Since 500+ of you were so fantastic about answering my last survey, I figured the least I could do was share the results, as so many people asked for.

Edit: I started doing this in a good mood, and as I really went through everything… well, you’ll see.

Question 1: How Long Have You Been Working On Making Money Online?

 It appears that around 26% of the people who filled out my survey have been working 1-3 years on making money online.

22% have been working for 3-5 years, and about 16% for 5-10 years.

The next 3, in order of popularity, were longer than 10 years, 6 months to 1 year, and 0-6 months.

The biggest comment people made on this section was that people have learned a little bit about IM, have some tools, but have never taken action and don’t know where to start.

The second biggest comment was that there are too many shiny objects out there.

Question 2: What Subjects Are You Most Interested In?

The top 3 subjects of interest (out of 28) were affiliate marketing, Kindle, and traffic generation.

The least interesting subjects were freelancing how-to’s, done-for-you services, and paid advertising.

Interesting side note: despite comments on other areas, productivity ranked #17 out of 28, mindset was #18, and focus was #19.

There were a bunch of comments here. One main one was that people wanted to get started quickly, easily, and cheaply.

(Interesting… as I’m writing this, I’m starting to get frustrated. I’ll add my comments here at the end.)

Question 3: How do you prefer learning?

The major way people like learning was PDF, then videos, then case studies. Interviews were last (out of 8).

Main comments here are that 1:1 coaching is best.

Question 4: What’s your biggest frustration with Internet marketing?

The biggest complaint was there’s too much information, then that it’s hard to focus, and then that there are too many people giving misinformation.

There were 2 comments that came across bigtime here:

1. People said it’s hard to find quality teachers to provide accurate/helpful information and products.

2. People said it was hard for them to follow through with an idea or focus.

Question 5: What are you currently earning online?

Around 44% are making $0-$500/month.

The next largest subset is 0, then $500 – $1000/month.

The next are $2k and upwards.

Biggest comment here is that people are wasting their money on buying things.

Question 6: Are you male or female?

I just asked this to my list (Dennis didn’t ask his). 63.2% of respondents were male.

Rachel’s Responses:

I feel such a range of emotions going through these survey responses.

One emotion I feel is PISSED. The gross majority of people who responded to this survey are NOT earning over $2k/month, yet they’ve been working on it for over a year.

The majority also said it was way too hard to focus… yet focus was NOT one of the more popular subjects they were interested in. It was #19 out of 28 possible subjects.

#*&^#@&^#&@^%^@%#^$%#@%$!%$#@$%@$#^@&#@#@%

Excuse my language, but… THIS SHIT PISSES ME OFF.

I understand that there are lots of people in the IM world who like to buy shiny objects. I know there’s that sexy feeling of hope every time someone hits the “purchase” button. Like… “Woohoo, this system promises to make me $333,232.94 in a second… maybe it’ll happen for me!”…

BUT WTF!^#%@$^$%#@!!#^@^%@$#^$%@$%#@$%#@

This is the same crap I come across when I make blog posts.

I’ll make blog posts full of content and email my list. I get MORE UNSUBSCRIBES than when I’m mentioning a product people can buy.

Sure, I could just send out a bunch of emails pitching products.

It’d sure make earning money super-easy.

But my soul simply can’t bear it.

It’s just so frustrating.

I don’t want to peddle hopes and dreams, and it’s just so defeating to feel like that’s what the majority WANTS.

Literally… in the same 10 minutes it takes to fill out the survey, I read comments that people are frustrated that they can’t focus, yet they don’t want to learn to focus.

But they’re not making any money.

^^&%@^%#@^%@#$%^#@%$!$^@#^R@#^%^@R GAH THIS IS CRAZY!

The next emotion I feel is sadness.

I know that there are exceptions to this… but selling to people who don’t seem to really want to help themselves is NOT how I want to live my life.

I feel I came here to do big things.

To help a lot of people.

And I feel regret and upset with myself for attracting this into my life situation.

I pour my heart and soul into all of my products… and to see this… just makes me feel like I’m not making anywhere near the impact I want to make.

Seriously… my entire list is pretty much 100% comprised of customers.

