In February 2016 I published my first business book, called Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money [Amazon affiliate link]. Before that I’d published my first ever book, a memoir called Let Go. Will It Fly? has been very successful, and I hope it sets a baseline for what can be achieved with Superfans [Amazon affiliate link], my next book that’s coming out on August 13. In this blog post, I want to share all the numbers behind that success, through a detailed income report on the earnings for Will It Fly? since the book was launched.

The Return of the Income Report

It’s been three years and four months since Will It Fly? came out. Today, I’m going to share all the numbers we’ve tracked over that time, including ebook sales, paperback sales, audiobook sales, and audiobook bounty unit sales. (I’ll explain what that is in a minute.) I’ll also share details on foreign royalties, as well as income generated beyond the book based on collecting emails and driving people into a related course.

For those of you who have been around for a while, this post may look a lot like some of my older income reports. In the first nine years of Smart Passive Income, I did a detailed monthly income report for all my businesses, all my products, and all their earnings. But eventually there were so many pieces involved that I couldn’t go into much detail about any single one of them. I started to feel like the income reports were becoming less helpful.

So I stopped doing them. But I think there’s still potential value in this kind of report. So I’ve decided to do occasional income reports based on specific products or campaigns. That way, I can go deeper to understand how that product or campaign has performed and establish some useful takeaways.

With all that said, let’s dig into the Will It Fly? numbers! These numbers are all accurate as of the end of May 2019.

The Bread and Butter: Will It Fly? Ebook and Paperback Sales

We’ll start with ebook sales, which came from almost 20,000 units. They were sold mostly at $6.99 each (because I offered limited-time discounts through Amazon from time to time), generating $32,893.93. But although there were more ebook units than paperback units sold (as you’ll see in a second), we made more money from the paperback because of the royalty rates. At $7 per ebook on average, we got 70 percent and Amazon took 30 percent.

Speaking of the paperback, we sold 13,556 units at a retail price of $16.95. However, Amazon likes to play around with price points, and because of that, we weren’t always earning royalties based on $16.95 for each unit sold. Amazon changes the price automatically via algorithms to optimize it for sales. For example, Will It Fly? is currently being sold for $11.25, so depending on how Amazon prices it, the royalty amount will change every time.

Paperback sales came to $62,495.48. There were also cases where I spoke at conferences and the organizers bought multiple copies for their attendees; there were also awesome fans who wanted to support me with bulk orders of the book. These numbers, which weren’t counted in the main paperback sales because they were handled directly through CreateSpace, totaled about $3,500.

Paperback and ebook sales combined came to roughly $100,000. Not too shabby!

Then we have Kindle Unlimited royalties. Authors who self publish on Amazon through KDP also earn a 70 percent royalty on books price between $2.00 and $9.99 and a 35 percent royalty on books that cost more or less than that. With Kindle Unlimited, however, you’re eligible for royalty payments from Kindle Unlimited and the lending library. That means you get a share from a global royalty fund, depending on the size of the fund each month and on how much of your book people have actually read. Since Will It Fly? was released, I've earned about $4,000 from these royalties.

Really Taking Off: The Will It Fly? Audiobook

With the audiobook, we sold 19,389 units. This is where things get really interesting. We definitely sold more Kindle and paperback copies, but with the audiobook, I get a bigger cut of each sale—about $5 per sale. As a result, I’ve made just about the same with audiobook sales as I have with Kindle and paperback sales: $96,945. That’s pretty amazing, and it shows you the power of offering an audiobook. I’m especially thankful that I’ve kept the rights to my audiobooks and will continue doing that moving forward, including with my next book, Superfans.

You can make a lot more money on the audiobook than other book formats—which is why a lot of people have wondered why I’m giving away the audiobook version of Superfans for free during the pre-launch period. That’s right: If you pre-order Superfans before August 13 and submit your receipt at yoursuperfans.com, you’ll get the audiobook for free. [Editor's Note: This promotion has ended.]

Yes, we’re giving away the audiobook during the pre-launch, which means we might end up losing money on it. But it’s more important to me to offer a ton of value and give people an incentive to pre-order the book. Honestly, that will also help me get as many sales as possible on launch day and maybe even boost Superfans onto another bestseller list. Will It Fly? became a Wall Street Journal bestseller after a week, which was amazing, especially as a self-published book. Superfans is being self-published too, and while the bestseller list isn’t my main goal for the book—helping people is—I’d be pretty psyched if Superfans became a bestseller, too.

Pat Flynn, Bounty Hunter

Now, let’s talk bounty units. What are bounty units, you ask? Well, when you have a book on Audible, if you can convince someone to purchase an Audible subscription and they make your book their first book, you get a $50 bounty. What’s especially nice is Audible gives a person their first credit for free when they subscribe. So if they use that free credit for your book, you’re going to get $50 if they continue their subscription.

I was able to sell 490 bounty units at $50 each, which is $24,500. That, added to $96,000, brought total audiobook sales to $121,455. Total ebook sales (if you also count the Kindle Unlimited royalties) came to $36,981.81, which is far less than the audiobook sales. So when it comes to digital audio versus digital print, there’s the possibility for almost a four-times return if you prioritize the audiobook.

Breaking the 50K Unit Barrier

That means total book earnings from the self-published book, with 52,166 units sold, came to $224,432.29. We broke 50,000 unit sales, which is really cool. Total earnings per unit was about $4.30, both audio and digital and paperback considered. A quarter million dollars is not bad, especially when you consider that sometimes royalties for traditionally published books don’t get to that level! Those royalties, on average, are in the four-, maybe five-figure range. But we definitely made a lot more money from the book alone by self-publishing, which was amazing.

That said Will It Fly? wasn’t only a self-published book. Yup, there’s more to the story . . .

Will It Fly Across the Ocean? Yes!

Then there’s total royalties from foreign rights. That’s right, Will It Fly? is international! I worked with an agent who helped me sell the book to traditional publishers across the sea in a few different countries, including Korea, Vietnam, Romania, Taiwan, and Poland, for a total of $19,600 in advances. Here are some pictures of the covers of the book as it was published in a few of those places.

Because these versions were published by traditional publishers, I didn’t have any say in the book cover design or any of that stuff. I just sold the book to them and they made it happen. But it’s been really cool and gratifying to see the book expand beyond the US, with the various awesome cover designs.

I’ve been noticing, especially in Poland, that a lot of people are responding really well to Will It Fly?. They’re talking about the book using hashtags and tagging me on Twitter and Instagram.

Serving and Selling Beyond the Book

All in all, the book itself has generated $244,032.29. However, book sales are just one group of transactions related to the book. There are other ways to use a book to make money and serve your audience. As any good business owner knows, a book can be treated as the first step in a process to generate more sales and ultimately help more people, which can help generate even more sales.

Beyond the book, there are a couple interesting notes to share. First, I created a free companion course that I linked to in the book. The Will It Fly? Companion Course has allowed me to collect email addresses so I can stay in regular contact with my readers. The beauty of this companion course is that although it’s free, it’s still really valuable to the reader. The course is kind of an obvious next step for someone who’s read the book and who wants to get access to more tools and more resources. The course was created using Teachable, and it took about a day and a half to put together. It’s not designed to help people on its own, but when combined with the book it definitely adds value.

At this point, 26,680 people have enrolled in the Will It Fly? Companion Course. That means more than half the people who read the book have agreed to share their email addresses with me.

This is a HUGE deal. Let me repeat that:

More than half the people who read my book gave me their email address.

(This number doesn’t include people who purchased the book in foreign countries because I’m unable to track those figures. It’s probably less than 50 percent overall, but very close to 50.)

One of the most important reasons to create a course or some other way to collect email addresses is Amazon (or any retailer, for that matter) doesn’t give you your readers’ email addresses. In particular, I’ve used that list to help solicit reviews for the book. We’re approaching 800 reviews on Amazon right now, which is amazing, and more than some other popular books by better-known authors. So thank you to everybody who has left a review. And if you’ve read Will It Fly? and haven’t left a review, I’d love to know what you thought of it. Follow that link to Amazon to leave a review.

Will It Fly? Led to One of My Most Popular Courses

Collecting email addresses has also helped generate additional sales from another course I created. That course, Smart From Scratch, came about as a result of a request from many Will It Fly? readers who said they wanted to go deeper.

I opened Smart From Scratch initially to beta testers for $147, and it’s currently available for $249.

Overall, 1,684 students have enrolled in Smart From Scratch, which has generated $215,308.71. It’s been amazing to see how the book became the first step that led so many people to want to go deeper and get access to step-by-step tutorials, specific examples, and support and accountability through community and office hours.

Will It Fly? Recipe for Book Success: Answer the Burning Questions

The grand total of earnings directly and indirectly from Will It Fly?, from self-publishing the book, selling it overseas, and selling the Smart From Scratch course, came to $459,341. I’m extremely happy with that, and it’s been really neat to go back in time and see how this book has performed.

I hope you find this inspiring as you build your platform, because the platform I’ve built is definitely the reason this book has been so successful. Will It Fly? wasn’t a viral hit like Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning, which tackles some of the fears and issues people encounter when they want to start a business or change their life, and has really taken off. But Will It Fly? has still been a big success, and I’m really happy with how it’s done.

This brings me to why I believe this book has become such a success, and that’s because it answered some of the most burning questions my audience was asking. The content for the book was based on the answers to a survey I did in 2014, combined with a number of conversations and questions on social media among my audience about what they needed help with. And they told me exactly what they needed help with. They didn’t know where to get started. They didn’t know how to pick a niche. They didn’t know how to do market research. They were afraid of losing money and wasting time. Hence: Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money.

Every Book Is an Opportunity to Serve More People

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who’s supported Will It Fly?. This book is proof that you can serve and sell at the same time. And a book is a great way to do that, because of all the ways you can connect it to other opportunities and offerings, like your email list, courses, coaching programs, and other products you can provide to better serve your audience.

This book, along with everything that’s happened in the wake of it, such as the companion course and Smart From Scratch, has been another SPI experiment that has helped me learn and grow. I’m very thankful for it, especially the fact that the audience is what has made it the success that it is. I’m hoping for similar success, if not more, with Superfans, not just in terms of sales and revenue, but how it can help people.

I know from experience that building superfans and creating amazing experiences for your fans is the best way to futureproof your business. It’s the not-so secret secret to success in business. I think every business, no matter its size, can benefit from creating superfans. Even if you’re just starting out, learning these things up front is going to help you stand out. It’s going to help you tackle or avoid a lot of the technological and competitive challenges out there right now.

If you think your business can benefit from creating its own army of superfans, then Superfans is for you. You can get the audiobook version of Superfans for free by pre-ordering the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, then going to yoursuperfans.com and sending us your receipt.

So Team Flynn, you’re amazing. Thank you for your support of Will It Fly? and everything else I do. I hope this post was eye-opening and helped you see all the possibilities that exist for you with a self-published book. Now go get yourself a copy of Superfans, and have a great day!

Addendum: The Numbers for Will It Fly?

*Published February 2016 | Figures accurate as of May 31, 2019

• Ebook Sales: 19,221 units (at $6.99 each) = $32,893.93
• Paperback Sales: 13,556 units (at $16.95 each) = $62,495.48 (~$4.61 per book royalty)
• Kindle Unlimited Royalties: $4,087.88
• Audiobook Sales: 19,389 units (profit $5 per sale) = $96,945
• Bounty Units: 490 ($50 each) = $24,500
• Total Audiobook Sales: $24,500 + $96,945 = $121,455
• Total Ebook Sales: $32,893.93 + $4,087.88 = $36,981.81
• Total Paperback Sales: $62,495.48
• Total Bulk Paperback Sales (from Conferences and others): $3,500.00
• Total Book Earnings (Self Published): $224,432.29
• Total Units Sold: 52,166
• Total Earnings Per Unit: ~$4.30

Royalties from Foreign Rights

• Korea: $10,000
• Vietnam: $1,200
• Romania: $1,000
• Taiwan: $5,600
• Poland: $1,800
• Total Foreign Royalties: $19,600
• Total: $244,032.29

Beyond the Book

• Emails Collected via Will It Fly? Companion Course: 26,680 enrolled on Teachable (51 percent conversion rate!)
• Smart from Scratch Course (Will It Fly? Leads into Smart from Scratch. Note: Not everyone in SFS has read Will It Fly?, but it teaches the same material, in way more depth, with step-by-step examples and accountability, community, and office hours): 1,684 students enrolled, $215,308.71 in earnings
• Grand Total: $459,341.00

The post Income Report: All the Numbers Behind My 2016 Bestseller, Will It Fly appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

I’ve been talking about the SwitchPod a lot in the past few months, and I’m excited to finally share this big Switchpod income report with you!

To start off, I want to talk about how amazingly thankful I am for everybody’s support for the Kickstarter campaign. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’m really excited for the actual release of the SwitchPod.

It wasn’t always smooth, of course. Not all of our marketing efforts panned out, and since it was such new territory, we ran into a lot of things we didn’t know about. In this post, I’ll share some of the numbers from the campaign. I’ll also talk about what worked well, what didn't, and some plans for what’s coming next for us in the physical product space.

The SwitchPod Kickstarter Campaign: Digging into the Numbers

I’ll get into the numbers in a moment. But before I do, it’s important to mention how working on a physical product has definitely made me appreciate the things I’ve been doing in the digital space. Physical products are a completely different beast. I still don’t know close to everything. There were times when Caleb and I were asked about things we just didn’t know.

More on that coming up—but right now, let’s get to the hard numbers!

The campaign ran for 60 days—and let me tell you, it felt like a long time. But I’m glad we kept it going for that long, because it definitely helped us raise more money.

That said, a huge portion of the funds we raised came in the first half of the first day. In 11 hours and 26 minutes, we fully funded the $100,000 minimum goal, which was amazingly fast. Our internal goal for the whole campaign was $250,000, and we hit it within four days.

What did all that mean? It meant the project was definitely a go, which was great because we could even start the process of manufacturing the SwitchPod a little earlier than planned!

But the campaign kept some momentum through the whole 60 days. After the first week, we were at just under $272,000.

By the end of the second week, we’d hit just over $300,000. By the third week we’d hit $317,000, and after one month we were at $330,000. Growth slowed after that point, but we were still bringing in an average of $7-$8K per week. Then in the last 10 days, the pace picked up and we raised another $62,000 to close out strong.

You can find a more detailed graph of the campaign’s performance at BackerKit.

Churn, Fees, Promotions, and How Much We’re Taking Home

On Saturday, March 30 at 9:00 am, the 60-day campaign closed with a total of 4,148 backers and $415,748. But we didn’t “go home” with that exact amount. Why?

A large part of it is something called churn.

What’s churn? Well, when people are asked to pay for something, sometimes they don’t end up actually paying for it, or their credit card doesn’t go through. The churn for our campaign ended up being $14,402—that’s how much we were pledged by backers but never received.

There were also several fees we had to pay that cut into the final amount. Kickstarter charged a 5% fee, and there was a credit card fee too. Once those were taken out, we received a total of $368,393.60 from Kickstarter.

We also paid about $23,500 to Kickbooster. Kickbooster is a service that allowed us to create and run an affiliate program for our Kickstarter campaign, which was very useful. We had a number of affiliates come on—a few dozen, in fact. However, as in most cases, just a few of the top people made a bulk of the income. But these affiliates drove over six figures in sales for us, and the affiliates’ payments plus fees for Kickbooster totaled $23,565.47.

We also spent $6,943 to hire a company called Jellop to run some Facebook ads. The ads were profitable, but not as much as we’d hoped. I honestly don't know what went wrong, but the campaign just it didn't take off like some other campaigns we’ve done before using the same company. (We hadn't used this particular company before, but had heard from and spoke to others that had massive success with them.) Maybe it was because of Facebook algorithm changes, or something else we can’t pinpoint. It wasn’t a failure by any means, but we thought it was going to go better.

We also spent $1,404 on Google AdWords and $900 on a PR company that got the SwitchPod featured in a number of articles. The impact of the latter was difficult to measure, but we did get some good publicity out of it.

We also ordered additional prototypes, which cost $15,000, to get them out to people and hopefully collect more video reviews, but unfortunately there was a problem with the shipment—some of the parts were not working correctly, due to miscommunication with the manufacturing company, which delayed us receiving shippable prototypes. That was unfortunate, but not the end of the world. We now have more prototypes currently available that we've been sending to people after the campaign, so all was not a loss.

After all expenses were paid, we earned a grand total of $313,212.43. The final numbers were a little lower because of the churn, fees, and expenses, but overall the campaign was definitely a major success.

However, are we taking home that money and putting it in our pockets? No, definitely not. Likely, nearly 100% of this amount will be used to create the molds and produce the SwitchPods, as well as fulfill orders made through our website at SwitchPod.co and supply them to retail outlets. (More on retail later.)

Since the campaign ended, we’ve sold nearly 100 additional pre-orders at the retail price, which has earned us $11,151.59. Again, all this pre-order money will go into ordering the actual units that will be sent our way and brought to the fulfillment house and then shipped out to everybody.

And you can still pre-order the SwitchPod before it hopefully gets produced and shipped by August, which is still the current plan. As with anything, there could be delays, but we're hoping not. Just go to SwitchPod.co.

To Retail or Not to Retail the SwitchPod

Our goal is to get the product into backers’ hands by August as promised—if not sooner.

And we’re working through that process right now. A big part of that is deciding on the final dimensions and design of the packaging—not just for the Kickstarter campaign backers, but also for how the Switchpod will be displayed in retail stores.

That’s right: the Switchpod is going to be on store shelves.

To get ready for this, Caleb and I have done a lot of research and visited a lot of stores to see how similar and competitive products are packaged and displayed.

