Relax, I’m not being rude with the title of this post

Instead, this is a genuine question – I promise!

If somebody asked you to explain the difference between the front end and back end of a web business what would you say?

If you’d have asked me during my first 12 months online then I wouldn’t have had a clue so if you’re in the dark too then please don’t feel bad.

But do read on, because this post is for you and concerns one of THE most important things to understand when it comes to making money on the internet…

Your Sales Funnel

The sales funnel is simply the journey your subscribers and customers take through your business.

Take a look at the picture below which shows your sales funnel:

As you can see, the sales funnel is split into 2 parts, the front end and the back end. Let’s look at these…

The Front End: This is what happens as people join your list as new subscribers.

But how do people join your list in the first place? Well, this could be in a couple of ways.

They could…

1. Sign up for your newsletter or free gift using the opt in form on the sidebar of your blog or on your squeeze page
2. Purchase one of your products

Basically, there are a number of potential different “on ramps” which allow people to become your subscriber.

Either way, they join your list at the front end of your business.

The Back End: This is what happens after people have become your subscribers.

As you’ll see from the diagram above they basically receive follow up emails from you. These can be either trust building emails such as sending free gifts, PDF cheat sheets, videos, blog updates or they can be promotional emails where you promote your own or affiliate products.

Now here’s the most important thing of all:

MOST OF THE MONEY YOU’LL EVER MAKE ONLINE WILL BE FROM THE BACK END OF YOUR BUSINESS!!!

Understanding this is super powerful.

Most online (and offline) businesses only make a tiny amount for profit, break even or even LOSE money on the FRONT END of their business.

For example, many businesses spend money on advertising, getting ranked in Google (SEO), direct mail, live events and so on in order to generate new subscribers.

There are ways of immediately making money on the front end of the business but basically it is rare to make a big profit.

This is FINE and how it should be provided that you have a solid back end to your business that makes the real money for you!

And this means of course it’s vital to build your email follow up sequence well.

The great thing here is that it can be put on autopilot using your autoresponder.

It’s also important to make sure you look after your subscribers so they get a great experience. This is something a lot of people fail to do and it really makes a big difference when you go to your list and offer them a product to purchase.

If you get this right then the subscribers on your list are more likely to become your customers. And your customers are more likely to purchase from you time and time again.

They are happy and you make money. It’s a Win-Win!

So…

Understanding the difference between the front and back ends is really important as you start to see a clear difference between your lead generation activities and real money making activities.

This really helped me to think a lot clearer about what I was doing when I learnt this.

A FAILURE to understand it often leads to big problems. For example, I met someone who was offering 35% commission on a small product of theirs and was frustrated that he couldn’t get affiliates to promote it for him.

This person has failed to understand that this product could have been used as a lead generation and traffic strategy at the front end of his business. By offering 100% (yes 100%!) commission on the product he would have had a much better chance of getting other marketers to promote.

But this person couldn’t understand this and kept saying, “Why would I ever give 100%? I’m in this for the money!”

But if he had understood his front end from his back end then he would have been able to see that it’s worth giving ALL of the profits away on the front end to drive the traffic. Then once the customers are onto the list you can make MUCH more money by building more trust with them and promoting to them again and again!

A similar attitude to whatever traffic techniques you decide to use will serve you very well too.

Does this make sense? Please do go for the LIKE button if you liked and let me know your questions/thoughts/anger/disagreements below

Building a list is just SO powerful.

It’s the fastest and easiest way to make money on the internet.

However, it will only work if you take the time to write emails that people want to read and this all starts with the subject line.

Think about it: It doesn’t matter how good your blog post, product, video or even email body copy is, without an enticing email subject line your subscribers won’t be feel compelled to open your emails and read your content.

For this reason I’d like to share with you some of my best converting email subject lines. I’ve ranked these in order of open rate. That is the percentage of my subscribers who actually chose to open these emails.

Obviously, it’s impossible to say with 100% certainty why these subject lines were successful. However, I’ve put some of my own thoughts as to the reasons against each one to help you think about how you can replicate good subject lines yourself.

