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4. Create a spreadsheet with the information gained from the above three exercises. Total all the count numbers to get a total demand figure. This will give you an estimate of the demand or market size for your idea.
Click on the ‘View Advertisers’ Max Bid in the upper right hand corner. This will show you the maximum bid each advertiser is willing to spend per click for one’s placement. Look at the top three bids and calculate an average.
NOTE: Make sure that you save these keywords! The top 10 to 15 keywords are going to be important to you when you start building your blog and your website.
Type in each phrase separately to get supply information for each individual word. Use quotation marks around each phrase (called an ‘exact phrase search’). From this you will gain the number of competing sites.
2. Find the maximum bid price and the number of competitors for each of your key phrases and words. Record your results on your spread sheet.
3. Calculate Profit Potential: Your profit potential is calculated by analyzing the demand of the market and the advertising dollars which are being spent on the particular idea.
Profit Potential for a Month
Profit Potential = (Total Count X 2.5) X 1% X Overall Average Cost Per Click for top three bids.
Here are some guidelines that you’ll want to use when doing this keyword research:
Guidelines When Doing Your Keyword Search
When completing Step 1, you want searches of at least 4000.
When completing Step 4, you want lots of bids within the range of 10¢ and 35¢.
When completing Step 5, you are interested in Google results that convey low 10s of thousands of competing sites.
When doing this keyword research, it is NOT meant to be used to determine whether a market exists to start with. Use the research from Step 2 to determine whether a market exists.
This research will help you ONLY with determining the profit potential of your market.
Pulling the Pieces Together to Plan Your Profit Funnel
Now it’s time to pull together all of the info that you've found so far so that you can plan your profit funnel properly.
I actually create a little Word Document for myself (sometimes I even make it into a pdf) and call it "Market_Research_File.doc".
In this file, I make notes about everything I found in steps 1 through 3. In a different color text, I put notes to myself about other ideas that I want to research later.
SIDENOTE: Notice that I don’t include spaces in my file name. I know that in the more recent versions of Windows that it’s allowed, but I got into that habit years ago and it’s stuck with me. I find that I have fewer problems with my computer as a result and it’s also easier to find my files.
I am a stickler when it comes to organizing my hard drive. You should be too. You’re going to accumulate a TON of files in your business and if you don’t set up a system at the onset for naming your files and folders, you’ll never be able to find anything.
Here’s what you want to do:
1. Create a folder called “Data”.
2. Inside of the “Data” folder, create the following sub-folders:
a. Ebooks
b. Audios
c. Videos
d. Software
As you download products on the internet, you’ll want to put them into the appropriate folder.
3. Below each of these folders, create additional sub-folders called:
a. Personal Use
b. MRR (for Master Resale Rights)
c. RR (for Resale Rights)
d. PLR (for Private Label Rights
e. Other
As you download products on the internet, make sure that you put them into the appropriate folder.
4. Within the “Data” folder create another folder labeled “MyBusiness”. This is where you will store all the files associated with your market research, your business plan, your strategies, etc.
So what kind of notes do you want to put into this file?
From your research, you should be able to answer the following questions before moving on to planning your profit funnel:
Target Market Analysis –10 Questions That Must Be Answered
i. Who is your target market?
ii. Why are they your target market?
iii. What do they want? (General idea)
iv. Where can you reach them? (i.e. Where do they "hang out"?)
v. What are their problems? (Be specific)
vi. What can you offer them? What are the benefits for them?
vii. Why should they care about your book? Why should they listen to you?
viii. Why should they purchase what you have to offer?
ix. What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? How is what you are offering uniquely distinguishable from anything anyone else offers on the topic?
x. What are you going to do to WOW your target market?
Let me cover a few of these in more detail:
Who is your “ideal customer”?
You want to create a character sketch of your ideal customer. Specifically, you want to know:
1. Gender
2. Race
3. Age
4. Income Level
5. Occupation
6. Education
7. Social Class
8. Product/Service Sold
9. Any other unique characteristics
10. Are there any geographic characteristics for your target market
Use this information to create a “Character Sketch” of your ideal customer. You want to make this character as real to you as possible. You may even want to find a photo that can represent your ideal customer, and perhaps even give the person a real name.
This will help you to have someone to create your products for, someone to write your sales letters to, or to write your emails to.
After doing a character sketch for my "Ideal Customer", you’ll want create a section for "Product Ideas" and just let your brain ramble.
