I don’t know what day you’re reading this.
But I do know that today someone, somewhere, just launched a brand new Internet Marketing product or course that will finally teach you the secrets to building a successful Internet Marketing business in just months.

How do I know this?

Because every single day of every single year, someone does exactly this.

And here’s the best part – many and even most of these products work.

They truly do. That is, they work as long as you do the work.

Which bears repeating – Building an online business takes actual WORK.

There is no magic button to making a million overnight.

If there were, no one would be waiting tables or working at dead end jobs because everyone, and I mean EVERYONE would be rich.

So just get thoughts of overnight wealth out of your pretty brain the next time someone tries to tell you they found the magic button and they’ll share it with you for just $97.

However, if you are willing to work, and you’re willing to invest in your business, then I will tell you the secret to having an honest to goodness real business within 3-4 months that does indeed earn you a minimum of $5,000 per month.

The sad things is, most people who read this aren’t going to actually DO it.

And that’s because it’s not sexy and it takes WORK.

Darn, there’s that 4 letter word again.

And one more thing – if you want to accomplish this in 3-4 months, it’s probably going to take an investment as well.

Now, before you get unraveled because I suggested you have to WORK and INVEST, think about this…

…what job can you get – with no formal training – that will pay you $5,000 a month to start, with monthly raises? And that calls for you to work from any darn place you choose, when you want, where you want and how you want?

Name me one job like that and I’m in.

But there’s no such thing.

Imagine for a minute that you apply for a job.

The interviewer says to you, “The only training you need will be on the job. You’ll be making $5,000 a month by your third or fourth month. Each month that you want a raise, you can have one. There is no limit to what you can earn, it’s up to you. You can work from home or any place you like. You can work whenever you like, as little or as much as you like. And if there is any part of the job you don’t like doing, you can outsource it to someone else.”

That, my friend, is a job applicant’s dream come true.

And it’s exactly what you can have, if you want it bad enough.

So what’s THE big internet marketing secret I mentioned in the title?

If you haven’t already guessed it, keep reading.

If you have guessed it, are you doing it yet? If not, why not?????

Okay, here we go, and I warn you – you have heard this before.

You may have heard this 100 times before.

But what counts is the ONE time you hear it and actually start DOING it.

That, my friend, is LIFE-CHANGING.

And it’s why I’m taking so long to lead up to this – because I’m trying to help you make THIS the time you actually DO it and make it yours.

Here we go…

What you need to succeed is a LIST.

Yes, I told you that you heard this before.

But if you really want total financial freedom, you need a list.

You need a list.

You need a list.

YOU NEED A LIST.

Whew. Sorry about that. I get a little keyed up when I see people buying every latest greatest newest product out there when all they need to do is get busy and build a list.

Having a list gives you a ready market for any products you want to develop and create.

It allows you to sell affiliate products whenever you want.

It allows you to make money on demand.

Whoa – did a big bill just land in your lap? Send an email and get the money to pay it.

Did you just find something in the store you MUST HAVE RIGHT NOW?

Send out an email and in a few hours you can have it.

Think about this… properly built and handled, a list of 10,000 people can give you an income of $5,000 a month if you promote the right affiliate offers.

This doesn’t even include promoting your own products.

Plus when you have a list of 10,000, you also have leverage.

You can ask other marketers to promote your products to their lists in return for promoting their products to your list.

And you can build your list from zero to 10,000 in a couple of months, especially if you’re willing to invest in your list building efforts.

First, choose your niche. Health, finance and business, relationships, self-improvement… choose something you enjoy yourself that’s filled with people who spend money.

The hungrier your market, the better.

Either create a lead magnet or have one created for you. It should be an offer so enticing that visitors can’t help but opt-in to get it.

Put an upsell after that squeeze page to earn some up-front money.

Run solo ads or Facebook ads to send traffic to your squeeze page. Just spend a little bit here and there at first until you get your squeeze page and upsell page tweaked and optimized for best results.

Then buy more traffic. Use the profits from the upsell to buy MORE traffic.

Yes, you will be spending money.

But done right, you will also be making money.

Worst case scenario, you spend $5,000 to build your list of 10,000 people.

Best case scenario, you make that $5,000 or more on your upsell to pay for your list building.

