Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
In my last post, I had mentioned that I wanted to tell you what my favorite infomercial was and dissect it so we can all learn about why it’s successful. Well, I decided to change things up a bit because a few nights ago, my wife and I had what was probably one of the most important conversations ever, and it’s directly related to what I do online. This message that I want to share with you, which came as a result of our discussion, is more important than any infomercial tactic, blogging tip or online business strategy that I could possibly offer.
(And in case you are wondering, the infomercial was P90X.)
The Issue
The subject of our discussion was my work schedule. The problem was: I didn’t have one.
As someone who has been somewhat successful online thus far earning a passive income, I do have the ability to work less hours, and if I really wanted to, not work at all. However, having this freedom to work whenever I want has put negative thoughts in my head about adhering to an actual schedule.
Why would I want to “force” myself to a schedule and work during specific hours of the day, when I have the freedom to work whenever I want?
I now know the answer.
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Hello. My name is Pat, and I’m addicted to watching infomercials.
Call me crazy, but I love to watch infomercials. Why? Because it’s a totally free marketing lesson that we can apply to what we do online.
If you think about it, the whole purpose of an infomercial is to get a direct response from its audience, hence the term direct response television, or DRTV for short. Isn’t that the kind of marketing you and I are interested in? Getting a direct response from our audience?
Whether you’re just a blogger, or selling multiple products online, we’re all trying to follow a similar model:
- Grab people’s attention and make them stick around.
- Connect deeply with people through their desires, emotions, wants and needs.
- Make our audience perform some kind of call-to-action (i.e. comment, opt-in, click on an affiliate link, or make a purchase).
Furthermore, the infomercials you see on television are optimized to the highest degree – they weren’t just randomly put together. In fact, they’re the result of proven formulas, months of production and a long history of sales data, all with the goal of engaging the most people and making as much money as possible.
There’s a lot we can learn from infomercials.
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This is a guest post from Michael-John Wolfe, an actor turned blogger who shares with us a very inspiring story about his journey towards legitimate, residual income sources. You can read more about Michael-John Wolfe on his blog at Residuals and Royalties. Enjoy!
The year was 2003 and I was living in my hometown of Wallingford, Connecticut. I was working full time for my cousin’s janitorial company. This job pretty much consisted of cleaning toilets and mopping floors at local medical facilities. Needless to say, I was not where I wanted to be in life at age 31. My one bright spot in life was a girl that I was dating, the only bad thing about dating her was the fact that I rarely had any cash to take her out. In fact, most of the time she was the one who wound up paying for the cost of our dates.
One day I stopped by her apartment and she told me it was over – she simply could not date someone who never had any money. Devastated, I called my friend to meet me for a beer. Over drinks, my best friend gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. You see, for years I had been talking about moving to L.A. to try and become an actor. This always seemed like more of a dream than something that I would actually pursue. My friend said to me “Why don’t you go to L.A. to do acting? You are always talking about it. At this point, what have you got to lose?” He was right. I had a shitty job (literally!), no girl, no money and I was going nowhere fast. It was that night with my friend that I decided to “go for it” and pursue my long time dream of becoming a working actor.
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Virtual Assistants, or “VAs” for short, are helping people get more things done each and every day. If you’ve read the 4-Hour Work Week, then you know that Mr. Timothy Ferriss is a huge fan of using VAs for all of the clutter and “the things that I don’t want to waste my time doing in my life” type of stuff. Like many internet marketers and other lifestyle design artists, I’m sure he has several full-time VAs working for him at this very moment.
I, on the other hand, don’t have any full-time VAs. I only hire providers and pay them on a per project basis. I’ll tell you why in a second, but there’s one thing I need to address first.
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All right! Time for another monthly income report!
As you probably already know, each month I write a blog post that details my income for the previous month. I do this not only to help me keep track of where my earnings come from and the health of my businesses, but more importantly to share with you what I’ve done that may have an effect on any increase or decrease in earnings, and what I’ve learned along the way, so hopefully you can learn what do to (and what NOT to do) too. I hope you enjoy this month’s report.
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It’s amazing what a new workspace can do for motivation and getting things done. In the last 3 days that I’ve been working from my new home office, I’ve gotten so much done and I even have a new startup in the works, but I’ll talk more about that later. That’s not to say that if you don’t have a nice workspace, you can’t get things done. Below is the picture of my old workspace, which was pretty much just a little niche area in the kitchen. Here’s a video of my old workspace too if you’re interested.
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No huge intro needed for this post. Here are 10 actionable items that you can do right now to improve your online business or blog:
1. Re-Evaluate Your Goals
On a piece of paper (yes – paper), write down where you want your business or blog to be a year from now. Think about the following when doing so:
- Number specific items, such as:
- earnings
- traffic
- sales
- subscribers / followers
- etc.
- Non-number specific items, such as:
- authority
- design
- happiness
- lifestyle
So often, we get stuck in the routine of just doing things, that we forget exactly why we’re do what we’re doing. Re-evaluating your goals will give you that boost of energy you need to get things done, and possibly even help you realize that you need to do things a little differently to get to where you want to go.
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Last week, a good friend of mine asked me out to lunch. He said he was dying to discuss a potential internet business idea and wanted my honest opinion. Naturally, I accepted.
I was excited, not only because we were having sushi, but because I love helping people, especially those who I can tell have that drive and passion to succeed. Many people ask me about what I do online, but only a handful actually ask me how to setup an LLC or use Google Optimizer to increase conversion rates.
At lunch, after some catching up and small chit-chat, I finally asked him, “So what’s this business idea of yours?”
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Most of you know that family is my number one priority, especially with the recent birth of my son who is now 25 days old. Most, if not all of the decisions I make from now on are done so with him in mind.
However, I’m still a dude, and dudes love their toys. My dream toy is an Audi R8, a car that I first saw in a commercial during the 2008 Super Bowl. I don’t remember the score of the game, or even where it was played, but I do remember that car. I’ve wanted it ever since.
To quote Left Lane News, the Audi R8 has “…a 420 horsepower high-revving V8 engine and all-wheel-drive. It uses the mid-engine Lamborghini Gallardo platform positioning it squarely against the BMW M6, Porsche 911, and Aston Martin Vantage.”
The base price for this bad boy is $114,200 USD.
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A screenshot is a snapshot of something you see on your computer screen. If you’re doing any kind of online business or blog, more than likely you’re going to want to use a screenshot for some reason.
I use screenshots a lot. You can see a number of them in my last post, where I took screenshots of my statistics from Google Analytics to support the information in my post. Whenever someone emails me and asks me how to do something, I often take a screenshot of the process and drag that into the email itself.
If you have a virtual assistant, and you want to make sure they do whatever it is you want them to do correctly, there’s no better way than to have them visually see a step by step snapshot of exactly where they are supposed to go and what their supposed to click.
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No, I'm not a millionaire, but I am living off of passive income made online. I'm here to show 
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