As part of our research, we had a conversation with Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost from Studio Neat on a recent episode of the Smart Passive Income. Their company makes physical products for video creators, like the Glif, which is an awesome smartphone tripod mount. But I’d never seen any of their products in a store, so one of the questions we asked them was, “Why haven’t you gone the retail route?”

They gave us some specific reasons about why they chose to stay away from retail: how it cuts into your margins, how it can be a headache sometimes, how it didn’t fit their goals.

All valid reasons. But Caleb and I decided to try out the retail route, and for two main reasons of our own.

The first was pure experimentation. We wanted to better understand the world of retail products, and we’ve already learned a lot. It’s a completely different world.

The second reason—especially since this is still very much a side business right now—is that we’re not trying to make a ton of money from the SwitchPod. If we were, we would just set up a Shopify website and sell the SwitchPod that way.

Sticking with online sales would give us the biggest margins, and we would have less to worry about overall, especially because of all the guidance we could have gotten from all the relationships we’ve developed in the online world.

But we also know that retail gives us a reach we wouldn’t have if we only sold the SwitchPod online. There are tons of people we wouldn’t be able to reach on our own, even through our own networks. This is why retail is so interesting to us, because it allows us to reach a much bigger scale.

What’s In Store for the SwitchPod on the Retail Front

So where will you be able to buy the SwitchPod in brick and mortar stores? We’ve already had discussions with several retailers, and the SwitchPod is actually available now for presale at places like B&H and Adorama. They even placed orders upfront with us, though I can’t share how many at this stage. Whether or not we end up in huge retail stores like Target, for example, is still an open question, but for some of these top audio and video retailers, it makes a lot of sense for us to be there.

And entering the retail world has been a whole new adventure.

When Caleb and I went to New York, we had a discussion with a buyer from B&H. It was one of the most intense discussions we’ve had related to the SwitchPod. The buyers were asking us questions like, “What is your MAP?” We had know idea what a MAP is, although we now know that it means minimum advertised price. It’s the amount that resellers agree to not advertise below. If a MAP is $50, for example, a reseller can’t advertise the product less than that. But there were several questions like this that we just didn’t know how to answer.

Luckily, we’ve had a lot of help from the team at Prouduct, who have been vital to helping get this thing off the ground. We’ve also had a hand from lots of others in the retail world, especially a number of folks in the camera space. There are just too many people to thank, but we’re incredibly grateful for all of their support.

Creators to the Rescue

We’re also especially grateful and excited about the help we’ve gotten from other creators in the video space. People like Marques Brownlee and Peter McKinnon, two of the top YouTubers right now, have purchased a SwitchPod. Justine Ezarik (iJustine) was on our list of buyers as well. We're just so excited to see the YouTube community and the vlogger community get behind the SwitchPod. It's been really fun to see, and really encouraging.

A lot of the people we’ve met have heard about the SwitchPod thanks to videos like this one by Peter McKinnon:

We’ve also traveled to different conferences since the end of the campaign to let people know about it. We were in Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), to meet friends, check out equipment for our new video studio, and share the SwitchPod with people. While we were there, we actually had people come up to us—people who didn’t know who we were—and say, “Hey, is that the SwitchPod?” They already knew the product.

It was really amazing to see that a product itself could have that much of an impact on people and create so much excitement. It was definitely a different experience from going to conferences and having people recognize me because of the brand I’ve built at Smart Passive Income. It’s been a really cool thing to see people get behind the product.

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As we were at NAB demoing the Switchpod, a lot of people also asked how they could get their hands on one, and some even asked if they could pre-order it on the spot. They seemed to love getting their hands on it so they could feel it for themselves and see if it was something they could imagine using in the real world.

This crowd interest was apparent at NAB, but it was even more so at Social Media Marketing World (SMMW) in March.

We set up a booth at SMMW during the final week of the Kickstarter campaign. We had a little table set up with a computer where people could pre-order it. Behind we had set up a video screen with our favorite parts of the Kickstarter video on a loop, as well as other people’s videos supporting the SwitchPod, like Peter McKinnon’s, Levi Allen's and many others.

We actually made several dozen SwitchPod sales from the floor at SMMW from people who got their hands on it and asked us, “Where can I buy this?”

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The whole experience has come with a ton of positives—but it’s also had a few minor downsides.

The Negative Side of the SwitchPod Experiment (It’s Not That Negative)

It’s been interesting to see and experience the negative side of creating and fundraising for a physical product. The biggest downside we’ve encountered is criticism of the SwitchPod itself. There have been people who’ve told us it’s a terrible product, that it’s not going to work, that it can’t compete with the JOBY GorillaPod, and that people would never use it.

And you know what? In a previous world, I’d have been pretty upset about criticism like that. I’d have wanted to create something that pleased everybody. But what I quickly realized with the SwitchPod was we’d built the right product—because it serves a very specific purpose. When the right people—the ones we designed it for—see the SwitchPod, they know it’s for them. Others who don’t see the SwitchPod as a solution for themselves might end up hating it. But that’s totally fine.

The analogy I like to use here is that sometimes people build products that end up looking like that TV remote control with 100 buttons on it, yet you only use about seven of them. Instead, we built something that serves a very specific purpose, and it does so simply and clearly. When you’re building a business, you want to create something like that because then it’s much easier to sell it to the people who you built it for. They get it.

Another big reason the SwitchPod is making such a big splash with the people who know it’s for them is because they’re the ones who actually built it, not us. We started the process of creating this product, but it was through a lot of research and sharing prototypes with people for over 14 months, then collecting and incorporating feedback (or not incorporating some feedback, depending on how useful it was), that we were able to create something that works really well for a specific purpose and a specific audience.

As a result, SwitchPod has taken off. It’s becoming a name. People are using it. To see people create videos with it—especially people like Peter McKinnon, who’s obviously using the SwitchPod in some of his recent videos but doesn't even mention it—is awesome. To me, that shows the whole purpose of the SwitchPod, which is to help creators make creating easier.

What’s Next After the SwitchPod When It Comes to Physical Products?

The SwitchPod isn’t the beginning and end of our physical product experiment.

We’re already thinking of other products we can build, and even developing a new brand, one focused on helping creators make creating easier. That’s what the SwitchPod does, and it’s what all the products in our pipeline will do. Of course, we want to be smart about it and not rush into things, but we’re excited about what we’ve got in store.

I can’t wait for the SwitchPod to make it out into the wider world! Whether or not this becomes a fully fledged business, remains a side hustle, or turns into something we eventually sell is to be determined, but we’re excited to bring you along for the journey. We’re especially thankful to have a successful Kickstarter campaign under our belt, and we’re looking forward to the next one.

If you’re thinking about creating your own physical product, and maybe already running your own Kickstarter campaign, we hope our process has been helpful and inspiring to you.

And Caleb and I would love to know: If you’ve been following our journey with the SwitchPod, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from it all? How might you use our experience to create a physical product of your own?

And don’t forget—you can still order the SwitchPod at SwitchPod.co!

The post SwitchPod Income Report: The Final Numbers, Churn, Retail, and How Much Are We Taking Home? appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

In this podcast income report, I going to take you “behind the microphone” and share three different ways my podcast helps me make more money, and exactly where it all comes from.

I've been talking a lot about advanced podcasting strategies lately, and if you missed my video interviews featuring several different podcasters and how they're each using their podcast to support their business, click here to watch and discover new ways to promote your business with your podcast.

Generating an income with your podcast is 100 percent possible, and you don't have to rely just on advertisements and sponsorships. In fact, especially if you have a smaller audience, you have way more opportunity elsewhere to generate more income than you would with advertising.

Whether you have 100 listeners or 100,000 listeners or more, I want to help you make more money. Let's start with the simplest method that any podcaster can begin almost immediately:

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing—generating an income by recommending other people's or company's products—is my bread and butter. It's how I've generated most of my income online since 2008, so it was a natural fit for me to blend it into my podcast once I started to get comfortable behind the microphone.

Over the past eight years, I've discovered some fun ways a podcast can support your affiliate marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is simple, but it's not easy. Find a product you'd like to promote, grab an affiliate link and send traffic through it. Done, right?

Not really.

Those are the motions, but like in golf where the concept is easy (hit the ball, get it in the hole), it's easy to struggle and be terrible at it. The follow-through and execution is everything.

The challenge with affiliate marketing is that you're promoting products that are not your own. Because of this, you have to work a little bit harder to have your audience trust you and your recommendations.

This is where podcasts provide a major advantage. Due to the nature of the medium, you can use podcasts to quickly earn that trust with your audience. How?

Use your podcast to tell stories that relate to the affiliate product.

Stories provide context. Stories are relatable. Stories are inspirational.

Stories work.

And when you tie a great story to an affiliate product, it's a match made in heaven.

Here are a couple methods and examples:

Method 1: Interviewing the Product Owner

Example Episode: SPI Session #244: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped ConvertKit

ConvertKit is now Kit!

Our recommended email service provider has changed their name to Kit. We're working to update our content to reflect this change. In the mean time, you may see us reference the product by either name—please know that our recommendation has not changed. You can read more about the name change here.

In this podcast, I interview Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of ConvertKit. Although ConvertKit is an email service provider and an amazing product, we didn't talk about email marketing much during this podcast session. [Full Disclosure: I am a compensated affiliate and advisor for ConvertKit.]

We talked about the wild journey that Nathan had for years after starting his company before ConvertKit became a household name in email marketing. We discussed why he decided not to take on investors to grow his start up, and specific conversations that he had with people that changed the course of the business.

Struggles. Pain points. Almost giving up. Triumph.

For listeners, by the end of the show, you can't help but become more connected to Nathan, and as a result, ConvertKit, too. And when the time comes for a call to action to give ConvertKit a try, it's a natural conclusion to the entire story for people, especially if they are in the market for such a tool.

One issue with podcasting is that tracking conversions from specific episodes can be difficult. In this case, I did not use a unique identifier or link that was specific to this episode and just used my general affiliate link that's tied to an extended free-trial.

Furthermore, ConvertKit's affiliate management platform, GetAmbassador, doesn't offer many tools to affiliate marketers. That being said, there was an extremely clear up-tick in sign-ups during the week this episode came out, and ever since then, the commissions have increased at a much higher rate. I also received emails and messages like these which confirm the effectiveness of the podcast even further:

“Just wanted to send you a quick message to let you know that I really enjoyed the episode about how Nathan started ConvertKit. My email list is only about a thousand right now, but I'm going to migrate to ConvertKit because I can tell he's in it for the right reasons. Thanks again for the recommendation!”

“Pat, thank you for the episode with Nathan. It inspired me to finally get started with my own business, and I'll definitely be using ConvertKit for my emails.”

Lastly, what's cool about a podcast is that anytime I mention ConvertKit, whether online or in person, I can confidently recommend this episode to people. For an important decision like “which email service to use,” a recommendation to listen to a podcast to learn more about the story behind the product, versus a direct recommendation to the product itself is less aggressive and salesy, and more organic. Just like how I mentioned it here in this post.

ConvertKit's affiliate program pays 30 percent commission for anyone who purchases through your link. The great thing is that it's a recurring commission for the life of the customers you send through, so although at the lowest price plan you're only earning $8.70 per sign up, that equates to $104.40 for the entire year (if they stick around), and even more if they upgrade their plan and stay a happy customer.

If I were to take a guess, I would say that this episode alone has helped generate over $100,000 in commissions over the past two-plus years since the episode came out, both directly through CTAs in the episode and show notes, and indirectly by referencing the episode elsewhere on the blog and other podcast episodes to support the product recommendation.

And to give you an idea of how well a well-integrated affiliate product can be for your business, my commission from ConvertKit alone last month was $14,018.67. Most of that coming from my resource page, as well as the 100 email marketing challenge.

But what if you don't have access to the product owner for the product you're promoting? Then tell your own stories about how you've used the product or tool with great success.

Method 2: Sharing the Product as a Part of a Challenging Process

Example episode: SPI Podcast Session #87: Why You Belong on Stage—Pat's Braindump of Public Speaking and Presentation Tips

In this solo podcast episode from 2013, I talk a little bit about my journey as a speaker. After speaking on stage for just two years at this point, I went from being deathly afraid of the stage to actually getting paid to be on it. This episode is a braindump of all the things that helped me along the way.

Near the beginning of the episode, I share a couple books that were really helpful for me (Amazon links):

• Stand and Deliver (Amazon link) by Dale Carnegie
• Resonate (Amazon link) and Slideology (Amazon link) by Nancy Duarte

[Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through these links.]

I do not share these resources anywhere else on the blog or podcast, and still today, nearly six years later, I see these books being purchased on my Amazon reports. Yes, the affiliate commission is quite small since it's from Amazon, but the longevity of podcasts make it worthwhile.

The trick here is not to just mention a book in passing, but actually sell the book to your listeners. No, you don't need to write up a full-length sales presentation, but actually being direct with your pitch is the most important thing.

Here's a passive mention, which doesn't work very well:

“Stand and Deliver was a great book. It really helped me BIG TIME when I started speaking. Here's the link in case you're interested.”

The problem? You made it all about you. Turn it around and make it about your listener, too:

“If you're about to speak on stage, and you want to set yourself up with the best advice, then you must read Stand and Deliver. It helped me feel so much more comfortable my first time on stage, and it will do the same for you too. Here's the link.”

Affiliate marketing. It's powerful, just make sure you're purposeful and honest and authentic in your recommendations. If you promote a bad product, you're essentially planting bad seeds for the future that could ruin the great reputation and character you're building with your podcast. Care about your audience, promote great products, and these seeds you're planting will grow into an amazing income source for you in the future.

Besides affiliate marketing, if you have your own products or services to promote, then you should 100 percent use your podcast to help you support that. How though? There's one way that's better than all the rest, which we'll talk about in the next section.

2. Promoting Your Own Product

What's better? You promoting your own product, or someone else doing the promoting for you?

Well, obviously it depends, because a great pitch by you can perform better than a poor pitch by someone else; however, in general, when someone else does the selling for you, it usually converts much better.

This is why things like reviews and testimonials are so powerful—we listen to how others have enjoyed (or not enjoyed) a particular product or service.

Insert podcasts.

When you have your own product or service to sell, instead of focusing 100 percent on promoting the product yourself (or even having your own product become the sponsor of your podcast, which is totally okay and very common), why not use the asset you've built to feature the success of your customers and students?

Well, this is exactly what I did in SPI Podcast Session #275: Real Stories and Results from 3 Brand-New Podcasters. In this episode, I interview 3 brand new podcasters who were also three of my beta students from my course, Power-Up Podcasting.

For each student, I ask questions about why they wanted to start a podcast, what some of their biggest challenges were, and the results of what has happened since starting their show. And without even asking or mentioning it myself, my course comes up naturally in the conversation.

I timed this episode to publish the same week that Power-Up Podcasting went public for the first time. It became an amazing 56-minute testimonial for my course. For those who didn't know my course was coming out, obviously now they knew (and it wasn't me telling them), and for those who were on my waitlist who knew about this course, this episode became a great excuse to email them to let them know they can do it, too.

Here's one piece of feedback I received via email the same week the podcast episode was published:

“I just wanted to tell you why I've joined your Power-Up Podcasting course. It was hearing those stories from your students, not just because they helped convince me that your course was actually helpful (I've been looking to start a podcast for a while), but because I heard the power of what it was like to have your own students share their experience with me. I'm going to start a podcast so I can do the same thing and help convince people to learn more about my coaching program.”

Here's another one that came in which will show you another reason why this is powerful:

“Hey Pat, your podcast episode with Dr. B, the ADHD podcaster, really spoke to me. I'm part of the older generation and thought podcasting was too technical for me, but hearing how she was able to do it encouraged me to join your program. Thanks, and I look forward to learning from you!”

When you create these kinds of episodes with stories from your students, try to pick a few stories that range across different avatars in your target audience. It doesn't have to be age-based, either. Perhaps it's choosing people at different skill levels or experiences.

For example, if you have a fitness podcast, but you want to sell a nutritional program, choosing a student who is a marathon runner for one story, and then someone who is just getting off the couch and into their first fitness regime for another, will help you capture the range of people who can relate to the show.

Which takes us back to the power of podcasts: relatability.

Other tips to help you for episodes like this:

• Ask your students what their biggest challenges were, and how they got over them.
• Make sure you ask questions to pull out the results they have. They are a living “AFTER” picture for the audience who is sitting in the “BEFORE” position.
• Ultimately, make your students the hero of the story. They are the Luke Skywalker, you're the Yoda who helped them along the way. An important character, yes, but not the protagonist.

So how did this particular episode perform? Similar to the affiliate marketing example with ConvertKit, I wasn't smart enough to have unique links in this episode to track, and tracking conversions specifically from podcasts is difficult (anyone have a solution for this?), but based on the feedback it's obviously something that supported the launch, and to date, it was the highest performing launch I've ever had.

I continue to reference this episode to this date, and over time, it's had over 22,000 total downloads!

3. Podcast Advertising

Before we finish up, I do want to mention that advertising and sponsorships are still very viable options for generating an income. I'm not going to go too deep into the how-to as I've done less and less of it since coming out with my own products and it's not where most people can start, however I do still include sponsored ads on my shows. Both of my primary shows, Smart Passive Income and AskPat, have generated advertising revenue. I've generated over $350,000 in advertising revenue since 2014 when I began, but I've had some issues with it over time.

With podcasting, the pricing structure is a bit weird. Usually, it's based on a CPM model (Cost Per 1,000 downloads), which can range anywhere between $15-50. When I worked with an advertising agency, I was seeing a $18-30 CPM price range, and when I worked directly with companies, I could usually command a higher rate. Additionally, I only allowed my advertisers to have the end of the podcast, also known as post-roll, which hurt my numbers because there's more money for podcasters creating pre-rolls (before an episode begins) and mid-rolls (advertisements within the middle of an episode). I care a lot about my listener experience and didn't want five minutes of ads up front before getting to any content in the podcast, like other podcasts I've listened to.

