Escape Your Day Job!
.
.
Hello,
This is Marlon.
I'm off to speak at the Marketing Warriors event.
Man, I just now recuperating from a terrible cold I
got when I returned from Yanik's seminar in LA. Where
I'll get energy to speak, I don't know!
You SHOULD have received an email from me yesterday about
The Red Factor. I'm re-opening Red Factor but only for
a few days. Monday will be the closing date. You also get
in on a cool teleconference if you're one of the first.
I'm recycling an article I did awhile back that seemed
to resonate with a lot of you. I realize many on my
list probably never saw it.
What is it you really want? For the most part, I've found
people wanna pay off bills and debts, and escape their job.
A lot of you are frustrated by that because you have a
job, don't have a lot of time, get bogged down in the
technical details, don't know which guru to listen to and
you don't know what to do next.
A repeated theme is that some of you buy one deal then buy
the next one that seems even easier, more lucrative and
better than the LAST one.
The end result that you end up not doing ANY of 'em! Which
is a GUARANTEED way to NOT succeed. So some of you are on
the “guaranteed NOT to make it at all” plan. And you need
to get off the craziness wheel.
The hypsters are out there every day spouting off systems
that are making people millionaires, made them a
millionaire and is gonna do the same for you in a jiffy if
you fork over the dough.
How do you sort through the hype to the reality and get on
a track that you figure is gonna get you someplace closer
to your dreams?
And how do you know WHICH plan to follow?
And what do you do if you get bogged down in technical
details
That's why I decided to make this ARTICLE BY MARLON
called:
“How to Escape Your Day Job, Pay Your Bills, And Make
Progress Towards The Ideal Lifestyle All The Hypsters
Talks About — And A Frank Discussion Of What's Hype And
What's Real.”
Best wishes,
Marlon Sanders
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Marlon's Marketing Minute
Electronic Newsletter
http://www.promotemarlon.com
Vol. 3, #12, April 11, 2008
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This issue contains:
A. Announcements from Marlon
B. Main Article: How to Escape Your Day Job, Pay Your
Bills, And Make Progress Towards The Ideal Lifestyle All
The Hypsters Talks About — And A Frank Discussion Of
What's Hype And What's Real
C. Services You Can Use
D. Ask Marlon Sanders
Brought to you by: Marlon Sanders – Publisher
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MARLON'S MINI PRODUCT CATALOG:
Here are the products I have to help you in your quest:
1. Amazing Formula: That's the Formula. The big picture.
This is the foundation of everything else.
http://www.amazingformula.com
2. Gimme My Money Now: The simplest action plan to do the
Amazing Formula I could think of.
http://www.gimmesecrets.com
3. The Marketing Dashboard: Amazing Formula and Gimme
boiled down to icons and step-by-step. Doesn't replace AF
and Gimme but useful. http://www.getitgoing.com
4. TheMarketingDiary.com: Be a fly on the wall as I
teach Matt daily all the secrets of the Amazing Formula
and Gimme system.
5. Push Button Letters: Software to help you follow the
12-step copywriting formula I teach in Gimme.
http://www.pushbuttonletters.com
6. Salescopy.com — Elaboration in detail of the 12-step
copywriting formula in Gimme (and Amazing Formula).
7. DesignDashboard.com — Step-by-step to designing your
own web site and saving a bundle on crap you do NOT need.
8. ProductDashboard.com — Step-by-step to creating your
own info product.
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A. “Announcements from Marlon”
1. Customer Support Issues
Do NOT email us for support. We don't get the emails half
the time. Please use the live chat and support desk. Click
the support link at the top of any of our web sites.
2. ALIST members — Santos is getting a new issue to you.
I think he already sent it.
3. Milcer's newsletters — OK. I so behind. I'm going
to re-brand and re-launch this shortly.
4. TYPOS? Gus and gals, I write these issues on weekends
when I have no staff here. I have all the attention to
detail of a pet rock. So lighten up. Please! Thank you.
Seriously, ability to type without errors and proofread
has ZERO correlation to the ability to market on or off
the Internet.
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B. “How to Escape Your Day Job, Pay Your Bills, And Make
Progress Towards The Ideal Lifestyle All The Hypsters
Talks About — And A Frank Discussion Of What's Hype And
What's Real.”
By Marlon Sanders
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There are 6 basic ways to get dough online:
1. Promote affiliate products
2. Google adsense
3. Sell a service
4. Sell advertising
5. Sell physical products (think ebay)
6. Sell information
You'll notice that the last 4 all involve selling
something. That's the approach I wanna talk to you about today.
