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7 Ways to Be Everywhere – Building a Brand Online

Pat — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:13:00 +0000

Last week, an SPI reader asked me the following question:

“Pat. You seem to be EVERYWHERE online. Everywhere I go, people are talking about you and your name always comes up. How do you do it?”

To be honest, I never believed I would become this successful online, especially with SPI – a blog in the “make money online” niche, which as you probably know is wildly over saturated. Although my success is partially accidental I know exactly why I’m here.

What it really comes down to is this:

If you want to become successful online, you must think about what you do as building a brand. In order to build a brand, you must do what you can to be everywhere.

A successful blogger is not just a blogger. True – it’s the blog where things get started. It’s where authority is constructed and content is published. But if you stick to just a blog, you’ll be just that – stuck to your blog.

Your blog or your website is only the beginning. It’s your hub, your homebase where people can go to find out more about who you are and what you do, but it’s also just one piece of the giant puzzle that is your brand – your omnipresent, influential and (if applicable), money making brand.

Below are 7 ways to simply be everywhere:

1. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

Before I get into more specific, actionable items, you must first realize that “being everywhere” isn’t going to be a walk in the park. It’s going to be uncomfortable at times because you’re doing things that you aren’t used to or even scared to do.

With that said, let me tell you this: the only thing holding you back is you.

In The 4-Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss gives us some exercises to perform throughout the book to help train our entrepreneurial minds. One particular exercise was to enter a crowded area and lay yourself down flat on the floor, looking upwards.

What’s the point?

The point is that it will train you to do things that you wouldn’t normally do, to get you to not worry so much about what other people are thinking and just take action – no matter how silly or ridiculous an idea may be at the time.

When I first thought about writing my first eBook, it was something I honestly did not want to do. I was afraid of the process and I didn’t know if it would sell even one copy. Well, I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to write that eBook, because it turned into a six-figure online business.

2. Keep Your Brand Consistent

The goal is to be everywhere, but the trick is to make it as easy as possible for people to recognize that you are indeed everywhere. This means using the same graphics and the same logos where ever you are online.

This is important, because image recognition is the number one way that people make connections in their brain. Huge companies know this, and even babies know this when they recognize the face of their mother for comfort and food.

This is why I do my best to brand each of my pages online the same. My blog, my Twitter account, and even my Facebook Landing Page all look very similar. My gravatar (which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar – the image that shows up next to my comments on any site that I leave comments on) even uses the same exact picture as in these profiles.

3. Explore Other Forms of Media

So you have a blog.

Have you ever thought about expanding your brand onto other media types such videos? How about podcasting? Live streaming? Printed books?

Only only will this help you get more traffic by reaching people you wouldn’t normally reach with a blog alone, but it will definitely expand your brand as well.

Darren Rowse from Problogger.net was the first person I knew from online that was “everywhere”.

I knew about his blog, but then I went to Barnes and Noble and saw his printed book in person. Seeing that book really changed my view about who he was and made him (and his blog) even more of an authority in the blogging niche in my eyes. He has definitely done a great job expanding his brand because he also has videos, podcasts and has done some live streaming in the past, not to mention an additional printed book that he just recently published.

He’s at the top of his niche for a reason.

For myself, I’m getting there. I have a great following on YouTube and am about to launch a podcast as well.

4. Get Onto Social Networks

This one should be a given.

If you’re not utilizing Social Networks like Twitter or Facebook as an extension of your blog (not just to spy on your friends, but to network with your audience and actually provide good, relevant content on), then you’re not doing everything you can to be everywhere. The thing is: THIS is where everyone is!

Plus, the simple viral nature of these sites alone does wonders to help expand your brand and get noticed by people who would never have heard of you otherwise.

Luckily, it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to setup a Twitter account (although it may take a bit more time to change the graphics and “brand it”), and I’ve laid out exactly how to setup your Facebook Page here.

5. Write Guest Posts on Other Blogs

This is huge.

HUGE!

Guest blogging is probably the easiest way to get a load of relevant traffic to your blog in the shortest amount of time. Beyond that, and even more important for your brand, you and your site’s url (and possibly your logo too) will be shown to tons of people who may have never heard of you or your website before. After getting published, you’ll be instantly known by that much more people when they come across the blog post live on the site or in the blog owner’s RSS feed.

There are several free guides about how to guest post online. My favorites are Glen Allsop’s Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide and Chris Guthrie’s Guest Posting [Ultimate Guide]. Yep – that’s two ultimate guides right there.

6. Over-deliver On Your Content

Okay, I have to mention by buddy Glen at Viperchill.com once again. He’s the master of over-delivering and a prime example of what can happen to a blog when you over-deliver on your content.

About 95% of the posts he writes on his blog are massive, tutorial-like blog posts that I’m sure take hours and hours of research and work. His posts are art in the form of words, and he goes into so much depth about everything that it literally makes me drool.

