Nina Kolari — Blog

The Web Developer Bootcamp The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0

Coworking Bansko says the following: “Home for digital nomads, freelancers and entrepreneurs.” They offer high speed internet, inspiring events, community, ergonomic work space and awesome mountain village location.

If you love skiing, Coworking Bansko is a must destination for your during European winter. It is not bad place to be in summer either!

Check your favorite winter coworking destination Bansko.

Ministry of New (Mumbai, India)

Ministry of New is not just a coworking space, they can help you set your business too and a calendar full of social events. “Our ultimate aim is not to build a space but a community”.

Bonus points for being dog friendly!

Check out Ministry of New here.

The Work Project (Hong Kong & Singapore)

The Work Project has three locations, one in Hong Kong (pictured above) and two in Singapore. They want to set up new stardard for coworking offering functional office space that looks good too.

You can purchase access for day, part-time, full-time or for the whole team.

This is definitely on my MUST VISIT list! Check out The Work Project.

YOUR TURN:

What coworking office would you call best in the world?

Add yours in the comments so that I can add it to the list.

Best Side Business Ideas

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Jumping from full-time job into full-time entrepreneur or business owner is pretty scary thought. That is why starting part-time while you work full-time is great way to start the road towards freedom from 9-5. In this post I present you the best side business ideas I found online. Many I am doing myself as well.

Side hustle path is incredible rewarding, challenging and exhilarating at the same time. It requires sacrifice and hard work but pay off is totally worth it.

The most common question I am asked is how can I do what you do and how can I get started.

In the post below I show many paths you can choose from.

*Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links*

Start a Blog

Yes, blogs are still in, and actually more than ever! But I’d suggest starting an authority blog relating to your skill set rather than one talking about your life.

Why so?

It is way easier and quicker to monetize authority blog than lifestyle blog. You make more money quicker and work less this way.

I waited way too long to start mine! Honestly if I had started when I thought about it the first time, this blog would be so much bigger today.

Do not wait for the perfect idea, just start.

You can set up your blog very easily with Bluehost. And I highly recommend starting with a professional blog that is hosted by Bluehost or any other hosting service. Don’t sign up with Blogger, Wordpress.com blog. Also use your own domain - you’ll get one for free if you sign up clicking below banner image.

Bluehost helps you set up and host your blog with ease. You can crete Wordpress blog with just a couple of clicks.

Online Freelancing

One of the quickest way out of corporate cubicle as as online freelancer you can offer your services to a global client base.

Upwork.com and many other online freelance platforms have hundreds of new projects posted on a daily basis. You can freelance as customer support, social media consultant, virtual assistant, graphic designer, web developer, sales, marketing, project management and so much more.

It is really important to find a profitable niche right off the start and learn how proposal process works online and what clients want to see. You cant apply with your resume thinking it works - you need a new strategy. This course helps you get a winning start.

If your current skills don’t really match with freelance opportunities, check below great nanodegree and online course options.

Web Development

This is one of the most common remote jobs you could have. Developers can work pretty much anywhere anytime.

If you do not have web dev skills but you are interested, I have great news for you! You do not need uni degree, a nanodegree or online course can teach you everything to get started.

Here’s couple of examples of courses that you can take to quickly train as a web developer.

Graphic Design

Along with web development, graphic design is seens as a traditional freelance/remote job. As with web dev, an university degree is not required. Formal education of course helps but it is not necessary by any means. Creativity is.

You do need to learn tools of the trade and here are couple of courses that could help you get started. Suggested courses:

Graphic Design Boothcamp by Derrick Mitchell.

Graphic Design Masterclass by Chad Neuman.

Start a Vlog / Youtube Channel

Vlogging is a great way to start a side hustle and offers endless opportunities and endless ways of making money.

Youtube channel can still success as a “lifestyle vlog” but one great option is to create an authority vlog on certain topic.

One of the great topics for YT channel is to create review vlog where you test and try various products/software/etc and you earn commission when ever someone makes a purchase with your link.

You do not need fancy equipment to start, your mobile and mic is enough.

Suggested course to take ->

CLICK HERE TO START CREATING YOUR OWN ONLINE COURSE SITE

Become product Reviewer on Youtube by Kevin Breeze

Online Coaching

Do people around you often asked how do you do what you do or how did you achieve XYZ?

If yes, you could become online coach that helps people archieve their dreams. I’ve been both online life coach and online business coach.

Coaching is all about creating a community of like-minded people. To start with you could create Facebook group around your topic. When the group starts growing, you can start sell your services.

If you would like to learn more about online coaching you could take this Udemy course or I can also coach you to become an online coach.

Amazon FBA

If you rather sell products than services, Amazon is the worlds largest marketplace and you can sell pretty much anything on the platform.

Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) means that you do not have any warehouse or product delivery worries. Amazon does all this for you.

Many Amazon sellers I know purchase products from China, ship them to Amazon warehouse and let Amazon to handle all shipping and customer support.

You can sell clothes, kitchen utilities, mobile accessories, pens, notebooks, calendars…. pretty much anything! What would you like to sell?

This is great option if you do not want to handle products yourself and are ok for Amazon to take their cut from your profit to handle all selling and shipping.

Affiliate Marketing

This is what I do also and I love it!

If you already have a website/blog/Youtube channel/followers you can monetize traffic and followers with affiliate marketing.

One of the best products to promote to business audience is Clickfunnels. Reason for this is that Clickfunnels are fantastic in selling and marketing and their two-tier affiliate commissions.

