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Yesterday’s Hotseat Session was a good one with several “gold nuggets” to recap and dig into a bit deeper. In today’s analysis we’re going to recap and cover:
- How to monetize a typically non-buying niche
- How to handle your routine (how to maximize productivity)
- Ideal website layout (conversion optimization)
- Extra points on SEO (linkbuilding)
- Other ways to promote your website (Quora & Facebook Groups)
FIMP Hotseat Session #1 Transcript Below
What’s going on, FIMP supporters?
We’ve got some pretty darn good material from yesterday, all things considered. Especially considering for the first hotseat session, it was kind of a shit show, unfortunately. Lots of technical difficulties – my internet went out (which it never does), but whatever. Nice thing is in the day-after analysis, you don’t have to deal with any of that.
We had on Juan and Darren from the group, and both conversations stuck, overall, because of where they are in their journeys – kind of really early stage; but even despite that, we got some really, really good information out of that.
That’s what we’re going to recap today. I’m going to try and go as quickly as possible to keep this as concise, but there’s a lot of good information here so it’s not like it’s going to be a short video. I’m just going to do my best to communicate efficiently and not get too long-winded, okay? But I want to make sure I deliver on this value for you.
The “golden nuggets” that kind of bubbled to the surface throughout the conversation yesterday were: how to monetize a typically non-buying niche, how to handle your routine (how to be more productive), your ideal website layout – which I really dug in there to conversion optimization and stuff that’s taken me years of testing and studying and just learning overall to come up with (which I’m going to share in detail and demonstrate today), extra points on SEO beyond the FIMP training – we dug really deep but we’re going to dig even deeper and I’m going to really share some great resources in this analysis videos, and other ways to promote your website.
It’s a lot of content but it’s some really, really, really good stuff. Some of it will be applicable to your journey right now, some of it will be applicable to your journey 6 months from now, but it’s good to have it all in mind, at the very least, because the more you can see those things coming down the road, the better you can prepare for them and just the better you’re setting yourself up for success.
I will say the number 1 (how to monetize…), number 2 – we’re going to recap pretty briefly. But number 3, 4 and 5 – we’re going to really dig in much further than we touched on in the session yesterday because that’s what this membership is all about (getting you those extra insights, that extra strategy advice, all that stuff to really equip you for success). That’s my way of saying thank you for supporting FIMP.
Let’s dig in!
How to monetize a typically non-buying niche – a non-buying audience?
My advice would be flat out don’t. You know, I’m not trying to be harsh. One asked this, it was a very valid question. He said: “hey, I’m perfectly okay with this being a 5 or 10 month long journey”. And that’s fine, that’s good. I’m glad he was in that mindset because the path he was on – that was absolutely the case. But I think there’s a better way to approach it. You don’t have to starve yourself. If you do this the correct way, it can be much less painful, I think.
I will, personally, only enter a niche if I feel like I can get it to be profitable within 12 to 18 months. In really high-competition niches, I would consider 24 months before I’m kind of breaking even. Anything outside of that, I’m not going to enter. I’m certainly not going to enter a niche where I think: “hey! 5, 10 years down the road, this might be really profitable”.
I would really like any website that I build and I do a lot of content marketing and stuff be at least somewhere in the $5,000 to $10,000 range by the end of the second year – so, by 24 months out.
I’d like it to be in the $5,000 to $10,000 range per month – which means I’m entering some pretty competitive spaces, right? Because there are some spaces that are never even going to have that kind of potential.
At the same time, I just feel like if you’re going to go into a niche expecting to become an authority with kind of that long term vision and that long term game plan, which is totally valid – websites can be really, really, really good for that to establish yourself as an authority so that you can publish books and be a speaker that kind of goes on a speaking circuit, and stuff like that. That can be incredibly lucrative, and websites are an excellent tool for that.
But I would recommend getting at least one or two profitable websites on your belt before you take that route (if that’s something you’re interested in), just because it’s going to make it so much easier on you.
You’re going to learn so much, that’s going to help you achieve success even faster with that site that you’re trying to use to prop you up as an authority in that industry. On top of that, it’s nice to not starve while you’re building these things.
In addition to everything else, it gives you money to reinvest in your future business, right? Whereas, if you’re starting it today and you’re thinking: I’m 5 to 10 years out on this timeline, it’s got a big payoff.