In thinking about this issue, think about:
1. What kinds of problems can you solve for your market?
2. What emotionally compelling needs does your market have?
Don't worry - you don’t need to write the product yourself, (I’ll show you ways around that), so you don't necessarily need to have any knowledge at all on the topic.
But, even if you use some of my other strategies for getting the product, what you do need to come up with is ideas for a product that can solve a problem. The bigger the problem, or the faster the solution is reachable, the better the product will sell.
This product is going to be a free report or a low priced info product of some sort. Ideally, it should be our own and not an affiliate product. (Don’t worry – this is the only one that you’ll absolutely NEED to have as your own, no matter what your market.)
This will be the lowest priced product (perhaps even free) in your profit funnel.
Creating Your Plan
To create your plan, it is extremely helpful to draw yourself a flowchart. I’m not talking about something real fancy here.
What I mean is a chart that has boxes and arrows to show you what comes first, where that takes you, and then what comes next.
SIDENOTE: In fact, each part of your plan for your business should be put into a separate flowchart. In other words, if you create a box that says “Sales page for Product A”, that should next go to 2 other boxes – one for those who order and one for those who do not order.
The reason that you create the plan in this detail is that you can usually see holes better when you view the information visually. With the example I just gave, it would make you realize that you could have an exit pop that displays another offer.
The tool that I use for creating these flowcharts is called DIA. It’s an open source program that’s available for free at:
Make sure that you grab the version for Windows users and NOT the source code version! (NOTE: There is no version available for mac users yet. But I’m sure that you can find flowcharting software for the mac in your favorite search engine.)
DIA is a VERY simple, very straightforward program that’s easy to use. I personally use it to flowchart everything from full business plans to traffic generation plans to the flow of a website or promotion.
When you start using this type of visual aid to view your business, you’ll be surprised at how much money you’ve been leaving on the table!
What Is Your Profit Funnel?
Your Profit Funnel is sometimes referred to as your "back end". I'm not talking about your one-time-offer or your upsell or downsell here. And I’m not talking about any single product either.
What I'm talking about is ALL of the products that you can approach someone in your market with ... from a giveaway item to a high end coaching program, home study course, or seminar.
It's not enough to have just a freebie item and a single one-time-offer. That won't bring in money on a consistent basis.
You need a whole Profit Funnel full of products that start out at a low price point and gradually get more expensive.
At this stage, you may not be able to plan the exact items that will be in your funnel, but you should be able to outline at least 5 to 8 ideas for what those products could be.
So how do you plan your profit funnel?
It’s a matter of strategically setting up a profit funnel for your business.
Your profit funnel consists of a series of products that start out at a low price and continue to increase in price as well as value.
Each product in your funnel should sell the next successive product in your funnel AND each product should also bring in additional revenue passively.
It is easiest to do this with your own information products. However, it can be done with resale rights products, software, and even with physical products as well.
Let me give you an example of how you would set up a profit funnel for your business regardless of your niche …
PRODUCT #1 — FREE REPORT
This can be a product that you have Private Label Rights to. The report should outline a specific problem that people in your niche have. It should then go on to pose a solution to that problem.
In the report, you only briefly discuss the solution. Then, give the reader a resource that can be used to get that solution faster, or make the solution more powerful. That resource is the second product in your funnel.
PRODUCT #2 — $27 EBOOK
As with the free report, this ebook should be based on solving a problem for people in your niche. A quick and easy way to create this ebook is to interview an expert in your niche and have that interview transcribed and editted into an ebook.
That will then give you the next product in your funnel as well.
Make sure that when you edit the transcript, you drop in appropriate affiliate links in the content itself!
You also want to include an ad for Product #3 at the beginning and end of the ebook (product #2). That ad can say something like, “In a Hurry? Get this ebook on Audio so that you can listen to it on your iPod, in your car! Valuable, Time Saving Bonuses Included”
These ads act as a traffic generation system for product #3.
PRODUCT #3 — $47 AUDIO PRODUCT
Remember that interview that you used to create product #2? Well you’re going to do what we call “repurposing your content” and use the content of product #2 to create your third product as well.
For product #3, you’ll want to have 2 or 3 audio interviews, the transcripts to those interviews, and maybe a few bonuses. You can even use resale rights products for the bonuses.
Package them altogether into a single zip file. Inside of the zip file, you’ll want a “ReadMe.txt” file as well as a “BONUSES.html” file.
The ReadMe.txt file will contain your copyright notice and a statement of any type of rights the customer has. It can also include a link to a webpage where your customer can get updates to the product. That webpage will then contain ads to future products you add to your profit funnel.
