Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

Izzy and Tim from FoolishAdventure.com were kind enough to have me on their show this week.

In the podcast, I tell some stories about how I got into the paid content business plus some of the things I’ve learned along the way that I haven’t talked about before.

You can check it out here.

Izzy and Tim ask some great questions – a great example of how to interview well, actually. So if you don’t listen for my killer business tips, listen just to pick up a few interview tricks.

membership pricing, selling content online, starting a membership site membership sites

Brad Stafford was the affiliate marketing manager for one of the largest financial membership sites on the web for many years. He’s now launched his own company, helping financial website owners learn how to sell their content with great email copy and honest-to-goodness solid content.

I recently convinced Brad to get on the phone with me and talk about everything from product launches to email marketing and everything else having to do with selling premium content online.

Listen in as I put him on the Interview Income hot seat and demand great answers about the best ways to launch an information product, promote it via email and maximize both profits and customer happiness with their purchase.

3 ways to listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here

3) Read the transcript below

Related Links:

- Brad’s site: Financial Marketers & Publishing Group

Transcript:

Tim: Hello, everybody and welcome to my interview here today. I’m talking with Brad Stafford. I’ve worked with Brad and known Brad for a few years now. He has been an affiliate manager for a big financial company in the past and done really well with that. Now, he’s out on his own doing his own marketing firm where he’s helping people who create content make money with it, monetize it in a lot of different ways.

I wanted to get Brad on the phone. We’ve talked to him before but he’s just really an expert in teaching people and showing people what works and knows what works when it comes to creating money out of the content that you’re working really hard to create. So Brad, first of all, thanks very much for joining me on the phone today.

Brad: Absolutely. It’s the least I can do. It’s always good to talk to you, Tim. That’s for sure.

Tim: All right. Well, so there’s a lot of questions that I had that have come to mind over the past few months as I’ve been trying to kind of play with different things in monetizing our content. I know our listeners are always looking for what’s going to work best, what can I work on to make money from the content that I’ve worked so hard for produce? And the first thing I want to kind of attack right off the bat is this product launch versus just constantly putting out drifts of content out there and converting people as you go.

And one of the things that I’ve noticed over the past few months is that A, everybody seems to be doing launches and they seemed to be getting longer to me. They seemed like before a launch just maybe three or four emails. Now, it’s like people want you to send six or seven emails out for their launch. And my sense is that the reason that’s happening is because launches have kind of lost a little bit of their shine and I’m wondering maybe if I’m wrong there or what are your thoughts on that?

Brad: Well, I mean, I think first of all, you know, the launches over the past couple of years have done extremely well. I think that product launches have been done in many different niches. I personally think that the financial world is one of if not the best at it. We have the most rabid audience. Really their ability to buy products is just overwhelming. But yeah, recently, the launches have been sort of hitting a wall and affiliates or affiliate marketers who have the launches that they’re managing are asking more and more and more.

And you asked if it is sort of hitting a wall in getting done. Yeah, I’m not sure 100% if launches are done. I think certainly the economy has thrown a significant ranch in that. I mean, when people aren’t trading, they’re not going to be buying products so it’s becoming more and more difficult to sell to them.

But I also think a lot of leads and a lot of the people who are buying these products and involved in these launches from a customer site, they’ve seen so many. I for one, I’m always signing up to pretty much any email list that I can get myself on and it’s just the number of launches that are coming out on a regular basis. It’s almost like the leads know what’s coming and so they’re, “Well, you don’t really have it.” Okay, you know, I get this then I get this then I get the webinar then I get the pitch, then okay, there’s only a certain amount of time left. So I think a lot of people are sort of they’ve seen that.

There have been some recently that have worked and have worked well, but I think for the most part, the launches are becoming more difficult. And when affiliate managers are asking you to send more and more, it’s because they’re wanting to basically use your relationship with your list and your audience to solidify their legitimacy and their product even more and more and more. So the more that you can send that, the better that they can hopefully convert that lead down the road.

Tim: Now, I know in the internet marketing space, just in that general kind of make money online, I know the launches maybe have really kind of maybe they’ve seen the top of the bell curve and they’re heading down in terms of usefulness. Perhaps in a niche that hasn’t seen this type of promotion, it would work really well, and the financial folks have been doing this for a little while so maybe we haven’t reached that apex yet, but maybe that’s coming.