But if you can hire team members to help you write content and take care of some of those daily tasks, you’re going to have a higher life satisfaction and you’re going to also have a lot more time.
Above all else, you’re just going to be so much more productive if you have those resources to invest in the business. You’re just setting yourself up for success all around, in that sense.
That’s my advice there. I, personally, wouldn’t ever go into a non-buying audience where I was trying to kind of gain mass appeal within that niche. Frankly, I just wouldn’t go the route of trying to become the long term, big, go-to authority within a space – that’s not my cup of tea, right?
Personally, that’s not what internet marketing is about. Internet marketing is about building websites, and seeing pretty quick ROI, and hopefully transitioning that into passive income fairly quickly after that.
It’s a trade off. It’s definitely a valid approach, not necessarily something that I would recommend. I think most people watching this video would kind of go: “oh! 5 or 10 years? No way! I’m not in it for that.” And I’m right there with you. Just worth mentioning. Okay?
The next topic we discuss that I think is worth talking about briefly is: to set a routine, or not to set a routine?
You will find that most successful people… and you can read about tons of different very wealthy people’s routines. It’s published online. There are infographics that are really cool – show which ones are morning people, which ones are night owls. There’s a lot of variety there and some really good resources where you can look that up and kind of test those out and see what works for you.
Personally, I’m not much of a rigid routine guy but I have found as I’ve had more responsibilities in my business because I’m making more money, I’m juggling more tasks, I have somewhat settled into somewhat of a routine; but it’s kind of free form, it’s kind of in blocks. I get up, used to, I’d get straight to work and I found that that got really depressing over time because everyday I woke up I just had this sense of dread.
So, I wake up, I kind of make myself a cup of coffee, whatever. You have to test it to find out what works for you. But typically, largely speaking, you want to do your most important tasks first because (the science have proven this) that’s when your cognitive resources are most easy to draw upon.
If you leave those big tasks that are usually very dreadful, as much as it sucks, you want to get those knocked out first thing in the morning because that’s when you’re freshest, that’s when your brain is most ready to go, most capable, working the fastest, etc.
If you leave that for the end of the day, you’re either going to end up pushing it off to the next day (I’ve done that a billion times in my own internet business over the years) or you’re just going to end up doing really sloppy work for something that’s a really, really important task.
It’s referred to as “eat that frog”, right? Just get up and eat that frog. Just go for it and get it out of the way while your mind is fresh because that’s typically very, very important work, okay?
If you’re not into routines, general advice: like I just said, get up and do your most important things first and as the day goes on… you know, a lot of us have the tendency to get up and answer emails first because it’s an easy way to ease into the day.
But again, science supports that that’s actually better towards the end of the day because you can answer emails with a pretty fried out brain but you can’t write really good sales copy with a fried brain, right? Just keep those things in mind.
The other thing is at least integrate some essential practices that help your brain work optimally. There are several of them. Two that I found very helpful in my own business are meditation (I mentioned this yesterday) and regular exercise. Both things are things that people have a lot of trouble integrating and sticking with when they first get started.
One thing is: if you have some pretty conception about meditation being religiously affiliated or that it violates some religious belief, you need to revisit it. It’s scientifically proven (even on a secular level), no spirituality tied to it to really help boost happiness and productivity. Period. It just helps you corral your brain a little bit better, stay more focused, not get distracted as easily. Okay?
Again, there is firm science to prove this. Don’t write off meditation just because you think it’s some woo woo crap. It’s very, very, very beneficial, even just 10 minutes a day. There’s a really good introductory book for that called 8 Minute Meditation.
Also, exercise. I know it’s tough. Personally, I’ve struggled with a lot of depression in my life. Just having to do with the upbringing that I had and I’m genetically predisposed to it as well.
I have found that exercise helps me tremendously. And even if you’re not prone to depression (again scientifically backed), when you exercise, your brain stays more chemically balanced. You have better impulse control over your emotions, better control over your motions overall, and just much healthier general well-being. Of course, more energy and stuff like that too. But your happiness goes up a lot and you’re just more stable rather than having this ups and downs.
If you’re not exercising regularly, I highly recommend it. I don’t want to dig too much into this but if you want to get into these, there’s a really good book – all peer-reviewed scientific data. Everything in this book, I think he shares 7 rules. John Medina shares 7 rules in this book that help you optimize your brain’s productivity and functionality, etc.