It’s a leap of faith to do this. Which is why most will never do it. But because most never will, that leaves plenty of room for YOU to do it.

Don’t have money to invest in traffic? Then you’ll have to use ‘free’ methods, which aren’t free. They involve spending time and effort, but again, it’s totally worth it.

Now here’s another ‘secret’ to getting this done – anything, and I mean ANY PART of this endeavor that you don’t want to do yourself, you outsource. Get someone else to do it for you.

Yes, outsourcing costs money.

You’re building a business, aren’t you? You are looking at earning a $5,000 a month income within 3-4 months, so just make the investment and do it.

Mail your list consistently as it grows. That means once you have your first subscriber, you start mailing 4-7 times per week.

This is where you’re going to put your real effort – into writing emails that make people WANT to open them and read them.

You can’t force people, but you sure can entice them.

Whatever it is that your particular list wants, give it to them.

If you don’t know what that is, hang out where they hang out, talk to them and ask them what they want, what they need, what one thing would make a big difference for them.

“But all of that sounds like so much work!”

Guess what? If you want to build a business it’s going to take work. It’s going to take going through some bad stuff, some stuff that doesn’t work, some stuff that costs you money to build your business.

But once it’s built, you have a perpetual fountain of money on your hands.

You keep building the list, you keep emailing the list and you keep promoting to the list.

Build, email and promote.

Imagine the lifestyle where you can be any place in the WORLD, send out an email and literally get money into your account that same day.

5 sales, 50 sales, 500 sales, all from one email.

But to get to that point you’ve got to do the work first.

And I don’t care how many programs you buy. The fact is sooner or later you will finally come to the realization that regardless of what else you might be doing, you should also have a list.

Because a list is security.

It’s money in the bank.

Now think about this:

A year from now something happens and you need to make serious money FAST.

Maybe you found the house of your dreams but you’re short $20,000 for the down payment.

Maybe your son needs an operation and your insurance won’t cover $20,000 of it, and they won’t do the operation until you get the money.

Maybe the IRS says you owe $20,000 in back taxes and they’re about to take your home.

Whatever it is, you need a substantial amount of cash in your hands NOW.

But thankfully, a year ago you began building a list.

Within 4 months your list was up to 10,000.

Now it’s over 30,000.

You send out one email.

And the next day you have $5,000 in cash.

So you send another email the next day, and two more after that.

And you have your $20,000.

You get the house. Or your son gets the operation.

Or the IRS leaves you the heck alone.

Now that is security. That is power. That is freedom.

And it all starts with you, right here, right now, creating your funnel and building your list.

If this is the only piece of internet marketing advice you ever take, you will succeed and succeed big.

Build. A. List.

Starting now.

It’s extremely important to understand the difference between features and benefits when you write copy. In fact, not understanding the difference can be death to your sales.

Have you ever read a sales page and thought to yourself that it was just so boring that you couldn’t even force yourself to keep going even if you thought you might want the product? I’m sure you have – we’ve all seen those terrible, ineffective sales letters.

But maybe to this point you haven’t been able to identify what really separates the effective sales letters (the ones that compel you to buy even when you didn’t originally intend to) from those that aren’t at all effective.

Maybe it’s the case that you’re really struggling to write effective sales copy yourself. Maybe your conversions aren’t what you know they could be – people are visiting your sales page but they aren’t reading or buying.

Or, maybe you’re struggling to write a sales letter at all. You know that you’re not yet a highly skilled copywriter and it scares you to even try.

Of all the elements that go into writing an effective sales page, understanding the difference between features and benefits just might be the most helpful. If you understand how to identify the benefits of a product, then all of a sudden things like writing the headline, bullet points, and persuasive copy just start coming together.

It’s about understanding human psychology. It’s one thing to know the features of a product, but it’s another thing to be swayed enough on an emotional level to move forward and buy. You’re not going to tap into those emotions that inspire people to buy unless you understand and pull out the benefits of your product. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

What Are Features?

At the core, features are what something is. It’s the descriptions and stats on a particular product. For example, you can describe a soda can as being red, made of metal, and containing a liquid.

