Month: December 2011

Dec

2011

Affiliate Click Pal – It’s a Monster

Offer Closed

***

Today Friday 30th December at 6.00pm I’m running a final pre-release sale for Affiliate Click Pal (ACP).

Yes I know some people reading this thought they’d never see the day, but ACP is finally done. (Those people who purchased in the pre-order sale several months ago will now be able to go back to their download page later today and grab the first release version of the completed script.)

It’s a monster.

What started off as a fairly small but entirely useful *little* script that allowed you to unify all your sites through a single ClickBank account is now a HUGE MONSTER of a script that incorporates all sorts of related things.

So…

It now has secure digital delivery – that wasn’t in the original plan.

It now creates secure order buttons for you – that wasn’t in the plan.

It has a built in autoresponder and broadcast mailer for both customers AND affiliates – that wasn’t in the plan.

It has built in integration with ImnicaMail, Aweber and Mailchimp – that wasn’t in the plan.

It now unifies multiple ClickBank accounts – that wasn’t in the plan.

It gives you full control over affiliates and their percentage commission via the use of multiple ClickBank accounts – that wasn’t in the plan.

It now uses secure download templates like SmartDD – that wasn’t in the plan.

Or you can optionally redirect buyers to a URL – that wasn’t in the plan.

It has a multi-level of granularity of control over both saleable items and affiliates – that wasn’t in the plan.

And there’s other stuff too.

I now look at this whole project and and I’ll openly say that my handling of it was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. What I *should* have done is released the very small script that I originally promised and then built on it from there.

But what happened was I got the first small release version back and spotted a couple of minor issues with it, and then asked if we could just have this “one little thing” added to it…

And then this became a cycle for the next few weeks and eventually months.

The dang thing just got way bigger than I expected it to and I let it all get out of control.

I’m really sorry if you’re one of the people that bought this on pre-order expecting to get it a couple of weeks afterwards – I’ve apologised individually to people who’ve asked about it.

The good news is I’m *much* happier releasing this as it stands now than the original script I envisaged. In fact the original script was planned to be very much like Easy Click Mate only better and at half the price.

Now it’s a much more well-endowed script that does some pretty cool stuff.

For example, just taking one of the key points from above. Originally it was intended for you to be able to unify sales of multiple products across multiple sites through a single ClickBank account. That alone would save you a small fortune in opening vendor accounts with ClickBank as you can now use the full 500 products available to an account but spread across lots of different sites. Woohoo!

But then I realised that this meant that everything you sold would be at the same commission rate as it can only be done at the vendor account level. What if you had some products you wanted to apply a 50% commission to, and others a 60% or 75% commission? With ClickBank you can’t normally do that, so if you wanted to pay JV partners or super affiliates a higher rate of commission as a reward for promoting for you, it was impossible to do.

Until now.

Now you can open a second vendor account with ClickBank and set a different commission rate. Then in ACP you specify that the item you’re selling should be linked to that vendor account instead and it all gets handled automatically. You can also flip individual affiliates (or groups) between different commission rates any time you want to without them having to change their affiliate links. 😉

Today at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), I’m running a final end-of-year sale and making ACP available for just $17.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a $97 product given the development time and effort that’s gone into it. If you don’t get it today, then in the new year it will go on sale for a month at $27 during the launch period, then $47 and finally $97.

Now’s your chance to get it at a massive discount at only $17.

-Frank Haywood

P.S. In case you’re wondering, it’s NOT a WordPress plugin it’s a standalone script and so will need a touch more work to install as you have to create a database for it first. It’s not hard to do (5 minutes or less) and well worth the little bit of one-off effort needed to centralise all your sales.

Dec

2011

How To Succeed In 2012

That’s a bit of a grand title isn’t it?

The fact is, the majority of hopeful onliners won’t succeed in 2012. My personal estimate is that 99% will be in the same situation as they are now or worse by this time next year.

It’s a fact that I’ve gone over and over here on my blog that only 1% will succeed with their online business.

Here’s a good question for you.

What’s the one determining factor that decides whether your business is going to succeed or not?

We’ll get to that in a bit, but first a quick statistic discovered by a friend and mentor a few years ago.

SIXTY percent of people starting today with the thought of “Can I make a living online?” will NOT be around in 6 months time.

That’s a very sobering thought isn’t it?

There will be people reading this who in 6 months time will have thrown in the towel in frustration at having gone round in circles trying to work out what they should be doing (and HOW) and eventually giving up.

It’s a shame and it’s also completely avoidable with a little thought and preparation. I know for a FACT what works. It works for me and it works for thousands of other people too.

Think about this for a moment.

