Omar:                  What’s up guys? Omar Martin here. Welcome to this episode of My Unfair Advantage. A little bit different setting along with my beautiful wife Melinda here.
Melinda:              Hello.
Omar:                  We are in our living room. A little bit more relaxed today than normal. We decided to do this one from the couch. We started it both on the couch. Then I got kicked off by Roxy as you can see over there. She took my spot. I had to move over to the recliner. We’ve got Romeo on the floor over there. We’re actually still broadcasting on Facebook. A little bit different setting today.
                            Frankly, it was a super long day. When we’re just ready to wind our day down, we realized, “Oh my goodness, it’s Thursday. It’s MUA day.” We’re like, “Let’s just do it from down here today.”
                            We’re live on the call. I’ve got the questions right down here. I’m streaming the questions even. The idea here was just kind of do an open session and just ask questions, make it conversational. We’ve had a bunch of questions coming through, as you could see here on my screen. We’ve had bunch of them coming from Robert. Robert’s been asking – he started by asking a question about legal stuff. Let me go back to all the Robert questions here.
                            First one I can see here by Robert was, “Omar, what back-end webinar converts the best out of all the Jedi crew? And what front-end product is the best continuity to feed that webinar?” This is a good question, Robert. Robert always comes up with great questions - very stimulating, thought-provoking questions.
                            When it comes to the high converting webinars, the thing that makes this a good question is that conversions have a shelf life, especially when it comes to webinars. If you want a webinar to keep continuing to convert, you have to continue to go after new audiences. If you’re staying within that same little circle of people, eventually everybody will have seen it. This is what happens with even registration pages.
                            When you’re using the same template over and over and over again and showing it to the same exact people over and over and over again, they’re eventually going to be used to it. They’re going to become desensitized to it. They’re going to get something that we call as banner blindness.
                            I’ll give you an example of this. If you’re not growing your list by bringing in new subscribers - let’s say you’ve got 50,000 subscribers on your list. That’s your audience of 50,000 people. If you just promote the same exact product to them over and over and over and over again, they’re actually going to be like, “Hey man. We’ve seen this already.” Because you’re promoting the same thing to a finite group of people. You’re not reaching outside of those boundaries and bringing in new forms of traffic.
                            There are billions of people on the internet with a B - billions. Most people can’t fathom how big of a number that really is. If I just had 1 million people on my subscriber list - I don’t even have that. I don’t even have a fraction of that. I don’t have a tenth of that. I don’t have a hundredth of that.
                            If you are realizing that conversions are going down on something or if you’re wondering what’s the best converting this or what’s the - back to the original point that Robert said. He said in this group of marketers, what is the most high-converting webinar and what’s going to perform the best? Webinars have a shelf life. After about two years, the general community that you’ve been marketing to has seen it. The people that haven’t seen it or seen part of it, they’ve got pre-conceived notions about it. You’ve got to change it. You’ve got to change the appearance of it, the look and feel of it. You’ve got to change the angle. You’ve got to update it. You’ve got to keep it up-to-date. Keep it fresh. This is how you continue selling in that space.
                            His specific question was “What webinar within this group of people converts the best?” The answer would be “Depends on when you ask,” because we’re each focusing on our webinars at different times. Right now, Michael’s got a killer converting webinar. I haven’t really been pushing our inner circle or our launch pad webinar - haven’t really done one in a long time. The next time I do, I’ll change the angle, do a new presentation for it. Guess what? We’ll top the numbers that we did last time because we haven’t done one in about a year. We should probably do an inner circle webinar. We haven’t done one in a long time. When I’m ready to do one, I’ll spend the day revamping the presentation, going over new stuff, putting in new things that I’ve learned over the course of years, since the last time I made one.
                            Even people that have seen that presentation before, that have seen that product before but didn’t join, they’ll look at it now with a new spin and now they’ll join. This is kind of what we see.
Conversions, do in fact have a shelf life. It’s very related to how long you’ve been doing the same thing. It’s very related to how often you’ve been sharing it with the same exact audience. Sometimes all you’ve got to do is put a new skin on it, wrap it in a new color bow, and you’ve got new activity. You’ve got people willing to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes that maybe shied away from it last time because you’re beating them over the brow with it.
