October 8, 2018
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Can your passion make you $1 million? In "The Circle of Profit" book review you will uncover the truth behind the book and I'll let you know what my own experience has been so far.
Pros
Cons
Anyone wanting to have a successful online business! It really does show you how to get started using email marketing and the 2-phase process that being an email marketer can make money online.
Phase 1 is using affiliate marketing to start earning an income through your online business. Phase 2 is how to create your own content to really expand your online business.
I have learnt a lot about creating an online business over the past few months. The more I have understood how online businesses work the more I have realised the importance of using email marketing (basically collecting email addresses and sending them regular emails).
Most people that make money online have an "email list" and I have heard from numerous people that wish they started collecting email addresses much sooner.
The reasoning behind this is that you have someones undivided attention in an email. If they read something on social media they can easily skim over it or not even see it due to the platform's algorithms (techy stuff that each social media platform has to decide what you see on your timeline). You can build trust through emails and it will only be seen by people who have chosen to access it.
Anik suggests that a rough figure is $1 per month per email that you have. i.e. 10,000 email addresses equates to $10,000 per month (roughly).
It is 100% worth a read if you would like to understand how it is possible to make money online and it has helped me to learn so much!
It is an email marketing program. It shows you how to use affiliate marketing and eventually your own products to make money by emailing your audience. The main 2 things to do are collect email addresses and sell products.
THE 8-STEPS
1. Passion Product
Discover your passion! The idea is to find a niche that you are interested in. If you'd like more information on how to find this, I go into more detail in "how to find your niche" (the video on here can save hours of unnecessary work that I went through!)
2. Opt-in Page
Create an opt-in page with an offer of a free gift in return for the visitor's email address. This is a standalone website that collects email addresses.
3. Autoresponders and Newsletters
An autoresponder is a programme that collects email addresses and automatically sends out emails. This is a crucial part of any online business and without email addresses (or an autoresponder) your online business won't exist.
The 4 that he mentions are:
There are other free autoresponders such as Chimpmail or Mailerlite, but I have found both of these to block my account due to messages sent. They really notice affiliate marketing links and don't allow these to be sent in an email, so they may not be the best ones to try with an affiliate marketing business (top tip- A workaround is to put your blog links into the emails and put the affiliate links in the blog posts, which seems to work fine on both free servers).
4. Get traffic
The fastest and easiest way to get traffic (visitors to your website- in this case, the opt-in page) is to buy it from the targeted sources. Traffic is the lifeline of every online business.
Anik mentions a variety of methods such as posting on forums or blogs (which appears to be outdated slightly/ are seen as spam on most blogs), Facebook advertising and email media (paying someone else that has an email base to send out an email for you).
5. Affiliates, Relationships, and Networking
Anik really knows his networking. He has built relationships with top-class entrepreneurs like Bob Proctor and Robert Kiyosaki.
He shows how having a good connection to other affiliate marketers can help you (and them) to build your own brands.
6. Passion Product
I thought this part of the book was amazing. Anik explains how to simply create a product within your niche that you can start selling.
This will be the long game and make the most profit in the long run but you don't necessarily need it to start making money initially. His explanation of written, audio or video products and how you can outsource some or even all of it, means it doesn't have to be a daunting task (obviously you pay for this with the money already made through affiliate sales!)
7. Sales Funnels- Frontend/ Backend
Anik talks about needing to know how to draft a proper sales message – written, audio, or video. Sales funnels are the key to multiplying your revenues.
I don't disagree with him on that but I do know that getting upsells can be really annoying when you think you have just bought a product and it turns out the upsell is ACTUALLY the product you wanted. So make sure if you have upsells they are clearly different from the products you are originally promoting i.e. online course to personal coaching.
You have your leads and you have your sales. What do you do with them? Well, as with every other business – you sell them more stuff. This is the part that I found very hard to read when I first looked at it. However, Anik puts it in a way that makes it seem more honest and acceptable to me.
Selling is good and necessary. Have you ever found a great deal when out shopping? It may be a super cheap holiday or a bargain on a pair of trainers. Do you keep that info to yourself or do you tell all your friends about it? It's the same online! If you find a great product that works, then tell your audience about it (equally tell them if you try a product and it was terrible)... they want to know!
8. Profit
Once you have everything down and connected – you launch your products. Either a full-blown time-sensitive launch or a rolling launch. You decide!
That’s when you make your money. And what do you do with the profit you make? You re-invest it into growing your business.
Make more products around your passions, drive more subscribers through your opt-in page, and create an authority in your niche.