In the launches that have worked, is there anything that you’ve seen that they’ve done to kind of differentiate themselves from everybody else doing launches?

Read more…

affiliate program, email marketing, starting a membership site affiliate marketing, Brad Stafford

You’ll find Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

This is part 4 of my interview with Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com. In this segment, I talk with Andrew about what he charges sponsors, why he has both sponsors and a membership model, how he determined his sponsorship price and why he never competes on price.

We also discuss how he uses memberships as currency to get things done.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Related Links:

- Mixergy.com

Transcript:

Tim Bourquin: No. That’s a fantastic idea though is to see where — you’re right. I kind of have to laugh because I don’t know why I haven’t thought about that. I’ve never thought of it that way. We track them manually how long people stay. But to figure out which pages they’re coming from. I know they come from the sign-up page because they got to get there but how they get there, a whole trail, those tools are — I think are out there available to track them all the way. I don’t track it that closely either, and maybe we’re both making a mistake by not. I don’t know.

Andrew Warner: And the difference between us is that you charge a lot more for your site than I do so you deal with smaller numbers, bigger revenues and so it’s easier for you to go in manually and it’s more important for you to go in manually and figure out what’s going on and you could track it easier. For me with dozens of people a month coming in and paying 25 bucks — dozens of new people a month coming in paying 25 bucks is just too much. And I also — yeah, it’s just too much. It’s too much. But there’s another value, by the way, to doing a membership site. You suddenly have a currency. You suddenly can say to somebody who offers you some help, “Hey, I know you want to do this free but I’ll give you free premium membership” or to someone who you want to do some kind of partnership with or you want to get some help with or maybe if I’m launching a new feature on the site and I need the audience to come in and help in.

I’m not just saying come and be paid volunteers and hoping one or two people come. I’m saying if you come in and do it I’ll give you premium access to the site. There’s a value on this. You see people are screaming that they don’t have access to this. I’ll give it to you and that draws in more people to help, out and then it becomes a currency that you kind of can print up yourself and use to help grow your business.

But you did ask about sponsorships too and I’ll be open about the sponsorship revenue. When I started out I was charging, I think it was $650 for an ad in front of my interviews. I made up that number. I can tell you in a bit how I came up with that. Now what I do is I have six sponsors. Each one pays $650 a month and in addition to it, I have a few one-off sponsorship throughout the site that are harder to identify and actually harder for me to name because if I say this spot cost this much you’ll know exactly which sponsor is paying that much and sponsors don’t want people to know that they’re paying me more than they’re paying other people because then have to explain Andrew’s got a different audience here, and Andrew is bringing in guests who I want to be associated with, and even if his audience doesn’t sign up for my service, if the guest knows that my business exists the guest might invest in my company and so on.

So I won’t go into the one-off spot — the custom sponsorships that I have on the site, but I will say $650 or $750. I have to check it out.

Tim Bourquin: Well, how did you come up with that number?

Read more…

membership pricing, starting a membership site Andrew Warner, launching a membership site, Mixergy

Back when I was in the LAPD police academy in 1994, I had a classmate who had just come out of Special Forces in the Army. His commitment was up and he decided to take his skills from the military and become a police officer. I still remember the first week of the Academy. For him it was like a day at Disneyland compared to his Green Beret training. About Day 4 we were out in a dirt lot at the top of a hill after running about 5 miles to get there. We were doing push-ups and I had lost count – a big no no.

Rather than doing the smart thing and being quiet until I heard what the next number all my classmates yelled, I did the dumb thing, guessed, and yelled out the wrong number. I was quickly surrounded by 3 drill instructors who immediately began screaming. I don’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something about the fact that they couldn’t believe the City of Los Angeles was so desperate for officers they would hire me to protect people. I looked up and saw Mr. Green Beret just smiling at me as he continued his own push-ups. I hated his guts immediately.