                            Robert’s next question - because Robert asked a bunch of them today. He said, “What sub-niche within the internet marketing space is in demand or in interest?” This is cyclical. The industry goes through cycles. It’s like bell bottoms are in, then they’re not in. They’re corny. Skinny jeans are in again, believe it or not. You go from the rap artist and pop culture. The jeans are so big that they’re falling off their ass, and you can see their underwear. That was the trend for the last few years. Now since skinny jeans are on; they’re so tight. Oh my god, what are you doing? Can we meet somewhere in the middle please? It’s cyclical.
                            When you say, what niche is hot? What sub-niche is hot? There are some that are just rock-solid performers all the time. There will always be products released in these niches because the technology continues to change. That is like video, any kind of media - video, audio, any kind of media type of product, software for producing videos. As the technology gets better, as computer processor speed gets better, as internet speed gets faster, connections get better, new technologies are able to thrive in the new, better, higher tech environments. There’s new room for growth in these particular sub-niches.
                            There are always the basics. The classics always work well or products that teach how to sell, products that teach how to drive traffic, products that teach how to track leads. Those always do well. There’s the technology-based: the plugins, the software, the ones that are actually - the necessity is what drives the market there.
                            Let’s say, browsers change, as email clients become harder to penetrate through all their filters, new technology will be designed to increase opt-in rates and to increase delivery rates and all that stuff. The market kind of adjusts itself, and it keeps raising its own game based on the advancements in the technology. That was a great question. Thank you for asking that, Robert.
                            Let’s see what else he got. He asked, “What killer products have you always wanted to create but didn’t have the time?” For me, I’ve had a bunch of it on my whiteboard. There’s no shortage of ideas here at Higher Level Strategies. What we have is a shortage of the organization to implement them.
                            I’ve got so many ideas on my whiteboard that I just hadn’t been able to pull off. I’ve got an impulse plugin, that I’ve been wanting to build for a while. We started it, and I don’t know where the hell that is or whether the new CEO is going to let us finish that. We’ve got the new MUA. We’ve got another one PDF creator called Speedy Product Creator that we started - didn’t finish. So many. There are probably half a dozen products that are half started that we’re probably going to end up abandoning.
                            There are two things that I always wanted to build. One of them is my own membership site platform - something that builds funnels in my way. That’s one. The other thing that I always wanted to create was an ecosystem for all of our WordPress sites. What I mean by an ecosystem is I wanted to turn all of our WordPress sites into a CRM, where they’re all connected and I can manage them all from one site, but in a way that none of those other site manager things - those site managers that you see out there for WordPress, they’re built for blog networks. That’s not what we do. We run membership sites with multiple levels.
We want to be able to do cross selling. I wanted to be able to show specific things to specific people that are members of these sites but not those sites. I wanted to be able to interconnect all my WordPress sites to be able to pull reports on who’s a member of this and not a member of that, and be able to then send messages to specific people based on the results of those reports. Those messages would be sent within the website. When you log in, the website knows, this person is a member of Buzzinar but not Content Nitrous and not Funnel Boss. We can show them the Funnel Boss advertisement. We’d be able to do intuitive things like that. Those are the two things that I have always wanted to build, and we just never got around to them.
                            Let’s see. Sarah asked about branding. Where’s Sarah’s question? Her initial question. “Are you using your Higher Level Strategies branding across all of your products?” Yeah, absolutely. That is because we want to associate the brand with the product, so that eventually when we sell the company, it’s not me that makes the products. It’s the brand. We can associate the brand with the product. It’s easier to sell a brand than it is a person.
                            Let’s see what other questions we have here. “Is MUA WordPress or HTML?” It is WordPress. Everything we do is WordPress.
                            Am I happy with the launch of RPS? “Did it meet your expectations? What aha moments did you get in this launch?” Excellent, excellent, excellent questions, Gail. Am I happy with it? Yeah. What aha moments did I get? A few. I learned a lot about my team and their inability to work under pressure. I learned a lot about, in many respects, how certain people in my team were just overpaid, like it’s just a waste in many cases.