I did a survey with my Milcers and Alist members. I found
out that most of them are still stuck to a degree in
getting things going.
I want to give you an abbreviated action plan that I spend
100 pages elaborating on in “Gimme My Money Now” and that
the icons walk you through in “The Marketing Dashboard”.
There are MANY Formulas out there. Here's the Marlon
Sanders Formula in a nutshell. So many of you have written
and said, “I need a Formula. I need step-by-step.” This is
the big picture:
1. Find demand
2. Write sales letter
3. Create info product to meet demand
4. Roll out with affiliate program
That whole formula is elaborated on in much greater depth
in both Amazing Formula and Gimme My Money Now.
Here's what I found out from my survey. Most of you guys
and gals have jobs that you want to escape from. You have
bills and debts to pay.
And most of you are coming into this without a lot of
prior knowledge of marketing and some of you have limited
computer skills.
Based on that, do you think it's safe for me to say it's
unrealistic to think you're going to quickly and easily
become a zillionaire? Well, it's true. If you have no
background in sales and marketing, and you don't have very
good computer skills, you have a learning curve ahead of
you and that takes time.
HERE'S HOW I PERSONALLY DID IT
I remember when I was broke and bought deodorant with all
pennies. But what I did was kept learning and didn't
expect easy nor overnight results.
I kept buying books when I could afford them. There were
no cheap and easy ebooks back then. I could have done it
10 times faster if I had access to all the information
available today.
Anyway, my way out was self education. And action. I kept
doing little projects to put what I learned into ACTION.
I ran this one little business where you sold booklets
using answering machines. You didn't have voice mail then.
So I had 3 answering machines hooked up in my home (my
friends hated it).
I ran these little ads in what we call in the U.S. “penny
shoppers.” These are little papers given away for free
that are all classified ads.
I ended up running ads in 72 cities! And people would
leave their name and address on the answering machines. I
shipped the books C.O.D. Half the books came back. It was
sorta like paying out 50% affiliate commissions.
You didn't have Paypal or easy merchant accounts in those
days. So you had to do C.O.D. I sold $12,000 of books via
“mail order.” And I was exhilerated to do so. I think at
the end of the day I probably LOST money.
But I sure learned a lot.
Then AOL and CompuServe came along and I started writing
sales letters and running ads on there. You'd run a little
classified ad (they were free on AOL). People would email
you.
Since autoresponders didn't exist, you'd personally email
them back your “free report.” Since there weren't any
PDF's then (at least, that I knew of), the free report was
a long email.
The “big trick” my friend Jonathan Mizel taught back then
was to put their name in the return email! That was a big
secret back then.
Mizel, me, others all learned copywriting from Tested
Advertising Methods by John Caples. That was like one of 4
or 5 books on copywriting. But you know what? We wrote
some pretty good sales letters back then. I first met
Jonathan Mizel 'cause he sent me one of his sales letters,
and I thought it was good. So I wrote and asked him where
he learned to write copy.
Of course, he said “Tested Advertising Methods” by John
Caples. So we were immediate friends.
AOL was great. You could test out your little ads, emails
and sales letters. I don't even think in those days we
sent out follow up emails.
As far as I know, my friend the late Corey Rudl created
the demand for autoresponders when he wrote about how he
brought in all this money by automatically emailing buyers
4 days later.
It was only after that someone was smart enough to create
an autoresponder. Corey's stuff was hand coded.
Somewhere in this timeline (it all escapes me), I had a
little retail store selling self help books and tapes. The
first thing newbies think to sell online is either diet
stuff or self help.
Man, self help is a tough sell. Both Dan Kennedy and I had
self development stores. And we both lost bux on 'em.
But I did have the chance to write and send out a few
sales letters. And since I often didn't have the money to
print and mail letters, I'd call 'em on the phone.
I found out that just by calling people, I could say
ANYTHING and I'd STILL get a lot of people coming in for
the next 3 weeks.
That's the power of staying in contact with your
customers.
Anyway, I could go on with this story. I've told the rest
of it in bits and pieces in different places.
What are you supposed to get out of this?
Dan Kennedy I think had a path kinda like mine. And what
he said once is profound. He said, “I became an overnight
success after 20 years of effort.”
Now, I'm NOT saying you need 20 years of effort. You
don't. But neither is 20 minutes a week gonna do much for
ya.
Most of the people I've seen make it in this business do
so after trying things that didn't work. And they kept on
trying. And sooner or later, somethin' clicked.
I think I shoulda called this article, “Sooner or Later,
Something Clicked.”
