With all the business coaching programs out there, how do you decide which will benefit you the most?
James Schramko walks you through the programs he currently offers, what they cover and what you need to get the most out of each one.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 33:25 — 30.7MB)
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Choose your program:
Mentor Membership |
Connect Membership |
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Monthly plan $1000 USD/mo | Monthly plan $99USD/mo |
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Private mentoring via web chat or voice messaging via app as a professional sounding board | ✔ | ✖ |
Live weekly small group focus calls with other members (Not recorded) | ✔ | ✖ |
Live monthly Ask-Me-Anything training calls including past recordings | ✔ | ✔ |
Playbooks. Fast action guides | ✔ | ✔ |
Members Discussion Forum to converse with other JamesSchramko.com members | ✔ | ✔ |
Recordings of the last ten years’ worth of Live events | ✔ | ✔ |
Progress Journal. Document your own growth within the community. Get personalized help from other members and James | ✔ | ✔ |
App access. All of this works on your iPhone or Android. Includes push notifications | ✔ | ✔ |
GO | GO |
Got a mentoring-specific question?
In the episode:
01:40 – A solution for a pressing need
03:11 – 10 years’ worth of membership experience
04:23 – Design your ideal lifestyle – free!
05:06 – The low-cost, high value way to get answers
07:38 – Building and selling a content site
08:25 – How to start your own short video campaign
09:25 – The sales skill you’ve just got to have
10:15 – Breaking out of solopreneur mode
11:17 – Upgrading the software upstairs
11:58 – Your entire life in one management system
12:41 – You stand to gain a lot from this strategy
14:54 – For the more established business owner…
18:00 – What you get when you go intensive
21:55 – A look at the partners’ program
23:31 – A friend and his situation
24:11 – If you could develop one skill…
24:49 – On earning as an affiliate
25:31 – Courses, memberships and selling websites
26:35 – James’s market recommendations
27:36 – Like the next level in affiliate deals
28:35 – Do you need insurance?
29:22 – Additional smart advice
31:52 – The best coaching program for this friend
Get the business guidance you need with help from James
Transcription:
James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is Episode 775. This is a solo podcast, just me today. And I’m going to be covering which coaching program is best for you.
Because I do get asked a lot. I have a few different solutions, and I want to be able to send people to an episode that gives a simple outline of the different options available, what they are, who they’re for, where you can get them.
And also, I want to just share, this episode was inspired by a friend of mine who I used to work with about 20 years ago. And he’s popped up into my universe at the moment, and he sent me a stack of questions. And as I started going through the questions, I thought, it’s probably going to be easier for me to record an episode around the questions and answer them for him, but also for you.
So I’ll start off with the coaching options that are available, and then I’m going to go into the questions that I got sent. So it’ll be like a two-part episode, but all in one episode.
Right. Which program is going to be best for you? We’ll start with the options.
Meeting a pressing need
One of the options that’s become pretty popular lately isSuperFastResults. And that was a new option I started in 2020, because I could sense the market needed something that was a little less pricey and more accessible.
Because there are people hurting out there, there are a lot of unemployed people, there are budget-sensitive situations where the cash flow has changed, there’s a lot of stress in the market. So I wanted to meet that and have something that I could offer people below the offerings that I had.
Prior to that, I only had SuperFastBusiness or higher as a starting point. And I was very deliberate. Before, I didn’t really need the clients who weren’t yet making $10,000 per year, because I do really good work with people who are already in motion. And that’s a choice. There’s plenty of people out there dealing with startups. And that’s not something I generally can involve with.
So I wanted a program that’s an easy access point. So what I started doing is taking some of the recordings from SuperFastBusiness and putting them as standalone products on SuperFastResults.
And there’s some wonderful products on the site that are particularly popular as a nice entry point for people who really just want to dial in a certain thing, and aren’t looking for all the other features that you do get with SuperFastBusiness, which I’ll detail in a moment.
So if I pull up SuperFastResults and I have a look at the products that are available, I’ll just give you a little outline of what they are. And that’ll give you a sense of how you go.
Start and sell a membership
Probably the most interesting product on there right now is called Profitable Membership Business. And that’s a fresh training that I’ve just done in the middle of 2020. I’ve taken a decade’s worth of experience from having membership sites. It does talk about how to start a membership. It’s how to sell people into your membership, how to keep it running. It is $199 at the time of recording this, but I suspect it will be a more expensive product later, as I get some fine tuning and change some of the modules.
