Digital Ambition

In this episode, I lay out the basics for how to make money online when you don't have a product. But, it's also a fantastic episode for people who do have products and even established businesses, who might want to supplement their income with affiliate marketing.

To help make the point that you can create an entire online business with affiliate marketing and never need your own product ever, I take you inside the numbers of Pat Flynn's operation. This is a guy that did six figures in a single month off affiliate marketing alone.

This episode lays the foundation for future content that I'll be producing on affiliate marketing, so make sure you're subscribed to the email list if this is a topic that interests you.

Join the list at https://digitalambition.co/list/

Too many entrepreneurs are underpricing their products and services. The big problem with underpricing is that it actually turns away buyers – especially the best buyers.

During my trip to Ft. Myers, Florida I had three separate experiences where low prices almost made me not buy. I want to tell you about those to help drive home the thought process a buyer might go through and how your low prices might end up costing you the sale.

If you're wondering about your pricing or trying to find the confidence to charge more, you'll certainly be motivated to raise your prices after listening to this episode.

A lot of people messaged me after the podcast I did on doubling your sales with email marketing and told me they don't have enough email subscribers or consistent email list growth to double their sales with those tips.

So, I'm organizing a 30-day email list growth challenge. Except, we're not going to do it the wrong way like many do. Instead, we're going to focus on "bamboo-style" strategies (versus what I call "kudzu-style" strategies).

In this podcast I explain the difference between bamboo-style list growth and kudzu-style list growth, why you need to focus on profitability and not just raw numbers, and I officially announce my new 30-Day Bamboo-Style List Growth Challenge.

Sign-up for the challenge here – http://bamboochallenge.com

https://youtu.be/v-zwMVOQn-U

Yo, it's the first ever Whiteboard Wednesday episode! I'm going to show you the biggest mistake people make when they're first getting into online business and what to do instead.

*** MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE ***

Divi Website Builder » http://bit.ly/2oRoM8D

Convertkit » http://bit.ly/2D8zX1b

Siteground Website Hosting » http://bit.ly/2DaiaGL

Six-Figure SEO » http://bit.ly/2o3UOgv

Email marketing is still the number one digital channel for driving sales for most small businesses. But the "newsletter" days of email marketing are over. In this article, I'm going to cover email marketing best practices for growing your list and generating at least $1 in monthly revenue per email subscriber.

You wouldn't believe how many business owners I've coached who:

Don't have an email list.

Have an email list, but don't use it consistently.

Use it consistently, but are doing it all wrong.

#1 and #2 are a mystery to me when you consider how powerful email marketing is for accelerating people through the "know, like, and trust" process and for creating a predictable, steady flow of sales.

Having an email list that you use consistently, and use the right way, is basically like owning a printing press to the tune of at least $1 in monthly revenue per subscriber.

While I initially couldn't figure out why so many business owners were avoiding email marketing, it started to all make sense as I worked with more and more of them over time.

It's not that they're bad business owners who hate money, as you might think. It really boils down to two things:

They don't understand even the basics of email marketing.

They're intimidated by the whole process of email marketing. They just want to do what they already know.

By the end of this article, you're going to have a clear understanding of profitable email marketing best practices and have all the actionable insights you need to turn email marketing into your number one profit channel.

What Are You Trying to Accomplish with Email Marketing?

Before you get lost in the weeds, I want to make sure that you know what the big picture looks like. Understanding the big picture means knowing what you want to accomplish and then knowing how to get there from where you are now.

Here's how a lot of people think email marketing works:

Get people on your email list by any means necessary.

Send sales emails.

Sit back and watch your bank account balance grow.

Nah, slow your roll there, Magic Mike.

Doing email marketing the right way means approaching it with the right attitude. Here's what successful email marketing really looks like...

Get the right people on your email list with intelligent strategies.

Send emails with the right mix of entertainment and information to foster connection, trust, and community.

Earn money by getting people to invest in products and services that add value to their lives.

Doing email marketing the right way is one of the most legitimate and sustainable ways of making sales online. There shouldn't be a single shady thing about it.

And no, you're not going to annoy people. When you do email marketing the right way, people will love hearing from you. In fact, many will reply and encourage you to continue emailing them...

How do you get there from where you are now?

Wanting to do email marketing is different from actually doing it. The first step is to get over the intimidation and mindset noise (some of the intimidation comes from the tech side of things, too).

The second step is to start executing, even if that means taking baby steps. Here are the five basic steps...

Sign up with an email marketing service provider.

Start growing your list.

Commit to an effective email format and tone.

Email your list consistently.

Sell something in every email.

Now that you understand the overview, let's get into the weeds a little bit...

Best Practice #1: Use a [Legit] Email Marketing Service

If you want to send bulk emails to a list, you need to use an email marketing service.

Tom Woods is a successful entrepreneur. He runs tomwoods.com and happyearner.com.

He's authored 12 books and is a New York Times bestselling author. He's the host of two very successful podcasts, the Tom Woods show, and Contra Krugman.

Tom has been a huge inspiration to me, both in terms of business and in terms of advocating for liberty and free market economics.

I truly can't recommend his work enough and I appreciate the fact that he took the time to come on the show to share a ton of advice and wisdom for building a successful online lifestyle business.

