198 – Listener Comments Episode 5

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Welcome to another episode of listener comments. And in this fifth round, listeners share their appreciation, their own perception and get all their questions answered by yours truly.

In this episode:

01:25 – Get featured on an OwnTheRacecourse episode
03:59 – How much would it cost to build SuperFastBusiness.com?
06:29 – Where to submit your podcast
07:30 – James agrees to disagree
12:33 – An old friend drops by
12:55 – Risks involved in syndicating your content
15:16 – Succeeding with better questions
16:39 – A podcast is not what most people think it is…
18:24 – Yes, your microphone is ON
18:46 – Helpful tips on branding
21:00 – To launch a new product, start with this
23:11 – Tell me what you want
25:11 – The big event is coming this June!

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Quotables:

You’ve got to separate the emotion here and go for a little bit more logic. [Click To Tweet].
You don’t have to have a mentor. [Click To Tweet].
If you’re going to go brandable, get a decent brand. [Click To Tweet].

 

 

Transcription:
Hi, this is James Schramko and welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com podcast and this is a listener comments episode. I love to get actual listener call-ins so you can dial in and leave your voice message which I will then comment on or answer.

If you’ve got a question, I’ll do my best to answer it. If you’ve just got some feedback on SuperFastBusiness.com then I also accept those as well. And you don’t always have to always agree with me, and that’s part of the magic of this show.  

So, you will have noticed that SuperFastBusiness.com looks a bit different these days. We’ve had another site design, and I’m pleased to announce that we are now getting more than 30,000 visits a month and with just on that 60,000 page use per month. So it’s really exciting to see it continue to grow.

There are more and more subscribers being added because the conversion elements are working well. And the podcast itself is working well because I’m actually putting more dedicated podcasts. In fact in the last week alone I’ve done more interviews and I love the listener comments thing.  

So, let’s get into those questions. I’m going to start off with Andrew Cordova.  

Listener:    Hey, what’s going on James. Andrew Cordova here. Long time listener. I love SuperFastBusiness podcast and also Think Act Get with Ezra. I think you guys make an awesome team. And because of you guys, I’m going to start my own podcast. I’ll let you guys know about it as soon as it’s up and running.

Anyways, I’ve been implementing OwnTheRacecourse and having you know, seen tremendous results on my own website. I’m going to be launching another website using the same principles and have you to thank for it. So, thanks a lot for the idea and OwnTheRacecourse, the free course, it’s super awesome.

And one question I have for you really quick, on SuperFastBusiness.com there’s the 7-Part Business Growth Training pop-up that comes up on the bottom hand corner when you scroll down the page. I think you mentioned it one time in a podcast but I can’t remember what it was and I kinda want to implement it on one of my sites.

So, if you could just let us know what it is and where I can get it, I would be super grateful. And also, thanks for putting on too Clay Collins, his LeadPages and LeadPlayer. I’m getting a ton of opt-ins just from, mostly from LeadPages, a little bit from LeadPlayer but those are opt-ins I wouldn’t have gotten before so I’m super stoked about it.

I love the Welcome Gate and the Squeeze Pages that are fit onto the Facebook page. So, yeah, thanks a lot James and I look forward to hearing from you guys in the future. Peace.

James:    Alright, Andrew! Started a podcast and doing more. I’m pleased to have been able to inspire that and OwnTheRacecourse definitely works, no doubt about it. These days I’m getting screenshots from people every few days. In fact I might do another OwnTheRacecourse customer results segment.

So if you’ve been doing OwnTheRacecourse and you’d like to be featured on that, be sure to leave me a message and I’ll see if I can organize that. Now, the plugin is called Scroll Triggered box and it’s by Dreamgrow. And it’s free. And that’s that little yellow thing that flies up when you scroll down on SuperFastBusiness.com. And I want to credit Pep Laya for putting me onto that. He’s a really good conversions genius and we’ve been installing on all of our websites

That’s a very, very good way to collect opt-ins on the basis that people are only opting-in when they’re scrolling down. It’s like they’re engaged and actually interested in the site enough to scroll, and that’s when it shows so it’s a user behaviour-triggered plugin called Scroll Triggered Box. So, well done Andrew and I’m really looking forward how successful the next one is.