Another one is if you can’t get a midafternoon nap (it’s scientifically backed), just 20 or 30 minutes. It’s a really, really good read, pretty easy read overall, and pretty skimmable. You can just pick up those points pretty easily and if you want to read more about a bunch of scientific data – that’s in there.
I highly recommend that. That’s been very helpful for me. But at the very least, if you’re not going to set a routine, do some things that are scientifically proven to help you boost your productivity because you will get a lot more out of everyday and you will be a lot happier overall – which I can’t overemphasize the importance of that as an individual business owner and as an entrepreneur: if you aren’t happy, your business suffers tremendously. So, pay attention to those things.
Ideal website layout. After I go through this side, we’re going to hop over and I’m going to demonstrate some of this. I’ll talk about it abstractly and then we’ll talk about it… I’ll show it to you on one of my own websites.
Granted, this is skipping ahead a little bit, right? If you’re just starting your website, this is not something you need to start implementing right now, but it’s a good thing to have in mind down the road.
Just as I taught in the original, the foundational FIMP training: always keep things crisp, keep them clean, keep them easy to navigate – universal rules, okay?
Don’t just plaster your website with banners (I talked about this on the webinar yesterday). People have a tendency to go on the right hand side – banner, banner, banner, banner, banner and they’re recommending like 5 or 7 or even just 3 different products and that’s actually really bad for your website. It’s horrible for conversions.
No matter what you’re doing, keep conversions as your number 1 priority. Conversion optimization should be above all else. The purpose of a website is not to look pretty. It doesn’t matter if you’re a corporate business, it doesn’t matter if you’re an affiliate marketing, eCommerce, it does not matter. The purpose of your website is to convert. End of story. Okay?
A lot of people get super caught up in design and all these graphics – none of that means anything unless your website is converting. That should be priority number 1.
This means having one, clear, consistent call-to-action throughout the entire page and typically throughout an entire section of your website. I’ll talk a little bit more about that as I show the example. That doesn’t mean you have to have one call-to-action across your entire website.
Typically when you have a lot of content on a website, it will kind of have this silos and even if all of them have the exact same call-to-action, they may be talking to different audiences; and those different audiences may have different hot buttons and different ways that they need to be funneled in to convert effectively, different emotional triggers, different buying needs, etc.
Most importantly, take home message here is keep your call-to-action consistent. Don’t have 3 or 5 banners on the right hand side. Don’t recommend: “hey, you could try this product, but you could also try this product, you could try this product, too. They’re all really good.” – that’s not good. It’s not good.
People (again scientifically proven), when given too many options, just fail to make a decision. They just decide: “This is too cognitively tasking – I’m walking away, not making any decision.” Malcolm Gladwell studied that in his book called Blink and he shares his insights there.
There’s a really good TED talk about it too… I can picture the guy… But anyways… Actually, it might be… I think it’s Malcolm Gladwell, himself, gives a talk about pasta sauces and how when faced with the decision between two pasta sauces, regular and chunky, people made decisions; when faced with the decision of like seven or eleven pasta sauces, they just went: “I’m not doing this”, and they just walked away, emotionally scarred. Same thing applies to your website. Keep those things in mind.
The best thing I found over years for testing: almost picture it like setting nets to catch fish, right? You’re going to set several different nets. A combination, they all have the same call-to-action; but a combination of in-text links, call-to-action buttons throughout the content – throughout the post, and a scrolling banner that follows the user. And I’ll talk about how to do that too.
I want to hop out really quickly and show you what this looks like in practice. You can see here, this is on StoppingScams.com and this is a survey site review.
This survey site is kind of known for sometimes screwing their users – you know, doing real fun things like that. Obviously, this is a negative review and I’m referring them to one of their competitors that, overall, is much better. They pay out more, they’re much more dependable, much more reputable, better variety, etc.
Someone coming to research a paid survey site is essentially saying: “hey, this one that I was interested in isn’t very good, I’m going to go check out this one instead.” Throughout this post, you will see in-text links to Swagbucks – the one I’m promoting. I even have this comparison tables that they can click this button. I have the scrolling banner that I mentioned. And I have these, in content, CTA buttons, these call-to-action buttons, okay?