That said, with AskPat, I do include a pre- and post-roll ad spot, but they're usually much shorter, and actually, I've never once heard a complaint. It doesn't mean those complaints aren't there, but the show has continued to grow and serve my audience, and that's the most important thing.

For advertisers, these CPMs were based on average number of downloads per episode after six weeks, which isn't a great metric, in my opinion. Podcasting has a LONG way to go on so many fronts, and this is one of them. What does a download actually mean? Is that the same as a listen? In many cases, advertisers didn't even ask for confirmation of numbers that I shared, which leads me to believe advertisers don't really know 100 percent what's going on, either. It's like the new billboard—companies are buying the space in high-trafficked areas, just because it's there.

However, most advertisers usually have unique links or coupon codes that allow the company to know if a lead or customer came from a particular show, which is a start, but like I said there is a lot more opportunity for innovation here, and I'm excited to see big companies start to get involved with putting more time and resources into podcasting, like Spotify, which recently acquired Anchor and Gimlet Media for several hundred million dollars.

What does this mean for us podcasters? At the time I write this, I'm not exactly sure yet. Perhaps we'll see better findability for podcasts and a better process for learning more about how our show is consumed. Perhaps there will be cross-podcast promotion in a built-in advertising platform, or maybe even sharing and discoverability will be easier through shared playlists.

As a podcaster, I do think the advertising thing for podcasts is still a great opportunity and if you have the download numbers, definitely see how you can work with a company and make it a win for everybody—you, the company, and your listeners. That said, I predict that in the near future, Google will become a big player for both podcasting and advertising. With Google Podcasts a thing now, and the ability to use its technology to do things like crawl through our podcast episodes and transcribe them (just like they can with YouTube), I imagine a lot more resources coming our way very soon. I look forward to being one of the first to jump on some of these new opportunities, and you can be sure I'll be sharing my findings along the way.

The post Podcast Income Report: 3 Ways My Podcast Makes Money (And How You Can, Too) appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Welcome to another campaign-based income report here on Smart Passive Income. This month, we're going to examine a promotion I ran at the end of last year for Cyber Monday to promote my online courses.

I've run small promotions during Cyber Monday before, but only for my architectural-related business.

Why not anywhere else? Because I had no other products of my own to sell!

Up until 2017, affiliate marketing had accounted for about 90 percent of my income, with podcast sponsorships, books, speaking, and niche sites making up the rest. Then, I finally created my own courses to better serve my audience, and have seen a significant increase in income ever since.

There were a lot of lessons learned and many things that could have been improved upon during this promotion, but I'm most excited about the results behind a brand-new tool my team and I discovered that makes selling a lot easier, and will forever change how I approach sales and marketing in the future.

I'm going to share all of that here in this post with you, including income generated during the promotion, and by the end, hopefully you'll be better equipped with the knowledge, and tools, for your upcoming promotion, too.

SPI-ber Monday

For Cyber Monday (which my team and I decided to call SPI-ber Monday), I wanted to promote all of my online courses to finish off the year. This promotion would last 48 hours, and all of my online courses would be sold for 30 percent off.

I have three courses available that would be featured in this promotion:

• Smart from Scratch: Designed to help you pick a niche and discover a winning business idea and lead you to your first sale.
  • Normal Price: $249
  • Sale Price: $147.30
• Power-Up Podcasting: My most popular course built to help anyone not just start a podcast, but launch it effectively with marketing strategies to help you get the most listeners possible, even on day one.
  • Normal Price: $799
  • Sale Price: $559.30
• 1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing: A step-by-step program to walk you through the best affiliate marketing strategies to make money by recommending products other than your own.
  • Normal Price: $699
  • Sale Price: $489.30

In addition, we wanted to pre-sell and validate a brand new course—an upcoming advanced podcasting course (for existing podcasters only) called AMP'd-Up Podcasting. It was already outlined in heavy detail, but not yet created.

(AMP'd-Up Podcasting will be available to the public in March 2019.)

As my team and I were discussing how to market all of these courses at the same time during a 48-hour sale period, it quickly became apparent that it could become very confusing (and potentially overwhelming) with all of the different products that were being offered at the same time.

Too many options often means too little action.

That, combined with the fact that everyone else who had a product to sell would be actively engaging their audiences, too. It was going to be a challenge, for sure.

Consolidation and segmentation during this promotion was key.

Teachable, the online course platform that I use and love (also, in full disclosure, I am an advisor and an affiliate for Teachable) puts all of the courses together on a “school page,” but that's more like a library with hardly any room to put any special promotional copy or deals. Furthermore, I have free courses (such as Build Your Own Brand) that I did not want to have shown on the same page.

Although each course has their own separate sales page, I wanted to build a central hub—a single landing page—for all of the courses and the SPI-ber Monday launch.

This hub would include a few key elements:

• A customized video at the top of the page to get people excited about the limited-time offers that were available. I was not course specific (you'll see why in a minute), but I was very clear on when the promotion was over, mentioning the date and time specifically.
• A countdown timer at the bottom of the page, thanks to a tool called Deadline Funnel.
• A mini-sales section for each course with compelling copy and a clearly marked discount off the regular price point.
• Testimonials for each product next to the buy button.
• A buy button for each course that goes directly to check-out (versus the individual, longer-form sales pages)
• A Facebook pixel so we could retarget people who have visited the page.

Pages like this should have no other navigation, buttons, or calls to action other than the products that you are offering. This is the drawback of simply creating a new page in WordPress, which usually still includes all of the navigation and sidebar options.

My team and I love using LeadPages to build pages like this. The builder makes it drag-and-drop easy to create, and although the page is not hosted on Smart Passive Income (it's hosted on LeadPages' server), that actually doesn't matter so much. [Full Disclosure: I am a compensated affiliate and advisor for LeadPages.]

After building the page, LeadPages gives us a link, which becomes exactly where we want to drive all traffic to. We can also include a Facebook pixel on that LeadPage.

Here's a sample section of the page for you, showing just how much copy we used, and how we tailored the call-to-action:

A few important things to note here:

1. You'll notice a strikethrough of the normal price, followed by the sale price. You can't get more clear about the savings here. I tested this back when GreenExamAcademy.com first started selling products, and it works like a charm.
2. The content section is split into two columns to allow for more bullets in less space. Again, this can be done simply in the LeadPages builder.
3. Proof, both in the form of the numbers of students served, and of course, the testimonials from a couple of my students.
4. The CTA button color stands out on the page and also includes the savings right on it.
5. There's a coupon code.

The idea behind the coupon code, which was mentioned at the top and bottom of each section, was to allow for customers to actually see their savings come through off the regular price, as opposed to automatically applying the sales price during checkout. That experience—the act of entering the coupon code and seeing the savings being applied—would, in theory, convince more people to actually follow through.

This doesn't always work, but for a promotional period that has a clear start and end date, I believe personally that it's more likely to work.

Does it actually make a huge difference?

There are so many variables in every single person's promotional style and products, the best answer is to test it for yourself.

But There's Still That Problem

The central page is setup, all of the buttons go to where they need to go, but we still have a problem:

There are too many products for sale on a single page.

I'm not an Amazon or ecommerce store where browsing for multiple products on a single page is the normal buying behavior. For online marketers, especially if you're building audiences and serving them with quality products, you want to be more direct when possible:

“Have this specific problem? Here's this specific solution.”

Understanding who is in your audience and segmenting them based on the problems they might have and the language they specifically use is a significant advantage. I'd recommend listening to Ryan Levesque, author of Ask, in Session #178 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast for more info about audience segmentation and exactly how to do it.

Over the years, I've been able to use my email service provider, ConvertKit, to not only collect emails, but start to place my subscribers into different buckets depending on where they are on the entrepreneurial journey. An example of how I do using in-email surveys can be found here in this video. [Full Disclosure: I am a compensated affiliate and advisor for ConvertKit.]

But even after segmenting my audience and understanding who needs what on my email list, how can I give access to only what they need, and nothing more?

What about my existing students? It's a poor practice to offer the same course to someone who has already purchased it.

Sending different groups of people to different sales pages makes sense, but that's a huge overhaul of three to four separate pages in a very short period of time, only to then revert back to what they were before the sale.

There's got to be a way to organize this!

(You can probably sense there's a solution coming . . . hehe.)

Enter, RightMessage. My 2019 pick for new conversion tool of the year.

Note: My team and I tested this tool for over six months to make sure this was the best for us and the SPI audience who wants to level up their conversions. As a result, I'm proudly an affiliate for this tool, and have struck a deal with the company to offer you an extended free trial (from 14 days, to 30), which is only available through my link.

To best explain how RightMessage works (before I share how my team and I utilized its superpowers, and the results), let's create a hypothetical, but simple example.

Let's pretend you own a website and business that helps people learn how to paint. While you share a lot of tips to help the first-time artist, you also share a lot of tips and strategies for helping existing artists sell their artwork.

You basically have two groups of people who follow your work:

• Bucket 1: Beginner artists (who have no business selling their artwork yet); and
• Bucket 2: Artists who are ready to sell their artwork online.

Through your email list, you begin to tag and segment your audience based on which bucket they fall into. Furthermore, using RightMessage's built-in tool, RightAsk, you begin to create surveys that show up cleanly on your website that ask which bucket they fall into and categorizes that person (even if they are not on your list).

And with that information, and the power of RightMessage, magic happens . . .

Every time a Bucket 1 (beginner artist) comes back to your homepage, they see messages such as:

• Develop the skills you need to become a successful artist!
• Painting isn't hard, it just takes some time. Let me cut the time in half for you.
• Want to start painting? You're in the right place. Grab your first lesson here.

And on the SAME homepage (not a second homepage that you create), Bucket 2 (pro artists) will see this kind of messaging:

• You make great art. Now it's time to make great money.
• Your artwork could be worth a lot. Let me show you how much.
• The best strategies for monetizing your art and talent.

For each, you could have different images, too:

• Bucket 1 could include images of rough sketches and something not entirely intimidating.
• Bucket 2 could include artwork at an auction, or hanging with a price tag next to it.

When you know your customers and can speak their language, you're more likely to capture their attention, more likely to hold their attention, and more likely to convert them into a customer.

On Smart Passive Income, starting in July 2018, I begun using RightAsk to show a survey at the bottom right-hand corner of my website to begin collecting data, which you might have seen on a previous visit here on the blog. It looks like this:

I ask five questions in total, and currently we have an amazing completion rate that helps me better understand my audience. Here's a sample of the data we receive from RightMessage:

Through RightAsk, over 60,000 questions have been answered!

Not only is SPI collecting real-time survey results from the audience, but that data is held onto that specific person in RightMessage via IP address, and then email address after they subscribe. How huge is that!?

That means that I can have any page on the website show different messages to people depending on what I know about them.

See where I'm going with all this?

Let's show you an easy example using the SPI homepage.

I have three buckets in my audience that I segment for:

• Bucket 1: People who are interested, but have yet to start an online business.
• Bucket 2: People who have started an online business, but only make $0-500/month
• Bucket 3: People who are making more than $500/month

Each bucket has different needs, solutions, and unique language that they use.

Using RightMessage's visual editor (because hardly any coding knowledge is needed to make these personalizations happen), here's what the homepage of SPI looks like when a person is in Bucket 1:

Notice the subtle different in the headline here for Bucket 2:

And Bucket 3, the more advanced segment of my audience:

Now that I look at this again, I should probably create more personalized subtext under the headline, which would only take a few seconds.

The copy on your homepage is the easiest thing to personalize first. That's where I would start. Then, you can go even further with it if you'd like, which takes us back to our landing page for SPI-ber on LeadPages, which yes, also integrates with RightMessage.

Yes, you can personalize any custom LeadPages you build, too.

Can you see why I love this thing!?

Making Magic Happen

Using the data collected from RightMessage, AND the integration with my email service provider, ConvertKit (meaning, RightMessage can serve people different messages on my website based on what tags they have in my email service provider), I can have the same sales page promotion only show what courses and messages I want to show.

I'm not going to get too specific with the campaign details here because we did have eight to ten different variations based on what bucket they are in, whether they have a podcast already or not, whether they were a student already or not—those kinds of things—but here's the gist of what we wanted to make sure happened:

Beginners will not see messages for my advanced courses, and their primary course offering would be my beginner course, Smart from Scratch.

Existing students will not see the sections that promote the same courses they are already in.

Existing podcasters will clearly see the promotion for Amp'd Up Podcasting up top.

To the best of our ability, language should be personalized for each particular group.

It's like magic, when in reality, it's just RightMessage.

So How Did the Campaign Perform?

As a result of the campaign (and this was after a lot of data crunching and even chats with the RightMessage team), during the SPI-ber Monday sale, we were able to increase revenue by $104,000 by dynamically tailoring the offers based on customer status tags we had stored in ConvertKit and RightMessage.

We discovered, through A/B testing against a control (which was the standard sales page) that Right Message helped us increase conversions by 2.38x. That means without it, we would have generated only $75,900 on our own.

HOME RUN!

That's a huge increase in income due to personalization. On one hand, I know I've built a ton of trust with my audience and would have likely done very well without the tool, but the numbers are that much higher that, even if the numbers aren't exactly correct here in the reporting, you can't deny that this is helping out, big time! Right Message is a huge discovery and I can't wait to see how it impacts the results of my business moving forward!

And furthermore, I was happy to have several new beta students (over 50!) join my new course, AMP'd Up Podcasting, taking advantage of the pre-sale that happened during the campaign!

And interestingly, the best-selling course as far as quantity was Smart from Scratch, which tailored to the beginners in my audience which, as you saw in the survey data from above, makes up a majority of my audience.

Lessons Learned

Three big lessons learned.

First, although we used RightMessage to personalize offers and better convert several customers, having a pre-sale for a new course in the mix definitely is something I wouldn't do ever again.

A pre-sale for a course is a big deal, and any and all messaging during a pre-sale period for the validation of a course should be about that course, and that course alone. To mix that along with the other courses that were available was a big mistake, and I think it reduced the overall conversion rates on both sides of the equation.

In the future, a pre-sale or beta launch should be treated more like its own event. It's a big deal, and you shouldn't lessen that by having other offers potentially confuse the buy, or overwhelm them.

I made a mistake in the video on the sales page too, referencing AMP'd Up Podcasting, even though for some we had removed that from the page. I'm sure several subscribers in Bucket 1 must have been confused. The video, however, did have a 100 percent play rate, which takes me to my second lesson . . .

Although I had made that mistake with the video, we did experiment with auto-playing the video once a person landed on the page. A couple of years ago, I would have been 100 percent against this. Auto-play = bad.

But, auto-playing videos is more common nowadays, especially on social media. Scroll through your feed on Instagram or Facebook (and even YouTube now), and you'll see videos play automatically.

But what's the one thing all of those social media sites have in common with the videos they auto-play? The sound is off, and usually there are subtitles.

So, that's exactly what we did.

Using Wistia as our video host, we set the videos to auto-play with the sound off, and we included subtitles so even if a person was watching with the sounds off, they could either keep reading, or simply click the video to have the sound come on.

I'll likely continue to use this strategy on custom sales pages moving forward.

And finally, the third and biggest lesson was from RightMessage. The lesson? It's one of the best tools I've found in a while that has had a dramatic effect on my business. Not just in sales here in this particular promotion, but also for generating more email subscribers, and keeping people on my page longer.

By connecting with people based on where they are at, a little bit of on-site personalization can go a very long way.

If you'd like to explore RightMessage, I'm good friends with the founder, Brennan Dunn. I asked him, knowing I was going to share this tool today, if there was a special deal that he could offer the readers here, and he did not disappoint.

If you click through my affiliate link here, or anywhere else on the page, you'll be given access to a 30-day free trial, which is more than double the normal 14-day trial you normally get access to. That's only available here, so I hope you give RightMessage a shot. It's simple to setup, and once you get a feel for it, it can become a powerful weapon in your arsenal of tools to better serve your audience, and ultimately, make more money.

Cheers, and I hope you enjoyed the Income Report this month! Look out for next month's where I'll take you behind the scenes of one of my content platforms, and just how much money is being made there, and how.

The post Income Report: This Game-Changing Tool Helped Me Earn 6-Figures appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Welcome to the first of our new edition of income reports here on SPI!

For nearly a decade since the blog was created in October 2008, I’ve been sharing monthly income reports to reveal exactly how my online businesses were performing, including exactly how much money was being made, where it was all coming from, the expenses and the lessons learned that month, too.

These income reports, many said, are what put me on the map and what I had become known for, and they were the most popular blog posts on the site.

Then, in January 2018, I stopped publishing them.

For an in-depth explanation of why I stopped the income reports, watch my YouTube video here, but for a quick rundown:

1. They were becoming less and less relatable.
2. They took over eight hours to publish.
3. They were becoming less valuable to readers.

Number 3 is the most important.

Back when I started, comments like this were not uncommon:

“Pat, this is super inspiring! Thank you so much for being open and sharing your numbers. I’ll take these lessons and implement them in my own business, too!”

More recently, the comments started to look more like this:

“Another successful month. Congrats Pat.” Or, “I’ll never be able to do that.”

The goal was to share the real numbers so that I could inspire and get people to take action. Over time, it was not that anymore.

Now that we’re in a new year, I’m excited to bring the income reports back, but in a completely different way—one that, in my eyes, is much more useful and interesting. I will still share numbers, and I will still share lessons, but instead of an overall business income report that shares a little bit of info about each income stream, we’re going to go deep and into the details of just one.

