traffic as possible. Once you have a profitable sales funnel in place that converts, the final step is to get as much targeted traffic as possible. Here’s what works best for me:
Free methods:
- Forum marketing (basically what I’m doing right now, helping people out on forums and then promoting your site in your signature)
- SEO (launch jacking works best, and it’s a great way to get the attention of product owners in your niche that you can joint venture with)
- Guest blogging (not only for lazer targeted, qualified traffic, but also for launch jacking. Just a few links from quality, relevant blogs is often enough to rank for competitive product names)
Paid methods:
- PPC
- Solo ads
- Media buys and banner advertising (highly recommended; the Google content network is still one of the best and largest sources of highly targeted, cheap, quality buyer traffic)
And that’s it. Again, it’s not rocket science. Sell information products to people who want to buy and can afford them, do it honestly and ethically, target repeat buyers, and use upsells to increase your sales and profits. It may not be a fancy schmancy method, but it works.
Want to know how to sell anything online? Start improving your copywriting!
Great copy – copy that hits the primary pain points of your target audience and copy that espouses ‘Big Benefits’ that your primary market are looking for are undeniably effective in generating conversions.
I am about to show you a quick and deadly effective effective way to do both of the above.
The purpose of this exercise is going to be to increase the conversions of your
sales letters and sales videos FAR beyond the ‘industry standard’…
After all, why settle for ‘average’ when you don’t have to?
Ideal copy needs to influence the prospect toward a buying decision by positioning what you have to offer in the best light possible. In order to do this effectively, we need to utilize the features and benefits that will resonate the most with your target market.
Most marketers are well aware that benefits far outweigh features in the ‘copywriting heirarchy’. Benefits speak to emotions while features speak to logic.
Emotional arguments are far more persuasive than logical arguments. Most people buy ‘wants’ based purely on emotions.
As an example of a purely emotional advertisement, take a look at the ad for the new Mac Pro:
Do you think there is anything at all ‘logical’ about your sudden interest in owning the new Mac Pro the day it comes out?
Of course not!
The triggers in the ad are all emotional… sleek sexy design, countless desires that Apple has already en-grained into the public conscience through its incredible branding, and the ability to ‘instantly’ be a part of The Future Of Computing.
Purely emotional, and Apple is the best in the game at this type of emotionally driven advertising.
With copywriting, it is also true that the fear of loss is far more powerful than the hope/promise of gain. This is a basic human ‘primeval’ emotion.
It is far easier to get someone to be emotionally tied to something they have, love and have experienced before, and then warning them it could be gone in an instant, than it is telling someone about some benefit they may get at some point in the future.
To better illustrate this point, let’s take a look at two separate sets of headlines – one headline in each set based on ‘gain’ and one based on the fear of loss – YOU be the judge of which one is more powerful…
VS
The fear of loss is far more powerful and more ‘real’. It hits more emotional hot buttons. Very few people can relate to the feeling of windfalls of cash. A windfall of cash ‘might be’ nice, but not as ‘nice’ as being penniless definitely sucks.
Don’t believe me?
Run an experiment where you asked 100 people with equal net worth… say… $200,000 and tell them that you are willing to play a game with them for all their money.
Tell them you are going to flip a coin in the air and have it land on the ground. If it land ‘heads’ you will give them $1,000,000. If the penny lands tails, however, you would immediately take everything they owned in the world – their home, their cars, their savings, their retirement fund -everything and they would be left penniless and homeless on the street. How many people do you think would agree to the coin flip?
Even though ‘fear of loss’ is more powerful than ‘hope to gain’ copy, we want to make sure to include elements of both for for the biggest impact. ‘Fear of Loss’ elements are something that lots of marketers either aren’t aware of, or simply forget to incorporate into their copy.
They are missing out.
In order to craft extremely persuasive copy, we first need to take our niche, and derive 2 large ‘positive’ benefits and 2 large ‘negative’ benefits (loss avoidance elements).
Unless you know your niche extremely well, or you are your market, chances are you can’t really analyze your markets’ pain points very effectively as a rank outsider. In order to create persuasive copy – copy that actually converts – we need to really drill down the BIG BENEFITS of a particular niche or market that have the ability to turn prospects into customers with very little effort on our part.
Luckily, there is a very easy way to do this…
Visit a few niche sales letters, and grab some primary benefits that seem like they might be enticing to the niche – either in the headlines, the sub-heads or the bullet points. One of the best places to do this is at Clickbank.
