Mining an Audience for “Back-End” Profits
Issue #2056
- WEALTHY: 4 ways to safeguard your investments against a recession (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: Are you increasing your heart attack risk by 43%? (Jon Herring)
- WISE: Charles Brower on making sales
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- The secret to making $30,000 an hour… on the side (Paul Lawrence)
- Bribing yourself to the top (Michael Masterson)
- It’s Fun to Know… about popular pet names
- Add "serendipity" to your vocabulary
Turn A Single $100 Investment Into A $2,000-A-Week Profit Machine
In the next seven days, 4,589 people will leave their jobs, never go back… and have all the money they will ever need.
I would tell you that these people are “very lucky,” but the fact of the matter is that there is no luck involved.
It’s happening everywhere. Ordinary people - including people who never finished school - starting their own businesses… and making in the neighborhood of $40,000… $60,000… even $100,000 or more a year.
Even though all these people are “ordinary” in some ways, one thing is certainly “out of the ordinary” about them:
Many used the same secret to start a business on less than $100. You can do it, too. Here’s how…
- Patrick Coffey
What’s Good for the Economy Can Spell Disaster for You
By Andrew M. Gordon
We’re due for another recession. Our last one was in 2001, and we’ve just gone through four quarters of annualized growth of less than three percent. Every time we’ve seen such slow growth in the past 60 years, a recession has followed.
Believe it or not, recessions are actually good for the economy. They punish wasteful companies and speculative money pouring into inflated assets. But they can also inflict major damage on your investments.
To protect your portfolio, this is what you should do:
- Move more of your money into dividend-paying and value stocks. Both go down less than other types of stocks in a bear market, and they’re the first ones to rise when the market turns around.
- Buy gold. I can’t say this enough. It’s like an insurance policy but better. Insurance companies can go under. Gold retains and even increases its value when disaster strikes.
- Buy other assets. Consider anything from antiques and collectibles to property - but don’t buy at inflated prices.
- Go into some short-term bonds. Their yield is very attractive these days.
We could still avoid a recession. Stranger things have happened. But to count on it would be foolish. Take steps now to insulate your investments before the market plunges.
[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR’s Investment Director, has authored several books on energy markets, global countertrade practices, and the hot growth sectors of China and Russia. A former professor of marketing and finance, he is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]
"There is no such thing as ’soft sell’ and ‘hard sell.’ There is only ’smart sell’ and ’stupid sell.’"
Charles Brower
Mining an Audience for "Back-End" Profits
By Paul Lawrence
Would you believe it’s possible to make up to $30,000 an hour? Well, I attended a seminar a few months ago where I watched it being done. In fact, the fellow giving the presentation made at least $30,000 in just a few minutes.
His success is easy to copy. And you don’t necessarily need a super-high-priced, exclusive product or service to do it. Just a solid, useful, workable information product that you can create by yourself, for around $100, and an audience ready to buy it.
Here’s how…
The gentleman I mentioned above gave a two-hour presentation about a moneymaking opportunity. It was very convincing - in part, because he provided proof that he had made a high-six-figure income by engaging in that business himself, and had helped other people make huge profits. He then went on to share some of the details on how the people in his audience could go about doing the same thing.
The advice he gave wasn’t comprehensive enough to allow the average person to go out and get into that business without further help. However, the information he shared was valuable, and certainly could give anyone a good start toward achieving similar success.
I’m sure the man (who’s a well-known personality) made a few thousand dollars (at least) for giving his talk. But the really lucrative part for him happened after the seminar.
At the end of his presentation, he announced that he had additional, detailed information available for anyone who was interested in purchasing it. It was expensive - and when I counted the people standing in line to buy, I calculated that he was about to make $30,000!
This is one way to make money by selling "back-end" merchandise. In this case, the "front end" - the product or service that initially gets the customer’s attention - was the actual presentation. And once the speaker delivered useful, quality information to his audience, they were eager to get more of what he had to offer. The product he sold after the presentation - his back-end product - sold like hotcakes, because he’d already proven just how valuable his information could be.
