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One of the questions that I have been getting a lot lately is from people that want to know how it is that you value your online or your digital products and/or courses. Now this is a really good question, and the reason why this question sort of came about is that I was talking to a few people about the price drop.

Now maybe you guys have seen these before, they are really famous on infomercials, you see them on a lot of sales pages, and you see them on a lot of webinars. Now what most people associate the price drop with are phrasing like this right – but wait, don’t do it now, I’m still not done, I can do even better.

You may have heard all of these phrases and a lot of people it rubs the wrong way. But a funny thing happens, is that some people it makes them get very- very excited.

I’m not here to tell you whether or not the price drop is good or bad or wrong or right, what I am here to tell you is why it’s a necessity inside of your marketing. And let me tell you what I mean … in order to first of all value your product or value your packages, it’s absolutely necessary that you show people what they are actually getting inside of your course. When I say that this is the actual listing of what each module is or CD is or each video is.

Wouldn’t you agree that when you’re purchasing something you want to know what it all is, but then you want a clear concise view of everything that you’re actually getting.

For a person to sell a product online, it’s very-very important that they list all of those out. Now along with listing everything out, you have to put a price value associated with each particular piece of your product. Now remember, you’re trying to justify what the value of your product is, you are trying to explain it to somebody. How do you go about deciding what each of your modules or each of your videos or what your report is worth?

What I like to do is there is a couple of things, first of all I look at what the market place in that particular niche, what it is selling products for and I try to get an idea of what they’re delivering for that. Now when I say what they’re delivering, I don’t mean that they are delivering 10 videos and charging $997 that you need to make a course with 10 videos. But what I am talking about is the result that people will get if they follow your training or buy your product. So it’s different to say here’s 10 hours of video on list-building and that cost $997 versus I’m going to show you how to get 10,000 new subscribers on your list.

There’s a big difference. Once you are starting to list out what is actually in your product and your comparing it with what the market place has, it becomes really easy to evaluate the result that people are going to get from you versus what they are already buying in the market place.

The second thing that I do when I am trying to value my products is I think about … well, when I used to work in corporate America what my salary was, and basically what I got paid by the hour, and then I thought about how long it took me to learn some of the things that I can now teach. Literally there are systems that Robert and I have that when I got started would take me one or two full weeks in order to implement something, and now I can do that with my new system in 10/15 minutes.

Is it different information, it’s the same result but the way that you get there is different. And so for me, when I value my products it’s when I was looking for it what would I have paid in order to get that result and I base that on what, again what I had paid other people previously.

What I am looking at is I want to provide the best value for the price in the entire market space. Now, I told you at the beginning that the price drop becomes inevitable – now why is that? Well what we have just done is we have gone through our products or our reports or our courses and we’ve listed out what the value on each component of it is. But now how do you add all of those numbers up and come up with a number that’s not the price that you want to sell your product for.

Well you want to deliver what – more value than what the price of your product is. That means by necessity that’s why you see all of these price drops. It happens because there is no way to go from look I have proven to you that all of my stuff is worth this, it’s worth $997 but it’s yours today for $97, you need to make a justification about why you’re bringing down the price … otherwise what – well it looks suspicious to everybody.

If you think about the entire sales process, and don’t isolate the parts that you may or may not like. For example, some people don’t like when people do the introduction of their products, some people don’t like the way that certain people talk about who they are and the great results they’ve gotten with their products, some people don’t like the price stack, showing what’s inside of the offer. And some people don’t like the price drop, but if you take all of those together in one entire system, well then all of it makes sense.

Now there is a lot of psychology that goes on behind the scenes of why that helps people to go through the buying process, but if you look at it as I am showing you what my product is, I am explaining the results that you’re going to get, here are the components of it listed out, and now here is the price that it makes sense as to why you have the price drop. And hopefully, now you can see why it is so effective and why you need to use it in your own marketing.

What I want you to do right now is at the bottom of this video, there is a place for you to leave a comment. Let me know how you value your products and what you think about the different components of the sales and marketing process.

Thank you very much and have a great day!

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I want to talk to you about something that is going to be a lot different than you probably heard, probably studied, probably been taught about being successful. I am not talking about being successful online, I am not talking about being successful in business, I am not talking about being successful in school. What I am talking is about is something way more important than that and it’s this – it’s how you can be successful at absolutely anything that you want. Literally, anything that you want.