There are so many success stories throughout the book. Anik mentions loads of "his" students that have been through the training and obviously they have all done amazing!
As with most salespeople, he forgets to mention the ones that don't do so well. Reading between the lines on the huge success stories it is clear to see that most of these people had some experience of working online or a business already up and running. So it's important to take these stories with a pinch of salt if you are brand new to working online.
What I must say is that I have spoken to a few people that have been through his inbox blueprint course (which he highly recommends throughout the book... so if you don't like that sort of thing this is your warning about it!) All of these people seem to be very happy with the products and learning they have received from using it.
I'm yet to speak to anyone who is earning MEGA bucks or who have told me exactly the monetary results from the course, but I'm yet to speak to anyone who has hated it and found it a waste of time.
So I read the book, I got super excited about it and thought I had found the answers to all the questions I was looking for. But (how did you know there was a but!!) it turns out it's really hard to get people to give you their email addresses... Yes even though I was offering a FREE e-book!!
I set up my email list on Chimpmail.
I made an opt-in page and pretty much copied one that was in the book.
I spent time setting up my initial 10 emails to send out to all the subscribers I was about to get.
I spent a couple of days putting my free e-book together.
I used the Facebook advertising method and spent £20 to get about 3,000 relevant people to look at my advert.
I managed to get about 200 people to click on the link and view my opt-in page.
And I managed to get a big fat total of.... ZERO people subscribe to my email list!! (enter "throw the toys out of the pram" tantrum)
It was sooooo disheartening spending all that time creating the free e-book & email responses to have NOBODY even look at them!!! I then re-read the book (yes front to back). I realised I went wrong on step ONE!!!!! Step bleeding ONE!! I didn't even clear the first hurdle (Muppet!) I realised I didn't even check out if my "niche" was profitable.
This is a huge reason as to why I've written an in-depth post about "how to find your online niche" and made a video to show you step-by-step what you SHOULD do to get started (and just in case you were thinking about starting a niche of "health, success and happiness"... DON'T!!! It is so broad that it's not even close to being considered a niche and pretty much includes every human on earth that is interested in it... which is why that won't work online- you have to be clear and specific in what you do!)
I also realised I didn't know how to sell. I have since learned that people buy on emotion... not logic. They will often justify the purchase with logic after they have been swayed emotionally. So my logical and bullet point adverts did not get people emotionally involved at any stage. You literally have to spell the dream out to them or hit a specific problem that they already encountered.
It's a learning curve and I learnt heaps! I keep finding the following quote to be so relevant to my life currently:
"I never lose. I either win or I learn."
That really helped me put things in perspective after this painful ordeal!! Check out my advert compared to some random advert I just saw on FB. You can see the difference right!?
My advert doesn't solve anybody's problem. It doesn't really sell any dream. To be honest, it just looks like it will be a waste of time to even read it, so why would anyone give up their private email address for this!?
This advert is clearly solving a problem... How to run a PROFITABLE online business from scratch.
It's something that some people would REALLY want. If they already know they want to start this, and the video of the guy can attract them in then they will give up their email address for FREE to receive a shot at getting what they want (btw I literally just found this so can you see how powerful FB adverts can be, Facebook knows that I have an interest in making money online to free up my time and so it specifically sends me adverts related to this!!)
It wasn't that long ago that I was still trying to figure out how it's possible for people to make money online.
I wanted to find a passive income system that ticked a few boxes:
UPDATE- In September 2018 that I found Wealthy Affiliate. At the end of 2019 I quit my full-time job to dedicate more time to it.
I had no idea where to start with an online business a year before, but this has shown me step-by-step what to do.
The best thing about it is:
When you try out this program you will see why so many people recommend it.
I think everyone should read this if they are interested in making money online as it has a step by step guide into setting up a profitable online system.
The information is all there in the book.
If you already have a business or some basic sales skills then this book would really compliment these skills with practical advice on how to use email marketing.
It really simplifies the process, which makes it easy to understand. However, it also means that it sounds really easy to do when, in fact, a lot of these things take time to learn or figure out. You still have to create content to get started such as a free gift and promotions to get people looking at your opt-in page.
Beware of the promotions for Anik's courses such as the inbox blueprint. As I say I have only heard good things about this course but it does seem like it's a product to get after you already have a clear niche and some understanding of how affiliate marketing works.
It comes at a steep price of $997 so you really need to be certain that creating an online business is for you.
Keep changing for the better,
Mike
P.S. Since you're still here, I'm assuming you're interested in making money online to free up your time. Click here to read my review of my #1 recommended program and join the form below to learn how to build an online business with no experience.
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