The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (33 page)

only your money counts and your opinion doesn’t.

What you should do is every so often pose a question. It can be as simple as, “I’m

interested to know what you consider to be the most difficult aspect of organic

gardening. I live here in Massachusetts but recognize that your climate may be very

different. If you could have one problem solved, what would it be? I’m not saying that I

can solve it, but I’d sure like to know what’s on your mind.”

I can tel you from experience that you’l not hear back from some people, but others

wil write you a page-long response. You’re the first person to ask them about what’s

been bugging them for years about organic gardening! Not only have you just succeeded

in becoming a most-welcome guest in their inbox, but who knows—you might have the

solution to their problem after al , or you could recommend another resource to them just

as a friend might do. You also might get a fantastic new product idea from such

responses because there could be many people with the same strong frustration as that

person—until you solve it in your next info product.

Major Warning: Under No Circumstances Should You Sell Your

List!

You might think that your info products are your most valuable assets, but they’re not

—your list is by far the most valuable asset you have as an info marketer.

Would you take your personal contact list and sel it to some no-name marketer for a

few bucks? I certainly hope not, because that would harm your relationships. Your sister

is likely to cal you up and chew you out about al the junk mail you let loose in her inbox

from that action.

It’s no different with the mailing list you have careful y assembled and cultivated. If

you’ve done it right, these people trust you about your area of expertise and maybe have

even referred business your way. You should be able to get a long and substantial

income stream from them over time with your own products and services.

Once you sel those names then you’ve lost control over how that relationship wil be

managed. You might try to do a sneaky sale without tel ing your list but is that the way you

run your business? Let’s put it another way: If you e-mailed your list and asked their

permission to sel their names so someone else can market to them and you can make

money from their names, what do you suppose they would say? If the answer is they

wouldn’t like it, then don’t do it.

OTHER WAYS TO STAY CLOSE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

As you can tel , I’m a big fan of e-mail as an inexpensive and effective way to cultivate

your customer relationships. But just as I recommend that you mix up the types of e-mails

you send your customers, I also suggest that you mix up the media and not rely only on e-

mail.

For instance, postcards are excel ent for staying in touch. Consider sending one to

your customers on a quarterly basis with a helpful tip or two, along with your web address

and phone number. That might be just the prompt they need to think:
″You
know, I’ve

been meaning to check out that dog lady’s site for any new products she
has.″

Another great vehicle is a one-page free newsletter in self-mailer format. That means

you fold a piece of copier paper into thirds and attach a little tab of tape to keep it

closed. One of the six panels of this tri-folded paper then becomes the side with the

customer’s address. It’s very inexpensive to mail and gives you more room than a

postcard does to communicate your message. It might be the most interesting thing your

customer received in the mail that day, and it could lead to sales. Make sure that your

information is not al sales-related but that some of it strengthens the bond by being

good solid content.

If you don’t mind picking up the phone, you can blow away some of your prospects or

customers by cal ing them to ask their opinions. Again, it’s not a sales pitch but you

simply identify yourself and ask two or three preplanned questions about your info

product subject. A few of them may not want to talk, and that’s fine because others wil

be only too happy and flattered that you asked their opinion.

I know one marketer who had mixed results with a series of products he offered until

he asked some of his customers to talk to him about what they real y needed. The

information he gained al owed him to refocus his product and earn many mil ions of

dol ars. He’s that same guy I told you about earlier who had an entire bank branch

devoted to processing his mail-order business.

Again, if you want to know my current recommendations for good commercial e-mail

vendors, go to www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “e-mail” in the search box.

The Secrets to an Upward Profit Spiral

By now you know that I have no use for hype-mongers who prowl the Internet, luring

people with their absurd claims of phenomenal profits that their systems wil generate.

Therefore, it’s out-of-character for me to make the fol owing statement, but I’l make it

because it’s true: There does exist a method for doubling or tripling your info product

profits without spending any additional money. In fact, in some cases you can spend less

and make more.

I’ve had to wait until this point in the book to tel you about it because the claim I just

made is so outrageous that if you didn’t know my philosophy you’d just dismiss me as

another snake-oil salesman.

This chapter is not about snake oil at al but an amazing method for multiplying your

profits cal ed conversion optimization. It’s one of the least-used but most-powerful ways

to boost your profits.

When I say conversion, I’m referring to an action you want someone to take. In other

words, if I’m doing lead generation then my conversion goal is signups, or getting people

to give me their contact information. Once I have a list of those prospects and I’m trying

to persuade them to buy my info product then purchases becomes my conversion goal.

Therefore, you can have different conversion goals at different points in the process.

Conversion optimization refers to the process of maximizing those conversions.

To state it another way, let’s say I have a flow of people coming to my web site and a

certain number of them sign up for my special report. If I can improve what I say on the

web site, then I might be able to double the number of signups even though I didn’t

change the amount of traffic to my site.