Listener:    Hi, James. James, what would it cost me, in money, to have your guys build me a site like SuperFastBusiness.com? Full package, with OwnTheRacecourse and everything, you know, everything there. And what would it cost me, in time, to try and build this myself.

I’ve built websites for other businesses. I’m not a full-time developer or designer but rather a media guy like yourself, like you’ve become.  So, what’s your advice on this? I found it pretty difficult for some odd reason to build my own site. I can build everyone else’s but it seems to be harder building your own. Advice! Love your stuff.

James:    Ok, Brad. That’s a great question. My take on this is, well, I’m not building my own site either. I have my team to do that. Anyone can access my team at ATLWeb.com. And if you go along there, and you want a site like SuperFastBusiness.com, the team are well-versed in it since they built it. And we make all our own changes.

Now, we build upon a platform called Genesis, which is about to be updated at the time of recording. And you can go along order a custom website for less than $2,000 and they will do a design mock-up approval process, send you some concepts, you check out the look, and you can make your own version.

Now, of course, you’re not going to have the exact same template that I have. You might have something very similar but you’ll need to choose your own colours and personality. And you might want some customizations.

However, we’ve put in the hard work to build our site already so if you want the exact same team to do it, and you want a very similar look, go for it. Order it at ATLWeb.com. Now if you want it mobile responsive so it works on anything, you just need to add extra hours to that and we do sell 5-hour packs which is our most popular program.

Then if there’s anything else you want done, then we can probably deal with it for most of our business units. We have a business unit called SuperFastBusiness Traffic Services and if you submit an audio or video to us, we can do the OTR process for you, and we do four of those a month for around about $300.

The same team to do all of my stuff, can work on your site. I really appreciate that question Brad. Thank you for asking it and don’t worry about not being able to work on your site. As you said, you’re a marketer and that’s where your highest value is. Stick to that just like I do for my business.

Listener:    Hey, James. This is Brian Knowlton with howtoearnmoney.tv. I’m just starting publishing a podcast with cast and was wondering if there were any networks that I should definitely submit my podcast too other than the usual iTunes. Really love your blog and all your podcast and videos. Thanks again!

James:    I submit my podcasts to another network called Stitcher because it makes it pretty easy for people to consume media. But that’s about it. I put it on iTunes and Stitcher. And of course I stream it to my website using the plugin, Blubrry.

And I know that a lot of people listen to my podcast on my website and interestingly enough, around about the same audio downloads per episode as I get for video even when I put a video there. So the audio medium is very strong. So there you go, put it up on iTunes and Stitcher and on your website, and you should be fine.

Listener:    Hi, James. I’m listening to your video from time to time so it was a  good opportunity to find out about your opinion about getting qualified. Actually, I would say that people listen to who they “like,” because if they’re qualified according to “whom” they are qualified, and you know, there are so many instances that qualify or disqualify you and I find it a bit, you know, it’s like, it’s like everything.

I’m receiving like a hundred emails per week from different gurus, some different social gurus and business people and stuff like that. So, when I’m listening to this, I myself look, I like this content or I dislike this content, but no one in the world can tell me if this is a qualified person or not a qualified person. This is just my opinion, my pure opinion. I respect yours but I think people are listening to who they like.

So, it’s actually it’s just an emotional attachment or an emotional response rather than fully, like in brackets, “qualified person” or not. So, I’m not a public speaker but I could be.  I mean, I graduated at some… some course here in Sydney some NLP things and I’ve been to a Chris Howard course.

Actually I think met you through a Chris Howard course, this specialized training. And I like what you say and I like what you do but I said it’s just a sensitive thing because some people could say, “Look, I don’t think this is qualified.” or “This is qualified.” So I think it’s just the kind of collective opinion here. Because if you like a person and you say, I like his energy, I think he knows what he’s talking about.

