Jeff Dedrick: Alright, no problem. Thanks for having me.
CeeCee: You bet. Now you have a lot of successful sites out there, but you recently just had a real successful launch called Hidden Sales Project. Is that right?
Jeff: Yes, that was really recent, in the last month or six weeks.
CeeCee: Yes, it was a good one. Now you have over 20 years of
experience in real business with restaurants and fitness clubs and you have been in the Internet business for some years to be able to get all these good sites up and going.
But today the topic is going to be something that people need a lot of help with. There is so much information out there on this, but so much is confusing.
We are going to talk about how to get started.Jeff: Yes, that is actually one of the biggest questions that I
always hear. People are confused. There is so much information out there. They are being hit with so many different messages from so many different angles.
So when you talked to me about wanting to help these people out, I said, “Yeah, let’s just come up with a game plan and even like a 30 day game plan and just walk them through the steps.” So that’s what I have for them today.
CeeCee: Sounds great.Jeff: To start with, again, people are confused. There is so much to do and a lot of times, because you are getting hit with so much information, I find that people tend to really just shut down.
They just stop taking action because they don’t know where to begin and that’s the biggest problem people have. If you are not taking action, then you are really not learning as much as you can.
A problem that people have is something I call “constant student mode.” They are always just learning. They are learning, they are learning, they are learning. And a lot of times they don’t realize that they have enough information to already be going.
They should already have sites up. They should already have products made and sales coming in. But for some reason they think that they need to get everything perfect and because of that, as we all know, nothing is ever perfect. So if you are waiting for that perfect whatever, it’s just never going to happen. So my goal here in our talk, or however long this is going to last, is to really set the steps.
It’s actually under 20 steps and if people really just follow this A, B, C, D, all these steps, at the end of 30 days you are going to have a product. Or pretty close to 30 days, you are going to have a product.
CeeCee: Good.Jeff: The first thing that I like to do is, when you are coming up with this idea for a product, the biggest problem or mistake people make is they come up with this great idea and think, “This would be so cool,” and then they waste or spend all this time and then they find out that it’s a waste because no one wants their product.
No one is looking for their product that they have made. There is no demand for it. It might be an awesome product, but if no one is willing to spend money and buy it, you really just wasted your time.
So the first thing you need to do is to find a need and fill it. What I mean by that is that, for example, with my very first site, Secret Article Converter, back in February of 2006, and when I came up with the idea it was the end of 2005.
The big thing was Google. Everyone is making these content sites and Google was just starting to really punish people because they were making all these spammy-type sites using this software that would automatically generate pages.
You would upload it and wham, you would have a site with 10,000 pages. And oftentimes they would get in the search engines and do really well.
So the next thing people knew was that they had to put good content on their sites and they also, after finding out that Google started penalizing duplicate content, then people realized they had to change all these private label article sites, articles they were getting from these sites.
In a nutshell, what that was is you would have 300 people buying private label articles from one site. That would mean 300 people would get the same article.
Google didn’t like that, so you had to change your articles. Right before I launched I saw the need for that because I was putting up sites myself and I wanted to automate the process. So that’s how the Secret Article Converter site came about because there was a need in the marketplace.
Another time for Secret Page Spy, that was really simple. I went to a forum and they were having a discussion on how to find keywords and how to figure out who your competition was and someone actually just stated in the forum post, “Wouldn’t it be cool if a program could do” bam, bam, bam, bam.” They listed it.
I just copied and pasted it to my Web guy and said, “Hey, how hard would it be to create this product?” Because I saw that there was a need for it, people were responding to this guy, (it wasn’t just one guy saying he needed something), but there were all these active threads and lively discussions on this topic.
That’s where I came up with that idea. I didn’t think of it myself. I listened to customers or potential customers or I was in the market place.
I always use a simple example: if it’s within dogs, right? If the need or the interest is on something in dogs, for example if dog training because of maybe the Dog Whisperer TV show or all those other type sites, TV shows that are out about training dogs, if that is the hot topic and you go to forums and you see that people are discussing dog training stuff or they are asking for better dog training videos or whatever it may be, that could be your product.
So you need to really pay attention to what people need and then fill it.CeeCee: So you need to kind of do some research on what you think is going to be hot and find out if it is.
Jeff: Definitely. There are times where, like I said, people will create a product and there is just no need for it.