I’ve studied a lot of successful business people, I read a lot about successful sports players, a lot of athletes. I really-really enjoy trying to figure it out what it is and what makes the difference between some people who seem to always be able to succeed in no matter what it is they set out to do, and then some people who seem to fail no matter what it is they try to do.

Before we get into that, I want to tell you guys a really funny story that led me into thinking about all this. Here is how it goes – the other night, well actually seven days ago now. Today is day number seven, you will understand what that means here in a little bit. My parents were in town, and my wife who is this absolute health nut, if you haven’t had a chance to meet Martie yet, I am sure you will at some event that I am attending. She is crazy, she is a lot of fun, she’s very personable and the one thing about her is she’s got this weird way of constantly motivating me, pushing me out of my comfort zone. My parents are here, my wife’s here and normally what we do after we have dinner is we watch some kind of movie, do something just as a family, just sort of hang out and talk. My wife puts on this show, I believe it was called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, something like that.

Basically it’s about this guy who is about 300 pounds, successful business person, but not successful in some area of his life, which was his health. Basically went he did was he went on a juice and vegetable fast, in liquid form – he did it for 60 days. Throughout this movie as we are watching it, he is challenging all these people, and I was really interested in how somebody could put their body through that. How they can stay away from pizza, and for me Wendy’s and hamburgers, and beer and all that other good stuff that we all love.

We are watching this movie, and I happen to make the comment, and again this is on a Sunday – I think we had chicken wings, I had drank probably six to twelve beers, and I say well that looks easy I can do that for ten days. I didn’t really think much of it, my family was thinking wow, you would do that for ten days. I wake up the next morning and my beautiful wife Martie, got to love her – I come downstairs in the morning and she’s got my breakfast ready. What she had done is gone to the store, bought lots of spinach, lots of bananas, lots of apples. In fact, what I am drinking right now some fresh squeezed apple juice. If you have never had fresh squeezed juice, I don’t know if you can tell on video, it looks a lot different than most apple juice that you see.

It is totally different, it tastes different. Basically she put me to the test. I said what are you doing, she said you said this would be easy, so you are going to do it. Silly me, right. That is the first thing, one thing that we all need no matter what we are trying to succeed with is somebody that can push us and motivate us to do the things we know we should do, and to actually follow through on them, accountability.

Here is what’s happened, like I said today is day seven. I have had nothing to eat except for vegetables and fruit in liquid form, kind of crazy right. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. Here is what I think is really important about this, what most people teach you about setting goals and about being successful, is to pick this huge “pie in the sky” goal. For me on this it would have been fast, drink nothing but juice and green smoothies and vegetables for ten days.

Believe me, almost every day I call my business partner Robert, I call my mom, I tell Martie, “I am quitting this, all I want is a Whopper, all I want is a Double with Cheese”. This happens constantly throughout the day. What I noticed is that this craving, this choice of whether I am going to continue on the path that I am on to success or veer off onto another path, happens literally hundreds of times a day. Now here is my point with that, all I think about is what I am doing, what I am supposed to be doing, concentrating on it and when that craving comes up, when that choice comes up in my life daily, hourly, sometimes every couple of minutes as to am I going to continue onto the path to success, or am I going to quit.

I immediately choose which one I am going to take, it becomes very easy to know where you are going. Now if I would have started this process, all I was saying is I am going to go for ten days, it’s not how I approached achieving the goal and I think there is a big difference here. Most people tell you, set a big goal, set a goal to have a million dollar company or ten thousand dollars a month, or run a marathon. They sort of leave you with that, and that is why so many people when they make things like New Year’s Resolutions.

They are too big, they are a good “pie in the sky” but there is no practical way to actually get there. My point with all this, whether you are building a business, whether you are trying to lose weight, whether you are trying to get healthy – here is the way you approach it. Set your big goal, that’s fine, but your big goal is not your focus. Your focus in on the small little steps that you are going to take in order to reach that goal, and if you just focus on what is the next step that you need to take. For me, it’s every single meal, every time I get hungry what is the next thing I need to do?

I need to make a choice, do I go to eat fast food or do I continue on the fast. If I look at as it’s the next choice, it’s amazing how fast this “fast” has gone. I really encourage you to look at your business that way, I think so many people get caught up. They don’t have a plan on how they are getting to where they want to go, and they are naive in thinking that you just set this goal and in a year you are going to be there.