As you know, I always like to give you the negative side of what we discuss here on the Gain Higher Ground blog so for good measure I’ll also reveal some of the worst performing subject lines that I’ve written!

7 Best Converting Email Subject Lines

“Why you should ignore Google+ (i.e. Google’s ‘answer’ to Facebook)…”

54.5% of my subscribers opened this email. It is very likely that its success is a combination of:

• Controversy – Most bloggers and marketers were raving about how good Google Plus was at the time so this subject line was flying very much in the face of that.
• Topical – At the time this email was sent Google Plus was being talked about all over the internet.

“Me on London’s Hampstead Heath (+a free internet marketing checklist)”

This had a 57.2% open rate. People love personal stories and seeing inside the lives of others. So I guess the lesson here is to really try to engage with your audience – they’ll be a lot more interested in your personal experiences than you might imagine.

“19 Internet Marketing Resources That I Love…”

The 59.8% of my subscriber base who chose to open this email were likely intrigued by resources that they feel could save them time and speed up their progress. As we’ve talked about resource lists, cheat sheet and the like are very popular in virtually every niche on the internet

“Why don’t you do this to make money online, {!firstname_fix}? (nothing to buy)”

The open rate for this subject line was a whopping 62.2%! It contains some features which tend to work very well:

• Results – It offers a method to achieve a specific goal that my subscribers want to achieve (or achieve more of)
• Personalisation – You’ll notice the presence of “{!firstname_fix}” which is the code that uses the subscriber’s own name. This helps to catch their eye and can increase open rates.
• Free content – I included the phrase “nothing to buy” as this was entirely free content. This helps people to click who are weary of those marketers who just promote product after product.

“…A quick recommendation and ‘the secret passage’…”

64.2% open rate with this one and I assume this is the very powerful marketing tactic of curiosity at play here. What is the recommendation and more to the point who isn’t interested in learning what the secret passage is?!

“{!firstname_fix}, do you fear the technical side of starting an online business?”

I was actually surprised by the very high open rate of 77.6% here. But again this is why testing is so important. Even though you don’t have to be technical to create your own successful web business many people still fear it so this is probably the most likely explanation.

“No charge. No opt-in. My new 56 page eBook FREE for you (link inside, {!firstname_fix})”

This is my best performing subject line of ALL TIME with my Gain Higher Ground related content.

83.6% clicked to open the email and I guess it appealed as it was free, people like eBooks they can download and of course I used personalisation (“{!firstname_fix}”) too!

And Now… Here’s The 4 WORST!

The following subject lines are some of the ones that have performed the worst for me….

“I’m half way to 72 today…”

This was just about my age and 23.4% were interested enough to open the email. So sharing personal information doesn’t always work. Perhaps there just wasn’t enough curiosity here?

“How To ‘Do’ Internet Marketing Without Your Computer”

Pretty dull subject line (even to me now!) and only 17.1% of my subscribers chose to open the email. Who wants to “Do” internet marketing anyway?

“SPRING (important behind the scenes news)”

I was surprised that only 15.6% open this one as I thought that the phrase “behind the scenes” would create more enticement. Perhaps people were put off by the word “SPRING”?

“2 QUICK things… ”

How boring! This subject line doesn’t suggest excitement, a benefit or anything really that important at all! 13.4% were interested though which I suppose wasn’t that bad….

Conclusion

So things that work are:

• Controversy
• Being topical
• Curiosity
• Engaging with personal information

But remember you can’t “cry wolf” here. If you use these tactics in a cynical way, too often or don’t have the content to deliver on your implied promises then your subscribers will open your emails less and less in the future.

Can you think of an enticing subject line that made you compelled to click and open the email? How about subject lines that put you off and make you want to unsubscribe? I’d love to hear about it, so please let us know including any questions or feedback you have. I’ll reply to every comment

Would you like to build a membership site?

If your answer is yes then you are not alone – perhaps it’s just me but I’ve noticed a growing interest in this area.

So based on my experience of running Gain Higher Ground Membership and setting up other membership style sites I thought I’d put together this blog post to help guide you in the right direction.

Why Build A Membership Site?