It’s just… that: people energy. And people will like what they see, what that person says or not. So I don’t know if it matters so much, that kind of qualifying thing, you know. This is just my opinion. So I’m Catalin Anastace. Thank you very much for your email and I’m just trying to respect the maximum recording duration which is two minutes. Thanks very much, James. And looking forward to speak with you soon.  Bye.

James:    Alright Catalin. Yeah, I think we totally disagree on that. I think that you can disqualify people for being able to teach you stuff because there are actually certifications and qualifiers that you can reference. One being, if someone purports themselves to be an expert on productivity or effectiveness and they appear to be chaotic and disorganized, that, according to my grandfather, was a good reason not to listen to them about that subject.

And I think the trap is that you might like someone and that’s not a good enough reason to follow their advice. In fact the post that we were talking about here was “How to protect yourself from getting bad advice.” And the whole concept is, there’s plenty of lovely, charming, lovely people out there who you might like but that does not qualify them to teach you and I think it’s a process of disqualification.

You should be asking for validation or proof that these people know what they’re talking about and it’s not that hard to glean this information. One way is to directly ask them, another way is to do some research online. But it’s the same, that’s like saying you should hire someone in any job because you like them. It’s just not good enough.

You’ve got to separate the emotion here and go for a little bit more logic when it comes down to this. If you’re going to give someone your money, then be very careful who that is.

The other thing is, you mentioned, you’re getting a hundred emails a week from marketers. I have to think how’s that working out for you? I would refine down and filter your list to just a few people who are actually getting you results. Think about the information they sent and how you were able to implement it and what results you get.

Now in every single day, I’m getting success emails from people saying that they got this or they got that success and they’re commenting on the blog posts and they’re making notes about this on my forum. And I know that if I needed to, I can point other people to these examples of success and that would be proof that perhaps I know what I’m talking about for the topics that I’m covering.

So, even if we have different opinions, Catalin, I’m happy if you do what you think is best and my advice to anyone who’s keen is still protect yourself from getting bad advice by asking for some qualifications and just having a good look at the person purporting to be an expert and see if it all makes sense. Ask yourself, “Why are they selling me this week and then last week, they were selling me something different?” It doesn’t really add up sometimes.

Listener:    Love your work, Shremmers, you inspire great things.

James:    Ok, that was a nice friend of mine, David, who use to work with me in the motor industry. It’s lovely to hear your voice there, David. Thank you for your encouragement and I love hearing from people in my previous life, who are following me on this new journey online. So, it’s great. I hope things are going well for you, David.

Listener:    Hey, James. How you doin’? This is Fernando from FernDogOnline.com. Got a question regarding copy in SEO. I’ve been in a number of places, they have contacted me and they want to post my blog postings on their sites.

So they just want to copy and paste it word for word and put it on their sites and give a link to my site. And I’m worried that, although I like the exposure in the fact they want to do this, I’m actually worried though that this is going to be seen as duplicate content by Google and it would actually hurt my page rankings because of that. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this. Thanks so much! I appreciate all your help.

James:    Ok, Fernando, here’s the scoop. If you let people cut and paste your content on their site, there is actually a risk and the risk is their site might be more powerful than your site. In which case I have seen instances where their site might outrank your site for your own content. Then there’s the question mark of how they’re going to attribute your authorship to that, and if they’re going to pass that back to you.

Obviously they’ve got something for them. They’re getting good content for nothing. Now I would suggest the different method. When people want to use my content, I ask them to rewrite it or I get someone to rewrite it and give them a different version. That’s the secret. Make it different.

And you might be a guest poster or a guest contributor to someone else’s site, give them different content and make sure that you put a different backlink to your site on each instance of your handing out content. So, you’re not just going to get the same thing over and over again because that’s a sure sign of manipulation and Google doesn’t like that. So, there you go.

I suggest, hold on to your very best content for your website, and if you do syndicate that content, just allow people to put a snippet or a rewrite or give them a different version of it that they can use. And forget about using spinning software and all those junky tools, this has got to be hand-done.

There’s no shortcuts, hand-written content. And if you find it hard to write content, then just dictate something and have someone transcribe it. You can get transcriptions very cheap and it’s a great way to stretch an idea into multiple formats.