                            This launch, I really needed people to come through. Literally it was almost like a test. The idea was to see how much and how far in the process can my team handle without me. In that respect, it was a failed experiment. My team couldn’t do shit without me. I got pulled in over and over and over for the most trivial things.
                            I learned a lot of valuable lessons here about the team and what level we’re in. I really thought we’re at a much higher performance level than we were because we’ve done over 20 product launches. I said to myself there’s no reason why with all the checklists, with all the processes, with all these tasks and everything that we already have with Melinda overseeing - there’s no reason why I can’t just be detached from this completely and maybe just show up to do the sales video. It was impossible because the content already existed. This is the method that we’ve been using, but it was just impossible. That was a very big learning experience for me.
                            I also went through a learning experience with some conversion numbers, some EPC numbers. On the first day, our EPC was $0.39. It wasn’t a true EPC because what was happening is we were getting flooded with bad traffic. I had to learn how to manage bad traffic from bad affiliates that should have never been approved. Then I realized that we were actually under a kind of a malicious attack, where there was some traffic being sent by non-affiliates. It was un-trackable traffic. We eventually tracked it down, but it was being sent to dilute the EPC.
                            If you think about it, it’s the earnings per click. If you send 50,000 clicks that resulted to 0 sales, you’re going to dilute it by 50,000 percentiles. You know what I mean? It’s like your EPC, which otherwise, without that traffic would be inaccurate. Real EPC is now diluted.
                            When that starts happening on the first day - this is the day that a lot of iffy affiliates are looking at your numbers to decide whether or not they’re going to promote. If they see your EPC is like $0.39 and dropping, they’re not going to promote, because they think the product isn’t performing. Meanwhile the people in the top 10 that did choose to promote, they’re seeing EPCs of $3 a click, $2 a click, $1.90 a click, and so on and so forth. I had to contend with that.
                            I’ve dealt with launches that we had to turn around because the EPC wasn’t what we expected, but it was always things within our control. It was maybe a poor choice of headline or maybe we need to modify the sales copy a bit or maybe the sales video or something. We kind of grouped together, got some advice from other marketers, and quickly adjusted within the first day and rebounded that EPC. It usually had to do with conversion. It usually had to do with something that we could test and get some metrics on and fix relatively quickly.
                            This was just traffic. We had to write some code that was going to block referring traffic from certain IPs. It was beyond firewall stuff. It got really complex there for a while. It wasn’t quite DDOS, but it was challenging. It was very challenging. That’s what I had to contend with. Overall, still happy with the result. We’re just a little shy of $50,000 overall revenue on the front-end launch.
                            We’ll probably come close to, if not break, six figures once all the numbers are tallied from the back-end webinar. The reason I say once they’re all tallied is because we’re still on replay phase of that back-end webinar, which goes until Sunday at midnight. We’ll see how that turns out. I don’t know if we’ll make $50,000 with it, but we might make $30,000 or $40,000 based on my projections - based on the conversions we’ve seen, by the amount of registrants we had and how many sales we’ve made so far.
                            We’ve got some pretty good promotions lined up for the new list that we’ve acquired. I would love to say that we built a whole bunch of new leads from this launch, but we didn’t because my team fucked up and they forgot to put in the exit splash that captures exit traffic. We probably lost about 1000 or 2000 leads, which is normally what we build from that. What upsets me is that out of 11 people on the team, me, I’m the one that has to catch this mistake like five days into the launch. I’m like, “How can nobody realize this, myself included?” But I’m the guy who’s not supposed to be involved.
                            A lot of aha moments in that regard - a lot of frustrating moments. In this launch, we, collectively as a team, made a lot of stupid rookie mistakes. We’re better than that. We don’t make these kinds of mistakes. We’ve done this so many times. We made money here in spite of ourselves.