Owning a successful membership site is a wonderful thing, here are some of the benefits….

1. Less product creation worries

Although creating a membership site does require a fair amount of work it means that you don’t have to rely on perpetually inventing, creating and launching new products.

2. You only have to sell ONCE

If you are promoting lots of different products, either your own or by being an affiliate, you need to be in selling and promoting mode a LOT. This is a pain and especially if you’re like me and don’t really like the thought of selling anyway! Owning a membership site on the other hand means that once your subscribers become members they then will stay with you as customers without you having to pitch to them again.

3. Continuity Income

By having a recurring billing structure built in to your product you are (by definition) going to get paid every month, quarter or year. This is really the holy grail of running any business – constant cash flow.

Content – Go Evergreen!

My top recommendation for creating content for your membership site is to try to keep it as evergreen as possible.

By this I mean that it should be information that is useful not only today but, next month, in 6 months and preferably in 2 years’ time. This way whatever content you do create you, and your subscribers, can reap the benefits from it over a long period of time.

Of course, you’ll need to update it from time to time but try your best to go as evergreen as possible!

When it comes to what kind of content to create then really it’s your choice. Use the “Content Mix” (as I like to call it) to ensure that you account for your members’ differing preferences for varying types of content.

Here are my favourite kinds of content that I publish:

• Tutorial videos – Use Camtasia to record them
• Webinars – Interactive and FUN to create!
• Audio Interviews – The FASTEST way to create content ever
• PDF Cheat Sheets – Members love ‘em! Lists of resources, mindmaps, flowcharts.
• Articles – Either publish these on a member’s only blog or convert them to PDF for download

Which Membership Site Software Is Best?

You could write an essay on this!

aMember, Digital Access Pass, Wishlist Member, Membergate, Easy Member Pro, the list goes on and on.

Personally, I use:

1. Membergate – Expensive monthly cost but very good
2. Wishlist Member – Much cheaper and a one off cost but also very good

Unless you have specific reasons for not doing so my recommendation is to go with Wishlist Member which integrates with WordPress. You’ll also need a good WordPress theme to make your site look attractive and for this I’d recommend OptimizePress.

Pricing

Start low to launch your site and then increase the price.

Not only will this get more members through the door to start with it will also encourage them not to cancel after you raise the price for new members.

It’s much hard to decrease the price than increase it so keep this in mind too. And take a look at the other membership sites in your niche to get an idea of the correct level of pricing that you can use.

I once tested a choice between monthly payment options and a one off charge for 12 month access and found that 79% of people chose the one off payment.

So this is something to keep in mind. Obviously, you forgo the luxury of being paid every month but some people are averse to this so by offering both options you are likely to get more people through the door.

How To Accept Payments

Paypal is the easiest and you can be up and running in just a few minutes.

Clickbank or similar solution offers more analytics and features but it will cost you some money to start with plus it takes time for your product to be approved.

It doesn’t really matter which one but I’d highly recommend either of these choices unless you have a very good reason for not using them.

How To Market Your Site

As I ALWAYS say (yawn!) build your list first.

Then build trust with your subscribers through your autoresponder sequence and by emailing them your blog updates.

Then introduce them to the option of your membership site.

The model works really well as lots of people like being your subscriber and consuming your free updates but some who are more serious will always want to take things to next level so it really makes sense to present them with the option of joining your members site.

Retention

Once you’ve got people into your membership site you need to do everything possible to keep them there.

Here’s a 3 point checklist:

1. Do consistent updates to the members’ area content at regular intervals
2. Offer the BEST support you can either via email, on a private Facebook page or via a members’ forum
3. Can you offer them tools, software or access to something that they will find useful going forward? This is a great way to keep members

So…

Building a membership site does take time and effort, there’s certainly no doubt about that.

However, once it is there it is really a very enjoyable experience running it and well worth the initial effort. Overall, just try to keep things SIMPLE. It’s so easy to overcomplicate things, especially when it comes to internet marketing.

Are you inspired (or put off!) to start your own membership site?  Please click LIKE if you enjoyed this and let me know what you think in the comments section below…

Hi – Rob here and I have a special message for you!