Two-tier means that if you click this link to get free book and end up purchasing something I get commission for your purchase. And if you then also decide to become affiliate and start promoting Clickfunnels and bring people to Clickfunnels and they purchase something then we both earn commission!

I am an affiliate to many products mostly related to online business. I drive traffic to these offers via SEO/Google.

If you are interested learning about becoming an affiliate to Clickfunnels, here’s 100 days to CF Affiliate Success course.

Virtual Assistant

If you have great admin skills and love to work closely with your clients, becoming a virtual assistant is a great option.

After years of being in business there are two things I’ve noticed that make a great VA. Tech skills and actively looking ways to help your client more.

With tech skills I mean knowing how to use Clickfunnels, Mailchimp, Convertkit and other common online business tools. Many business owners are clueless with these and are willing to pay to have someone else to set up and manage these. Takes bit of time but pays off!

Other is actively looking for more ways to help business owner. We are very busy and we dont always know what extra tasks you could help us with. That is why we need VA’s that actively tell us how they can help us better and more.

You can find clients from Upwork, Indeed and even Facebook groups! If you want to learn some basic VA skills, check out my course on Clickfunnels and Mailchimp.

If you are interested in location independent lifestyle, becoming a VA is great option!

Language Teacher

Teaching languages remotely is great way to start your side hustle. There are many type of language teacher/tutor jobs for all kinds of skills. Converstation class teacher generally require any formal education or training.

If you are keen to learn more you can take TOEFL (check this Google search for more) course online or 4 weeks in class. Read this before you sign up with any teacher training schools.

Classes are often held via Skype or other video call app. Your internet connection must be reliable and fast.

You can earn up to $25 per hour as an online language teacher teaching both adults and children new language.

You can sign up with language school as a teacher or go solo with websites like iTalki.

Social Media Manager

We all stair at our mobile phones majority of the day and many times we are looking at one of the major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.

You can offer social media manager services to businesses who do not have the time or interest handle their social media presense. This involves posting, commenting, liking and increasing followers.

You can also train to become Facebook Ads consultant if you have keen interest in the topic. This will make your side gig quickly a full-time job.

Sales Funnel Consultant

Every business needs a sales funnel!

There I said it. Over the 10 years in business the biggest challenge businesses face is lack of leads and lack of sales. Sales funnel is what fixes it - well partly anyways.

Sales funnel consultant uses platforms like Clickfunnels/Convertri/Leadpages/etc. to build funnels for their clients. I also wrote more indepth post about it, you can read it here.

Skills required are basic tech skills, writing skills and graphic skills. Of course you do not need to have all skills yourself, you can work with fellow side hustler who was the skills you don’t.

House Sitting

Here’s selection of my house sitting buddies from all over the world.

Not exactly a job per se but one that can help you go from corporate cubicle to freedom in matter of months.

A house sitter looks after a house, and often animals, while the owner is away. While you are house sitting you don’t have rent or any house hold bills to pay. You can invest saved money to your business or build up your rainy day fund.

You can save thousands per month being a house sitter. For one year I house sat in Ecuador, Panama, Dominican Republic, Oregon and New York allowing me to live rent free for whopping 11 months!

There are also some paid house sits available. Learn more about house sitting and sign up internet’s best house sitting site with 25% discout - click here.

Which is Better | Kartra vs Clickfunnels | An Honest Comparison

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

*this post has affiliate links. If you decide to make purchase by using links in this blog post, I’ll earn a commission that helps me write these reviews.*

I****n this review I’ll compare two sales funnel tools - Kartra and Clickfunnels**. You’ll learn the difference of these platforms in terms of…**1. Features2. Price3. Pros and Cons4. Comparison of the two

I have used both platforms extensively for my online coaching, course business and sales funnel consulting business. This review is based on my own experience on running a business using these platforms and running funnels for clients.

I just discovered a sales funnel tool that looks super awesome and best IT IS FREE! Click below to get your sales funnels for FREE!

I also write when Clickfunnels is the better option and vice versa - both have their place depending where you are in your business.

And to be transparent I am currently using Kartra after cancelling Clickfunnels subscription. I do still work with few clients that have Clickfunnels subscription.

Click to try Kartra for 30 days for FREE and compare the two yourself

Kartra vs Clickfunnels Features - What Do You Actually Get

I’ve used both Kartra and Clickfunnnels extensively and trialed all their features and run my business on both platforms. I know both in and out.

If you would like to see my complete tool box for me business, go to Online Tools

This review is based on my personal experience using both platforms, and although I am an affiliate to both, commissions earned does not impact my review.

Email Marketing

KARTRA

Email marketing in any way you want from creating to actual delivering the emails.

Create automated campaigns, autoresponders, drip campaigns and broadcasts.

All with beautiful done-for-you templates or DIY if you wish.

No extra cost involved.

CLICKFUNNELS

Email marketing is ONLY available at $297 version and even so email marketing with Clickfunnels is very, very, very basic.

You still need an STMP server who actually sends your emails. You can use free services, but it it recommended to pay to get a level of better service.

If you use Clickfunnels I highly recommend using external email marketing provider like ActiveCampaing or Convertkit.

Winner: Kartra (by a mile!)

Let’s compare Kartra and Clickfunnels membership site / online course options.

Membership Sites

KARTRA

With Kartra you can do pretty much anything and in any way you want.

Create multiple membership levels, host all your videos under Kartra and keep track of leads with integrated shopping cart function.