So you got a job that sucks. You got bills that are
stacked up. Hopefully you can buy deodorant with something
other than pennies like me in the old days.
So what do YOU do?
My friend, I'd personally tell ya to do what I did. Fall
in love with the process more than the immediate fixation
of “I gotta make this work now or the whole thing is a scam.”
What you're learning is marketing.
And that'll benefit you your whole life. It can help you
get your son or daughter or friend a job. It can help you
raise money for your Church or charity. It can help you
promote an idea whose time has come.
See, a LOT of people say, “I feel like I've just wasted my
#*$&* money on stuff.”
I my response is, “Then you don't understand what you're
learning. No wonder things haven't clicked for you yet.”
See, this isn't about gimmicks. It isn't about you
figuring out how to trick people into buying with magic
words. It isn't about fooling the search engines into
stickin' your stuff at the top. If you do this business
the way I teach it, it's about learning marketing. And
yeah, I said the dirty 5-letter word — LEARN. You can
paint it up. You can put perfume on it. You can sell the
sizzle not the steak.
But my friend, what you're doin' is learning. And like my
friend Jim Edwards says, “That isn't something you
microwave.”
“So Marlon, tell me how long this is gonna take and how
much I'm gonna make when I'm done?”
Rule 1: People learn at different rates, so no one knows.
Rule 2: You'll never be done.
Rule 3: It depends on what you sell, who you sell to, how
much you charge, what your margin is and how often they
buy.
Some people like Russ Brunson get in this business, do it
part time between classes in college and go great guns
with it.
Others are like me and take like 10 or 20 years to learn
it. What's average? Average is not doing anything,
therefore not learning anything, therefore the bills pile
higher and the job gets tougher.
“Well, if you can't tell me how much I'm gonna make, how
long it's gonna take and how much it's gonna cost me, then
I think this whole thing is a scam.”
To say that is to say you believe marketing is a scam.
Because at least the way I teach it, that's what you're
learning.
What's my advice?
Think of the best info product idea you know how to come
up with. Interview some experts and record it. Or have a
friend interview you. Do a little 3-hour product, write a
sales letter for it. And see if anyone buys.
If they don't buy, guess what? You asked the market a
question and the market answered.
You asked the market, “Do you want to buy this?” And the
market responded, “No, not in the way you're presenting it
to me.”
Your choice is to present it differently or do another
product. Along the way hopefully you learn some things
about how to find out what people want, how to get 'em to
buy, how to fulfill products, write letters, create sales
pages and so forth.
Honestly, in the DOING, you'll learn a lot more than
you'll ever learn in the reading. You ask. The market
answers. You learn along the way.
But if you're a spectator and you never get in the game, I
can guarantee you one rock solid thing: You'll never win
the game if you aren't in it.
This is a great business. It isn't for everyone. It sure
isn't a way to become a zillionaire overnight. Maybe after
5, 10 or 20 years you hit that zillion and you're the next
John Reese or Jeff Walker.
I don't think everyone should be in this business. If you
don't wanna figure anything out yourself, if you don't
wanna learn how to solve problems, if you don't wanna
learn more things about html and the computer than you
really wanna know, if you can't tolerate risk, if you need
your first attempt to be a success, or even your first 3
or 4, then I don't know, if you can't afford to spend
money on learning and education, if you can't afford to
try things that don't work, if you think it should all be
simple and easy, I don't know if this industry is for you.
A lot of people get seduced by the lure of ez dough. The
promises of zillions without learning. Just connect the
dots and you too can be John Reese, Marlon Sanders or
whoever you wanna choose.
Here's the deal: People WILL sell you a turnkey system to
escape your job, make zillions or whatever. They'll give
you the fish. I want to teach you TO FISH.
I have a strong belief that unless you buy a franchise, in
most cases your going to better off learning marketing
than “buying a fish.” There are exceptions. But more often
than not, buying a fish doesn't serve you well.
Some of my friends would disagree with that premise. I
happen to have a strong conviction that you are better off
learning marketing.
Here's my criteria for buying a product: If whatever “IT”
is doesn't “pan out” for you, are you STILL better off
from having spent money on it? Will it continue to benefit
you, your family or your friends in the future?
If the answer is NO, then think twice before spending your
money.
You have a job you wanna escape, bills to pay off,
retirement to prepare for. Or special needs like a sick
loved one. Or a sickness yourself.
I can't promise you ez zillions. There's no integrity in
that.
I can't promise you 6 figures a year ez as pie.
What I CAN promise you is that selling products works.
It's no scam. People been doin' it for thousands of years.