But, who cares? You don’t see Coca-Cola advertising their product that way. Sure, it’s good to know those things and people do make features part of their buying decision. But that’s not what’s going to capture people’s attention in the first place.

If you fill your sales copy full of features and only features, people are probably going to click away unless they were already highly motivated to buy the product.

Yes, features are important to talk about, but only after people are already interested. The first focus, for you and for the customer, has to be on the benefits of a product.

What Are Benefits?

Benefits are what something does. It’s the result of using or having the product. So, in the case of having a Coca-Cola, it’s a crisp, delicious refreshment. It’s something that puts you in a moment of pure pleasure, nostalgia, relief, and happiness. At least, that’s what Coke wants you to think.

You don’t really care that it’s a red can that contains a sweet liquid. You do care that it adds pleasure to your day and gives you the refreshment you so dearly desire.

When you have your list of features for your own product, ask yourself why those features matter. Why does it matter that there’s a sweet liquid in that can? What’s the result people are looking to find?

When you ask yourself why the features matter, what really matters about the product, you can come up with a list of benefits.

The classic way copywriters describe this is “selling the sizzle, not the steak.” People are buying the hole, not the shovel. People are buying the result, not the thing itself. Once you understand this, it will be so much easier for you to write copy.

How to Pull out the Benefits of Your Product

Now that you understand more about the difference between features and benefits, it’s time to learn how to pull out the benefits of your product. I suggest you go through your product and take notes on everything that really matters about your product.

What sets this product apart? Which results are people going to find by going through your product? Write everything down that comes to mind.

After you’ve written your list, go through it again. Ask yourself what really matters… again and again. Dig deeper. If you’re selling a product that will help people make more money, it’s easy to think that money is the result people want. That’s typically not the case.

Money isn’t the real benefit… The true benefit might be freedom, living life on one’s own terms, etc. Keep digging, keep asking yourself what matters most to your audience.

By the way, some benefits will be more important than others. Again, keep asking yourself what matters most – I can’t stress this enough.

You’ll use the top, most important benefit in the headline of your sales copy. You only have a short amount of time to capture people’s attention, so you really want to make it count. Sell that sizzle, get people interested, and then you can start explaining features and additional benefits.

Using Benefits in Your Bullet Points

In addition to using the main benefit within your headline, you’ll probably also want to include benefits in the form of bullet points. Remember that people are typically skimming through copy when they first read it. Even if they’re intrigued by your headline and by the benefit you promised, they aren’t quite sold on it yet.

You want to make it really easy for people to decide that they want to buy after all. Include the rest of the important benefits you came up with in bullet points within your sales copy. Bullet points capture people’s attention. When it’s all laid out there for them, the benefits are clear and they’ll be a lot more likely to buy.

Features Are Important Too…

I don’t mean to make it sound like features aren’t important at all. You actually should include the features of your product. But,they’re not the main focus. And you don’t really want to list the features until people are already swayed by the promised benefits. Don’t leave those out, but don’t rely on them to capture people’s attention either.

I hope you’re really excited by all of this. Understanding the difference between features and benefits can help you sell your products (or affiliate products) so much easier. You’ll be able to write much more effective copy, make more sales, and make better connections with your audience by understanding what is really motivating their actions.

It’s very exciting to have your own business. You get to make decisions yourself, live life on your own terms, and determine how successful you become. We live in a great time for entrepreneurs – it’s extremely exciting, whether you’re new or experienced.

At the same time, working for yourself can be very isolating. It can be hard to stay motivated and have the right mindset when you’re relying on yourself. If you’re finding yourself procrastinating, feeling confused and overwhelmed, and feeling isolated… then the chances are good that the dream of working for yourself isn’t exactly what you thought it would be so far.

The operative phrase in that sentence was… so far.

It can be scary to realize this. Many people dream of working for themselves all their lives. People want to own their own business and dream about how wonderful it will be. But then reality hits. The grass isn’t always greener. It’s not uncommon to run into mindset issues and problems when you work for yourself.

Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to work in isolation, struggling on your own. There are people out there who can help motivate you, help you stay on track, and help point you in the right direction.

You can bounce ideas off of people. You can hire people to hold you accountable and to show you the way. Whether you need a little bit of hand holding or a lot of hand holding, there are people out there who can work with you and help you.

