1) Build an Awesome Mailing List
Why it’s perceived as “difficult”:
- Takes time to build (no instant result).
- Autoresponder services cost monthly fees.
- Good email marketing requires your personal involvement.
- Adds the task of email writing to the existing tasks of blogging (more work)
Results you can get:
With a small mailing list of just under 500 subscribers, I launched a product that ended up making 6 figures in it’s lifetime. This shows some of the potential of email marketing. But more importantly, having a mailing list means that you have on-demand traffic, whenever you need it.1000 subscribers on a mailing list can easily mean 100+ clicks on any link you send in an email. How useful is that?
How to Use Email Marketing to Get an Edge:
Start building your mailing list.Right now.
Make Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Google+ connections and RSS subscribers a distant second priority to getting more subscribers.
To turn your blog into a list-building machine, add opt-in forms to:
- Your homepage
- The top of the sidebar
- The bottom of each post
- Optionally add a lightbox or slide-in box as well.
As for the email marketing itself, just follow the number one rule: be cool to your subscribers. Don’t send emails that you wouldn’t be happy to receive yourself.
2) Create Attention-Grabbing Videos
Why it’s perceived as “difficult”:
- Requires a different and new set of tools (compared to writing articles).
- Comes with a bit of a learning curve.
- Is a lot less anonymous than text and can make you feel exposed.
Results you can get with video marketing:
Video gets a lot more attention than text. This helps engage your visitors and keep them on your site and it helps increase your conversion rate on sales-pages. It can also be useful for decreasing your bounce rate and getting more clicks from Google, when you get video thumbnails listed in the search results.As an example of how powerful video can be, I did an experiment with my business partner. We spent a total of only two days to create:
- A video for YouTube, to attract traffic.
- A video to convert people who clicked on the link below the YouTube video into subscribers.
- A video to make an offer for a simple, low-priced product.
How to Use Video Marketing to Get an Edge:
If you’ve never made a video, start off by doing a few quick screencast videos using screenr (a free and very easy to use tool).Alternatively, use your webcam and simply record yourself talking about a topic. If you can write a blog post, you can make a video. You’re delivering the same content, just in a different format.
Yes, it will take a few attempts before your videos start looking awesome. In fact, if you’re anything like me, your first few videos will be pretty terrible. But with a bit of practice, you’ll get the hang of it (and come to think of it, writing also required some practice to get to where you are now, right?).
Learn how to make videos (by starting right now) and very soon, you’ll have an incredibly valuable skill you can use to grow your blog.
3) Host Fantastic Webinars
Why it’s perceived as “difficult”:
- Requires that you do a presentation, similar to video.
- It’s a live event. Many people are terrified of making mistakes, especially in front of a live audience.
- Stage fright applies to a virtual audience as well.
Results you can get:
One of my first webinars, held to just under 100 people, netted $3,642 in commissions. And all the attendees loved the webinar!A decent result for about three hours of work, I’d say.
Also, you can achieve unheard of levels of engagement on webinars and I know nothing more effective for “creating fans”. I’ve now hosted several webinars where the audience was so engaged that more than 100 people were still online, listening, participating and asking questions, 3.5 hours into the webinar.
And just to be clear: I didn’t plan on doing such long webinars. They just kept going, because we kept getting questions and comments and everyone was having a blast!
Another great advantage is that you can host webinars and then turn that content into products, or you can offer coaching webinars as products in themselves.
How to Use Webinars to Get an Edge:
Just do it.The biggest obstacle for most people is their fear of screwing up, in front of a live audience.
In reality, this fear is unjustified. First, things rarely go badly wrong and second, the attendees are usually very understanding.
Open your webinar with something along the lines of “I’m new to this and I’m pretty nervous, but I have some really important things I want to tell you about”. You’ll see that if you really have the intention of delivering great content, the audience members will totally have your back, even if things don’t go smoothly.
Also keep in mind that you don’t have to do webinars on your own. Invite guest experts and leave the major part of the presentation to them, or team up with other bloggers in your niche, to share the stage with you (and make some great connections at the same time).
4) Create Insanely Valuable Products
Why it’s perceived as “difficult”:
- Creating a product is more work that writing a few blog posts.
- You invest effort upfront and hope it will pay off, when you release the product (certain risk involved).
- Fear of selling.
Results you can get:
My first self-created product sold 2,102 copies and made more than $100K in it’s lifetime. This may not be a typical result, but it shows what can be done, even for someone without experience in product creation.Having a product also opens up one of the best traffic sources on the Internet, for you: affiliates. With a product, you can have an affiliate program and get affiliates to send you massively valuable traffic.
In my opinion, your own product is the most valuable asset you can have, as an affiliate.
How to Use Product Creation to Get an Edge:
Start by creating a simple free product, such as a report. You can use this as an opt-in incentive, to build your mailing list and in addition, it can serve as “product creation practice”.Once you have a few subscribers, ask them some questions. Find out about their biggest problems. Find out what they want and need. Then, create a product based on that and sell it.
This approach eliminates some of the risk from product creation. If you base your product on the answers you get from your potential customers, it’s much more likely that your product will be well received than if you just think of something all by yourself.
Obviously, product creation is quite a broad topic and I can’t cover everything here. But as with all things, the most important part is to get started and then trial-and-error your way forward.
The Challenge
Here’s my challenge to you: pick one of these four methods (or maybe one I haven’t though of myself) and dedicate 30 days to it.Yes, it’s a bit more difficult than just keeping on doing what you’re already used to, but that’s exactly why it’s easier to get good results with it.
Think about email marketing, video marketing, webinars and product creation. You know that most bloggers don’t do these things. You know that most people reading this post won’t follow through and actually do the 30-day challenge. And that’s exactly where the power of this approach lies. Do it, and you’re instantly in a different league.
Shane Melaugh