Ard555 Journal

ard555

ard555

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Mar 3, 2014
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I'm just going to leap in to what I'm doing right now and pop in the details as I go. But ...

In brief, I've lived now for almost 2 years rather comfortably on a "quadrangulation" of Kindle, Print, Audiobooks and video courses.

Although these paid products have all helped me build a good list made almost entirely of people who have already bought something from me - people I call "action-takers" - recent activities on YouTube have been getting subscribers who never buy anything and are even damaging because of the negative reviews they leave and inspiration they suck. These I call "belly-achers."

The tasks I have set for myself to reach the next level that I haven't carefully defined (though I know that it involves creating positive change in the world, actual wealth and increased wealth-mindset) include the following:

* Making product specific capture pages with very tasty cheese and no whiskers (to use Dean Jackson's great terminology with respect to giving free stuff away in exchange for email addresses)

* Sending traffic to those capture pages and turning the people behind those addresses into buyers, primarily through email

* Learning how to get that traffic there, ideally by purchasing it

* ... which entails learning the necessary math (good thing I just gave a presentation with a world class math expert who's willing to help me learn the formulas)

* Writing more engaging posts, YouTube videos and meeting people where they are instead of where I want them to be (I can transform them later with my trainings if they're game)

* Turning just one of my info products into something that earns 40-50k in a year instead of earning that much from nearly 30 products

* Moving from there to get each of my info products making 40-50k a year

Shouldn't be so tough, and yet ...

Somehow it is, because ...

I don't have dedicated working systems to guide me.

Thus, I have started doing the following time journaling. It works like this:

1. Open notebook
2. Write current time
3. Write current activity
4. Stay with that activity until it's done without checking email even once (hard but focusatwill.com helps)
5. Note the end time in journal
6. Break (tracking the time).

It looks something like this (just an example):

10:15 Start Wickfire journal -----> 10:30
10:30 Email -----> 10:45
10:45 Write on x book project -----> 11:30
11:30 Break -----> 12:30
12:30 Practice instrument -----> 1:00
1:00 Study Epic Content Link Building - The Advanced Guide to Link Building found here on WF -----> 1:30

... and so on ...

Thus, today I am reading that very page I just cited and starting a post to compete with the number one site on a Google search in my niche. We'll see what happens.

Later I will play the instrument I am studying, work on a book I'm writing to keep my Amazon machine running (almost all my books are in the top 100,000, most around the 50-60,000 range, which makes between 1-5 sales a day of each title).

I'm not sure what I will do about that, but here's the beauty of time journaling as opposed to a to-do list:

I see what I've done instead of looking at what I haven't done.

That's what I always hated about to-do lists. Most of the shit never gets done, which is just depressing. But by tracking what I'm actually doing, I'm less inclined to do fuck all and then at the end of the day I can look back and say something like, "god damn, I'm a productive mother fucker."

This in turn makes that Pareto principle more interesting and effective because it's easier to see what the 20% things I'm doing actually are so I can focus on them better, while also seeing how 80% things can be fitted into the 20% of the results at a higher level, possibly through VAs and JVs so that it's all 100%.

In other words, I don't by the Pareto principle and think it can be hacked.

Here are some other things I intend to include in this journal as I go along:

* Some of the exact things I do on Amazon to help me float books in the rankings over the long haul

* Some of the laziness I don't do that makes other books sink in the rankings

* Some of the things I do in my video courses

* Some of the things I don't do but know that I should

* Some info about my first JV which launched yesterday with a live-stream training I gave with the aforementioned math expert. Attendance was free in a Createlive-type setting where the video is being sold at a premium. It was a super cool experience getting flown some place to be broadcast all over the world. We have 500 attendees on the 8 hour stream, one person actually came live - a 14 year old kid who had read some of my books! - and there were presales for the recorded product. I have to get busy now on some marketing stuff for that, possibly my last task before the day closes, which will of course be time-journaled.

But always my last task is collecting my numbers so that I can see how much money I made over the course of the day. I believe that this is a critical activity that tells me a lot about what I'm doing right and keeps me going. And even though the "what you track grows" principle sometimes sounds a bit woo-woo, I've seen it work for me, so if you're not already tracking your time and revenue on a daily basis, give it a try. I think after about 90 days of doing this in a dedicated manner, you'll be surprised by all you've done and the outcomes you've achieved.

