*** Rant Alert ***
This post may be considered a rant (and get me kicked out of Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge)
*** End of Rant Alert ***
I have learned a lot from Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge but not from the “content” being delivered. The content of the 4 weeks course is very basic and has to do more with motivation to take action than with actual content. You see, all we actually learned was: Build a personal blog and blog about yourself (How to build the blog? Search for it… What to blog about? Why not about the Quick Start Challenge? You may win a prize if you do…) Drive traffic with blog and forum commenting (and why don’t you comment on each other’s blogs? That way you will see immediate responses… And as far as forums are concerned, the Warrior forum is recommended 😉 You want to know how to comment effectively?… Go out and find out for yourself). Bonus assignment – create a video (about… you guessed it – Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge…). How to do this? Go out and search for it…Rant within a rant – those basic traffic tactics are only useful when you are starting up as they require a lot of time and effort on your part. Once you stop actively posting, traffic will die out. This is just one example of how the whole program was geared for the short term and not really showing people how to build their business for the long term.
Build a list – create a product to giveaway, setup an autoresponder and a signup form on the blog. How to do all this? … go out and search for it… (This was actually named: “Push Button Income & Automation” if you can believe it…) Really, this has been one big disappointment as far as content is considered. Only the very basic concepts were covered, none of the strategies, tactics, tips and trick you would have wanted to learn were even mentioned. So what did I learn from Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge? Brilliant marketing. I did not learn anything from the course itself but learned a lot from the way it was constructed. Let me lay it all out for you… Let’s say you have a high end coaching program (which sells for $5,000) that you want to promote. Of course you can do the hard work of advertising it all over the place while spending a lot of money in the process. You could recruit affiliates you may say, and you’ll be right in thinking so, however there is one little snag – why would big name affiliates want to promote your coaching program when they have their own to promote? So what do you do? Let me tell you what Dean Holland has done. The very basic approach to marketing says you build a funnel which sorts out your prospects and turn them into customers. You start out with a low end (or even free) item which in turn promotes your high end product and build your brand in the process. So where is that “brilliant marketing” you were talking about, I hear you asking… Hold on to your pants, it’s coming 🙂 You start out by advertising the entry level product as being a newbies dream of quickly starting a true Internet business. With some name dropping and the following list of topics you say it will cover:- The Big Beginning
- The free Traffic Tap
- On demand Income and Automation
- Instant Internet Lifestyle
- An army of highly motivated, trained affiliates which have nothing but rave reviews for your teachings.
- A monster of a marketing funnel.
- A lot of buzz around your brand and product.
- A huge amount of positive feedback and rave reviews.
I have an excellent idea for a product I can easily and quickly create, sell and earn from. Really… It’s tailored for me 🙂 Let me share something with you.
When you are being taught about product creation, what do they usually tell you? Mostly they tell you you can do one of two things: either create a product of your own, from scratch or get a ready made product and make it “your own” by modifying and improving it. Right?
Well, I like to use a third method which I like to call “product integration”. What does it mean? Simply put it means taking ready made elements and combining them together in such a way they will make a new, fully formed and whole, new entity.
I’ve used this method successfully in the past, several times, and created products that people really loved. In the last few days I was trying to get a new “integrated” product on it’s way. But I’m kind of stuck 🙁
I have everything I need for this project:
My first reaction to getting stuck is simply trying it again. Maybe using a different combination (trying to fit the pieces together in a different way) but still striving to the same end result. Makes sense, right?
Sometimes this simply does not work and I need to do a “hard reset” (Ever had a Nokia smart phone? If you did then you probably know what I mean 🙂 ). What I mean is, take a step back and examine the whole plan again. If the plan still looks solid to me, I take a second look at my goals and force my mind to focus on the steps that will get me there in the fastest, easiest way. Once my subconscious mind get a clear vision of the goal, it will take the necessary steps to get me there 🙂
Another major roadblock for me is the fact I’m a perfectionist. I just can’t get myself to cut corners and produce something I’m not totally happy with. When that causes me to get stuck, I start thinking about the people who are going to consider my product and try to see it through their eyes. If it will makes good sense for them I put my hesitations aside and regain focus of the goal.
Why am I telling you all this? The last 2-3 days where very frustrating for me. I had an excellent idea, I already have all the components I need, I even told some people about my plans (nothing like being accountable to motivate you, right?) but I was not able to get this thing going.
So today I’m doing my “hard reset”. Wish me luck 🙂
There are two things which are evident at first sight:
Basically, there are two ways of letting people know about your site: paid methods (paid advertising) and free methods (free advertising). Paid advertising is an excellent way of getting large amount of traffic (and targeted traffic, if you do it right) but it is also a great way to spend a lot of money, fast. At the beginning of our journey, it’s best to avoid paid traffic and concentrate on free traffic methods. It maybe slower to get it started but it is a lot cheaper and safer.
Generating free traffic to your site can be further divided into 2 general categories: direct (invitation traffic) and indirect.
With direct methods of generating traffic you simply invite everyone you know to come and visit your new site. I have some email subscribers so I sent them an invitation. some of them have already got to know, like and trust me so they stopped by to see what my new site is all about. More significant for me was my social media connections, namely: Twitter, Facebook, Empire Avenue and others (like Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Linkedin, etc.) I sent invitations or posted about the site, as appropriate, on all those channels. Reading the comments I got to my first post you can see those efforts were fruitful.
Next I’m working on some indirect methods of generating free traffic to my site. There are many methods at my disposal, among them are:
Blog commenting – I have a great advantage being part of the community built around Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge, where we all support each other’s blog. You can look for blogs in your niche (or area of expertise), join and participate as a valuable member.
Forum posting – where you contribute as a community member by participating in discussions both on other people posts and by starting your own threads. By adding the URL of my blog in my signature, I make it visible to all that read my posts. If they like what I have to say, they may find it interesting visiting my blog.
Other content distribution methods (such as articles, reports, presentations, videos, etc.) are also great ways of showcasing your strength and getting people to be interested in what you have to say. Those methods require a little bit more skills, knowledge and effort but are great for the long term.
Adding the blog URL to everything you do – add it to your social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. Adding your blog URL to your email signature is another simple but effective method. I’m sure you are getting the idea – associate your blog address with you and whatever it is you are doing on and off line.
Using the domain of your blog in other activities. If you have other online activities that involve setting up web pages, use the same domain for hosting these pages (in a sub-directory). This will help spread awareness to your domain and if that domain is your name the effect will even be stronger. People are curios and some may just go and check the main domain when they see a webpage under an interesting domain.
As an initial goal I’m looking to getting around 100 new visitors to my blog every day. This brings me to another important issue you need to take care of and that is tracking. How would I know I’m getting 100 new visitors to my site if I’m not tracking my site’s traffic? the same principal is valid for all your business activities: track it so you’ll know what’s working and what’s not. That way you know where to focus your efforts, where you need to improve and what venues to abandon.
The most commonly used tracking service out there has to be Google Analytics. I’m not going to go into the debate of whether it’s good or not to give all your information to Google. That fact of the matter is, this service work and works well.
This post is already rather long as it is so I’ll leave the discussion on Google Analytics to another post.
Thanks again for visiting my blog and reading my posts 🙂
See you soon!
Since we are both here so you can get to know a little more about me I would love to share my story and have you follow me as I build my online business and grow as a marketer. I sincerely hope you will find my story interesting and maybe even learn a thing or two.