Recently, he just surpassed the 10,000 subscriber mark (although Feedburner is acting weird lately, but nonetheless), which means he earned about 9,000 subscribers in less than a year. That’s unheard of in the blogging world.

It didn’t happen because he writes blog posts consistently. He doesn’t – even though that’s “the rule” we’re all supposed to follow. It happened because his posts always over-deliver, and because they do, they spread like wildfire and his subscribership grows as a result.

When I’ve taken the time to write KILLER posts (and I mean posts that take days of research and just really have a ton of great content in it), I’ve seen all of my numbers grow as a result, including viral numbers like retweets and likes, which help expand my brand to people I’ve never reached before.

7. Create Raving Fans

It takes time, but if you continue to provide good content on your blog and build a nice community behind it, after a while you’ll eventually see that you and your blog may accumulate a number of “raving fans”. I like to think I have a few here on SPI, and I love each and everyone one of them to death.

Ravings fans should be treated like royalty, and you should go out of your way to make them happy. Do favors for them, or just spend time talking to them on Facebook or through email.

Why?

Because they are the ones who spread the word about you and your site. Some raving fans are more enthusiastic than others, but each one plays an important role in expanding your brand and influencing people who you alone cannot.

Let me say that again: your raving fans will influence people who you alone cannot.

This is why each and everyday I notice a huge influx of traffic from a few random websites that I’ve never been to before. My name and a link to my site show up on forums and blogs around the world not because of me, but because of my raving fans and their recommendations.

Thank you – you know who you are.

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As always, I just wanted to thank you for subscribing. This blog is a success because of you and your support. Here's to your online success!

Become a Fan of the Smart Passive Income Blog on Facebook and join the conversation!

Thank you so much!

7 Ways to Be Everywhere – Building a Brand Online

YouTube Tips and Tricks For Bloggers – Part 3

Pat — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:19:55 +0000

This is the final installment of my YouTube marketing tactics series. In part 1, we covered how to approach video marketing, as well as what to include in your recordings for maximum impact. In part 2, we discussed the importance of optimizing the Title, Description and Tags of your video, and I included a few cool tricks to help you “snipe” traffic from other popular videos.

In part 3, we’re going to cover some tips and tricks that you can do with your video after it’s uploaded. Much like with blogging (and iPhone apps), the work should not stop once your content is live. There are a few things you should do before you can just let YouTube and the Internet do it’s thing and drive traffic to your videos and ultimately your blog automatically. Again, it’s about putting in the hard work now, so you can continuously reap the benefits later.

Place the Video on Your Blog

An easy way to increase traffic to your video is to show it to an audience that you already have! In addition, if your post Title matches the title of the video (and tags and urls as well), then you’re giving a nice boost in SEO to both your video and your blog post at the same time.

I used this technique in my keyword research experiment.

When you include a video on a blog post, be sure that you also include a link to the YouTube video as well.

Why?

Because many RSS feed readers will not play the video, but if you have the link in there as well (preferably with keyword anchor text), then you’ll be all good to go.

Blast it Onto Social Media Platforms

This is a given.

If you’re on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else on the web that has (targeted & relevant) people following you, then post links to your YouTube video.

Bonus Tip: Instead of just saying: “Check out my new YouTube video…”, why not post a tweet or a wall post that has a good reason for people to click on it to watch, for example:

Whoa! Lots of controversy on my latest video – check it out! (insert link)
I almost didn’t publish this video. You can see why. (insert link)
Doesn’t my hair look awesome in my latest video?! (insert link)
I need your opinion on my latest video. Too much powerpoint. What do you think? (insert link)
This may be the only video you every need to watch about [niche]. (insert link)

You get the idea. Put your copywriting skills to the test, and get more clicks to your video!

Utilize the Video Responses Option

If you haven’t noticed already, underneath most popular YouTube videos there is a section called Video Responses. These are videos that people have submitted as a response to the particular video that is loaded.

Many people strategically place their own videos as responses to popular, highly viewed videos so they can “ride the back” of the traffic of that particular video. It’s another easy way for you to get a lot of exposure on YouTube.

To post a video response to another video:

1. Find a popular, highly viewed video. The more relevant to your response video, the better.

2. Click inside the comment field immediately below the video, and then click on Attacha Video.

3. Here, you can either record a video response using a camera for your computer, or choose a video that you’ve already uploaded to YouTube.

Please understand, however, that your video responses will not post automatically. If they did, there would be spam everywhere. Your video must first be approved by the person who uploaded the original video in order for yours to be shown with it. In many cases, if your video is somewhat related, it will indeed be approved by the owner. If not, no worries – just try it again on another video later.

Annotations

Annotations are severely underutilized in the “blogger gone YouTube” world. I’ll admit that I don’t use them as much as I should either.

If you don’t know what an annotation is, it’s an ugly, small little popup that shows up on top of the video that has some text inside. It reminds me of “Pop-Up Videos” on VH1 from way back in the day.