In fact, it’s a really good idea to find a coach, mentor, or accountability partner. In some cases, you’ll want all three. It doesn’t matter where you are with your level of experience or how successful your business is, it’s important to connect and work with others.

What Is a Coach?

First, let’s go over what a coach is. A coach is someone you’ll typically hire because they’re at a higher level in business than you are. They’ve been there, done that, and you’d like to learn how they got to where they are so that you can follow in their footsteps without taking too many wrong paths yourself (Like they may have in the beginning).

They’ll help you take stock of your business and figure out what you should be working on. A good coach will help you apply the 80/20 principle – knowing that just 20% of your efforts are leading to 80% of your results.

A good coach will help you cut the fluff and only focus on what’s most important in your business. They’ll help you stay motivated and help to hold you accountable. They can give you business advice that only comes from experience. This can help you get to where you want to be much more quickly than if you were to do it on your own. There’s something to be said for following in the footsteps of success, and that’s exactly what you’re doing when you hire a coach.

Experience is a great teacher, it’s even better when you’re learning from someone else’s experience, so that you don’t need to make the same mistakes and have the same do-overs that they did.

Of course, as is the case anytime you work with someone else, you have to make sure your coach is compatible with your personality and your needs. Sometimes, your coach will need to show you tough love, and that’s okay. Don’t be annoyed when it happens. But overall, you should really enjoy working with your coach and you should find that they help you get to where you want to be.

There are many different types and styles of coaching. There are business coaches that will meet with you in person. There are others that operate solely online. Sometimes, coaching is offered one-on-one and other times it is offered in a group setting, which will be much less expensive, depending on how and how often you get to communicate one on one with the coach (such as via teleseminar or webinar, email, phone, etc.).

Do some digging and figure out what will work best for you. You can find the ideal coach who will help you earn more money much more easily.

What Is a Mentor?

A mentor is different from a coach in some important ways. A mentor is also an expert who can help you achieve what you want to achieve. A mentor isn’t always someone you hire or pay. In fact, a mentor doesn’t necessarily need to know that they’re your mentor.

There are people out there you admire. You look at their journey and find that you’re on a similar path. They inspire and motivate you. This is a great thing and can help you keep going when the going gets tough. They can help you see things you wouldn’t see on your own.

You can find a mentor by reading blogs, websites, and books. There are people out there who document their journey and steps and invite you along for the ride. This can be highly inspirational and motivational.

You can find a mentor on forums and on social media sites. These are people who are helpful and knowledgeable and who really stand apart from the crowd because of their success and how they help people.

Again, you don’t necessarily have to pay for a mentor. A mentor can be someone who knows they’re your mentor or not. They can be someone you communicate with directly or not.

And for all you know, you might be someone’s mentor if you have some experience and have been helpful to others already.

It can be as simple as you posting a question in a private forum or Facebook group and there they are, giving answers.

I suggest you find yourself a few different mentors. These are people you look up to. These are people who motivate and inspire you. We all need mentors in our lives to help us reach the next level.

The important thing with a mentor is that you should be careful that you do as they do, not just as they say, because there might be a huge discrepancy there. It might also be difficult to determine the difference with some people, so don’t rush to select a mentor just because he or she says they’re doing fabulously.

What Is an Accountability Partner?

An accountability partner is someone who can help you stay on track in business. They might be on the same level as far as business is concerned or they may not be. Really, it doesn’t matter as long as you keep each other on track. It can be helpful to choose someone who’s going through the same things you’re going through.

You and your accountability partner might communicate with each other back and forth, talking about what you have and haven’t accomplished. You might email or Skype each other to make sure you’re on track.

You can have an accountability partner that’s online or offline. The only important thing is that you hold each other accountable and help each other achieve your goals much more quickly.

It’s hard to stay on track when you’re the only one who cares about your business. When you find an accountability partner, you both care about each other’s business. It helps you stay connected and on track.

No matter what level you’re on, it can help to find an accountability partner to check in with.

I don’t recommend that you choose a spouse or friend as an accountability partner, because it can cause friction in your personal life if your accountability partner (or you) has to call one or the other out for failure to accomplish certain tasks that you were supposed to.

