505 – A panoply of potpourri from our listeners: Tom talks Ask Me a Question

Episode 505 – Ask Me A Question
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and five of Screw the Commute podcast, I'm going to do another ask me a question session because there's just so darn many questions I get all the time and I guarantee you don't know the answers to all these questions. Maybe you hit on one and I said, I knew that, but I got to tell you, I've been around twenty seven and a half years doing this every day. Pretty much so. There's a lot of stuff that I know that you probably should know. So check this out now. I hope you didn't miss episode 504 Mark Joyner, I've been trying to get him on here for over a year. We go way back. He's a friend of mine, but he's all over the world all the time, and he's one of the most respected people in the entire internet marketing world. Bar none. I mean, he invented a lot of this stuff that Google and Facebook use long before they were. Yeah, they were in high school. The kids that started Facebook and YouTube and all these. So oh, and we had this long conversation who got into some deep stuff. So it's really, really worth listening to, but then looking deeper into his internet marketing stuff. So this was more philosophical. But oh my god, the guy is, like I said, one of the most respected people in the entire universe on this topic. That was episode 504. And of course, the listen to any back episodes go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number 504. So how'd you like me to send you big commission checks? Well, if you're in our referral program, I can do that anywhere from eight dollars and fifty cents for an e-book referral to over $5000 for a speaking engagement referral. So check it out by emailing me at Tom@screwthecommute.com and I'll give you the complete details. You can really make a living doing this. All right, so. So check it out now. Grab a copy of our automation e-book. I harp on this, and if you haven't done it yet, why you're crazy if you haven't done it, just one of the tips in the book is save me seven and a half million keystrokes. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. We literally we figured it out. All right. You're crazy not to do this. It'll make your work go so much faster. If you just take the time to what they call sharpen the axe. Put it one or two of these things in play and you'll go way faster, getting your work done. Also, the big thing is that you'll be able to ethically steal customers from other competitors because you'll get back to the prospects faster. And I've proven this over and over for years and years and years, I've been using just one of the tips in this book since 1997.

[00:03:19] Ok. And it's just it's made me a fortune in extra money because of the speed that it gives me. While you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app. You can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Now we're still going strong with our pilot program to help persons with disabilities. We'd love to have your help with this. This is something you can be so proud to support. We're taking five people with disabilities going to put them through the school, the internet marketing and digital marketing school mine and get them hired or start their own business. And then I'm taking a grant writing course to roll it out. Really big to go for big money from corporations and foundations to help loads of people with disabilities. So love to have your help with this. We have a Go Fund Me campaign. Check out IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Click on the Go Fund Me campaign and anything you contribute is great. Hey, if you're really flush with cash, you could. You could support an entire person yourself. Change their life forever. So check it out. We'd really love you to have your help.

[00:04:39] All right, let's get to the main event. Ask me a question. Well, question came in from one of my students about shared hosting. And. That's what most people get is what is called shared hosting, what's happening is some company that's connected to the internet has a whole bunch of computers, just like a desktop computer you have except their server computers, their internet access computers.

[00:05:07] And your website is housed on that computer with a whole bunch of other people's websites that's you're sharing the resources of that computer. And that's why it's so cheap, you know, you can get, you know, sometimes five dollars a month for hosting. But here's the big but. And that's with one t not to like my butt camp seminars. All right. So if this computer is overloaded with people. Your site is going to go very slowly. And that's the kiss of death to to both Google and the search engines. They want your sites to load fast and your visitors who are used to going to sites that load fast so they won't wait anymore. It's too prevalent that sites load fast. So if you go for the dirt cheapest rottenness hosting to save a few pennies, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot because you're, you know, you're you don't know what you're going to, the speed you'll get or the downtime, you know they should be have ninety nine point nine something percent uptime, which means they're your site is available on the internet. But a lot of cheapo places, maybe they have ninety five percent. So five percent of the time your site is down, we just had to move a doctor. I know that, you know, and a lot of the major companies go after people that don't know any better.

