Why is it when we want to be at our most creative and innovative, we resort to using the most worn-out cliché at our disposal? “We need to think outside the box on this one!”

Ugghhh.

First of all, that ‘box’ is there for a reason. It gives us boundaries and guidelines on what we want to accomplish. For example, if I say I want you to write an article on new ways small businesses can use social media, I’ve just given you a ‘box’.

But if I tell you to get to work and give you no idea what to do, you’re going to be totally and utterly lost.

Second, if we want to be more creative, let’s start by abolishing the “think outside the box” phrase and make a pact, just between you and me. From this point forward, if you or I say or write ‘thnk otsd th* b*x’, we owe $5 to our favorite charity payable immediately.

Agreed? Good.

Now then, what can we say when we want to express our desire to think differently, get off the beaten track, search for an innovative approach, break new ground and take an imaginative leap?

Seriously, I’m asking you for your help on this one. Even the phrases I used in the previous sentence sound worn out and tired.

I did have one thought, but if you’re a Star Wars fan then you might not like it. For whatever reason, people seem to either gravitate towards Star Wars or Star Trek. I’m told Star Wars is for dreamers and Star Trek is for science geeks. This might be wrong, but I can see some truth to it.

Here’s what I do know: In the very first Star Trek series during the opening credits, we hear Captain Kirk saying…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before.” What do you think?

Can we boldly go where no one has gone before?

It beats thinking outside some cliché box.

Whoops! That’s $5 I owe… now where did I put that checkbook… 😉

CTA stands for Call to Action. When you’re talking about an email you’re sending to your list, the call to action is when you say, “Hey Reader, click this link to get a once in a lifetime deal” or some such.

The more you can get your readers to click the links you put in your emails, the more traffic you send to your offers. The more traffic you send to your offers, the more sales you can make. Usually.

Okay, there is an exception to this rule, and it’s if you don’t set up your email and your offer to be congruent. Like if you say in your email, “Click here to discover the best fertilizer for roses” and then you send them to a page that is advertising a cleaning solution for rubber duckies… you’re not going to make sales.

But let’s assume that your email sets up your reader to know exactly what to expect when they click the link. The more people who click the link, the more people you have who can potentially purchase the product and the more money you can make.

Thus the question becomes, how do you get more of your email subscribers to click the links without holding a gun to their head?

By using the CBS method:

•   Command
•   Bolden
•   Soften

First, you’re going to COMMAND them on what to do. Don’t be subtle here. Don’t slip your link in there and assume they will click it just because it’s there – they won’t.

You’ve got to TELL them to click it.

•   “CLICK HERE NOW”
•   “Go HERE now for full details”
•   “This is the link to click NOW”

Next, you’re going to BOLD keywords. People tend to scan emails just like they scan sales letters. By bolding the keywords, you can stop a scanner in their tracks and get them to do your bidding.

“The price will double at midnight so to get the discount go here now and check this out before it’s too late”

Read just the bold words above and you’ll realize it’s everything the subscriber needs to know they should click the link NOW.

Finally, you might want to sometimes SOFTEN the language you use.

If you only say, “CLICK HERE NOW” it seems kind of pushy or bossy.

But if you say, “CLICK HERE NOW and see if this is for you” then you’ve softened the language and made it more friendly.

“Click HERE now and see if this can double your income”

“Click THIS LINK now and find out why 2,926 reviewers give it 4.8 stars”

“Go HERE NOW and discover for yourself why grown men blush when they see this”.

Remember CBS to increase your email calls to action: Command, Bold and Soften.

The $500 figure is arbitrary. Depending on the size of the promotion, you could gain an extra $100 to $2,000, or a whole lot more. Here’s how it works…

Anytime you promote a product, whether that product is yours or an affiliate product, consider adding a one-time deal for your own personal email support for an additional fee. For example, you’re selling a $47 product that teaches buyers how to train their horse. You offer your own personal email support for a fixed length of time to answer any questions they have that are directly related to implementing the information in the product.

The biggest obstacle many people face when learning something new is putting it into action. Having someone they can lean on for guidance can be tremendously helpful both from a psychological as well as a practical viewpoint.

Things to know:

1: You most likely won’t be overwhelmed by questions because only 10 – 15% of people who pay for your support option will use it. People have the best of intentions to use the products they buy, but as you know yourself, people get busy and things get set aside.

2: You’ll be getting paid for something you probably already do, especially on your own products. If people already email you with questions about how to implement information you teach, the difference now is they will be paying you for your answers.

3: Many of the questions will be the same. This is helpful for you in two ways – first, you get to discover what’s missing in the product. For example, if you forgot to include how people will take payments in the system you teach, you’ll know to add it to your course. If it’s an affiliate product, you’ll find the holes and have the option to either create a bonus that covers the missing areas, or even create your own, more comprehensive course.