Unfortunately, they don’t do the steps that are necessary in order to get there. Just a little thing that I wanted to share with you guys today. I hope that this helps you, and I really hope that no matter what it is that you are trying to achieve, or succeed in, in your life you set that goal and then remember it’s a constant bunch of tiny little steps. If you take those tiny little steps it will be absolutely impossible for you not to achieve your dream and goal. It will happen, take small steps, stay focused and just focus on the next task at hand and you can’t help but succeed.

I hope that helped you, thanks for stopping by.

Let me know what you think is the key to succeeding in life, and the key to achieving your goals. I can’t wait to hear from you and I will talk to you very soon.

Have a great day.

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In school, I wanted to know what the best students were doing to get good grades. It seemed like they had a secret to getting their homework done on time while I was struggling to throw something together at the last minute.

Turns out after watching them they all had some kind of system. Some had day planners, some just did their homework as soon as it was assigned and some were in study groups.

Rewarded For Being Unproductive!

Then I went to work in corporate America, I was shocked to see that most productive people are actually “punished” for being productive and everyone knew it.

The most successful people in Corporate America also had ‘systems’. They would spend time getting coffee, organizing 2 hour meetings and having lots of ‘client lunches’.

I even had one boss that told me he waited to go to the bathroom in the morning until he got to work (in not so nice words). His system was called the “$120 sh**!” (no joke)

Anyone that has worked in the ‘system’ knows that you get paid for time, not for productivity.

Retrain Yourself To Be An Entrepreneur

As a small business owner, you no longer get paid for your time, per se.  If you sit at your computer for 8 hours and do nothing or worse, the wrong thing… guess what?  You make no money!

When I started my own business online and soon discovered that there were thousands of productivity and time management systems. I even found a ton that actually worked for me from my now business partner, Robert Plank.

No matter what you want to accomplish having a ‘system’ to follow makes it way easier. Especially online since so many of us are completely new to marketing, technology and even running our own businesses.

Systems Aren’t Everything

But even with the best systems I have found there are some days I sit at my computer and just stare. I know I should be doing a system. I know I should be productive, but for some mental reason I just can’t.

Here are 2 things that I have found dramatically improve my mental state so and actually make me able to change my mental state instantly so that I can move forward and follow traditional systems.

1) Motivation Wall – A couple of months ago, I recieved a few nasty emails and it really put a mental block on me. My wife just laughed and said, “what about all the nice things people have said or done for you online?”

I couldn’t think of any… (funny how one or two negative things can over ride a zillion positive ones at the time)

So she pulled out cards, letters and other ‘trinkets’ that customers, friends and students had sent to me. You know what? It changed my mental state immediately!

Now I hang up my favorite ones right in front of my computer. This is the first thing I see when I sit down every day and it makes me feel great about what I am doing right away.

2) Quiet – Normally, I love things quiet. But recently I have found that while working online as entrepreneur this can be extremely bad! Most of us sit at the computer for hours on end reading blogs and forums, building websites and sometimes getting frustrated because a piece of software or site isn’t doing what we think it should.

If you spend too much time in this kind of isolation and quiet, you will not only decrease your productivity, but you will eventually condition yourself to be in a bad mood.

I started using a free service called Pandora, that actually tailors music to my liking. It took a while, but now almost every song they play is something I love.

Here is the thing. Don’t sit in silence. Listen to interviews from people you want to be like, listen to music, put something on. You will notice an immediate change in your mood and productivity.

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What do you think?
httpv://

Click Here to Play Video

How many fans will you have in the next 30 days?

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Please help me in congratulating Carolyn Holzman in making her very first sale in just a few days…

Below is email that I just received from her:

Lance and Robert -

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I'm been following your training for facebook fan
pages I started two fan pages - one for a sports
team and one for a celebrity.

The sports one has 500 fans the celebrity has 350 fans.

I posted a link on the celebrity to a product on amazon -

I MADE A SALE!!!!

Do you realize two things happened this week
that I've been wanting since I went to my first IM seminar
- over 2 years ago!!!!

A list

A sale

And I didn't need a website -
an email responder -
seo -
nothing

thank you!

Carolyn

Congratulations Carolyn

We are all VERY proud of you!!

