My advice to anyone starting an online business (or re-starting one) is to optimize for the “invisible money” first.

This is the revenue that is generated behind-the-scenes that isn’t immediately visible to people who are visiting your home page or blog.

Do you want to have a professional, well-designed website? Eventually, yes.

Some people do look that up and make their buying decision based on the overall feel they get from your brand – Can they trust you? Does it look fly-by-night? etc.

But initially, when you’re first starting out, I recommend you primarily focus on these 3 things…

1) An Offer – How are you going to offer your product? Price points, bonuses, guarantees, etc.

2) A Sales Page – The money page that is going to walk your visitors through solid arguments as to why they should buy your product over every other alternative available to them, including doing nothing.

3) An Ad – The initial message (and images) you are going to use to get your market’s attention and send them to your sales page.

Get those 3 things working, first.

Start making sales. Start building a customer list.

And then go back and improve your site (if you want to).

There’s more than a handful of businesses I’ve worked with that do 6 figures (some 7 figures) of invisible money that have a main website that most would call “ugly” or “not professional”.

Their website might look like an abandoned village but behind-the-scenes they are receiving thousands of visitors a day to a sales page that is NOT directly accessible via their homepage or blog and they’re making daily sales – invisible money.

Instead of focusing on getting the right logo, the right color palette, and determining whether that image should be left aligned or centered…

They figured out…

What their offer had to be to make sales…

What arguments they needed to make on their sales page to channel their visitor’s existing desire onto their product…

And…

What words (and visuals) they needed to include in their ads to get people over to the sales page.

There’s an endless list of “shiny” things to get distracted by. Don’t let those distract you from getting these 3 ingredients (offer, sales page, ad) working in harmony to make you daily sales.

A couple of questions for you:

Q: If you’re not making daily sales yet, where do you think you’re dropping the ball? How much time have you spent on activities that don’t directly get those 3 ingredients working in harmony?

Q: If you’re dropping the ball somewhere, why do you think you haven’t been able to solve it yet?

See you on the next one…

Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

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A large part of your success in the digital product business comes down to choosing a good market.

I define a market as…

People who share a common desire.

Desire is defined as a strong feeling of want or need that someone has.

These desires shape the behavior of individuals and of the group of individuals who share the common desire. Some of these desires are so strong that you can’t ignore them. For example, the desire to eat when you are hungry, the desire to be warm when you are freezing cold, or the desire to cool down when you are too hot.

There’s a few things to understand about desires…

1 – Desires already exist, you cannot create desire.

2 – You can channel someone’s (or a group’s) desire into wanting your product, but you cannot create that desire in the first place.

3 – Desires come in varying degrees of “strength” or said a different way, varying levels of power over an individual’s or groups’ behavior.

Because of this, the market you choose to be “in”, or rather the “desire” you wish to help people with is such an important decision.

Even with everything else remaining equal, two quality products, both with great marketing, great branding, and great timing…

You can see huge differences in sales volume (number of sales), value of each individual sale, and the frequency at which the customers come back and buy other products from you.

For example, in the “weight loss” market, someone with a quality product could easily make thousands of dollars per month while someone with an equally ‘good’ product in the “underwater sculpture painting” market could struggle to make even a few hundred dollars per month.

There are multiple reasons why this is.

How is it that two different markets can produce such different results regardless of the product quality & marketing efforts put forth?

Here are three characteristics of markets that may have an impact on your results regardless of the quality of your product, your skill at marketing, or any other efforts you put in.

Characteristic of a Good Market #1 – Size of the Market

This is the number of potential customers for your products.

Larger markets have more potential buyers. Smaller markets have fewer potential buyers.

Think tiny streams vs rivers vs oceans.

Here are the upsides and downsides to smaller vs larger market sizes.

Larger markets tend to be easier to reach with your marketing because they tend to be everywhere. This means that you can usually find this market hanging out on Facebook, Google, and several different websites online. This gives you the advantage of using several different traffic sources (i.e. places to get web-visitors from) to get customers for your digital products.

With larger markets you also have the ability to reach new people every day so you can potentially run the same digital product offer successfully for years without making big updates or adjustments to it.