Please Click PLAY below to watch it (it’s only 4 minutes )…

Please Click HERE Now For All The Details

As I said, the only the first 100 tickets are discounted to £47. After that the price rises to £147 (the event organisers control this not me unfortunately!). So please book right now if you can make it!

Kind regards,

Rob.

P.S. Will any of your friends or family be interested in coming along? If so, please click LIKE below or let them know about this page.

Promoting other people’s products and services, namely affiliate marketing, is probably the easiest way to get started making money on the internet.

You don’t have to worry about customer support, taking payments, issuing refunds or putting the time and energy into creating a product in the first place.

However, as time goes on and you get more experienced it is well worth considering creating your own products as there is no doubt that this is where the largest amounts of money are made online.

If you’ve never created a product before then this can seem like a daunting prospect, so here is a short blueprint to help you avoid the common pitfalls.

1. Choose A Launch Date Before You Start

Just as many first time novelists have been working on their masterpiece for 2 years or more, lots of internet marketers spend endless amounts of time working on open-ended projects that never seem to get completed.

So before you do anything set a fixed date to release your product.

This will force you to get things done, not be a perfectionist (a big mistake!) and work backwards in your planning so that you can accomplish all of the other tasks in this blueprint.

2. Realize That The CUSTOMER Matters, Not You

One of the biggest mistakes people can make is to assume that what they’d like in a product is also what their audience would like.

FORGET what you think, go out and discover what your audience wants.

Check what is selling in the marketplace. Sites like cbengine.com, clickbank.com, WarriorPlus, Amazon Best Sellers are all good places for research but keep your ear to the ground and use your intuition too: What are bloggers talking about, what are affiliates promoting?

3. Make A List Of Benefits And Features

You MUST write these down in a list!

They will help you keep on track in both creating the product and the marketing material as you approach your launch date.

Remember…

Features: What the product consists of. E.g., a 37 page eBook on keeping bees

Benefits: The results that the customer will get. E.g., saves the hassle and money of buying the wrong equipment and making the common mistakes that first time bee keepers usually make.

See the difference? You need to push the benefits in your marketing before you talk about the features.

4. Aim To Massively Over Deliver

Simply, your product should be worth 5-10x of the price you ask people to pay.

Buy some other products that are similar to the one you want to create and break them down. What are their key elements, what are their weaknesses? Write all of this down into your product plan.

Another great thing to do is to include unannounced bonuses in your product. These are parts of the product that you don’t talk about in your marketing. (HINT: Audio interview are excellent for this!). This will create a positive surprise for your customers and reduce the refund rate.

5. Include Different Media Formats

Different people like different formats: Some people like MP3 so they can listen in the car or when they are out running, others text PDF files, some webinars and others recorded video tutorials.

Here’s a breakdown of some of my products:

• Gain Higher Ground Membership: Video tutorials, live webinars, audio mastermind interviews, PDF cheat sheets/swipe files/flowcharts
• The Traffic Escalator: Video + PDF report + audio interview
• Stock Market Sniper: PDF manual + Video tutorials

We discussed content repurposing a while back which will give you some ideas on how to get this done with minimal effort and time.

6. Taking Payments

If it’s your first product then keep this simple!

PayPal is definitely the easiest to set up. I used this for my Traffic Escalator product. It also integrates with other systems (e.g., Rapid Action Profits, WarriorPlus etc) so you can have an affiliate program.

Clickbank is simple, effective, has great analytics and has a built in affiliate program. I use this for GHG Membership.

So don’t worry about getting a merchant account from your bank, you can do this later. Keep it as simple as you can to begin with.

7. Enjoy Yourself!

In my opinion, having fun is crucial to being successful online!

And when it comes to creating products things should be no different.

Personally, I love creating products as much as I do making money. Starting from scratch and ending up with a brand new product gives you immense satisfaction, especially when you start to receive great feedback from your customers (and you will if you follow this blueprint)!

