Here is the latest weekly video where I discuss my week in online and affiliate marketing. If you prefer to read there is a transcript below the video,
TRANSCRIPT
Hi there, Steve here and welcome along to my, hopefully now going to be weekly updates into my endeavours in the online field, on the field of online marketing, social media and affiliate marketing. I’m back here now in the UK and those who follow these videos regularly will know that in Gambia, when I’m there, we have birdsong and we have plenty of it here as well. It’s nice to be near nature and hope it’s not too distracting for you.
Anyway, as I said last week, I was recovering from a pretty tough bout of food poisoning, to be honest, but it just knocked me out and it sort of spilled over. Maybe into Monday of last week even I was feeling a bit rough. Anyway, it just shows that you do have to factor in these things and if you’re feeling a bit rough, you can’t expect yourself to push yourself, so you move the deadlines about a bit and get on the best you can, that’s all you can do.
Anyway, on the business goals, business goals reached. Obviously it’s the end of April somewhere in the last couple of weeks and I had a goal of getting my mailing list back up to over a thousand. I’ve been cleaning it, if you like, so I now have, I think it’s a thousand and forty-eight, it was at the end of April, who are engaged subscribers, which means that they’ve opened emails in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, they’re not buying subscribers at the moment, but they are engaged, they’re opening their emails in the last 30 days and they’re now all moved to my new platform, which, I don’t know which one it is at the moment, they’re both very similar, but it’ll be either Rocket Fuel or Affiliate System.
But they’re on, they’re on the new system and it’s working very well, I’m pleased with it. So yeah, so everything is now moved from ConvertKit, so that’s another saving I make this month. I will be just emailing the people in ConvertKit because there’s several hundred still in there that may pick up on an email some way down the line, so I just try an email every, I don’t know, probably two or three emails a week and just see if anybody does respond to them. If they do, move them to the new system and Bob’s your uncle, away we go.
How we did last week, well, I should have had the training on Monday night with Paul Mahony at the Racing Academy, but he apparently had a home situation, which he had to attend to, so that was cut very short. But we did catch it up later in the week.
He recorded a video and sent it by email. It’s basically about the exciting prospect of self-liquidating adverts. Now, apparently at the moment, with the economic situation at the moment, high ticket sales are a little bit further down the funnel, if you get what I mean.
So we’re working on something that a company’s tested with several million dollars of advertising spend of having a low ticket front-end offer and then sort of gradually moving people down the line or down the funnel. So this company, they’re an advertising agency and they themselves did a funnel with the starting offer was a $1.99 e-book, e-book, audio book as well, which that sort of offer got 10% conversion, 10% sales conversion. Then they did an immediate upsell on that for sort of a done-for-you product, so it would be something like, on an agency, it would be something like templates, advertising templates and stuff like that.
And they actually achieved a self-liquidating situation where if they were spending $1,000 a day on advertising, they were getting over $1,000 back the same day. So that’s self-liquidating advertising, which is the holy grail. It’s a no-brainer because you just sort of build and build and build on that until you’re making thousands and thousands a day.
And so, yeah, it is possible and it’s something that we’re getting training on, I’m getting training on that at the moment. Obviously, it’s not something that is guaranteed. You have to work on it, you have to do your testing, you have to test different things.
But I have now got the benchmarks of what you should be aiming at for each upsell within your funnel, upsells, downsells, whatever. Some of it’s beyond me at the moment, but we can always work on your low-ticket item and then bring in an affiliate product for your upsells so that you’ve got something for $2, maybe $1.99. And you maybe got something for anything, another low-ticket product, say $47 or less, whatever. And then you’ve got another upsell for something which is maybe $97 and then you put them people into somebody else’s funnel to take them forward and hopefully give you the bigger upsells further down the line when you’re talking thousands and big commissions as well, obviously.
So that’s what I’m working on at the moment as well as I’m trying to learn as much as I can about copywriting and email writing. It’s something I have to get perfect, or more perfect, I never get perfect, I don’t think, but as good as I can get, put it that way, yeah. So, yeah, basically the message was you come with a low-cost product and you can’t go in with your second, your upsell of something for sort of thousands of dollars.
You’ve got to start and move people through the funnel slower than was the case. So, yeah, that’s what I’m sort of, just a few months ago.
So my journey back from Gambia to the UK.