I have tracking on each one of these links. This is my number 1 most clicked link. My number 2 most clicked link. The comparison tables are the number 3 because there’s one up top and there’s also one down towards the bottom. Number 3 are the comparison tables. Number 4 are the in-text call-to-action buttons. And number 5 is the banner on the right hand side. Okay?
It doesn’t matter which one you click. I can click this one. It takes me to Swagbucks landing page through my affiliate link. I can click this one – same thing. I can click this one. They have different tracking for each one of them so that I know which are performing the best. But each one of them goes to the exact same place, right?
I have the same consistent call-to-action, and this exact same template and formula is applied to all of my paid survey reviews – whether it’s mysurvey (which is what this one is), whether it’s VIP voice, whether it’s YouGov. These are all paid survey sites. The exact same elements are on every single page.
But, obviously, StoppingScams is not primarily a paid survey review site. I have a lot of internet marketing and affiliate marketing training reviews. I have a lot of content about how to, and lessons, and learning. And so, those have a very different funnel, right?
I’m not going to pass all those people in the paid survey, they’re not going to convert as well. I’m not going to pass the paid survey people into this kind of general make-money-online through affiliate marketing funnel because that’s a lot more effort, that’s a very different audience, okay?
So, that’s what I talked about where we talk about these silos. My calls-to-action remain consistent across those silos – the template, the elements are very similar across all of them if not pretty much exact copies. It’s highly effective.
This is something, like I said, took me so much testing over the years. I think it’s something like 25% of people that find their way to this post – 20-25% click one of these links. That’s a really big deal. If I didn’t have all of these elements, I may be getting 3% or 5% or 10%. But over time, I’ve tested all of these things.
So, when Darren asked about the ideal layout – it has to do with conversion optimization, it’s going to look a whole lot like this. It doesn’t matter if I’m on StoppingScams or if I’m on another one of my affiliate websites, I apply these elements and a scrolling banner that’s really attractive and tempting with a really good message across all of my websites.
I can’t tell you… you can write this off, you can overlook this, you can think: “that’s a small little thing.” I could double a lot of affiliate’s conversions just by applying these principles to their website, okay?
There are guys out there making 5 grand a month that could be making 10 grand, 12 grand, 15 grand a month, if they just apply these elements. Conversion optimization is huge, it’s something I was forced to get very good at, at one point in my journey because I had a huge traffic drop but I needed to figure out how to make the same amount of money from a fifth as much traffic.
Take it for what it’s worth. You can blow it off if you want, I wouldn’t recommend it because this is the kind of thing that makes you a very, very profitable internet marketer versus a guy down the road.
I just want to talk about the plugin I use to make that widget scroll. If you’re a programmer or if you know a good programmer that knows CSS (which is a programming language, stands for Cascading Style Sheet), they can do this very, very easily and it won’t be quite as buggy. This plugin can be a little bit buggy.
Whenever you’re adding a widget in WordPress, obviously, you have something that looks like this. What happens when you install the Q2W3 Fixed Widget plugin (totally free) is you get this little check box, and you just check it and you say: fixed widget. And from then on, it follows your user like this. Okay? So, just worth mentioning.
You’ll notice also that I don’t have a ton of banners around my site. I don’t have a banner up here. I don’t have 3 banners over here with completely independent calls-to-action. I have one consistent call-to-action across the board.
I’m going to stop repeating myself but take that for what it’s worth – very, very valuable advice. I can’t overemphasize that. Make lots of money, blah, blah, blah. Let’s keep going, alright?
Onto the next golden nugget from yesterday.
Recommended “extra efforts” for SEO. This was a very good question, again, by Darren. If you’re going to put more effort into SEO beyond on-page optimization that’s taught in the FIMP foundational training, you should be focusing it on links. Period. All there is to it. If you’re focusing on anything else that has to do with the SEO, it should be links.
There are people out there that are idiots, as far as I’m concerned, that say links are dead, you should stop linking, links are too risky. It’s true that they are risky. Goggle will penalize you if you do it wrong. I can’t overemphasize that. You have to be very careful, and very well-educated, and very conservative if you build links these days. But that does not mean you should stop building links.
If you’re going to focus time outside of content marketing, content creation and on-page SEO (which I emphasize a billion times in the foundational training), that’s enough. You don’t have to do this. But if you are going to invest more time in SEO, put it in the links. Be careful doing it, okay?