                            This is what kills me. So many people just complain and bitch and moan, “No, I can’t make money.” No. You know what? Because you can. It’s just - you’re not following instructions or you’re rewriting the instructions because you think you know better. This happens all the time. I see people talking about it.
                            I was reading those comments yesterday in that webinar. We’re doing a webinar; it’s a sales webinar. I’m reading these comments from people that are on the webinar trying to tell me and tell Michael how we should be doing things. “No, I wouldn’t be doing it that way.” Dude, how much money are you making? You’re not making any money. Shut up, listen, pay attention. Do what we’re doing. Even when I fuck up a launch, we make $50,000 on the launch. We’ll probably end up making another $40,000 to $50,000 on the back-end. That’s my terrible launch. We’re going to end up with around $90,000 to $100,000, but I still have people trying to tell me the way I should be doing. “Can’t believe you do it that way. You shouldn’t be doing it that way.” Really, really? Okay, shut up. I’m done pussy footing around. I just say the way that it is.
                            Let’s see. Robert asks. He says, “When an entrepreneur wants to start as an internet marketer, what five things should they consider?” Five things that someone should consider before they go and market online? It’s a great question. I have to think of five.
                            I would say the first thing that comes to my mind is: is this the right time in your life? Are you properly motivated for this? Because, you said, “an entrepreneur going to become an internet marketer” - the fact that you said an entrepreneur, says to me, “This person is looking. This person is looking for something, looking for a place to expand, looking for a place to invest some money, looking for something to create.” That’s great. But choose the right time in your life.
                            You guys know I always say, “Look, it’s not the right time in your life when your house is on foreclosure and your credit - and you’re about to get evicted and all this is happening.” Somebody came back to me recently and said, “Omar, I think that’s the best time in your life. I don’t know when else you could be more motivated to make something happen.” I said, “You know what? That is one way of looking at it.” I personally don’t think that that’s the time to start a business. I definitely think that when you’re hungry like that, you’re more resourceful. You’re able to find ways and means that you otherwise wouldn’t.
                            Let me tell you something. Crack heads are awesome at finding ways to pay for their crack because crack is expensive. Not that I have bought any, but I know it’s expensive. How do these homeless crack heads end up? They get very resourceful. They steal. They turn to crime and everything. But I’m sure before it gets that bad, they still find a way to get their fix.
                            The point that I’m making is that when you have that need, when you’re hungry, when you’re jonesing, you become very resourceful. You think of ways and means to make things happen. In that regard I had to agree. “Yes, you know what? You got a point. You’d be more resourceful, but it’s totally the wrong time in your life. Because even though you’re in a position where you’re hungry, you have to make something happen, it’s also when you make the most mistakes for building a real long-term business.”
                            You’re usually just focused on quick fix, but that fix usually dies down. When you’re trying to build a business, you can’t build a business - you can’t build anything great in that minute. You can just get yourself through. You just get yourself through the next fix, to the next jones. A lot of people start their business that way. It just becomes quick fix after quick fix after quick fix. They jump from this, they jump to that, they jump to the other thing. They never have a solid business. They are always struggling in one way or another. Three years later, they’re still a newbie.
                            Here’s the thing. Now they think they’re internet marketers because they’ve been around for three years - still broke. They may or may not still have a full-time job and not making enough money to retire or pay the bills or support a family off of their internet ventures. But they think they know more than me or than anybody that is established. It’s this kind of persona that becomes of someone that’s been a perpetual newbie, three or four years doing the same - they’re still not making money. They’ve got 101 excuses as to why they’re not making money and it’s not their fault.
                            At the end of the day, nobody in prison is guilty. Ask them all, and they all say, “Yeah. I’m innocent. I was framed.” Every single one of them. At the end of the day, it’s not anything other than yourself that you really have to count on. I believe that the right frame of mind is very important. I spent quite a bit of time just on the first thing.
                            The second thing I would say is make sure that you raise capital. Understand that there’s capital and time required. Raise capital because you’re going to need tools. You’re going to need capital. You got to get yourself through. Knowing that it’s the right time in your business and knowing that you have to invest time and money - finding those before you come.