All this you can do by drag-n-drop function making it super easy to use and build.

CLICKFUNNELS

This is a feature with many, many issues on CF and they have no plans of developing their membership site.

You need to host videos externally for example Youtube (not recommended) or Vimeo (extra cost).

Biggest issues are payment problems and integrations as well as not being able to deep link - major issue if your course has multiple modules / videos.

Winner: Kartra (CF does not even come close)

Shopping Cart

KARTRA

Fully-customizable sales pages, product pages, multi-step funnels and much more.

Integration with Stripe, Paypal or many others.

Use Done-for-you templates or create your own.

CLICKFUNNELS

Fully customisable shopping cart and checkout pages - works with Stripe and Paypal.

Affiliates only available at $297 / month option!

Winner: Kartra

Split Testing

KARTRA

Split testing and analytics are included in the package.

CLICKFUNNELS

Split testing and analytics are included in the package.

Winner: tie

Calendar Function

KARTRA

Kartra recently launched Calendar functionality which of course integrates with everything inside Kartra making it super easy to manage.

Schedule live events, appointments, and anything else seamlessly.

CLICKFUNNELS

Clickfunnels does not have this, you need external provider which means another monthly expense.

Winner: Kartra

The next is a big between Kartra vs Clickfunnels - VIDEOS! Have you heard the saying video is the future?

It is true and hosting your HQ videos could be pretty expensive, unless you opt for Kartra!

Video Hosting | Kartra vs Clickfunnels

KARTRA

You can host videos with Kartra and add awesome extra functionalities like click-to-action to your videos - very powerful.

CLICKFUNNELS

You need external video host like YouTube (free but not recommended) or Vimeo (cost extra)

Winner: Kartra (Video is the Future!)

Support from the Platform

KARTRA

Kartra offers responsive support plus very active Facebook Group and my experience has been nothing but positive.

CLICKFUNNELS

Clickfunnels offers support and Facebook Group.

I have had issues with CF support by not getting response to my tickets in timely fashion, or getting bad attitude when I wanted to cancel a service <- one of the main reasons why I left!

Winner: Kartra

Extra note: having reliable and timely customer support is crucial to your business! If something goes wrong, you need support to be available and ready to help. Do your self a favor and check out FB groups and see feedback on customer support…

Biggest Differences - Kartra vs Clickfunnels

The biggest differences between the platforms are that they serve a difference purpose.

Clickfunnels is a sales funnel software.

Kartra is all-in-one business management software.

Clickfunnels on its own does not allow you to run your whole business where as Kartra does.

W****hich one is better for you depends which stage you are in your business and what do you want.

When Clickfunnels is better than Kartra?

Clickfunnels is great if you just want an effective sales funnels with a drag-n-drop interface. You already have email service provider, website etc. elsewhere then Clickfunnels is great option to host your opt-ins and sales funnels.

You can also use it for autowebinars - it is not perfect but kinda’ish works.

If you want to learn marketing, Clickfunnels peeps are the best people to learn from. They have created a massive following to both Clickfunnels and Russel Brunson - people buy the product because of strong brand, and their famous “one funnel away” slogan.

And if you want to make money as an affiliate, Clickfunnels affiliate system is great as they have two-tier earning possibility and even a possibility to earn a free car (read more here).

Because of this awesome affiliate set up, lot of people promote CF. If you’ve read glorious reviews of Clickfunnels (especially the ones that offer lot of extra bonuses), these are affiliate posts, and often writers of these have never really used Clickfunnels and wrote to review just to earn affiliate income.

I am affiliate to both and currently my Kartra affiliate earnings exceed Clickfunnels earnings so I guess that tells something too.

When Kartra is better?

Kartra is great option when you want all-in-one solution to run your business.

If you are not interested integrating various services with Zapier and all, go with all-in-one solution.

Trust me when I say that this, having all in one can be a life and time saver!

Kartra offers everything you need to run your business and best of all everything works automatically****together.

You get video hosting and really powerful ways to catch people depending how much they’ve watched your video. And one more time, video is the future!

My Choice - Kartra vs Clickfunnels…

I already mentioned that I use Kartra in the first paragraph but here’s my reasons why I changed.

Why I left Clickfunnels

Clickfunnels served me great for a while and I was pretty ok with their service.

What I disliked from day one was lack of Undo - button!

Trust me, this is a huge problem!!

You’ll remember me saying this when you accidentally delete big junk of your newly built sales page….. cause it will happen to you!

Undo - button is mandatory when building anything online.

Another big downside with CF is lack of development of the platform itself. They focus on creating pretty templates, unnecessary games (why oh why..??) and serving affiliates rather than improving functionality of the platform.

Clickfunnels is essentially a marketing company with tech attached. That is great if you want to learn sales and marketing but you don’t need to pay $97/ month to do that! Sign up for free trial and watch the sales pitches flood in!

Zapier is necessary to get everything talking with each other - if you run multiple funnels you end up with way too many zaps (and another extra monthly cost).

And you can not use PayPal with CF the easy way! Seriously in year 2020 you cant plug and play worlds largest payment provider!!

And lastly the community feels like massive network marketing event - which the two-tier affiliate system creates.

Why Kartra

After running my business for years I started to hate that all services were separate and having to use Zapier to integrate all.

I just want to run my business as lean as possible and my current multiple service provider set up did not match this.

Kartra offers all in one - and all I need.

There is slight downside with Kartra is that they do not handle EU VAT - but neither does many other services. If EU VAT is an issue for you, it is if you sell to EU based customers, try Thrivecart as they have it built in.