... first transmission out ...
 


Unsubscribe quote of the day:

If I wanted a Sham Wow sales pitch, I would have signed up for that. He's entitled to make as much money as possible, but I thought the newsletter would be more than a teaser sales pitch.
Click to expand...

Three things I like about this:

1. The dude's email has the word "moron" in it. No kidding.

2. I don't know people like this on my list in the first place.

3. Dude can't see the massive value in my free daily email list.

But all humor aside, it reminds me that I need to scrub my list. I normally do this once a month and here's why:

1. I don't want tire kickers who don't open my emails at least once a month on my list.

2. I don't want to increase the potential for spam complaints.

3. It feels good to write everyday to people I know are actually opening at least one email.

4. Seeing the open rate percentage rise is motivating, even if I am partly deluding myself. All the same, it feels like a tighter community.

The other thing I would add here, if only as speculation, is that if you're in a self-improvement niche like I am, the real reason why people say things like this, I think, comes from scarcity. This person could never possibly benefit from what I teach because all he sees is the pitch at the end of every email.

But the fact of the matter is that if this person just read my emails and implemented what I'm talking about, there would actually be no reason to buy. People who buy my stuff do it because they like my approach, want to own it and who knows what else. Most of them never see results, but my feeling is that those who have a scarcity mindset (and not just about money) will never see results. Ever. The mind and the soul have to open to receiving skills too.

And that's one thing I've noticed in the journals here. It's not just about taking the steps and making the effort. It's actually about being open and non-resistant to what you're going to learn as you go along. If you push the knowledge away, it doesn't matter how diligently you proceed.

Time to scrub that list and see how many more email addresses with "moron" in them I find ...

... second transmission out ...
 
Just released another Kindle book and set it up on acx.com to be narrated. I'll be working on setting up the print book today and ponder turning it into a video course.

A lot of work, but with these three things combined, it will probably make 3k over the next 12 months, not to mentioned generate hundreds of subscribers, traffic to my site and general brand extension.

That said, it's almost my 40th Kindle book and I'm getting tired of seeing these efforts sell for $2.99 - though in this case the book is listed at $5.99. That will mean fewer sales, but potentially more revenue if there are enough sales.

For example, if 50 sales come in at $2 in revenue for me, that's $100.

But to get the same amount at $4 in revenue (which is basically what a $5.99 priced book will turn out to be), I only need to sell 25.

More and more I've been selling these books at higher prices, and even have one at $7.99, which since its release has sold approximately 50 copies every month.

The problem with that book is that it is essentially a sales letter for a video course, albeit an extremely valuable one loaded with value. The majority of the people who have reviewed it recognize this, though I do get some bellyachers who cry and complain about the pitch.

Funny story: I gave away 25 copies of the audiobook for this "sales letter" book and kindly asked the listeners for reviews upon completion. One person got back to me to ask if I was really sure I wanted her review because she said she couldn't finish it due to there being a sales pitch in every other paragraph.

I knew this wasn't true so offered her a $25 Amazon coupon if she would be wiling to get on Skype and point out all these sales pitches to me.

No answer ...

Until a week or so later when she wrote to say that whatever I was doing in the book worked on her because she went and bought the video course and another one of my books and is now seeing results!

So ...

I guess the point to all of this is that by making these Kindle books, I'm actually serving the majority of the people who make the small investment and my daily newsletter helps them stick with the program, assuming ...

... they haven't got their "pitch blinders" on (see previous post in this thread).

But, I've got to start figuring out sales pages and traffic generation better because these books are worth a lot more than $2.99, $5.99 and $7.99.

And having an email list full of tire kickers isn't really pounding my bank account with sales either.

At the same time, people ask me the most incredible questions about my niche and these literally write the newsletter for me.

And they create fascination with the techniques I teach (a good thing), along with fascination with me (not such a good thing if I want to free myself from being the muse of this business one day - but still a good thing so long as I keep it true).

In addition to the print book, I have to optimize my first email capture page today with phone number and address to please Google and maybe put more content on it. This is for a book priced at $37 that I've tested on my list with a 6% conversion rate (very warm traffic).