How To Spend Your Time

Having created multiple products myself in different niches I recommend you split your time as follows:

1/3 Research & planning
1/3 Creating the product
1/3 Creating the marketing for the product

Finally, the worst thing you can do – and I’ve seen people do this a lot – is to jump straight into creating the product. It might seem clear in your head at the time but I can almost gaurantee you that skipping the planning and research stage will cause untold trouble later down the line!

Are you thinking of creating a product? Have you had a previous success or failure before? Rather stick with affiliate marketing? Please click LIKE if you liked this and drop your comments below…

I’m in the mood for a rant today so hold tight, here we go…

If you aren’t already aware, there has been a lot of turmoil in the SEO community recently.

This has been come about in reaction to changes made by Google to its ranking algorithm. In particular it is focusing on “overly optimized websites” and has de-indexed a link building service called BuildMyRank.com.

The changes have been so dramatic that BuildMyRank.com has gone out of business and are currently refunding their customers. This means that the thousands of people who have used their services to try and boost their Google ranking are probably feeling a touch of frustration right now.

This is a classic example of why I don’t rely on SEO as a traffic strategy: You can spend an awful lot of time and money trying to get your web pages to page 1 in Google with very uncertain results.

This blog is only one of my websites but it still gets around 4,000-5,000 visitors per month on average:

However, as you can see about only around 13-14% of my traffic comes from Google.

The other 85%+ is from other sources, referrals from other sites, guest posts I’ve done, contributions of content I’ve put out there on the web, mailings by other marketers and my own email list.

Here’s why I don’t focus on SEO for traffic generation:

• It’s increasingly slow (read: usually takes MONTHS to get ranked well in Google these days)
• You’re playing a constant game of cat and mouse with The Big-G who can change the rules on you at any time
• It’s not really “free” traffic as you really need paid tools to get it working well
• It’s very time intensive compared with other traffic strategies. Sure you can outsource the work but again this costs money.
• The success of your business rests entirely in the hands of an arbitrary third party (Google again of course) – is this really sensible?
• The results of SEO are very uncertain (all of your work can be wasted)

The Great SEO Scam

So why, you may ask is SEO so popular and why do so many people keep talking about “get to Google page 1″ strategies all the time? After all, there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t receive several emails about exactly this kind of thing.

My cynical view, is that SEO appeals to internet newbies and people exploit this.

Many marketers who sell make money online products know full well that using phrases like “get to Google page 1 in 7 days” entice people to buy their products.

But I can tell you from firsthand experience that virtually NONE of these marketers use SEO in their own businesses – they know it’s flaky so they rely on other traffic strategies instead.

I was at a conference last week where one marketer showed an example of how he got to page 1 in less than 24 hours. Now, this is technically TRUE but the phrase he ranked for was “The best speaker at XXX conference”.

Well that is a phrase for which no one searches, hence the competition is very nonexistent and therefore he’ll get virtually no traffic from it even though he is technically speaking at #1 in Google.

Nonetheless, he received a solid round of applause from at least half the audience who were clearly in the dark about this.

Don’t blame the audience though: 18  months ago I probably would have clapped too.

If I created a post here on my blog called “Why Rob Cornish Doesn’t Like SEO” it would be ranked as number 1 in Google in probably just a few hours.

So I could claim that, “I’ve got to page 1 in Google”, here’s the proof, buy my course and I’ll teach you how to do it!

What a load of hogwash – this is part of the “The Great SEO Scam”.

How To Avoid The Scam

The best way forward for the vast majority (but not all) websites is to work on non-SEO traffic and marketing strategies which involve less effort and have more certain results.

This is what I do personally, and it’s what we cover in massive detail inside our members area.

Serious businesses starting up online don’t begin by focusing on SEO. They promote their businesses by writing articles for other websites in their niche, posting videos, doing press releases, paid for advertising, offering free content to other product creators and networking both online and offline.

The list goes on and on but SEO is way down the list of priorities when they start out.

Now, here’s an interesting thing: Many of these traffic strategies produce nice SEO side benefits as a by-product! So as you become more popular, build out your site’s content and get more traffic, Google will recognise this and reward you by sending you some traffic.

Excellent!