You can just do searches and you can find the top forum sites within your niche or your area of expertise or your area of interest and just go in there and take notes and pay attention to what people are talking about.
Then the next thing is just because you have a product idea, you need to find out what is your goal with that product. Now most people think that, “My goal is to make money.” Well, yes, that’s a simple one. Everyone wants to make money, but that may not be your goal with that first product. What I mean by that is, what if you wanted to create a splash in the marketplace?
What if you wanted to create a product and you wanted everyone in the dog training market, or whoever is interested in dogs, to learn your name. You wanted to brand yourself.
Your goal there is maybe not so much to sell products at the beginning, but you want to get your product out there. You want to get your name out there. Maybe you want to get subscribers.
Another very important possible reason to create a product is to get a mailing list. You want to be able to create a list of subscribers for your next product.
So the first product may not always be for sales for yourself. If you want to get your name out there, for example, you may want to then have your affiliate program give out 100% or a super-high percentage of the money that is being brought in because you don’t care about that first product.
I think it was John Reese that said, and I don’t remember his wording, I’m sure I have it totally screwed up, but basically what he means is that you need to almost be thinking ahead on the second product. You need to take a hit on the first product and set yourself up for long term success. So you shouldn’t be going for the money.
Yes, you can create a product and say, “I’m going to give my affiliates 10% because I want to make 90%.” That’s just not going to work out. Affiliates expect more than 10% of the money.
You will turn out having no affiliates pushing it, your message probably won’t get out there in the marketplace, and not only will you not make money, but you definitely won’t brand yourself or get customers or subscribers.
So you need to think about what you need to accomplish and then your sales process will come from there. I’ll kind of get around back to that in a little bit.
The next thing is actually creating the product. You don’t always need to do it yourself. For example, in this right now CeeCee, you are creating a product by getting me on the line and taping our conversation. You are creating a product that is going to help people get started.
You are not having to sit there and do the research or write the book or create the software program. You have connected with someone that maybe has expertise in the area of the product that you want to create.
Back to the dog example, find out who the top ten dog training experts are in the world and try to get them on a phone call similar to this. So let them create your product.
Another thing you can do, I couldn’t make a software program if my life depended on it. You could lock me in a room for a year and I still couldn’t come up with a simple software program.
But what I can do is, I can have someone else make it and make it pretty inexpensively and then I can sell it in my name. I don’t know if you have heard of sites like www.eLance.com or www.RentACoder.com.
There are many sites like that. Think of it like a market place for everything, like writers. You could have an e-book ghostwritten. You can have people make software. You can hire Web site people. You can hire graphic artists.
Whatever you can think of that you want to do on the Web, you can go to places like http://www.eLance.com or http://www.RentACoder.com and you can place a little ad, basically, that says, “Hey, I want this project done.”
People will bid on it. It’s similar to eBay. You can look at all these people that are bidding on it, you can look at their ratings, the past work they have done.
You can see if people are saying, “Yeah, these guys are 10 out of 10. They did a great job. They completed it in time.” You can look to see who is bidding on it.
You can really find out if these guys are good or not ahead of time. Also, the money does not exchange hands until you are happy with the product.
It’s almost like escrow. On some of these sites you upload the money and they kind of hold it until both parties are happy with the work that is done.
So if you are not happy or the guy doesn’t come through, you don’t lose money. So the beauty of that is, if they can’t do that software program, the idea that you have come up with and they said they could do it, if it turns out they can’t do it, you don’t have to pay them. Once you are happy, then the funds are released to that worker.
That’s a perfect way to go about getting a lot of different work done. You would be amazed because people from all over the world are bidding on your jobs. You obviously don’t want to go with the cheapest person all the time because they might be crap, but like I said, you can see what kind of jobs they have done in the past.
You can see their rankings or their ratings or whatever you call it, and you can tell, “Gosh, this guy is only charging me . . .” You can get people for $5.00 an hour, $10.00 an hour that do fantastic work.
They will do it better than you. They will do it quicker than you. Something that would take me, graphic-wise, two days, I could work two days straight, 48 hours, and it would still be ugly and I’ve wasted 48 hours. And some guy can do it for $20.