A larger market also has some downsides.

Due to the large size of the market, the people within it will have different motivations and will require different marketing messages to effectively reach them AND get them to consider purchasing your digital product.

For example, in the weight loss market, you have some people that want to lose the last 5-10 lbs. Others want to lose 20-30 lbs. And others want to lose over 50+ lbs or more. Then you have different genders, different age groups, different health conditions, different reasons for wanting to lose weight, different ways in how they want to lose weight (pills vs diets vs exercise vs surgery vs other) etc.

Each of those groups will need to be spoken to differently and each of those different ‘messages’ takes extra time to create.

You also tend to have more competitors in a larger market than in a smaller market. This can be both an upside and a downside. This is because in a larger market there are more people with money to spend and this creates room for more competitors to enter the market and sell their products.

With a smaller sized market, you have fewer sub-groups to cater to and this keeps you from spreading your efforts too thin trying to market to multiple sub-groups. Instead, you can focus your time on dialing-in one message which helps you maximize your results faster.

The downside in a smaller sized market is that you naturally have fewer overall potential customers. If the market is too small it may not be able to support your business goals. In other words, there may not be enough money to go around.

With a smaller sized market you also run into something called “offer fatigue” much faster and have to update or change your offer often to keep making sales of your digital product. Offer fatigue does not prevent you from selling your product successfully for years. It simply means you’ll probably have to invest more time into updating your marketing often to avoid ad blindness.

Characteristic of a Good Market #2 – Existing Competition

If you have multiple competitors in a given market, it means you’ll have to work a bit harder to find your way ‘in’ to that market.

However, existing competition is also an indicator that this market has lots of BUYERS, people who are willing to buy products & services to solve their problem.

Many people dream of finding an amazingly unique market where they sell a unique product and have no competition. The problem is this is a very rare thing. If you do stumble on a market where there are very few or no competitors it is usually a sign that people have already tried entering this market and failed. It either wasn’t profitable or was too difficult or time consuming to make work.

I suggest that you aim at a larger market with a significant number of competitors. This means there are more buyers in this market and again, the more buyers there are the higher the number of potential customers. And of course, more customers equals higher revenue.

A larger market generally contains a higher number of frustrated or unsatisfied people who haven’t gotten what they want. They are just waiting for something that is a better ‘fit’ for them (or different from what they’ve already tried but didn’t work) to come along and help them finally solve their problem. This is an opportunity for you to provide that solution.

Characteristic of a Good Market #3 – Highly Motivated

Different markets will have varying degrees of motivation to solve their problem. You can put this on a spectrum from ‘very unmotivated’ to ‘highly motivated’.

One way to ensure an easier time selling your digital product is to create a product for a market that is highly motivated to solve their problem.

This makes it so that you don’t have to do a lot of “convincing” if any at all because they are already highly motivated to solve the problem, so all you have to do is let them know that your product can solve their problem and they’ll buy!

What makes someone highly motivated?

Generally it’s the urgency at which they need the problem solved. In simple terms, how badly do they want it?

What makes something more urgent?

Two things.

1 – The size of the problem. Is it a BIG life-altering problem that simply can’t be ignored or is it a tiny problem that is more of an inconvenience that they can easily continue to ignore.

And second…

2 – The cost of not doing anything about the problem. If they continue to do nothing, what is the cost? Is it a big, painful cost? Or can they easily deal with the cost of not solving the problem?

The higher the cost or pain, the more urgency there is, and this all leads to someone who is highly motivated to solve their problem, right now!

Bottomline, if you want to increase your level of success…

Select a larger market.

Think several million people vs hundreds or even a few thousand.

This ensures that you have plenty of room to grow your business to the level you want without being limited by too small of a market.

Working with a larger market gives you room to create multiple products on different topics so that you can generate a stable income.

And it also allows you to generate a steady stream of new buyers to meet your revenue & business goals.

Select a market with at least 3-5 formidable competitors.

By formidable, I mean… Are they actively advertising to get customers? Do they have hundreds or even thousands of reviews?