This is “natural SEO” and is exactly what Google wants you to do. You won’t get penalised for this because it is genuine as oppose to what so many people have been doing which is effectively trying to game the system by finding loopholes and using paid for software which Google disapproves of.

So stop worrying about keywords, article spinning and link building so much. Spend some time learning real and proven ways to get traffic. There’s no magic, it’s just a skill set you can learn. The results will come with more certainty and less effort, I can almost guarantee it…

What do you think of the “Big SEO Scam”? Whether you agree or disagree please click LIKE if you liked this and drop your comments below. Don’t hold back, tell me what you REALLY think….

If you have followed me for a while you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of audio interviews.

Here’s why I love them:

1. They are probably THE fastest way to create content and products

2. You only need Skype (free) and something to record your call (Pamela for the PC or Call Recorder for the Mac). Then edit the interview to MP3 format using Audacity (free)

3. Despite the nerves on your first interview I can almost guarantee you’ll have great fun!

I’ve interviewed well over 20 people in the last 12 months but from time to time I’ve been the interviewee as well.

So in this post I thought I’d link to a very recent session where I was interviewed by Moe Muise from KeywordsBlogger.Com.

Here’s the link (free, no opt-in): Rob Cornish interviewed by Moe Muise

In the interview I share tips on finding hot niches, product creation, why you don’t need to be an expert, my “Traffic Escalator” principle and product launch strategies.

I hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think below

Yesterday I received an email from a new subscriber of mine. Here is a snippet from it:

“I seriously have my doubts that anyone can emulate your success in such a short time unless they went and did stock trading or were lucky enough to find some really hot trendy niche market.

I challenge you to prove me wrong.“

This is a very fair question and something that echoes the sentiment of many people who wish to build a residual income from the internet.

So although I’ve replied in full to this subscriber personally, I thought we’d bring this issue out in the open here on the GHG blog. 

The #1 Myth

A commonly held belief is that the only people who make money are teaching other people how to make money online.

It’s understandable and I in fact was swaying towards this belief during my “struggle” in 2010 when I was starting out.

Now, it’s certainly true that many people have only made money online by teaching others about it.

But the truth is that the majority of money that is made is from other niche markets. These are real people making real money providing help, advice and information outside of the field of internet marketing.

One example is my own success in stock trading but you certainly don’t have to pick this market in order to be successful. It suited me because I managed investments professionally so had some great strategies and tactics that I could share. But that’s just me. We are all different.

So to blow the myth apart let’s take a look at 10 examples of successful niches online…

1. Cooking

In The Devils Kitchen is a site run by Kevin Riley a very successful Canadian marketer living in Osaka, Japan. He shares his passion for cooking on this site and has built a list of subscribers using the opt in form on the right hand side the site.

2. Herbal Remedies

Herb Mentor is a membership site which has thousands of paid members. It’s run by John and Kimberly Gallagher who, together with other content creators provide training and information on how to use herbs and plants to improve your health.

3. Fitness Workouts

Two of my favourite marketers online are Alica & Carrie, otherwise known as “The Bootcamp Girls”. Here is their site which helps fitness professionals with “done for you” training programs that they can provide to their clients. They have also turned their blog into a membership site where they help their clients with the marketing side of their fitness business.

4. Magic

UK based marketer Chris Burton runs his site called Secrets Of Card Magic which helps people learn and master the art of card tricks. Another real person making real money in an unusual niche! Chris started from scratch with zero internet marketing knowledge to build his business very recently.

5. Self Improvement

This is a CLASSIC example of how you can make a lot of money online WITHOUT being an expert yourself. Marketer Lanny Morton approached personal development expert Bob Proctor to provide all the content for his site Six Minutes To Success. This site has generated millions of dollars online even though Lanny is not that well known and can be consider somewhat of an underground marketer!

6. Photography

I first met Arran Wulf at a conference in June 2011 when he was just starting out with his site Become A Photographer. He interviews pro-photographers and asks them to share their tips and advice on how amateur photographers can go professional. Then he packages those interviews up and sells them! Again, a brilliant strategy which you can adopt even if you’re not an expert.