CeeCee: That’s all he does. That’s his specialty.Jeff: Yes, he already has templates, he already has pictures, he knows all that stuff. So you just give him some direction and wham, $20 later you have full graphics for your site, or $30 or $40. That’s a perfect example of how you don’t have to do everything.
The next thing you need to do is, I suggest instead of always going to eLance and getting someone that will just do a piece here and a piece there and a piece there, ideally you want to get someone that you can kind of work with long term.
Someone like a webmaster that you can always just e-mail or instant message and say, “Hey, I need this done,” instead of having to go back through the eLance system and hire someone.
You want to hire someone that is always going to be there for you. You still don’t want to hire them full time or part time, but you want to have them available all the time. And to find that person, and I came up with this system, I kind of stumbled upon it, and it worked out great.
I went to eLance and RentACoder and put in jobs. I said, “I want to hire people for ten hours.” I think on one of the sites they ask, what is your job range? How much you are willing to pay? I think I put in $100 to $250.
At the time I didn’t realize people would work below $10 an hour but most times people came in right at $10. Some of them even went below it.
But I hired three different people just to do ten hours of work. And I didn’t even care what they were really doing. They didn’t know that, but I was giving them almost busy work because I wanted to evaluate how fast they did it, the quality of the work they did, and then also their communication skills and how easy it was to communicate to get the things done.
I was thinking long term. I wanted to find someone good. So out of those three people, one guy totally sucked so he was gone pretty much after the ten hours. I was, “Okay, thanks a lot. See you later.”
The two guys I ended up with were both good and I continued to give them some work, because one job they could be great and then they start slacking.
It turned out one of the guys was in college, I think over in India, and his communication wasn’t the best, meaning he wouldn’t get back to me because he was probably busy with classes and whatever. So even though he started off good, over time I saw that it would take him a long time to get back to me and get jobs done.
So then I pretty much ended my work with him and I went with the third guy. Then I started to hire him more and more. I got to the point where I hired him part time and then I took the leap and I hired him full time and then I even gave him a percent of some of my profits.
Now he is running an office that I have over in the Ukraine with other coders. I have a couple other workers over there along with him and he has been with me ever since.
That is just one example where you can start slow and as your business grows, you can start almost taking on full time people. So that’s a great way to get people working for you and get the correct people working for you.
The next step is, you are going to need to learn correct sales copy. If you either write e-mails or write squeeze pages or write your sales copy, because you are not going to be able, the first time, to go out and buy the services of a top copywriter unless you have $5,000 to $10,000 lying around, or more.
I know a couple of guys that I’m friends with, they are up to above $10,000 already. So you need to learn the basics of copy, and there is a lot of good stuff out there.
One of the top copywriters that I really like his stuff is Yanik Silver. He has really good copywriting courses. He has fullblown seminars that he has taped. It’s a higher end product. I think I paid anywhere from $1,000 to maybe even $1,500 for it. So it’s pretty pricey. But that’s what is going to drive sales.
Now I have the luxury of being able to hire some copywriters to do work for me. But you really need to learn the basics. So anyone from Ray Edwards to John Hostler to Yanik Silver, those are the guys that I work with and am familiar.
There are some classics like anything that Dan Kennedy does, Ted Nicholas, Gary Halbert, and then there are even other guys that I can’t even remember their names.
But there are classic copy formulas that you should learn. On this call we just don’t have the time to get further into depth into that, but it’s just another step in your process.
CeeCee: So the beginner can go and look up some of these names and purchase maybe Dan Kennedy’s program or Ray Edwards’. Do they put products out there that they can get their hands on to be able to learn the formula?
Jeff: Oh, yes, some of these guys have real world books so you can go to Amazon and spend anywhere from $10 for a used book up to $20 or $30.
I know that Dan Kennedy has real world books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble that you can purchase. There is even pretty decent free reports that give you kind of like the flow of a sales letter, how you need a sub-headline, you need the headline and then you need to create, almost show the pain that someone is feeling.
Meaning like say if these people are feeling the pain, like their dog is ripping up their house and they are not trained. You want to bring up that pain and then you want to agitate it and then you want to create the solution for them which is your product, then testimonials.
There is a certain format people can use for sales letters. You can get online on Google and start learning that and figure out which of these copywriters you really like. But there are a lot of free or inexpensive resources out there that will give you a good head start on sales copy.
CeeCee: Good advice.