Here’s how to make them for your uploaded video:

1. Go to your “videos” area to see all of the videos you’ve uploaded.

2. Find the video that you want to create annotations for, and click on Annotations at the bottom.

3. Use the timeline to create as many annotations as you want!

They are ugly, but that’s good.

Why?

Because you can’t miss ‘em – as you can see below:

You can change the shape the the annotation and select from a few different colors too, but what’s most important is what you put in them.

At the beginning and end of your videos, you should have an annotation that asks your viewers to either subscribe to your channel, leave a comment or a rating, or all of the above. You can add more in the middle if you think your video needs it.

Again, this is another simple way to provide a call to action to your viewers that may otherwise not be there.

The Video Thumbnail

The video thumbnail, or poster frame, is the picture that shows up when ever your video is shown around YouTube. The thumbnail itself can have a huge impact on your traffic because an eye-catching picture will get clicks, and a dull one will get lost in the sea of other dull thumbnails.

Fortunately, we can choose our thumbail (yay!). Unfortunately, we only have three choices that we do not really have control over (boo!).

Or do we?

We can actually strategically “place” optimized pictures within our recorded videos at the perfect time for YouTube to capture them as one of our 3 options. There is some math involved though.

Here’s how it works:

X = Video length (in sec.)
Y = X divided by 4 or X/4 (in sec.)

Y is the 1st thumbnail.

2 times Y or 2xY (in sec.) is the 2nd thumbnail (poster frame).
3 times Y or 3xY (in sec.) is the 3rd thumbnail.

For some, this may be too much. To be honest, I don’t strategically place pictures in my videos. But, I do make sure to go into the “edit” section of my YouTube videos to select the most eye-catching option. Which of these three do you think I use for my video?

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my YouTube series for bloggers (and non-bloggers too!). Thanks for all of your support, and I wish you all the best! Please spread the word if you have the time by retweeting or sharing this article. Thank you!

Cheers!

YouTube Tips and Tricks For Bloggers – Part 2

Pat — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:33:53 +0000

In part 1 of this mini series about video marketing on YouTube we discussed two important topics:

Your mindset as you begin to push videos onto YouTube for brand expansion and traffic generation; and
A number of things you can do to your video recording to optimize it.

In part 2 we’re going to cover some tips and tricks for what to do after your video is recorded with the title, description and tags.

Before that, I’d like to answer a couple of quick questions that some of you asked me after the previous post:

1. What’s the Maximum Length of a Video That You Can Upload to YouTube?

The answer is 10 minutes flat. People who got in early on YouTube before this 10 minute rule started are “grandfathered” the ability to upload longer videos, but that was within the first year only. If you search on the web, you can actually find people selling their old grandfathered accounts for a lot of cash because many people would love to have the ability to upload videos longer than 10 minutes in length. How legal is this?I can’t answer that, and I advise that you to use your best judgment.

That being said, 10 minutes or less is plenty of time to create a video with great content that can send masses of people to your site and expand your brand.

2. What Do I Do if I Have a Recording That’s Longer Than 10 Minutes?

You can either do your best to edit it so that is under 10 minutes, OR you can break it into two equal parts – and use either the description of the videos, annotations, or a video response to connect the two. More on this later in the series.

3. Is There an Easy Way to Check Video Statistics on YouTube?

Yes – indeed! YouTube has something called “Insight” that tells us a load of information about each of our videos, including incoming traffic, where they came from, and even what parts of our videos people are more interesting to the viewers – plus a lot more.

One thing I do is I added an “Insight Module” to my homepage of YouTube, so that after I sign in, I can immediately see what kind of traffic I’m receiving, and what my most popular videos are. In order to create an “Insight Module”, simply sign into your YouTube account, and click on the “Add/Remove Modules” button, and then select “Insight Chart”.

Okay – now back to our regularly scheduled program…

Today, we’re going to be talking about the Title, Description and Tags of your videos. All three are very important, yet are often overlooked as people get excited to see their videos finally live on YouTube.

The Title of Your Video

Treat the title of your video the same way that you would treat the title of any blog posts that you write. In other words, make sure they:

Contain targeted keywords that relate to your video; and
Are not generic – meaning they have some thought behind it that may catch people’s attention.

Having a keyword rich title is important because remember, YouTube is a search engine! And guess what…they are owned by Google (gasp!). Plus, many YouTube videos are picked up in Google Searches, so there’s a potential to get traffic not only from YouTube search, but Google search as well.

YouTube does not crawl through your video and listen to each and every word that you say to see what is the most relevant for a certain keyword. That would be crazy. So, what you say in your video doesn’t directly effect the search engine results, but it definitely matters – indirectly. Much of the rankings are based on views, competition, tags, related videos, and comments. I don’t know the exact algorithm (of course), but viewer action weighs in big time. That’s why it’s really important to include calls to action within your video to get more subscribers, and more comments as well, if possible.