There are lots of different business models and some of them are really quite complicated. A lot of people find out a little about some of the more complicated and well, let’s say “flaky” ones, and try to get to grips with them. The problem is, deep inside they already know they’re going to fail because they don’t *quite* believe what they’re being told, and rightly so in most cases.

Here’s what I know DOES work, and you’ll know right away for a FACT that it works the moment the words settle in, and that’s because you see this every day.

Here it is. Ready?

You create a product that people want and you sell it to them.

What on this planet could be simpler to understand than that? But many (and this may be you) don’t know how to get from A to B.

So you end up with puzzles like “How do I come up with a good product idea?” and “How do I get it created?” and “How do I unleash it on the world when it’s done?”

I know it can seem never ending and an insurmountable task when you don’t know how. But the best way of approaching it all is with a plan and one step at a time. With my learning and experience, I can help you get from A to B when you join my personal coaching.

On Thursday 15th December I’ll accept you and four other people to join me during the first two months of 2012 and coach you through product idea to creation to sales page and promotion.

When you have that product online and making sales and building a mailing list, you’ll agree with me that signing up for personal coaching with me was the best thing you ever did.

My coaching with you will be one to one which is why I call it personal coaching. You and I will sit and chat and work out what it is you want to do and I’ll help you put together a plan and achieve it. So If you’ve spent some time just thrashing about a bit and don’t seem to have any real direction, or things are moving a little slowly…

I’ll get you on track.

I’ll show you:-

How to come up with neverending product ideas. There’s a few simple techniques that means you’ll never go short of a good idea. Heck, I’ll GIVE you some ideas if you want – I have more than I can possibly ever implement, and I add new ones almost every week.[br][br]
The steps you need to take your ideas and turn them into profitable reality.[br][br]
How to build a mailing list and with that a profitable business.[br][br]
The tools and methodologies I use on a day to day basis.[br][br]
How to find good (and very low cost) outsource staff and get them to do the things you can’t or don’t want to do. Not as easy as you might think – certainly not as easy as I thought two years ago. Yes I believed all the blather and hype about it. You live and learn.[br][br]
Where to find that staff (and I’m not talking about the Freelance sites) and how to approach it all to pick up the right people. I’ll help you hire them and hold your hand while you do it. And here’s a tip to keep your costs down – you don’t have to hire them full time if you don’t want to. Many outsourcers are more than happy to earn “bread and butter” money from you while doing other things. Some only want to work part time, and I’ll explain why that is when you join.[br][br]
How to realise that opportunity is all around you, and all you need is to be prepared for it. Someone told me a few years ago that “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Boy were they right. If you’re prepared, then when the opportunities arise (and they always do) you’ll see them as your “Lucky breaks.”[br][br]
How to learn some of the essential skills you need even though you may be totally unaware of them right now. And also the methods I personally use, and then I’ll help you to use them too in order to make sure you get a good response from what you do.[br][br]

And finally, of extreme practical use to you (and I’ve learned this is a blocker for most people) I’ll write your sales copy for you for the product you’re going to have created by the end of the coaching period. I’ll also explain the entire copywriting process to you, and why I did what I did.

That last one alone is worth the entire cost of the coaching for many people.

Talking of cost, this isn’t going to break your bank.

Let me explain. I spent about ~~$10,000~~ on coaching a few years ago and I still think of it as the best thing I ever did. I went into it scared and came out confident a few weeks later. I’d invested in the most important part of my business.

Me.

So to answer the question I asked earlier – “What’s the one determining factor that decides whether your business is going to succeed or not?”

It’s YOU.

In case you missed my point above, you shouldn’t see the coaching I’m offering as an expense. It’s an investment in YOU. (I’m NOT charging ~~$10,000~~ either, or anywhere near it.)

When I open the doors tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), stick the investment cost on your credit card and pay for it later out of your profits. That’s exactly what I did.

-Frank Haywood

Dec

2011

Personal One On One Coaching Part 2

I had lots of replies and kind words to my last blog post about my depression a few years ago.

In that post I said I’d tell you why I made it. It’s important.

With me, it was my trial through depression and the recovery time that followed that bought me to the place where I realised it was time to strike out on my own. In my case I thankfully had no choice in having to do my own thing as following my depression I effectively became unemployable.

I can take advice, and I can learn stuff just like I’ve always done, and even ask for help. But what I can’t do is have anyone tell me what to do. I can’t help that side of it any more, the barriers just go straight up and whoever’s doing the telling is wasting their breath. It’s quite different if I want the advice or knowledge.

When I finally moved into the digital products market place (in my case software) I believed for a short while all the nonsense I was told about how easy it was running an online business and how you didn’t have to do any work, ha-ha. I say “nonsense” because it really is.

Running your own business takes work and determination no matter what the business type.