Your turn!

Which one is your winner - Kartra or Clickfunnels?

Don’t forget to share the review on social media and leave a comment letting me know which one you are using and why!

How to Come Up With Great Domain Name in under 30 Minutes

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info.

I’ll show you how you can come up with great domain name in your niche without spending countless hours searching for ideas.

I have started several websites in my entrepreneurial journey and one of the biggest learning experiences has been that domain name selection does not make much of a difference!

Yep, I said it. Your domain really do not make that much of a difference at the end of the day.

I am totally guilty of delaying moving forward on business ideas because I could not come up with the “perfect” domain name.

The worst thing you can do is not go ahead with your idea because you can’t come up with the perfect name.

It is way better to go with your second best name and start your project (and making money) than waiting for the ideal name to come up.

So I thought I would write a post on how to come up with great domain name for your blog and/or business.

[thrive_2step id=‘9116’]Click to Download My FREE Guide to get Leads on Autopilot[/thrive_2step]

Bad News First - Popular Domain Names are Already Taken

Great (and even not so great) domains are taken in seconds by domain sellers. They are domain hoarders who hope to make big bucks later on by selling the catchy domain name.

This is the first hurdle you need to get over.

The domain you were thinking about is probably taken already.

But don’t give up yet, there is a lot of hope still!

At the end of the day your domain makes very little difference in your bank account. You taking action today and your content on that site, on the other hand, makes a huge difference to your bank account.

I have many domains I don’t think are the best but they still work like magic.

Stop mourning for the domain name you could not get, and start thinking about new ones with the help of the list below.

Use .com Domain

Domain ending .com is still by far the most popular domain url and I highly recommend using it if possible in anyway.

Even a not so great domain with .com ending is better than a clever .somethingelse.

There are new domain ending like .coach, .io and all but people still tend to type .com at the end. If you competitor owns the .com version, guess who the online searcher will end up buying from?

There are many successful non .com businesses (like leadpages.net), and .co is gaining popularity, but I still recommend .com when ever possible.

Start with a List

In order to come up with suitable domain, you need a list of ideas. Nothing beats a brainstorming session. Get your friends to help you out as well.

Start gathering ideas and inspiration from the following sources:

I Spy…

Start Googling websites in your niche and write down all the URL’s you find. Nothing better than spying on your competitors to get ideas!

As an added bonus, you also learn a lot about what they do and what they sell! Double benefit!

This will start your creative juices going and get you closer to your ideal domain name.

Go Beyond Your Niche

If you don’t come up with many ideas by spying on your competition, go beyond it.

Add to your list all of the URL’s you’ve seen and liked.

You can also check blog aggregators and sites like Blogger to get even more ideas.

Synonyms and Slang

As many great domains are already taken, maybe you could use a synonym or a slang word instead. Also use this tool to grow your list.

Run out of Words?

Use this awesome tool to add couple thousand of adjectives instantly to your list.

Add Your Name to the Mix

With the list of words you have, do a few of them look good with your name attached?

DeliciouslyElla.com is a great example where a word + name works beautifully (and profitably!)

Or you could just go with…

Simply You

Using your own name may not feel as exciting of descriptive enough vs using SellingMadeEasyOnline.com, but it just might be the right thing to do.

No matter what niche you are in, your name should be one of the candidates for your URL.

When I started online I did not want to use my name. Nowadays I don’t even remember why I was so against it but I do remember it being a big no-no for a long time.

Silly me!

This website would have been way bigger and have much higher authority if I stated using my own name from the get go…

What’s Next?

By now you have a list of potential names and lot of words on a piece of paper. Start connecting words together and see if something comes up together nicely.

While you are at this stage, you could pop the name on Google and see what kind of search results come up.

If you find couple of potential options, it is time to check if the domain is available. You can do so safely at Namecheap. Read later why I wrote down safely.

Found a domain that is available at Namecheap? Great, here’s what to do next.

Check Social

One of my main criteria for a great domain is that all social handles must be available and preferably an exact match to the domain name.

I use service called Namecheckr to see if social handles are available or not. If I get a green light for Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest and Twitter, the domain idea is good to go.

If you actively use other social platforms as well, do check those, but the minimum requirement is the 5 major ones listed above.

I think it is really important to have a single handle for all social platforms. It is worth to be consistent on this one.

You do not want to end up like this…

Domain: greatdomain.comYoutube: greatdomainNMFacebook: great-domainTwitter: greatdomain123Instagram: greatdomainnnnn

and so on…

Nobody has long enough attention span on social platforms to start searching for you! Consistency is the key.

What to Watch Out For

There are couple of no-no’s when it comes to URL’s. These are not set in stone but a good guidance to follow.

There are couple of types of domain I do not suggest using.

First, domains with hyphens. I am not a fan of a - in the middle of the domain.

I do recommend staying away from - on the domain. Here’s why…

If your competitor has the domain without the “-”, they most likely thank you for reserving the domain and giving them lot of free traffic.

Second, using numbers in domains. Potential for disaster…

10greatdomains.com can also be spelled TENgreatdomains.com

How would your reader know which one is yours?

You can opt for a number only if you reserve both domains - both the number 10 and written TEN versions_._

Heads Up!

Here’s a bit of a warning before you go use blog/website name generators. Many are totally OK to use but there are few nasty ones out there (you can’t tell this though until it’s too late) that record your searches and reserve the domain and then later try to sell it to you.