COOL TRICK: You probably know some of the primary keywords you’d like to use in your videos before you even start. Type in those keywords into the YouTube Search field and see what comes up. You’ll get a quick glance at which videos are the most popular and get the most traffic. Here’s the tip: some similar titled videos will show up next to other videos in the “related videos ” area on the right. If your video shows up there, there is always a potential for people to click over and check out your video too. More exposure = more traffic.

The Description

The description is where you tell people what your video is about. Sounds simple enough, however there’s one all-important tip that I recommend you do:

Always start the description with the URL of your blog (or whatever website you’re promoting). As you can see in the screenshot above for my video on How to Make a Facebook Landing Page, the first thing that you see in my description below the actual video (see blue arrow) is my website address. Although it’s cut off a bit, it is still clickable, and I get traffic from these links every day. If you include a link in the middle or the bottom of your description, people will have to expand the window below to see it, which most people never do.

Again, start with your link and it will always be there for people to click on.

It’s also important to include a real description (after your link) that contain some relevant keywords to help the YouTube (and Google) search engines determine what your video is about.

Oh, and from what I understand, as of today, html does not work inside the description – so there’s no need to try and optimize with anchor text. Plus, the links from YouTube to your site are NoFollow anyways, which means they don’t really count in Google’s eye as a backlink. It’s still important to include a link though, to drive traffic from your video to your site.

Up Next

I hope you enjoyed these tips and tricks for the title, description and tag of your YouTube video. In part 3, we’ll cover what you can do after your video is uploaded and live on YouTube to maximize traffic to your videos and your own site.

Cheers!

YouTube Tips and Tricks For Bloggers – Part 1

Pat — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:58:04 +0000

YouTube.

It’s been around for over 5 years, yet for some reason most bloggers still haven’t explored the video sharing platform where millions of people around the world are watching over 2 billion videos a day.

I took the SPI brand onto YouTube on September 26th, 2009 for the same reason I do everything else I report on this blog – to see if it’s a worth while place to invest my time.

276 days later, I can truthfully say that I’m more than pleased with the results of my experiment with YouTube to expand the SPI brand and audience base. Here are some quick numbers from my account as of today:

15 Uploaded Videos
59,582 Total Views
720 Subscribers

That’s an average of about 1 new video every 2 to 3 weeks. Considering that the average length of my videos is about 6 minutes in length, you can get a feel for just how much time I’ve really dedicated to this “experiment” – 6 minutes every 3 weeks.

Not a huge amount of time invested, but you can see that I’ve earned a considerable number of views and a good amount of subscribers as a result, which has ultimately increased traffic to my blog as well as helped to earn a few affiliate sales here and there. Without much additional effort, my daily viewership continues to grow as you can see below:

By no means would I call myself a YouTube expert, but I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks along the way that may help you expand your brand, increase your views and grab more subscribers if you do decide to expand onto YouTube, if you’re not on the platform already.

Mindset Stuff

1. Provide Good Content

This is not really a trick, and I’m sure it’s something you heard before, but I’m reiterating it here because it’s still the most important thing to understand before anything else. Much like with your blog or online business, if you don’t provide good content, then everything else you do doesn’t really matter.

2. Video Quality Does Matter

If you upload a blurry, crappy and laggy video, people won’t stick around to watch it – even if the content is good. Your video doesn’t have to be in High-Def or an Emmy Award Winning production, but it does have to be watchable. Use your common sense here.

I try to upload all of my videos in HD (1280 x 720 resolution), because it looks really good on the YouTube and any embedded players.

3. Stand Out From the Crowd

There are a TON of videos on every subject imaginable, so in order to get more views and get people’s attention, you’re going to have to do something different than the “other guys”. What it is really depends on what niche you’re in and what kinds of videos other people have uploaded, but just do your best to find something that’s uniquely “yours”.

For example, a lot of my videos comprise of my “electronic white board”. Many people enjoy watching these videos because no one else uses this technique, and it makes learning about internet business and blogging fun.

4. What’s the Worst That Can Happen?

Many bloggers don’t use YouTube because of the fact that it is video, and video means they’ll have to be on screen, or at least talking over some slides or a presentation.

Well, you can’t hide behind your blog forever if you want to get anywhere, and YouTube is the perfect place to “practice” stepping out of your comfort zone and publishing more than just typed text.

I was scared too, at first, but then I thought to myself, “What’s the Worst That Can Happen?”

Really, what is the worst that can happen? So you upload a video and it get’s no views. So what? You learned from your experience, and you can only do better from there. Plus, I doubt you’ll ever get zero views if you follow the tips later in this post/series.

Within Your Videos

5. Place a Watermark of your Blog’s URL on the Video.

A watermark throughout most or all of your video will give people an easy way to know exactly where this content is coming from, and where they can go to get more.