I’m going to call these my Campaign Income Reports (or CIRs for short), and this is the very first one.

At the end of this post, I would love your honest feedback in the comment section about anything that stands out to you, good or bad. Was it useful? Do you like the format? What other campaigns and specific income items would you like to see me talk about? The goal here is to give you something more useful and tangible that you could more easily learn from, with inspiration and transparency to go along with it.

And like my older income reports, not all of them will be positive, either. Many income reports showed months where I took major hits and saw a decline in earnings. I hope to cover both wins and failures in these CIRs.

If you’d like to see a history of my older income reports, which will continue to live on the blog, click here to see every single one that was published since October 2008. If you’re ready to check out the campaign income reports, well, keep on reading.

Inside a 5-Figure Affiliate Promotion

Affiliate marketing is something that I specialize in, and in this Campaign Income Report I’m going to share the details behind a promotion that I recently ran to successfully sell someone else’s online course and become one of the top three affiliates during the promotional period.

I’ll be sharing how I warmed up my audience, how I promoted the product, emails with open and click-through rates, how I stood out from other affiliates promoting the same product, and finally, how much overall income I generated.

I did not spend any money on ads during this campaign. It was primarily promoted via email, social media, and on the blog.

But first, a little about the product.

The Product and Why I Chose to Promote it

To be a successful affiliate marketer, you cannot just promote any ol’ product that has an affiliate program attached to it. I mean, technically you can, but when you focus on the product commission before how the product can actually help your audience, it can get you in trouble, or leave you with lackluster results. Or both.

This is why I always recommend promoting only products that you’ve used and you’re 100 percent confident that will help your audience.

The product I promoted during this campaign is an online course created by Michael Hyatt called 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever, and I’ve personally used it for the past three years in a row. It updates each year, and is only open for a three-week window near the end of each year. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Having used the product helps quite a bit because:

1. I can personally vouch for it based on my own experience.
2. I know what to expect when I send my audience into the course.
3. I can easily answer any questions about the experience and results the course provides.

It also helps that I have a relationship with Michael Hyatt. He’s been on my podcast and some of my audience already knows who he is. Although I did not publish any new interviews with him during this time (which would have helped), a direct connection to the product owner adds a lot of trust to the potential purchase.

Hot tip: Get to know the person behind the products you’re promoting, and make sure your audience can get to know them, too. A podcast interview, like this one, goes a very long way in building trust.

Over the past three years, Michael has strategically promoted this product right before the new year, which is smart because it is a goal-setting course, and that’s exactly what people have in mind during this time of year. Selling during the holidays, however, can be a bit tricky.

Before my strategy, let’s talk about pricing. There are three levels for the course:

• Basic: $197
• Premium $397
• Live (includes ticket to Michael’s Live Event): $697

The commission percentage was 40 percent during this promo. This is about average for an online course at this price range.

In addition to the commission, there are various prizes for affiliates, too. There are prizes based on sales, which are usual for this coordinated joint-venture type of affiliate promotion, and there are also prizes for leads.

I’ll share more about the promotional schedule in a minute, but essentially it broke down to two periods:

1. Pre-launch, when leads are collected
2. Launch, when sales are made

My Strategy, in a Nutshell

With this course in particular, I use a “become a student with me approach” when marketing it, which isn’t actually very common, but works like a charm when you have an audience already—even a small one.

What does that mean exactly? It means that if a person were to buy this course through my link, they will become a student with me. We’ll go through the material together, and I’ll hold them accountable along the way. I’ll also share what I’ve come up with and help guide them when needed.

Another friend of mine, Tiffany Lee Bystander (also known as Coach Glitter), shared how successful this strategy was for her in Session 281 of the SPI Podcast:

“. . . what I could offer was me. I created accountability groups because that was something that I wanted, that I wished for when I had done these courses myself, that I wanted other like-minded people who were going to be just as dedicated, and I didn’t want to be alone doing this because that was going to be a much harder way to do it.”

As a bonus to help you stand out from other affiliates, and really give to your specific audience, offer accountability. Offer community. Offer help. Offer yourself for a little bit. Too often marketers think it’s just about selling the product, but it’s not. It’s about the experience before, and the experience after the sale that helps make people feel comfortable—like they aren’t going to purchase something online and then never hear from anyone again.

“Let’s do this together.” That was my strategy, and although it can’t work for every product that you sell, courses and programs that have a certain amount of days or weeks to complete, or have a very specific end-goal are ideal for this approach.

You’ll see the language and positioning later in this report when I share my emails and posts, but before we get to that, here’s the promotional schedule that Michael’s team provided for the course affiliates:

• 11/28: Promote LifeScore Assessment available
• 12/3-12/9: Promote Video Series—Design Your Year: Goal-Setting Secrets to Make 2019 Your Best Year Ever
  • 12/6 – Video 1
  • 12/10 – Video 2
  • 12/12 – Video 3
• 12/6-12/14: Promote Webinar—How to Set Goals that Stick in 2019: 5 Proven Strategies to Overcome Goal Failure
• 12/12: Special Early Bird Cart Open for Video Opt-Ins
• 12/13: Cart Open to Public
• 12/13-12/19: Webinars
  • Webinar 1: Thursday, December 13 at 10am—LIVE
  • Webinar 2: Thursday, December 13 at 8pm—REPLAY
  • Webinar 3: Friday, December 14 at 10am—LIVE
  • Webinar 4: Monday, December 17 at 12pm—LIVE
  • Webinar 5: Monday, December 17 at 6pm—REPLAY
  • Webinar 6: Tuesday, December 18 at 10am—LIVE
  • Webinar 7: Wednesday, December 19 at 10am—LIVE
  • Webinar 8: Wednesday, December 19 at 8pm —REPLAY
• 12/19: Cart Close (11:59pm PST)

I hope you pay careful attention to the schedule here. It looks like a lot, but it’s crafted with precision to warm people up and close a sale in various ways. Let’s see if we can break this down real quick.

11/28: Promote LifeScore Assessment

The LifeScore Assessment is a proprietary quiz and score that Michael Hyatt created. The results allow you to understand what areas of your life you might be excelling at, and what areas of your life you may be lacking in.

This is a great lead magnet because it’s actually extremely useful. Whether a person continues into the sales process or not, even here at step one, you get a quick win—useful, personalized information that you can then begin to understand how to remedy.

As an affiliate, this is when my lead count begins to climb as I promote the assessment and people sign up to see their results. I don’t have a specific number for leads generated by the assessment alone, but I know it captured a few hundreds after I sent an email out.

I sent my first email on 11/28, but it wasn’t about the LifeScore Assessment. The subject line was:

Winners Selected for Podcast like a Pro Giveaway!

I had recently run a contest to give away some podcasting equipment, and this is an email that announced the winners, which was already scheduled for the same day as the LifeScore Assessment promotion. Instead of sending two emails in one day, I added a little something to the end of the email:

This email, which was more of an announcement email for the contest, still generated a total of 657 clicks to the LifeScore Assessment. Not everyone will convert, but that’s a healthy start.

I also shared a few social media posts, like this one:

I didn’t go too heavy on the assessment promotion because my strategy was more about taking the course with me. The course hadn’t even been mentioned or launched yet at this point.

12/3-12/9: Promote Video Series

The three-part video series, just like Amy Porterfield teaches us in Session #137 of the SPI Podcast (sometimes known as the Product Launch Formula), works really well to warm people up to the idea of needing a solution for a specific problem.

The first two videos: all value. The third video: value + product mention.

Michael’s video series is always very strong. It’s one thing he excels at very well. This is the opportunity for people to get to know Michael and the man behind the mission (and the solution that’s coming). Promoting this was important for adding trust, so I added small CTAs in existing emails to seed the idea of the course and begin feeding the more interested parties into the video series:

In this particular email, which was primarily promoting a YouTube video, saw 737 clicks to the video series. And remember, not everyone who clicks will actually watch the video, so the actual lead count is likely less than 40-50 percent of that click-through number.

Again, I didn’t push hard pre-launch because my strategy was all about taking the course with me. Softly mentioning the course is okay, but a hard promotion for it would have been weird before it was even available.

12/13: Cart Open to Public

It was on December 13 that the cart was open to the public, and it was a day later that I began to shoot my shot.

First, an email to my existing course students, both to students of my paid courses, and my free Build Your Own Brand course:

Subject: I’m becoming a student (again!) this year.

Actually, I decided to split test this subject line. In ConvertKit, when you split test an email subject line with two subject lines, it sends each subject line to 10 percent of your recipients. After four hours, the winning subject line is sent to the remaining 70 percent. [Disclaimer: I am a compensated affiliate and advisor to ConvertKit.]

As you can see, the winner was just a small nuance in the punctuation of the A/B test, but not a terribly huge difference overall. Still, it’s fun and informative to test subject lines in this manner.

Over 30,000 emails sent with a 27 percent open rate (that’s 8,100), and then a 3.1 percent click-through rate, which isn’t terrible.

Here’s the copy in that email:

Hey, it’s Pat here! I hope your holiday season is treating you well!

During office hours today for my premium courses, a student had asked me if I was taking Michael Hyatt's 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever course again this year. The answer is an astounding yes, and I've actually taken it, as a student, the last 3 years in a row.

It’s become a tradition for me, every December, to go through Michael Hyatt’s 5-day lesson plan to clearly define my goals and plan the actions I will take to achieve them, and it's been instrumental in my success and growth over the years—both personally, and professionally.

This discussion prompted several people who had never heard about this program to ask a few more questions after office hours was over, so I wanted to shoot you an email to tell you a little more about the program, and the fun thing I include on top of what Michael offers for anyone who wants to become a student with me.

A lot of people ask me who I learn from and what courses I take, and 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever is the number one course I always make sure to take each year. Since you’re already a student of mine, whether through a paid course or a free course I offer, I know this is something that will help you, just as much as it has helped me.

I’m just going to be honest with you here: I am selling this to you. When you know you have access to something so helpful, and an audience that you know can benefit from it, you must sell, and with confidence. Now obviously there's a line that can be crossed, so you're not going to see 400 emails from me in seven days about this, but I just wanted to get it in front of you so that you know this is here.

If you’ve got a clear plan for 2019 already nailed down, and you know exactly how you’re going to get there—awesome. You don’t need this, and you’re going to crush it. If you need guidance and direction, accountability and a plan of action, then I invite you to take this course with me, and let’s go through it together.

And literally, we do take this course together.

Starting on Wednesday, December 19 (the same day enrollment closes), I’ll be going live in a private Facebook group created just for students who want to take this course with me. During that time, we'll work through the day’s lesson plan together, and I’ll share tips and strategies for optimizing your work through that particular lesson. There’s a workbook that comes with the course (see mine below for my 2018 plan) and I’ll share my work and thought process with you, too.

We’ll go live for five days straight and go through all of the lessons together. And yes, there are only five lessons in this course, which is why I love it so much. It's only two hours of total content, but it’s a total game-changer. Remember the value of a course is not how long it is, but what it can do for you.

Then after that, we will get together regularly once a quarter to check in with each other, and adjust our goals if needed. Plus, I’ll give you a nice dose of motivation to take you into the new quarter. I’m here to hold you accountable!

With Michael’s framework, and the accountability that comes with taking the course with me, you’re going to define your clear path to success in 2019. Just to give you a dose of inspiration now, here’s what some of the students from last year’s bonus group said when I asked them about the extras that I throw in:

The enrollment period just began, but it ends on the 19th. Click the link below to join now and be a part of the SPI bonus group for 2019! The link is an affiliate link, which will also gives me access to the list of students for the Bonus Group. I will send out information on the 18th and 19th about the bonus Facebook Group, the live streams, and the quarterly check-in calls.

Click Here to Enroll in 5 Days To Your Best Year Ever With Me! [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

There are different options—no matter which one you pick you’re in. And if you’re an alumni who has joined me in Best Year Ever the last two years, you’re automatically in as well.

Cheers, thanks so much, and hope to see you on the calls soon starting daily (for five days) on December 19, and then throughout the year, too.

All the best! I appreciate you!

Pat Flynn

As you can see, this is a lot more aggressive than my P.S. mentions in the previous emails, but this is the strategy at play here. This, again, was sent to my existing students, so to pitch myself as a student makes it pretty cool—you get to take a course with your own course creator.

You’ll also begin to see specifics about my bonus, and exactly what it means to be a student with me:

Starting on Wednesday, December 19th (the same day enrollment closes), I’ll be going live in a private Facebook group created just for students who want to take this course with me. During that time, we’ll work through the day’s lesson plan together, and I’ll share tips and strategies for optimizing your work through that particular lesson. There’s a workbook that comes with the course (see mine below for my 2018 plan) and I’ll share my work and thought process with you, too.

We’ll go live for five days straight and go through all of the lessons together. And yes, there are only five lessons in this course, which is why I love it so much. It’s only two hours of total content, but it’s a total game-changer. Remember the value of a course is not how long it is, but what it can do for you.

Then after that, we will get together regularly once a quarter to check in with each other, and adjust our goals if needed. Plus, I’ll give you a nice dose of motivation to take you into the new quarter. I’m here to hold you accountable!

My goal was to help people understand that I’m in this with them, and I’m creating this to hold them accountable. You’ll see that language throughout the email, including the call to action link:

“Click Here to Enroll in 5 Days To Your Best Year Ever With Me!” [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Sales began to come in from this email already. By the end of December 14, this was my sales breakdown:

• 14 Basic Sales at $197 each
• 8 VIP Sales at $397 each

Twenty-two sales, 60 percent coming directly from this email. The others came from leads who watched the video.

The cart close was on 12/19, so there was still a long way to go, and usually with longer promotional period like this, a majority of the sales always come in on the final day. It happens every time.

Hot Tip: Although a majority of sales come on the last day, it’s important to talk about and promote the product beforehand. Not just for the quick and early takers, but for the people who need more time to think about it. Wait until the last day, and you won’t be giving people enough time to understand and think things through. Sometimes people need multiple touch points and more lead up time before the deadline in order to take action.

December 17

At this time, I was ready to send emails to my entire list. Looking back, I should have promoted to my entire list sooner, like on December 14 alongside the email to my course students. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t do that.

This email was sent twice, once to everyone, and then again the next day to those who did not open:

Pat Flynn here, and I hope your holiday season is treating you well! Can you believe we’re just a couple of weeks away from 2019? Insane.

At this time of the year, I traditionally reflect back and think about the things I accomplished, and the things that I wish I accomplished but just didn’t get around to. For many years, this exercise usually left me feeling bad about not doing what I set out to do. Since 2016, however, it’s become the opposite:

I feel great because I finally learned how to not just CREATE goals, but how actually ACHIEVE them, too.

How?

I have to give credit to where credit is due: it’s because of Michael Hyatt.

In 2016, I discovered Michael’s 5 Days to your Best Year Ever framework, and it completely changed my life. I’ve been able to start new businesses, create a high-level mastermind program, hire a team, write books, create courses, live healthier, have a stronger relationship with my family, become more spiritual, and create better habits, all because I had his framework from which to base my goals and actions.

Picking goals is just part of the process, creating a plan and developing habits which support those actions (which was a huge takeaway I got from Michael) is the secret sauce.

And my favorite part of Michael’s course? It’s literally the shortest course I’ve ever taken: only five days—one video to watch per day. About two hours of total content.

Here are some pictures from my workbook for 2018:

I become a student of Michael Hyatt every single year, and I’m about to go through 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever again starting on December 19. If you want to see more about what this process is like and learn how to make goals that stick, Michael is hosting a number of free webinars early this week that I recommend you check out:

Click here to register to one of these webinars (live or replay) [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Each year when I’m about to take 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever, I also offer some useful bonuses to other SPI community members who follow-through and take Michael’s course with me:

• You’ll get access to a Facebook group with other students so that we can share wins and hold each other accountable throughout the year.
• I host quarterly check-in and goal adjustment calls so we don’t lose the motivation and the work we put in during the course.
• I’ll be going live daily for five days while you take the course with me, starting on December 19th through the 24th.

I’ll be going live TWICE each day (for five days) starting on the 19th within the Facebook group for students who want to do this with me. On those calls, I’ll be there to help you through the content and exercises, answer questions, and we can literally just get this done together before the new year starts.

(I’ll be going live at 2:30pm PT and then again at 10:00pm PT daily through the 23rd, and then one call only at 8:00am PT on Christmas Eve to wrap up the lessons.)

Again, you can check out the webinars in the link above to learn more, however if you know this is something you need now and want to take the course with me this week, click the link below to get 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever and be a part of the SPI Bonus Group!

Click here to take 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever with me! [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

This is an affiliate link that allows for me to also make sure you become a part of the bonus group!

Monica Louie, an SPI community member who took this course with me this past year, said this recently:

If you do end up grabbing 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever, expect an email from me tomorrow (the 18th) related to the Facebook group, the quarterly calls, and the live streams that start on the 19th. I look forward to doing this with you!

And whether you end up using Michael’s exact framework or not, I just want to wish you the best in 2019. I know you have some amazing and big opportunities in front of you, and I’m excited to help continue to support you next year through SPI in any way that I can.

Happy Holidays, and here’s to an amazing 2019!

-Pat Flynn

p.s. Enrollment for 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever ends on the 19th. There are various levels you can join the course at, but any level qualifies you for the Bonus Group. Just wanted to clarify just in case. Thanks again, and here's the link to join one more time. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

This is a very similar email to the one I sent my course students (and don’t worry, they didn’t see this one TOO because I removed my course students list from this list. I love the power of tagging thanks to ConvertKit!) [Disclaimer: I am a compensated affiliate and advisor to ConvertKit.]

The differences are that I added some images from my workbook from 2017, specifically left out the part about office hours for my existing students (which was not relevant to these subscribers), and I used a more powerful testimonial from a student who has once taken this course with me before.