When I saw how easily he made such a large amount of money, I decided that I wanted to try to do the same thing.
Now, as I said earlier, this gentleman had the advantage of being a well-known personality. Plus, he was able to offer proof that he’s made himself and other people rich.
Since I’m not nearly so well-known, I realized that I was unlikely to be able to make the same colossal profits. However, I do have expertise in fields that are of interest to others… several small businesses that I’ve been successful in. These are areas where I can prove levels of success that many people would find attractive.
I already had a nice little side business going as a motivational speaker. So, after watching him, I was inspired to mine my own audiences for profits by creating back-end information products to sell after my presentations. By doing this, I greatly expanded my options.
As a result, speaking engagements that I would have passed up because the compensation for the presentation itself was too low suddenly became much more attractive. Instead of just earning a single fee for my talk, I could look forward to making additional money by selling the products I’d created.
There’s almost no limit to the topics you can find a receptive audience for. In the world of business, for example, you could speak about sales and marketing, time management, and new technology, just to name a few. Plus, there are many special interests and hobbies (like sports, collectibles, cooking), and endless other subjects that could draw a sizable crowd.
And almost any time you have enough information about a topic to create a presentation around it, you also have the opportunity to create at least one back-end product - maybe an audio CD, a DVD, or a "how-to" book or course. Products like these offer huge profit margins, because the cost to reproduce them is nominal compared to what you can sell them for.
For example, at my last speaking engagement, I sold a combination audio CD/DVD for $99 - and my total cost per unit was $15. That means approximately 85 percent of all of the sales I made was pure profit.
Here are the basics of what you need to know about creating each of the above-mentioned information products:
- Audio CDs
There are many devices that sell for no more than $100 and allow you to record high-quality audio CDs on your home computer. You can find them in almost any major electronics retail store that sells computers. With one of these devices, you can record your presentation and then dump the file into your computer. Using an inexpensive sound software program, you can then burn your own audio CDs, or you can burn a master and have a fulfillment house make copies for only a few dollars each.
- DVDs
While it’s certainly possible to spend a great deal of money on making videos, it’s also possible to make a professional-looking DVD master for a reasonable amount. A cheap mini-DV camcorder can be bought for a few hundred dollars. Any files you create can be loaded into your computer digitally with what’s called a "fire wire." Although video files takes up a great deal of storage, you can buy an external drive that has more than enough capacity to store them. And you can purchase video-editing software for another few hundred dollars.
Though producing your own DVDs might cost more than producing audio CDs, they have a higher perceived value and can be sold for a higher price.
- Print Materials
The advantage of print materials over DVDs or CDs is that you need nothing more than a regular computer to create your product. The disadvantage is that it’s not cheap to have small quantities of a large book or course professionally printed. Plus, they’re more cumbersome to transport to your speaking engagements. However, a comprehensive "how-to" book or course can have a very high perceived value - and can probably be sold for much more than either a DVD or CD.
If you have an area of expertise you think others would be interested in learning about, speaking is a great little business that you can get into with almost no capital. And it’s something you can do at night and on weekends, while you’re working your regular job. But to really want to cash in on the moneymaking potential of this business, you should "mine for profits" by creating a back-end product to sell to your audiences.
[Ed. Note: Paul Lawrence is a produced screenwriter, direct-mail copywriter, and business author. He is also the creator of the Quick and Easy Microbusiness System, ETR’s program for starting a business for under $100.
Learn more about the business of public speaking here.]
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How to Stay Motivated to Achieve Your Long-Term Goals
By Michael Masterson
Your most important goals can take time to accomplish. Sometimes years and years. How do you stick with them? How do you avoid distractions? How do you keep yourself from losing interest?
There’s only one answer to all these questions: Learn to love the process.
The process is what you engage in while you are on your way. It consists of the steps you take on your journey. It includes the little breakthroughs, the small triumphs, and the pleasure of overcoming adversity.