Listener:    Hello James! There was a little disconnection between the email, “[What if you don’t have a mentor]” and this title, “How to Succeed With Better Questions.”

James:    Hey Francesco, thanks for that. So you’re saying that there was a disconnect between my email that said “How to succeed without a mentor?” and the post was, “How to Succeed with Better Questions?” Well, for me, they’re more or less the same things. My email is just making a point that you don’t have to have a mentor.

Now certainly, you can speed up your success if you do have one and a lot of people are saying they’re not ready for it yet. So my technique that I really wanted to share is that you can ask yourself better questions and I put a whole post on that. So I don’t think it’s a complete disconnect, I think it’s on the same lines.

But the way that my process works is, I create the video on the content first and it gets posted to the site and then at some point later, I will craft an email to drive traffic. And sometimes when I’m writing that email, I might have a better angle or a way that I’d rather phrase it that is going to motivate people to go and have a look at the post.

So, I’ll always make sure that it’s very similar, but it might not be identical. But I’m glad that you followed through to have a look and hopefully the information was helpful for you.

Listener:    Hi James! Thanks for another… it’s Julia, sorry. Thanks for another great little lesson and particularly the reminder that the podcast is just a traffic source and not a product and you can sell a lot just by creating good content and just mentioning almost in passing a product. Thanks a lot. Bye!

James:    Hey Julia that’s a great point. I do get asked that a lot, “How to monetize a podcast?” and the answer is, “Sell something.” (Laughs.) You use the podcast to generate traffic and then you can mention products. But also, you can specifically and explicitly mention your products, you don’t have to hide it. But the point is the podcast itself – unless you’re going to get sponsors and try that revenue model – is pretty hard to monetize.

And I remember hearing John Lee Dumas talking about the tremendous amount of traffic he had earlier on but wasn’t monetizing that and I think now he’s probably monetizing it well with all the services and memberships. So if you can drive your traffic or build your community and then tell them about something you own or somebody else owns that you can affiliate with, that’s how you make money from a podcast.

I mean, for example, this is a podcast and my main contributors are actually listeners and my answers to these questions will be relevant for most of my audience, and I’m still able to mention my products and services.

However, I don’t choose the questions, you choose the questions so I’m only putting a product link or recommendation where it’s appropriate. But because my market research is very solid, a lot of the things I provide will be solutions to most people’s questions. I hope that makes sense.

Listener:    Is my microphone on? I think it is but we’re going to try it.

James:    Yes, I think your microphone is on. Now it wouldn’t be a listener comments episode without the old “mic test.” Love it. Thank you for calling in. Hopefully you get it all the way to asking a question.

Listener:    James, thanks for the tip. I disagree to some extent mainly because by social media and everything’s been set up under Ray M Feeney and I’m going to continue with that. My company name is RMF Enterprises and I haven’t used… I haven’t tried to brand that. So I’m going to stick with Ray M Feeney for the time being. I may go ahead and start with the business branding later.

James:    Hey, Ray.  Look, you know, if my company name was RMF Enterprises, I wouldn’t bother branding it either. I actually have a company called J-Six Solutions and I don’t brand that. That’s why I came up with SuperFastBusiness. Now I do have social properties under my own name, my Twitter account, and I’ve got a personal Facebook page and that’s fine.

But if you’re going to go brandable, get a decent brand, that trading company’s not going to get that exciting for your audience.  And to a large extent, it depends if you ever plan to sell the business. If you’re lucky enough to find another Ray M Feeney, they might find a lot of value in your business.

However, if you want to sell it, it’s going to be a little bit more difficult.  So just keep that in mind, but there’s certainly validity in the whole concept of not building a whole business to sell. If you want to be a speaker, author, expert or your name is your brand, then your name is your authority and that’s where you make the money.

So whatever you choose, just remember that you get to decide and build around a strategy. In my case, I’m still comfortable building out my business names and my brands. A lot of my customers know my brands and I know that because they searched directly into the browser.

In fact a huge proportion of people come into SuperFastBusiness.com go to the browser and type “superfastbusiness” into the browser and that’s how I know the brand is strong. Same for SuperFastBusiness Traffic Services, my SEO company, a lot of direct search traffic and SuperFastBusiness.