More importantly, if anyone chooses to embed the video on their own website, their audience will know it originates from you and your blog, which they can see the url for right in front of their faces – driving traffic and expanding your brand at the same time. The description of the video on YouTube doesn’t show up when embedded onto another site, so a watermark will at least include your url.

6. Begin with a Quick Overview

Your job as a publisher of a video on YouTube is to get people to watch your videos, and to continue watching your videos all the way through. The best and easiest way to do this is to simply begin your video with an overview of what you’re going to cover and approximately how long it will take.

Even though there’s a video title, a description and a timeline, just saying what your video is about will engage your viewers and increase the chances of them sticking around, especially if you can get them excited about what you’re about to talk about.

7. Don’t Forget Your Calls to Action

Many people shoot fantastic videos, but fail to leave out any calls to action. If you want the highest impact from your videos, you have to include at least one call to action at the end of your video, preferably telling them to visit your website. I’ve often included more than one, sometimes telling them to say hi to me on Twitter or on my Facebook Page as well.

Just think – if a viewer makes it to the end of your video, they’re going to be in the best state of mind to follow any calls to actions that you have to say.

8. Screen Sharing is Awesome

There’s a huge difference between just telling someone how something works (or even listing out the step-by-step instructions) and actually showing people exactly how to do it.

If you have an opportunity to teach your audience something by showing them how it works on your computer, do it. Screen recording and sharing is a fantastic way to engage your audience, as well as easily give them the steps needed to do whatever it is you want them to do.

You can use software such as Camtasia Studios (for PC) or Camtasia for Mac to get the job done quite nicely. There are cheaper options out there, such as Jing, Screencast or Screenflow (for Mac) that again make it easy to record your screen and then quickly upload to YouTube.

Most of my videos are done on Camtasia for Mac. It can record my screen easily in the 1280 x 720 HD format that I like, and also my face on my iMac camera at the same time. After a little bit of editing, I simply click share -> YouTube, and it’s up in no time.

Also, if you have the chance, utilize some of the cool features that come with the software to enhance the look of your video. Using things like fade in and fade out, zoom in and zoom out, or even adding titles and little notes to your video, which you can see me utilize on this YouTube video. (see the 40 sec. mark)

Again, not so many people do this, so it’s another way to make your videos stand out of the crowd.

9. Intro / Outro Screen and Music?

Putting intro or outro screen and music is debatable, and really depends on your style and what you like to do. If you already have a brand that has a recognizable tune (i.e. a podcast with intro music), then you may very well want to bring that music over to your YouTube videos for continuity.

I had intro music in my first few videos, along with a title screen for each, but I stopped doing that because they didn’t really serve any purpose. They just took up precious time (YouTube’s max video length is only 10 minutes), and for all I know hundreds of people who watched those videos exited right away because they didn’t like the music, even before they get to the content of the video.

In my later videos, I skipped the intro music entirely and went straight to an overview of what’s to come. If they still leave after that, then at least they are leaving for the right reasons.

It seems to be working out much better, and it’s less editing for me to do as well.

Up Next

In Part 2 of this series, I’ll be going over some tricks you can do with your video title, description and tags to get more YouTube search engine traffic. Also, I’ll be going over how to improve your channel as well.

Cheers!

How to Earn More Money Working 9 to 5 Versus Working For Yourself Online

Pat — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:41:20 +0000

Here’s a quick two and a half minute YouTube video which explains why it’s so much easier to earn more money working for yourself online, versus working for someone else.

Think about it.

Cheers!

(How to Earn More Money Working 9 to 5 Versus Working For Yourself Online on YouTube)

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As always, I just wanted to thank you for subscribing. This blog is a success because of you and your support. Here's to your online success!

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Thank you so much!

How to Earn More Money Working 9 to 5 Versus Working For Yourself Online

Camtasia for Mac, Bamboo Tablet, Omni Dazzle, and Branding

Pat — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot this past week as far as expanding the Smart Passive Income brand. I created a Facebook Fan Page, which has nearly 100 fans already. Today, I setup a YouTube Channel and decided to post my first video, which I’ve embedded here on the blog for you below.

Part of branding is staying consistent with how you present yourself and your products/blogs/business/whatever. So, in an effort to do this, I’ve tried to create some continuity in the web addresses where people can connect with me. Here are some examples below:

I’ll also be using the picture below where ever I am online. It’s my profile image for all of the forums I’m in, it’s on my Facebook page, my YouTube channel – everywhere. Black and white, so it’s pretty unique, and I think the smile brings a nice welcoming feeling (correct me if I’m wrong…LOL). Again, it’s these kinds of things that start to brand yourself pretty much automatically. It’s like billboards, TV ads and magazine ads – constantly showing the same things to people over and over again, even if they don’t know it.

I’m pretty excited about all of this stuff. I hope it get’s to a point where people who I’ve never met before say hi to me on the street because they know I’m a part of this brand. We’ll see – I’ll definitely post about that if or when it happen.