Are there 3-5 strong competitors in your umbrella market? That means you’ve found a market of people who are willing & able to pay for solutions to their problems.

This also means you might have a strong chance of finding buyers who are unsatisfied or frustrated with the current solutions and will be open to purchasing your product if they see that it is a better ‘fit’ for their specific situation.

Select a market that is highly motivated to solve their problem urgently (read: right now!)

If you’re in a market like this, you will have just made your life a whole lot easier because these markets are trying everything, they are buying everything, and they want their problem solved right now.

Their existing motivation & urgency has done the heavy lifting for you and now all you have to do is present your product as a timely solution to their problem (as long as your product works ofcourse!).

So, Are You In A “Good” Market?

I’m creating some NEW content and would love to hear from you.

What is your biggest question about growing an online business?

Get access to my weekly email newsletter, ask me your question, and I might answer it in a future newsletter.

See you on the next one…

Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. Here’s an interesting tidbit…

Netflix just sent me an email saying they are releasing a new show this Thursday called “Blockbuster”

The synopsis is “At the last remaining Blockbuster, a hardworking manager fights to keep his video store open and staff happy amid competition and complicated feelings.”

In 2000, the CEO of Blockbuster Video had the chance to buy Netflix for $50m.

He passed on the offer.

I wonder what would have happened if Blockbuster had said “Yes” instead!

Time to get the popcorn ready for Thursday 🍿 📺

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— calculated Thinking —

3 Step Formula For Coming Up With NEW Money-Making Front End Offers That Grow Your List Full of Buyers…

This morning I got woken up by Shadow with his whiskers right in my face…

Asking…actually… demanding that I get up and feed him right MEOOW!

He’s a big lazy kitty (a Mackerel Tabby) that loves to relax most of the day but when it comes to his food, he doesn’t mess around.

The other cat’s name is “French”.

He’s the opposite.

He’s small, full of energy, jumps everywhere, and looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo and little white boots.

He loves food too but they both come running for distinctly different things.

For example, let’s say I’m making an omelet with green olives.

Shadow will RUN over, rub himself on my legs, and meow for little piece of olive. French doesn’t really like them and when I offer him a little piece he’ll just briefly sniff it and run off somewhere else.

On the other hand, if I open the back door French will come bounding over so fast he sometimes runs into the wall because he just can’t stop himself in time! French loves going outside while Shadow will just amble over slowly & cautiously.

Just like these cats, your chosen market is full of different Shadows & Frenches.

And your job is to find the ‘green olive’ (aka the thing) that will get them to RUN to your offer.

And so the first step in the formula to come up with a new money-making front end offer is…

Q1: WHO are you helping, specifically?

If you want people to RUN to and buy your offer, you want to be clear on who you are creating it for in the first place.

Every niche market has people in it that can be grouped together by different characteristics, preferences, and biases.

Here are two ways to identify your market segments within your main market…

1 – Demographics

These are things like gender, age, relationship status, kids/no kids, income, occupation, etc.

2 – Psychographics

This is how they identify themselves (their beliefs, their values, their opinions, and attitude towards things).

Also it can be about their behavior (their lifestyle, what they like to do, what they don’t like to do, who they associate or hang out with, who they avoid, etc)

For example, in the Golf market.

You’ve got male golfers & female golfers.

You’ve got avid golfers who are very passionate about golf and play it multiple times a week.

You’ve got weekend warriors who just play on the weekends every now and then and generally are not as good at the game as an avid golfer.

You’ve got golfers who take things very seriously and are always trying to lower their score, tweak their swing, and generally always looking for that edge.

Then you’ve got golfers who are just out there to have fun. Sure, they may be competitive but they’re mainly out there to drink a beer and have a great time with their buddies.

Then you’ve got those that bet money and those that don’t.

Older golfers, younger golfers.

Golfers who are playing for the first time.

Golfers who are getting back into it after several years away.

Etc. etc.

By now, you get the idea.

You’ve got just as many segments or more in your market and the first step is to pick ONE market segment to move forward with.

Q2: WHAT is their specific situation?