But in this course, it is a really powerful course. It’s easily something people would sell for $600 or $1,000. It’s about three and a half hours of my most up-to-date, absolute best training on memberships. If you have a membership, you’ll easily find $199 worth of value in it. If you are thinking of a membership, it will save you making some of the biggest mistakes.
It also includes some access to the membership platform that I prefer, which is 10XPRO. So if you do take the course, you will get a special offer for that. So I really think the value is particularly good on this. And it’s my most current format of how I’m doing trainings. So get a hold of that one if you can.
Design your ideal lifestyle – free!
The other one I’ve got on there, I put a free training. So I mean, that’s the absolute easiest way to access my stuff, is the Lifestyle Design Secrets of a Seven Figure Daily Surfer. And that one is an extract from my live event. It talks about how you can make more money while doing less. And you can structure your days around the things you want to do, take days or weeks away from your business with complete peace of mind, and don’t worry about where the money is coming from. But it also talks about health and relationships.
“You can structure your days around the things you want to do, take days or weeks away from your business with complete peace of mind, and don’t worry about where the money is coming from.”
That’s free. And I suggest you get access to that, because it will rewire the way you think. If you’re still stuck in some nine-to-five nightmare, or if you’re working for someone else, it’ll start to dislodge some of the friction points for you.
The low-cost, high value way to get answers
I’ve got a fantastic product here, which is something I’m really proud of, called Coaching Support. It’s a support assist program. And what that is, is access for you to get your questions answered. This one is a recurring monthly program, and it’s just $10 a month.
And what I’m finding is people are absolutely blown away with this product. This is for someone who is starting out or just wants a really lightweight access to me without any extra bells and whistles. You know, you could define this program by what’s not in it. There’s not any recordings, there’s not any calls for you to shop. There’s not any downloads. You don’t have any downloads. It’s like, finally, you can buy something that doesn’t give you 20 gigabytes of crap to download that you’ll never use.
What it is, is a place where you can go for answers. Because this was my biggest frustration when I started online. I couldn’t get access to any experts or gurus, they wouldn’t respond to me, they wouldn’t tell me what they were doing. So I wanted to basically put me in your pocket, you know? I’m accessible via an app on your phone, you can access all of these via an app.
And you can post your related questions on what is called a wall. It’s called a social wall. But if you’ve ever used Facebook, and I imagine you probably have, it’s a lot like that. You simply post your question, and me or someone in my team or an expert friend of mine will give us an answer and put the answer there. So you post a question, you get an answer. Post another question, you get another answer. Post another question, you get another answer. That’s how it works.
Now everyone in that membership can see your question, and they can see the answer. You can also see other people’s questions and other people’s answers, which I’ve now discovered is very valuable for the other members, they are saying this is great.
And I constantly get the feedback that people feel that they are getting ridiculously good value for their $10 a month. So this is a good option. If you’re starting out, or you just want some lightweight access, or you’re getting stuck anywhere with your online journey, and you just want to ask an expert, this is it.
I mean, it’s kind of like a free Facebook group, except it’s $10 a month, and you screened out all the maniacs. And it’s moderated, and it’s curated for good quality. Okay? So whatever your question is, I’ll answer it, or my team will answer it, or an expert will answer it.
And I’ve had such good feedback from this. People are basically saying they can’t believe it. And so I’m really proud of that product. I think that’s a good starting point. And it will also give you a low-risk way to get involved with my coaching to see if some of my other solutions might be useful for you as well.
Build and sell a content site
Another training there, it’s just $19 a month. That’s How to Build a Content Site You Can Sell for Big Dollars. And I’ll take you through what you need to research before you build a site, how to get content for your site, how to get premium domains cheaper, how to start generating income for your site.
What I don’t teach in that is, I don’t teach you how to build the site from a technical perspective. So I’m not going to log in and show you how to use WordPress. Okay? some of these courses will require you to use other resources. But it’s handy. If you’re going to go and buy a premium domain, I’ll show you how you can probably save half. I’ll also show you how you can do pretty much any of your hobbies with a tax deduction, and lots of other cool stuff. So I’ll also share cost-effective resources.
It’s only a 48-minute course, and you’ll learn plenty. So if you have a website that you’re building to make money from, this could be a good one.