Second, it’s helpful that people tend to ask the same questions because then you can write the answers once and copy and paste them each time the question is asked. Or you might create an FAQ to send out, or even create an FAQ page you can refer people to. This will greatly cut down on the number of questions you receive.

4: This does not undermine the pricing of your personal coaching. Think of answering questions about a particular product as being a FAQ, not a coach. Your answers will be shorter and more direct, and they generally won’t be tailored to the person asking the question since you don’t know their situation. You’re giving bite-sized answers, not in-depth personally-tailored step-by-step coaching. For that they need to upgrade to your much more expensive coaching program.

5: You’ll set a time limit, and if you want, an email limit. You’ll answer their questions for a set period of time, such as 30, 45 or 60 days. You’re not offering email support for the rest of their lives. Emailed questions are only taken if they are directly related to the product. And if you want, you can limit the number of emails they send to you to one per day. This last one sounds unnecessary and it usually is, but one time someone decided to write to me 4 and 5 times per day. Ever since then, I place the one email a day limit in my offers. You can also limit the number of questions per email to 1 or 2.

6: If you’re selling an affiliate product, you’ll need to be familiar with the contents of that product and how to implement what it teaches.

7: You don’t need to be an expert. The questions are coming by email, which means you can take time to look up anything that you don’t already know. If the answer isn’t in the product, use your friend Google to find it. And if the question is beyond the scope of the product, recommend another product to fill their need. For example, if they’re asking how to get traffic but that’s not covered in the product, suggest your own traffic course or one that you are promoting. If you’re giving them an affiliate link, say so.

Bonus: You’ll build rapport with the people who send you questions. Plus, you’ll demonstrate your ability and willingness to help them, too. When you follow up with these folks and offer your coaching program, you’ll find that some of them are not only receptive but also eager to grab the opportunity to join your more expensive program or service to receive even more help.

I’ve probably made this sound harder than it is. Realize that most people who buy the upgrade don’t use it, and those who do use it will email you 2 to 5 times with questions. It’s actually an incredibly easy way to make some extra money when promoting anything, and it’s an awesome stepping stone to your high level coaching as well.

I received an email the other day promoting contests, telling me how I can become a big winner if I know contesting secrets and so forth. Which is true, there really are methods to winning a lot of stuff through contests.

But here’s the weird part… the email was written by a guy in his early to mid-20’s and judging by the language he used, it was also targeted to that same demographic – 20 something males.

What guy in his 20’s is interested in spending hours a day entering contests to win appliances and gift certificates and what not?

I suspect the target audience for something like this is people over 40, most likely female, who have some time on their hands. You could write about how they can enter these contests while they’re standing in line, while on their commute (assuming they’re not driving) while they’re watching television and so forth. And I’d talk about the vacations they can win, the cash prizes, and yes, the gift certificates and appliances, too.

This 20 something marketer will start making more sales when he starts choosing products to promote that appeal to the type of audience he is attracting to his mailing list – 20 something males.

A marketer has to know his or her audience and know what they want, what fits into their lifestyle, and what will bring them the benefits they seek. Keep this top of mind when you are choosing products to promote, and how to promote them.

I’ll bet there is something that is holding you back from greatness in your online business… And if you eliminated this one thing, you’d get more accomplished in a week than you’re currently getting done in a month. And not only would you get more done, but you’d make more money, too. Maybe exponentially more…

I know, because I’ve experienced this myself. There was something holding me back, and at first I didn’t even realize what it was or why it was stopping me from earning as much as I wanted to make.

This thing is in your business, and while almost every online marketer has this same problem, the issue itself differs from one market to another. Goodness, that’s about as clear as mud, isn’t it?

Let me try to illustrate…

Imagine you have a giant hourglass filled with gold nuggets. Any nugget that falls to the bottom of the hourglass is yours to keep, and there is an unlimited supply of gold nuggets at the top.

But here’s the problem: Because an hourglass is skinny in the middle, the nuggets have a hard time falling to the bottom. In fact, those nuggets are continuously getting jammed in the middle, and when that happens, you’re not getting any gold nuggets at all.

The solution is obvious – eliminate the area that is slowing down the flow of gold nuggets. In the case of your business, identify and eliminate the bottleneck.

Let’s say you’re a whiz at creating content, making products and doing social media. But building landing pages, sales pages, websites and all of that is hard work for you. It can take you days or weeks to build a funnel.

There’s your bottleneck! Get a program such as Leadpages or ClickFunnels to allow you to quickly and easily build those pages and you’ve just eliminated your bottleneck.