Pick sales letters in your niche that are converting (the higher the gravity, usually the better they are converting) and pick out a few key benefits of the products that they are pitching.
Go through the top 5 sales letters of similar products being sold in a similar niche to yours. Start looking for common benefits amongst those sales letters/sales videos.
While you are doing that, remember to keep your eyes open for any interesting ‘fear of loss’ copy that you run across. You can ‘swipe’ the fear of loss stuff, switch it around, and add in a few elements that might tie into your offer, and you can use these ‘fear of loss’ pain points as powerful hooks in your copy.
If your niche is internet marketing, you might not need to do that much research. You probably already have a really good idea of what moves people that would be interested in biz opp and internet marketing products.
Two of the big desires in the internet marketing niche are:
Financial freedom
People want to Quit their jobs and work from home
Two other major desires of the internet marketing niche are:
Avoiding lots of hard, greuling and painful ‘work’
Avoiding the pain and humiliation of being forced to give up on internet marketing dream
So then, as you can see, ‘Big Benefits’ are really simple and straight forward to uncover for your niche. Just grab a few. That will suffice for now.
We are going to take these Major Niche Benefits and extract copy GOLD.
Once we have this list of niche benefits it’s time to DIG DOWN DEEP. What we want to do is dig down 3-4 levels to find the real motivating factors… the stuff that is the real emotional triggers behind these big niche benefits…
HERE’S HOW:
Once simple little word can uncover a lot: “Why?”
How exactly do we dig down and find the ‘why’s’ of our big niche benefits? We head right over to Google and ask of course!
Let’s start with the first big positive Benefit we talked about in the internet
marketing niche – the hope of, and desire for Financial Freedom.
Here is exactly how I would query Google – asking Google to bring back relevant results relating to ‘Why’ people actually desire Financial Freedom.
Remember – we are digging down deeper – much deeper – than just the skin deep, super-obvious benefits of our niche. We are uncovering very specific emotional triggers buried inside these larger, obvious ‘big niche benefits.’
Into Google I can type something similar to the following:
“What does Financial Freedom mean to you?”
Querying Google in this manner will lead us directly to the ‘Why’ people are looking for financial freedom. Everything we dig up with these results will be the 2nd level.
This stuff is great, but we will want to dig at least one level deeper still.
Of the answers we uncover at this level we are really looking for the stuff that is emotional – THOSE are the real gems. That is exatly the stuff that we are looking for.
The ‘why’s’ that are emotional reasons for wanting financial freedom. Logical reasons can be good as well, but the highly emotional stuff is the real gold…
Here are the answers that we end up with. Going through the results on the first page of Google as to WHY people want financial freedom, we end up with the following:
To help protect against ‘worst case’ financial scenarios
To build a secure financial base for my family
The ability to do exactly what I want with my time
Not being burdened down with the stresses of money – owing someone, late bills, disconnect notices, and having to go without.
Now, those answers are great – powerful, and a lot of emotion tied up in them – But – Let’s Keep going a bit and dig even further…
We want to dig down to the “Third Level” – THIS is where the really powerful emotional triggers can be found…
Let’s start with the desire to protect again the worst possible case financial disaster…
To dig down another level, remember, we need to ask ‘Why’?
To protect against the Worst Case – WHY? – You could lose ALL your money – WHY?= financial insurance. Financial insurance is a very good ‘why’ but it’s simply a bit too logical. We are looking for something more emotional…
The ‘worst case’ we are trying to protect against as well as ‘financial insurance’ would both be to protect against the exact same thing:
The possibility of being poor and not having any money!
Ahhhhh…there we go… NOW we are getting somewhere. That is a strong level 2 emotional trigger. The fear of lack. The fear of being without money. The fear of being poor…
Again, that is very powerful indeed, but we still want to keep digging. We are still only at level 2. We want to uncover the emotional trigger gold buried beneath level 2…
Here is what I queried Google With to get to level 3:
“WHY does being poor s****”
Here are the answers we are given:
The bank can hit you with a $35 fine for every charge that comes in while your account is in negative territory. The bank will not tell you they charged you this money. You will have no idea anything is wrong – until you check your balance that is. Now we are getting somewhere! When you are poor (as many people have been before OR are currently) you get hit with nasty over-draft fees each time you over-draw your checking account!