Your accountability partner should be someone who understands what you’re going through, and the technical language you use. They don’t necessarily have to be more experienced or more successful than you are.

Find Your Coach, Mentor, or Accountability Partner

Hopefully, you’re inspired now and know that you don’t have to go it alone. It can be hard to work for yourself, even when you know you’re finally living your dream.

You’ll achieve whatever you want to achieve much more quickly if you find yourself a coach, mentor, or accountability partner… or all three. There’s no shame in reaching out and getting help. In fact, it’s one of the things very successful people have in common. You want to be more successful, so reach out and connect with someone who can help you.

PLR or private label rights don’t always enjoy the best reputation. Most marketers figure PLR was written by someone who either doesn’t speak English well or has no background in the subject matter. Oftentimes the PLR is cobbled together with a lousy sales letter with amateur graphics and sold as a package to unsuspecting marketers.

Is that how you view PLR? If so, it’s no wonder. Many PLR packages aren’t worth the money which is why potential buyers are leery of new offers. But there is a way to still sell boatloads of PLR to marketers, and it works like this:

Before you sell PLR licenses, sell the product as it is. Launch the product on its own without rights. Sell it to your list, put it on JVZoo or wherever you want. Make no mention that you will be selling the PLR rights to it, not even as an upsell.

The idea is to let it stand on its own. Now it’s tried and tested, there is no question it sells, and it stands apart from every other PLR offer out there because it’s proven.

Wait a couple of weeks and then offer the rights to it. Often the people who purchased the product from you in the first place will be the first people to buy the rights, too, because they’ve seen the product and they value it.

If you want to sell the PLR licenses for a higher price, then simply restrict the number of people who can purchase a license. And you won’t need to convince anyone that your PLR is of great quality because it will already be a proven seller.

Have you ever driven your car onto a frozen lake, parked, cut a hole in the ice and started fishing? This might sound like a crazy idea if you’re from a warm climate. Why would you sit there on the ice for hours, freezing yourself silly, waiting for a fish to wake up from its cold slumber and bite your hook?

One way to make this sport more bearable is to build yourself an ice-fishing shanty. About the size of a garden shed, this is a small structure that is towed out onto the ice. The structure has one or more trap doors in the floor where you can use an auger to cut through the ice.

You can furnish these shanties with comfortable chairs and a propane heater – just don’t get your shanty so warm that it melts into the ice or worse yet – through the ice.

“What in the heck does this have to do with email marketing?”

Maybe nothing, but let me continue…

A couple in Princeton, Minnesota, decided they’d rather have chicken eggs than fish, and so they converted their ice fishing shanty into a chicken coop. They added nesting boxes to accommodate 80 chickens and used the trap doors to clean out the old bedding and chicken poop before moving the structure – on wheels – to a new location. When a chicken hawk appears in the sky, the chickens can dive under their chicken coop for safety.

Really, I think this is a much better use for the ice shanty than sitting in the cold for hours hoping a fish has had enough living and is ready for the fry pan.

If you’ve been doing online marketing for any length of time then I’ll bet right now you have assets that you aren’t using fully. It’s just a matter of identifying those assets and converting them into a better, higher use.

For example, do you have…

•   Old email lists?
•   Social media followers?
•   Products you’ve created but no longer sell?
•   Content that is languishing with no readers?
•   Special knowledge you’ve gained on how to do certain things?
•   PLR products you’ve purchased but not used?

Any of these assets and loads of others I didn’t list can be repurposed to increase your business. Think about it… if an old ice shanty can find new life housing 80 chickens, couldn’t you…

•   Revive your old email lists by sending a 30-day campaign of emails people WANT to read?
•   Start a new, coordinated campaign to bring your social media followers to your website, your squeeze pages, your products?
•   Update, refresh and re-release your old products, or sell resell rights to them?
•   Update and repurpose your existing content into audios, videos, new posts, books and so forth?
•   Take your own specialized knowledge and turn it into new posts, lead magnets and products?
•   Dig out those PLR products you purchased, find the gold and repurpose those into content and products, too?

You might want to take inventory of everything you have, whether it’s languishing on your website, on your hard drive or in your memory, and make a list. Then after each item, think of 5 ways you can repurpose and reuse it to either build your audience or make more sales.