Start your own short video campaign
Another one is How to Profit From Short Videos. It’s $39, but it covers the basics of the types of videos I’ve been creating, including the equipment that I use and how you can compose your shots and what sort of frameworks you can use, plus best practice for uploading it to the social platforms, and how you can do it with just an iPhone. Really good course.
On this course, what I don’t teach you is, I’m not going to show you how to edit a video using software, because I don’t. Someone in my team does that. there’s any number of services or suppliers who can do it. And there’s any number of tutorials both free and paid out there on YouTube or Udemy showing you how to use whatever video editing software you want to use. I don’t teach that, I just want to point that out.
But I do give you the standard operating procedure we use. I show you how we’ve been getting results. I actually give you screenshots of it. You’ll easily double your sales from videos. I’m making hundreds of thousands from videos, probably a million dollars. I’m not sure, but it really adds up in the last couple of years. It’s a 33-minute course, well worth the money.
Learn this essential sales skill
Next up on there, I’ve got, How to Sell Over the Phone. I think this is a critical skill. If you sell any kind of coaching program or any kind of agency service, then getting on the phone will be the key to your success. Even if you’re a blogger, and you want more exposure, phone calls and having confidence on the phone and being able to make frictionless sales and generating income on the phone, it’s really my background.
So for $39, you can access some huge knowledge from this. And I’m going to tell you which words to stop using, how to not be sounding like a telemarketer. People will basically buy from you without any sort of pressure or high stress anymore. You know, I don’t think this is a typical training, I think it’s something I’ve built over my own formula for many years. It’s an hour and a half’s worth of solid gold training.
Break out of the solopreneur model
Another one is How to Recruit Your Next Team Member. I mean, the bottom line is you’re going to be a solopreneur unless you can build a team. And solopreneur’s going to limit your income and give you a cap on your scale. So in this training, it’s everything you need to know about hiring a new team member, where to find applicants, the ad format that you can get great people from, interview questions, and the whole hiring process, what to do after you hire, and how to make sure you don’t get staff churn.
I mean, for perspective, my current team have been with me for around 10 years. This system is something I’ve built as a general manager. I was trained in it over 20 years ago, I’ve developed it for the last two decades.
“There are questions you should never ask.”
There are questions you should never ask. There are things that people teach you out there that I strongly disagree with, you basically take my best system and use it to build an incredible business. I have hundreds of people I’ve hired from this. It’s $39. And it will help you be world-class. So in an hour from now, you could be a top-level recruiter, at least in theory, and get out there and start developing.
Upgrading the software upstairs
Another training I’ve got is How to Develop a Strong Mindset. It’s $19, and it’ll help you recognize what sort of subconscious mind programs are holding you back or are causing your success, if you’re already going well It also gives you steps to remove the unwanted programs and scripts that have been put there and install new ones for success.
So it’s a great program. You’ll be able to upgrade the software in your brain, I’ll help you build a stronger, smarter business, because you are the foundation of your business. And if you’re getting stuck, if you’re getting hung up, if you’re getting frustrated, if you feel under-confident, you have imposter syndrome, you’re not being productive, this will cure all of that. For 32 minutes’ worth of training, you’re done.It doesn’t have to be long to be effective.
Your entire life in one management system
Another one here is Life Sheet System. And that’s how to optimize your own life. It’s a system I’ve used, I’ve basically strained everything down into one sheet. It’s $9. And it just tells you my personal organization system. Now I’ve seen a lot of people talking about productivity and organization and charging a lot of money for courses. But this one will really get you up and running.
You’re simply going to learn how to create a little dashboard for your own life. I share with you the platform I’ve been using for that. And it’s very, very easy to use, works on any device, it’s cheap, you’ll be able to declutter your mind, finally. It’s 34 minutes long. And you’ll have a nice little system to start with.
You stand to gain a lot from this strategy
The final one I want to share with you from this is the Powerful Cart Abandonment Strategy. And it’s a detailed cart abandonment strategy that will boost your sales. I’m charging just $19, seriously, for 35 minutes’ worth of training that can make such a substantial gain in your business.
If you don’t have a good cart abandonment – and I’m not talking about the one email that you send saying, oh, here’s that link again – I’m talking about a proper email follow-up sequence, I’ve had copywriters charging me several thousand dollars to write follow-up sequences that perhaps aren’t even as effective as this.