In order to do this kind of thing, you definitely cannot be a shy person. I think that in order to go big, you have to put yourself out there. You can’t hide and succeed – especially today when everything is about being open with who you are online, social media, and all of those kinds of things.

Anyways, here is my first YouTube video below for SPI. There are some links to things I mention in the video underneath it as well.

Time: 3 minutes.

Here are the tools I mention in this video:

Camtasia for Mac - for screen captures
Camtasia for PC (Camtasia Studio) – for screen captures
Bamboo Tablet by Wacom – to use the pen instead of a mouse
Omnidazzle – to draw on screen

Thanks everyone! Enjoy your weekend!

Please note that some of the links above may be affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you choose to purchase the programs/hardware.

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As always, I just wanted to thank you for subscribing. This blog is a success because of you and your support. Here's to your online success!

Become a Fan of the Smart Passive Income Blog on Facebook and join the conversation!

Thank you so much!

Camtasia for Mac, Bamboo Tablet, Omni Dazzle, and Branding

The Triple Threat of Informational Products You Can Easily Create

Pat — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:57:24 +0000

It doesn’t matter what industry or niche you’re in – different people prefer different ways of learning. If you can cater to each of these types of people, you will not only expand your customer base to those who wouldn’t normally purchase from you, but you’ll give those who would of purchased from you anyways the tempting option to send a little more cash your way.

There are three basic methods to learn new material: reading, listening, and watching. Keep in mind that particular order. While doing business online, we can cater to those who prefer each of these methods by creating eBooks, audio products, and video, respectively.

Reading via eBooks

Most internet marketers and entrepreneurs start out with an eBook as a product to sell. Why?

Creating an eBook is relatively easy, it’s cheap, and it can be started today. All you need is a Word Processing program, and you’re well on your way to a finished product you can sell online. There is no wonder why my How to Create an eBook series page is one of the most visited pages on this blog.
Anyone with a computer can read an eBook. Reading is the most common form of learning new information. It’s what we’ve done since we started school.

An eBook is great, but why stop there?

Listening via Audio

If you have an eBook, why not create some audio to go along with it?

Today, more and more people are learning “on-the-go”. In their cars, waiting at the airport, at the gym, on a walk – audio is perfect for these kinds of people. I remember when I used to take the train from San Diego to Irvine every day (I don’t miss it), I’d prepare my iPod with various podcasts to listen to on my commute. One was actually the Internet Business Mastery Podcast, which ended up being the real reason why I’m where I’m at today with my online business. I’d also listen to Fantasy Football podcasts, and Dave Ramsey’s financial podcast too.

Anyways, the creation of an audio product could not be easier – especially after already having an eBook. Your eBook is your script. You can record the audio yourself, but I recommend hiring a professional voice talent to do it for you. It will cost a little bit of money (maybe some money you’ve earned with your eBook already), but it will save you time and the quality will be superb.

To give you an idea, the creation of my audio guide helped me go from an average of $200/day, to nearly $600 (and often more) a DAY!

But wait. Let’s not stop there…

Watching via Video

So we’ve got the eBook, and now the audio – why not top it off with video too? This will cater to those visual learners who are more used to learning in a classroom/lecture hall type setting.

The video can simply be a slideshow presentation, or even just a person speaking on screen. I’d recommend taking advantage of the video format by adding pictures and examples (if appropriate for your niche), which can’t be done in an audio format.

Many people don’t use video because they think it will be tough to create, or it just won’t be useful. Well – you have an eBook already which can be formatted into a slideshow presentation, and you have your audio which can be used on top of the slideshow presentation…it’s practically made already!

Furthermore, video is seen by consumers as a “higher-end” product, so you’ll be able to use that to your advantage as well when converting sales.

The Triple Threat

With an eBook, an audio and a video product, you can easily cater to all types of people and their learning preferences. But again – it doesn’t stop there. (This is where it really get’s exciting…)

You can easily get more from your customers by combining your products and offering deals and discounts! There are a million different possibilities and combination of offers you can do with three different products, but here is one example:

Let’s say you sell your eBook at $25, your audio at $35, and the video for $50 (remember…high-end!) – separately. Combined, that’s $110.00. You could offer something like the eBook and Audio both for $50.00, which is a nice $10.00 savings. You could offer the eBook and video both for $60.00, which is a nice $15.00 savings – or, you could offer all three items, the eBook, Audio, and Video for a total of $85.00 – a substantial $25.00 savings! You’ll have people spending $85.00 who would of been happy with one item separately.

They’ll be happy, you’ll be happy, and your bank account will be happy too.

(p.s. currently I have an eBook and audio guide, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I am working on that third element – the video, as we speak)

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The Triple Threat of Informational Products You Can Easily Create

Passive Income Tools of the Trade

Pat — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:59:59 +0000

I thought it would be helpful to create a resource page that you can always come to for all of your passive income needs. I’ll add to it as I learn more, but you’ll notice that in the future I will reference this page quite often. I recommend bookmarking it for your reference and convenience. Enjoy!