If you’ve been doing online marketing for any real length of time, then I’ll bet you an ice-fishing shanty that you have thousands of dollars in assets going to waste right now. The challenge is to identify them, decide on a course of action and then get busy.

Would you like to know how the highest-ranking affiliates are making their sales?

Here’s how to find out:

Research the top selling evergreen products at places like JVZoo and Warrior Plus. See who is winning the leaderboard competitions and then get on their lists.

You might have to do a little Googling to locate their sites, blogs, squeeze pages or whatever, but it’s not that difficult.

Join their lists and then watch their emails.

You’ll see how they warm their lists as well as the exact email sequences they use to sell products.

Don’t copy their emails word for word, but do study them and figure out what makes them work. Then write your own.

You’ll have email sequences for all of the best evergreen products, written in styles that you already know convert. Plug them into your autoresponder and make sales!

I know firsthand how difficult it can be to continually come up with new topics for your emails. The first 20 are easy. The next 30 aren’t too difficult. The next 50 take work. And once you’ve done a few hundred emails, you’re pretty sure you’re just writing the same things over and over again – most likely because you are. If you want to keep your emails fresh, interesting and even exciting for your readers, then it’s time to step up your game and find something new to offer. Which is why I thought of… jokes.

Because who doesn’t love to hear a joke? Even if it’s one that makes us groan, we still enjoy the anticipation of seeing whether or not it’s funny, whether we laugh, and maybe even whether or not it’s good enough to share with others. I know that when I receive an email from an individual or a business that says, “Joke enclosed,” I almost always open it, because… why not? I need more laughter in my life, and I’ll bet your readers do, too.

So how do you turn a joke into a marketing email?

That is the question.

First, let’s find a joke. I just did a quick search and found this one…

“When I asked my 3 year old niece Anna what she wanted for her birthday, all she’d say was “reading glasses.”

Thinking it must be some sort of preschool fashion trend, I bought her a pair with plain glass lenses. A week later, I picked Anna up from daycare and asked where her glasses were.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But they don’t work anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I still can’t read,” she sighed.

Ha!

Okay, I thought it was pretty funny.

How do we segue this into an offer? Let’s use the online marketing niche for our examples:

1: We could say something like, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could put on a pair of marketing glasses and suddenly know how to make sales on autopilot? This product is the next closest thing because…”

2: Or we could say, “As you see Anna took ‘reading glasses’ quite literally, which is exactly how I want you to take my guarantee on this product. I 100% absolutely, positively guarantee that when you follow the program, this is what will literally happen for you: …”

3: Perhaps we might go with, “Poor kid. Obviously, the glasses didn’t perform like the name, ‘reading glasses’ promised her. Have you ever purchased one of those, “Make X Money in X Days” programs, only to discover that what they really meant was, IF you have a website and IF you have a list and IF you have a product, then this will work?”

“Well with my $10,000 in 30 Days program, you don’t need any of that in place. In fact, you can be a total beginner and this program will still perform exactly as the name implies, with no catches and no disappointments.”

4: Last example: “I can’t promise you reading glasses, but I can do one better than that. This course will open your eyes to an entirely different way of thinking and doing business, resulting in you being more excited about your future than you have been since you were Anna’s age.”

All 4 examples need a little polish but you get the idea.

I took a random joke, typed it out and then came up with four segues into offers. Of course, there is no right or wrong way to do this and there are an infinite number of possibilities. In fact, if everyone reading this tried this exercise, we would have thousands of examples and no two would be exactly the same.

Here’s your assignment: Go online and find 3 jokes that make you chuckle or even laugh out loud. Copy and paste them into your writing program and then come up with 3 segues into any product you are currently promoting or plan to promote in the future. If you don’t have a product, make one up.

The point is to see that you can indeed use almost anything interesting or entertaining to begin your emails, and then segue that into the message you want to convey. It might not even be to sell something, but rather to teach a tip, make an announcement or simply remind them that you stand ready to help when they need it.

Taking this to the next level: Keep a file of everything that catches your eye, whether it’s humor, news, off-the-wall ideas or whatever, and dig through this file when you need an opener for your next email to your list.

Let me preface this by reminding you that the greatest selling tool in all the world isn’t the internet, or sales letters or sales videos or even word of mouth. It’s stories.