Now, it’s, if it’s a direct flight, it’s basically a six-hour flight and it’s more or less a straight line, so there is no change, no change in time zones, it’s pretty straightforward. However, there are no direct flights at this time of the year, so it’s, it can be a bit of an adventure. Anyway, this time we left at, I think it’s 10, 10 past two or 2.30 on Wednesday morning, which means we had a stopover in Casablanca of six hours and then a little flight down to Gatwick, London Gatwick, and arrived there at sort of 3.30 in the afternoon.
So, it’s basically a case of, you know, you don’t go to bed really on Wednesday evening. No more chance of sleeping during the day on Wednesday either because, you know, it was fun there to see family and friends, to say, you know, cheers for now, but, you know. So, yeah, no sleep that night really.
On the aeroplane, I think I probably got two hours sleep. So, I know I could have hired a car maybe from Gatwick to get myself back to Lincolnshire. It can be sort of a three and a half, four-hour drive, and I’m afraid I can’t do that.
It’s not just these days, it’s been the same for a long time. I think the last time I attempted it, I had to keep stopping to sleep. Because, you know, you’re deprived of sleep the night before and I can sleep anyway.
I’m a brilliant sleeper. I just fall asleep like that and, unfortunately, I’ve done a couple of times in the car, so I just have to watch myself and, anyway, we stayed overnight in a Premier Inn. I don’t know if that’s an international brand or not.
It’s a budget, sort of a budget hotel chain, usually attached to a restaurant somewhere. So, we stopped in the hotel, I’m sorry, stopped in a Premier Inn at Gatwick Airport on the Thursday night, had a breakfast and then got the train from Gatwick to Lincolnshire, which is three trains, basically. So, again, it’s more or less Thursday, I don’t know which Thursday, let’s see, Wednesday, Thursday, that’s Friday, sorry, it’s Friday, it’s pretty much Friday gone.
So, again, we had another night locally to where we live in another friendly Inn, sorry, Premier Inn, a friendly Inn, it’s a different place. And this is due to the fact that, you know, we need to, sort of, get the home here put back into living conditions and, you know, three, four o’clock in the afternoon, you don’t feel like cracking into that. So, let somebody else look after you for the night.
So, we went into the hotel. Now, the contrast between the two was immense. It was the same chain, the experiences were totally different.
The Gatwick one, let me say that the actual hotel room itself is pretty standard, pretty much standard. When I walked into the Gatwick one, I was a bit taken aback with all the machines that you had to use rather than seeing a person, but there was a person there telling you how to use it, so the personal touch was there. And I said the rooms are adequate and comfortable, the beds are comfortable.
Anyway, the dining experience, on the other hand, was totally different. You know, the Gatwick one was very young-ish, Eastern European, I guess. Serving, waiting at the tables, everything was, sort of, stress-free.
It was a bit of a banter with him and, yeah, it was an enjoyable experience. As it was breakfast, you know, totally hassle-free. On the other hand, the one, the stay the next night was not enjoyable at all, to be honest.
The staff, I can’t blame the staff, it’s the system they were operating, I think. It was all computerised, they were messing with computers and screens and and seemed totally disillusioned and disinterested. There was no, sort of, customer liaison, if you like, you know, the people walking around, sort of, doing nothing and not, sort of, interacting with the customers at all.
I remember one guy who, I think he may have had some, sort of, learning difficulties but he was absolutely brilliant. He was whipping around, you know, getting, clearing the tables and, yeah, he looked a great lad and he was, you know, he was chatting to people and, you know, one bright spot. But it just taught me the lesson that, you know, people do still I think the personal touch does still count, you know, giving value, being there and interacting with your customers is very, very vitally important, I believe, and something we should all, sort of, concentrate on in our online businesses.
Don’t make things too complicated and concentrate on the customer. It’s them getting them, as I’ve said before. So, yeah, that was about all this week and, so, I’m back in the UK now for some weeks.
I don’t know how long, maybe six weeks, I don’t know. I have to visit my father a few times. He’s had a stroke last year and, you know, he’s not brilliant but he’s fairly fit and he’s doing okay.
So, you know, I’ll just see how it goes and, yeah, I think that’s about all for this week. Obviously, I’ll be doing more testing and tinkering on this self-liquidating advert idea and I will be documenting that in my blog. So, if you want to look at over the next few weeks, keep a check in there and, excuse me, keep a check in there, and I will be updating there, how things are doing, what’s happening and that’s the geese going over now.
Yeah, thank you very much for reading Wonderful. So, yeah, until next week, thanks for watching and bye for now.