I can promise you that marketing works. Always has. Always
will.
I can promise you that money and time spent learning
marketing can pay off in many ways.
I can promise you that if you find demand, meet it with
products and well-executed promotions, and you do that
over time, those bills will likely fade away.
I can promise you that everybody on the Net selling you
this or that “dough making system” ALL have 1 thing in
common — THEY are selling you a product, service or
seminar.
They have a target market.
They have an intro offer.
They have a back end.
I believe in paying more attention to what people DO than
what they SAY.
People get all confused what to DO. And there's a new
system invented every day that's the next big thing. Thank
God. I love commerce.
But to remove the confusion, understand this:
They all may disagree on HOW you make money. But one thing
is certain: They're making bux selling a product to a
target market — YOU!
Go and do thou likewise.
I remember back then. When I bought deodorant with all
pennies.
I remember the date I had with a model in a car that
smoked like a bomb.
And to me, there's no confusion. It's all crystal. It's
all simple. Take away the smoke. Take away the mirrors.
You need a product. You need people who want it with the
money to buy it. You need some great promo out there.
There's only ONE method people having using to pay their
bills and quit their jobs for the past 1,000 years —
Selling products and services to a target market with a
great sales pitch that presents benefits and solves
problems.
I know you want more details on how. How do you find
target markets? How do you identify demand? How, how, how.
I have provided a lot of those answers in the Milcer's
newsletters, Amazing Formula, Gimme My Money, Action Grid.
You wanna quit that job? You wanna liquidate that debt? I
don't have an ez zillion for you. But I do have a crystal
clear answer.
Find a group of people. Find out what they need and want.
Meet those wants with a product. Provide great service.
And who knows. Maybe. Someday. If the stars shine down on
you, you'll hit that pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow.
———————————————————–
Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Amazing Formula That
Sells Products Like Crazy.” If you'd like to get on his
mailing list and receive tips, articles and information
about online marketing, visit:
http://www.themarketingdiary.com
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REPRINT RIGHTS: You have permission to use the above
article without omission and including the resource box.
You have the right to insert your reseller URL for
“Amazing Formula” in place of the existing URL.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
C. “Services You Can Use”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1. Amazing Formula: That's the Formula. The big picture.
2. Gimme My Money Now: The simplest action plan to do the
Amazing Formula I could think of. If you wanna take
action, this is the plan man. http://www.gimmesecrets.com
3. The Marketing Dashboard: Amazing Formula and Gimme
boiled down to icons and step-by-step. Doesn't replace AF
and Gimme but useful. Basically, it spoon feeds all the
things in AF and Gimme. http://www.getitgoing.com
4. The Marketing Diary: Me teaching Matt daily all the
details of the Amazing Formula and Gimme system. This
contains additional insights into The Amazing Formula and
Gimme that you won't find in those products. It's
literally what I taught to Matt in his first 90 days with
me. http://www.themarketingdiary.com
5. Become a RESELLER: I run great contests and specials
every month. This month we have some neat ones.
http://www.promotemarlon.com
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D. Ask Marlon Sanders!
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QUESTION:
Hi Marlon,
Everybody and their dog is sending me emails about this
hot, new product. It must be good since everyone is
promoting it, right?
— Name Withheld
(Actually, it's a made up question but I know you're
asking it.)
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ANSWER:
Social proof is a form of credibility.
But look at it this way: Just because everyone else is
going to a city does NOT mean YOU should go to that city.
Is it the city you wanna go to?
That a lot of people promote a product ONLY tells you that
the author is very good at setting up joint venture deals
and likely has spent 6 months or a year setting those
endorsements up.
That tells you nothing about whether or not you should buy
the product.
My criteria is this:
Let's say whatever the “IT” is doesn't pan out for you.
Will you STILL be able to use the information in other
scenarios? Say, to help yourself, your son or daughter or
a friend get a job? Or to help get members for an
organization you're a member of. Or something.
That's a question of enduring value vs. jumping on the hot
bandwagon that may not have value to you in the future.
Best wishes,
Marlon Sanders
P.S. To have your question in the next issue, send an
email to [email protected] with QUESTION in capital
letters in the subject line.
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“Marlon's Marketing Minute is copyright 2008, Higher Response
Marketing Inc. All rights reserved.
You have permission to reprint the above article without changes.
Visit my web sites at: http://www.marlonsanders.com
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In memory of Corey Rudl, Ken Giddens, Ken Kerr, my mom,
and so many others…
May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at
your back. The sun shine warm upon your face. The rain
fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may
God hold you in the hollow of his hands.
— an irish blessing