                            The third thing is having an open mind. Don’t think that you’re going to come on to the scene and change the internet marketing landscape because you are great at whatever you used to do, or you’re great at the corporate field. Look. You’re at ground level again. You’re gonna learn all - it’s a whole new game. You’re gonna learn the whole thing. You need to humble yourself. Shut up, take notes, and learn. Learn the skill from somebody that’s already done it.
                            The quickest way to fail is to think that you know better than the internet millionaire that’s teaching you. I’ve seen so much of these this past week. It’s probably why I keep mentioning it. Because it’s like, oh my god, you’re getting in your own way. Stop getting in your own way. Shut up, grab a pencil, write this down. Just stop. Stop complaining and thinking you know better. You don’t. Just stop.
                            I got to a point where I just lose my patience. I’m like, “You know what? Okay dude, do it like that. Do it your way.” They’re like, “See, you don’t care about the little guy.” No. It’s not that I don’t care about the little guy. I don’t care about the asshole. That’s what I don’t care about. You don’t want to listen.
                            Have an open mind. I don’t know what I’m up to. I don’t know if that was three or four. I don’t know. I lost track. What else would be number five?
                            Reverse engineer. Plan for the long term. Don’t just think of “What product should I do? What am I going to create right now?” Think of what series of products you’re going to create. Why should you get into video, or do you have three or four video ideas that you’re going to do? Are you planning on creating a video business? Reverse engineer your entire business. Think about a business plan. What am I going to do in a year, two years, three years? What is the purpose of me doing this? Am I doing this to retire? Am I doing this just for pocket change? For extra money?
                            Look. I know a couple of guys that did really, really well. I know one guy. This is Keith Woolman. Keith Woolman was a big shot internet marketer. When I started, he was like big shot. He made a bunch of money in internet marketing. You know what he did? He used the money he made to go pay for college. He went to college and got his master’s degree. Now he’s got some kind of corporate job or something. It’s just what he wanted to do.
                            What’s your plan? Why are you in internet marketing? What’s the number you’re trying to reach to get out? Are you wanting to get out? Or are you just planning on making money as an internet marketer forever? I don’t know. But you got to have an idea of what that’s going to be for you.
                            Let’s see what else we got. Carolyn is asking, “Aren’t you worried about if everything is connected, hacking would be misery? Unless you just get connected to a messenger system that people had to sign up for each membership site, then figure out how to broadcast just to the membership site or person?” I’m not worried about hacking. I don’t worry about hacking.
                            Carolyn as well, “Have you practiced letting them do things on their own before?” Not really sure when you were asking that.
                            Roy Llamas says, “Talking about webinars, any suggestions on upgrading to WebinarJam and also Everwebinar? Is an evergreen system necessary if I am just starting off with webinars?” Roy, it’s a great idea to do webinars. I just spoke about that a little bit earlier tonight on the JVZoo Facebook live.
                            Webinars are an important part of, I would say, any internet marketing business because webinar allows you a sales environment. They create a sales environment where you could market to people outside of the inbox, where people can literally schedule a time to be sold.  They can literally say, “Okay, on this time and date, I’m going to be available. You’ll have my undivided attention so you could sell the shit out of me.”
                            This is a totally different way of selling than what we normally do in internet marketing, which is called pattern interrupt selling, where we’re marketing to people while they were in the process of doing something else, and we’re trying to get out in front of them. They were in the process of checking their emails, and we want to hit them with a link in their emails. But they’ve already got a process that their mind is in, then all of a sudden, we’re trying to pull them out of that. Or if they’re on Facebook and they’re checking out a picture of their ex-girlfriend or spying on a boyfriend or whatever they’re doing on Facebook, then on the sidebar we’re trying to say, “Hey, look over here. Internet marketing product.” Or we’re hitting them with an ad. It’s pattern interrupt.
                            Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “Oh, I sure hope to see an ad from Omar Martin today so that I can buy some shit.” No. But I guarantee you somebody buys something from Omar Martin as a result of an ad every day. It works, but it’s pattern interrupt marketing.
