Coffee Break Blogging

In order to sell much of anything on your blog, you're going to need to be able to accept credit cards. But, just HOW do you do that? This episode of Coffee Break is a 101-level overview of exactly how to accept credit cards. We'll discuss: What's a merchant account and payment gateway? Do you NEED a merchant account? How much does a merchant account cost? Is a merchant account cheaper than Stripe? Should you use Paypal? How does a credit card transaction work? If you need a "plan English" discussion on how to take credit cards on your site, give this episode a good focus right now. :-)

Today, here at Coffee Break, we are going to talk some more about membership sites. And because I've been asked many times what tools I use personally to build my membership site, the Blog Monetization Lab, this episode is my answer to that question. We'll discuss... What membership plug-in do I use? How do I build my sales pages and checkout page, and what do I REALLY think about Lead Pages? How do I process credit cards? How do I put together the Action Plans and courses? Today, actually, we are going to specifically get a little bit technical. We are going to talk about the tools that I use to build membership sites. So we are going to talk about some specific tools that basically, this is how the Blog Monetization Lab is built. So if you have ever wondered how I put it together, this podcast is going to answer that question.

Hello there! This is yet another new episode of Coffee Break Blogging, where today we are going to talk about 6 Reasons why you should probably think about turning your blog into a Membership Site. I've said this many times... A blog is NOT a business. It is merely a marketing platform for a business and the actual business almost always takes place somewhere else. But, there is just one exception... The membership site. I am a HUGE fan of the membership site. And, this goes way beyond recurring monthly billing (as that is only one application of a membership site). For many reasons, if you want to turn your blog into a business, I believe turning it into a membership site is the way to go. So in this episode, I share 6 specific reasons why I believe you should consider turning your blog into a membership site. If you intend to sell information-based products at all, especially on your blog, then this episode is made for you.   Now, I want to say right off the bat, that when you hear the word "Membership Si

Hello there! So we're here again in another episode of Coffee Break Blogging! This episode is going to be fun... and that's because I shed light on some of my big product creation screw-ups over the last 17 years. What can you learn from my mistakes? My goal is to save you time and effort by allowing you to see some of my... shall we say, "finer" decisions over the years. ;-) We'll discuss... Why the way to make more money with your business is NOT to focus on marketing and conversions Why you should literally SCHEDULE time for delivery The big mistake I made with my first training product Why you shouldn't make a BIG training course Why I moved from making big courses to creating "Action Plans" for my members How to structure your products so they're actually effective My somewhat humorous experiences with NAMING my products... how I screwed it up and what this means for you. Learn from my mistakes. When I teach this stuff, I do it from a lot of experience. :-)

Your entire business strategy depends on having effective products to offer to your audience. Preferably, more than one. And in order to do that, you need to be able to create these things quickly and effectively. In this episode of Coffee Break, we're going to talk about how to SPEED UP product creation. We'll discuss.... Why you should plan your product BEFORE you start making it The exact tool I use to outline my training products My internal process for producing Action Plans for the Blog Monetization Lab Why you should consider teaching your product (the first time) in a live environment Why it is OK to sell your product before you ever make it Put these tips to use and you'll drastically speed up your product creation. This doesn't have to be a big deal. And "lack of time" should not be an excuse for not having products of your own to sell.

Coming straight off an important discussion about how to build the different learning styles into your training products (see episode 118), we're now going to move into some of the specifics on how to create an awesome online training course. How can you make the course truly effective? How can you alleviate confusion? How do you put it together? In this episode, we'll discuss: 4 highly important aspects of a successful course What to do before you ever create your first training video Whether you need to use modules or not Should you give them everything at once or drip it out to them? How to make your job as the instructor much easier (and ensure you get the course done quickly) The learning management system I use to assemble my courses Where to host your training videos How to do a "digital whiteboard" video How to make your training videos more engaging and less boring There's a lot in this episode (and its a little bit longer than the average CBB episode). Be prepared to take notes. So now, let's get

If you're going to create informational training products that SELL, you're going to need to make it effective. With that in mind, you need to pay some attention to specifically engineering your product to get the stated result on the receiving end: your student. To do that, we need to look at the different learning styles people have and specifically create our training to cater to them. In this way, you'll have students who get results and end up praising your course. We'll discuss: The 7 primary learning styles How we can build each of these 7 learning styles into our product An overview of the 4MAT learning system A simple 5-party structure you can use to create training videos In the end, it doesn't matter how well you sell a course... if it doesn't actually get the result, it will ultimately all come down. This is how you make your course DELIVER.