7. Woodworking

Ted Mcgrath runs his online business under the name of Ted’s Woodworking. This is a HOT product on Clickbank currently selling very well. Customers get thousands of woodworking plans so help them with their own projects.

8. Dog Training

This is known as somewhat of a “Rock Star Niche” after one particular guru marketer (Frank Kern) did very well in it. Secrets to Dog Training from Daniel Stevens is currently making a lot of money online.

9. Model Trains

Model trains are something I know virtually nothing about but really fancy getting into! Model Trains For Beginners is a good example of one site in this niche which is making a lot of money through Clickbank.

10. Women’s Business And Self Improvement

I saw Marie Forleo last year at a conference. Rather than being behind the scenes like some of the other examples in this list she runs very much a personality based 6-figure business. One of our members is currently working on a similar project and I’ve directed her to Marie’s site as there’s just so much to learn about her marketing.

So…

I could literally find a hundred of these examples but I’m not sure whether that would push home my main point any further which is that there is a profitable niche for us ALL and you don’t need to be an expert already.

Here are some important points to consider:

• I’ve met and spoken to many of these kinds of marketers and they are no different to you or I. In fact, Chris (from Secrets Of Card Magic), Kevin (from In the Devil’s Kitchen) and Alicia & Carrie (the Bootcamp Girls) have all been special guests in our archived Expert Interview Mastermind Sessions inside our Gain Higher Ground Members Area where they explain exactly the steps to their success.

• They have ALL started from scratch and just learnt the marketing process and implemented the steps to become successful. Many have full time jobs too and have developed their online incomes by working in the evenings.

• They all build email lists of customers and prospects. The BIG key to success online!

• Most of the websites are built on WordPress a free, flexible and easy to use platform. It’s just point and click and doesn’t require any “coding” knowledge at all.

• The start up and running costs are extremely low compared to any other kind of business.

• All of these successful marketers have made many mistakes. They refuse to give up, enjoy the learning curve and “fail forward”.

This is the kind of thing that I LOVE about this business!

Are you inspired? Still have objections on why you couldn’t possibly replicate this kind of success? Disagree, Angry, Confused? I’d really like to hear you thoughts on this post more than any other so please click LIKE (if you liked it) and drop your thoughts below….

If you’ve been a subscriber of mine for a while you’ll know that I always say building a list of subscribers is hands down the easiest and fastest way to make money from the internet.

That’s because, well, quite honestly, it is!

But here’s the thing: Not all subscribers are created equal.

In fact, there are 2 kinds of subscribers: 

1. Freebie seekers
2. Proven buyers

Freebie seekers are typically people who have signed up for a free gift you have offered (usually an eBook or free report PDF). This type of subscriber is certainly valuable and well worth having as they may well become customers of yours later on (when you promote them an affiliate product or a product of your own).

But then again, they might just stay on your subscriber list and never buy anything.

The second type of subscriber, a proven buyer is far more valuable. This is because they have proven that they are willing to spend money by already purchasing a product.

How To Get Proven Buyers Passively And For Free

The easiest answer to this is to create a product and sell it. These customers will go onto your list and statistics show that they will be far more likely to purchase from you again in the future.

But if you’re starting out in internet marketing this can be pretty tricky: You have to create the product, marketing and find traffic before you can make any sales at all.

Having done this myself I can undoubtedly confirm that this is a LOT of work!

So here’s a much easier way that works in any niche. I’ve been using it myself for several months now to great effect.

What you do is to create a some very simple content and offer it for free to another marketer already has a successful product.

Let’s break this down…

1. Create your content

Let’s say you are in the Indoor Organic Gardening niche. You can create an eBook called “7 Steps To Start Indoor Organic Gardening Today!”

If you don’t like writing, create some Camtasia screen-cast videos and do a presentation of the information that way.

If you don’t like writing or creating videos, go and interview another gardener on Skype and ask them their top tips on the subject.

There are many ways of creating content – just choose a format that suits you and get it done!

This part should take no longer than a couple of days to complete. I’ve done it several times and this is a conservative estimate.

2. Create a squeeze page for your content

You can do this yourself using free tools, use a WordPress theme which is designed to do it, adapt a free PLR squeeze page or pay someone on fiverr.com or oDesk to do it for you.