But one day, while we were running trails up near Dodger Stadium, we started talking about trading stocks online. Talking about something other than how hot, thirsty and tired we were made the miles go faster. He mentioned that he had started trading stocks online for very short periods of time – day trading – before the term even existed. I was fascinated by this and started doing a little research myself on the weekends.

(Green Beret dude I hated on Day 4 actually became one of my best friends and was in my wedding 3 years later.)

Fast forward a few months and I opened a small account at one of the only online brokerages at the time (this was a while before E-Trade and Ameritrade were around) and started day trading. I did pretty well and people started to ask me how I was trading. I got tired of constantly talking about it, so I wrote up a 5 page Word document that outlined how I found the stocks to trade and how it all worked. I kept adding to it until it was nearly 80 pages.

Being the capitalist that I was, it finally occurred to me in 1998 that I could actually sell the report as a book – online. I had a little money saved and spent the entire amount on a website and sold the book for $24.95 plus $3.00 shipping. Things were pretty slow back at first but I sold my first book in 1998 with a website with a ridiculous $100 bill background and 30 different fonts in bold text all centered down the middle. I wish so much that I could find that design now. The first 6 months people had to send me checks and money orders – I didn’t even know what a merchant account was.

Then one day, Wired Magazine called. They had heard about this cop who trades online and wanted to write an article about it. The scanned version is below.

(Click on the image below for a larger version)

I sold about 400 copies of my book in the weeks that followed, and the link wasn’t even in the article. I would print out copies on a black and white laser printer and bind them with a comb-binding machine in the morning. My wife would then take boxes of books to the post office in the afternoon to ship while I was at work. While we were waiting for my daughter to arrive from the womb, our days were filled with printing, binding and shipping. When we couldn’t finish the printing and binding in the morning, I’d leave for work and my wife would continue the process – sometimes until I got home again 12 hours later (God bless her – 8 months pregnant and all).

It was a huge win and it was at that time that I knew I wanted to make my living online from then on. It took another 2 years before I actually quit my job, and it could have happened a lot sooner if I had any idea what I was doing. I did no advertising and no promotion. I simply rode the “daytrading” wave when it came in the late 90′s and the damn thing literally sold itself. 30, 40, sometimes 50 copies a day. It was AWESOME. I can’t even imagine what I could have done if I knew anything about marketing like I do today.

But, courtesy of the Wayback Machine, here is the earliest version they have of my very first sales website (it sometimes takes a minute to load). Not a bad website design for 1999! Don’t you just love my “risk free guarantee?” I’m sure I swiped half of that sales copy from some other website that actually looked like they did knew what they were doing.

The book led to me starting a national trader organization which led to starting my first trade show and conference for online traders. One thing led to another as good things always seem to do.

It was an exciting time, and while I still get excited every time I get an email that notifies me our online cash register has rung, there was something very special about getting those checks in the mail back in 1998. Just like I wish I could find that first website design, I wish I had that first check. Things don’t seem like a big deal at the time – until years later when you have some perspective.

Does the Wayback Machine have copies of your first website? If so, link to them in the comments – I’d love to see them.

creating content, starting a membership site make money online

Every once in a while I get a bad case of blog post jealousy. I read a post on someone’s blog that I wish I would have written. Today I read, “How To Become a Millionaire in Three Years” by Jason Baptiste.

I came across the post from a Tweet by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com. It’s an excellent article and I found myself saying, “Yes!” out loud after every point.

My favorite is probably this one:

Go with your gut and do not care about fameballing. Go with what your gut says, regardless of how it might look to the rest of the world. Too often we (I) get lost in caring about what people think. It usually leads to a wrong decision. Don’t worry about becoming internet famous or appearing on teh maj0r blogz. Fame is fleeting in the traditional sense. Become famous with your customers. They’re the ones that truly matter. What they think matters and they will ultimately put their money where their mouth is.

There was one I don’t entirely agree with, but it’s only because I found it gets me into trouble:

Be a master of information. Many think it might be wasteful that I spent so much time on newsyc or read so many tech information sites. It’s not, it’s what gives me an edge. I feel engulfed.

Personally I find that the more I consume information (and therefore the less I create) our income declines. Wealthy content creators always create more than they consume, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

creating content, online entrepreneurs, starting a membership site how to become a millionaire