[00:06:45] And the doctor that's a great doctor doesn't really know this stuff. We get that. It's nothing against them. But we had to move them to a decent house because their site was down like sometimes a couple of hours in a day, you know, so. So don't cheap out super on the hosting. The best we've been able to see lately is called liquid web, and they're very the service is very good and so forth. Now when I say that, I got to tell you about the porpoise effect. So when somebody like me or somebody like maybe Kim Komando, that's got way bigger audience than I do, says hosting place is good. Everybody rushes there. And then and then it goes downhill for a while because they can't keep up with the the computer capacity to keep it going fast. So it goes down after it gets a big recommendation usually. And then if they invest in, it comes back up. So it's like up and down, like a porpoise in the ocean, jumping up and going down and jumping up and going down. And then the other thing that you got to worry about on super cheap hosting is being having your IP address in what it's called a bad neighborhood. Now, if all the sites are super cheap, junky, crappy, hated by Google spammers, then you're kind of in a bad neighborhood. Now, according to my sources, that won't kill your website, per say, but it might, especially if they start sending emails out and stuff so don't cheap out on the the hosting use good quality shared hosting the ones that we use are liquid web, vario.

[00:08:30] We have a couple of others, but again, like I said, as soon as I tell you about them, they could go down a little bit and back up. So don't cheap out because here's the thing. The speed that your site loads is the main factor. It's got to load fast. Now you might have a bunch of files on your website that cause it to load slow. That's another issue you should get signed up with the Google search console, and Google will tell you what's wrong with your site and then you fix it or get a geek to fix it. No matter how much you pay your site better, load fast. Now, if you're flush with cash and you've got lots of websites, you might want to go to a dedicated server where you're the only one on there. That way, it knocks out a lot of these problems. But again, if you have lots of sites, you know, even with me, I've got a dedicated server, but I don't have all my sites on it because if that server goes down, I disappear off the face of the Earth. So I still have stuff spread out in other places. So, so so don't cheap out on your hosting. That's really, you know, you save a few pennies or a few bucks a month, but it's just stupid to do so.

[00:09:45] Ok. Let's see.

[00:09:50] So I got a question, should I move off of GoDaddy? And. It depends. So what I just told you, I put this question together with the last one is GoDaddy is shared hosting most of the time. They may have dedicated servers available, but it's a little bit of a crapshoot. And for instance. So this one doctor I was telling you about. Was on there and we were checking in his site was down and we call support and they said, No, it's not. How do you know? Well, we know because we know how to check. And so one one of my overriding principles on on these internet services, this is just my opinion. But if you see them advertising on national TV or national forums. Guess what, they're targeting people that don't know any better. There's just a sales organization that happened to sell website stuff. But I mean, with this guy, they were. He already had a service and the representative was trying to sell him the same service. So and and they would have charged him for, you know, so, I look at it as a sales organization. So in his case, we had to move him. And it just so happens. I have a student, sits another doctor, and she said, Well, I want to move my sights. And I said, Why are you having trouble with him? No.

[00:11:23] Well, it's a big pain in the neck to move. So. I said and and she's the go daddy. I said, are you having trouble? And I said she said no. And I said, OK, well, we're going to have my tech guy check out your sites. And they're working fine, so she just by the luck of the draw is on a server that's working fine. The uptime is great, so they have thousands of servers around the at least around the USA and probably around the world. So we did not move her away from GoDaddy. So it depends if you're having trouble or not now. I don't recommend you go there if you're starting from scratch because we've heard so many horror stories. But if you're there and you're not having trouble, it's more hassle to move than it is to just stay there and then. But you do need to start getting a geek or somebody competent to check your sites regularly, so if you do start to go downhill, in other words, they start to throw more and more, you know, other websites on your server computer and. Your site starts to suffer. Well, that's the time to to yell at them and try to get move to a better server, and if that doesn't work, then it's time to move and your domain registration there is fine. I don't care about that.