This will probably add 20 percent more to your sales. It will show you what to write, when to send it. You can basically take the system that’s been creating sales for me and for so many people who have implemented this. I’ve had someone come back to me just as recently as yesterday, saying they can’t do offline events anymore, so they went online, they’ve installed this cart abandonment sequence, they’ve put a pre-recorded training series and merged it with the live Q&A. And they’ve now had their best month ever.
And because this is follow-up, after people visit your sales page, and it’s effective, and you get to peek behind the curtain and see what I’m doing.
So that is SuperFastResults. I’m incredibly proud of this new venture, it’s performing well. I also want to acknowledge, I got good design from Greg Merrilees. I’ve been using the 10XPRO platform for this whole site. It was very important for me to use the platform to demonstrate its power. And this is now generating me a fantastic extra income that wasn’t there at the beginning of 2020.
So kudos to John Lint for creating this amazing platform. I highly recommend it. If you’ve got any kind of course or membership, or you want to put your knowledge out there as an expert, get into it. If you take the Profitable Membership Business course, then you’ll actually get some access to 10XPRO to try it out for yourself.
So that’s SuperFastResults, it’s suitable for you if you just want one of those courses, and that’s it. It’s also really good if you’re starting out and you just need a bit of help.
Or if you’re an experienced player, and you want some access to me, and you don’t feel like you want to pester me in my inbox, and that you want to get a massive exchange in value, take on that Coaching Support program, because it’s tremendous value.
For the more established business owner…
Now, if you’re a little more established in business, if you’re already making, say, $10,000 a year and up, then I think SuperFastBusiness is starting to look like an option for you. And I want to talk about what it is, and who it’s for.
This platform has been going for many years, seven or eight years now. I’ve been doing this style of membership for 11 years. What it has got is there’s a monthly group, Ask-Me-Anything call, so you can get on a call. I’m going to talk about the standard program first, which at the moment is just $99 per month, or you can save $400 if you go annual. Okay?
So there’s two levels of ways that you can get into that. You can come on to the monthly Ask-Me-Anything call, which is recorded, and they’re audio, so you can access all the previous recordings. And you can ask me whatever you want live on a call, and I’ll answer it and it’ll be recorded.
All of the trainings I mentioned from SuperFastResults are included in SuperFastBusiness. So technically, you could pay $99, and you can access them for as long as you are a member. Now if you buy the courses on SuperFastResults for a one-time fee, you’ll always be able to log in and access them. With SuperFastBusiness, You can access them as long as you are a member.
Of course, there are PDFs and things you can download and read later and you can store them, that’s fine. But the videos and the access to comments will only be available as long as you’re a member. And that’s fine. It’s been a good way to consume information. I guess you can call it an all-you-can-eat buffet.
So you can get all those trainings, and there’s plenty more. There’s like, at least 43. There’s even more than that probably now. You’ll also get instant access to the forums. So if you like reading other people’s posts or comments, if you want to be able to search and get an answer for just about anything, it’s probably already there. There’s hundreds of thousands of posts.
I’m in there every day answering questions. So you still get that access to me in terms of you ask a question, you’ll get an answer. There’s also a live training call, which is pretty much a new product each month, and you get a new product every month, ongoing. So it really is fantastic value.
And you’ll also get access to all of my live events. So there’s been at least eight or nine of them have been recorded and put in there, and there’s some absolutely incredible presentations. So generally, if you ask a question that one of those presentations solves, I’ll point you to it.
And when they’re happening, we do have live meetups. Now that’s stopped at the moment because of COVID. But I imagine it’ll start up again, and it went for for at least 10 years before it stopped. And it’ll start again. So when that’s back on, you’ll be the first to know about it.
So that’s SuperFastBusiness standard. And then you might be thinking, who’s that for? That is if you just want to pay a very low $99 a month or take an annual subscription. And you’ll basically get a new product every month, be able to ask all your questions and see all of the old information that is still super relevant. And you’ll be able to connect with 400 other people. So that’s a really good option.
If you’ve got a business, you’re already making 10 grand, you just want to get a finger on the pulse and you don’t need an intensive back and forth, or individualized responses, then that’s great. You can still get individualized responses, but other people will be able to see it. There are also handy features in there, like a public journal, if you feel like accountability is important to you. There are group challenges and lots of other cool stuff.
What you get when you go intensive
Now, if you do want to go that next step, then you could join the intensive version. And that’s $799 a month, or $5,000 per year, which would mean you save $2188 at the moment. So all these prices are at time of recording. If you’re listening to this in the future, then the pricing might be different.
