I’ve had some things on my mind the last few days, and those things, combined with some recent reading, will probably cause this post to be a rambling wreck, but hopefully valuable to at least one person.
So please excuse the length, which will probably be excessive.
One thing that has been on my mind is a note I got from someone considering canceling. He said that he’s sure that a lot of people are doing very well from being here, but he hasn’t gotten any value out of 1KaD worth his monthly subscription.
Without wanting to insult anyone, I find it hard to imagine that someone could come here and not get value of at least a dollar a day, which would cover anyone’s subscription here.
Whether it’s with a new idea, a technique, or just being able to get reports for free instead of spending money on them, I think a dollar a day is easy to justify.
If someone really cares enough to make an effort in their own behalf. That’s the key.
He’s right, a lot of people are doing very well from being here. Recent success stories like Michael and Adam are motivating, Adam’s had his 1K day which he attributes at least partly to what he’s learned here, and Michael says he’s gone from 0 per day to common days of 100, 200, even 400. Not 1K a day yet, but I have no doubt he’ll reach it soon enough.
And I suspect there are others that want to stay under the radar that aren’t reporting considerable success.
And I further suspect there are many that increased their income by a dollar a day real early on here. 
Some have even covered their dollar a day, and then some, with the affiliate commissions they’re earning for promoting this site.
So that’s one thing I want to bring up to encourage everyone to stay here because as long as you improved your income by a dollar a day, your membership has paid for itself. 2 bucka a day and you’ve got a 100% ROI, which even Warren Buffet would love.
But that’s not why you’re here, you’re here to do much better, and it’s my job to help you get there.
So I’d like to give some thoughts as to how you get to that magic number, whether it’s an occasional $1000 day, or an average $1000 day, or a million dollar year.
First you create a product. There’s a download available to get you started for brainstorming, but it isn’t that hard. The product can be a simple one, even less than 10 pages, even something you’ll give away free.
To create that product, you have enough information in that report in the download area, and if you need to get help writing it, there are writers here advertising in the services section that will write your first little product for you. You can get a 5 or 10 page report for less than $100.
Or you can create it yourself.
Before you do that though, you have to figure out what you want to write about, or what you want someone else to write about for you. That’s the hardest part.
I would suggest a report that a lot of people would be interested in, in a broad niche, such as nutrition, fitness, weight loss, self improvement, financial, that kind of thing. Something that truly has good information and can help a lot of people.
Don’t skimp on the information, this is the most important step. You want everyone who downloads that report to get value far beyond the time it takes them to read it, and you want them to want to hear more from you.
OK, now you’ve got a report to give away. The purpose is to build an email list.
If you aren’t with aweber already, you should be if you’re going to build a list. I started out with software I installed on my own domain, and that was a big mistake, for various reasons, not the least of which was when my domain got hacked, I didn’t have the database backed up recently, and I lost a lot of names.
Now I’m with aweber:
http://www.aweber.com/?201135
That’s an affiliate link, if you want to pay just as much without giving me the benefit of the commission, no problem, just leave out the part beginning with the ? … You need someone to host your mailing list as surely as you need someone to host your web sites. Very few people have their own server in their office, do they? It isn’t worth the trouble.
So, as you’re giving away your free report, you’re collecting email addresses. Actually the report won’t be free, your customers will pay with their personal name. You need to provide value worth their investment.
If you want more information on building an email list, you have that information available to you here. As I type this post, I just a couple days ago uploaded the ListFx email course, and so far I only listened to half of the interview between Keith and Russ, Keith talks about how he started from scratch and built a 10,000 name list, from which he earns about $1.50 per name. Per month. Very motivating.
Most people would be content with $15,000 per month pay for nothing more than finding offers to send out to their list.
Anyway, I digress. You’ve got your little product, and you have your aweber account. Now it gets to be work.
You need to find merchants to recommend to your list. Depending on your niche, you can find dozens, even hundreds. Pick the cream of the crop. That’s one reason I recommended picking a relatively broad niche, like weight loss.
I didn’t say make a web site about weight loss on a broad basis, did I? You’ll have to stay with me on this.
So get accepted to several, as many as 25 different affiliate merchants within your broad niche.
You need to come up with a bunch of autoresponder messages to send to your list every week. The messages can take the form of short generic articles about the niche topic. Each message should have a link at the bottom suggesting the reader click to see something that you’re recommending.
You will be recommending one or two of the merchants you’ve signed up with, for a product that matches the subject of the specific article you’ve written about in the email.
You need to build up an inventory of at least 52 messages, a whole year’s worth. 2 years worth is better. You don’t need to wait until you have 52 to start the process, but you need to keep ahead of your oldest subscriber. I recommend you do them and get them done with, for reasons mentioned later.