So whichever one you choose, go for it. But if you are an authority as well, remember, it’s pretty easy for you to jump start a brand by starting a new brand and then Ray M Feeney can lend that authority to the brand.  The same way that Richard brands and lends his authority to the virgin brand.

Listener:    Hey James. My name is Ryan. I’m from publicspeakingman.com and just wanted to say that I love the podcast and love the OwnTheRacecourse strategy and everything that you do.

My question is, I can create videos, I can create the content, I can do all of that stuff but what’s the easiest and quickest way that I can create a product that people are willing to pay for? And should I launch with you know, a one-off product or should I launch with some sort of membership site?  Thanks again for everything and I look forward to hearing your response.

James:    Hey Ryan. Great question! Before you rush out and create that product, start with your content, get that OwnTheRacecourse stuff going. Make some videos. Start with the questions people ask you, the things that you’re saying over and over again. What’s on your little “make this video” list that ideas pop into your head because someone mentions something that you think is pretty cool or they want help with.

Have you had to sit down and step someone through recently?  Because that would probably be the basis for some kind of course and what are you an expert in that people already pay money for or that you teach live that you want to leverage online? I would suggest you start with one module of some description so that you can at least have a feature post.

See, OwnTheRacecourse is one of dozens of dozens of courses that I’ve made and I’ve decided to give that away for free. But from that spawn a lot of different services, we have our Short Video Pack where we do OwnTheRacecourse for people. We have our Web Development team, ATLWeb.com, where we build websites for other people because variably, our customers are going to want to have a website and they’re going to want to have traffic.

So, what industry are you in? What things do people already pay for? What would they like to learn? What courses do they already buy that you have an expertise on, that you can put together at least a good module on.

And I’m talking a 12-minute or less module. Put that up on your site, get it out there, get feedback, and if you want to ramp it up or create extension models then they could be paid. So that’s how I’d start if I’d start from scratch.

Listener:    Hi there. Thank you for providing this simple but useful information in “How to Design an Effective Training Course.” I really appreciate you taking the time out to do this and I just want to wish you all the best for the rest of the future as you do more of this for us guys out here. Blessings and have a great day. Bye!

James:    Ah, Valerie, that’s very kind and thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate it when someone gets some value from the stuff that I’m putting there. I will definitely be creating more and in fact, listener, if you want me to create something in particular, then hop on the Send Voice Message tab at the footer of the site at SuperFastBusiness.com.

Tell me what you want. I’ll make a few videos. I’ll put you in the future Listener Comments episode and I’ll remember to credit whoever asks me for it. So I’m kind of in the mood now to make a few little content videos. I’ve been sending the guys and girls in SuperFastBusiness.com some special videos lately.

I showed them how I optimized the page titles on SuperFastBusiness.com which doubled the amount of search queries within a day of me adjusting that so there you go. There’s lots and lots of cool stuff that I could share with you, I just need to know what you want so I’m asking you: What would you like to see on SuperFastBusiness.com and I’ll put that in a future episode.

So there you go, that’s our Listener Comments episode number 5. Hope you’ve enjoyed it. I’m going to be doing a lot more podcasts. I know you love the videos. I’m also doing these podcasts now and that is because it’s so easy to do.  I love the medium, you can listen to it anywhere and hopefully you get some tremendous value from it.

Now on the side note, I’m moving over a lot of my very best posts that I had at InternetMarketingSpeed across to SuperFastBusiness.com. This will be the new home for those posts. And I’m hoping to see you at FastWebFormula 4 Live in Sydney in June. So hopefully if you’re listening to this before the event, go to FWF4.com and grab a ticket.

Now if you missed the cut off or you’re listening to this sometime in the future, that’s OK, head over to SuperFastBusiness.com where you can join 700 other people who are interested in growing their Internet business nice and strong and profitable.

I log in every single day and answer questions in there. That is the place to be where you’re going to learn much faster. Well I’m James Schramko, this has been another episode. Catch up with you in the future episodes.

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