I’ve had thousands upon thousands of buyers.

And yet the majority are not even earning $2k?

I am positive that the information in my products helps people earn $2k. I know this because of the success stories that HAVE poured in.

Then I wonder about my whole pricing strategy.

I’ve been selling my soul for pennies on the dollar for a long time. I figured if I made this money-making information more accessible, I could really help a lot of people.

And like I said… a lot of success stories have come in. They’re what fuels me on the days I just feel disgusted with this industry.

But I can’t help but wonder if MORE success stories would come in if I charged higher prices. Prices that people would need to double-think about before purchasing. Prices that would reflect products they would actually USE, because they really had to convince themselves to buy them.

That might not be what the majority of people want to hear, but at this point, I’m not aligned with what the majority are thinking anyway.

Then I remember a tweet I read…

I recently saw a tweet from Chris Guillebeau that said “If you’re not embarrassed by work you did years ago, you probably haven’t evolved or developed much.”

I certainly have other work in my life I’m embarrassed about.

Maybe I’m coming towards the end of IM as I know it.

Maybe it’s time to re-shift.

A lot.

I’ll continue to teach, but only work with the people that are vigilant about their success.

People who will IMPLEMENT.

People who, when I survey, will either be making money, or be working on a plan (I can help with) to do so.

Blah.

Customer service is obviously very important.

However, so is taking some time OFF of the computer!

Here’s what I do when I don’t want to bring my computer on vacation, but want to answer emails:

1. I have an outrageously fantastic virtual assistant who can answer 99% of all my emails off the top, which saves a TON of time…

2. Anything she can’t answer, she forwards to my personal email address.

3. I open up my AudioMemos on my iPhone:

(I’m pretty sure this comes standard on all iPhones, but if you don’t have it, you can grab it for free right here.)

(I’m also sure there are Droid and Blackberry apps that will do this same thing…)

4. I open up my email and record (dictate) my responses to all the emails that my assistant didn’t know the answer to.

5. I email the recording to my assistant, and she types out my answers.

(It’s EXTREMELY easy to do if you’re familiar with an iPhone, but the technical details are: make your recording, hit “pause” when you’re done, then hit “done”. The recording will come up in a list of all your recordings… hit the blue arrow next to your recording and select “Email recording”, then put in your assistant’s email.)

Presto! That’s it! In less than 10 minutes you can knock out a TON of emails (and your V.A. will have already hopefully pre-screened the majority).

You don’t need your computer AND you have the joy of knowing things are being taken care of!

If you don’t have a smart phone, you can use Jing (free for the basic version) to record little 5 minute video explanations. I use this all the time when I’m on my computer!

Hey everyone! I’m on my honeymoon right now, but had this auto-scheduled to go out June 7th

This blog post is another one that I tried to make on the plane, but unfortunately, it was WAY too loud.

Someone recently asked me about my SEO strategy and what I do to get ranked.

Truth be told, I am NOT a big SEO person. I don’t know very much about SEO and I don’t really care to. I do know enough to get top 10 rankings for niche sites though, and that’s the main thing I use it for.

If you’re interested in how to get ratings for competitive sites, I think the best resource out there, from what I’m told, is Bring The Fresh. A lot of SEO products will tell you not to try to rank for super-competitive terms, but the guys at BTF not only did it… but they ranked for it very quickly. They say most people make SEO look a LOT harder than it is, and I think that’s the case too. And the guys at BTF teach SEO in a way that’s not overwhelming at all.

Anyway, what I do, that works pretty well, is:

1. I use Angela‘s and Paul‘s backlinks. If you’re not familiar with them, here’s how it works: these places are basically services that show you where you can post links that Google thinks highly of. For example, maybe they find an NBC article that has a high page rank. They’ll tell you about it, you can post on there with a link to your website, and then Google sees your link associated with NBC. Google sees you as more of an authority site and thus rank you higher in the search engines.

I use an amazing guy named Shaon to post links for me. He happens to have more availability, so if you want to hire him, scoop him up! The guy is INCREDIBLE and was Bangladesh’ top freelancer of the year. His email is shaon@privateoutsourcing.com (I get nothing for sharing that).

