Uncategorized

I want to be clear right up front – there is NO stealing required to do this. In fact, professionals have been doing this exact same thing forever, or at least since people have been creating stories, content and so forth.

I’ll give you some movie examples:
Bridget Jones Diary (2001) is really a modern version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Clueless (1995) is based on Jane Austen’s Emma.
Cruel Intentions (1999) is a modern version of Pierre Choderlos de Lacios’ Les Liasons Dangereuses (1792).
Pretty Woman (1990) is based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, as is She’s All That (1999).
10 Things I Hate About You (1999) is really Shakespeare’s play, Taming of the Shrew, in disguise.
Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, The Hidden Fortress, only in space.
In fact, I would wager that at least 9 out of 10 Hollywood movies are based on stories from other movies or books. And yet these movies earn millions of dollars. So, the question is, is it ethical or legal to ‘borrow’ other people’s ideas?
Yes!
It’s a fact that you can’t copyright an idea. All the best artists (who are honest) will even admit they steal like crazy, which is what makes their art so awesome.
There is no need to continuously reinvent the wheel. The wheel was invented once, and ever since then people have copied that idea onto their own products, whether it was for wheelbarrows, carts, carriages or cars. Using other people’s ideas (not their work) is 100% legal, ethical and even required if we are to move forward as a society.
Now let’s say you’ve run across a 50-page ebook on how to do something. You cannot copy the actual writing, the author’s name or the cover of the book. But you can use the idea of the ebook to create your own.
West Side Story and Disney’s High School Musical used a famous playwright’s plot in their stories. Can you think what that might have been?
A little play called Romeo and Juliet.
So that book on driving traffic that inspired you to use the method yourself… you can’t copy that book and sell it. But you can write your own. Or record your own videos. Or offer a coaching program that teaches the method. As long as you do not use the author’s copyrighted stuff such as their writing, their screenshots, their images and so forth, you can write up the method as your own and sell it as much as you want to.
And if you’ve used the technique taught in the material yourself, which hopefully you have, then you can speak with authority on the subject.
If this makes you uncomfortable, then the solution is simple: Don’t do it. Instead, take something from an entirely different niche and adapt it to your own niche.
For example, you read a great book on dog training and you realize that many of the techniques in that book could work equally as well on your three-year old. So you try it out and sure enough, you’ve gotten your three year old to stop screaming when she wants attention, to eat her food when you give it to her, to follow your simple instructions without throwing a tantrum and so forth.
Yes, I’m probably going to get emails from people who are upset I equated training a puppy with training a child… 😉 The point is that what you learn in one area of life can often be used in other areas as well.
Take a look at the millions of how to books out there and find something you can adapt to an entirely different niche, and you’ll have all the inspiration you need to create unique products without having to be brilliant yourself.
Although incidentally, people will think you are brilliant.

Setting aside every self-help book out there, I’d like to propose the theory that there is ONE thing you need to be successful, and that you are already in possession of this thing. You just don’t know it yet.

Ten years ago two marketers started their online journey. They both endured similar pitfalls and setbacks. One went on to make millions. The other one failed miserably and works a 9 to 5 job. What made the difference?

The mind-flip.

Imagine you have a switch in your brain, and every time you have any kind of setback whatsoever, you flip that switch into finding the positive in it. No, I’m not talking about pie-in-the-sky rainbows and magic pink unicorn thinking. I’m talking about flipping your own switch because no one else is going to do it for you.

Instead of getting discouraged, angry or sad, find the good or the lesson in everything that normally gets you down. This is called resilience. We’re told to be resilient, to bounce back from defeat and just keep moving, but no one tells us how to do that. So, let me try, and see if this resonates with you.

You get an angry email from a customer. Yeah! This is your chance to make it right while also finding out if there is perhaps a flaw in your product. What an awesome thing to have happen! Your formerly angry customer now understands what happened, they’re thrilled with the attention you paid to them and how you resolved the issue, and you have feedback on how to improve the way customers use your product.

You have trouble with your website. Yeah! Now you get to call your host or your website builder or whoever and let them show you what awesome service they provide. You’re not happy with the result? Yeah! Now you have the perfect reason to go find a new host or webmaster who will make you happy!

You dropped that dish of spaghetti on the floor? Yeah! You’ve been meaning to clean the floor for weeks and this is the perfect motivation to get it done. Now look at it shine!

You missed the light and now you have to wait 3 minutes to get through the intersection? Yeah! If you had made the light, perhaps you would have been involved in a fatal accident that you’ve now missed!

Does all of this sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But your experience is exactly what you make it. I once went camping with a friend. As we arrived, it started to rain and it didn’t stop raining for two days and two nights. Yeah! I took it as a challenge and it was one of my best vacations ever. I sang in the rain, danced in the rain, hiked in the rain and listened to the rain on my tent as I fell soundly asleep each night.

My friend, however, decided to be miserable the entire time. He grumbled, complained, got angry, picked fights and spent the entire time wishing he was someplace else. He also wasn’t too happy that I didn’t share his attitude, but oh well! 😉 We shared the same experience, and yet it was positive for me and horrible for him. The only difference was how we chose to view what was happening.