I also added two calls to action—one for people interested in catching the free webinar from Michael (which eventually leads people into the course), and then the CTA for direct enrollment.

Also, with how long this email and the images are, I made sure to include another link and one more quick message to the course in the postscript at the end of the email, too.

Remember how I said I sent this email twice? Here’s why sending the email again to unopens is important:

• Email 1 on December 17:
  • Open rate: 13.3%
  • CTR: 0.6%
• Email 2 on December 18:
  • Open rate: 8.4%
  • CTR: 0.4%
• Cumulative:
  • Open rate: 19.7%
  • CTR: 1%

Hot Tip: When re-sending to unopens, change the second email subject line just a tad so that it’s not exactly the same. I also like to just change a few words in the intro to the email, just on the off-chance people see both emails.

Through this particular email set, over 2,000 clicks came through.

One thing I wish I did was send one more email out to my entire list, but I’m hyper-sensitive to being overly promotional and, during this time, a lot of emails were being sent out. I also had a holiday party I was throwing I wanted to let people know about, so I did squeeze in a bunch of things in a short period of time. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t promote earlier. If I had, I likely would have had room for just one more email to everyone on the final day.

Instead, I did something a little similar, which was send an email to everyone who clicked through during this promotion, but did not buy. Thankfully, Michael’s software and team were able to supply me with who my buyers were, so I could add them to my email software and make sure to remove them from correspondence for this email. The last thing you want to do during an active promotion like this is sell a program to someone who has already bought it from you. Here’s that email:

Pat Flynn here!

I’m about to start my coursework through Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever program to plan my 2019, and I wanted to remind you one more time that enrollment closes today, and if you sign up to become a student with me, we can work through this course together to set ourselves up for an amazing 2019.

My bonuses include:

• Access to an exclusive SPI only Facebook group for the course with other students (over 100 have joined already—your classmates are waiting for you)
• Quarterly calls throughout the entire 2019 year to catch-up and recalibrate our goals together if needed
• Daily live streams for the next five days so we can go through each lesson together and really make this happen.

I’m actually going live TWICE per day (2:30pm & 10pm PT) for the next five days to accommodate for students living in different time zones, and I’ll be streaming live from within the Facebook group you get access to. The calls are also automatically recorded.

I wouldn’t be pushing this if I didn’t think it could help you—I’ve used this framework for the past three years in a row, and I’m excited to do it again and I hope you’ll join me this time. Just click the link below to register—any course option will qualify you for the bonuses.

Click here to gain access to 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever today! [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

There’s about a half day left to register. At midnight, the course will no longer be available until next year. You’ll get a couple emails from me before each call today (2:30pm & 10pm PT) with the bonus information, including links to join the FB group and watch the calls.

This is the final email you’ll see from me about this course and offer, so I hope to see you in the FB group soon! Cheers!

Pat Flynn

p.s. Here’s a picture of my 2019 workbook I just printed out to go through. I decided to go all out this year and get a folder to go with it

And lastly, here's a message from Chris who was in last year’s group who had some nice things to say about the course and the bonus I uniquely offer. Chris is, by the way, coming back again for another year

Thanks again, and click here to go grab 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever! [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

One last noble effort! I also showcased a new folder with the new 2019 worksheets inside to fire up those mirror neurons and get people excited about joining. This email had an open rate of 41.9 percent, and a click-through rate of 7.9 percent. Quite high, but these were people who had already once clicked and didn’t buy (so they were somewhat interested), and scarcity is at play here—there was less than twelve hours remaining until the cart disappeared for another year.

To show you just how wild the last day can be, here’s a breakdown of the overall total course sales by day:

• 12/15: 4 sales
• 12/16: 8 sales
• 12/17: 21 sales
• 12/18: 30 sales
• 12/19: 96 sales

96 sales on the last day! That’s 53 percent of the overall sales all happening on the final day.

Hot Tip: If you’re in the middle of a launch and the numbers don’t look so great, all is not lost. Keep following through and pushing into the final day! Don’t give up!

Other notable numbers included in the 181 total sales: 135 were for the basic plan, and 46 for the VIP. This totals a NET commission of $16,695.60, minus refunds. Just enough to place third in Michael’s affiliate contest, which has various prizes at different price ranges.

Post Launch

Post-launch. A quick celebration, and then following through.

If you’re promising something to your audience and customers, it’s important to fulfill on that promise as soon as possible. Even before the launch ended, I already had customers coming into the Facebook group I had created for this group of students and gearing them up for the five days of live streaming I was going to do with them so we could go through the course, together.

And the most important and best part of the process . . . results! I finished the course with many of the Facebook group (going live each day in the group), and now we’re seeing people sharing their wins and progress already. It’s still active as of today, which is awesome!

After-Thoughts

Post-launch, I was extremely happy with the results. With just a few emails and social posts, and five-days of going LIVE after the launch, I know I could have done more, but I’m excited that it was done in a tasteful manner, and I was still able to generate about $16,000 from it, all while helping people live a better year this year!

And really that’s the secret—picking products that will help your audience make the process so much easier. Sharing a little bit of the insides of how I work and giving people a chance to have access and complete the course with me is a big draw for this type of promotion, and it’s not one I can do with all my products, but with a little creative thinking, it can likely be done with more than you think.

People don’t want to go it alone, and people don’t buy when they aren’t sure what’s going to happen after the purchase. No matter what you sell, whether it’s your own product, or you’re an affiliate for someone else’s, share more about what to expect, and help guide your students and customers into success. Reassure them, and you’re more likely to convert higher.

So What Do You Think?

Personally, after writing this report, I feel really great about it! As I was writing, it was bringing me back to those early days of writing income reports, back when they mattered and were helpful. At least that’s how I perceive it, but it’s not about me—it’s about you. What do you think? Helpful? Want more?

It’s nice to get behind the numbers again and into the weeds of the business, and I hope the specificity of this income report adds more color and detail to the kinds of things that happen here, and my wish is that you take anything you want here, whether it’s the inspiration, or the actual email copy itself, and use it as you wish.

Please leave a comment below and let me know if you like this style of focus and writing, and I’ll be sure to listen intently. Cheers, and thank you Team Flynn for all of your support!

#TeamFlynnfortheWin

The post Income Report: Inside a 5-Figure JV Affiliate Promotion appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Welcome to my December 2017 monthly income report! We’re well into January now and things are flying over here at SPI headquarters. I’m working on getting ready for my YouTube push next month (subscribe here so you don’t miss anything) as well as some behind the scenes implementation of funnels for my online courses.

More on that and other 2018 plans later in this report.

In December I turned 35 years old, celebrated my son’s 8th birthday, and spent a lot of time reflecting on how the year went. Best of all, since the kids were home for two weeks for Christmas break, I got to spend most of my time with them and my wife, and I did very little in terms of heavy work.

I’m thankful to be able to celebrate another successful year of business, and I’m stoked to cap off the 2017 year with one final monthly income report with several highlights to share and lessons to pass on.

So let’s do this thing

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Important Goings-On in December

Traditionally, each December, I become a student of Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever online course. It’s been super helpful in aiding me to wrap my head around setting ambitious but realistic goals for the following year, and I definitely contribute a lot of my success in 2017 to my planning done in the course the previous year.

For example, some of the goals that I had set for 2017 were:

1. To diversify my earnings and earn ~50% of my income from affiliate marketing, and ~50% from other sources, including my own products.
2. To create at least 2 online courses to aid in goal #1.
3. To enjoy a total of 4 weeks with the family on a vacation, unplugged.
4. To read at least 1 book per month.
5. To touch the rim of a regulation height basketball hoop (10 feet).

I accomplished all but one of the above.

My total earnings for the year were almost exactly split in half between affiliate marketing and my own products. Compared to 2016, my affiliate earnings were down just a little, while the other half was primarily from my own online courses. However, I didn’t create just two online courses, I created four (three premium, one free):

• Smart From Scratch
• Power-Up Podcasting
• 1·2·3 Affiliate Marketing
• Build Your Own Brand

I was able to enjoy four weeks of vacations with my family throughout the year, including a trip to Australia, and not only did I read at least one book per month, I was able to read a total of 45!

If you’re interested in my reading habit to achieve such a number, watch this YouTube video here.

If you’re interested in my top pick for business book of the year, watch this YouTube video instead.

The only goal in this list I did not achieve was my jumping goal to touch the rim of a 10’ basketball hoop, although I’m just 1.5” short. This last 1.5” seems impossible though. I haven’t progressed for months, but I know this isn’t true. I’m only 5’8” so it may seem that way, and I nearly gave up entirely, but I reinstated that goal for this year (after announcing this defeat last month and getting bombarded with encouraging emails and support—thank you!), and when it happens, you’ll definitely see it in a video.

Now, in addition to being a student of Michael’s course, I’m also an affiliate, and I decided to push the promotion harder than I did the prior year because it had such an impact for me personally.

With any large-scale affiliate promotion (the ones where you see a large number of influencers promoting the same thing at the same time, such as with this launch), it’s always best to come up with a plan to create a special bonus that’s just for those who purchase through your link, something that helps you add more value to the package, and also better serve your audience.

This year, I decided to frame the promotion in a way where people could take the course with me. I created a bonus Facebook Group to house the students who specifically went through my link (the emails were provided to me after the launch was over), and I decided to live stream every evening for five days as I took the course so that others could have someone to take the course with them—and not just myself, but the rest of the community as well.

In additional to that, I scheduled four accountability calls, one per quarter throughout the new year for these students too. That was enough to encourage over 200 students to sign up through my link, which not only provided affiliate revenue, but also created an amazing community of supportive, like-minded people who are all there to help each other.

It was a great bonus, one that doesn’t require too much of my time because I’d be going through the course and recapping the lessons with myself anyway, and I’d personally want accountability calls like this too.

So, if you ever have the opportunity to become a Joint Venture (JV) partner for a product that you can become a student of, you can create some unique bonuses that promote the community and accountability for the course work to help you drive more sales, and actually give a better experience for everyone taking the course, including yourself.

This was a strategy that was very similar to what Tiffany Bymaster (a.k.a. CoachGlitter) shared in Session #281 of the SPI Podcast.

Although the course you’re joining and promoting may have its own community, an even more niched one with people who are somewhat familiar with each other, if not personally, at least through a brand they follow, can be very beneficial and attractive for a prospect.

Of course, if you plan on following this strategy, make sure you also know the quality of content within the course. It helped that I’ve taken this course the past two years in a row and know exactly the kind of impact it can make. I wouldn’t recommend doing this with a course that you’ve never experienced or know nothing about.

Oh, and a big thank you to Michael Hyatt for once again setting me up for success in 2018! Also, make sure you check out his new book, Best Year Ever (affiliate link), which recently became a USA Today bestseller and cracked Amazon’s Top 20 for ALL books on Amazon! Congratulations, Michael!

Warming Up for YouTube

As you’ve probably heard me say over the past few months, YouTube has become a recent focus of mine. More than a potential platform to find new people, subscribers, and customers, I’m honestly having so much fun producing these videos.

I’ve filmed and rolled out a few new videos—about one per week since I started to learn more about the platform—using those videos to experiment with different strategies, from thumbnail design to methods to increased watch time (the most important metric in YouTube-land).

When February rolls around, you’ll start to see anywhere between three and five videos per week on the channel, so make sure to click here to subscribe if you haven’t already.

I still have a lot to learn though. The video world is a lot different than the podcasting and blogging space. Although some things are similar (e.g., you must produce great content, keywords are important, etc.), other things are just fascinatingly new to me, such as “suggested video optimization.”

You Tube Tip: From what I’ve learned (and can also confirm on my channel from years of videos that have just been sitting there since I started in 2009), search doesn’t account for most views for videos. It’s actually the suggested video recommendations that YouTube’s algorithm serves up on the sidebar of the video that you’re watching.

In looking at my traffic analytics from YouTube in 2017, you can see that by far it was the suggested videos that produced the most traffic:

Here, let me zoom in on that for you:

That’s 36 percent of watch time, and 33 percent of all views coming from suggested videos.

I learned a lot from many YouTubers in conversation about this, and also Brian Dean’s (Backlinko) course, First Page Videos, which is great and takes a very analytical and SEO-based approach to YouTube, which is obviously Brian’s forte if you know of him.

And this, my friends, is why the thumbnail is one of your most important decisions when creating YouTube videos.

When attending VidSummit in mid-2017, I sat through an entire 1.5 hour presentation that was literally all about producing optimized thumbnails. In other words, how to create thumbnails that get seen, and then clicked.

Caleb, my videographer, also calls them “thumbstoppers” (meaning, when a person is scrolling on their phone with their thumb).
Of course, you can create an eye-catching “thumbstopper” using lots of different techniques, including adding things that don’t necessarily relate to what the video is about; however, you risk having someone click-through, only to leave a few seconds later when the disconnect is apparent. And when you do that, you’re essentially telling YouTube that this video does not match the title and keyword that you produced, so you’ll rank lower and get fewer views as a result.

Derral Eves, founder of VidSummit, told it to me best: You should try to make your thumbnails look like they are telling a story related to what that content is about. You also want the viewer to want to know more.

When he asked me in person what my next video was going to be about, and I told him it was a video about my favorite book that I read in 2017. He asked me what I thought would make a great thumbnail, and I said this:

“I’m thinking of a picture of me holding a bunch of books and looking at them.”

He replied with, “No, this is what you do . . .”

Then he told me to hold a book that was lying nearby, hold it up, point to it, and he snapped a photo with his iPhone. He showed me the picture and then he said this is your thumbnail, except the book is blacked out, and there’s a question mark on it.

And that’s why this video’s thumbnail looks like this:

There are no words, just people who say “I need to know what that book is.”

And that’s probably a significant reason why it likely has way more views than many of my other recent videos:

Anyway, I have a lot more to learn, for sure, but I’m excited to continue to experiment, collaborate and see what I can do this year on the platform. Our goal is 250k subscribers by December 31, which is a lofty goal considering that currently as I write this post I’m around 88,000 subscribers.

We’ll see what happens though!

Fun with Funnels

As much as I’m having fun with YouTube, it’s not all just for fun. It’s a small part in a larger strategy to generate traffic and get eyeballs on my online courses.

Over the past year, with the launch of my courses, they’ve each been open and closed launches. They open for a short period of time, it creates a sense of urgency to get in before the doors close, and then you can only sign up for the waitlist at that point.

Over $1m in earnings were generated last year from these open/close launches, but they are definitely time consuming, and I believe we can generate more by not letting those who are interested in the courses wait until the next opening, but also get smarter about the experience leads have through a proper and valuable sales funnel.

There was no sales funnel before. All sales were generated via email and a few Facebook Ads here and there.

That’s going to change as my team and I, along with the help of Molly Pittman who I hired, are working together to create several specific funnels for each of my individual courses.

This will allow for the selling process to happen automatically so that I can focus more on driving traffic into these funnels, getting more strategic with long-term ads and targeting, and also open up more time to help serve my customers and my audience in general.

You’d think I have all this in place already, when in reality this is all fairly new to me. Remember, it was only within the last year that I finally had my own products to sell. It was all about affiliate marketing before.

But, we’re approaching this in stages. First, it was validation of those courses. Then, it was open and closed public launches. And now, it’s about optimization and automation here in early 2018.

In terms of funnels, we actually previously attempted to create one as an experiment that utilized a tool called Deadline Funnel, which is a very powerful tool that allows you to create launch sequences for each individual on your email list at a specific time relative to when they signed up to your list. It allows for the automatic opening and closing of your courses for each individual.

And it worked. It was able to help inject scarcity into the selling process automatically for us. But, a couple of things:

1. A part of it felt just disingenuous. Yes, normally launches are open and closed, but to create one that was just for the individual, as some of my team members put it, “didn’t seem very Pat Flynn like”, and I have to agree. This is no knock on Deadline Funnel, by the way. It’s a great tool, and we’ve never experienced such a great customer service team before, but the way we decided to use it just didn’t jive with what the brand stood for. Just being honest here, and sometimes you don’t know these things until you implement and actually see it in place.
2. Part of the strategy was putting people into a waitlist first, which Molly basically ripped us apart on once we started working with her. She said, “Why are you holding back the customers who actually want to buy from you right now—that’s absurd!” And she was right.

In several cases I can see a waitlist approach (with Deadline Funnel)/scarcity strategy working for something like a high-level coaching program or something that requires more of a person’s time, but not for something like an online course that a person could get access to right now and benefit from.

Using a scarcity strategy for a bonus, or a discount makes more sense, but not the entire thing—at least for the products that I have.

Lesson learned. However, we did get a number of sales using the experiment and have seen many of those students thrive, but everything is getting reconfigured as we speak, and just more honest in the approach.

And simpler too.

More on funnels later, but a big shout out and thank you to Molly Pittman for her help in piecing everything together. In working with her, it was nice to know we have a lot of the pieces, such as lead magnets, email segmentations, etc. already. The puzzle just wasn’t put together properly, hehe. She’s been a great help to put the pieces together! If you want to learn more about Molly and what she does, check out DigitalStrategyBootCamps.com.

Other than those items, like I said before, December was pretty low-key. It was nice to spend time with the family, play board games every day, visit Disneyland and play some virtual reality and Rocket League too. I knew 2018 was going to be a busy year, but it’s always great to just sit back sometimes, forget about all the things that are coming, and just enjoy the moment with those you love most.

Alrighty, let’s get to the income report for last month!

Some of the items in the list below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase through that link, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

Note: Items with an empty difference percentage were not present on the previous month's income report.