[00:12:47] Ok, next topic. Google is changing your page titles. So one of my students asked me about this because I have harped for many, many, many years on the importance of your title tags and your website. And so my student heard that, Hey, Google is just changing them. Whatever you know I put, they're putting something else. Well. Here's the thing. They do that and they have the right to do it. So it's your job to make it so they don't want to do it. You do a really good job of making your own page titles that are highly descriptive, you know, within the character limits, and they make sense for the page that it's on and so forth. And chances are they aren't going to mess with you because the last thing you want to do is leave your page title blank or make it non descriptive. And then Google looks at it and says, You know what, we're going to do better than this guy or this girl. And then they change it to something else and who knows what they'll change it to? They might think it's something better for you, but it may not be. So don't give them the chance. And and apparently it's only affecting about 13 percent of websites currently, but you do not want to be in that 13 percent. So I just did an episode as episode 502 on title tags, so you should listen to that and you should also, I think it's episode four sixty nine on basic SEO.

[00:14:23] You know, we're we prefer paid traffic nowadays, even though I had great success with SEO in past years. To me, it's just not worth it anymore to kill yourself and depend on SEO search engine optimization. Because paid traffic within a day or two, you can have targeted traffic coming in and turn it off if it's not working with SEO. You wait months and months, hope and crossing your fingers, something will work. And if it does, it might work for a little while and then somebody in Google or somewhere turns a dial and then you disappear. So. We prefer paid traffic, but. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do the basics of SEO and take whatever free traffic it can get. Say so. Listen to four, six, nine and five oh two and don't let them or don't make them want to change your page title. You do it so that you can control it. All right, next question, how to run a topic oriented master class or mastermind? Well, first of all. Even though the word master is in it, don't overthink this. You don't do not have to go get a certification on how to run masterminds, you don't have to get a certification on how to be a coach. Yeah, there's places out there and people are all proud of their certifications, and a lot of them still don't have any business or helping anybody making any money.

[00:15:51] All right. So certification is nice, maybe. Or they might be telling you stuff that's just ridiculous. I've never taken one and made millions and millions of dollars being a mentor and a coach and running masterminds and master classes and all that stuff. So please don't overthink this. Go out and help people go. Read my book on the one sentence business plan. Ok, yeah, the one sentence business plan is is I create quality products that people actually want at a reasonable price, and I service them after the sale. Ok. If you do that and your master class, you'll be fine or your mastermind. And I've had people accused me. I say, accuse me of having taken instructional design classes in college or being a PhD in instructional design. No, I went to the School of Claysville Pennsylvania, where there's 500 people there, and we all have common sense. All right. So all you do is take your information and put it in some logical order. For instance. I did tonight as I'm recording this probably a couple of days ago from when you hear this, but I'm doing the last session of an email mastermind, the sixth session course. And it's on list building, and it's on email marketing is basically what it's on. But one of the sections is on list building.

[00:17:32] But I did an extensive session on preparing to list build before I got into this building because it's crazy to attract and do list building and drive traffic when you're not ready to accept it or convert it into subscribers. It's not a logical order. So take your material and say, well, what do they need to know first and then what do they need to know after that? Then some of it may be you could just put anywhere. But the thing is is put your stuff in a logical order and then deliver it in a periodic fashion and you get to make up the schedule. And if people don't like it, they won't join. If they like it, they'll join. So I've had them on Monday nights. I've had them on Tuesday afternoons or Wednesday afternoons. And, you know, so I've had them all kinds of places. So you you do it to suit yourself and the people that like it? Well, you know, join at that time. So don't overthink this. Just put it in a logical fashion, right? A good sales letter for it. You've got to tell them what they're going to get the benefits of it. And of course, you want to get a copy of copywriting nine on one. If you're a mentor of mine, then that's included in your deal, but you've got to get people to want to join it, you know, so.