Most people create the product they think will be wanted and loved... then proceed to make the sales page and offer afterward. This can result in a flop. In my opinion, the best way to do this is to start with your offer and then create the product to match it. But, what goes into creating the offer? In this episode, we'll discuss: Why most people get split testing all wrong 6 factors for creating an offer that will sell How to remove risk so people will trust you enough to buy What to do if your perfect offer isn't something you feel you can deliver

Hello there! Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to be talking today about creating an awesome information training product. And if you're in the business of creating training products (or plan to be), this is an important episode. I've been creating information training products for over a decade now - and this episode sums up 8 important tips I've learned over the years on how to make great products. You'll learn... Why the "thud factor" is a mistake and why your product should be smaller Why you need to outline your product before you make it Why you need to CONTROL your student The importance of a clear start and end The danger found in the WORDS you use inside your product How to design your product so that your student wins and they KNOW they did.

Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging! Today we are going to talk about what kind of information product that you can sell. We are kind of going to do a little bit of a bird's eye overview over the different product types. But before we jump in to that I want to give you a quick reminder, especially for those of you who are newer to the show that this is of course a podcast but it is more than that. It is actually a course that goes in a particular order. And so, we are at a particular stage in our overall sequence of starting an online business from scratch and we happen to be at that point now where we are talking about building the actual business side of things where we are going to start talking about money and product creation and that type of thing; hence today's topic. But if you would like to play "catch up" and look at the past episodes of the show, you can go over to coffeebreakblogging.com, check out the archives, go back in time and check out everything that we have done. This is Episode 115, so

The LAST thing you want to do is spend a lot of time creating a product that nobody wants. And, quite frankly, even if you have a number of people TELL you it is a great idea... don't listen to them. ... because the ONLY valid test for a product idea is whether people will yank out their wallet and buy it right there on the spot. In this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, I discuss the PRE-SELL. Selling a product before you even make it. Not only is this a great way to test an offer, but it is also a way for you to generate some revenue (potentially) immediately because you can just create the offer out of thin air. Find out: Why an actual order is the only valid product test How to create an offer for something which doesn't yet exist How you can do this even if you don't have an audience yet The minimum number of people to bring to your offer page to consider it a valid test How you can use webinars to build leads AND test potential offers at the same time

We start off this episode with a matter of simple math... You're not going to create a nice six-figure online business on the back of little eBook sales. Remember, there are 3 ways to grow a business... Get more customers Get more frequent purchases Get higher ticket sales. With that in mind, we begin talking about DESIGNING your business with this in mind: Namely, your funnel and why you should lay it out BACKWARDS.   You'll learn: The inherent design flaw of any business which relies solely on low-ticket offers The huge benefit to the mere exercise of creating a high-end offer...even if you don't actually build it yet. The order in which to design your funnel The recommended order on how to BUILD the pieces of your sales funnel if you're just starting out.

In order to build a real business online and generate the most revenue, you'll need to create and offer products of your own rather than relying on affiliate marketing. And it ALL starts with getting solid ideas for products to create in the first place. In this episode, we discuss several methods for gathering ideas on what your audience needs and wants. We'll talk about... The first place to start when getting product ideas How to gather ideas from your market even if you don't have an audience of your own yet The 7 word question you can insert into your list to get endless ideas The most effective - yet most forgotten strategy for learning TONS about your target market An extremely important point about the makeup of any product you create moving forward I recommend you keep an idea list inside of Evernote or some other document, because this process of getting product ideas will be ongoing.  