If there is a sign up form on the generator before you can use it or see suggestions - run!

It’s Go Time

Once you have the good enough (!) domain, it is time to reserve it and all the social handles.

A good enough domain is better than no domain! A good enough domain can bring you money, no domain keeps you stuck.

My go-to domain host is Namecheap. I have used them for years and never had a single issue. They also give you free domain owner privacy which many others charge for!

Building Your Site

After you domain is in order, it is time to build your site. I recommend a Wordpress website hosted on Bluehost.

Ready my post how to start a money making blog even as a newbie

UPDATED: My Favorite Tools for Business Website – Great Plugins, Programs and More

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info..

Finding the right tool can make a massive difference in your productivity, efficiency and free time, which is why I decidee to write about my favorite tools for business website.

I see many business owners doing a lot of manual work when they could use a plugin or a program to automate the whole task. I don’t know who would say no to automated sales for example!?

The most important thing is to invest into plugins and programs that can save you time and bring more evergreen income, and the second most important thing is to not to allow months (or years) to go by before implementing systems into your business.

Many get stuck in “which one should I choose” for way too long, where they should just pick one and get moving forward. Literally anything is better than nothing, so my advice is to start automating their business.

Let’s start with plugins for a Wordpress website.

EMAIL

Ever heard someone say “money is in the list”?

If you have or not, it is true! Money is really in the list and the sooner you implement email into your business, the quicker you can start making serious income.

Here’s my favorite email tools.

Convertkit

Do you want super easy email management software you can set up in under 30 minutes?

That’s Convertkit for you. Trusted by the biggest names in the blogging world and built by a blogger, you can trust it is as good as it sounds.

Convertkit is great if you do not need fancy Client Management Systems (CMS), you just need a place to host your list and automate your emails. It does provide very powerful tools, even for a larger company.

One of the best things about Convertkit is their delivery rate. Simple text-based emails usually land in Gmail’s Inbox vs the Promotion folder. This fact alone will make a huge impact on your open rates!

I also recently wrote a review on Convertkit and you can see it by clicking here.

Google Apps

The entrepreneurs best friend is the Google Apps Suite!

Not only you can easily create myemail@ninakolari.com email but you also get access to powerful business building and sharing tools like Sheets, Documents, Forms and much more.

If you are still using a @yahoo.com or @gmail.com email as your professional email, now is time to change!

Having a professional email that matches your domain will make a big difference in how your clients view you.

Clickfunnels

Having an email service provider itself is not enough, you also need converting landing pages that capture emails.

Clickfunnels provides much more than landing pages though! You can build high converting sales funnels that sell your services/products on autopilot.

Also if autowebinars are on your radar, Clickfunnels can handle that too - and save you at least $400 a year not having to sign up with webinar tool.

Sign up with Clickfunnels and get a free trial on me. If you sign up using my affiliate link here, I’ll give you free access to my Clickfunnels course! (drop me a message after signing up)

Graphics / Social Media

My favorite graphics app is Easil! I used to use Canva a lot but its become so popular that I see same templates being used too many times plus its missing some much needed functionalilites.

Easil is especially awesome if you use Pinterest - their pin templates works WONDERS! And option to create gifs is the best!

Check out Easil now.

PLUGINS

If you run a self-hosted Wordpress website, plugins are your best friends. Plugins enable you to do pretty much anything with your site. Here are my favorite plugins:

Yoast

If you do not have Yoast installed already, DO IT NOW!

It is a lifesaver when it comes to being ranked by Google and other search engines. It is a total must-have plugin. I use it every time I publish something on my sites.

SEO is something many businesses skip as it seems hard or too much work, but honestly it is the opposite. Once you do basic groundwork for SEO, you are able to capture traffic from search engines day and night.

Social Warfare

Social Warfare enables you to create social sharing buttons on your website and determine which image it should pick for Facebook, Pinterest and others. You can also customize the look and feel of your social buttons.

This is a must have tool if you are avid Pinterest user. Which you should be if you are not yet.

Pinterest prefers vertical images and those do not always look great on blog posts, or it takes too much valuable space from other content. A great thing with Social Warfare is that you can pre-define a Pinterest image but you do not need to have the image itself on the blog post/page.

Lastly you can define a different title and description for social media. A great way to capture further traffic with calls to action!

Try it by pinning this site to your Pinterest board and you’ll see an image that is nowhere in the post but will come up once you pin the post!

SOCIAL MEDIA

Automating social media is a must!

If you are still doing social media manually, automating it will feel like a complete time saver or even a life saver.

All my social efforts that are geared towards traffic generation are automated, and here’s the tools I use:

Tailwindapp

Tailwind is a powerful Pinterest tool that enables you to keep your Pinterest account looking active, even if you don’t actively pin anything.

It also allows you to join Tribes which increases your reach in seconds.

For Pinterest I use both Tailwind and Boardbooster, which I’ll talk about next. You don’t need both, one is enough, and I recommend you sign up with both to see which one you like the most.

GENERAL TOOLS

Here’s tools I use all the time but don’t really fit into any above categories.

Website Hosting

Your site must live somewhere. Where it does makes a big difference.

I host all my sites on Siteground.

Here’s a bit of a warning if you’ve seen lot of reviews and recommendations for hosting companies. No names mentioned here… just a note to be careful with which one you choose and why.

Many cheap hosting company offers means your site will be hosted in a shared server with many, many, many other websites. This will impact your site speed negatively and speed is everything, by the way. Many companies also have massive affiliate programs and pay very generous commissions for reviewers and those that “recommend” the service.