[00:18:58] So but running it, don't fret it, you know, just put your stuff in logical order. Teach it to them, give them assignments to complete by the next time and so forth. Not just don't overthink this. All right, next question. Tom for affiliate products Do you like Clickbank or JVs? Do better? Well, I don't like either one any better than the other one, because they're different. They still provide affiliate products, almost all digital, something physical, might have snuck in as part of somebody's deal sometime, but they're known for digital products. And there's differences between the two, so I don't like one better than the other, it's just there's differences. So let me just, you know, give you a briefing on what's the difference? Well, Clickbank has lots of different products on different subjects. And they collect the money, that's fine. And send you your share from whatever you've promoted and usually have to wait a couple of weeks to get paid. And, you know, so that's great. They've highly reputable, been around a long, long time and you can make a lot of money doing it. But the big thing is is they have lots of different topics. So it's health, wellness, beauty. They do have internet stuff. They have regular marketing stuff they have. Sports, I mean, just everything you can think of, they have products on it, all right now, JV Zoo is the new kid on the block, but still a very reputable, even though they've had some speakers at their events.

[00:20:44] That I would say are rip offs, but that's a different subject. Anyway, it's a very reputable and reliable service, but they are totally dedicated to marketing products, say so you're not going to find something there on archery. You know, so. And then the other big thing that they that they have going for them is that if you're a reliable and reputable affiliate seller, you can qualify for many of their products to get paid instantly when you suggest, you know, when you refer a product. And you know, I got to tell you, even where I'm at now, I love that. I love the fact, but dumb deal. The money is in my PayPal. Boom, boom, boom. All right. Yeah. And they might take out a little bit later if there's a refund or something, but I don't really promote stuff that's not good. So the refunds are, you know, aren't very much. But I love that instead of waiting, waiting, waiting. So that's the difference. JVZoo is more internet and marketing stuff, and they'll pay you instantly if you qualify and click. Bank is all kinds of digital stuff, different topics and so forth, and still both very reputable. Ok, next question, Tom, how do I track offline sales, I do a lot of speaking and want to see the results of sales that are coming in after my speeches.

[00:22:18] Well, the easiest thing is if you have kick start cart is to give them a special coupon code, you know, send them to whatever product you're sending them to. And then they put in a special coupon code for a discount. And then you can just track the number of coupon codes. And each group you speak can have a different coupon code. So it's not like you got to figure it out later. The cart does everything for you. And that's one way. Another possible way is you make a special package name for a product, so you just put it in the cart again with a different name and a different link to it. And then you just see how many of those sold. And you know, it'll keep tracking that, you know, for months and months or years after that speech. And I've had stuff come in years later from somebody that saw me speak that just wasn't ready at that time. So that's another way is just name a certain package and put it in as a separate product, and it's easy to see how many people bought from it. Ok. You know, simple ways is ask how they heard about you. That's one way. Another thing is you can have like a Google Voice or a tracking eight hundred number.

[00:23:37] Now, I don't usually do that, but you could, and it's not that expensive to do. And then another thing is called the UTM code. So this is and why it's called this, I don't know. It's called urchin tracking modules. All right. And these are codes that you put on top of your links to track for you. So I've never used them because I have the coupon code route that is way easier for me to to use. So there's some ways to track offline sales. Oh, another thing like if you're doing a postcard or something, you know, you just have a different landing page. And again, you can have a tracking code on the landing page to see how many people hit there and how many people bought. And some people make an entirely different web address and then track that how many people hit that address off of like a postcard or a flyer mailing or something? I don't do a lot of that stuff anymore, because it's just so easy to sell digital stuff directly nowadays.

[00:24:45] Ok. Tom, I'm thinking about paying an influencer for a post. How much is reasonable to pay? Well, first of all, figures are all across the board. A place called influencer, and I'm going to give you some links here that you can go. Read more in-depth about this. They studied 12 hundred influencers and ask them questions.