2. SENuke is a GREAT tool I have my traffic outsourcer do. I don’t know a lot of the details but I know whenever he uses it, our rankings go WAY up.

3. We convert all of our articles into Powerpoints, read them out loud and make videos of them, and then post them to video sharing sites. This helps us leverage the same content in many different formats. (You could also post them as podcasts, which I *think* we’re doing but am honestly not sure).

This alone works pretty decently, especially in small niches.

Honestly though, we do a LOT better with our affiliate program than SEO. If you missed the (free) post I created on how we got 2,536 affiliates, you can check it out here.

And if you have any other internet marketing questions, please feel free to ask them! I’m happy to answer (almost) anything!

Hey guys!

I know it’s been a little long since I’ve made a marketing post… hopefully today’s makes up for it!

The video explains some of the reasons I’ve thought, off the top of my head, why we have so many affiliates.

Here’s the full video explaining everything:

…and here’s the list I was referencing:

Nanacash

100% Commission Reports

Offer Awesome Products

Seminars – Meet High Leverage People

Affiliate Contests

Promote Other People First

Second Tier Commissions

Joint venture brokers

High Leverage People In Your Niche

Popups

Hello!

Hope your day is going AWESOMELY!

Today’s question was on list building.

Specifically: “You have talked about “the money being in the list” and back end sales etc.  I understand the concept to first get people on the list.  But how often and what types of offers do make to your list? And given that only a fraction might open the email what sort of total conversion rate would you typically expect at a given price point?”

I am NOT happy with how the video turned out, but I don’t know how else I could answer it.

Truth is, in my experience, list building has been VERY variable. I can’t (honestly) give “clear cut” answers because there are so many things to consider (such as the niche you’re in, how often your niche gets mailed, when the last time you’ve mailed to your list, your relationship building abilities, etc).

That being said, I gave you some of my best tips for what to do when you’ve built a list.

I’d say this video is more newbie-oriented. I’ll give the Cliff-Notes below so you can see if it’s worth your time. Here goes:

Once you have a list, you can mail about these things:

Blog posts (This is better than content in an email since it trains people to click on your links.)

Relationship building goodies (The video goes over what I do in my niches. Relationship building is huge if you want people to trust and eventually buy from you.)

Surveys (Surveys are awesome for figuring out what people want to hear about! You can use them for product creation, for knowing what to promote, and knowing how to NOT waste your time.)

Affiliate offers (Promote things people have expressed interest in ONLY. Promoting other things is disrespectful – not to mention gets you a world of unsubscribes.)

Other tip: Make sure to have emotionally compelling headlines that get people to want to click.

If you’re totally lost:

When I say a “list”, I mean a list of names and email addresses that business owners accumulate. This can be a list of past customers, people who have signed up to your list to get a free giveaway, or people who have expressed some kind of interest in your services. List building is VERY important as it takes several exposures to a brand or company before most people want to do business with them..

Things I Forgot To Mention In The Video:

As far as how often to mail, I’d say to be respectful. I wouldn’t recommend emailing people with 3-4 different offers in one week on a normal basis.

I’ve done it before – and made a LOT more money when I did – but at the end, I don’t think it forms good long term relationships, it’s certainly not helping the consumer, and I feel like a worse person for it.

Dennis and I stick to one main offer during each week now, and maybe a weekend special for a cheaper item.

I’d also say when you’re writing your emails, it’s helpful to imagine that you’re writing to your core customer. Think about what that customer looks like – how old they are, what their house looks like, what they’re wearing, all of it… and then just write your letter to that ONE person. It makes it MUCH easier to write email copy.

As for emotional headlines – make sure they MAKE SENSE to your message! I hate when people have a headline such as “She’s going to KILL ME” and then when I open it, it says something like, “Made you look!”. Not only is it disrespectful but it makes me not trust the marketer.

Here are some examples of good headlines:

“He did WHAT?”

“How leaving my hubby prevented overeating” (got this from Jena LaFlamme!)