This is EXTREMELY emotional for most people. A REAL pain point…
Here are some more ‘Why’s’ – more reasons that being poor sucks….
The Constant threat of the Utility companies shutting off the — Phone — Water — Power —
YES. These are VERY real and extremely emotional triggers for many many people…
What if someone who lived in near constant fear of those horrible threats to their basic necessities could AVOID those threats forever, and NEVER have to deal with them again?
If we could craft a hook in our sales letter that talked directly to these people – a method, a step-by-step blueprint, a real PLAN to ensure that they would never again lack the necessary funds to take care of the basic utilities they needed in their lives and in their households – for themselves and their families, do you think you would have the attention (and interest) of that group of people if you had an offer that could back up the promise?
Problems paying Bills/Loans/Credit card on time = suffering from the stigma of Bad Credit. This can be a huge problem when trying to get a job -OR- trying to secure a line of credit when you really need it.
YES. Again, this is a VERY powerful reality for millions of people. You don’t even need to be ‘poor’ to experience credit problems and late payments (necessarily).
Most people who have had credit problems in the past, and found out in person how horrible it is, and how difficult it makes your life would do anything to avoid having more dinged credit/calls from creditors/letters from creditors in the mail EVER again…
Let’s play around with this extreme pain point – hitting on the ‘bad credit avoidance’ angle and see what we come up with.
Imagine the following letter were directed at homeowners who were a minimum of 60 days late on their mortgage payments. What if you had an offer that could help them bring their bills current and help them to get out from underneath the crushing mountain of debt they were living with each and every day…
Are you starting to see how powerful this stuff can be?
Obviously that was just an example I crafted around a couple of 3rd level ‘Why’s’ but it’s easy to see how copy built around a few of these very deep, emotional, 3rd level pain points or benefits can lead to some extremely compelling, emotionally driven copy.
You might not be able to provide for your family. This is extremely emotional and a HUGE motivator for many people – especially men that are the ‘head of a household’ – They view it as their responsibility to make sure that food is on the table, basic necessities are met and the lights stay on -
Again – this is very powerful and extremely emotional
You risk (or are forced into) homelessness – Yeah. Some poor people are Also homeless! Being homeless brings up a whole new host of problems that most people try to avoid thinking about at al costs. Lets put it this way – people would do ANYTHING to avoid being homeless-
- You will lose your job, and probably NOT be able to get another decent job
- You will lose your wife, your kids and your family
- You will be cold in the winter, possibly get sick and die – and you will have [b]NO medical treatment
- Would be very painful…
- Emotionally distressing
- People immediately Judge you if you are homeless..
- People who are homeless their lives often spiral out of control because they start to lose hope…
etc etc etc…
This are all highly emotional, deep seated reasons that people would do anything to avoid being poor and penniless and all of the problems that not having any money brings along with it.
If you can just touch on some of them – or let people know that there is a definitive way that they can avoid these common problems – Letting them know there is hope – and there is a way that they can avoid worrying about these issues – this will for EXTREMELY powerful copy in the right niches and with the right audience.
All of this is just from going 3 levels deep on ONE of the ‘Why’s’ we came up with on ONE of the major ‘niche benefits’ — Imagine how much more GOLD you could extract by going 3 levels deep with more big benefits and more ‘why’s'?
Even digging 3 levels deep with just a few of these major niche benefits/pain-points, do you think we could now craft some copy slightly more compelling than:
“Get Financial Freedom”….
Of course we can! All it takes is a little bit of digging.
I think you will agree, by adding some ’3rd level’ benefits, our headline automatically become far more captivating and interesting.
In addition with all of these 3rd level benefits that we have taken the time to
uncover, we now use as KILLER ammunition for the body of the sales letter and/or bullet points!
We can use these 3rd level benefits as powerful questions/imagery with two of my favorite modifiers -
“Imagine” and “What if”…
like this:
- Image what it would be like to easily and effortlessly be able to tackle the next financial ‘emergency’ that came your way? Instead of being forced to over-draf your checking account to pay for that blown out tire, you could simply dip into your 5 figure emergency cash fund and take care of the fix -without thinking twice!
- What if, instead of the constant worry and angst of losing your job due to ‘downsizing’ you were so confident, and so secure in the multiple auto-pilot streams of income constantly stuffing your bank account with cold hard cash that you could simply kiss your lousy boss ‘good riddance’ forever?