It's my first on Clickbank and it hasn't attracted any affiliates, likely for the following reasons:

1. It's on Clickbank.

2. I'm using Clickbank Powered, a cookie cutter sales page filled with leaks that I understand affiliates do not like (and that makes perfect sense). I didn't know it would be a cookie-cutter website when I signed-up, but didn't refund because I wanted to try and learn from the experience. Since my first promotion paid for the year, I'm holding on to run some more experiments to see if I can get a flow going. Plus, I believe with the right amount of traffic and better sales copy, this book could make several hundred thousand a year.

3. I haven't completed the audiobook yet so that I can charge more and make it more than just an ebook.

4. The sales copy is good, but it's aggressive and written for my warm traffic. They know and like my "take it or leave it" style.

Silly Clickbank Powered doesn't seem to have a way to split test so I'm probably going to try OptimizePress, which I think does allow split-testing.

Before I go ...

Unsubscribe quote of the day:

I dont have money to buy your products.. if you have something free let me know.
Click to expand...

I emailed him back to my website and suggested the hours and hours of interviews with experts I have on my podcast, not to mention loads of free YouTube videos and quality blogposts.

I reckon this kind of person can't see the value in what I'm doing because he has Matrix fantasies that somehow I can download Kung Fu into his head.

Free ain't going to help him. Probably not even having some skin in the game either.

... third transmission out ...
 
Looking at CCarter and eLiquid's new offer this morning, I must concede that I don't understand enough about how to use the data at the moment to invest ...

But I got temporarily excited when I found myself seven down on page one of Google for my main keyword. That was before I realized I was logged into Google ...

Nowhere to be seen in the first ten pages ...

Which is odd because my keyword is in dozens and dozens of posts on my site, in my header, in YouTube pages linking to me, two other websites pointing to me, Hubpages, Squidoo ... other places.

Then again, the most important and highly populated discussion board in my niche, where I also have a link and get page one ranking for my name, does get on page one.

Anyhow, not sure what I'm doing wrong in the keyword area, but I'll get it figured out.

Adventures in Capture Pages

On a completely different website, I've done my best to make a simple squeeze page Google compliant, in so far as I understand what that means. It has a phone number and mailing address on it ... now that I think about it, I should make a contact form as well. Then I should be free to buy ads and test if I can capture email addresses. I want to get a good sales cycle going from this and do believe it will be very profitable.

On Reading

I've been reading Ca$hvertising. An entertaining way to put a lot of concepts I already know. One part reminded me of the power of choice I read in a book called Hooked about building habit forming apps and products. Basically the idea is that you give people a choice in order to increase their compliance, i.e. "but of course you're free to choose to leave a review of this book, but it would really help me continue bringing you value, etc." That's a line I've tested and it seems to up the percentage of people who leave reviews.

I haven't put a whole lot of split-testing into that one, however (actually none).

On a recommendation posted here, I got Everything is Bullshit, which I look forward to reading. I looked at their blog and find it difficult to look at so much text at once on my laptop, but love reading on my iPhone. That compressed little screen creates a lot of focus for me and I've never read so much since finishing university (with the exception of audibooks. In that world I sometimes get down as many as four a week while exercising and doing manual chores both online and off.)

All other reading has been in my niche.

On my first JV

It was cool being flown to another city to do the recording, but we can't see eye to eye on the title. His has no direct benefit in it, just an implied one. He thinks prospects are more clever than I do. English is his second language (or maybe his third) and it's hosted in a different country that is a bit more direct in its marketing (i.e. this is for sale comes out of his mouth in the introduction in the first 20 seconds), but our main prospects are in the US.

Working on convincing him to re-engineer the product title and the sales copy and remove some leaks from the page. So far, he's been non-responsive.

Plus, he's bundled it with another product. Perfectly okay, because this other product creator is world famous and drives sales quite well just for being who he is. On the other hand, there isn't any proper tracking ...

It's a good learning experience overall and I'm not complaining. We'll see what changes I can bring while mostly using the product as social proof that I'm the real deal (he's got symbols from bigshot universities on his page where he has been featured that helps my street cred).

On Trying to Buy Something On WF

So ... I bit the bullet and invested in a service here about 3 weeks ago. I'm not going to single the guy out by nickname, but he has a good rep here which was key to my investment decision. But ...

... the service hasn't been delivered. One response has come to my three with a next day promise that still hasn't been fulfilled.

How do I get some attention on this without being a dick or asking for a refund through PayPal? There are a lot of cool services offered here that I'd like to experiment with, but the first purchasing experience from someone with a solid rep on a board where it's clearly hard to learn takes "buyer beware" to the next level.