The Bonuses.html file will contain a web page where you give away a short (i.e. 3 to 5 minute) video excerpt from the next product in your funnel. At the bottom of the page, include a Special Offer for product #4 and a link to order.
PRODUCT #4 — $97 VIDEO COURSE
Ok, now we’re moving into the bigger guns here. Remember the 2 or 3 audio interviews that you used for Product #3? You’re going to create a powerpoint slide show for each of them.
Once you have the powerpoint slideshow created, you’ll want to add the audio to the slideshow to create a new video.
There are tons of tools available to do this quickly and easily — even if you’re a non-technie.
You can even hire someone to do it for you for less than $100.
You’ll want to create a checklist to include with the videos as well. Since the interviews will describe a solution to a problem, simply outline the step-by-step process that one would take and title that as a checklist.
If the material lends itself to a worksheet or a workbook, create one in Word and include that as well.
Can you include a mindmap or flowchart showing the solution in a more diagramed manner? That would add additional value to the product as well.
Look for resale rights products that might also add value for your customers. Perhaps you could include some time-saving software, a planner, or the like.
Once again, you’re going to include a ReadMe.txt file and a Bonuses.zip file inside of the main zip file for the package.
This time, the bonus might be a free Strategy Session with you or a coach on your team. You will use that free Strategy Session to then send the prospect an autoresponder series of 12 to 14 emails each talking about a coaching program or seminar or workshop that you offer as product #5.
Don’t forget to include affiliate links throughout the content itself! You can do that through outright ads, a copyright notice, or a single slide in the video.
PRODUCT #5 — HIGH END COACHING PROGRAM, WORKSHOP OR SEMINAR ($997 OR HIGHER)
This is the product that is your biggest profit maker. Products 1 through 4 should refer to it in some way, in case you have a buyer that wants to skip the middle steps and go straight for the hand-holding.
Think of products #1 through #4 as nothing but lead generation tools for this, Product #5.
Regardless of your niche, you can offer a coaching program, a multi-speaker seminar, or a one-day to a weekend workshop. The content of any of those would be to show your customer how to do something, rather than to tell your customer how to do something.
Again, that “something” should be a solution to a problem that your customer has.
If you’re in the golf niche, it could be based on “Cutting 5 strokes off your game”.
In the dog grooming niche, it could be based on “How To Make Your Dog Look Like a Million Dollar Pedigree”.
The better job you do in posing the program as a true SOLUTION for your customer, the more you are likely to sell!
Through the content of this product, you will offer products #1 through #4 as well as other affiliate products.
Do you get the picture now?
Perhaps it will help to see a graphic of a completed profit funnel:
SIDENOTE: The reason that the flowchart has the high priced product at the top and the low priced product at the bottom is because that is the order in which you plan your profit funnel. You’ve got to start with your end goal in mind – the product that you want to lead people into. So in planning your funnel, start with the high priced product and work your way down to the lower priced products.
Also, note the arrows in the flowchart. Each product is able to promote multiple other products. That’s what the connecting arrows refer to. How will you do this with your funnel?
The point I’m trying to make is that having a single product that you sell over and over again isn’t enough to build a business.
Instead, when you set up a true profit funnel as I’ve described, then all you need to do is to drive traffic to product #1.
This way, you maximize the lifetime value of a customer.
Instead of making a single $7 sale from a single customer, you are much more likely to make up to $1,180 if you used the prices in my example, and even MORE if you plan things out right!
You no longer have to worry about getting new customers every week. Now you are able to focus on selling to old customers who you have established relationships with already.
Not only is it easier to sell to those existing customers, it is MUCH cheaper as well! Especially since you don’t necessarily have to pay an affiliate commission on the successive sales. That alone could ave you well over $590 per customer over a customer’s lifetime (and that’s just with the example prices I used!).
Once you have the plan in place for your profit funnel, then it’s merely a matter of setting up a traffic generation strategy that does two things:
1. Gets people onto your list where you’ll be able to sell them your low end, entry level product over and over again, and
2. Gets people to buy your low end entry level product immediately.
Think of your low end product as a lead generator for all of your other products. All of your products except for the highest level product are merely lead generators for the high end product.
Your entire focus is on making as many sales of the high end product as possible and that’s the ONLY reason that you’re going to sell the lower priced products. You’ll get more leads!
The system that I’ll be sharing with you for driving the traffic and building a list is setting up a blog and using your blog to drive traffic to product #1.
