Chapter 6: The Steps for
Successful Transition
A lot of people have tried to generate income from multiple sources – both active income and passive income. But only a few were able to become successful at it. Many of them will start creating one source of passive income like blogs or information products but after several months or even years, they observe that the dollars don’t just come flowing in. Yes, a lot of many have struggled and failed but it doesn’t mean that you will not be able to create a high income portfolio that will allow you to achieve your financial goals. You really just need to learn the secret formula that has helped thousands of other people who have successfully brought financial freedom into their lives.
In this chapter, you will learn those secret formulas that will not only help you increase your income but also greatly lessen your working hours while building an extremely profitable portfolio. You just need to make sure that you do not leave out any of the steps outlined below because you will only be able to achieve results when you strictly follow the seven steps. Perhaps, you have already completed some of the steps discussed below but completing the sequence will assist you in completely focusing and maximizing your results.
Each of the steps may not really be considered a secret formula when taken on its own. But when you are able to combine all of them together, you will be able to create a very powerful portfolio that will give you steady flow of income.
Step 1: Create a Very Responsive Mailing List
When you try to build your portfolio of passive income sources without building a database that consists of your target prospects can be likened to teaching a monkey how to fly. Well, I have to say it but it is really quite impossible. If you ask anyone who has successfully built their passive income portfolio, they will inform you that their own mailing list is their portfolio’s lifeline. Their mailing lists enable them to generate income practically on demand. If you have been working on your portfolio for more than one year and your mailing list is still lesser than 1,000 people, it appears that you may be overlooking of the following primary factors in your portfolio:
Specific Niche Market
You definitely need to identify who exactly you want your businesses to appeal to and who you want to attract to your mailing list. You may have determined the niche topic that you want to focus on such as effective communicate, increased productivity, healthy nutrition or stress management. But that is never enough. You have to be able to aim your specific message to a particular set of people who can easily resonate your message. You need to understand that your target niche market is considered as the foundation of a truly strong portfolio of passive income, particularly if you are starting with a restricted budget and you want to earn income quickly.
A rewarding niche market is a set of people who have already made the decision that they do have a specific problem that they desire to find solutions for and they are eager to make an investment to find the best solution. If you focus your marketing efforts to other people outside that niche market will basically require more effort and more time from you. You may even end up with frustrations because you may feel like you cannot get your messages through the market.
The first group niche markets that you can most easily target are those who belong to particular professions or industries such as the physicians, hotel operators, wedding planners, restaurant owners, accountants and lawyers. The second group of niche markets that you can focus on is the people who have identifiable goals or problems like those who want to train for their 1st marathon, get accepted in an Ivy League university, get a salary increase or find summer activities for their kids.
The most difficult niche markets to be successful at are those that involve general topics such as effective communication, increased productivity and healthy nutrition. These are very broad areas of expertise wherein you will find it very hard to draw people to the products that you want to create. If you are currently working on these topics or if you plan to work on them, you need to further dissect the topic so that you can find your niche market in a particular profession or industry or in particular goals or problems.
For instance, if your expertise is in nutrition, you can further trim down your market by targeting those who want to train for their first marathon. Similarly, if your expertise is in effective communication, you can concentrate on helping lawyers in acquiring effective negotiation skills.
I am sure that this makes sense to you but a lot of people have an unintentional resistance to niche marketing. Many of them tend to skip this step of identifying their real niche market and they end up spending five to ten years of their lives struggling in building their portfolio and in attracting passive into their lives to no avail. They end up with nothing but frustration because of their unwillingness to truly look for their specific niche market.
After you have identified the specific niche market that you want to focus on, your next objective is to find out what is the main or principal problem of your target customers. What are their biggest pains? What existing problems are they looking to solve? What particular products and services are they already using? Which particular sweet spot can you use to address their biggest needs while earning the most income? Yes, there are a lot of people who earn big money from broad or general products that they have created. But you need to realize that other people will only be willing to pay you with their hard earned money if you are able to solve their biggest problems.