                            What webinar marketing does is it creates an environment where people do get up in the morning and say, “Oh, okay. Today is Thursday; it’s 8:00 AM. Webinar’s today.” Because they scheduled it, because they put a reminder on their phone, because you’re marketing to them outside of the inbox, you’re literally creating an environment where people are going to be more prone to listen to your message and buy from you. This is why conversions sky rocket on webinars. This is why webinars should be an integral part of every internet marketing business.
                            For most people, webinars are something that they work up to, so that they become affiliate marketers. They try their hand at building a list. They start creating their own little products. Then eventually they realize after a couple of products, “Oh, I could be making much money if I have webinars, because then I can sell higher ticket items and things like that.” It’s not usually the thing that people start with.
                            Live webinars like this - well obviously if you’re watching the recording of this, it’s not live. A live webinar like this is something that scares the crap out of people. What I wanted to point out is that with webinars, you can do a live one like this, and you could do it once a week. When you use something like Everwebinar, you can actually automate this process.
                            For example, say, you’re doing a sales webinar. You have to do it every single week live. Like right now, the reason I’m doing this webinar down here - today I was feeling a little under the weather; Melinda is actually getting sick too. I’m sure you could tell that my voice is a little bit different. I’m feeling a little sick. I’m actually having trouble swallowing. I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow sick. Today we’re like, let’s just do the webinar on the couch, and let’s just make a conversation.
                            What if this was a sales webinar, and all the advertising and all the money and everything that I invested in today was supposed to lead up to this event, and I’m not having a good day? I wouldn’t give my best performance. I wouldn’t do my best sales pitch, and guess what? I wouldn’t probably make a lot of money from that webinar because I wasn’t at my prime. I wasn’t at my peak. I wasn’t performing well.
                            Evergreen webinars allow you to take your best performing webinar recording and use that one as a replay over and over and over again. You don’t have to worry about, “I’m off one day, I don’t feel well or whatever. I just got into an argument with my wife, then I had to go do a sales pitch.” A lot of things effect the way that we sell and that we come off. I think it’s a combination of both: live webinar and evergreen webinar.
                            At the time that we recorded this, JVZoo has some amazing webinar features that we’re getting ready to roll out, which is awesome. I’ve been working very, very closely with them for a while now in developing these. It is going to be cool.
                            I’m going to take one more question here. “Did Omar change his mind about showing the screen and the comments?” No. I’m actually recording. Am I not showing the screen?
Melinda:              You can’t see it when you’re recording.
Omar:                  Oh, okay got it. It’s not sharing.
                            Guys, I’m going to go ahead and wrap it up. I hope that you got some value out of that presentation there. It was an impromptu presentation. I basically just answered some questions here. The crew in the house tonight was Carolyn, Cat, Don, Erik, Gail, John, Lee, Marc, Rob Borsuk, Robert Luaders, Roy Llamas, Sarah, Shreya, Terrence, Tiffany, and Zora Blume.
                            We’re going to call today’s session - what should we call it? Somebody give me a name for today’s session. Let’s see who can come up with the coolest name. Keep it clean guys.
                            Why can’t you show the screen that shows on Facebook on the webinar? I can’t. I’m just not sharing the screen.
Melinda:              Also, we got disconnected from Meevo. Meevo died.
Omar:                  Here you do. I can show you my screen. There you go. Now you’re seeing my screen.
                            Who’s going to give me a name for this webinar before we wrap it up? Anyone suggesting? Couch potato. That’s actually a pretty good one.
Melinda:              Carolyn said the same thing. She said, “Laid back couch potato webinar.”
Omar:                  Relaxed chat. Okay. Omar getting down about starting up. Okay. We’ve literally gotten sick during this webinar. I’m having trouble swallowing.
                            Alright guys, we’re going to wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed it. We made the best of it. We’re not really feeling up to it but the show must go on. We put it together for you here. We’re going to call this the Couch Potato episode. MUA Couch Potatoes. That’s what it’s called. I hope you enjoyed it. We look forward to seeing you in the next episode of MUA. Take care.
Melinda:              Bye.