Or maybe you’re an expert at building pages but you’re terrible at writing content. Hire someone to write content for you or find another way to get content such as curation or maybe recording your own videos.

Perhaps the only thing you do well is social media. Then the answer might be to do social media for other marketers, teaming up with them and even taking a percentage of profits.

The idea here is to determine what you’re good at, what you’re NOT good at, and then find a way to eliminate, outsource or expedite the thing(s) you’re not good at – your bottleneck.

In my case, I was great at creating content, getting product ideas, setting up JV’s and a host of other things, but I didn’t like the technical aspect of building websites, pages and so forth. When I found a way to make it easy for myself, I freed up an amazing amount of time and energy which I then used to focus on my strengths. And when I did that, I literally tripled my income, had more fun in my business and for the first time found the entire experience to be thoroughly enjoyable.

I’d removed the bottleneck, removed a lot of stress and frustration, and replaced it with many more opportunities to build my list, gain new JV partners and make more money.

Find your bottleneck and eliminate it so that you can concentrate on your strengths, and that hourglass of gold nuggets will be replaced by a firehose of income.

I want to clear something up right now. Too many aspiring online marketers have bought into this fairy tale that says all you need is ONE BIG hit and you’ll magically go from broke to six-figures. 95% of the time it just doesn’t work like that. Nor is your online income going to magically grow like “clockwork” on “auto-pilot” with “zero effort” or investments.

Have you heard the expression, “Two steps forward, one step back?” That’s how almost every business grows, including any and all forms of online marketing.

Building an online business isn’t like winning the lottery, nor is it a movie. You don’t get struck by lightning and fall into a pot of gold. Instead, you do an affiliate promotion that costs you $500 in advertising and makes you $400 in commissions.

This is where most people quit. “SEE?! ONLINE MARKETING DOESN’T WORK!”

Baloney.

You earned $400 in commission AND you learned something, too.

You use that new knowledge on your next promotion where you spend $500 again, but now you make $900. You repeat that for a while and you’re making pretty good money, all because you didn’t quit when you lost that initial $100.

Then you’re feeling pretty confident so you decide to expand your list with a solo ad that costs you $300, but you only earn $50.

Nuts!

But now you’ve got a bigger list, and you nurture that list and eventually over the course of weeks or months you earn an additional $2,000 from it.

Yeah!

Then you hire someone to create a product for you, and it’s a terrific product but no one wants it, and you lose $700.

Darn!

But you still have the product, so you break it up into pieces and use those as posts and free reports and combining that with social media you further build your list while promoting a related affiliate product and now you’re earning a cool $300 a week just from that while also watching your list grow.

Wow!

But you need to invest in a better website or software or whatever and there are expenses and so you’ve got to pay those and…

Do you see how this works?

Two steps forward and one step back.

The trick, therefore, is to simply keep moving forward no matter how many steps you take backwards.

If you graph out the growth of online businesses, you’ll find that 95% of the time the line goes up, dips down, goes up, dips down and so forth. But the downward dips don’t mean a thing as long as the overall trend is up.

And if you’re prepared for this and expecting that it won’t be all smooth sailing and that you will have setbacks small and large, then you’ll know enough to weather those setbacks and keep plugging away.

You’ll be far less afraid, too, knowing that it’s normal to have these setbacks. And in my experience, it’s much easier to work when you’re not terrified that your income will suddenly dry up if you make one wrong move.

The vast majority of online marketers experience a series of small successes and small failures, too. They go hand in hand, and that’s okay. Just make sure you either have more successes than failures, or that your successes are bigger than your failures and you keep moving forward.

Really, that’s the only ‘trick’ to online marketing.

You know I love residual income. And you know I think membership sites and newsletters are both outstanding ways to earn residual income. You make the sale once and you get paid for as long as that person remains a member. But there is something different about investment memberships and newsletters.

You might say they are in a league of their own, because the bulk of their profits seldom come from subscription fees.

Have you ever wondered why a millionaire (or billionaire) investor would bother to publish an investment newsletter? It’s not like they need your $99 a year.

And why would any investment expert charge $99 or even $499 for a newsletter or membership if it can really 10x or 20x your investments in a relatively short time? We’re talking about you receiving million-dollar gains in a few short years. All for just 99 bucks? What’s the catch?

Here’s what I think: That publisher wants as many people as possible following his or her recommendations because when they do, that publisher makes money.

Let’s say I run an investment newsletter and you’re a subscriber. I tell you to buy XYZ stock because I think they’re about to get a billion dollar contract with Amazon.