I might be oversimplifying here, but when you boil it all down, I think the only difference between the successful person and the failure is resilience. Look for the bright side of everything. Sure it’s a cliché, but it is a fact that your experience is what you choose it to be.

Have you ever felt sad or depressed about something, and then you drank some coffee or you took a walk, and then felt 10 times better about it? The situation didn’t change – you did. And once you have the positive mindset, you can move forward and do whatever it is that needs to be done.

Here are 9 tips for flipping your mindset to the positive side of life:

Play Opposites – When you think a negative thought such as, “I hate getting on these Zoom meetings,” ask yourself, “What if the opposite were true?”

Friends – Support groups are wonderful for helping you to build this resilience. Talk it out and help each other to see the positives. If they insist on being negative – and let’s face it, some people revel in negativity – then get a new support group.

Greatest Hits – When you’re feeling down about yourself or your abilities, think about times when you did awesome things that totally worked for you.

Self-care – Get enough sleep and eat well. Exercise. All of these things will help you to stay positive and keep moving forward in your business and in your life.

Is it True? – When you notice your negative thoughts are spiraling out of control, ask yourself if those thoughts are true. 9 times out of 10 you’ll realize the negative thoughts are a distortion and out of touch with reality.

Acceptance – Instead of negatively judging yourself for being pessimistic, accept your current mindset and stop fighting it. Then set it aside and move on.

Humor – Can’t find the positive in the situation? Then pretend 5 years have gone by and you’re telling someone the story of what just happened. Find the funny in it and make your friend laugh.

Use Your Power – You always – ALWAYS – have the power to choose how you will view circumstances. Maybe right now you choose to feel bad, but realize that is indeed your choice. Try choosing to feel just 1% better and see what happens.

Body Language – Emotions follow the body and not the other way around. When you force yourself to smile, stand tall and raise your arms overhead in a victory gesture, you feel better. Even holding a pencil sideways in your mouth will activate your smile muscles and improve your mood.

Now I know that some people reading this will have a strong rebuttal for me that goes like this: “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, my life is upside down and people are getting sick and even dying. How am I supposed to mind shift into positivity?”

All of that is 100% true. But can you think of a better or more important time in your life to practice resilience and find the good in everything you possibly can?

The next time something is getting you down, go take a walk. Or play your favorite music. Or pet your dog or talk to someone. Taking a break is a good thing because it gives you the perspective you sometimes need to keep moving forward.

Practice flipping the switch in your brain each time things don’t go the way you planned. This life-skill will see you through the tough times and ensure massive success in the good times.

Flip the switch. Know that resilience is your strongest defense. Find the positive. I promise you that it’s there somewhere. And smile, because no matter what it is, this too shall pass.

This is a part time business that quite literally requires no specialized knowledge, and you don’t even need a product. One thing you do need is just enough people skills to build rapport over the phone, Skype, Zoom or whatever mode of communication you choose.

I know a guy who is doing this part time and based on my own math he seems to be making about $4,200 a month doing this 2 hours a day. He charges his clients $35 a week for a 20 minute phone call, and he books about 6 clients per day during his lunch break and after work. And he takes his weekends off, too.

Have you guessed what he does? If you said coaching, you’re right. But this is a rather narrow, specialized coaching niche. He calls himself an accountability coach. He lets his clients tell him what they’re going to accomplish over the next seven days. He asks what their plan is to get it done. He points out potential problems and asks the client how s/he will deal with them if they arise. Basically, he asks a lot of questions and once in a while he gives a little advice.

Then when he calls them the following week, they have to be 100% honest and tell him exactly how much they did or did not get done. Personality-wise he comes across as a father-figure, and his clients don’t want to disappoint him so they get busy and do what they need to do.

He bills weekly automatically with Paypal because he says that when they see that money come out of their account every week, it’s a reminder that they need to get in gear. He tried billing monthly but his clients would just relax for three weeks and then get busy in the fourth week. He says he doesn’t exactly understand the psychology of why weekly billing works better than monthly but that it doesn’t matter to him as long as his clients are getting results and he’s getting paid.

He has a full-time job but he does have some flexibility. He does some calls during the day and the rest in the evening when he gets home. He’s firm about only having 30 clients a week because he says more than that is too much. And he’s got a waiting list of people who want him to be their accountability coach.

He’s strict with his clients about being ready to receive his call. As much as possible, he lets the client choose the day and time for the weekly standing phone appointment. He explains to them that they MUST be available at that time to talk to him, no exceptions allowed. He doesn’t care if their house is on fire, they better answer the phone when he calls.

When I asked him how he arrived at $35 a week, he said it seemed to hit a sweet spot for clients. At first he was charging too little ($20) and the clients weren’t taking the call all that seriously. Then he went overboard in the other direction and charged too much ($100) and the clients usually canceled after a couple of weeks, if they signed up at all.