On Yet Another Online Video University

What this dude at Edupow is doing is quite interesting. Basically he's got a contest running for 1% of stock in the online video university and is trying to get people to play ambassador for the project. I'm thinking of submitting my stuff there to try it out.

I mean, who knows ... maybe he could become the Facebook of online video course universities ...

... fourth transmission out ...
 
Not much to report today other than working on Saturdays in the fun is nice.

Found this great resource in a CCarter post:

Keyword suggestion tool — Google suggest scraper — Übersuggest

Independently found this great resource for scouring Twitter. It's really, really good (for what I'm doing):

Twitter Search, Monitoring, & Analytics | Topsy.com

It lets you search a keyword and find just images (to pin on Pinterest, for example), just links or for "influencers."

The latter doesn't mean much in my niche, but still interesting to see who comes up and what they post.

Plus it's been good for starting some interesting conversations that let's me know how I can serve my peeps better.

Other than that, spent time writing a monster blog post with a pitch at the end and contacting some interesting people in my niche for interviews on my podcast. The idea is to be the guy who can offer them all. An aggregator of sorts who becomes more memorable than any of the aggregated, so to speak. Who remembers what they found on Reddit, after all? It's Reddit that they remember and that's where they go to find more stuff to forget ... ;)

What I haven't done is worked on my new squeeze page project. Shame shame shame.

... fifth transmission out ...
 
Working on some of the ideas here:

13 Ways to Use Fiverr.com as the ULTIMATE Link Building Service [Niche Affiliate Income #4]

103 High PR Backlinks (One-Way Links to Improve YOUR Search Engine Rankings)

Dated, but still good reads with some ideas.

Other than that, wrote a Wiki article with links to my site (as well as many to internal Wiki pages) to be posted by a Fiverr dude. If it works out, I'll have him do at least one more.

Collecting some addresses for guest blogging now as well as many keywords as I can to help those guest blog posts get traffic so that I do too.

... seventh transmission out ...
 
FWIW be careful with both of those articles because they're dated and could sabotage your site before it even takes off.
 
Thanks Pheasant.

Yeah, so many of those links are no longer even what they were (or he claims them to be).

UPDATE:

Death in the family has slowed me down, but I'm very excited to have my first Wikipedia page up. The Fiverr dude who created it based on my text really seems to know what he's doing. He did all kinds of extra research, finding stuff about me that I didn't even know existed.

I'm excited to see if it boosts traffic, but equally cool is that if I ever need a job again (no point begging god for that because I can take care of preventing that on my own), people who search me up should be seeing my Wikipedia link as number one on Mr. Google's property.

Other than that, no other news to report.

... eight transmission out ...
 
Guest post project going swimmingly. Lots of work, but good quality placements.

I'm just about done creating the slides for a new video course and am working on the slides for the promo video at the same time.

I'm going to actually put out 4 promo vids specifically for my lists. They are warm and when I create a new product I can expect at the very least to pay my rent. Of course, I want to be able to buy a house, but it'll come.

But unlike these 3-4 video sales sequences people run, mine will have a sales component at the end of each. I don't want people to lose the opportunity to buy until the last video which so many people will never watch and in any case, those who are offended by a sales message at the end don't matter.

Basically, this is how these promo videos run:

1. Title: something like 5 steps to______

2. Here's what you're getting today

3. Here's why it's important to your success

4. Here's how this video will help you

5. 1st tip

6. 2nd tip

7. 3rd tip

8. Why these will expand your effectiveness in _____. List benefits

9. Introduce product

10. Primary benefit of product

11. Description of parts of the product (training modules)

12. Build value by comparing with other products, time cost in piecing it all together in forums online

13. Give a tiered set of payment options

14. Introduce temporary discount

15. State the guarantee

16. Introduce the bonuses

17. Give the reason to buy now (scarcity on the discount)

18. Re-cap the name of the product and all the bonuses, discount, etc.

19. Re-state why do it now


But in my case, I've decided not to have an expiring discount offer in order to preserve evergreenity (new word) on my promo videos.

So instead of the same old, "this discount will expire in t-mins" shenanigans, I'm going to simply point out that people are losing out on the fullest possible pleasure of life every day they're not using my stuff.