“FINAL NOTICE!” (a Frank Kern classic that works very well if not used all the time…. it gets people super interested in what they might be missing)

Okay… I hope I remembered everything, and I hope that helps. I’m going to keep editing as more questions come in. Here’s the video:

Hellllo!

Hope you’re having a great day!

Today’s video is on a question Max Stryker asked. He wanted to know about how Dennis and I launch products once we’ve got some created and ready to sell.

As I mentioned in the video, we don’t do the typical guru “launch” model with high priced products, but of course we do want to build momentum when we launch something new!

If you prefer video, feel free to watch that below. Otherwise I’ll post the main gist of what I talked about under it.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the basics of what I went over:

1. Figure out product we’re going to launch
2. Mention it in Earn1KADay
3. Send out an email to affiliates. Include a discount link for them to buy review copies, give them specifics on mailing out (like if it’s a dimesale), and include email copy for them to copy and paste.
4. Launch product

A few things:

- We almost NEVER launch without giving affiliates lead notice (we want to keep them happy!)

- Since we use Nanacash, affiliates WANT to promote us

Here’s an example email Dennis has sent out:

Hi, folks,

As always, thanks for being an E1KaD affiliate.

Have you promoted our dime sales yet? If not, I have a great one
for you to start with…

… and the rest of you know that you can certainly count on our
values to drive up your commissions every weekend!

This week, I’m combining a Jason Fladlien gem with 4 strong bonuses
that tie in with it, and enhance the value tremendously.

As if the value needed to be enhanced, but still…

I’m talking about “7 MInute Articles”, the product that put Jason
on the map, and still continues to sell on his site for $47.

For the dime sale, people are going to get a huge bargain, plus the
extra bonuses, and they’ll love you for giving them this
opportunity.

If you want to get a preview copy, you can use this link:

http://e1kad.com/r/7-minute-articles-affiliate-review

The dime sale page is paused right now, so you won’t be able to see
it in your Nanacast affiliate center, but here’s how you can get
your link…

Go into the affiliate center:

https://nanacast.com/ma/59618/

And find your affiliate ID, by clicking on “My Account” and on that
page you’ll see your Nanacast Account ID. It will be a 5 digit
number or larger.

Your affiliate link for 7 Minute Articles will be this:

http://nanacast.com/vp/98899/XXXXX/

(replace XXXXX with the Nanacast affiliate ID that you determined
earlier).

The link should be very near the bottom of the page.

And test your link before you send your email, to make sure that
the right product is showing up, and the buy button doesn’t say
that it’s paused, as it will until it’s time to start the dime sale.

Note: If you try to test your link before I unpause the product,
your link won’t work, so don’t be surprised.

You should be able to start promoting this at 9:00 a.m. eastern (New
York) time, Saturday, November 20th.

Here’s the email that I’m sending out if you want to swipe any
part of it (obviously change at least the link to your affiliate
link, if nothing else):

SUBJECT: Dime sale alert:  7 Minute Articles, and tons more!

Hi, folks,

I just started another dime sale, and hopefully you’ll agree that
we’re seriously overdelivering on this one.

For those that don’t want to wait and want the absolute best
price, here it is:

http://e1kad.com/r/article-marketing-blowout-dimesale

The main piece of this bundle is the original centerpiece to Jason
Fladlien’s empire…

7 Minute Articles

By itself, Jason sells this gem for $47.

But you won’t pay that, and you won’t get it alone.

Included with this bundle are the following bonuses:

Content Speed Writing by Andrew Hanson
Get Paid to Write: Content Speed Blogging
30 Day Bum Marketing Blitz

and last but not least:

Freelance Profit Method, which will show you how to get paid
handsomely for every article that you write.

So learn how to write them fast, and learn how to get cash for what
you write.

I’ll bet if you head over to the page right now, you could get all
of this for less than half the regular price of 7 Minute Articles
alone. Don’t delay too long, the price rises after every sale:

http://e1kad.com/r/article-marketing-blowout-dimesale

Have a spectacular day!

Dennis Becker, the 5 Buck Guy

P.S. The dime sale will only run through 9 a.m. eastern time,
Saturday, November 27th, so don’t miss this opportunity.

http://e1kad.com/r/article-marketing-blowout-dimesale

Hope that helps!!! If you have any other questions, leave a comment here!