The concept of the "funnel" has been used in sales for years. And it is quite possible that you've heard the idea of the sales funnel before. In this episode of CBB, I outline what I call the blog profit funnel. This is the sales funnel adapted to what I believe is the best version of it for a blog-based online business. In this episode, you'll learn: The 3 key ways to grow any business How these 3 business growth strategies are built right into our funnel The key role of each of the 3 stages of the funnel Why a membership site is, in my opinion, an awesome business model. Especially for bloggers How these funnels fit into the blog Today we are going to talk about what I call The Blog Profit Funnel. What we are basically going to be talking about here is the idea of a sales funnel. The reason I call it blog profit funnel is simply because the way that I put the system together is that it is very much integrated with the blog, which is something that not all marketers do. A lot of marketers run paid traffic

The first and possibly most fundamental concept to understand in order to build a profitable blog is the transformation. Everything begins with the transformation. Product/market fit is determined by the transformation that your audience is looking to achieve. In this episode, we'll cover: What do I mean by "transformation"? How the transformation maps out to potential products to offer How understanding the transformation is also the key to effective affiliate marketing How to move forward if you're in a niche where you can't figure out the transformation

As we begin our series on monetization and the business side of blogging, we simply MUST address the topic of banner advertising. Banner ads is usually the default way to monetize a blog. It just so happens to also be the DUMBEST way to go about it. In this episode, I'm going to make it very clear where I stand on banner ads. Even though I've made quite a bit of money with banners in the past, I still believe it isn't the best way to go for many blogs. It comes down to some problems which I give the details below...   The 5 Problems That Come With Banner Ads It doesn't make much money at all. It sends people away from your blog. Readers hate them. It delivers no value. It makes a mockery of what you're doing. In this episode, I explain all 5 points - with backup. I also reveal the one SMART way to make money with ads. Lastly, I talk about the one situation where banner ads is really the only way to go for you.

In this episode, we take one of our "pit stops" to look at the bird's eye view of what we're doing on this podcast, where we've been - and where we're heading. Based on the 7 Stages of Building An Online Business, this podcast goes in chronological order - to show you how to build a blog-centric online business from scratch. We are about to embark on stage 5: DELIVERY. For the next many episodes, we will be talking various aspects of the BUSINESS. This will include info product creation, course creation, sales funnels, membership sites, launches, making offers, increasing conversions - and more. But, first, let's take stock of where we've been so far...

Traffic has changed - big time. And many bloggers haven't realized it yet. In this episode, we talk about the new world of blog traffic and why your monetization strategies have EVERYTHING to do with how you're going to get traffic to your blog. Driving traffic to your blog is actually a secondary priority. The model you use to bring them in the door has everything to do with how this is going to work. Don't miss this episode of CBB to get acquainted with how you should be looking at blog traffic moving forward. You can get all the traffic you want to your blog if you just change the way that you think about it. So that is everything that we are going to be talking about in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging. We will be talking about "Why monetization is your key to building your traffic."

After talking about WHY to plan your content in advance in the last episode, in this episode we talk about the HOW. In a few steps, we talk about how to go about planning your editorial calendar for your blog. We then go over several different solutions to use to make your editorial calendar.

This podcast has been planned out through the end of 2015; through episode 146, to be exact. This is a level of content planning that I haven't done in quite some time. Thing is, it has been a HUGE time-saver. And that's the topic for today's episode of CBB - planning your content in advance. When you fly by the seat of your pants on your content, it leads to a lot confusion on what to talk about, a lot of pressure on yourself... and it generally turns your blog into a digital slave driver. It isn't that much fun anymore. It also happens to be not very effective, either. The answer is PLANNING. There are 4 specific reasons to plan your content in advance, which I share in this episode. Plus, I'll share some more details on exactly how I planned out this podcast so far in advance. Behind the scenes, baby! ;)