Word of Mouth Traffic

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When you build relationships, you hope people will shout the name of your business from the rooftops. You want them to tell absolutely everyone who is even remotely interested in your niche to visit your blog, follow you on social media, and invest in your products. This happens via word-of-mouth marketing.

You can’t force word-of-mouth marketing, but you certainly can encourage it. The first step in doing this is forming great relationships and getting people really excited about the things you’re doing. People are a lot more likely to check you out if they heard about you from a friend or trusted advisor. You can have all the ads, articles, and other content out on the web you want… but the unfiltered words of other people will always be more effective than all of those things combined.

That’s why, throughout this guide, I have spent a lot of time telling you to build relationships with everything you do in driving traffic and marketing. When you focus on relationships and really helping people, word-of-mouth marketing will sort of fall into place. You’ll have proven yourself as an expert and as someone who delivers on your promises.

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Make Money No Matter WHAT The Market Does

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This one is clever and a bit diabolical and frankly maybe I shouldn’t love it, but I do.

The gal who does this is specializing in the stock market, but this will work in any financial market. Think Bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies, every stock market, commodities market, gold and silver, rare coins… anything that people invest to make money.

Here’s what Jill did…

She bought several books on the stock market. These were current books that were published within the last couple of years.

She made lots of notes for herself and then she visited investing websites and made more notes.

Essentially, she was looking at two things: Why the experts said that NOW is the right time to invest in stocks, and why other experts said that now is the time to get OUT of stocks.

Then she made two products. Essentially each one is a 100 page report of her own, written in her own words but quoting the experts for credibility. Both reports are compelling and make some great points. One of course is something like, “Why you MUST get out of stocks RIGHT NOW before the great crash of 2022 and here’s what to invest in instead” and the other one is something like, “Why now is the best time in history to put everything you own into stocks and retire in 5 years as a super wealthy person” or something like that. You get the idea.

Next, she created two personas for herself, along with two squeeze pages, one for each point of view. She created two corresponding reports that essentially sell the new subscriber on purchasing one of the 100 page reports. She gave away the short report on how the market was about to crash, and in that report she sold the 100 page report.

She then bought traffic and sent it to each squeeze page. People opted in to get the free report and were immediately offered the upsell of the 100 page report for a small fee. If they didn’t immediately buy the 100 page report, then they received a series of emails reminding them to purchase it.

As you can see, she’s building two lists of people – one list that’s being told to buy stocks, and another list that’s being told to get out of stocks.

Naturally she can continue to promote financial products to both lists, and she’s doing that in spades.

But it gets even better, because inside each 100 page report are all kinds of affiliate links to investing services, expensive investing courses and other things.

And those affiliate links are earning her a sizable income each and every month.

Here’s the best part: You can do this in any investment type of niche. I think it would work great with cryptocurrency, commodities and so forth. Of course, you don’t have to take both sides, but I find it interesting that no matter what people think, she is reeling them into one funnel or another.

And in case you’re interested, the “Get out of investing” report is selling at nearly 2:1 compared to the “Invest now” report. Bad news truly does sell.

You could even do this in other niches. “Why diets are the worst thing to happen to us” and “Of all the popular diets, here’s the best one and why it works so fast.”

For online marketing, it might be, “Why ‘how to make money online’ courses are pure BS” and “How anyone with half a brain can make a decent living from their laptop.” Or some such… I think you know what I mean.

One thing to avoid is taking opposing positions in ONE product. For example, some marketers might think it clever to put the two reports together so that they can simultaneously give the reader both perspectives. Nope. All that will do is confuse the reader into analysis paralysis. They won’t know which way is up and so they won’t do (or buy) anything.

Plus, when you take one position or the other, you can then slant your emails in that direction as well to reconfirm what you’ve already taught them. Jill sends more negative emails to her “get out of stocks” list and more positive emails to her “buy stocks now” list and she’s converting like crazy.

As I see it, the entire key to Jill’s business model is taking a STRONG position for or against the topic at hand. People want to be told what’s going on and what to think. No, they won’t admit that, but you know it’s true. They would rather you do the thinking for them, and if you sound completely confident in your position, then they will be happy to follow you and your recommendations.

I guess it all boils down to standing for something rather than falling for anything. And in Jill’s case, she’s standing for BOTH sides of the issue, but without ever letting her audience know that.