I use Siteground myself and I’ve tested all hosts that are out there, and I ain’t moving anywhere anytime soon.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly allows you to shorten those long URL’s into nice, compact form. It also allows you to easily track the number of clicks your links get.

Thinkific Site Builder Review

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info..

Thinkific has just launched a new feature on their online course platform - Site Builder. It allows you to create beautiful websites that matches perfectly with your online courses. Here’s my take on the Thinkific Site Builder.

It allows you to create complete online course websites and sell your courses under one platform.

You can create course pages, homepage, and product pages as well as additional pages containing any content that you want or need. No coding necessary!

Who is Site Builder Best For?

I recommend site builder for those who do not have a website already. Maybe you have an idea of a course and need both an online course host and a couple of extra pages to sell your courses.

Best suited for:

New Online Course Creators without a website
Course Creators who want extra pages on their course site, for example FAQ, Resources
Any business that needs a great online course site that can be created without coding

Site Builder Features

First of all you need to choose a theme for your site. Thinkific currently offers three options: Empire, Vogue and Vision.

In addition to selecting a theme, you can also select color schemes for your site.

Save Save

Design Focus

All themes have been carefully designed specifically for online educators and course creators. You can edit colors, fonts and other features to ensure your course site matches the overall branding for your business.

Ease of Use

Ease of use is the great thing about the Site Builder - no coding necessary!

Anybody can create a high quality site with Thinkific’s Site Builder. The drag and drop interface is simple and intuitive to use.

Mobile - no problem

Mobile optimized pages are a must these days! If your site is not mobile optimized, you are leaving money on the table.

You do not need to worry about mobile traffic with Site Builder as it is completely optimized for all devices: desktop, laptop, and mobile.

All themes comes with pages that are optimized for all devices.

Save Save

Pricing

If you don’t already have a Thinkific account, click here to create one for free!

You can start using Thinkific for free and upgrade as you go. I highly recommend choosing at least the Essential Plan so you can have affiliates, bundles, upsells, coupons and promotions.

Nothing beats having affiliates doing the marketing work for you!

Final Thoughts

Thinkific’s Site Builder is an awesome add-on to your online course platform. They already had a great education specific website and it is even better now with Site Builder.

I highly recommend Site Builder and Thinkific for those who want to create an online course and need additional pages with their courses / website.

Being able to create pages with drag-and-drop is a game changer as you do not need to hire a coder to do simple pages for you.

Save Save

ConvertKit Review – Does it live up the hype?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post has affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info..

Email automation is a must no matter what kind of business or website you have. Money is in the list and passive income is the email automation. One of the most used email service providers is ConvertKit. In this ConvertKit review I will cover pricing, features and how it compares to other email service providers.

Investing in an email service provider (ESP) should be first on the list when you start your business, or for sure when you want to grow and scale your business.

I will also compare ConvertKit with many popular ESP’s like Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign.

Blog post UPDATED June 2020 with new FREE pricing plan for new accounts.

What is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit was founded by Nathan Berry, an avid blogger, who realized that market needed a better ESP than what was available.

ConvertKit is suitable as an Email Service Provider for bloggers, podcasters, entrepreneurs and basically anyone who wants to collect leads and send emails out (and who does not want that?).

ConvertKit Highlights

One of the best things about ConvertKit is this: it is super simple to use!

Many ESP’s are notoriously hard to figure out and complex. I am sure you have read how horrible Infusionsoft is to set up and it’s expensive.

ConvertKit is totally opposite, where you can literally get started in couple of clicks.

It took me under an hour to set up my account with ConvertKit and start collecting leads. It is a really great tool for those who are ne****w to email marketing as it is so simple to learn and start.

That does not mean it is not good for those who are experienced with email marketing. In fact you will probably love the ease of managing your emails.

ConvertKit also has direct integrations with many of my other favorite tools like Teachable.

There’s nothing worse than having to use Zapier to connect your each and every service… Trust me on this one!

ConvertKit Features

I’ll cover the main features you will need in email marketing and what ConvertKit offers.

Form and Landing Page Templates

ConvertKit comes with a form and landing page builder, which is great. Both are really easy to use but lack a little on the customization side. You can set these up in under 10 minutes and start collecting emails.

Lack of templates and designs may put you off ConvertKit at first but it is really built for conversion. Pretty does not deliver conversions, simple does. And this is where ConvertKit shines.

And to be honest, less is more anyway. The less options you have, the quicker you make your decision… All templates are proven to work and I bet you’ve seen the above templates while browsing online.

You do not have to use the templates; you can build your own. I use both ConvertKit templates and ThriveLeads templates that I connect with ConvertKit.

If you know a bit of coding the sky is the limit. You can build the exact look you want. Or hire a coder to do it for you. But don’t hang on to the design step too much! Any kind of form is better than no form at all.

Same goes for landing page!

Email Automation

This is where the “money” is. No matter what your business is, automation is the key to your success.

Again ConvertKit makes this super simple process where you can set it up within an hour!

You can set up the time for sending emails (you can exclude days of the week if you wish), add filters to messages and, of course, create an email as you like.

Note though, ConvertKit may not be the best option if your emails are image heavy. Or if you want to focus on design.

ConvertKit is great if you want your emails delivered!

Emails with images may go into promotions folder on Gmail and nobody wants to be in the promotions folder…

Email Broadcasts

Email broadcasts are one-off emails you send to your list/subscribers. You can send emails to everyone on your list or set-up a segment of your list.