And maybe XYZ will get the contract, and maybe that stock will go to the moon because of it. But even if what I predict doesn’t come true, here’s what happened for me:

Because I bought the stock before I told you and thousands of other subscribers to invest in it, and because all those investors drove the stock price up, I made money. If an investor has enough followers, they can and will influence stock prices simply through their recommendations.

It’s no wonder why that ‘million-dollar’ newsletter costs $99.

I’m not suggesting you don’t subscribe to these newsletters if you have faith in the person making the recommendations. You can still make money, as many people do. Just be aware that the newsletter author is likely making even more money with their recommendations because of you and all the other investors buying into the stock the author already holds.

And if you’re wondering what type of membership or newsletter to start, well… this bit of insight might just help you to decide. 😉

As an marketing coach, which do you think would be easier: A: Taking someone who is earning $1,000 a month and showing them how to earn $10,000 a month, or B: Taking someone who is earning nothing online and showing them how to earn $500 a month…

As you’ve probably guessed, the answer is “A”.

But why is that true?

Because someone who is already earning $1,000 a month likely has systems in place to earn money. They have a squeeze page and maybe a website, they have one or more products to promote and they have a means of driving traffic and a list they can contact.

Most of all, they KNOW that $10,000 a month is an attainable goal because they’re already earning $1,000 a month. They believe it can be done.

But the person who is currently earning nothing likely has no online marketing infrastructure in place. They probably don’t have a list or an audience and they might feel overwhelmed and unsure of what to do and how to do it.

More importantly, they’re not entirely convinced online marketing is even REAL – at least not for them. They don’t yet believe they can do it. They want to believe, but their doubts are so great that it’s easier for them to think online marketing works only for other people and never for them.

If you take someone who is earning $1,000 and show them how to earn $10,000, they will be happy. But if you take the person who is earning nothing and show them how to make $500 a month, they will think you are a SUPER STAR and they will love you for it.

And if by chance you are not yet earning anything online yourself, then let me ask you this: Do YOU believe you can earn a full-time income online? Because if you have doubts, it will be that much more difficult for you to find success.

The U.S. elections are over now, but the impact they had on many people still resonates strongly. Thinking I might like to revisit a U.S. show about the White House called ‘The West Wing’, I found it on Netflix and started binging.

The West Wing was a serial political drama series that ran from 1999 to 2006 and it enjoyed a large, enthusiastic audience.

The funny thing is, the #2 actor on the show, Rob Lowe, doesn’t appear in many of season 4’s episodes. And by season 5 he’s gone. Why did he leave?

It’s rumored that he was disappointed the network wouldn’t raise his salary. It seems the $75,000 per episode they were paying him wasn’t enough to hold his interest.

And if you think that was a lot of money… Years ago, Martin Sheen the lead actor was earning $300,000 per episode.

I bring this up for one reason: Are you possibly thinking too small?

I realize it’s good to have realistic goals that are achievable. But if your goal is, for example, another $1,000 per month, what would happen if you make a second goal to be earning $1,000 per week? And then $1,000 per day?

Odds are you are providing as much value to your customers as actors provide to their audience. In fact, if you are teaching new skills then you are providing more value than someone who merely entertains. You’re just not doing it at the same scale… yet.

Please realize that you are indeed worth more than you realize. Think of this as permission to raise your goals considerably, and take the action needed to get there.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, then you know I advocate testing everything to see what works rather than simply taking the advice of others. In fact, I tell my readers to test what I preach as well. Just because I say something works for me doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you.

For example, let’s talk about bonuses – those things we’re all told to attach to offers to increase conversions. We sometimes spend as much time building bonuses as we do creating the product itself. But did you know that bonuses don’t always increase sales?

And that sometimes they can actually HURT your sales?

I’m not sure why that happens, but I can remember a time or two when I’ve been tempted to purchase a product and then noticed the bonuses. Inside I groaned… “You mean I have to download and read all that stuff, too?” It’s too much, and I close the page rather than make the purchase.

Bonuses can distract from the main product, dilute the main product’s value and even make the whole product package too big and too complicated.

Plus, bonuses sometimes cause confusion or point out a flaw in the product. “Why are they adding the bonus on getting traffic? Oh my gosh, that’s right, I’ll need to get traffic to make this work. How hard is it to get traffic? It must be difficult or they wouldn’t add that bonus. Forget it, I can’t do this…”

This is why the smart marketer tests out each bonus. Try making your offer with and without the bonuses and see what happens. If you have more than one bonus, you might also test having more or less of those bonuses until you find just the right combination or no bonuses at all, whichever converts the best.

And here’s a bonus for you: The next time you create a product, don’t assume you have to make a half dozen bonuses, too. Maybe you can save time and increase sales by simply offering your product as is. Now wouldn’t that be great?