So if you go annual, it’s $5,000 a year. And if you take the annual option, you’ll get a one-to-one strategy call with me. And we’ll go through the same diagnostic that I use for SilverCircle members that I’ve been developing for decades. It is a really solid diagnostic. And you’ll do that one-on-one with me, and it’ll probably take an hour or two. So I actually think that’s worth five grand, but I’m a bit biased.
But aside from that, let’s say you take the monthly option for $599. And by the way, with any of these, you can switch around. You can switch from one to the other, if you want, you can switch to SuperFastResults, you can switch from SuperFastResults back to SuperFastBusiness, my team can help you do that.
So if you’re listening to this, and you’re already on a plan, and you want to change, we can do it. If you want to start with one and change down the track, that’s fine. I always suggest you take whatever is comfortable for you, there’s absolutely no pressure for you to take any of these, or any particular. Pick the one that is most relevant.
Now, who would intensive be for? First we got to understand what it is.
This is private coaching with me. So you’ll get your own little section of the forum, which only you and I can see, nobody else. This is where you can share your deepest darkest vulnerabilities, your secrets, your concerns, your fears, you know, what’s really going on. Remember, when I started the private forum option, that’s when the coaching really got good, because when you can just share things with me, and we keep it confidential, then you can really make the progress.
“This is what’s missing from most Facebook groups, etc. People aren’t posting the truth about what’s going on, because they can’t.”
And I think this is what’s missing from most Facebook groups, etc. People aren’t posting the truth about what’s going on, because they can’t. You can’t post publicly that you’ve had a bad month or your sales are going backwards, you know, and not suffer loss of pride. So this is very powerful. And you will get my personal attention. And I check these every day.
And you’ll also get an intensive members-only group thread. So just the intensive members who are on the current rate will see that. There’s only a few people in there. And so you can get a peer group support of people who are in a similar place to you. Now, I imagine the intensive is going to be useful for you, if you’re already doing quite well, if you’re making 100 grand, a couple of hundred thousand, all the way up to millions, this is still going to be useful for you. And I’ll explain why in a minute.
Because this is something brand new that I’ve just added for new members of the intensive and this is a private, weekly intensive group call with me. So every week I get on to GoToMeeting, and I have a live call with you every week. And we use a framework that will extract from you your appreciation for things that you’ve done well, it will deal with the challenges that are on your plate right now. And then we go into what you’re promising to do for the next week.
So there is an accountability and a focus element of it as well. This is what I’ve been running for SilverCircle. It is the exact same SilverCircle call, and there will be some SilverCircle members and revenue share partners from time to time on that call. I’ve been running this call for 11 years. And you can now join it if you’re a member of SuperFastBusiness intensive on the $599 monthly rate or the $5000 per year rate. And that is brand new, as of like, literally, as a week ago from recording this call.
So there’s a reason for that. And that is because SilverCircle is now closed to the public for private one-to-one slash group coaching. Because I’m able to do that now from SuperFastBusiness intensive. So up until last week, if you wanted to come to that call, you would be paying $3,000 per month, and now you can access it for $599.
A look at the partners’ program
So, let’s talk about SilverCircle for a minute. It’s no longer open for public access coaching for one-to-one slash group. I’ve been doing that for over a decade. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve got some great clients. I still have clients in the program, but I’m not accepting new applicants for that program. So you can’t spend $3,000 a month with me on that program.
What it is now is it’s turned into my partners’ program. That’s where my partners go, where I’m building their businesses with them as partners. And I do that on a revenue share basis.
So if you’ve got a good business, and you think it’s a fit for my audience, and I don’t already have a partner in that business category, then we should perhaps chat about that. I’ve put the details up there at SilverCircle.com. This is where you’re willing to give me a small percentage of the revenue over and above what you’ve been able to earn to date, for me to grow your business with you as a partner.
These are long term deals, there are more stringent requirements. And it absolutely has to go through a vetting process. So you and I will be chatting about that. In the first instance, just send me an email and we can chat about what your business is, and if it’s a suitable fit.
So that is it, basically. Hopefully one of those solutions is useful. Now I’m going to address some of the questions that my friend sent me, because I thought it might sort of give some examples of, you know, what I’m thinking and what I typically respond to the many emails I get, and then we can wrap this episode.
Thank you so much for listening, I appreciate it. Of course, we don’t run ads on these episodes. But I will be sending you to this post if you ask me which program is right for you.