[00:25:09] Now, I'm not sure how honest influencers are going to be answering questions about how much money they make, you know, or how much they charge for stuff they might to be an influencer. They might inflate it to sound better, like they're bigger, bigger stuff. But anyway, some things that you you want to consider. Oh, and by the way. They they looked at two different types of influencers, and one type of influencer is a peer or authoritative influencer. This would be an expert on some topic. Let's say you were a racing carburetor repair guy that's showing you doing YouTube videos and getting half a million views every time. I don't know. But this person isn't a big shot just because they they look good in a bikini, put it that way. All right. So that's a peer, authoritative person. And then another one is an upcoming or a celebrity, an upcoming celebrity or wannabe celebrity where they're just known because they're known. So they could be really gorgeous. They could be really cool men and women. And so they don't really have any particular skills. They're just, you know, they're they just get a big following because they do cool stuff. So that's a different kind of celebrity, and then you have full celebrities, which would be like the Kardashians, you know, people really, really well known. So. What they conclude in this is that I don't know for a thousand followers or less, you might pay.

[00:26:51] I think they came up with a figure of one hundred and ninety three dollars average and for more than a thousand people, it could be $1000 and weigh more than that. I think I recall Kim Kardashian was it was like $18000 for her to to put an Instagram thing. I'm not sure about that, but I think it was some crazy stuff like that. But what they conclude is that a small niche audience that's highly engaged is probably your best bet and the best return on your investment. And especially for what we call direct response. So if you just want brand building like Coca-Cola could have Kim Kardashian put it in front of 20 million people. You know, that's great. And they got the money to do it. But. For most of us, we want to turn into sales and as soon as possible, so a highly engaged niche audience is better. And I'm going to give you an example here. I just picked fishing out of the hat and I said, OK, I searched Google for the top influencers in the fishing market. And believe me, I came up with an article of the top thousand fishing influencers. Ok, so, so. And it's worthwhile taking a look at it just to see how they lay this out. I didn't go to places like Cabello's or Bass Pro Shop who have several million followers because they probably are not going to do it for any amount of money.

[00:28:28] Do an Instagram post for you. And by the way, they kind of look at it as Instagram and TikTok are the biggies. And then Facebook is cheaper than that. And then Twitter is cheaper than that. That's from the biggies. That's kind of what they concluded. But anyway, I went to this fishing place and I found two people that were individuals that had Instagram accounts. And both of them had about three hundred and sixty thousand followers. So serious Instagram accounts, right? But they give you the engagement rate for each person. And so Josh Holloway and he was at official Josh Holloway. Has a five point four percent engagement rate. And this other guy, Kevin Van Dam at Kevin Van Dam Fishing has about three hundred and sixty thousand followers, but he's only got a point six conversion rate. So if you were picking between the two of them just on those numbers alone, you would try to pay Josh Holloway because he's got nine times more conversion than this Kevin Van Dam guy. So you really want to look at the numbers and then of course, you've got to make sure that they make sense for you and that they're nice to deal with and they'll actually do what they say they're going to do.

[00:30:05] But there's no sense in in going after three hundred and sixty thousand people that nobody responds, say so. I've got links to a couple of different things in the. So the phishing thing that shows all thousand people so you can see how it's laid out and what to look for. And then the article that I learned all this stuff in and talked about the influencers study, there's a link there for that, too. So. You're going to pay a couple of hundred bucks, at least for an influencer, but it makes it really makes a difference on who you pick and their engagement rate say. So check it out. Ok. There's a bunch of ask me questions, and please go over and check out the Go Fund Me campaign for the persons with disabilities. And we're going to use some of the money to to hire persons with disabilities to help run the program. And I'm really proud of this and you could be two. And we're going to change these people's lives forever, and they're already making progress. When you go to go fund me, they. Two of the people have put updates in and both of them are blind. Or how do you like that? So if you want to be inspired a little bit, see what these people are doing and they're blind. Ok. That's my story. And I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you later.

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