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links to products that will earn me a commission. These are all things that I have experience with that I am recommending because they are helpful and are companies that I trust, not because of the commissions that I may earn from you using these products.

Blogging

WordPress: The #1 Blog Publishing Platform. Free and easily customizable with wonderful support. All of my blogs use WordPress.
WordPress Plugins: Download any plugins, widgets, or customizable elements for your WordPress blog.
Woo Themes: The ultimate resource for premium looking WordPress themes.
Revolution 2: Another resource for premium WordPress themes.

Hosting

Bluehost: All of my websites are hosted using Bluehost. Easy to use, 1-click automatic WordPress installation, and good customer service.
PowWeb: Another fantastic and easy to use hosting service. Also includes 1-click WordPress installation.
Amazon S3: The Amazon Simple Storage Service. Reliable internet storage, which is great for putting large files like podcasts and videos, so you don’t create bandwidth problems on your own website.

Product Distribution & Shopping Carts

E-Junkie: The shopping cart I use to sell my eBook. It’s compatible with Paypal Standard, Paypal Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, TrialPay, Clickbank & 2CheckOut. Works like a charm, very low price to use. Comes with a decent affiliate program for your products.
Clickbank: Another digital products retailer. Probably the most popular. Decently priced, but comes with an amazing affiliate program for your products.
Paypal.com: Paypal is just ok for selling your own products through them, but you’ll need an account anyways to configure with and accept payments from the above shopping carts.

Keyword Research

WordTracker Free Keywords Tool: Spits out a number for the popularity of a keyword of your choice. Search volume numbers can be compared to find the perfect niche, or to choose keywords for your blog posts.
Google Adwords Tool: A tool to help you decide what keywords to use for your Adwords campaigns. You can also check to see the popularity of certain keywords and the competition for ads for those keywords as well.
Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool: Another fantastic keyword research tool, with even more information and numbers to compare and select the perfect keywords.

Advertising Stuff

Google Adsense: Make money by placing relevant ads on your website that are generated from advertisers using Google Adwords. This is free to use, but you have to register for an account.
Google Adwords: If you want to begin advertising on Google, you can select keywords and locations and you pay each time someone clicks on your advertisement.

Email Subscriptions & Marketing

Aweber: The internet’s most powerful email opt-in service and email marketing/broadcasting tool.

Testing Results

Google Analytics: Google’s free website tracking and analytical tool. A must have for anyone with any type of website.
Clicktale: You can use clicktale to watch actual recordings of how people use your website. It is actually like watching their own computer screen, so you can then optimize your website if you don’t like what you see. You can view a small sample of website viewers for free. It will cost more for a larger sample.
Google Optimizer: This is another free tool from google where you can test different webpages of the same content, only changing one or two things, so you can see which one works/converts best. It’s basically a website optimizer testing tool.

Outsourcing Work

Elance: Hired service for just about anything you can think of.
Odesk: Another outsource website for freelancers, IT companies, programmers and web designers from abroad.
99Designs: This is a unique website that you can use if you need a logo design. It’s in a contest format. You submit the description of what you want, and designers will compete against each other to win money.

Health Insurance

eHealthInsurance: Here, you enter your information, and it generates a number of different health care plans for your particular situation with a variety of different prices and specifications.
The National Association for the Self-Employed: NASE has a variety of different benefits to it’s members, including a unique, customizable health insurance plan for the self-employed.

Legal Stuff

LegalZoom: Easy online incorporation or LLC creation.

Books

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich: Pretty much the most awesome book in the entire world. I reference this quite a bit in my posts.
ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse: The best book about blogging from the number one online blogger, Darren Rowse.
Moonlighting on the Internet by Yanik Silver: I also own this book and it’s really what insipired me to go full time working online. I finished it in 1 day because it’s so good.

For eHow Users

If you can think of any more great tools and resources, please feel free to leave a comment below. I will review it and add it to the list.

The Methods of Making Money From an Informational Product

Pat — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:01:10 +0000

Everybody wants information. This is why we search on Google, watch the news, read non-fiction, ask for help, etc. Consequentially, providing useful information online is the best and easiest way to make money on the internet. Everyone is looking for information, so if you can provide it you have the ability to profit. Think about how much time you spend online each day. How much of that time are you looking for answers or information? Probably a majority.

There are many different methods that you can use to give information to people and generate an income at the same time. Each method has a unique way of organizing the information and the user experience is different as a result. A lot of profitable websites sometimes provide their visitors with a combination of more than one of these methods. Think about which of the following method(s) would best suit you for your niche. (in no particular order):

A Blog

A blog, short for “web-log”, is a great way to easily organize your information online because the blogging platform does all of the organizing for you. This website, for instance, is a blog. Whenever I want, I can log into my WordPress account, write in the “new post” area, click Publish and the website updates automatically.