With your ONE chosen market segment in mind, what is ONE situation they find themselves in?

A situation is the specific scenario someone finds themselves in.

1 – The specific outcome they want.
2 – The main problem that is keeping them from getting that outcome.
3 – And the main obstacle, roadblock, or barrier in the way of them solving that problem.

For example, when I used to sell vegan recipe books, this was the situation of one of our customers, Tommy.

Outcome: Tommy was a woman in her 50’s with adult children. She wanted to get into better shape and just be healthier so that she could keep up with her grandchildren.

Problem: Tommy was suffering from constipation and bloating.

Obstacle: Tommy’s diet had little to no vegetables and she just didn’t know how to best incorporate them into a tasty dish she could enjoy instead of detest.

Your second step is to analyze the market segment you chose and identify ONE situation to move forward with.

What is their desired outcome?
What is their problem holding them back from getting that outcome?
And what is the obstacle holding them back from solving that problem?

Q3: HOW are you going to solve the problem for that specific market segment in that specific situation in a way that is different from other alternatives they’ve tried?

Now this is where the rubber hits the road and where a lot of people get stuck.

For Tommy, our solution wasn’t a supplement or an exercise plan.

Instead, it was our 2 week menu that was filled with delicious recipes that contained lots of vegetables. We got an email from Tommy saying that her first two meals had her going to the restroom right away and her bloating had reduced!

It wouldn’t have been the same if I had sold her a book filled with BBQ recipes.

The key here is RELEVANCE.

And NOVELTY.

You want an offer that is specifically designed to solve the problem for the PERSON you chose (market segment + situation).

And you want the solution to have some component of novelty to it. Chances are they’ve already tried several other solutions with varying degrees of success. However, most probably didn’t work otherwise they wouldn’t still be in the market.

You can add novelty by introducing a new process, method, or system that solves the problem faster, easier, and with significantly better results.

You can also add novelty by identifying a root cause for the problem (symptom) they are experiencing. This way your solution is no longer competing with the alternatives because now it’s in a space of its own – solving a different problem that the specific PERSON (market segment + situation) didn’t even know they had.

Bottomline, the third step is to come up with a tactical, step-by-step solution that is both relevant to the market segment & situation you’ve chosen AND has an element of novelty. Something they can go and do quickly that works amazing well most or all of the time. As close to a “magic bullet” as you can get.

Get These 3 Things In Alignment…

1 Who
1 Situation
1 Solution

And you’ll have an offer that a group of people within your market will RUN to and buy, even if they had been lazy or hesitant to buy any of your products before. Just like my cat Shadow will RUN to get his piece of green olive even though he is super lazy.

What is the green olive for your market segment?

The truth is there are multiple.

Start with one.

And then create more.

Until you’ve got several highly compelling front-end offers that are growing your list full of buyers every day.

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#AskEddys

If you’ve got a question about today’s email topic, you can subscribe to my email newsletter below and reply to any of the emails with a question.

I’ll pick one or more of the submissions to reply to in a future email newsletter.

OR, if you’d rather keep your question & business details private you can ring the 15-Minute Marketing Hotline.

It’s something new I’ll be offering most weeks (not every week though just in case I don’t want to get on zoom that week lol).

We’ll get on zoom (video or audio only if you prefer) and you’ve got my ‘brain for hire’ or a ‘second set of eyes’ to help you answer or solve ONE tightly focused question or tactical problem you’ve been struggling with.

This week, that topic is – coming up with highly compelling front-end offers. If that’s something you need help with this week…

📞 Ring the hotline.

It’ll be $100.

And limited spots per week.

This week I’m only making 3 spots available (first come first served).

It’s not a big money maker for me, but rather a way to get to know & engage with people on my list.

This way I can understand your situation better and come up with more of my own future green olives as well 😉 – It’s a win-win.

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See you on the next one…

Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. If you found this week’s newsletter helpful, would you forward it to anyone you think might find it useful?