Stories sell like nothing else because we are hard wired to listen to and love stories. It’s in our genes. There was a time when storytelling could literally save our lives. Think of a primitive man coming back from a hunt and telling everyone in camp the story of how ‘Bob’ was killed by a saber tooth tiger in the sixth valley to the south.
Do you think anyone would venture into the sixth valley to the south after that? No way, because they knew the story of how Bob got killed by the tiger who lives there.
Now then, here’s how to get experts to practically write your blog posts for you AND get them to do it in story form:
Ask them a question that invites a personal story.
For example, your blog is about investing in commodities. This week you want a blog post on pork futures (I’m making this stuff up right now) so you send out an email to every commodities expert you know of, asking them about their most memorable pork futures story. It doesn’t matter if they made or lost money, you just want to hear their story. A dozen of them write back and you put those stories together into a post.
You’re doing a few things here:
First, you’re getting experts to weigh in on an interesting question, which means you get to ‘borrow’ on their credibility, making you look good to your readers and customers.
Second, you’re doing this in story form, and since people love stories, they are coming back to your blog every week for more of these stories.
Third, you’re building a relationship with these experts. Sure, some of them won’t respond to you, but others will be eager to share their stories. And down the road, who knows what might happen. They could end up promoting your product to their lists, or asking you to do a JV, or even becoming good friends with you.
Fourth, blog posts like these tend to get shared on social media which brings in more traffic.
Fifth, your experts might also share your posts with their followers. “Hey, my hog futures story is featured in this post, check it out.”
The trick here is to phrase your questions in such a way that it invites personal stories.
And don’t forget to ask your readers the same questions. Sometimes it’s the everyday guy or gal you don’t know who has the best story – the one that makes your article go viral or even get referenced on other major sites.

One little notebook could be worth a million dollars to you. Or more. Here’s how…

Keep track of everything you do and especially all of your ideas. When you start something new, keep a running record of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

Two things will happen:

First, you’ll have more and more ideas, and better ideas, too. The simple act of writing ideas down drives your subconscious to create more ideas. Review your ideas weekly and find the gems. Test out the best ones, choose one and run with it. It could be a million-dollar business.

Second, teach others how to do that business. If you find an awesome new way to build an email list, build your own lists and then teach others to do the same. If you discover how to launch a product from start to finish in 3 days, teach others to do the same.

Keep your notebook with you at all times. Write in it when the mood strikes, and even when it doesn’t. Resort to an online journal only when necessary. There’s something about the brain and handwriting connection that inspires more creative thinking than simply tapping keys.

So, do you have your million dollar journal yet?

If not, get one and get started.

Your future self will thank you for it!

Why is it when we want to be at our most creative and innovative, we resort to using the most worn-out cliché at our disposal? “We need to think outside the box on this one!”

Ugghhh.

First of all, that ‘box’ is there for a reason. It gives us boundaries and guidelines on what we want to accomplish. For example, if I say I want you to write an article on new ways small businesses can use social media, I’ve just given you a ‘box’.

But if I tell you to get to work and give you no idea what to do, you’re going to be totally and utterly lost.

Second, if we want to be more creative, let’s start by abolishing the “think outside the box” phrase and make a pact, just between you and me. From this point forward, if you or I say or write ‘th*nk o*ts*d* th* b*x’, we owe $5 to our favorite charity payable immediately.

Agreed? Good.

Now then, what can we say when we want to express our desire to think differently, get off the beaten track, search for an innovative approach, break new ground and take an imaginative leap?

Seriously, I’m asking you for your help on this one. Even the phrases I used in the previous sentence sound worn out and tired.

I did have one thought, but if you’re a Star Wars fan then you might not like it. For whatever reason, people seem to either gravitate towards Star Wars or Star Trek. I’m told Star Wars is for dreamers and Star Trek is for science geeks. This might be wrong, but I can see some truth to it.

Here’s what I do know: In the very first Star Trek series during the opening credits, we hear Captain Kirk saying…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before.” What do you think?

Can we boldly go where no one has gone before?

It beats thinking outside some cliché box.

Whoops! That’s $5 I owe… now where did I put that checkbook… 😉