It’s quick and easy, and the best part is that you can set up a Blog for free. There are many different blogging platforms, but the most popular seem to be WordPress.com and Blogger.com, so check those out if you would like more detailed information about blogging.

Pros:

Easy to start, edit and manage your content
Builds an online community with your readers
Establishes you as an expert in your field
Blog can be used to promote a product of yours (i.e. an Ebook)
Can be free

Cons:

There may be many similar blogs in the same niche already (how will you be different?)
It takes time (sometimes months or years) to establish yourself as an expert
Requires upkeep and constant attention to update content and respond to comments

How money is made:

Advertising. (Google Adsense, Text-Link Ads, Private Advertising, etc.)
Affiliate Links (Linking to a particular book and getting paid for leading a sale. Amazon.com for example)
Donations. Yes, if you provide useful information and a donation button, some people may be kind enough to donate to your cause.

Helpful Links:

9 Little Known Traits of Successful Bloggers at Copyblogger.com
How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs at Problogger.net
How to Get Started with a Blog (and why all writers should) at WritingforyourWealth.com

EBooks

An Ebook, or electronic book, is also a fantastic way to organize information and distribute it to people. Usually Ebooks come in an EXE or PDF format and can be easily viewed on most computers. Ebooks are becoming even more popular today, especially with Amazon.com’s new Ebook reading device, “The Kindle,” out on the market.

Pros:

If you write and sell it yourself, there is no printing press to pay (it’s electronic, no paper!), no publishers and no retailers to take a chunk of the profit. Practically 100% of each sale is all yours.
There’s little or no upkeep once it’s finished.
It can earn you money for a time.
It’s easy to set up an affiliate program to have other websites sell your book for you too.

Cons:

An Ebook can take a lot of time to write.
It’s difficult to sell an Ebook from scratch. In other words, if you don’t have an established audience already (i.e. from a blog or membership website), finding people to purchase your book can be a challenge.
Once the Ebook is published and is sold, the information inside cannot be updated if, for example, something you wrote has become outdated. This is why you’ll see different editions or versions of books come out sometimes.

How Money is Made:

Visitors click on a “Buy Now” button on your website, which takes them to a form to fill out with their billing information. After processing, money is put into your account.
Clickbank.com and E-Junkie.com are the top two methods of selling electronic files online. I prefer E-Junkie, because they will also deliver the product for you, and they don’t take any money from your sales. Clickbank, however, has a better affiliate program, which is also important.
If you start an affiliate program, you can find affiliates who will sell your Ebook for you off of their website. You pay your affiliates a small “finder’s fee” for bringing in the sale.
Through an ebook distributing website such as Amazon or Ebooks.com.

Helpful Links:

How to Create Ebooks That Sell at Copyblogger.com
11 Tried and Tested Strategies To Market Your Ebook at BloggingBits.com
How to Create and Publish Your Own Ebook with a $0 Budget at SkellieWag.org

Membership Sites

A membership site is a website that can be accessed with a password. People usually pay a one time or monthly fee to become a member and gain access to the information inside. I think membership sites are a powerful way to generate an income online, and I’m hoping to get involved with this very soon.

Pros:

Immediately creates a sense of membership and community within the site.
Continuously updating and providing information in this way can guarantee that people will stick around and keep feeding you money each month.
As an owner and administrator of a membership site, you’re immediately seen as “the expert”. This is powerful because it can help you bring more members in, and also have the ability to easily sell things to the members you already have. (Although, you should never become too greedy!)
The payment system in a membership website, and is kind of a snowball effect. For instance, month one, you have 10 paying members. The next month, you gain 10 more paying members, for a total of 20 paying members.

Cons:

Creating a membership site definitely takes a lot of hard work, time, and effort. You want to make sure that you are able to give your members what they are paying for. If you don’t, they’ll feel betrayed and leave.
Again, it can be difficult to bring in members if you don’t have an established audience or reputation already. Some money may be needed to invest in marketing the membership website to be able to get it off the ground before it takes off.
Although money is generated automatically, you can’t just dissapear and leave the content static. It’s reassuring to the members if new there is new stuff available every once and a while, which is good because it decreases the potential number of cancellations.

How Money is Made:

Members will be charged a one-time lifetime fee or a monthly fee for access to the information on the site.

Helpful Links:

The Continuity Snowball at Continuityblueprint.com (warning: 30 minute video, but it’s worth it)

In addition to the methods above, you can also sell tools and templates, newsletters, audio or visual products, and learning methods.

As you can see, you have a lot of options to choose from. You can also combine two or more of the metods to create an even bigger resource for people – it’s really up to you and what you feel most comfortable with.

If you are in no rush to make money, I would recommend starting with a blog, building readership and trust, and then sell an ebook or start a membership program to take your informational marketing to the next level.

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The Methods of Making Money From an Informational Product