Also, if you happen to have an email list or online following of at least 500 people (combined) in the ‘coaches/consultants/course creators’ niche and you share a link to this blog post with your audience (i.e. sending an email or making a post on social media or both), I will give you a complementary copy of my Sales Page Architect course OR a complementary 15 Minute Marketing Hotline spot, whichever you prefer.  It’s currently in BETA but the raw core content is available and ready to go through.  After you’ve shared it with your list, just send me a screenshot for proof ( support @ digitalmarketingrx .com ) and I’ll get you access to the course.

This morning I finally cracked open a notebook that had been sitting on my shelf for a few months.

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I’ll buy a fancy notebook and then will immediately proceed to…

NOT write in it because I don’t want to “mess it up”. Can you relate?

So I end up writing my notes down on one of those big yellow pads instead. “There’s a lot more room anyway”, I say to justify it to myself.

Anyway, this morning while feeding the cats and drinking coffee from my favorite mug…

(if you’ve watched “the office” then you might appreciate the color changing picture on the side)

…I was contemplating the following question.

“What does it take to go from just an idea to creating ONE customer… and then TEN… and then ONE HUNDRED… then ONE THOUSAND+?”

I felt inspired so I cracked open my fancy notebook and began to write my answer.

There’s a lot to unpack from that question but here are the cliff notes…

TWIST

T for Thinking – It takes thinking, calculated thinking. Thinking about your business model, strategy, tactics, & offers with a full awareness of the likely consequences of those decisions. Who are my customers going to be? What problem am I going to solve for them? How am I going to solve it? How am I going to get the word out? How have these decisions impacted other businesses? How might these decisions impact MY business in the future?

W for Words – It takes compelling words. Words that grab attention, evoke interest, and channel your chosen customers’ existing desire onto your product in a powerful way.

I for Inspiration – It takes contextual inspiration. 10 out of 10 times you will run into problems, hiccups, obstacles, barriers. Some of them may seem insurmountable. Perhaps it’s not being tech savvy, not marketing savvy, or just not feeling like you’ve got what it takes to do this. This can keep us ‘stuck’ in inaction and one of the best ways to get us out of that funk is to get a dose of contextual inspiration. Reading or watching/listening to stories of people who have done something similar to what you are looking to accomplish. Inspiration won’t solve everything, but it can be the thing that gives you just enough ‘energy’ and ‘motivation’ to get unstuck again.

S for Self-Management – It takes consistent self-management. Doing a task at a given time, in the same way, every time, because you said you would. Distractions and disorganization can kill a business and so success in going from idea to ONE customer and beyond requires that you are able to execute your plans on a consistent basis.

T for Traffic – It takes creative & continual traffic. This means coming up with creative ways to get traffic. Putting ads in a variety of locations and getting traffic from multiple different sources to the point that you are always receiving traffic 24/7 and have a process (that you came up with at the “Thinking” stage) by which to continually convert those visitors into customers.

If you’re feeling stuck in your business or feel like you’re not making the progress that you want to be making…

The culprit is likely found in one of the following letters… TWIST.

If you’ve got a question about any of the above topics, send them over.

I’m going to start a Q&A column (#AskEddys) in my weekly email newsletter and since you’re a subscriber, you can send in a question at any time.

But before you do, here’s a few things to know about #AskEddys…

1 – I won’t be able to answer all the questions but while this email list is small, your chances of getting your questions answered are HIGH.

2 – To increase your chances of getting your questions answered, ask a topical or big picture question where the answer can be of benefit or compelling to most people on the list (people wanting to start or grow their online business) — bonus points if you have something inspiring, urgent, or a juicy bit of ‘drama’ to share along with your question.

3 – Each week I’ll pick one or a few of the questions to answer in the newsletter.

4 – To submit your question, you can reply to any of my emails and make sure to include the phrase #AskEddys so that I can search for it in my inbox.

What do I get out of this?

Lots!

Ideas for content, products, ads, and I get to know everyone on my list a bit better too.

Ultimately, your questions will help me turn this email newsletter ( DigitalMarketingRx.com ) from just a content blog into a profit center that goes from 6 to 10 to 100 and then 1,000+ customers like I’ve done (and am doing) in other markets.

If you want to follow along and do that for yourself as well, you’ll want to stick around 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

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