These questions/statements paint powerful pictures in your prospects minds and allow them to visualize something that they themselves may have never even thought was possible before.
I sincerely hope some of these tips help you to create some incredibly compelling copy in your niche!
Today I want to share with you the greatest free online stroage provider available.
We all know about dropbox… well 2 GB isn’t that much. To be exact it merely is 10% of what copy.com offers you.
Box is a nice free cloud storage system as well, but come on. 5 GB? Not enough I say!
Mega offers enough storage space but in my eyes it is a very unsafe option. Mega is the new born brother of the banned MegaUpload and therefore I can’t recommend it.
And there are dozens of other either too small or too unserious online storage providers. By far the best free online storage I have come across is copy.com! I am going to tell you what makes copy.com so great:
Why is copy.com the best online cloud storage system?
Advantages of “Copy” Online Cloud:
15 GB free storage space!
even 20 GB free online storage space if you follow my link!
You can share your files with friends or the public
You can privately share files with other users
Very easy to use
100% privacy and no spam
Oh and did I mention that it is completly free?
Disadvantages of this specific free cloud service?
Sign up with copy.com and claim your 20 GB free space right now. Highly recommended.
They even offer you the option of inviting friends. If you friends join under your referral link (for example https://copy.com?r=f6AKBH is mine) they also get 20 GB of space instead of just 15 GB.
Ok I am rambling… 350 is the recommended minimum word count for blog posts so google, yahoo and other search engines show it some love, but I ran out of ideas. Everything that needed to be said, has been said already. Therefore I am going to use my last couple of words to stuff in some keywords, people might be looking for. So here it comes… What is the best free online cloud? Well, it is by far the top free online storage that you will find if you follow my copy link. If you haven’t seen it look up. How to store files online and what is the best and safest way to store my files online? In the copy free cloud. Ok… this is getting pathetic… That’s why I am telling you, that one of my new books will be released in about 2 weeks. You can follow its success and stay updated. The news is going to follow on my blog.
Thank you for reading and enjoy your awesome new free online storage space!
And why do I get the “Oops!Unable to post to blog service: Didn’t receive 200 OK from remote server.” error?
I have no clue. I don’t know it exactly and I don’t need to know it. The only thing I know is, that you need the XML-RPC URL to be able to post various entries to your WordPress .com blog. For example AudioBlogs or with the neat Social Poster plugin.
It took me a while to find out what this is and how I can get WordPress XML-RPC URL but finally I managed to figure it out. The solution is as easy as humanly possible.
How to enable WordPress XMLRPC URL?
Are you running WordPress 3.5 or higher? (you should). If the answer is YES, then XMLRPC URL is enabled by default. Just follow my next steps.
How to get XMLRPC URL for WordPress?
Whenever your programs or plugins ask you for your WordPress XMLRPC URL, in order to post various stuff on your behalf automatically, you simply enter you WordPress.com Blog address and add /xmlrpc.php at the end.
Example:
I have a plugin that needs the WordPress XMLRPC URL, so it can automatically post excerpts from my real blog on the free WP blog. My WordPress Blog Address is http://nickcnobles.wordpress.com
Now I need to add /xmlrpc.php at the end of my URL and it should work. In my case I enter:
when asked for your XMLRPC URL. Just enter this exact address if your blog is called http://nickcnobles.wordpress.com which is highly unlikely though. Insert your own blog name and get started connecting your HootSuite account to WordPress
What to do when I still get an XMLRPC URL error?
Here is something I found online that might help you:
So after a long email conversation back and forth it seems for us the issue is network related. Some where down the line before you get to WP's servers provided by provider Peer 1 the connection gets refused.
If you do a tracert from the server in question or from the client (depending on who can't reach WP), you'll notice that the ip address changes about 3 times (do the tracert more than once), this is what I believe is WP's load balancing cluster (nginx).
I found two of the three IP addresses reject my incoming request, but the third will let me in and post via xmlrpc, making it like Russian roulette. And of course if you get the two addresses that reject, you have to wait until the DNS lookup expires to try again (from your browser).
What I did to patch it so to speak was use our host lookup file in Ubuntu (server edition) and route our blog to the one address that works. Although this kinda duct tapes the service together, it will work.
Unfortunately for a lot of bloggers, you may be using a shared hosting plan, which will not give you access via SSH to change the hosts file. You might have to contact your help desk to see if they can fix the issue for you.
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