With a blog, it will be easier to drive traffic. It will be easier to get top search engine rankings. And it will be easier to direct your visitors to a product of YOUR choosing.
So, once you have a profit funnel in place, your entire job is to become a traffic director for your company. Work as hard as you can to get as many people as possible to download product #1. Let the product itself become the lead generation tool for your other products.
The income from sales of your lower priced products, as well as income from affiliate links that you include in the contents of those lower end products inside of your ReadMe.txt file and your Bonuses.html files, will be passive income for you for a LONG time to come! This will help to ensure that you have a CONSISTENT INCOME for the long haul.
But, your REAL MONEY – the “big bucks” so to speak – will come from sales of your high end products.
Models For Getting Products For Your Funnel
Am I telling you that you’ll need to create all of your products yourself?
Absolutely NOT!
There are several models that you can use to fill up your profit funnel:
1. Sell Other People’s Products as an Affiliate – This is the quickest way to get products into your funnel. However, it is much more challenging as a model. The reason that it is more challenging is that you have no control over the delivery of the products. So adding mechanisms into each product that allow you to promote the next product in the funnel can require some outside the box thinking. Could you use an autoresponder to deliver the messages? Could you set up a joint venture with the product creator to have a special version of the product created just for your customers? Think outside the box a little and see what you can come up with here.
2. Sell Products that You Have Resale Rights To – It is fairly easy to locate products being sold with resale rights on the internet today. With these products, you are able to include other files to promote your other products. You cannot change the original product in any way, so you are unable to include ads in the content itself. But since you’ll control the delivery, you are at least able to use a combination of autoresponder letters and other files inside of the product’s zip file to promote your other items in your funnel.
Many people do not choose this method because they are afraid of the technical side of setting the website up. Don’t let that stop you! Remember that this is a real business and if you want to be on the internet, you’re going to have to face the technical side sooner or later!
3. Use Private Label Rights Products To Create Your Own – This is perhaps one of the best ways of creating your products. Today it is very inexpensive to locate products with PLR rights and you’ll be able to use them to build a much stronger relationship with your customers than you would with either affiliate products or with resale rights products. A few examples of products being sold with PLR rights at a great price are:
4. Locate Public Domain Products to Sell As Your Own – This is a great model to use as it helps you to gain credibility quickly. Not only are you able to get good quality products without much effort, but you are able to borrow on the original product creator’s credibility to add to your own. Ted Ciuba is a great example of this. His entire, multi-million dollar business has been based on the success of Napolean Hill with “Think and Grow Rich”. Ted has an entire profit funnel of products based on that one book. His products include ebooks, print books that have been on both the Amazon best seller list and the New York Times best seller list, software, games, etc. You’ll find his website at:
5. Create Your Own Products - This is probably my favorite way of building your profit funnel. But, in order to succeed with this model, you’ll need to be at least competent in your niche. You don’t have to be a good writer, though. It’s easy enough to simply record your info products and have them transcribed and edited. Of course, you can also create audio products, video products, sell teleconferences, sell workshops or seminars, etc. Whichever method you use, you’ll be building a stronger, more credible relationship with your market using this model.
NOTE: To learn more about all of these business solutions, as well as maximizing your profitability by using info products as lead generators, take a look at my course, “Abundant Info Products: How To Make Big Bucks With Info Products … FAST!”
In this course, you’ll learn step-by-step how to profit from all 5 business models, set up your USP, create your sales letters, set up your website, and do some basic traffic generation that will have you set up and running quickly.
So — where do you get started?
Well, you’ll want to get started by planning your high end product first. Be as detailed as possible in your planning. Include price points, topics, and ideas for how you will later sell it.
Then work your way down one product at a time, to the lowest priced product in your funnel. When you're done, your plan should look like this:
In this graphic, you’ll notice that there are different columns when you get to the lower priced products.
Let’s talk about that for a moment …
Each of those columns represents different “front doors” to your high end product.
If your market has a number of different problems, then each problem could have its own line of products. Each product line is represented by a column. This is completely acceptable so long as all of the columns lead into the same high ticket product.
In your initial plan, start out with just a single column. You can grow additional columns over time.
You’re not going to want to kick your promotional efforts into high gear until you have at least 2 to 3 products that you can sell! Without a minimum of 2 to 3 products, you’ll be leaving WAY too much money on the table!
CREATING YOUR PRODUCT(s)!
Whether you decide to use affiliate marketing or creating your own products, or any of the other business models, the one product you MUST have your own name on is that low end product.