Biggest Lesson Learned

2017 was an amazing year, and I’m incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities that came my way. Now that we’re in 2018, I can see that it’s setup to be an even better year, from what’s coming in the product line, the fun I’m going to have on YouTube, and the speaking gigs I continue to land that keep getting bigger and bigger (come see me give the keynote speech at both Social Media Marketing World and Podcast Movement this year!), and even a secret side-project that my videographer Caleb and I are moving forward with.

[Full Disclosure: I’m an affiliate for Social Media Marketing World and Podcast Movement.]

During the downtime I had to reflect on the year, I also looked back at some of the things I could improve. One of those things was procrastination. Although I get a lot of things done, many of those things are done last minute. This always adds a layer of pressure that I don’t think needs to be there, although I sometimes try to tell myself that I work well under pressure, so I might as well wait until we’re close to the deadline anyway.

I don’t always procrastinate, but when I do, I’m a little unsure about how to feel about it. It made me realize that procrastination doesn’t just involve me and my projects, but a lot of other people too—from my team, to my family, and my audience too.

I’m going to work harder to procrastinate less, which may mean creating “false” deadlines because I do feel that the pressure helps me focus.

In addition to that, one thing I am working on, and creating a habit for, is making sure I express my appreciation to April, my wife, each and every day. She is amazing and has never blinked an eye at any decisions I’ve made in my business and in our lives, or anytime I’ve told her I need to stay busy for the next few days for a launch or go on business travel. I do make sure to try and balance everything out (e.g., after a launch or something that requires a lot of my time, which means extra work for her as an already busy stay-at-home mom), but in learning about what she likes best, it’s simply recognition and appreciation. So, I’m making a habit every single day to in some way, shape, or form, purposefully express my gratitude to her for all that she’s done, and continues to do to serve this family. Although she’s not actively involved in my business, she is a huge contributor to it, as a supporter, as a mother to our beautiful children, and as a teammate in life.

This record year wouldn’t have happened without her, and although she likely won’t ever read this blog post, perhaps it’ll convince someone out there, if they see me out in public with my family, to not only thank me for any service I’ve done to help them, but also thank my wife too. She deserves it way more than I do.

Here’s to you and those who support you in your journey, and an amazingly successful, fun, and memorable 2018. Here we go!

The post My December 2017 Monthly Income Report appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Over the past few years, the business has become more and more like a machine. Although I’m definitely keeping myself busy with new projects, more parts of the business become automated. This is thanks to the team that I’ve built, the software we’re using, and the rules and procedures we have in place.

The blog, the podcast, the emails—a lot of it is automated, which is great. I can serve more and offer even more value since the hard work was put in up front.

But . . .

Since growing the team and getting more hands-off, I’ve noticed I’ve had a thirst for something new to get excited about—something that would allow me creative freedom and also allow me to re-experience the journey of trying to “figure something out again,” like it was at the start of my podcast and blog.

And I think I’ve found it, and it’s coming in full force in 2018.

November was dedicated to planning for this new era of SPI, and I’m stoked to share more about that with you here in this report, along with the usual income numbers and lessons I learned this month.

Welcome to my November 2017 Monthly Income Report!

Important Goings-On in November

Several big events and important milestones happened right at the beginning of the month.

To start, it was the Business Boutique live event in Nashville, hosted by Christy Wright. It’s put on by the Dave Ramsey team and it was not only one of the most professionally produced events I’ve been to, but also the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of.

With about 3,000 people in the audience, the energy levels were unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I had the time of my life!

But, the lead up to the event was a little stressful. I’m not going to lie. I typically get very nervous before I speak anyway, but with this crowd size, and the caliber of other speakers, such as Don Miller, NicoleWalters.com, and Molly Pittman from Digital Marketer, I think I got a little too much in my own head.

I had never been this nervous in my life.

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A post shared by Pat Flynn (@patflynn)

One thing I do when I get nervous before I speak at events is try to speak to as many attendees as I can. This helps me get to know the audience better, and allows me to begin to establish a rapport with them. Even though it’s usually a small percentage of the crowd (and even more so with this size of an event), it really calms my nerves, and helps me to understand that I do have a ton of value to offer them when I am on stage, which is motivating.

This isn’t easy for me to do, though, because I am introverted, but this totally works for me, so I force myself to do it anyway.

I spoke twice, once for a “smaller” breakout session of 800 people, and then once again for the entire audience.

The crowd was amazing! The energy was infectious, and seriously when you can get an audience of 3000 to be pin-drop quiet a times . . . there’s nothing like it.

Plus, I received not one, but two standing ovations! I must have said the right things.

I couldn’t help but ride the high that I get after a successful presentation, until I got back to my hotel room that evening and crashed. Thanks again to Christy Wright for inviting me to speak at your amazing event!

Youpreneur Summit

After speaking in Nashville, I had a bit of time back home with the family before one more final trip of the year, the one that I feel the entire year was leading up to:

The Inaugural Youpreneur Summit in London, hosted by my best bud, Chris Ducker.

Chris and I have been long-time friends, and it was in my home office a few years ago that the idea for Youpreneur was born, which is Chris’s community of like-minded entrepreneurs from all over the world.

I followed his progress since the beginning, from building the sales page to launching the membership site, and over the past year, updates each week about this ambitious event.

There are so many great business-related, content-driven events in the US, but nothing like that existed in the UK and in Europe, which is why this was so important to Chris. He was able to sell out 320 seats in London, and I was to be the closing keynote, which was an honor.

Unfortunately for me, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. After some buddy time with Chris and exploring chilly London a bit, I got back to my hotel room only to discover my voice seemed to be leaving me, fast. And then, it quickly disappeared.

Not good when you’re supposed to be going on stage in a couple of days!

To get the full experience of this trip, and learn exactly what happened, I recommend you watch these two vlogs on my YouTube channel from the trip which document this entire story.

If you’d like to skip the videos, no worries. Spoiler alert below:

I was able to keep my mouth shut and not use my voice long enough just to make it all the way through my keynote.

Additionally, a special moment happened on stage that had me and much of the audience crying. I met Michal Szafranski for the first time, after five years of email correspondence.

Michal, from Poland, is an SPI fan and is the main reason why the SPI podcast still exists today, because just about a week before I was about to give up on my podcast in 2012, he had sent me an email letting me know how the podcast saved his life.

Meeting him in person in London was so awesome, and I’m thankful it was at an event where I could share the story out loud. If you’re intrigued now after reading this, you can get the full story in the second video embedded above, or you can go directly to that video on YouTube here.

Congratulations to Chris on a job well done. I heard nothing but amazing feedback about the event, and I’m sure next year’s Youpreneur Summit will be even better!

Back Home . . . and Sick

Immediately after my closing keynote was the networking party, which killed my voice completely. The next day, my voice was barely audible, and it hurt like crazy. I took some time to explore some of the museums in London and shop for souvenirs, but I was ready to get back home to recover.

I had spent five straight weeks speaking all around the world. I made quick trips back to San Diego each week, but I think my body was telling me it was time to rest. Plus, it was now time for me to give April back some time to herself without the kids, which she sacrificed while I was out speaking. She’s amazing.

I knew I’d be out and down for the count for a while, which isn’t good when you plan to come home and begin podcasting and shooting videos too.

After I flew back home, it was another six days until I finally had the range back in my voice. By that time, it was Thanksgiving, and I was getting things ready for a big push into December.

Getting Things Ready for 2018

Much of the rest of November was focused on planning and getting ready for what’s coming in 2018.

If you remember from last month’s report, I’m about to go pretty heavy in the YouTube space. I’ve been creating weekly videos, practicing certain styles and methods so I can begin getting into a flow and rhythm with how things are filmed and edited, and I have to say, I’m having such a blast!

YouTube is an interesting platform, far different than anything I’m used to. I have had a channel since 2009, but I’ve never tried to optimize it. It’s always sort of been there as a fallback for when it just made sense to have video content, but most of the videos were related to stuff that was originally posted on the blog and the videos were there mainly for support.

I attended an amazing conference called VidSummit in October, which is a video creator-centric event started by a guy named Derral Eves. I met a TON of amazing people in the YouTube space who were super encouraging as I shared my plan for next year, and even Derral himself was excited about it too.

In fact, he was so excited that in November he flew down to San Diego to spend an entire day with me and my videographer, Caleb, and give us the run down of what to do and what not to do.

Caleb and I had previously created a plan for my YouTube channel. We presented it to Derral in the meeting, and he essentially ripped it apart.

It was great though, and exactly what we needed.

I’ll be talking more specifically about what he instructed us to do— and not do—in a case study post once things get rolling, but the biggest outcomes of the meeting were:

• We need to post more often, and stay consistent. We may end up going five days a week with various types of content.
• Use the platform not just to give information, but to also engage and build a community. By taking advantage of the fact that it’s very easy for a person on video to share their personality and style, I can more easily stand out from others who are mainly just giving info. Taking what I do on stage (in terms of how I engage the crowd and make it entertaining), and having that be done on video, was a great way to frame it.
• He taught me how important it is to consider what’s happening in the world at the time the videos go out. Meaning, are there any important events or other things going on that I can use to start how the content is created. For example, we’re coming up on the end of the year here—creating videos that relate to that would make sense and provide context and get more people more likely not just to watch, but to share too.

There was a LOT more that we dove deep into, but I was thankful Derral took the time, because I’m already starting to see the results, and we haven’t even really put the entire plan into action yet.

Like I said, I’m in practice mode right now, but I am warming up my audience a bit on YouTube and the views and subscriber counts are indeed growing.

Below, you’ll find a video I filmed the day after the meeting with Derral. I’ve never gotten such positive feedback from a video, or as much engagement (there are 500+ comments at the time of this posting) ever:

Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, because lots of experimentation will be happening, and I promise you won’t be disappointed with what’s coming. It’s going to be a ton of fun!

Some of the items in the list below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase through that link, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

Note: Items with an empty difference percentage were not present on the previous month's income report.

AskPat Hits Episode 1,000!

And finally, a huge milestone to share with you. The AskPat Podcast, which started in February 2014, just crossed the 1,000 episode threshold!

It’s incredible to think I’ve recorded and published that many podcast episodes, plus the nearly 300 from Smart Passive Income. (Episode 300 will be published the second week of January! Make sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already. It’s going to be a great celebration episode!)

Episode 1,000 was actually super important, not just because of the number, but because of the important announcement, which related to the new direction of the show.

I recommend you spend a few minutes, if you have the time, to listen to it below:

[smart_track_player url=”http://www.buzzsprout.com/56535/591462-ap-1000-what-s-next-for-askpat.mp3″ title=”AP 1001: What's Next for AskPat?” ]

To sum it up, we’re on a little bit of a break with AskPat as we gear up and prepare for a new era of AskPat, which is called AskPat 2.0.

After answering 1,000 questions, I began to notice that a lot of the questions coming in were the same as ones I’ve answered before. Not only that, I knew that in order to best help people, I had to go deeper with them, and although I was answering voicemail questions from the audience, they were, of course, just the tip of the iceberg in most cases for what the real problems or pains were in their business.

So, the new show, which will live on the same feed (there’s no need to re-subscribe to another new show), comes back in February, but this time once a week. But here’s the big difference:

Instead of five episodes that are each 5-12 minutes long, now they will be 20-25 minutes in length, and a real conversation with people who need help and coaching through a specific problem in their business!

Yes, a live call, recorded, that you can all listen to. This is going to be massively helpful, not just for that person, but for everyone else listening in too. Plus, it’s a great format that allows me to also practice my coaching and hone in on my skills for helping people live, which everyone can always improve upon.

I’m super excited about this new era of AskPat, and if you’d like to submit an application to potentially become a guest on one of these episodes of AskPat 2.0, head to AskPat.com and fill out the application on that page!

We’ve already begun recording for February, and it’s going to be amazing!

Make sure you subscribe to the AskPat podcast too, so you can listen in on these conversations once they go live.

Thanks again for your support, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s income report!

The post My November 2017 Monthly Income Report appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Welcome to my October 2017 Monthly Income Report! It’s been a busy but extremely enjoyable month. I’m happy to share what I’ve been up to, and how the businesses have been progressing. As always, I share all of the ins and outs of my business so that you can get motivated, and learn from both my wins and my failures. Some months are up, others are down, but there are always lessons to be learned, which I’m happy to pass on to you.

Beyond that, I also love to share what’s coming next, and with the year coming to an end very soon, team SPI and I have been putting a lot of effort into what’s coming in 2018. So, without further delay, let’s get right to it!

Important Goings-On in October

In October, I did more traveling than I had ever done in my whole life.

Before I even get started, I just have to say, I’m so thankful to have an an amazingly supportive wife at home. April basically works overtime when I leave to speak at conferences, and with how hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom, I definitely can understand how much more challenging I make it for her when I leave. She’s always been 100 percent supportive and never makes me feel bad for leaving. For that, I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world.

So, where was I off to first?

VidSummit

On October 11, I traveled to Los Angeles for VidSummit, a conference run in the video and content creator space by a man named Darrel Eves. It was just a couple of hours north of San Diego where I live, so it was a fairly easy and convenient conference to get to.

VidSummit was unique, however, in that I did not come to teach. I specifically came to learn, since YouTube and video creation is going to be a large part of the strategy moving forward into 2018.

I attended several sessions. And beyond that, I met so many friendly and super talented creators. It was awesome. I was thankful to have the opportunities to learn more about them, their stories, and their amazing journey into YouTube. Several of them own channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and some even with millions.

From Roberto Blake, Owen Hemsath, Jeremy Vest, Rob Sandie, Shonduras, Dan Lok, Judy & Benjo Travis, Sean Cannell, and many more.

I even ran into a number of my friends at the conference, such as Caleb Wojcik, Michael Stelzner, Luria Petrucci, Richie Norton (from SPI Podcast Session 270), Gary Vaynerchuk, and also several SPI fans. It was a ton of fun, and I learned a whole bunch about the YouTube space and strategies for performing well on the platform.

I started my SPI YouTube Channel a long time ago, back in 2009, and initially it did very well. As soon as podcasting was added to the equation, I put all of my focus into that and sort of just let the YouTube channel sit there. Well, over the years, the views declined, and although I had about 60k subscribers, new videos were only getting 1-2k views, at most.

Consistency, I’ve found, is very important, because like many of these other platforms where we post content, algorithms can make or break your views and engagement.

Beyond that, I also learned that watch time and session time are some of the most important metrics to pay attention to when it comes to YouTube favoring or highlighting your videos. The longer you can keep people watching your videos (total minutes watched, not percentage of videos watched), and the more you can keep viewers on YouTube itself after your video is over, the greater rewards. If you can have that approach, your videos will be better off than most of the videos that are uploaded to YouTube each day.

At VidSummit, I also attended an hour-long session that was specifically related to the thumbnails of your videos. The thumbnail, I’ve found, is one of the most important aspects of your video because it’s what people see before they click. In this crowded space, it’s easy to get lost. But if you put an effort into it, it can also be easy to get noticed.

It was a very successful trip, and I did manage to film quite a bit while I was there. Those will be posted soon on my YouTube Channel, so make sure to click here to subscribe if you haven’t already!

Also, big shout out to Derral Eves, the man who put on this amazing event. It was absolutely well done. I had an amazing experience, and I’d love to be back again in 2018!

Make sure you check out Derral’s YouTube Channel here—it’s full of info for those of you looking to make an impact in the world of YouTube. He’s the guy to follow!

Converted 2017

As an official advisor to LeadPages, Converted 2017 is a conference (run by the LeadPages team) that I look forward to speaking at each and every year.

It’s held in Minneapolis, MN, and over the years I’ve had my fair share of COLD. I’m from San Diego, CA so I’ve become very spoiled when it comes to weather. This time, however, the weather was absolutely perfect, so I knew it was going to be a good trip.

And it was.

I flew in on Tuesday October 17, and set to speak the next morning. As always, I went straight from the airport to the hotel to begin rehearsing, like I always do before I speak. I always like to put in some final, last-minute improvements to my presentations.

The next morning, I woke up, went to soundcheck, and got “in the zone,” which is where I begin my breathing exercises and start pacing up and down the back area running through the first few minutes of the presentation in my head. To me, those first few minutes are the most important. If I can get past the first few minutes, the rest sort of takes care of itself on autopilot.

Then, at 9 a.m., Clay Collins, co-founder of LeadPages, introduced and invited me onto the stage.

I was a little nervous about this presentation specifically because I was testing a lot of brand new material I hadn’t offered to live audiences before. I was interested in how the crowd would react to certain stories I was going to tell, because depending on how it’s received, I can use those stories in presentations in the future, including webinars and other places where I’m in front of an audience.

Well, it went off without a hitch, and I’m thankful that I had such a welcoming audience to enjoy my talk. Thank you to everyone who was there. It was awesome!

With this conference in particular, I get a little competitive. Each year there’s a survey for the attendees and one of the questions is who their favorite speaker is. Since the conference started three years ago, I’ve been voted best speaker each time, so I wanted to make sure I delivered for LeadPages and the audience like I had done in the past.

I haven’t heard anything back yet, either way, but Clay promised me he’d let me know once he finds out. Hehe!

Another significant moment of the trip was when I met with the new CEO of LeadPages, John Tedesco. Clay stepped down as CEO recently to focus on some other projects of his, and John stepped in with a ton of professional experience to help the company grow even more than it has. He was super friendly, and I’m excited to work with him into the future to help the company grow.

It was just two days in Minneapolis, but a lot was accomplished. The night after my presentation, I met with a lot of Team Flynn who was in town for a planning session, and we had some BBQ and played some games to bond even more. For many team members, it was their first time meeting each other in person, which was great!