Just like anything else on ConvertKit, email broadcasts are really simple to set up and get ready for sending out.

You can monitor open rates, click rate, unsubscribes and re-send messages to those that have not opened the email yet.

Automation Rules

Here’s another place where the money is: automation is key to making money passively.

On ConvertKit you can create automation rules that trigger actions. If-this-then-that is the logic behind automations.

I highly recommend investing time into automating your lead gen and sales. The time you spend honing your automations will grow your bank account.

Automation rule examples:

Subscriber clicks a specific link on your website - Convertkit sends out the email set or they are added to another sequence.

If someone purchases your course from your website (they land on the thank you page), you can add that person into a sequence that is meant for buyers and remove them from prospects list.

Value for Money

If you want highly effective yet easy to use email service provider, ConvertKit is way to go!

Money is in the list and the longer you fight with complex ESP’s, the longer you have to wait before you start earning.

I see many business owners get stuck with other ESP’s huge template libraries, complex interfaces and automation rules and never actually get to the point where emails are sent out.

Don’t make this mistake, take action today!

Save Save Save Save

ConvertKit pricing is based on number of subscribers:

1,000 subscribers costs $29 per month, or $0.029 per subscriber per month5,000 subscribers costs $79 per month, or $0.016 per subscriber per month95,000 subscribers costs $619 per month, or $0.006 per subscriber per month

At first you may hesitate spending $29 but if you set up your account today, add forms to your website, and add email sequence to ConvertKit, I can almost guarantee that you’ll make that back (and more) by the end of the month.

ConvertKit vs Other ESP’s

I have tried all other ESP’s out there. I started with Mailchimp and then moved to ActiveCampaign. ConvertKit was already around then but I did not choose it because of price… stupid mistake!!

I chose ActiveCampaign because of the price. I lost so much money because learning ActiveCampaign requires quite a bit of a learning curve. It was just too complex and flashy for my needs. ActiveCampaign has great sounding features which I never used because I did not need them at that stage.

Especially in the beginning, simpler the better!!

CLICK TO TRY CONVERTKIT AND SEND UNLIMITED EMAILS

ConvertKit Review Final Words

So does it live up the the hype?

You bet!

I highly recommend ConvertKit for anyone who wants to grow their email list and send out emails. It is so simple to use and you can get started in matter of hours.

Their support is great too if you get stuck using ConverKit.

Disclaimer: I am affiliate for ConvertKit and links in this page are affiliate links. As an affiliate I can often offer extra bonuses when you sign up using one of the links on my site.

20 Content Upgrade Ideas to Grow Your Email List

Anonymous — Mon, 28 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info..

Growing your email list should be your number one priority pretty much every week. Money is in the list is pretty accurate saying. One of the fastest way to grow your email is to provide a content upgrade.

What is a Content Upgrade

There are many names for content upgrade as they are businesses. No matter many names it still has a single target - grow email list.

A content upgrade or opt-in freebie/bribe or lead magnet is created specifically to convert browser into email subscriber.

An example of a content upgrade is on this page too. I ask you to download my freebie.

Your content upgrade should be relevant to your posts or content. And feel free to test various types and styles of content upgrades!

Save

Content Upgrade to Grow Your List

Now that we know what it is, let’s look at awesome content upgrade ideas you can execute today!

EXCLUSIVE BONUS: DOWNLOAD MY SET IT AND FORGET IT GUIDE TO DRIVE EVERGREEN TRAFFIC TO YOUR CONTENT AND OFFERS.

Content Upgrade Ideas

1 PDF POST

This is by far the easiest to execute. Simply copy/paste your final blog post into Word/Canva (or any other tool you use) and save it as a PDF.

Sound simple but it is effective. This is really great for how to posts where it might be really helpful to print it out.

2 LIST OF RESOURCES

If your posts has lot of links here and there, it might be good to offer a list of resources that one can download/print. This is great for any kind of tool / resource type of posts.

3 AUDIO/VIDEO VERSION

Your reader might want to listen to the posts while driving to work, or watch a video on train. People have different preferences and it is always good to provide options. This allows you to create a simple audio/video file of your post and offer it as a content upgrade.

4 TRANSCRIPT

Opposite of previous one. If your content is audio/video, then you can offer a transcript of it. If you do not want to do it yourself, use Rev or Fiverr to find freelancer to do it for you.

5 CHECK LIST

This works really well with longer blog posts and how to posts. If you have a tutorial about something then a check list might be seen as a valuable upgrade to your post.

6 BONUS CONTENT

Can you offer something extra as a bonus? Tutorial as a video is a great bonus content to offer readers.

7 EBOOK

Ebook generally is not a good idea as a freebie because it is quite large thing to give. Most effective freebie should be consumed in minutes, not in hours. I have successfully offered a first chapter of my ebook as a bribe and then sold the whole book to subscribers later.

8 TEMPLATES

These are great and considered a high value upgrade. I have offered sales funnel templates as an opt-in bribe and these fly of the shelfs! I

9 FREE TRIAL

Do you have a membership site? You could offer free trial for a week for example. Lot of software companies offer free trial so that customers can try out the product before purchase.

It works great on membership site as well, nobody can consume all content in free trial but get enough value to make the purchase decision.

10 FREE COURSE

If you have courses a free mini-course is great way to provide value and raise the trust factor. You can check my free course here.

11 EMAIL COURSE

Same as previous but with an added bonus, you will be in there inbox multiple times! Highly effective way to engage a lead.