There is no “short cut”, no “magic bullet”, no “loophole”, no “weird solution” or “ancient remedy” that many of the methods sellers would have you believe. You just need to choose something you’re happy with and work at it until you get better at doing whatever you do.

Obvious really isn’t it?

If you’ve been going through this yourself, or trying to get started at it, then you’ll have found that to begin with many of your days bring new problems to go with the pile of existing ones and the need to discover ways of solving them. And you find yourself “working” long, unproductive, pointless days when what you really need to be doing is focussing on the money that will drive your business forward.

More than 60% of people give up at some time in the first 6 months for whatever reason, and I suspect the biggest reasons to be a lack of focus and just plain not knowing what to do. This results in trying out lots of different things – “thrashing about” – until finally throwing the towel in.

I’ll repeat it again in case you weren’t paying attention further up the page, you need to choose something you’re happy with and work at it. 🙄

Usually and in my experience, whatever that something is, then you’ll find there’s always going to be a core set of requirements.

From my own perspective, I chose to sell software. Some days I wish I’d just gone into ebooks as I’d have total control of my own product creation process, but I don’t see that as being as much fun as working in software. I’ve always liked computers, but that’s just me. Something else might light you up in your case, or you may be similar to me.

Whatever it is, you need to do something you enjoy, or at the very least feel confident and determined about.

And I can help if you let me.

In a few days time I’ll be opening what might be my last ever personal coaching programme which will run through January and February 2012.

I say might be last ever because I have a project starting in March that will consume a chunk of my time and may eventually take me in a different direction (still with software). We’ll see, it’s very early days yet.

The last coaching I did was four years ago so you can see it’s not the kind of thing I do on a regular basis and that’s why I think it’s a bit special.

I won’t be pushing you through a one-size-fits-all sausage machine. I know that more than a few of the coaching programmes I’ve seen tend to operate on a “come one, come all” basis, but that’s not how I do it.

This will be personal coaching, tailored for you. The way I think coaching should be done.

There are some provisos that come with it though, and these are only there to make sure you’re not signing up for something that isn’t appropriate for you.

#1 – The coaching will be in the IM (Internet Marketing) niche.

#2 – The coaching won’t attempt to cover things I don’t do myself such as CPA and PPC, or network marketing. I have very little knowledge of those and I’m not really inclined to find out, it’s just not my bag.

#3 – The coaching will cover things like product creation, traffic, list building and automation by outsourcing. The stuff I personally see as vitally impotant to most online businesses. I’ll give you more information on what I will cover with this personal coaching in my next post.

#4 – You’re prepared to work hard at it and work under your own initiative with my guidance. Yes as your coach I’ll do some hand holding and pointing you in the right direction, but the sooner you take responsibility for your performance the better. I can help you achieve that very useful attribute.

#5 – You commit to the ethic of product creation. To be in the “game”, you need your own products to either give away (to list build) or preferably sell, and I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to create or have one created for you after 30 days or less. Once you know what you’re doing and you’re really cooking with some useful outsourcers, a week or less for product creation is completely do-able.

On that last one, having your own product(s) is vitally important as from that point on you can start list building. The size of your list bears a direct correlation to the size of your business. Simple isn’t it?

That okay for starters?

More information on personal coaching in my next post.

-Frank Haywood

Dec

2011

I’m Outing Myself – The Positive Side

I’ve had more than a little problem putting this together – I intended letting this out on Saturday and I’ve had to put it back.

I knew it might be a bit difficult, and it has been. I ended up writing a lot more than I intended to, and now I’ve put all that to one side and started again as I’m sure you don’t want to see something the size of War and Peace. 😉

I’ll get right to the heart of it.

In late 2002 (around about this time of the year), I was diagnosed with severe depression bought on by job related stress.

I know some people reading this will think that depression is just another way of saying you’re feeling a bit down. And that’s exactly how I used to think of it until it was my turn. 😉

We all say it don’t we? “I’m depressed…”

But feeling a bit down doesn’t even get anywhere near what depression is really all about. And no, you can’t “shake yourself out of it” in much the same way that you can’t shake yourself out of any other life threatening illness, like cancer for example. I know that one might be a hard one to swallow for some, but it’s true.

I sincerly hope depression never touches you.

Anyway. I won’t bore you with the details, but I ended up being off work for two years and then finally leaving the company I was working for. I later found out that at the time long term illness (due mainly to depression) within my business group was running at an incredible SIX percent – I think the industry standard is something like a quarter of a percent for ALL reasons.

The company had gone bad, and taken me (and a lot of other people) down with it. I was in a bad way, and it’s left its mark on me.