Don’t put it in… there are some of that will recognize this… I’m calling out a specific product and it blows my mind. Don’t emphasize getting comments on your website. It would be idiotic for Google to make it so that their algorithm was heavily dependent on something as easily gamed as comments. It just doesn’t make sense.
It’s very hard these days to game links, okay? Didn’t used to be the case. Pre-2012, it was very easy to game links. Still took some effort but it was easy. Now, they need to be relevant, they need to be high-quality, and you need to be careful about your anchor text – which we’ll talk about here.
The way I would recommend very safe, white hat ways to get links to your site are guest posts, which there’s a good resource in… I believe it’s section 7 of the foundational training that talks about guest posts – very, very good article there. The skyscraper technique by a guy named Brian Dean, who owns backlinko.com – we’re going to take a look at his site in a second. And also, broken link building, which is something that people have used for a long time but Brian Dean teaches really well, as well, and that he has a really good guide on his website. I’m going to show it to you here in a second. But that’s the link. Take note of that
If you’re going to do linking, that is a must read. Live and die by it because you can really get into a lot of trouble here if you don’t do it right, but if you do do it right, you will have tremendous payoff.
And just kind of a sidebar here before I keep going, if you’re sitting here and you’re going: “how much time should I invest in link building versus creating content?”
If you’re working 10 hours a week, and only 10 hours a week, you probably don’t have time for both. Focus on your content, at least until you get a really good bulk of it built up, a really good base on your website. And then maybe you alternate weeks between content creation and link building efforts. But if you’ve got 20 to 25 hours a week, I would say you can easily split your time half and half and see a really, really good payoff.
You still want to get your site somewhat established early on with probably 10 or 15 really high-quality articles, but after that, start splitting your time between link building because it can be very, very helpful – tremendously helpful, especially for SEO.
The other thing that I want to discuss, Isaac, in the group, actually asked a question after the video. He said: “hey, what about anchor text?” It’s actually a really good question because that’s one of the things you have to be most careful of when building links in this search climate.
For those of you that don’t know what anchor text is, I think I discussed it in the foundational training – but it’s the blue text that’s highlighted whenever you click the link.
A lot of the time, you’ll see like: for more information, click here. And “here” is highlighted blue, as a link. That means “here” is the anchor text. A lot of the time too, you’ll see like “make money online” as a blue link – that means that the anchor text for that link is “make money online”.
In today’s search climate, the easiest way for Google to penalize someone for intentional link building is for them to look at the link profile. It’s a very, very easy thing for them to determine and algorithmically calculate because a natural link profile does not have a whole lot of keyword anchor text. Most of their anchor texts, the vast majority of it, is going to be brand-based, or brand-oriented, or a naked URL or a domain.
Examples of that are as follows: for Stopping Scams (you know, stopping space scams), StoppingScams is one word, StoppingScams.com, www.StoppingScams.com, Ian P. of StoppingScams.com, Ian Pribyl – these are all non-keyword anchor texts that have to do with my brand, have to do with my business.
If you’re building intentional backlinks, that you’re deliberately doing this using guest posting, or the skyscraper technique, or broken link building, use these the vast majority of the time. If you want to be really conservative, use them all of the time. You’ll still see a lot of benefit from your SEO efforts.
Now, having keywords in your anchor text is absolutely the most potent link you can build. It’s the most valuable, the most powerful in boosting rankings; but that’s also why it’s so easy for Google to catch it because people try too hard to really get their… every link they’re building has anchor text that’s a keyword, that’s trying to boost rankings – that becomes really obvious really quickly.
I would say, don’t make any more than 5-8% – so, 1 of every 20, approximately, links that you build should have keyword anchor text. Everything else should be brand-based.
If you violate that rule, 8% would even be a little bit aggressive. If you violate that rule, you could very well get penalized. If one in every five, especially if like one in every two of the links you’re building are keyword anchor text, you’re going to get a Google penalty.
Even if you don’t get a Google penalty, you’re going to get buried in the search engines because Google’s going to algorithmically know: “yeah, this site is trying to game the search engines and they’re doing intentional link building.” You don’t want Google to know that’s what you’re doing and you definitely don’t want to come across as abusing their algorithms to try and get ranked.
Keep that in mind. Like I said, live or die by this information if you’re doing manual link building, intentional link building off-site.