Leave your cheers for Carolyn below…

1. Your membership site doesn’t have to be recurring. It can be a single payment or even a finance plan

2. You don’t have to create months of content, just stay ahead of your earliest subscriber. This will let you “get it out the door” soon, plus you will end of with better content since you can adjust based on the feedback you receive

3. You can ask your current members to help promote your site as affiliates. Create something that “wows” them so they will tell their friends. Under-promise and over-deliver

4. You don’t need fancy or expensive software. In fact, you can run a membership site with your existing blog and email list. Always make sure you get the right tool for the job.

What is your favorite tip or hint about running or being a part of a membership site?

I can tell you what you want to hear. You know… you have probably heard some of these before:

• Your doing great building your online business
• All you need is to build a list and you’ll be rich!
• Keep doing what your doing and you’ll be living the “lifestyle”

and on and on and on…

I know this is what you want to hear…

How Do I Know?

Over the last 4 days I built a new list of 2,426 new subscribers (we can talk about that some other time) so that I could do a little experiment.

I sent them 2 “personal” videos showing them concrete actions they could take to actually stand out to their prospects and customers with a call to action asking them to leave a comment about how they were going to build a better business and relationship with their clients.

I Got HUNDREDS of Responses

And I personally replied with custom videos and emails going into detail about personalized action plans each person could do for their business.

These weren’t big things. Just small tweaks and tips that would get them better results.

Of the over 100 personal responses I sent I got less then 7 replies. I am guessing those were the few people that actually read them.

Anyone Else Confused?

Why ask for help and then turn your back on it? If you constantly feel like you are getting the “short end of the stick” online, maybe it is time to take a real look at your business and start finding ways to build it into the machine you want.

Now here is what you need to hear.

Building an online business is not as different as you have been led to believe than building one offline.

You still have expenses, no matter what you have been led to believe.

• You still need an education
• You still need to do your homework
• You still need to DO SOMETHING that works

Here is the thing. I finally understand why SO many people fail online. They somehow believe that having a “business” online is like the gold rush.

They just push a button… money
They just build a big enough list… money

If the main focus of your business model is to “provide value” to your subscribers, I want you to think about the following…

HAVING to use deceptive headlines like

• “PayPal Is Not Accepting Payments Today…”
• “re: You Purchase”
• “Your Commissions Have Been Aproved”

etc, etc, etc.. followed up by a “free offer” to get even more junk from another marketer is NOT providing value.

Don’t get me wrong, these are fun to use and can be very effective, but this is NOT a business model, there is a big difference.

Second, simply hoping that you can run a “numbers game” and get enough people on your list to click on a free crap offer and then run them through an endless cycles of upsells and exit popups is NOT providing value.

Are there places for upsells and exit popups and tactics like this? Of course! Just NOT the way you might be using them.

It’s Time For You to Make a Stand and Take Responsibility for Your Business

It is about personal growth, relationships, passion and dedication.

If someone led you down the wrong path.. who’s fault is that?
If you bought into a scam… who’s fault is that?
If your not getting the results you want… who’s fault is that?

The good news is you can start changing these things immediately and your business and your happiness will benefit as a result.

The real keys to online success are actually really simple

1) Provide REAL value, stand out and be yourself… No one can duplicate YOU

2) Study systems that have a proven track record from people that actually “walk the walk”. If someone is telling you that you need to build a big list… do your homework and make sure they actually know how to do that. If someone tells you that you need a Facebook Fan Page with millions and zillions of fans. Make sure THEY have one. If someone tells you that you should build membership sites. Make sure THEY have successful membership sites (and not just the ones that teach you how to make one)…

3) Then rinse-and-repeat what ACTUALLY works.

Building an online business can be fun, profitable and extremely rewarding, but when was the last time you really got something GREAT without a little elbow grease.

So what are you going to change TODAY that will make sure you build a thriving, successful online business?

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This post is NOT for you if:

• are trying to “get rich quick”
• chasing the marketing dream of the “big hit”
• think “pushing a button” is a business model

Basically anyone who is not interested in building a long term, sustainable, REAL
business…

This post is not for you.

Ok, with that out of the way, I want to share something with you that can dramatically change your business.

Too many of us get caught up in the hype, watching the big launches and thinking that we are all going to become millionaires overnight. (I know I did)

The truth is these huge launches are not something that the majority of us can duplicate.  If you have ever tried to get even a single JV partner (forget about all of the online marketing world), then you know exactly what I am talking about.

