… I’m Making SOL
Those of you who subscribe to my email newsletter will have read about my admission that I have SOS …
That’s Shiny Object Syndrome…
… the irresistible urge to buy one or more of the never ending products being launched these days.
In their marketing material, lots of marketers online criticize those of us that buy Shiny Objects ,classifying us as no hope, go nowhere wishful thinkers, as a reason why we should buy their products instead.
All while at the same time buying shiny objects themselves.
I agree that flitting from one shiny object to another with no real purpose in mind is a pointless waste of time, and many of them simply don’t work anyway. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be buying any new products at all.
There is a way that we can satisfy our weakness for buying, while at the same time benefiting our business.
And that’s where SOL comes in.
SOL is Shiny Object Lemonade and is a concept that I recently learned from Lee Murray.
The idea is to use new products being released to further our progress towards a goal. In the process of doing this we also effectively review products for other people to benefit from.
I really like this idea because it is a fact that more and more people are buying WSO’s and JVZoo launches now and it’s my belief that the majority of the time those purchases just end up clogging up hard drives or worse, never actually getting downloaded in the first place.
Unlike a lot of people I hear, I’m not having a go at anybody here, it’s very easy to fall into this trap because before you’ve got the download link for the product, several more have been launched and are being promoted by the world and his wife.
Shiny Object Lemonade forces you to only buy products that fit in with your current goal but also to put them to work to see if they are really what the sales page made them out to be, and help you progress towards your goal.
My First Goal
OK, so time to get started. I’ve decided that my first goal is about list building. Having a responsive mailing list is key to success online. All the top marketers not only have large lists but credit their success to the fact that they do have a large list.
Sarah Staar, who is a friend of mine that I meet at the now famous London lunches, says that her very successful business didn’t take off until she started building a list.
Martin Avis, who runs the lunches, has made the majority of his income for 15 years now from his list.
Everyone needs a list, and if you have a list already, you need a bigger list and you need it to be responsive.
So for my first goal I’ve set myself a target to build a new list from scratch of 5000 people.
This will do several things.
It will be just like anybody completely new to online marketing that currently doesn’t have a list. I’ll be starting out just like them, I won’t be using any of my existing lists to help build this new one, I’ll be using the methods suggested in whatever shiny object I buy to use with this project.
OK, so the goal is 5000 people, the next thing is to choose a product to test out with it.
As you know, there are lots of products being launched every day. If you look at muncheye.com which is one of the places that lists up-coming launches you’ll see that there are 4 -5 products listed there being launched every single day.
Given that many offers to choose from how do you choose.
The method I use is to watch the sales video or read through the sales page when the offer comes through. Check out which affiliate network it’s being offered through (either Warriorplus or JVZoo normally) and then go and check out the affiliate details for the product in there.
You need to be registered as an affiliate for both of these networks to do this but it’s free to become an affiliate and very useful.
Checking out the products like this gives me a good idea of whether the product is going to be of benefit to me and is worth buying.
I often buy the upsells as well if I see that they complement the main product and are not just something extra thrown in to boost the value of the sale.
Remember, you can always ask for a refund if you find that the product is a bunch of crap so I never worry about spending money on upsells. *
And please don’t think that I’ve got endless money to throw around buying this stuff because I don’t. For me, anything I spend on my business has to have a pay-off. Whether I’m investing in product training or buying traffic, I need to see a pay-back from it. This is a business and all businesses need to be making a profit. Remember that, it’s key to success in any kind of business.
OK, so I’ve looked through a few of the products that have come through lately and selected Quick Fire Commissions from Jason Fulton as the product I’m going to try first.
If you want to follow along with me here’s a link to it;
These are the reasons why I selected this product:
- I’ve purchased products from Jason in the past and they outlined systems that worked so this should also work
- I liked the idea that he was talking about making $100 or so a day which sounded achievable and was a good side bonus
- I liked the idea that it was possible to make this sort of income without selling anything – that’s often a stumbling block
- I liked the idea that this seemed newbie friendly which I know a lot of you are and so will be very useful to you
- I liked the idea that it was going to build my list at the same time
I bought the product and two upsells. The upsells provided templates and email follow-ups that I thought would be useful.
The first step in the Quick Fire Commissions process is to build a squeeze page to send traffic to so that is my job for today. Jason recommends Instabuilder for this but you can use any squeeze page builder for it. I’ve got a useful guide about building your squeeze page which you can download for free at;
http://www.trevor-greenfield.com/documents/squeezepage.pdf
I already have instabuilder and as a previous customer I just bought their Instasuite which is a complete online marketing platform similar to clickfunnels or Infusionsoft.
It’s not a cheap solution but certainly a lot cheaper than Infusionsoft and cheaper than clickfunnels as well.
Well that’s my update for today. I’m off to get started on implementing Quick Fire Commissions and I’ll report back on my progress tomorrow.
Until then,
*NOTE: I’m not recommending that you become a serial refunder – please don’t do that. Products that you buy that prove to be good solid training and that you really learn from deserve what you pay for them and the vendor deserves to get paid for them, but, crap products definitely deserve to be refunded.
The only way these vendors are going to get any better is if we return their rubbish to them.