The same is true at the next goal—the purchase conversion. What if I could change

the things I said to my prospects so that more of them bought? That would be great

news.

The amazing power of conversion optimization is that it truly can multiply your profits.

Think what happens when I have the same traffic as before, but I boost both the signups

and then the percentage of signups that become buyers. I’ve now shot my profits through

the roof.

But is that possible in our realistic, nonhyped world? Yes, it is. But if it’s so good, then

why isn’t everybody doing it? Two reasons: First, many people don’t know how to do it,

and second, optimization involves measuring and testing, and most people are lazy.

They’d rather exaggerate than measure.

It’s clear that you aren’t lazy or you wouldn’t have read this far in the book. Therefore,

you get to multiply the profits your web site wil generate without spending additional

money to do so.

Conversion optimization is a matter of applying three steps.

STEP ONE: INSTALL MEASURING DEVICES

Go to Google and type in Google Analytics. Then fol ow the directions to instal it on your

web site. It’s a matter of putting a smal snippet of invisible text on your web site. That

text al ows Google to give you an amazing amount of information on the behavior of

people who come to your site. Google Analytics is a free tool, and the process of putting

it on your site wil take a few minutes. This tool is so powerful that I can’t possibly cover

al the insights it can give you about your site, so if you would like more information, go to

www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “Analytics” into the search box.

Another tool that you should consider getting is at www.crazyegg.com. It’s only a few

bucks per month but it wil tel you some real y eye-opening things about your web site. It

actual y can track where al your visitors click on your site. It’s almost spooky how you

can peek in on how people behave when visiting your site.

STEP TWO: DETERMINE WHY NONBUYERS DON’T BUY, AND

ADJUST YOUR SITE ACCORDINGLY

Conversion optimization is al about getting inside the heads of your nonbuyers. It’s not

uncommon to have only 5 percent, or 2 percent, or even fewer than 1 percent of visitors

take the action you wish them to take—for instance to buy your info product.

What about the other 99 percent? What’s up with them? Here are just a few possible

reasons for them not to buy:

• They mistyped in someone else’s web address, landed on your site by accident

and have no interest in what you have, so when they realized they were in the wrong

place they left right away.

• They did intend to come to your site but their web browser is showing a

jumbled-up version of your web page, so they leave.

• They thought your site was about dog grooming in general and they don’t have

a Schnauzer.

• They have a Schnauzer with a particular grooming problem and you didn’t

mention it so they’re not sure if your guide wil cover that problem.

• They think your price is too high.

• They are not sure what your return policy is, and they don’t want to take a

chance.

• They were offended by a slang term you used about another dog breed they

like.

• They in fact want to buy your guide, but they’re low on cash right now.

• They tried to order from your site but got an error after entering their payment

information.

• . . . And at least a couple dozen other possible reasons.

You wil get some insight into these reasons if you pay close attention to the kind of e-

mails you get from prospects and customers. If a person asks, “Does your guide cover

such and such problem with Schnauzer grooming?” then after you reply, be sure to add

that information to your web site.

For every person that asks the question there could be dozens who might have bought

but they didn’t take the time to ask. Scrutinize those e-mails as if you were a detective

looking for clues.

Also consider instal ing a free tool cal ed Kampyle, which you can get at

www.kampyle.com. This is an instant-feedback tool that al ows visitors to your web site

to ask you questions from anywhere in your site. It’s a way of making it as convenient as

possible to hear what’s on their minds. As with e-mails, pay careful attention to what they

ask and the observations they make. With any group of people, some observations are

more valuable than others so don’t dismiss them al just because a nut case writes you

from time to time.

STEP THREE: TEST EVERYTHING

You’l hear al kinds of sure-fire rules by marketers who swear that a certain button on

their site boosted response, or how having your price end in the number seven wil work

better than anything else. Even if their rules seemed to work for them, you need to test

them on your site to see if they work with your people.

You might want to test how many sales you get when you price an info product at $47

versus $37. Believe it or not, sometimes the higher price results in more sales. How nice

is that! In addition to price, there are dozens of different things you can test on your site:

headlines, pictures, captions beneath pictures, guarantee language, shipping charges,

types of bonuses, and many others.

The first things you should test are what you discover in Step Two about what your

visitors are asking you. Also, Google Analytics might be able to tel you that your visitors

spent the most time on a particular page that talked about the Brother CS-6000i

embroidery attachment, for instance. Could that be an area of hot interest for them? You

could find out by running a test where you add a special embroidery video to your info

product deluxe package and see whether it boosts sales versus not adding that bonus,

or adding a different bonus.

Google has another tool that is free and that enables you to test pretty much anything

you can think of on your site. It’s cal ed the Google Website Optimizer. It’s another smal

bit of invisible text or code that you add to your web pages. Then you tel Google what

you want to test on the page and you prepare the different versions.

For instance, you may want to test two different headlines so you tel the Website

Optimizer tool what wording to use for each headline version. Then the tool wil show