I’m going to carry you over here to… actually, I don’t have… link… there it is… I didn’t have it pulled up. This is Brian Dean’s guide on link building, like I said, it’s just backlinko.com/link-building – incredible, incredible guide. You can’t do better than this.
He also goes into detail about the strategies that you can use to build links that are all white hat and very safe and he even talks about anchor texts. Just keep those rules in mind.
But if you’re going to do it, if you’re going to invest effort in here, Google has flat out said: “we will be dependent on links, probably for at least several more years.” So anybody that says link building is dead is just not paying attention. It’s straight from the horse’s mouth. Links still work, links are still vital for rankings.
Frankly, anybody that I have seen say otherwise is someone I just instantly… anything they say in internet marketing is now discredited because they are not paying attention to the facts. You can’t build a business in this industry if you’re not paying attention to facts.
Most of those guys have been in this industry a long time, they’re comfy, they’re sitting on their couches, and they’re just making shit up, and that they’re hoping people believe, or they’re trying to sound like an authority. I just would recommend, flat out, unfollowing those people because again, straight from the horse’s mouth.
I’m getting long winded. Trying not to do that. We’re going to move on to Other Ways to Promote Your Website.
This is the last little gold nugget we touched on yesterday (again, from Darren’s hotseat) – very, very good. These are especially helpful when you’re new and you’re trying to get initial traction and following.
One of the best ways to do it is to answer questions on Quora (I’ll go over that, in-depth, in a minute). You want to make sure in all of your answers you provide a ton of value, you really want to come across as a very credible expert. Even if they have no exposure to you, you want them to read your answer and go: “Holy crap! This person really knows what they’re talking about!”
You want to make your title on Quora, as in like your job title or whatever, credible and hopefully somewhat intriguing that if they Google it, they’re going to find you really easily.
Another thing worth mentioning is that you can add links to your answers on Quora; but I wouldn’t abuse it because, again, if you get too many links from one source, it’s going to look like you’re trying to do intentional link building. I would be careful of that.
I’m not saying that… there isn’t hardcore evidence that people are going out in there, they’re posting their link all over Quora and they’re getting penalized. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, knowing how the search engine algorithms function these days, you’ve got to be careful and very selective about the links you’re building.
I would only add a link to a question on Quora if it was directly relevant and very helpful for the user that you’re answering the question for – like, if you had an article on your site that was exactly what they were asking about. And then, again, I would link it as a naked URL or the anchor text would be like the title of the post (something like that), or even just brand names.
I’ll show you some in-depth insight and step-by-step on how to do this on Quora and I’m also going to show you how to do posting to Facebook groups in a really effective way. That’s a great way to promote your website.
Some niches aren’t going to have as much opportunity as others on both of these, unfortunately. You may just not be able to do this for your niche. That’s a distinct possibility. But most niches are going to have the opportunity to do this.
The way you post to Facebook groups to get traction and start getting people to follow you, again, provide a ton of value. You, usually, cannot link directly to an article. Blatant self-promotion, your own videos – stuff like that are almost never allowed and can actually get you banned from a group very easily.
But if you provide a ton of value and a lot of insight, you’re going to have people check out your profile – which means you want a branded banner that tells them where to find you and where to follow you.
You’ll also get a lot of friend requests, so you may want to create another profile (which is a personal Facebook profile), but that is only for these business promotional purposes; because you’re going to have a branded banner, and you’re going to get a bunch of friend requests from people you don’t know. And if you accept those friend requests, you can market to those people; but if it’s on your personal profile, I think, (myself included) most people don’t want to just constantly promote their business to their actual friends that have no interest in whatever it is they’re talking about. If you want to create an extra personal profile, I highly recommend that, all for it.
Let’s look at how to do both of these things in real time, okay?
A good example is if I were going to promote Free Internet Marketing Project, this is actually something that I’ve wanted to do more of, I just haven’t had the time. You can see right now, I’m in the Affiliate Marketing area. These are all the questions tagged with affiliate marketing on Quora. They’re sorted by what was posted most recently. So, 11 minutes ago, 3 hours ago, 6 hours ago, 10 hours ago, blah, blah, blah.