There are several ways that you can do this:
a) Hire a ghostwriter.
I like to use people who I find in the niche forums or niche networking sites who have experience in the niche.
They're usually much cheaper that someone with ghostwriting experience and often, their products are even better. I know one person who paid only $97 to have a 5,000 word report written, and then he took the report and broke it apart to create 5 separate products! More on him in a minute.
b) Interview experts in the niche.
You can find these experts in Google very easily. You can even ask for names of experts in the forums/social networks. The best part about using this option is that you will have built in JV Partners to promote your product for you.
NOTE: Liz Tomey and I did a call on this exact topic recently. It's part of her Joint Venture Seeker package that's still selling at the intro price. You can get it at:
This one will require the most work for you because you'll need to make your product unique. To do that, you'll probably even want to have at least a working knowledge of the topic.
d) Use PLR Products and Add Other Materials To Them To Create a Package.
The other way to go is to take the PLR product, make it your own (but not necessarily unique by itself), and then add products that you have resale rights for to it. This creates a unique "package" that you'll be able to sell for substantially more. It also adds value to make your product unique. To learn how to do this, take a look at my first ebook that I've updated several times at:
I don't suggest this one if you're just getting started as it tends to be a bit more challenging on the technical end. But if you're ok with that, then you want to set up a site that has 2 levels of membership -- one around $19.95 per month and one around $49.95 per month.
Remember that your new members will expect you to add content each month so you'll want to plan out in advance how you will do that and what that will include.
ACTION STEPS FOR LESSON 3
1. Determine how profitable your market will be by using the following formula:
b. Find the Maximum Bid Price for the keywords from: http://Overture.com. Look at the top three bids and calculate an average.
2. Calculate The Total Supply of the Market
a. Find the number of competing site using: http://Google.com
b. Find the maximum bid price and the number of competitors for each of your key phrases and words. Record your results on your spread sheet.
c. Calculate Profit Potential using the formula provided.
3. Create Your Market_Research_File.doc that summarizes your market research. In it you want to know:
a. Who is your target market?
b. Why are they your target market?
c. What do they want? (General idea)
d. Where can you reach them? (i.e. Where do they "hang out"?)
e. What are their problems? (Be specific)
f. What can you offer them? What are the benefits for them?
g. Why should they care about your book? Why should they listen to you?
h. Why should they purchase what you have to offer?
i. What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? How is what you are offering uniquely distinguishable from anything anyone else offers on the topic?
j. What are you going to do to WOW your target market?
6. Determine whether you will use Affiliate Products, your own products, resale rights products, PLR products, or Public Domain products, or a combination thereof to create your profit funnel.
7. Locate a minimum of 3 products (ideally, you want between 10 and 20 total products) for your profit funnel.
8. Create a flowchart for your profit funnel plan using DIA
“RESOURCES” For Lesson 3
1. “Abundant Info Products: How To Make Big Bucks On Info Products … FAST!” –
The most helpful resource to you at this point is my course, “Abundant Info Products: How To Make Big Bucks On Info Products … FAST!”. In this course, you’ll not only find a TON of resources for finding hot markets, but you’ll learn EXACTLY what to do to find the products you’ll need for your profit funnel. The course explores Affiliate Marketing, Creating Your Own Info Products, Working with Resale Rights, Using PLR Products, and it has an extensive section on Public Domain. It’s the resource that my Apprentices use to plan their profit funnels.
The course even comes with one free month of hosting/ autoresponder/affiliate program/shopping cart!
And, to make sure that you get off to a great start with your business, I’ve dropped the price by $10! As a participant in the 30-Day Challenge, you’ll pay only $17.
Inside this package, you'll not only learn exactly what I did to overcome the death sentence my doctor's gave me and explode my business in the process ...
You'll also learn how to use Goal Setting to put together your Strategic Plan for your business.
AND, you'll even get immediate access to "The Master Key System", a strategy used by multi-millionaires like Bill Gates to achieve THEIR success.
The Goal Setting audios, report, and worksheets should be essentials for every entrepreneur!
This is a completely free, open source program that allows you to create stunning flowcharts. You can even save those flowcharts in .jpg, .gif, and even in .pdf format. It’s an essential tool for planning your business.
A Look Ahead to "Step 4 – Putting Together
Your WEBSITE and BLOG"
1. Assemble all of your TOOLS. These include a domain name, hosting account, shopping cart, affiliate program, and an autoresponder. Several that you can use are:
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