The morning after, I held a meet-up at a local co-working space for about 30-35 entrepreneurs and SPI fans who were in the area. I had a blast! It was so great to share some insights on what’s coming into the world of SPI next year, gain some feedback on that, and also answer as many questions as I could for a couple of hours. I always love meeting SPI fans when I travel. It doesn’t always happen, but I love to get everyone together to meet each other if possible. I know a lot of new friendships were made that day.

Thanks to everyone who came out!

Success Incubator and FINCON17

After a few days at home with the family, it was time for another trip the week after. On Monday, October 23, I made my way to Dallas, TX to visit some friends over at the Success Incubator Conference (Formerly known as Digi-colab), and FINCON!

Although this was the longest trip of the month out of all of my travels (four days), it went by so fast—partly because I was so busy, partly because I had a lot of fun!

At Success Incubator, I spoke in front of an audience of about sixty highly enthusiastic entrepreneurs and taught them how to use an editorial calendar to plan not just their blog content, but also their launches, and how planning launches actually influence what the blog content should be about.

After the talk, I heard some rave reviews of my presentation, and saw about a dozen people in the audience start to fill out their editorial calendars for the next year of content. It was great to see them take action right then and there!

I also sat in on a number of great presentations from people like Darren Rowse (Problogger), Steve Chou (MyWifeQuitHerJob.com), Leslie Samuel (Become a Blogger), and several more. Although I came to speak, I actually learned quite a bit while I was there. One extremely helpful thing I learned came thanks to Steve Chou, who opened up the backend of his business and shared his exact email funnel strategy. The one thing I learned was that I needed to simplify, and not think too hard about some of these things.

As a result, I had a chat with my team the next day, and I actually hired someone to help me define my funnels a little better. Now that there are a ton of lead magnets and courses in my business, I need to put the puzzle together a little better—and, like I said, make things a little easier.

The next morning, Success Incubator continued. But this time, instead of presentations, there were roundtable mastermind sessions. I sat with eight other entrepreneurs in a roundtable and we each had a turn for thirty minutes to share something we need help with. I got a lot of tremendous feedback, specifically about my upcoming affiliate marketing course, and how to best promote that for the segments of my audience I’ve already built.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, I have an affiliate marketing course coming out this month on Cyber Monday. It’ll be a 72-hour limited beta launch only available to the first 500 students who sign up, so click here to get on the waitlist now so you can be one of the first to be notified!

FINCON, a four-date event, started the next day, but I only planned to attend the first day knowing I had more travel coming up during the month, I wanted to get back home and provide support for April and relieve her from the kids for a while. Even though I was there for only a day, it was a ton of fun.

First up, basketball. That’s right. Traditionally, FINCON starts off with a friendly basketball game between attendees. It’s a pick-up game, so nothing formal, but for the past two years we’ve had about twenty to twenty-five friends come out to play. This year, we played at a local college gym, so the venue was the best we’d ever had. Best of all, we had about fifty-five basketball players show up this year!

And boy, some of them got game. I held my own, especially as one of the shorter guys there, but everyone won because no one got hurt, and we came away with some great memories.

The next morning, I had a panel scheduled with Grant Baldwin, a good friend who teaches people how to become great speakers. This panel, however, was unlike anything I’ve ever participated in before. Grant and I, as seasoned speakers, found a guinea pig to present an upcoming talk in front of us (and the viewing audience) so that we could interrupt the presentation to better improve it as it went along.

It was purely experimental, and I have to thank Erin Chase from 5dollardinners.com for being such a courageous presenter!

As Erin began her presentation, Grant and I watched from the side with a microphone and got very nit-picky with what she was doing. We talked about her storytelling, how she moved, the pauses she took, how she integrated with the audience, and a whole lot more. Afterward, the attendees in the audience told us it was one of the coolest and most informative panels they had ever seen! Win!

Nice job, Grant! And thanks again, Erin!

@5dollardinners having the peanut gallery of @PatFlynn @grantbaldwin break her ignite talk down #superbrave #magicalinsights #fincon17 pic.twitter.com/ZvligQ1QuO

— Peita Diamantidis (@PeitaD) October 26, 2017

Business Boutique

The final part of October was spent focused on two things:

1. Halloween with the family (one of our favorite holidays), which includes watching The Nightmare Before Christmas at least a dozen times. The kids know the tunes better than I do. It’s awesome!
2. Preparing for the biggest presentation of my life.

I was invited months ago to speak at a conference in Nashville, TN called Business Boutique, a Dave Ramsey-affiliated event hosted by Christy Wright of BusinessBoutique.com. I didn’t realize how big the conference was until Christy had me on her podcast, and I started to receive dozens of messages from future attendees telling me how excited they were to hear me speak.

That never happens; especially at that scale.

I learned about a couple of friends who spoke at the event the year before, and they said it was one of the most well-produced and biggest presentations ever. But when I finally found out there were going to be 3,000 people there, I nearly fainted!

Truth. I still get scared before I speak, but I do it anyway because it’s fun once I’m up there, and the impact I can make on a person’s life while on stage is unlike anything else. But, catch me right before, and I’m basically dry heaving backstage. LOL. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you!

But 3,000 people, that’s four times the biggest audience I had ever spoken in front of before, and for the Dave Ramsey team too! I needed to make a great impression on this crowd, which I think added to the pressure I had leading up to my presentation.

The event didn’t happen until early November, so I’ll save the details of what happened while I was there for next month’s report, but I did bring a camera crew with me to capture the moment, and here’s an Instagram post showing you a bit about that nervousness in action:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pat Flynn (@patflynn)

So, the end of October’s work consisted of me focusing on Business Boutique, and the two presentations I had to give. One was a breakout session about creating content that crushes the competition, and the other was about the proven path to passive income. Topics I know a lot about, obviously, but also I wanted to knock it out of the park while I was there.

Lots of late night rehearsals, slide tweaks, and pretending to speak in front of people in my home office. All worth it, because that’s how you get better!

I also brought a film crew with me to capture the moments in Nashville. So, like I said, look out for next month’s report where those videos will be. And if you want to catch them as soon as they come up, subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Build Your Own Brand

Among all of the hectic travel, my team and I were still hard at work producing content for you. Beyond the normal blog and podcast content, I published a new course!

It’s a free course called Build Your Own Brand (BYOB for short), all about helping you define your brand position, build your website, plan your website’s content, and finally make your mark on the internet! If you haven’t yet taken the course, it’s open, so feel free to get access to it now—it’s a full-on, highly-produced course within the Teachable platform.

The reason it’s free is two-fold:

1. I’ve already produced two premium courses during the year: Smart from Scratch, and Power-Up Podcasting®. I felt it was time for an incredibly valuable free course within the brand to bring new people into the SPI ecosystem.
2. It perfectly fits into the already existing structure of what else is being offered.

For example, for those who validate their business idea using Smart from Scratch, they are likely ready to build a website, and BYOB is there for them. Since it’s in the same Teachable platform, their username and login is already in the system and it’s a simple one-click unlock to get free access to it. The same with Power-Up Podcasting. Podcasters need websites, and now there’s a step-by-step walkthrough to help them make it happen, for free.

And it works the other way around too. Those who get into BYOB, maybe they’re looking to start a podcast, in which case it’s an easy offer to get into Power-Up Podcasting from there. And the Affiliate Marketing Course (1·2·3 Affiliate Marketing) coming out later this month will be a great continuation from the BYOB course.

In addition to all of that, there are affiliate opportunities within BYOB. For starting a website, and for those who choose to follow my advice and start an email list too, offerings for hosting packages, and email service providers are mentioned as well.

Already, the results of BYOB have been amazing. With over 5,300 students enrolled, the daily emails that are coming in with people’s wins and new websites are the best part. Here’s an email I got the other day that really made me happy:

It’s easy to go through, and crafted with love, so if you haven’t yet built your website because you just don’t know what to do, now you’ve got a free resource to go and make it happen!

Click here to get free access to the Build Your Own Brand course!

Trademarks

In other news, a fun one to share with you. The name of my course, Power Up Podcasting^®, is now a registered trademark!

It’s not really for marketing purposes, but rather more for protection purposes. Now that I’m finally building my own products and courses (versus affiliate marketing, which I’ve been doing for years), I want to make sure I do my best to protect these assets I’m building for business and my future. Registered trademarks are just one part of that puzzle, but an important one.

The worry up front was that no parts of the mark are very specific. It could have been rejected because “Power Up” doesn’t really tell much, and “Podcasting” is too general to own. Put them together, it’s all good!

Smart from Scratch was also trademarked, although I never really announced that before.

Fun times!

That’s a ton of info about what happened in October. But, like I said, all good stuff. I have one more trip for the year, a trip to London to support my best friend Chris Ducker and his inaugural Youpreneur Summit. I’m stoked to be giving the closing keynote at the event! Around 350 entrepreneurs from around the world are going to be here, and I’m super proud of my boy for selling the event out and really making it happen. I was there in conversation with him when this was all just an idea!

There’s no better way to end the year of public speaking in my opinion. In fact, the day this income report gets published, I will have just finished my closing keynote the night before! So, if you catch me on Instagram (Instagram.com/PatFlynn) you might find some pictures and stories related to the event.

And yes, I’m bringing a camera to vlog this trip too, so in case you couldn’t make it, I’ll show you what it was like!

Let’s get to the income report for October 2017!

Some of the items in the list below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase through that link, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

Note: Items with an empty difference percentage were not present on the previous month's income report.

What I Learned in October

Going back to VidSummit, another key lesson I learned while I was there is “the hook.” That is, when you start a piece of content (whether it’s video content or other content), how quickly you get people committed to finishing that content all the way through before they make the decision to leave (aka “bounce”).

This relates back to increasing watch time and session time, two of the key factors YouTube looks at in their algorithm.

I realized after hearing about the importance of “the hook” over and over again at this conference, that in all of my content—the blog, the podcast, and especially within my existing videos—the hook is something I never really tried to do well. I just sort of started, and would hope that I would set it up nicely so that people would want to continue to read down the page, or listen to more of a podcast episode, or stop themselves from clicking away from watching a video.

In 2018, you’ll notice a significant attempt (hehe, attempt) to get better at hooking the audience to keep you intrigued. I also learned not to bait and switch people either. Meaning, if you create an amazing hook, but don’t close that loop, or deliver on that promise, your audience will actually turn away even harder, and probably never come back.

You need to keep your promises. But, on the other side, I know personally I can do a better job of letting people know what those promises are right away.

And on the other end of this are your open-ended teasers. To keep people going, you need to also let them know what’s coming next. It’s partly how Netflix shows reel us into the next episode as soon as one finishes.

For us, it’s how we can get people to keep reading, watching, and even clicking.

So, I’m going to practice that right now.

This month, Ask Pat Episode 1,000 goes live on Monday, November 20. It’s a special episode of the podcast, not just because it celebrates 1,000 episodes since February 2014, but also because I’m going to announce an important and significant change to the format of the show.

After 1,000 questions answered, this new direction is needed, and it’s going to give me an opportunity to give you even more value down the road, maybe even directly related to you and your business situation.

What is this new change and how will it affect you? Well, you’re going to have to subscribe to the podcast and listen to episode 1,000 when it goes live next week.

To subscribe to AskPat, visit AskPat.com, or click here to subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks so much for your time and attention here in this month’s income report! Wishing you all the best, and here’s to an amazing end of the year!

The post My October 2017 Income Report appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Welcome to my September 2017 Monthly Income Report!

We had a lot of firsts this month, and I’m excited to share them with you today. Before I go on, if you’re looking for the archive of income reports dating back to October 2008, please visit the income report page here.

As always, I’m excited to share not only my income sources and total income generated from this past month, but also the lessons learned at the same time. I’m pushing hard through the rest of the year, but I’m having a ton of fun at the same time.

Here’s what happened in September.

My First Time in Europe, Ever!

I checked a major item off my bucket list in the beginning of the month: I finally made it to Europe!

I was invited to perform the opening keynote at the DNX Conference for Digital Nomads & Lifehackers in Lisbon, Portugal, and although it was a quick four-day trip, I definitely made the most of it.

To start, I decided to vlog (video blog) the entire journey. From packing, to arrival and even parts of the presentation itself, I had an amazing time figuring out how to best capture this journey of mine to Europe for memory’s sake, and also to share with those who wanted to come along the ride with me.

I edited most of the videos on the airplane on the way back using iMovie, and I have to say, it was so much fun to record and edit these videos! It actually renewed some creative energy in me that I haven’t had in a long time.

The blog and the podcast have been so “machine-like” as far as production for so long now, I didn’t realize I had this craving to get “artsy” with something until I was in the middle of editing these videos and caught myself smiling from ear to ear.

I’ve embedded the first of four videos that were made from my trip, so if you wanted to see what my trip was like, and also check out my experiments with vlogging, click play to watch the video below!

And please make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. I have a lot more videos coming in 2018 (more on that later) and I’d be honored if you clicked here to subscribe to my channel.

Beyond the vlogging, I met some amazing new people, and I even ran into Brian Dean from Backlinko.com, who is a fan favorite here on SPI when it comes to SEO and backlinking. He’s written the most popular guest post of all time here on Smart Passive Income, The Backlinking Strategy that Works. It was great to reconnect with Brian and explore Lisbon after midnight one night, which apparently is when a ton of people roam the streets of Lisbon and party.

I also spent a lot of time with my book coach, Azul, who happened to be temporarily living in Lisbon and also attending the same event. He and his partner Steve showed me around town, took me to some amazing restaurants, and we even did a little bit of sight-seeing together, which was amazing.

My only regret with the trip is that I didn’t plan to stay longer, but I knew I didn’t want to be away from the family for too long. The short trip makes me definitely want to come back again, and I’m totally bringing the family next time, too.

Special thanks to Feli and Marcus, the co-founders of the DNX Conference, for inviting me to speak. And also a big thanks to all of the amazing international SPI fans who were there, too. I forget how world-wide this audience is, and I’m thankful for support for my work wherever I go. It means the world to me.

My First Solo Live Workshop

After getting back from Europe, I didn’t have too much time to relax before having another big time first to think about—something that scared me, but also really excited me at the same time:

My first ever solo live workshop.

I had a few weeks to prepare before the September 30 – October 1 event, but time was running out, and I had no idea what I was doing.

I’ve ran workshops before, but they were always with a partner, such as with Chris Ducker for our 1-Day Business Breakthrough Mastermind. This time, I was on my own.

This particular workshop was called The Power-Up Podcasting^® Fast-Track Workshop, a two-day intensive that speeds people through the content of the digital podcasting course I offer, but with a lot more personal attention and hand-holding along the way.

It was pre-sold as an upsell during the previous launch of the digital course back in June. The idea was originally inspired by a few of my course students, who had hinted that they would fly to San Diego to learn the material from me if such an offering existing. So, I decided to test this out for two reasons:

1. To see if this was indeed something people would pay for; and
2. To see if this was something I actually enjoyed doing.

Running a live workshop is definitely not passive, but I’ve learned that as my passive income continues to grow, I still find the need, personally, to want to connect and help people more.

If I launched and no one purchased, then it would be easy for me to see that this is something I shouldn’t do. If I launched and people purchased, but I didn’t enjoy the work, then again it would be easy for me to see that this is something I shouldn’t worry about anymore.

There was no way to know for sure except to try, so that’s what I did.

During the launch of both the digital course and the workshop, I had a number of people inquire about the workshop and all that was included with it. That was a good sign. Soon after that, I had eight people sign up within a couple of days, and I knew I needed to slow down a bit because I hadn’t considered a limit on the numbers of students, and how the experience of the event would be based on the number of people who were in attendance. So, I pulled the upsell and just focused on selling the digital course only until the doors were shut on that.

It was at that time I decided to put a limit of fifteen on the event because I wanted to keep it small and intimate, plus I figured if it didn’t go very well, at least it was to a smaller group of people, hehe. If it did go well and I wanted to do it again, I could always scale it up later.

It was at this point I sent an email to two different sets of people:

1. Those who were on the waitlist who had yet to purchase the digital course; and
2. Those who had already purchased, who I could offer the workshop to as an upsell.

To those who were on the waitlist (again, after the digital course was closed), my positioning went something like this:

Since you’re on the waitlist, I wanted to share something exciting with you since the digital course I offered last week just didn’t seem to be a good fit for you. I get it—it’s not easy to go through a digital course on your own! There are a ton of videos, and unless you have a lot of extra time, it can be nearly impossible to find consistent time each day to go through the course material and get any value from it.

With that said, I have a solution that could work. For two days only, starting on September 30, I’m conducting a fast-track workshop here in San Diego, CA, that will walk you through the entire course curriculum within two days so that by the end of the workshop, you’ll have everything you need to go home and record and launch your new podcast with confidence . . . 

To those who had already purchased Power-Up Podcasting^®, this is how I framed that offer:

Thank you again for purchasing Power-Up Podcasting! As you can see, the course outlines everything you need to not only launch your new podcast, but also market it so it can be found. I’m excited to see your show live, soon!

Some students, including alumni, have shared with me that they wish they could find a way to absorb all of the course material in a quicker way, and I’m excited to mention that I’ve come up with a solution to make that happen. Whether it’s because you’re impatient (like I am, hehe!) or because you literally just do not have the time to go through the video content within the course, I’d love to offer you a seat at my upcoming two-day Power-Up Podcasting fast-track workshop, which will be held in San Diego, CA for the first time on September 30. We’ll run through all of the material in the course in just two days, and we’ll even have a chance to do some fun and helpful things that cannot be done within a digital course, like live interview training and voice coaching . . .

After sending an email out, the seats filled up rather quickly, and I’m excited to have had a number of people tell me they wish they could make it but they just couldn’t line up their schedules to make it work.

After that, we were on.