The way that it happens for the rest of us is usually a slower, longer process.  The good news is that this gives us an advantage and allows you to build the foundation for something that is truly long-term and can pay you passive income for years to come.

I still remember doing the “happy dance” about once a week when I made a single sale.

A SINGLE SALE!!!

I recently polled my list and asked them

“On average, how many sales do you make in a month”

Here are the results:

Now there are two extremely important points about these numbers that I want you to check out…

Just Get Over The Hump

There is a group of people that are still “learning” how to make a sale online.  That is about half of the group.

Then there is a very few that can between 5 and 10 sales.

And finally another large group that has figured out how to make sales consistently every month.

My experience was that once I learned “HOW” to make a sale online, it became easy to duplicate and I made a major jump in sales.

Just like the poll numbers show.  Once you learn “HOW”, the growth gets bigger and bigger.

Plan For Your Success

Most people never add a residual component to their product.  This is a HUGE mistake!

Here is what I mean.

I am positive that each and every one of you reading this has a $47 product in them.

You should also be confident that you can sell a single copy of that product each month (even if you have no idea what you are doing)

That means that over the course of a year, you could expect to make about $564 on that one product assuming you ONLY make one sale per month (12 x $47 = $564).

That’s 12 customers, 1 time

BUT…

What if you added a monthly, residual component to your product?

Now, each sale compounds and you can REALLY start building a long term business.

Suddenly over the course of 12 months those 12 customers are now worth $3666.00 (again assuming you only get one new customer per month).

Creating a recurring component to your product is simple to do.
What if you:

• Did a one hour call each month explaining more detail on your product?
• Used the questions from your customers to create additional videos?
• Updated the product each month with your new strategies?

I encourage you to take a step back from your business model and start to think about how you can maximize the sales that you are currently making and learn from the mistakes I have made with mine.

I can only imagine the size of my business if I had started with a recurring model to begin with.

So what do you think?  Can you make a single sale of your product and build a truly passive income that will take care of you for years to come?

Before you decide on how long your sales video should be you need to determine what type of action you are trying to get your viewer to take.

If you are trying to get your viewer to give you their name and email address you will use a different strategy than if you are trying to get them to purchase your product or service.

When trying to get your viewer to “opt in” to a mailing list.  You want to make sure that your message is short , concise and contains a strong call to action.

Consider a short 30 second video that explains the benefit of the information they will receive in exchange for opting in.

This video should repeat the headline, major benefits the information will provide them and explicit instructions for opting in.

If you are trying to get your viewer to make an impulse buy for a product in the $7 – $47 range, then you will need a longer video.

This type of video will be 5 to 10 minutes in length and will contain the same information as the opt in video with a few minor changes.

First, you will need to explain the benefits to the viewer in more detail.  Demonstrate the product to them in your video so they can “see” why they need your product or service.

Second your call to action need to tell them exactly what button to click and encourage them to complete the payment process immediately.

Many people overlook the importance of the actually telling them to buy.  This one small tip can increase your conversions.

Now that you understand there are different types of videos for different purposes you can choose the correct time for your need.

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My current setup has two 24 inch widescreen monitors.

Bigger Is NOT Always Better!

In the case of monitors adding a second or even just adding a bigger monitor can actually decrease productivity if not used the correct way.

It is often very tempting to leave open an email client, IM client or some other time waster.

That is why I hesitate to do this…

BUT…

I have a 24 inch wide screen Acer F-22 Ferrari monitor and I am wondering if it has your name on it.

Here Is How This Is Going To Work!

I will ship this monitor (free of charge) as my gift to one lucky reader.

Comments on this post will be CLOSED on Wednesday, April 21, 2010  at 5PM Mountain Time

I will announce the lucky reader on Thursday April 22, 2010 and have this in the mail on Friday, April 23, 2010.

You must complete the following to be considered:

1)  Post a comment with the following information:

• What is the biggest obstacle you are facing with your business?
• What concrete action will you have completed by April 30, 2010 that will add to your business.
• How will this monitor help your business?
• What is your top productivity tip?

I hope this monitor has your name on it.  I will post the name of the lucky subscriber here on Thursday April 22, 2010

Congratulations to Mike Ippersiel for submitting winning my 24″ wide-screen Ferrari branded monitor.