So, now you have your product that you’ve given away to people that give you their email addresses, and you’re starting to send your list messages every week. Soon you should start seeing an occasional affiliate commission. The more people that are getting the messages, and the deeper they are into your autoresponder sequence, the more you’re making.
Just again, make sure the weekly messages give them valuable information, not just a pitch for the product. You want your list members to appreciate your information, and trust that you aren’t just using them to make money. Well, maybe you are, but you’re doing that by giving before you expect to receive.
How do you build up those 52 or 104 messages? You research and write them, or you hire someone to research and write them. It will be a wise investment either of your time or of your money.
Now, you’ve got your product, you’ve got your list capture form, you’ve got your timed messages all loaded up. Now you need to get started on getting people to sign up to go on your list. How do you do that?
Traffic is the lifeblood of this business. People have to find your lead capture (or squeeze) page. I hate squeeze pages, personally, though the gurus swear by them. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve wanted something that someone was offering, but I couldn’t even get a description of it without giving my email address, and I’ve clicked away.
So I tend not to use that technique. I’ll put an email capture form on my web page, but I won’t require it in order for someone to see a description of my product.
But, if you’re giving something away, instead of charging money, there is no reason not to have a squeeze page as the price of admission.
To get the traffic you have to start doing typical things like building web sites, web pages, writing blog posts, article marketing, even buying traffic with AdWords.
Think of building multiple sites on more tight niches than the giveaway report. You want to funnel the people who find your site or blog into the system, but you don’t want to write a new report and a/r sequence for every tight niche. You can have a dozen different weight loss sites, but one a/r sequence.
Just don’t go too far astray. Don’t be sending information about weight training to senior women wanting to get rid of cellulite. So what I’m suggesting is that your giveaway is very generic in nature, all things to all people as much as possible.
If you’re blogging, with each blog site, you want to write enough blog posts and ping the blog directories and you’ll start getting more traffic and more list signups. Each signup starts them on a sequence of a year’s automatic messaging or more from you. Completely hands off.
If each signup is worth $1.50 a month, you can even afford to spend money with AdWords as long as you spend it on very targeted traffic.
Also, there’s no reason that each message in your sequence has to be about the same thing. And there’s no reason each little mini site or blog you set up has to be about the same thing.
People interested in weight loss are often interested in nutrition, for example, or fitness training, or dozens of other topics around the theme, so you don’t have to have 52 messages for each little mini site or blog.
One last tip. If you’re doing this for the first time, don’t choose an Internet Marketing or a Make Money theme. Those people are less likely to follow your recommendations. It can be done, but it’s probably a bigger challenge than doing it in a mass consumer market.
Hint: You can even do this with your Mini Money Sites. If you have traffic coming in for a market segment that you can write your 52 little articles about, why not add the lead capture to your other monetization attempts? In fact, a little lead capture block, in the place of the AdSense block, might pay off handsomely.
Now that you have your giveaway product, your 52 or 104 weeks of messages, and are starting to accumulate names on your list, you’re set. Your list might only grow by 1 or 2 names a day, in some cases you might get 20 or 30 a day. All you want to know is that it’s growing faster than people are unsubscribing.
Should you be worried about unsubscribes? If you’re getting more additions than deletions, I wouldn’t worry. You want to keep the people that want to hear from you, and don’t lose any sleep about the rest. They aren’t indicting you personally, they’re just unsubscribing because your information isn’t right for them personally. Your effort has to be to find the people that the information IS right for, not trying to change the minds of those it isn’t right for.
Once you have this money machine in motion, you can think of it as a perpetual money machine. Scientists and inventors have attempted to create a perpetual motion machine for centuries and have never been able to. You have something just as valuable.
You won’t be able to stop the money coming in unless either you shut down your domain, or unless your affiliate merchants cease operations or no longer offer an affiliate program.
Which is another point (see, I told you this would be rambling). When you set up your affiliate links, set them up as redirects so that if something changes, and a merchant goes out of business or ceases to convert well, you can easily plug in a different offer to your sequence by just changing the redirect code to go to the new merchant instead of the old one. You won’t even have to change your autoresponder article. For example if a message is promoting vitamin B12 tablets, and XYZ company goes out of business, change the redirect to go to ABC company that also sells vitamin B12 tablets. No muss, no fuss.
Don’t forget, you can still blast special announcements and offers to your list occasionally, in addition to the weekly messages that you don’t have to do anything to cause to happen.
So now you have your perpetual money machine, what now?
Simple, you make another one.
By this time next year, you could have a dozen of these going, and if you do, and you aren’t making 1K a day at least occasionally from this post, I’d be totally surprised.
Comments are welcome.
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