A friend’s situation
So my friend sent me this email. He’s been looking after kids, they’ve been in lockdown. He’s been working for corporates, but then he’s had an unemployment period. He’s dealt with all sorts of crazy stuff, and I’m aware of what sort of stuff he would have had to deal with, because I came from the same industry. And he’s basically been shortchanging himself on, you know, a couple of hundred grand a year salary. Because like me, he’s got good skills that could be useful for others.
So a couple of questions he asked me, considering that his overall goal is to go online exclusively, and to not need another job, he wanted to know where to start. And he gave me the overview of what he’s been working on.
If you could develop one skill…
He is educating himself about copywriting, which I think is a tremendous start. If you’ve got any business skills or knowledge, that’s a great place to start.
Because the more we tune our copywriting on our sales offers, the better we can write social media posts, the better we can respond to people when they send questions, the better you can sell on the phone. That’s all going to be infused with good copywriting basics. So if you can get advanced, then that’s great.
It also opens up the potential for you to get a start online with freelance work, because copywriting is what I would consider high-paid hard work. You can do it virtually, so it ticks the online box. It does require great skill, and there is big money involved. And if you get good at it, then of course, you can apply it to your own stuff.
On earning as an affiliate
So the other thing my friend was talking about was affiliate marketing. And he wanted to bring in some affiliate revenue, and he asked me a couple of questions around that. And he was thinking also of sponsored content. That would be really good if you’re taking the content site training, because I talk about how I revenue some of the sites that I have.
Also, affiliate marketing is close to my core. It’s how I started online. You can do it virtually, you can get tips from our other members who are doing it very well, you’ll get a good handle on effective conversion rates and squeeze pages and copy, etc. There’s a couple of affiliate trainings inside the membership.
Courses, memberships and selling websites
Of course, the real sweet spot for me is the online course. And that’s where you can use platforms like 10XPRO to just absolutely go berserk. If you’ve got any kind of expertise, or you can find an expert who would be willing to sell you their information or do some kind of partnership, you can get going with a membership, and I talk about that in the Profitable Membership Business course.
And that will give you totally flexible online business. I love it. I love SuperFastResults, and that’s a great example, it’s a working example of what we’re talking about here with online courses.
Buy, renovate, hold, sell websites. Absolutely, this is a good business. I usually refer people to a friend of mine. I’ve got a few people I’ve sent there where they like real estate investing, they have a feel for developing and holding these sites, and they want to make money on them. I’m going to recommend someone else for that.
Personal interest blogs. Certainly that’s something to consider as a luxury, and maybe as a tax deduction. But I would focus on the other areas first.
James’s market recommendations
So he had a few questions around this. For affiliate marketing, you know, he asked if it’s a good place to start, and I said, Yes, it’s okay to start with that. For sure. But not in his case. I think he should probably start as a freelance copywriter, because he’s learning copy, it’s a valuable skill. Most people suck at it. A lot of people need it. It’s less competitive, probably, than affiliate marketing. But affiliate marketing is a great place to practice your copy. So why not do both?
In terms of the markets that I suggest, he asked, do I like Clickbank or Amazon, etc. I don’t. I don’t like those markets so much. What I like is having a direct relationship with a product supplier. I like to go to software companies and promote their software. I want to be off those mainstream platforms, because they’re very, very competitive. And often the commission is not as good.
Clickbank’s good. Amazon is not so good. And they’ve certainly made some big changes to their program. So I like to get good recurring income, especially from software companies. And that’s how I still make affiliate money today, is making good recommendations.
Like the next level in affiliate deals
And of course, if you want to take it to the next level, then go for revenue share deals. And I will be adding a revenue share training to SuperFastResults. I do teach it in SuperFastBusiness. And I absolutely deploy this model with my SilverCircle partners. It is a fantastic arrangement for both parties. And it’s like the ultimate affiliate deal. Imagine if you can be an affiliate of a person’s entire business.
“Imagine if you can be an affiliate of a person’s entire business.”
He asked, what’s a minimum commission? Well, typically you’re going to look for 20 percent minimum, but often it’ll be 40 percent or 50 percent.
In terms of payment terms, almost every affiliate company is going to want to hold the money for a little while till they pay you, check out what their refunds are or they offset it. If you’re doing any pay per lead, they might scrub bad leads if you send rough quality. So there you go.