If you were doing this, you would come here and you would just look for the ones that are followed the most, right? And the easiest way to do this is I can go: “follow”… I usually start at 10, to see if any have 10, 11, and I work my way up to 15. Not always anything in this particular thread for 15. So now I’m going to work my way backwards from 10. And what I’m doing is I’m just looking for the ones that have the most followers recently, okay?
This one says: “how can I earn money through affiliate marketing in India?” So, there’s one match for that. Let’s go follow, 4. “What do most people struggle with when being an affiliate marketer?” What was that other one? “What Shopify plugins can I promote via affiliate link?” – those are really good. “What does it take to start a passive income without an office?”
So, as I’m answering these questions, if I’m promoting FIMP, I want to know: is this person likely to be in my target audience for FIMP? “What do people struggle with when being an affiliate marketer?” – absolutely! Absolutely! This is someone at early stage that could benefit from FIMP.
“What Shopify plugins can I promote via affiliate links?” – that one’s probably a little bit further in their journey and FIMP is best for people earlier in their journey. So, probably not that one.
“How could I become a successful affiliate marketer?” – very early stage in their journey. I could definitely answer that one.
You want to answer ones that really resonate with what you’re delivering as a brand or as a company through your website, and through your products, and through your services. You really want to pay attention to who’s in your target audience versus who is not.
The nice thing about this is answering on Quora, a lot of these posts over time will get ranked. Especially while we’re looking for the popular ones, because we don’t want to spend a whole bunch of time answering things that nobody’s interested in because over time, these are less likely to get ranked.
What we’re really aiming for here is we’re kind of planting a bunch of seeds across Quora, answering with really high-quality answers that are maybe 300 words, 500 words, 700+ words that really demonstrate authority and over time we’re hoping that those get ranked highly in Google for terms that people are searching; because Quora ranks very highly across Google.
Once that happens, people are just searching. And essentially, you have a search engine ranking for your brand, and for your website, but on Quora. Over time, those will really add up if you do this for 3 months, or 6 months, or 9 months on end, as part of your promotional strategy. You’ll start to see a ton of stuff come from Quora.
An addition to that, a lot of people will find your answers when they’re researching and links you from their own websites, which further builds your website authority. This also helps a lot with SEO, even though it’s kind of indirectly.
The other thing I mentioned, you want to have an intriguing title where they can find you. When I answer on Quora, my title is “Lead Instructor @ The Free Internet Marketing Project”. I didn’t put creator, I didn’t put founder, I didn’t put anything like owner, because I didn’t want people to see and they’ll go: “oh, this guy’s probably pretty biased.” Lead Instructor sounds really, really credible and it’s also true.
And the nice thing is if they search Free Internet Marketing Project or The Free Internet Marketing Project, I basically own the first page with all of my properties for Free Internet Marketing Project because I made sure to brand my meta title for my homepage, brand my meta title for my YouTube videos, for my player.fm (which is tied to my Apple podcast).
These people are going to find me if they see and are intrigued by Lead Instructor at the Free Internet Marketing Project, which, just imagine, being on Quora, reading a really, really good answer for something that you were interested in and you go: “oh, man! I’m going to look this person up!” – it’s very likely. So, just make sure that you’re propping up high in Google for your brand name, and that it’s distinct, and that it’s easier for them to find you that way.
The next thing that I want to talk about is Facebook groups. Perfect example of this is someone that I recently started following called Matt Staton. Matt does provide a fair amount of value.
Personally, just based on my personal standards in my business, I’m not saying that Matt is putting anything out that’s super low quality. My standards for quality posts, personally, I have found to be higher than his.
So I’m in the ClickFunnels Facebook group right now and he has been very, very effective at bringing people over and he actually has a lot of advocate within the ClickFunnels group, that when some asks: “hey, who’s the go-to for affiliate marketing? Who should I study affiliate marketing from?” Matt’s name comes up all the time and people tag him, and then people find him. It’s just been incredible and it’s all from Facebook promotion.
He started Affiliate Blueprint Marketing, which we’re going to take a look at here in a second, about the same time I started Free Internet Marketing Project – except it appears that he has a lot more time to promote Affiliate Blueprint Marketing than I have to promote FIMP because I’m focusing on… in addition to helping the people at FIMP constantly, I’m focused on building my own internet businesses. So, I haven’t had as much time to promote it as I’d like. I’m hoping to train someone to do that soon.
The stuff that he puts out is not as high value and his training for Affiliate Blueprint Marketing is all about funneling people into ClickFunnels Affiliate Program. What he does is he collects people.