I do that by breaking all my long-term goals into shorter-term objectives. I’ve broken down all my lifetime goals into five-year objectives, then into yearly, monthly, and weekly objectives, and, finally, into daily tasks.
Each completed effort is something I feel good about. Often, I reward myself with a small psychological prize. Usually, the reward is simply the gratification I feel when I scratch the task off my task list. Other times, I allow myself to brag about it. And, sometimes, I reward myself with money - $100 here, $1,000 there.
Let’s say you want to save a certain amount every month but find you don’t get any pleasure out of doing it. In that case, what you could do is pay yourself off each time you achieve that goal… perhaps with a small sum of "fun" money that you can spend any way you want to.
If, for example, your savings goal is $3,000 a month, you might give yourself a $100 bonus when you achieve it. That money might go to buy a nice dinner or pay for some "toy" - almost anything, so long as it feels like something extra.
I really like to give myself a cash bonus. I usually spend that cash on expensive cigar lighters - which I see as completely frivolous but irresistibly pleasant.
Think about a long-term goal you might apply this idea to. Make deciding what the reward should be part of the enjoyment.
Hint: It’s sometimes fun to let someone else - a partner, your spouse, or even your assistant - award the bonus. That way, it feels more serendipitous.
[Ed. Note: If you need a weekly dose of motivation to help you achieve all your goals - personal and professional - sign up for ETR’s Total Success Achievement program.]
Another Killer Drug on the Loose?
By Jon Herring
Three years ago, Merck & Co. voluntarily withdrew its pain-relieving drug Vioxx from the market when it was discovered that it substantially increased the risk of heart attack. According to Dr. David Graham of the FDA, Vioxx has been responsible for at least 140,000 heart attacks and as many as 40,000 deaths.
Wow! And to think the FDA has re-approved this drug for the market (with a stronger warning label), while they are doing their level best to control your access to safe, natural supplements. It would be enough to elicit a big ol’ belly laugh … if the issue were not so deadly serious.
And what do we have now? The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article suggesting that the diabetes drug Avandia, taken by more than 6 million people worldwide, also raises the risk of heart attack … and, possibly, death. As you may be aware, more than two-thirds of people with Type II diabetes die of heart problems. And the pooled results of dozens of studies on nearly 28,000 people showed a 43 percent higher risk of heart attack for those taking Avandia as compared to those taking no diabetes medication.
As you might expect, the maker of Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline, disputed these results. The company said their own review showed "only" a 30 percent increased risk of heart attack. (Phew! What a relief!)
If all this isn’t troubling enough, the study I told you about yesterday showed that the use of diabetes drugs has risen almost threefold among teenage girls in the last five years. There’s no telling what the long-term fallout from this trend might be.
Besides antibiotics and antivirals, no drugs I know of can successfully remedy an underlying medical condition. All they do is mask or alleviate the symptoms. And while they might provide temporary relief, in some cases, the unintended consequences can be profound.
Type II diabetes is a condition brought on by lifestyle choices. And, in most cases, it is easily preventable and readily reversible. To do so, you must exercise consistently, maintain adequate vitamin D levels by enjoying frequent sun exposure, and eat a diet rich in protein and healthy fats … while avoiding starches, sweets, and grains.
It’s Fun to Know: Popular Pet Names
The top 10 pet names in the United States, according to a study by the ASPCA, are Max, Sam, Lady, Bear, Smokey, Shadow, Kitty, Molly, Buddy, and Brandy. Neither Spot nor Rover made the list.
(Source: the InfoPlease website)
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Word to the Wise: Serendipity
"Serendipity" (ser-un-DIP-ih-tee) is good luck - making a desirable discovery by accident. The word was coined by the English author Horace Walpole in 1754. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip" [an old name for Ceylon/Sri Lanka] whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of."
Example (as I used it today): "It’s sometimes fun to let someone else - a partner, your spouse, or even your assistant - award the bonus. That way, it feels more serendipitous."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007