He was once referred to a potential client who desperately wanted his help but $35 was out of reach. Obviously this person’s first goal was to make more money. Since he doesn’t charge for the initial consultation anyway, here’s what he told the new client:

“Our next call is in 7 days. Right now you’re going to tell me 5 ways you could add an extra $100 a week to your income starting this week. Then you and I are going to choose one of those 5, and you’re going to tell me your plan for making it happen.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Within a week that man had a new income stream, and within a month he was making an extra $1,000 a month. 9 months later he quit his job and opened his own small business, all thanks to having an accountability coach.

You probably need a certain personality to make this work. If people naturally look up to you or naturally want to please you, then this might be an idea for some part time income. Goodness knows there are plenty of people who just need a weekly fire lit underneath them along with some encouraging words to help them reach their goals.

Have I told you lately how much I LOVE recurring income? Here’s a case study about a guy who has not one, but FOUR different newsletters that he puts out twice per month.

These are super simple newsletters that contain all the latest stuff he’s found on the internet about the topics. How in the world does he find all the latest news, articles, blog posts, stories, video clips, photos and so forth?

Google alerts.

Yup, it’s that easy.

He creates a dozen or so Google alerts for keywords and phrases for each niche and Google spoon feeds him all of his content for free. In some cases he asks for permission to reprint a post or article. For other things he simply rewrites it into his own words. And even more often he’ll provide an intro and then a link to the video, article or whatever.

Seriously, this does not take a lot of time or brain power. His strong point is he chooses topics that he’s interested in so that it never becomes boring to him.

I asked him if I could share his newsletter topics with you, but he was pretty firm in saying no. But what I can tell you is all 4 of them are not things you might think of off the top of your head. And that makes sense.

The BIG topics are already covered on millions of websites, videos, articles, magazines and so forth. It’s the little sub-niche specialized topics where people are craving more info and not wanting or even knowing how to hunt it down themselves.

I’ll give you an example: Cats and dogs are EVERYWHERE. No one really needs to subscribe to a newsletter to read articles on cats and dogs. But sloths… now there’s a much smaller niche that isn’t covered nearly as much as more popular pets. Or how about iguanas? Sugar babies? Or tarantulas?

If you insist on choosing a big niche, then sub-niche it down. Instead of cats, focus on the care of cats with a certain illness (diabetes, kidney disease, etc.) or a certain breed of cat.

What should you charge for a curated newsletter? In most niches, $10 or less works well. This makes it super easy for people to sign up and there’s almost no incentive to stop the subscription.

Let your readers send you articles and photos of their own for your newsletter. Put in a classified ad section, too. People think it’s hard to create a newsletter, but the fact is you don’t even need to have an original thought to do it. Between curated content from the internet and submissions from your readers, all you have to do is assemble the newsletter, save it to PDF and send it out to your subscribers. You don’t even need a membership site to do this.

Don’t want to do a newsletter? Create a podcast or video subscription instead.

You can get new subscribers by striking deals with blogs and list owners in the niche. Because these are smaller niches, it’s far easier to get people to mail for you for a small fee or sometimes even for free if they really love your newsletter.

This is a model that will never die, takes a minimum of work and even builds you a list. You can promote products to your list above and beyond the newsletter. In many niches the money you make from promoting products will double your income from subscriptions, so why not?

And by the way, that $3,500 a month figure is from just ONE of his newsletters. Remember, he’s got 4 of them.

Make a list of topics that interest you, no matter how weird or even obscure. Choose one that has an active audience you can reach. Create a sample newsletter, contact people in the niche and get your first subscribers. This almost sounds too easy, doesn’t it? Then again, many of the best ideas are the simple ones.

Imagine a squeeze page that takes you 20 minutes to put together, including the lead magnet. Imagine this page converts at something close to 71%. And now imagine you can buy unlimited traffic to your squeeze page because the paid traffic pays for itself.

How many new subscribers would you like today? This week? This year?

The key to a high converting squeeze page is to offer something so ridiculously good, people are more than eager to enter their email address to get that prized item. You could offer an outstanding resource of some kind, or a huge bundle of books, or maybe a hot plugin or piece of software.

Or… what if you take a product you have lying around, such as a course you’ve been selling for $197, and offer a coupon for a 90% discount on that course? Of course you need their email address to send them the coupon, so it just makes sense they would fill out your form to get it.

Then you send them to the actual sales page with their coupon. They get to see that everyone else is paying $197 while they’re only paying $19. That should make them pretty happy AND immediately set you up as an authority in their eyes, since it is your course they’re buying.

Don’t have a big product of your own? Use quality PLR and a weekend to create one. The point is to have a REAL product that sells for a high price and then offer a crazy discount coupon like 90% or 95% off.

People enter their email address to get the coupon. Some of them use that coupon to immediately buy the course. Others purchase the course sometime during the following week, as you remind them that their coupon is expiring soon and they’re going to miss the deal of a lifetime.

Now you’ve got new subscribers and enough income to continue buying traffic for as long as you choose because the purchases of your course – even at 90% off – are paying for the advertising.

Just remember the deal you’re offering has to be irresistible to new subscribers. Your goal here isn’t to make money, it’s to pay for the advertising that’s building your list. Once they’re on your list, then you can start making profit when you offer them other products.