Provide Tempting Giveaways
After you have determined your specific target market, the next step is to create something that you can give away for free which can definitely help you attract more prospect customers. The most common giveaways that people give out are free newsletters, free e-courses and free white papers or special reports. Those are all acceptable giveaways but what really matters is how you present your free giveaways on your website.
You cannot simply put a statement that says “Sign Up to Download a Free Special Report” or “Sign Up to Download Free Nutrition Guide”. You need to think of a better statement that can certainly make your prospect customers to think that your offer is truly irresistible. Make sure that your statement contains something very valuable, convincing and relevant. Also ensure that your statement focuses on the greatest problems or goals of your target market. For your prospect customers to be compelled to sign up and download your free giveaway, make sure that it contains the particular information that they will find useful in solving their problem. It is also ideal if your free giveaway can have a value of around $20.
Focus on Building Your Mailing List
After you have created something that can you give away to your prospect customers for free in exchange for their names and email addresses, it is now time for you to begin attracting visitor traffic to your own website or blog. You should take this task seriously and not just get into it when you feel like doing it. You need to single-mindedly focus on creating your database of prospect customers. The visitor traffic in your website or blog is the only way for you to build a credible list of prospects. There are a lot of people who cannot seem to get into receiving enough passive income after ten years of trying because they have never grown their mailing list to more than five hundred. One basic reason for that failure is because they were never serious enough in doing it.
There are a lot of techniques and strategies you can use to attract visitors to your website or blog. But it is ideal to focus on two to three techniques that work best for you. For example, you can focus on writing articles and submitting them to other professional blogs or websites. You can also get into a joint venture with another business owner who is already reaching your target market. A lot of people have become very successful after creating and distributing educational videos or giving out press releases. Just make sure that what you will do is informative and educational for your prospect customers. You can even re-purpose several of your existing materials so you can use them to draw in your specific target market to your website. And regardless of the material you want to use – podcasts, press release, video or articles – you need to ensure that they all direct your target market to the free giveaway that they can download from your website.
Step 2: Productize Your Businesses
One of the key steps in growing your portfolio of passive income sources is “productizing” or transforming your expertise and knowledge into valuable content for your customers. But I do not mean to say that you should productize your processes because that can really be an overwhelming experience.
Think about all the ideas and knowledge that you have built up on your subject matter expertise. You can focus on those topics which a lot of people are not very familiar with or the areas where many people normally commit errors or mistakes. Those are things that you can transform into content. You can ask yourself questions such as:
- What are the things that you keep repeating to your clients or customers?
- Which particular steps do you often ask your clients to take?
- Are there any specific anecdotes, instances or accounts that you normally impart with your clients to make it easier for them to understand the point that you are trying to get across.
- Which particular principle, concept or belief do you believe your clients need to understand for them to become truly successful?
For instance, if you are an expert in Passive Income generation and you always ask your clients the question: “What is your niche market?” You can create a product that can help people find out a profitable niche market for their business. To start productizing your skills and expertise, deliberate on the various beliefs, ideas and convictions that you belief your clients need to understand before they can be successful in achieving their goals. Focus on one idea in creating your first product. Do not attempt to produce a lot of products all at the same time. Three to four instructive products per year is more than enough for you to earn passive income.
Step 3: Diversify Your Line of Products
In the previous step, you learned that you can productize your knowledge and expertise. But a lot of people still fail to succeed because they randomly generate their products without following any system or line of thinking so that all their products will perfect fit together. You can just end up feeling perplexed and overwhelmed. You need to understand that creating products is never enough. When you diversify your line of products, it means that you offer your materials on the same topic in various formats including eBooks, tele-classes, live events, 12-week group programs, workbooks, membership sites or even private consultations.
We mentioned earlier that you should concentrate on creating only three to four products each year. So your question now may be: which of these formats will you use to offer your products? One technique you can use is to make sure that your products cover all styles of learning of different people including auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Because of modern technology, a lot of people lean towards products that have an audio component.