Creating Lower Cost Products as Loss Leaders

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Have you ever gone into a store or restaurant because you received a coupon that was so good you just couldn’t pass the deal up? Maybe they were even giving something away for free. Or, maybe the discount was so fantastic on a product that you really wanted, and maybe even such a dramatic price drop, that you practically flew to the store the very minute you received the coupon.

Maybe you wondered how on earth the manufacturer or the store was able to give away such a fantastic deal. It was such a steal of a deal for you, that there’s no way they made money on the deal, right? You think about these things even more now that you’re a small business owner.

Well, you hit the nail on the head. They didn’t make money on the deal. If they did it right… they ended up making a lot more than they would have otherwise, though.

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Simple Trick to More Comments and Better Ranking

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Whether you’re trying to get more people to interact with your written content, such as your blog, or you want more people to leave comments on your videos, such as YouTube, here’s a trick that will make it happen.

Why do you want people to interact with your content? Because it will often give you a better standing in search. For example, part of YouTube’s algorithm is to look at how many comments your video gets. The more comments you have, the higher your video might rank in search.

And when you get your readers and viewers to interact with your content by leaving their own comment, you also increase their perceived ‘ownership’ of that content. They are more likely to share it on social media as well as view more of your content in the future.

Now then, how do you get comments?

The usual way is to simply ask, and that does work. “If you’ve enjoyed this video, please like and leave a comment.” Or… “Which do you prefer, chunky or smooth peanut butter? Please leave your comment below and let us know.”

Now here’s how you can take this simple technique of asking and double or even triple the number of responses you get as well as increasing the quality of those responses dramatically:

Make it into a contest.

At the end of your video or article, let them know that the BEST comment will get a free valuable gift.

Yes, this freebie might be one of your products, but it doesn’t have to be.

I was watching a YouTube video of a gal talking about a certain kind of jewelry. She was wearing one of these necklaces throughout the video, and at the end she said she would send this necklace to the person who posted the best comment.

What a great idea! This necklace is something every viewer has been looking at and admiring for the entire video, and now they’re told they can OWN it?

And it gets even better, because at the very beginning of the video she said, “Stay tuned to find out how YOU can receive THIS necklace in the mail.”

This no doubt increased the average viewing time her video received because people were sticking around to find out how to get the necklace.

And the reward was very specifically targeted to the exact audience who would want the reward, since the video was about this specific type of jewelry.

The cost to her? I doubt it was more than $10. And yet there was a true element of scarcity because in this case the necklace was vintage (approximately 50 years old) and not something people could buy at their local store.

What I love about this is that the prize would be physically mailed to the recipient. Because it was lightweight the postage wouldn’t cost much regardless of what country it would be sent to.

And scrolling through her comments it was obvious that people really were going for the gold in trying to have the most interesting, wittiest or most helpful comment of everyone there.

She uses this technique with many of her videos, which gives her an immediate bump in views from her regular audience as well as a ton of comments. Views in the first 24 hours are especially important on YouTube to help with getting your video seen by more people.

She states in the description below the video that she will choose the winner in 30 days. But since she does not show the date the video went live, she continues to get more and more comments even when her videos have been up for months. She also uses this reward system to encourage viewers to become subscribers so they know when she posts a new video, too.

Depending on your niche, you might have to get creative to make this work for you. If you have electronic products, then the key is to offer something of high value, like a course you sell for at least a couple hundred dollars.

If you teach dog training, maybe you could give away adorable handmade dog sweaters. Let your own dog be the model. If you have a book, then that could be your prize.

Try this on your next couple of videos and watch the magic happen in the comments section.

How to Survive a Recession

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As I write this, we’re on the precipice of a nasty recession, maybe worse than 2008 and maybe even worse than 1929.

At this point we don’t know, but better to plan ahead than to put your head in the sand, right?

But not only do many people have businesses which survive recession, millionaires and even billionaires are created,

Always have, always will.

Conrad Hilton made his fortune by buying up hotels at recession-prices because he knew that a boom always follows a bust, even if it takes a while.

If you’ve seen the excellent movie The Big Short you’ll know that Michael Burry made his fortune shorting the sub-prime housing market.

But let’s get REAL…

You and I probably don’t have the capital to buy hotels, or the financial wisdom to see bubbles in the market let alone the balls to gamble everything we have on a stock market hunch.

So, we need to work smart, work on a budget and work differently to the crowd if we want to not only survive the coming recession but profit from it too!

Let’s get straight to the meat and bones…

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