And that's true.

... ninth transmission out ...
 
Never thought I'd see the day I'm returning a new laptop to the Mac store ... laugh if you will that I used to like their stuff, but this Mavericks nonsense is not taking my money.

... tenth transmission out ...
 
As I indicated here:

http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/180920-my-wikipedia-page-canned.html#post2200929

... I'm up in arms about having a Wiki page taken down on grounds that strike me as wrong. I'm not so dense as to not see their point and acknowledge it, but even so, it's wrong.

Perhaps stupidly, I'm starting a new site this morning to test a niche. It's very specialized and targeted at a group of very angry people. They may be deeply offended that I'm trying to capitalize on them.

I'm wondering if I should go anonymous for this reason, of capitalize on being a polarizing figure. The transparency could pay off in a kind of Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com kind of way, but I want to express the same anger that I know people in this interest area have.

So ... their flack could be very profitable ... or it could harm the niche that I'm in right now because trolling hate mongers may go over there and wham me with all kinds of nasty reviews because I'm talking about my success.

Decisions ... decisions ...

Now back to Wikipedia.

... twelfth transmission out ...
 
Unsubscribe comment of the day:

i couldn't fallow every day, once a week or twice a month would be ok :/

but my huge support for what you're doing,

It's no excuse, but endearing.
 
I haven't been around for awhile because I had my first 10k month.

That means:

* Reinvesting almost all of it into a member's area for my site
* All of the landing pages, payment pages and upsell jigamajigs that go into that
* Manning up and giving my passwords to strangers!

Crazy times. Doesn't look that this month will reach the heights of July, but we'll see. I still think it's worth pushing forward.

To do so, I've:

* Created a free, 4 video training series
* Thought about the autoresponder sequence for this
* Kept working on my other stuff

It's going to be great.

... fourteenth transmission out ...
 
Came thinking I was going to see a journey thread to $3.54 per day ad sense empire, left saying, fuck... I've always wanted to build an email list and sell around a specific problem / niche like you are doing. Gonna re-read it but so far looks good.
 
Yeah, that would have been boring.

This is probably not the most interesting journal because I write big long paragraphs that are mostly for me, but I was already making my living with this stuff before I found WF. I've learned some things here, but mostly it's inspiration for picking up my game.

Definitely do the daily email thing. It's magic. Just write for one person until it becomes ten and keep writing as if it's just teaching your best friend some area of specialty.

The one thing I've learned, however, is that it doesn't really work without getting questions from people, so sometimes you have to invent questions. When people see that they aren't the first to ask, then some more will come in. If you have anything like my experience, then the whole newsletter will become questions day after day. It's pretty awesome because then people see a muse and mentor, not just some dude waxing messianic about some expertise in a niche he may or may not actually have.*

* It's really good if you actually have expertise. People feel it.
 
Having lots and lots of fun today:

* Outsourced a ton of book covers

* Managed the dude building my member's area. Everything's looking great. Using a combo of OptimizePress and Wishlist

* Played around with making squeeze pages with OptimizePress. Pretty easy and lots of fun. Found some great swipes to model.

* Learned some cool stuff about optimizing my author page on Amazon. I knew about it before, but the refresher was good and I took immediate action (that's where the magic lies).

These actions include:

1. Adding my url. Why the hell wasn't it there before? Dunno. Now it is.

2. Adding my Twitter feed.

3. Adding my podcast feed.

4. Adding more pictures of myself to increase the sense of my personality. Not just the author photo but "who this guy really is" kind of stuff.

5. Added a quote from my Wikipedia listing, which is finally back up and running.

We'll see if it has an effect!

Found this place today too:

https://www.constant-content.com

Not bad stuff. Hardly nothing in my niche, but well worth looking into.

... fifteenth transmission out ...
 
Pushing hard.

Unsubscribe comment of the day:

TOO MANY EMAILS- BUT I WILL KEEP CHECKING IN .THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELP- GREAT SITE
Click to expand...

... sixteenth transmission out ...
 
Lessons in outsourcing:

Never take the cheapest person, no matter how many good questions they ask.

Never take the most expensive person, because they're too busy being snotty about their worth to do anything worthwhile.

Do let the middle-of-the-road person exercise his/her creativity and impress you enough to hire them more or forget their name forever when the contract ends.

... seventeenth transmission out ...
 
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