As you'll hear, he's the prime example of what it means to be a lifestyle entrepreneur. And I think you're going to get a lot of inspiration out of hearing three specific things:

How Tom wasn't techy and had to figure out all the tech stuff himself in the early days – a huge barrier for a lot of people.

How, according to all the "experts," his first product idea was never going to succeed – but he hit a home run with it.

How, today, he gets to do some of his most important work from a sunny Florida beach.

This is a good one, Grinders.

TomWoods.com

HappyEarner.com

TomsFreeBooks.com

LibertyClassroom.com

To become an official member of the Six-Figure Grind tribe, text the word "grinding" to 444999.

Did you know that you can build a very successful online business, only to have it completely vanish overnight?

Did you know that this happens to thousands and thousands of people every year?

You can guard against this, though, by following one very important principle.

In this episode of the Six-Figure Grind Podcast, I'm going to teach you this principle and talk about the top 3 channels for long-term growth and stability.

You'll see how these three channels align perfectly with the important principle I'm going to teach you. And by the end of this episode, you'll have a sound strategy for where to focus most of your business building efforts.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments below.

Don't forget to rate and review this podcast on iTunes and make sure you're on my email list at https://digitalambition.co/list/

Also mentioned on the show: https://digitalambition.co/seoclass/

SEO (search engine optimization) is a huge industry.

If your site ranks well, you can get tens or even hundreds of thousands of qualified leads dumped into your lap with ZERO advertising dollars.

But most people don't know what SEO entails. They just know they want free traffic.

So, they hire an "SEO expert" to "work their magic" in the hopes that they'll be showered with traffic and sales.

Let's get one thing out of the way first: the people working in SEO who actually know what they're doing is a very small percentage of the total.

But even if you find a good SEO person, here's the first dirty little secret they won't tell you...

There is no way to guarantee strong rankings for any keyword.

Yes, even keywords that have relatively low competition.

See, the Google algorithm is not public. So being an expert in SEO means being an expert in a theory that's based simply on lots of trial and error combined with little breadcrumb clues given by Google.

That's not to say that investing heavily (either time or money) in SEO is not a good strategy. It absolutely is.

You just have to understand that SEO is a game of percentages. It's not like hiring a contractor to build a house.

A good contractor will end up with the house you want 100% of the time if they follow the blueprint.

A good SEO expert might get 1 out of 10 articles to rank well by following the blueprint.

But, compare that to the alternative...

A person who knows nothing about SEO might have to write 50 or 100 articles before Google actually picks something up and cares about it enough to put it on page one.

And their site might have to exist for 5x or 10x as long before Google decides to rank it better.

That brings us to the second dirty little secret...

Hiring an SEO expert only makes sense if you don't have *time* to do SEO yourself.

This isn't a talent/technical ability/skill/knowledge issue. It's only a time issue.

Why? Because you can learn how to do almost everything that SEO experts do in a very short amount of time and get great results.

I've done this myself with multiple sites. In fact, I took one site from scratch (zero traffic) to 200,000 visitors a month, in less than two years.

At one point, I had a single article pulling in close to 1000 visitors a day and sustained that for over three years.

By slapping a "content upgrade" on that article, I was able to convert 4.5% of that traffic to my email list – 45 new subscribers per day (1350 per month).

Since a good email list can generate $1 or more per email subscriber, I'm sure you can see how there's a direct payoff there.

That site was generating six figures in less than 18 months.

So here's the deal...

I don't want you to spend thousands of dollars on an SEO expert to try and get your site ranked. That doesn't make sense unless your business is killing it and you simply don't have the time to spend doing it yourself.

I also don't want you to waste a boatload of time and energy on efforts that don't actually generate targeted traffic to your site (which is also a waste of money because you're not bringing in as much revenue as you could be bringing in during this time).

If you want to get ranked on Google and want to drive thousands of targeted, free visitors to your site monthly, weekly, or even daily, then you need to enroll in my Six-Figure SEO Master Class.

I'm holding this class live on February 21st from 1p - 3p Eastern – it's two packed hours of SEO secrets and strategies (plus cheat sheets and checklists).

If you can't join us live, no worries. Everyone who enrolls will get full access to the recording,

Dana Lee is the owner of RealFit.tv, a website, membership platform, and bustling YouTube channel.

When Dana reached out for help with her YouTube and Facebook strategy in our Six-Figure Grind Facebook Group, I invited her on the show so we could share the value with everyone.

If you're in our Facebook Group, you need to be: https://digitalambition.co/group/

Links to Dana's stuff is here...

https://www.youtube.com/user/RealFitTv

http://realfit.tv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDwd-h5J_Yw&feature=youtu.be

If I hired a branding expert they'd probably tell me to rebrand "Six-Figure Grind."

They'd tell me to choose a name that doesn't highlight "the grind."

They'd say I need to choose a name that speaks to how accessible and easy this will be for people.

After all, I'm telling people they can build a lifestyle business that serves them as much as they serve it. And what does that even have to do with grinding?

I address this directly in my new video – https://youtu.be/IDwd-h5J_Yw

This isn't about creating fantasies and fairy tales.

If your thoughts aren't closely aligned with reality, all you're going to encounter is disappointment.

Watch the video. And if it resonates with you don't forget to like, comment, and share.