The recent downfall of a major business opportunity, combined with new privacy laws and regulations, has many people wondering the same thing ...
Is it too late for me or can I still create a real income online?
Here is the good news ... it is not too late for you!
In fact, you are just in time because the best days of doing business online are yet to come.
But there is a catch, and the catch is this ...
You must use a proven process in order to avoid wasting time, wasting money, and becoming confused and discouraged.
Yes, the good news is that NOW is your time. The better news is that I am revealing the exact process I use (and use with my clients) in this short video.
As always, a full transcript is provided below the video for those who prefer to read.
Here is the enhanced transcript for your convenience.
A person asked me this very recently, "I've read a lot of articles, visited a lot of sites, but Charlie I'm confused. What does it really take to create passive income online? Can it be made simple?"
Here was my answer.
First let me give you a disclaimer.
There is no such thing as completely passive income, as in I buy something one time and then I just make money for the rest of my life.
That just doesn't exist.
All selling systems will need to be monitored, they need to be adjusted for changes in the marketplace, and improved.
The very short work week, which is what a lot of people are after, "I want to work a few hours a week and make income," that can be achieved using this formula.
Step One - You have to have a product to sell
That sounds almost silly to say out loud, right?
You have to sell something in order to make money, right?
And it's true, of course you have to have something to sell.
- It might be a product, digital or physical.
- It might be a service.
- It might be a business opportunity.
It might be something completely different, but ultimately you can only make money online when something gets sold, even when that something is some of your time.
What you choose to sell, this is very important, will make all the difference to your outcome.
For example, it might sound logical to sell a $20 product.
Because of the low barrier to entry, everybody can afford $20, right?
Yeah, that's true, absolutely that's true, and that is logical and that's the siren song that a lot of websites give you.
"Just give this away or sell it for $10-20 and you'll get rich."
But you'd have to make at least 50 sales a day to make even $1,000, and $1,000 a day is very very possible online.
But making 50 sales, wow.
When's the last time you made 50 sales in one day?
Here's my advice.
There are three criteria that I suggest to clients.
1: A product you believe in.
This matters more than I can say right now.
You really need to believe in and know your product.
You can't just go find something in a marketplace, get a link and promote it, and expect to build a business.
You might make a few bucks that way every once in awhile if you get lucky, but to build a business, no.
- You have to know your product.
- You have to believe in your product.
- You have to use your product.
Only then can you speak with the authority and compassion and conviction necessary to make sales.
2: A product that pays $100 or more.
Why $100? That's an arbitrary number, right?
The reason for this is that you need to be able to cover your advertising cost and make a profit.
So we go back to our $20 product.
It's going to cost you money to get people to come to a website.
It's going to take a certain number of people to come to a website to make a sale, and if you're only collecting $20, you've got no room for margin there.
You've got no room to move, so a product that pays $100 or more is one of the criteria. It's not a hard and fast rule. It's a suggestion.
3: A product that pays recurring commissions.
This is a beautiful thing, and it's one reason people like to promote software as a service, like ClickFunnels or LeadPages or web hosting, things like that, because these products pay recurring commissions as they are renewed,
When your customer visits in January and he or she buys the product and then in April they're still paying for the product, you're still making money.
If you use these guidelines, you'll be able to cover your advertising costs, a very very important factor, and build a truly passive income.
That's a type of conversion. It's different than sales conversion, but it is a type of conversion, converting strangers into subscribers at a high rate of conversion.
That's what you want.
This is much easier to do than it used to be. Used to, we were guessing. Today there are sites like LeadPages, Thrive, and many many more who share their conversion statistics.
A word of warning: their numbers won't be your numbers, because these are people with big budgets.
They're reaching audiences you might not be reaching. They might be using advertising sources you're not using, but you can use them as a guideline.
You can find what works by looking at what they do. Also, you can follow top leaders in your industry and model what they do.
They're testing and tweaking all the time. They're spending money to make sure their squeeze pages convert at the highest rate possible, and you can benefit by modeling not copying, never copy anybody's work, what they do.
Model what they do by all means.
Step three - A sales letter that converts visitors into buyers
If you're an affiliate marketer, you're selling someone else's product to earn a commission, then the sales letter's out of your control.
You don't have to worry about this step, because the product owner is the person who controls the sales letter.
He or she is the one who decides what goes on the sales letter, and you really can't control that, but if you are in control of the sales letter, you're selling a product of your own or you've bought a product with resale rights and now you're selling it as your own, then there are many things you can do to make this work.
This is a whole art and science and it's too long for this video, but if you contact me at CharliePage.com, I'll be happy to help you.
Step four - An email follow-up system
This is a must if you want to make sales, especially if you're trying to create passive income.
An email follow-up system will often triple sales over a sales letter alone.
Let's face it, we all know that a 2% conversion in today's world is a high conversion rate for a sales letter that's actually trying to close the sale, so what happens to the other 98% of the people?
They go away and they don't come back, because here's the thing, people no longer bookmark sites and return to them.
What they do instead when they're interested again, they go back to Google, and unless you're on that first page of Google search results, you're toast.
It's actually easy to create an email follow-up system, and it's something that's very vital to do. If you have access to the right templates and knowledge, it's really easy to do.
This is my specialty, this is what I love to do and it's what I've been doing for over 17 years, so do contact me at CharliePage.com if you want my help.
The starting point for a great follow-up system is to know why people want to buy from you.
All marketing is about communicating how our products can move a person from where they are now to where they want to be as quickly and easily as possible.
Email does this especially well because it helps the reader focus on the one thing you want to say to them today.
A sales letter has to cover everything, so you've got these 5,000, 7,000 word long sales letters.
They're trying to be everything to everybody, all things to all people, because they've got one shot at a person going to that sales letter and making a purchase.
With email, you can zero in on each one of the reasons why a person should buy from you.
What are their desired outcomes? You can write an email about each one of those. That's why email's so powerful.
Step five - A traffic source that is reliable and affordable for you
It doesn't matter what some $100 million marketer who makes videos every three minutes can afford.
It really doesn't, and I'm not knocking these guys and these ladies. I think they're great, and I buy their products and I learn from them, but it really doesn't matter what they can afford.
It matters what you can afford.
You have to know your budget, even if that budget is small, even if it's embarrassingly small.
You've got to get a piece of paper out and write down, "I can afford X. I can afford this much for advertising."
And then match the right traffic source to your budget.
The key is this, you'll be reaching a cold audience with any traffic you buy.
Almost any traffic you buy is going to be cold, and by that I mean they don't really know you. They don't really know the product you're promoting yet.
They're going to be cold, and you've got to convert them.
That's why you need to have that squeeze page and sales letter and email system before you go for traffic.
It's not ready for traffic, because if a bunch of traffic came their way, they wouldn't be converting them into subscribers.
They wouldn't be following up by email, and they don't have a sales letter that will convert well.
Before you go for traffic, you've got to get these systems ready.
Getting traffic before your system is ready is like going to the river with a leaky bucket, all that effort and not much to show for it.
If you've got a leaky bucket and you go to the river to get water and you hike back two miles with your leaky bucket, you're not going to have much but you're going to have done the same work as if that bucket had no leaks and you brought back a full bucket.
Fix your bucket first and then go for the water.
Or like we say in Texas, dig your well before you're thirsty.
This is how real businesses are built online, and this is what works in any niche for any product for any person who follows the process.