I had booked a room at a local country club I’m a member of, which came free with the membership. We just had to book the room in advance, which thankfully I did a number of months ago, in case we did actually sell seats to this thing. What was nice was that the food for the event was catered by the country club, so we just had one point of contact, and no outside contractors to work with to make this happen, and make it awesome.

Although the material was mostly the same as is covered in the digital course, obviously because it’s a live event, the content was going to be delivered in a different way. It was my job to convert that digital material into something that could be taught in person in an engaging and fun way. I also created worksheets and templates to help people through some of the parts of the journey that I felt would require some writing and reflection time.

In addition to the workshop content, we also had plans for an on-site designer to come in and work with each individual student on their podcast artwork.

And then came September 30 . . .

So How Did the Workshop Go?

Honestly, it couldn’t have gone better. We couldn’t have hand-picked a better group of amazing future podcasters who worked hard absorbing a ton of information and putting pen to paper all weekend to craft their show concept, content, and launch execution plan. It was a weekend filled with major breakthroughs, and we all came away with fifteen new friends as a result.

My favorite part was having time to individually go around the room and help people on those little things that they seemed to get stuck on. From their show description, to figuring out who to interview, and how to market their podcast, having the time to give people my time was so fulfilling, and people loved having that time to ask questions directly.

It was actually a really good thing we capped it at fifteen, because if there had been more participants it would have been hard for me to give each person individual attention within the two-day period.

The testimonials that came from the event made me cry, and I’m excited to come back and do it again. I’m not quite sure when it’ll happen, but I’m looking to run at least one fast-track workshop per quarter starting in 2018.

If you’re interested in Power-Up Podcasting, either the digital course, or the workshop, please sign-up to the waitlist at PowerUpPodcasting.com and I’ll let you know when things happen.

Big thanks to Jessica and Mindy from Team Flynn who flew down to support me during the weekend, and a HUGE thanks once again to the attendees of the event for trusting me to guide you. I had massive amounts of fun, and I cannot wait to see your podcasts soar!

Here’s a picture of all of us in a private room in one of my favorite restaurants in San Diego.

Matt and Caleb Visited San Diego

Mid-month, while I was putting together the materials for the podcasting workshop, Matt Gartland, who is a top-level team member on Team Flynn, flew into town to talk strategy with me for all things SPI 2018.

For two days, he and Caleb Wojcik (my videographer, who has also been contributing a lot of strategy into the SPI brand lately) locked ourselves in my studio with two giant whiteboards and planned out the entire year for 2018 from a high-level strategy perspective.

We looked at our business plan for 2017 and compared it to where we were at now, and determined what was working, what wasn’t, and how we should shape our goals for 2018.

A LOT of new things are happening in 2018 based on this meeting, and although I’m not quite ready to lay down the exact plan for next year, I am going to tell you that the one big theme for everything we’re doing for next year can be summed up into two words:

Higher value.

This means higher value in the free offerings that we have, including the blog, podcast, and on video, and higher value in the premium offerings that we have as well.

2017 was about laying the foundation for the courses, which has panned out very well so far. In fact, we’re above our estimates for 2017 already, and we still have a few months left in the year. Next year, the course creation will slow down, and it’ll be about optimizing those marketing funnels, and offering more value on top of those existing courses.

In addition to that, we looked at a severely underserved segment of my audience, also known as “Bucket #3”, as segmented on my email list, which are those who are generating a generous amount of income online who have specific needs that are much different than Bucket #0 (those who have yet to start an online business), and Bucket #1 (those who have started and are generating a little bit of income, but not enough to go full time).

I’m excited to launch something fun next year for those a further along in the business journey. I know that’s kind of vague, but we’re still hashing out the details of exactly what this offering will look like, and you’ll definitely hear more about that later. Especially if you’re in Bucket #3

Here’s Matt writing on one of our white boards in my studio, and Caleb paying close attention

I’m excited for the future of SPI. It’s going to feel a bit different next year, but in a better way—I promise.

And don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going anywhere. In fact, there are changes being made to the podcast to give you even more value in what’s already being served to you.

Excited to share more as 2018 approaches, so stay tuned, and make sure you follow me on Facebook since I often make a lot of major announcements on live video on the SPI Facebook Page.

Speaking of video, one more things to share before we get into the income report . . .

Check Out the New Look!

Although I’ve had my video studio (a 900 SF space I’m leasing that’s setup for live and recorded video) since June, it still hasn’t been used to it’s top capacity yet. Part of the reason is because it’s not quite yet “walk in and record” ready. In other words, there are still a lot of steps required to get to the point of entering the space, and starting to record or broadcast on live video.

That’s going to change though. With a newfound energy for video, thanks to those vlogs, video is actually going to be a large component of the content strategy next year for Smart Passive Income.

Caleb and I have been putting the missing pieces into place within the studio to have it walk-in ready, and we’ve been going deep during the last month figuring out out content plan related to video.

I’ve also been in learning mode again, picking up Brian Dean’s First-Page Videos course, and learning from YouTube content creators such as Tim Schmoyer and Roberto Blake. Although I’ve had a YouTube channel since 2009 with 75,000 subscribers, I know I’m completely under serving my audience over there, hence the low numbers on my most recent uploads.

The YouTube algorithm is a beast, and there are a lot of tips and tricks I’m learning to hopefully make some sort of impact there next year. It’s very experimental in the approach, but I’m definitely investing some time and money into figuring things out.

One investment that was made recently, which is fun, was upgrading the background in my video studio for the main camera view. Instead of a white wall behind me, which you may have seen on some AskPat LIVE videos on Facebook, I hired a contractor to build this backdrop instead:

Isn’t that great? I can’t wait to share this live on camera, and within recorded tutorial-style videos that will be coming out next year too.

Ahh, there’s so much to look forward to, I can’t wait!

We’re in for a strong finish here in 2017, but planning ahead, I’ve learned, is so important to do. It’s the difference between an entrepreneur who is constantly scrambling to figure things out, and an CEO who knows what’s up and what’s coming next.

For now, here’s the income breakdown from last month, which includes the second public launch of Power-Up Podcasting.

Some of the items in the list below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase through that link, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

Lessons Learned in September

September was definitely an experience for me. From my trip to Europe to my first podcasting workshop, to massive changes in the approach for content on SPI next year—there were a ton of lessons learned, and lots of exciting moments, for sure.

The biggest thing I learned, however, was while I was in Lisbon self-filming my vlog related material.

I used a Sony RX-100 Mark V to record, and I had it mounted on a small tripod with flexible legs that could bend and wrap around things. It wasn’t a huge thing to carry with me, but it was definitely noticeable—especially if I was filming myself in selfie mode and talking to it . . . which was totally awkward.

Here I am, in Europe, holding this “thing” in front of me and speaking to it—I almost didn’t go through with it because I was worried about what people would think of me—but then I realized: why would they think of me in a way that matters anyway?

I’m in another country, so I’m likely to never ever see these people again, and more than that, do I really think I’m that important that someone would care so much about what I’m doing while recording myself that it would bother them?

Over the course of the four days I spent in Lisbon, I became more and more comfortable with the idea of talking on the camera while in public. On the final day, at the event, it was almost a natural thing to do, especially while at the DNX Conference when I was able to capture moments with other attendees and speakers.

There’s nothing to worry about, and although when I pull out my camera, or even my phone and I still have those reservations about speaking at the device while in public, I realized that there’s nothing to worry about, because no one cares.

Keep that in mind as you begin to create behind the scenes content of your own, perhaps small snippets of your day that you share on Instagram or Snapchat, or Facebook or maybe in a more drawn-out video. Whatever it is, your audience will appreciate getting an insider look at something you’re up to, and you’ll be able to build an even stronger relationship with them as a result, and become more confident at the same time.

Thanks again for following my journey, and I look forward to what happens over the course of the next thirty-one days!

The post My September 2017 Monthly Income Report appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Welcome to my August 2017 Monthly Income Report! I’m excited to keep you up to date on the inner workings of SPI and all that happens here in the business, from the wins, the losses, and even the income and where it all comes from.

If this is your first time here, make sure to check out the income report page where you can see the history of income reports on the blog dating back to October of 2008. It’s been almost nine years since starting my online business, and we’ve had a lot of ups, a lot of downs, but no matter what it’s a lesson for those of you looking to build an online business of your own.

Happy to share, and happier you’re here following along. Let’s get into what happened this past month.

What Happened in August?

Two important event-related items happened in August:

• The Problogger Conference in Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia
• Podcast Movement in Anaheim, California

Speaking has become a passion of mine. If you want to know how I got started with it, check out SPI Podcast Session #230 where I tell the story of how I booked my first talk in 2011, and why it was one of the scariest moments of my life.

Now, after speaking on stages of all sizes, all over the world, I’m happy to be able to choose exactly where I want to speak, and make the best of those trips.

Do I still get nervous? Absolutely! If you’ve seen me backstage or the moment right before I go on stage, you’ll notice I’m a nervous wreck, often pacing back and forth—almost to a point where I’m throwing up! It’s bad.

But I’ve learned to be able to convert that nervous energy into excitement. The butterflies tell me it’s an important talk, one that I’m going to enjoy once I’m up there, and after the first minute I’m perfectly fine and on auto-pilot.

That’s why I spend a lot of my rehearsal time leading up to the speaking gig practicing those first few minutes.

The Problogger Conference, which takes place annually in Australia, holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the biggest conferences where I spoke in 2014, and Darren Rowse from Problogger.com was a huge inspiration to me when I first started blogging back in 2008. To be invited back to speak, which is usually by request from the attendees, was an absolute honor. I was excited to speak twice while in Australia this year—once in Brisbane, and a week later in Melbourne.

I was also able to bring along my wife and two kids. Now that my kids are a little older (ages seven and four) than last time, it’s definitely much easier on us. From the airplane travel (about fifteen hours on the plane each way), to just moseying around town, having the kids be able to walk on their own and last longer before needing rest made the trip much more fun. I love bringing my family with me, and it’s something I hope to be able to do when traveling to events in the future.

Here are the kids on a playground in 2014, and here they are again in 2017 in the exact same spot. Man, they grow up so fast!

The theme of the conference this year was “Evolve.” Darren spoke about how his blog and business have evolved since he started in the early 2000s. Seeing how his business at Problogger—and his even bigger business at Digital Photography School—changed over time, it was inspiring, a little amusing, but also very real. Hearing Darren’s story made me realize that we all go through adjustments and changes over time, and even someone as high-caliber as Darren started in the same way we all do.

Some of his first blogs looked horrendous (no offense Darren! You can look at mine; I’m in the same boat), and his attempts at monetization early on were like my first attempts—intimidating.

In both city locations for the event, I opened each day after Darren’s keynote with a Q&A with Darren about how my businesses have evolved over time too. And then I finished each day with a keynote presentation related to Will It Fly? and idea validation.

And here’s a snapshot of my slide deck from the closing keynote:

Thanks to everyone who attended the conference with me in Australia, and big thank you to Darren and the entire ProBlogger team for the invite and the hospitality.

Will we be back to Australia again soon? The coffee is calling me, and I may have another opportunity to speak again next year—so that’s a definite maybe!

Podcast Movement

Another favorite conference of mine is Podcast Movement. I was happy that it was happening in Anaheim, California this year, which is only about two hours north of me here in San Diego. After driving up on the 22nd, I was excited to participate in a panel at the event with two podcasting friends of mine, Amy Porterfield and John Lee Dumas.

I performed the opening keynote last year (here’s a recording of it on YouTube), which was extremely fun, but also nerve-wracking (you know the deal, wanting to throw up beforehand, sweaty palms, etc.). This year, it was nice to have a more casual approach to the conference. Panels are great because you don’t have to prepare very much, but they can also be a little scary because you don’t know exactly what’s going to be discussed.

Luckily, Amy, John, and I spent some time before the event going over our game plan, and from what we heard from the audience afterward, we rocked it. It was about podcasting and business, and we talked about everything from getting more downloads, to using your podcast within a sales funnel, and more.

One of my favorite things to do at conferences is talk to fans of SPI, so after my talk, I spent the entire day walking up and down the hallways chatting with people. I love asking questions about how people found out about SPI—a memorable post or podcast episode—and I also start asking questions about what they wish was there on SPI that isn’t yet.

One interesting thing that happened at this event was that I noticed a camera crew following John Lee Dumas around. I was like, “John, what’s going on here? Are you doing an Ask Gary Vee style vlog or something?” It got me excited, because I would actually love to see how JLD rolls on the daily, but I was surprised to learn that it was just a one-time thing, at least for now.

When I asked him where he found the videographers, I found out it was a crew from Eighty80rule.com, who was there supporting influencers at Podcast Movement and demoing their service. You can hire them to create vlog (video blog) style videos, which I thought was pretty neat because a vlog is something I’ve always wanted to do.

When I spoke to Jack, one of the two camera people following John, he offered to film me the follow day! I said that would be perfect, because I had a meetup in Downtown Disney with students from my Power-Up Podcasting^® course, and it would be awesome to capture those moments on camera.

Jack and another cameraperson, Betty, followed me around the next day—through the conference center, in the expo hall, and even at the meetup too (although we had some trouble getting cameras into Downtown Disney). And I have to say, it was a little weird having a camera follow me all day. But it was also pretty fun! Thinking about the audience watching on the other end, I just felt like you were all there with me.

I’m happy to share this video with you from the Eighty80 team, and I’d love to know what you think!

My favorite part of the video was the Power-Up Podcasting meetup. It was amazing to hear directly from students of my course just what kind of impact the material was making. I found out that a lot of the students felt the course was way more than a podcasting course—it was also, they described, really a guide to learning how to take action and get things done.

Twenty-three students came out to hang for a bit, and many now have their podcast up and running on iTunes since this event. To hear the praise first-hand from the work that I did and the course that I created—it’s the best feeling in the world. Thanks to all of the amazing people who took the time to meet up!

One new podcast in particular that just went live from one of my students is Sober Together, an awesome show from Power-Up Podcasting student, Michael Gallardo.

The reason I’d like to highlight this is because of the journey this man went through to get this show up and running. He struggled through a lot of setbacks and mindset limitations when deciding to move forward with this show, and since going live, he’s already received emails from new listeners who personally thanked him for helping them through recovery.

Congratulations, Michael! Your show is going to succeed, not just because it’s put together well, but because it’s going to help a lot of people!

And check it out, he’s ranking well too!

Power-Up Podcasting – My First Experience with Failed Payments

I launched Power-Up Podcasting publicly for the first time in July, and it was the first time I’d ever launched a premium course with a payment plan. Over 500 students signed up, which was amazing, and August was going to be my first time experiencing a round of recurring payments from those who chose the payment plan.

I was warned, however, by my friends who have launched courses before, that there would be failed payments, which are a hassle to deal with.

I said to myself, “I only have four recurring payments, and it’s only the first month. How many failed payments could there be?”

Well, there were . . . a lot.

For a $197 payment, there were a total of $3,349 in failed payments. That’s crazy!

Failed payments can happen because of a variety of reasons: someone may have changed their credit card, their credit card may have expired, bank issues, payment processor issues, etc.

No matter what though, it can be frustrating. And I was very frustrated.

Luckily, thanks to a referral from a friend, I was able to connect with and find a company (Payment Saver; more on that below!) that helps recover failed payments like this. Guess what? It worked! [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Here’s the report after the first round of payments came in (some recovery is still in progress):

If you're interested in this service, it's called Payment Saver, created by a friend of mine, Casey Graham. It's a no-brainer if you collect recurring payments for anything. Please know that if you work with Casey and his team, I receive an affiliate commission (at no extra cost to you!), and I'm sure he'll take even better care of you.

Again, you can see how Payment Saver can help you here.

The overall course experience has been amazing, and it’s teaching me a lot of new things I never thought I’d encounter.

The rest of August, in between the events, was spent gearing up for the next and upcoming launch of Power-Up Podcasting, which I’ll talk a little bit more about in a minute. For now, let’s get to that income report breakdown!

Some of the items in the list below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase through that link, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

Important Lessons Learned in August

One big mindset hurdle I’m learning about is related to asking for testimonials from my students. As a marketer and business owner, I know how important this is. As a person who is brand new to the online course world, it’s a lot easier said than done.

I’m thankful I had a number of students offer a testimonial without me asking, but I knew that I would get a lot more great ones if I were to step up and ask, so that’s what I did. I personally reached out to a number of my successful students after they launched their shows and asked for a testimonial. And wouldn’t you know it, I got a 100 percent success rate.

This was a great lesson for me; not because I know their testimonials will help convince even more people to join my course, and not because it makes me feel great knowing I was able to deliver on my promise, but because I simply had the guts to ask.

Asking isn’t always easy, and for me, for the first six years of my business, all I did was give. I didn’t ask for anything in return from anyone.

I didn’t have any offers or courses to sell. I didn’t ask for favors from my audience more than just a standard “please share” or “if you like this, please subscribe.” And I definitely didn’t ask my friends and colleagues for advice.

But lately, as I’ve grown into a more confident person in my business, I’ve been able to start to get comfortable with asking.

I’ve started to offer courses and ask people to join who I know it would be perfectly suited for. I’ve learned to ask my customers for testimonials. And I’ve even learned how to ask friends and colleagues for some help when I may not understand something completely about marketing or online business.

It’s been a game-changer in my business, and it can be for yours too.

Thanks again for all the support. I appreciate you! Also, for those of you interested in starting a podcast of your own (and making sure it gets found!), Power-Up Podcasting is open for enrollment once again! I’m accepting new students from today, September 18 to the end of September 25, so if you’re ready to get started launching a podcast of your own, and joining an amazing community of other supportive podcaster on your way, click on the link below to join Power-Up Podcasting today!
[Editorial note: The application window has closed.]

The post My August 2017 Monthly Income Report appeared first on Smart Passive Income.