He asked, when I did promote it, was I doing it because it was promoted, or because I liked it or knew about it. Well, I did it because it was a great way I could add value. I was able to harness my skills with it. And I cared a lot about the people I was helping with a good solution. And yes, it was lucrative. And there’s a lot of mistakes you could make for sure.
Do you need insurance?
He asked if you need insurance. Of course, depending on the country, like, some countries are more litigious. If you’re in one country and someone else’s in another country, it’s probably harder for them to pursue you legally. I wouldn’t recommend trading as a sole trader. And ideally, you’re going to set up a company structure that reduces your liability to start with. It’s not that hard to do.
And yes, it’s good if you can have insurance if you’re doing anything high-risk. But in the beginning, if you’ve got very few assets, or you’re not making much money, you don’t have that much to lose. So I’d set that as a trigger. For most of my clients, I’d say if you’re doing a million dollars a year, you definitely want to consider having the correct structure to reduce your liability.
Additional smart advice
In terms of online courses, could he take everything he’s known and turn it into a course? Yes. But he should also make sure he checks in with his market and see, what else is already selling? Is there demand? How much do they sell for? And could he sell the course before he makes it? These would be my suggestions.
In terms of websites, should he learn about coding or building a website to help him with his journey? No, absolutely not. Do not learn coding, do not learn website design. There are a gazillion coders and designers out there. In the beginning, I used to teach that. But I still didn’t even learn coding.
There are platforms like 10XPRO that just take all the hard bits out of it. You don’t have to worry about the hosting, the coding, the design. You can have someone change the colors on it and move things around, for sure. The design can be updated, but you don’t need it out of the box. You no longer have to worry about all the junk we’re worried about.
“Do not learn how to build a website unless you want to be a website developer.”
Do not learn how to build a website unless you want to be a website developer, which by all means, you’ll need to learn how to build a website. But look, I know people in the website development business getting out of it. And I know people who do WordPress who have stopped working on it because it’s become so commoditized. So just don’t. Just don’t. Be a marketer, be a business person. Hire those people.
Should you learn about SEO and Google Analytics? Yes, you should install Google Analytics. Yes, you should have a good understanding of SEO. But again, I would hire professionals like Gert Mellak from SEOLeverage.com when you’ve got a good site. But it’s good to get a basic understanding of it. And I’ll give you the basic understanding of SEO – make really great content that Google wants to put at the top of their page. And don’t do anything spammy or tricky to try and jag the result, because you’ll be penalized for it. That’s one of the basics.
Now, he mentioned I previously said I had 2000 domains. Is that 2000 running at once? Are they all profitable? I had 1000 blogs at once. I used them for my SEO business. So it was profitable for that. We were able to generate links and rank anything quickly and easily. I then changed my model to not need those sites. I then sold a lot of the sites and then I let a few domains go. Because not all domains, you know, are worth anything. And I sold some of the premium domains from time to time.
And, yeah, I’ve got the fewest domains that I’ve ever had for a long time right now, because you don’t need many domains. Almost all of my money comes from my three domains, SuperFastResults, SuperFastBusiness, and SilverCircle. So you don’t need a lot of domains.
He enjoyed my talk about content site. And that was motivating. So that’s good.
The best coaching program for this friend
In terms of motivation and money, he just went through what he’s trying to make. So basically the end of it, he asked what’s the best option for him. And I’ve said this because he’s got previous background and skills, because he’s got the potential to create courses fairly quickly, and because his venture into copywriting freelancing would rely on having customers, he should join SuperFastBusiness standard.
That will be the best place for him because he will get a return on investment instantly. One copy job, and he’s paid for his first month; one course out there, and he’s paid for his first year. So that’s why I suggested that. It’s a very low risk for him to spend $99 and give it a shot for a month. And that’s where we go.
So I want to thank my friend for sending that email. It was something we could turn into a podcast episode. Maybe if you’re listening to this, and you’ve got a podcast or you have any kind of membership or service where you have customers, speak with your customers. That’s where you get the absolute best ideas.
If you listened to this episode, and it’s been helpful, please let me know. I always appreciate the feedback. We don’t have a big ad pre-roll at the start of this and we don’t have a big ad pre-roll at the end of this. This is a straight-up SuperFastBusiness, that’s what I do.
I hope I see you in one of those platforms. And thank you so much for listening, and we’ll be back with regular content on the next episode. This is Episode 775. I’ll see you on the next one.
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