Either way this step is critical because in order to get your free content, people must subscribe to your list first! (Do you see where this is going yet?!)

3. Email other marketers and offer your content as a free bonus to their product

This is exactly what I’ve been doing and it works like a charm

You can find products on Clickbank, from other blogs or just by searching Google. Then just contact the product owners by email and suggest that they add a link to your squeeze page inside their product.

Of course, it doesn’t always work but in my experience more often than not it does – they will be happy to accept your bonus simply because it really adds value to their product so they make more sales and have lower refunds.

So they make more money and you get proven buyers onto your list!

Let’s recap the benefits of this:

1. You get proven buyers onto your list
2. The content you create is extremely quick to create (just a 1 hour audio interview is perfect for example)
3. The traffic is 100% passive – once you set this up you’ll never have to do any more work
4. You can massively leverage this: Once you’ve done this once it’s just a matter of emailing more product owners to increase your traffic flow

The only other thing you need to make this work for you is ACTION – this is the simple but secret sauce which will really make you money this year!

What do you think? Anything here you think you couldn’t do? Honestly? Please do click LIKE if you liked this and drop a comment below.

P.S. If you really want to take action and discover lots more simple strategies like this that can make you money in 2012 please click here.

If you’re like me then your experience with internet marketing started with your eyes locked on to your computer screen for hours on end.

This, along with information overload, is somewhat of a rite of passage for all of us.

And there’s no doubt that it can be a pretty lonely experience to begin with.

But there is GOOD NEWS!

There are LOTS of things you can do to practice internet marketing when you’re NOT in front of your computer screen. These things can really give you great ideas of how to make more money online.

As you’ll see it’s all about observing rather than just looking! For example, here are some things that I do almost every day when I’m out and about: 

1. TV Commercials
Recently, here in the UK there have been a lot of ads for internet dating on TV. Online businesses using offline advertising to promote themselves are always worth paying attention to – even if you haven’t got the budget for a TV commercial yourself!

2. Bill Boards
These are all around, in the cities, on the side of the road and so on. You can gain a real insight into what the current trends are by studying these. Also, be sure to check the calls to action. Are they telling you to call them on the phone, go to their website or, as many big corporates have been doing recently, sending you straight to their Facebook page?

3. Book Stores
If I pass a Borders or Waterstone’s store I usually try to pop in for 5 minutes. Observe the main stands when you walk in. These can give you GREAT inspiration for new profitable niches that you could exploit online. How are they promoting their books using special offers?

4. Magazines
Magazines cost a lot of money to publish and distribute so they are a great indicator of profitability. There’s no shortage of new ideas for niches so always take a moment to study the titles in any shop that sells them.

5. Radio Commercials
These are great, although slightly annoying When I was in the US recently I listened to talk radio a lot whilst driving. I heard a lot of ads for investing in gold and real estate. These were (and still are) great online niches you can make money in.

6. Flyers In Shops, Stores, Libraries
How many times have to gone to pay in a store and noticed flyers on the counter? Can you remember what they were? If not, then make sure you pay attention next time. There are often internet based products and services which are being advertised. A friend of mine recently spotted one promoting someone’s MLM scheme…

7. Go For A Walk
I’ve written about this before here on the GHG Blog. Walking, especially somewhere peaceful and quiet, is a great way to break out from the narrow mindset we sometimes develop when we’re stuck in front of our computers. A great source of Eureka moments in internet marking!

8. Live Events
Get out, meet people. Don’t just restrict yourself to your own niche either. There’s always ideas that you can transfer from other industries. There are lots of seminars, conferences and local meetups that you can attend. I’ve been to about 6 of these so far in 2012, how many have you attended?

I hope this post helps to break the mould a bit and give you some inspiration for new ideas and greater motivation. Be creative and remember that some of the best ways to make money online come to you when you’re not sat in your computer chair!

Have you got any more suggestions for practicing internet marketing when you’re offline? Agree, disagree, angry, inspired by this? Please hit LIKE if you liked it and drop your thoughts below