Hello!

Hope you’re having a SUPERB day!

Today’s post is a 2-parter. Someone asked me 2 questions in one, and I didn’t think the first question was sufficient for its own blog post.

The first question:

Would you care to blog about how you ended up getting into Internet Marketing? I understand you were in a standard type of job previously, how did you come to find Internet Marketing?

I made a quick video (below) explaining how I jumped into internet marketing and started immediately earning $500 – $800/day:

The second question:

How did you and Dennis come to be partners? How did you find it initially when partnering with someone? How do you work together and who brings what particular skills to the company? And I would be even curious as to what Enneagram personality types and Myers Brigg’s type you both are and if that’s been a factor? (assuming you have thought about it?)

I explained how Dennis and I got started in the video below, the differences in our personalities, as well as our Myers Briggs and Enneagram types.

Please keep all questions coming! Just leave a comment here or ask on my fan page!

Hey everyone!

Hope you’re having a SUPERB day! I know I am, it’s SUNNY HERE!!!, which means I am loving life.

Today’s question comes from Jason Ayers. He was wondering:

“How do you determine what product you are going to create next and how do you improve your odds that it’s going to be something your prospects and customers are going to buy? I’m currently upgrading my process to include more “co-creation” where I work with the customers to refine the product itself before I make it and while I create it (kind of like “agile programming” in the software world).  I’d love to hear how you approach this part of your business.”

I created a video to go into more detail, which you can see here:

The short form of the answers are:

1. Look at forums in the niche to gauge needs

2. Use surveys (on forums or with SurveyMonkey)

3. Bounce it by a partner or a mastermind

4. See how you can add to what’s already selling well

5. Look at your own frustrations with products in the market

Ninja tip: Sell BEFORE you create.

Again, if you have any questions on anything you want me to take a crack at, please leave me a comment here or post on my fan page.

Have a BEAUTIFUL day!

Hope you’re having a SPECTACULAR DAY!!! I sure am!

My internet was down when I made today’s video so I couldn’t answer IM questions (I like to show you what I’m talking about), so I will answer those ASAP. Please keep shooting questions in — I LOVE them and other people are telling me they’re getting a lot of benefit from them!

Today’s video is on 2 things:

1. The virtual assistant service I use – FancyHands – to do all my personal tasks (watch the video for examples if you’d like!) I make no commission off of them, they’re just awesome native English speaking people who make life very stellar.

2. My new self esteem practice, and how Otto made it even better. If you want the mp3 I mention in the video just leave a comment with your receipt or a picture of you with the book or just something and I’ll shoot the mp3 to whatever email you comment with. You can buy the book right here if you don’t have it already.

(I get a few cents if you buy through that link, you can feel free to bypass that if it makes you feel better )

Here’s the video!

…and I hope you have as great of a day as I’m having!!!

I just saw a video from Marie Forleo here where she talks about the top 10 qualifications her clients MUST have in order for them to work with her.

I thought I’d make one of my own and am super-glad I did. Now I can check off potential clients against my list, and if they match, keep them, and if not, peace ‘em out!!

Here’s my list in video form, with explanations:

And here’s the list written out:

1. They are MASSIVE action takers, focused, and get stuff done!

2. They have a “yes” attitude and are OK with making changes as more information becomes available…

3. They are happy to pay on time and with delight. I don’t need to convince them of my value – they just GET it.

4. They respect my time and energy. They don’t try to “nickel and dime” me and they’re confident I take care of them in the end.

5. They’re grateful for the time I spend with them and openly tell me how much I’m helping them. I get re-inspired to help more every time we talk.

6. They proactively tell other people about me and are ecstatic to do so

7. We work together as a collaboration so we can make masterpieces together… I’m not treated as the “guru”, but an experienced partner…

8. They don’t have their entire lives based on ME (ie my results I give them aren’t going to make or break them – that is too much pressure!)

9. They must have a product or idea that will genuinely add value to the world

10. Open, communicative, compassionate, positive minded and welcome transparency

I like this exercise!!!