You need to realize that not all people would like to read an eBook or watch a video because the most effective learning style for them is listening or auditory. You also need to consider the lifestyle of your target market. Do they have enough time to sit down to read an eBook or to watch a video? Will it be better for them to listen to your product while driving or while taking their evening walks? You just need to understand the different people learn differently. If all your products are presented in the same format, you will not be able to reach out to 10 to 30 percent of your target market.
Another diversification strategy is by price. The people in your target market most probably have varying budgets and degrees of commitment. For instance, one person may just want to try out the particular subject that you are selling and if you only offer a 12-week program that costs $400, that person will definitely buy your product even if he is interested in it. Make sure that the products that you offer include low-priced ones with prices ranging from $20 to $100 so you can attract customers who are still exploring your subject.
In contrast, there will be some prospect customers who may want to get in deeper into your subject matter expertise and they are willing to make bigger investments into what they already consider as their passion or goal. Make sure that you also have high-priced products for that specific type of customers. Having high-priced items will also increase the perceived value of the products that you are offering.
When your products have varying formats and different price levels, you can definitely attract more customers. Before you know it, your previous customers who bought your low-priced products may soon become one of your high-ticket customers.
Step 4: Build a Transformation Path for Your Clients
Another effective way to streamline your product line is to create a transformation path that your clients can pursue. This will not only make it easier for you to decide what specific products to make but it can also definitely help reduce your marketing time by a significant amount.
An effective transformation path is basically a sequence of products, courses and services which are intended to assist your clients to improve their skills from a specific level to the next. This can absolutely enhance your lifetime value for each of your clients. For instance, if you are a consultant, you can make the following transformation path for your clients:
- Clients who have just started their own businesses and who are currently setting up and building the foundations of their business.
- Clients who are looking for ways to grow and expand their business.
- Clients who already enjoy a fair amount of success but still wish to acquire more edge against their competitors.
When you start creating your products, make sure that they are designed to be of great relevance to various clients who are currently in various stages of growth. Make sure that your clients can clearly see and understand the transformation path that you wish for them to take to become successful. This is the best way for you to reach out to your entire prospect customers, regardless of the current stage they may be in because you will have a product that offers to solve their problems at different stages.
A lot of people are not aware of this very effective strategy so they end up generating number products and services that are quite random in nature. They can have twenty or more products that they need to market separately. Using a transformation path can accelerate and absolutely streamline your business, especially your marketing activities. Instead of creating a marketing plan for each of your products, you can create a marketing plan that captures the entire transformation path. And it is quite easy to accomplish because all you have to do is market your first product only. That primary product will work on its own in marketing the rest of your product line. One option you can take is to create a “toolkit book” which is concentrated on a particular topic. You can then include all your pertinent subtopics inside that toolkit book. Make sure that your book includes a lot of references to your other products and how your readers can gain access to those products. After you have completed your toolkit book, your next step is to market it and then it will do the rest of your marketing work.
Here are some guide questions you can answer to develop the transformation path that you want to build for your clients:
- Do you normally work in phases with your clients?
- Can you visualize how you can setup your products so that they can be in a series of levels including beginner, intermediate and advanced?
- Can you instruct your clients about your concepts, ideas or principles as a series of different products?
As much as possible, do not create products that are considered stand-alone. Each of the products that you will create should be able to fit into a group or line of products. That will make it a lot easier for you to market your products and to earn big amounts of passive income. Here is an example of a product line which follows a transformation path:
- Preparatory eBook
- Self-study program which your clients can study on their own using CDs, online courses or workbooks
- Twelve Week Program where your clients can attend a course in a classroom setup. You can then personally guide them in the implementation of the principles that you taught them in your other materials or products.
You need to realize that different people buy in varying methods. There are people who prefer buying products that are informative while others prefer having one-on-one or personal interaction with the expert (which is you). By providing them with options on how to learn your principles and ideas, you will be able to reach more clients or customers while earning more income.