So I left. But I wasn’t idle for the two years I was off work. You might say I was lucky enough to be able to spend that time researching and learning how to run my own business – under doctor’s orders I hasten to add. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) helps a LOT with depression. For me it means “Keep yourself too busy to get any worse and hope you start to get better.”

Following that period, there were some rough times but we still did okay, and eventually I moved away from selling physical goods and into my first love of software.

And here I am today.

The depression *has* changed me. I can’t say for good or bad, I’m just different.

I’m almost back to the fun loving and very sociable person I was over ten years ago, but it’s taken a long time to get here, and there have been ups and downs. (I still have my grumpy days, but I don’t think I’m any different to most people in that respect.)

One of the changes now is I’m a VERY positive person, and I’ve also become a bit of a workaholic. Although I still like to kick back and enjoy myself as a reward for my hard work.

The positive aspect of my nature is part of my defensive shield against future “issues” and it’s a good thing to have, but means I can’t and won’t tolerate any negativity or negative vibes from people. My attitude is a little bit of “If you want to bring yourself down, that’s YOUR choice, now get out of my face.” 😉

It means that although I’m a much kinder more empathatic person, I will no longer “Put up with fools gladly.” I now say if you want someone to blame for all your problems, go look in the mirror.

And that’s exactly how I lead my own life now.

If I have a problem, it’s my problem and I caused it. Something I did, some choice I made means it happened. And by accepting responsibility for everything in my life (the good things too) I don’t dwell on why things work out the way they do. I already know it’s because of me and the effect I have on the world around me, even when it’s a bit unexpected.

And conversely, I no longer even try to accept responsibility for what other people do, and who then try to lay it at my door. (I teach this to my children.)

They did “this”, then “this other thing” happened as a result, even if it was an accident or a freak occurrence – THEY made the initial decision, the responsibility is theirs.

“Don’t try to blame anyone else except yourself” has become a lifestyle for me. And it’s both liberating and exhilarating. 🙂

So why the heck am I telling you all this for?

It’s important. But this is already long enough, and so I’ll tell you in the next post.

Until then.

-Frank Haywood

Dec

2011

2012 Personal Coaching Programme

After many requests for help I’ve received from people this year about how to set up their sites, how to create a product, how to outsource it, how to build a mailing list etc, I’m finally able to offer a coaching programme.

Unlike some marketers who only make their money by coaching others, I’m the real deal. I’m like you.

On Wednesday 7th December I’ll make an announcement as to how you can sign up for coaching with me.

This will be a little different to the usual “run-of-the-mill” progammes as you’ll be getting direct access to me via Skype or phone. And I’ll also expect you to be open to doing other projects with me under my guidance, as a joint venture partner.

It will be an ongoing 12 month programme, although you will have at least one product and web site at the end of the first 60 days coaching. Depending on how fast you can work, there’s no reason why you couldn’t have at least two products and web sites (it’s up to you), and you’ll soon learn how you can create one per week with a bit of effort.

One per week?

Well, long time readers of this blog will know that’s almost exactly what I’ve been doing over the last couple of years. And I also know there are people reading this that have bought pretty much everything I’ve ever released.

You’ll learn how you can move fast and achieve the same kind of results as I do. There have been many times where I’ve had the idea on Monday and delivered the product on Friday.

The focus will be in the IM niche and will be on product creation, traffic, list building, outsourcing and earning lots of money.

Due to the very personal nature of the coaching, you will be one of only 10 people that I’ll be working with. I don’t believe I can offer you the kind of attention you need to succeed with any more than that.

I know that some people will want to know how much the personal coaching will cost, and my first (and experienced) response to that is if you’re serious about succeeding online it shouldn’t matter. You’re simply coming at it from the wrong point of view.

This is NOT an expense, it’s an INVESTMENT. In you.

There’s never been anything more true than “you have to give to get”, so just put it on your credit card and pay it back out of the profits.

Let me put this into perspective. A few years ago I paid something like ~~$10,000~~ for coaching, and although I didn’t get everything that was advertised (shrugs) and a lot of it was unnecessary (shrugs again) I still consider that the BEST investment I ever made.

I paid for it on my credit card and maxed it out. The credit card company being the evil swines they are then upped my limit, but that’s another story.

All I want to say here is, I’m NOT going to be asking you for anything like the ~~$10,000~~ I paid.

This is SERIOUSLY affordable if you’re SERIOUS about making a go of it online. I don’t know, maybe you’ve had a bit of a skirmish already with creating a product, but it didn’t go anywhere?

We can fix that.

On Saturday I’ll tell you something very personal about me that I’ve shared with maybe two or three people over the last few years.

I’ll publicly explain how and WHY I got into marketing, and what drove me to do what I now do, and why my options became limited and why I HAD to do what I do.

Who knows? You may have a similar story.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

-Frank Haywood