He does put out some valuable stuff. Without a doubt, he’s definitely offering up value – but it’s just not step-by-step training (like is in FIMP). He is leveraging ClickFunnels Affiliate Training to position himself as an authority.
He started this 30-day (I think) or maybe it’s 90-day affiliate marketing challenge where he basically recruited all these people and they kicked off: “Okay here’s the 30-day affiliate marketing challenge. Go sign up for ClickFunnels and follow their affiliate program.” That’s all it is.
I know from a screenshot he posted where he made like $840 in a day pretty soon after he kicked off his challenge, that he’s probably making about a thousand dollars a month from doing this – and that’s recurring revenue, at least, and it’ll continue to build.
So, you’re going from 0-2 moths down the road, making a thousand dollars a month that’s continuing to build and is recurring revenue, so it’ll stack on itself – not too bad. The guy knows what he’s doing and he’s very aggressively promoting through Facebook groups.
The way you do that is you come into a group, you can establish yourself over time – over the first week or two, just answering comments, being really helpful. That way, any administrator that sees you goes: “okay, this person really knows what they’re doing and they’re not just leeching off of our group.” After you establish that credibility, you can start doing posts like this.
Matt Staton says: “We are all stupid” – really, really eye-catching headline with emojis. “I’m stupid for this, I’m stupid for that, I’m stupid for that, or I can outsource.” So, it’s just like a little thought that he had and he’s putting that up as a piece of content to draw people in. But it’s clearly working because when people click his image, he’s got a branded banner (exactly what I talk about) says “Affiliate Blueprint Marketing, More Money! No Bullshit!” Right? So, really, really clear, concise call-to-action.
Over here, he says: “hey, click this link” – it takes you over to his Facebook group for Affiliate Blueprint Marketing – same thing, same tabs I have open here. He has, again, in a couple of months 2,225 members – and from what I’ve seen, it’s basically all through Facebook marketing. He’s doing this in multiple groups – in the affiliate marketing, internet marketing space.
It’s working very, very well and it can work very well in your industry as well. It’s not like you have to deliver a ton of value. I feel like I can very objectively say that… actually, I can say very matter-of-factly, even factoring out objectivity, I put a lot more time into the training at FIMP, it’s much more step-by-step, it’s a lot more original content.
He’s just posting some guides and some videos here and there about referring people into ClickFunnels and the guy is making a really good amount of money. And probably within a year, he’s going to be doing really, really well.
It’s not like you have to go way above and beyond on value like I do. He is very effective at what he does and he’s becoming very, very successful with this project as a result.
That’s all there is to Facebook marketing, right? Establish yourself in probably 3 or 5 groups. After you’ve established yourself as an authority, you can start doing posts like this. Have a branded banner where people can find you. And call-to-action, even like this, funnels them into his Facebook group.
From his Facebook group, over here, he funnels you into his website and his email list to download the ClickFunnels’ DotComSecrets book – which will put you into, if you sign up the ClickFunnels product, $97 a month. And he’s going to be commissioned about $50 a month on all of those.
I’ve kind of fallen down the rabbit hole here. Got a little bit longer winded than I wanted to, but hopefully that’s really helpful. So, those are the steps to Facebook marketing, and it’s an excellent form of promotion.
So, let’s finish up here.
I want to say thank you so much for your support. I hope that this first day-after analysis was very helpful for you. I think there’s some really, really good insight in here. I just want to say that I’m so grateful for your support.
Initially, launching Free Internet Marketing Project, finding out it really wasn’t going to be very sustainable is heart breaking. I couldn’t continue providing all of the foundational training at Free Internet Marketing Project for free without you, so I always want to make sure to overdeliver on stuff like this for those of you that are so kindly and so generously supporting.
Like I said, I want it to be a win-win. I want you to get a lot out of this too and never feel like you’re not getting anything for your money. So, hopefully you’re finding a lot of value in this.
Elite members, I’ll see you for your monthly one-on-one. If we haven’t had it yet, get on my calendar if you’re watching this.
For basic members, I’ll be seeing you around the Facebook group, I’ll be seeing you around the FIMP training, and I look forward to watching you all grow and helping you as much as I possibly can on your internet marketing journey.
Stay safe out there and I’ll talk to you guys soon!