12 SWIPE FILE

Works great for certain businesses - you could offer an email swipe file etc. For my freelance business I at times offer swipe file of my highly converting proposals - work like magic!

13 TOOLKIT

Another effective way to give value to leads. Getting a list of tools that one need to use is highly effective. I also use this, you can access it here.

14 SPREADSHEET

Does your blog post have anything to do with numbers or calculations? Adding a done for your calculation is seens as hugely valuable add-on. On my freelance website I offer freelancer hourly calculator as a opt-in bribe.

15 IMAGES OR GRAPHICS

If you are in the creative field adding free stock images or graphics templates is great way to add people to your email list. Great example is images or graphics geared towards Pinterest which is one of the best free traffic generator of all social media platforms.

How to Create Content Upgrade in Under 30 Minutes

You need to have high value content but also content that looks good. Your lead is still getting to know you and you need to impress to make sure they get positive first impression.

You can use multiple tools to create your content upgrade and I’ve listed few free tools to try.

Canva

Canva is a free online tool that you can use to create your opt-in freebie. No matter what type of graphics it is, you most likely can use Canva to create it.

I create all my PDF’s using Canva. You can start using it for free but their premium version does offer great add-ons.

Jing

Creating a video or want to take high quality screen shots? Use Jing to record screen or take screen shots.

It is great for video tutorial type of freebies

It is free to use and offer both Windows and Mac version.

Google Drive

No matter what you are sharing, Google Drive can help!

You can create spreadsheets, documents, presentations and so much more with Google’s free service. Sharing is also super easy!

Audacity

Want to record your blog posts as an audio?

Audacity is great little tool (and free) that you can use to record high quality audio. Do invest into great mic though!

What Tools to Use for Content Upgrade?

Tools are as important as the content - at least for you. This process needs to be fully automated so that you can serve your leads day in and day out.

I personally use ThriveThemes and Convertkit for my sites and upgrades.

How I use Pinterest to Get More Clients (+ 8 tips to help you do the same!)

Anonymous — Wed, 23 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info..

Pinterest is often forgotten social media when talking about marketing services and products, except make up and fashion of course!

But it is so wrong thinking.

I actually stopped using Facebook altogether since going all in with Pinterest.

I don’t need to pay for ads anymore, no more constant chatting in groups in hopes of someone taking up on your offer, no more exhausting FB Lives… You can check my FB page here, as you can see tumbleweeds are rolling there on their own…

Anyways, let’s get to the tips I promised. I’ll talk about Pinterest funnel later.

How Get More Clients with Pinterest

Let’s get to it and talk about how you can get more clients using Pinterest as your lead generator.

GET YOUR GRAPHICS RIGHT

First things first, get your graphics right! Pinterest is a visual social media and getting the right image makes a huge difference.

Use vertical images with 2:3 proportion. Do not try to re-use any other social media graphics you have. Just create a new one with…

USE CANVA FOR GRAPHICS

Canva is an awesome tool that allows you to create all kinds of graphics for all kinds of needs. You can find hundreds of Pinterest templates that are correct size and look awesome.

Looks does matter on Pinterest!

MASTER THE LOOK

The look of the pin is as important as it the message. Stick with your brand colors and fonts on Pinterest or use something very similar. You want consistency in all your brand visuals.

Pins with up to three main colors works the best.

IMAGES

As mentioned before Pinterest is a highly visual media. Use really, really good images on your pins. Make sure they are high quality and sharp.

Heads up though, don’t go on Google to find images! Use image banks for your images to avoid any copyright issues.

You can get images directly from Canva, both free and paid, or you can use an image banks like Depositphotos.

BE DIFFERENT

Don’t be afraid to add you personality on your pins. People see hundreds of pins and your pins are like everyone elses, you’ll disapper in the crowds.

At the moment there are literally millions of really light colored, almost white, pins promoting business services. Go the other way & stand out!

DOMAIN

Do put your domain on the pin graphic. Your name is not enough, put the actual domain. Sometimes links get broken and in these case a domain on the image saves your lead!

MAKE IT MEMORABLE

No matter what style or colors you use, stick with those! You want the browser to instantly recognize your pin from the sea of pins.

Your differentiator could be the font you use, colors, style or even your own photo on the pin (I do this).

#AUTOMAGIC

Use Pinterest tool like Tailwind to automate your pinning. I can almost guarantee that the money you put on either software will come back tenfolds in matter of days in terms of leads!

Build Your Pinterest Funnel

Pinning itself gets you visibility and what do you aften makes the difference in your bank account.

Optimizing your content, adding opt-ins and creating a Pinterest Funnel is the magic here.

A Pinterest Funnel could be a simply following:

Pin -> Blog Posts with Opt-in -> Email Sequence -> Sales Page -> Money on Your Bank Account

Create Valuable Content

Create content that your leads want to read.

Aim is not for you to become a blogger but to create few pieces of content that your readers want to read.

How to articles works really well and generally speaking you should address the first problems your leads come across in their journey.

Another great one is 8 Tips, 5 Strategies type of posts.

You do not need to create a post everyday, not even every week, but you do need to create few posts that you can pin to Pinterest.

Content with Purpose

Before you create any content, consider two things:

What is the purpose of that contentWhat kind of opt-in/freebie I can offer

No matter what you create it should have a clear purpose behind it and then an opt-in form on the post.

Make it super easy for your leads to subscribe to your emails.

Email Sequence

Once someone opt-ins to your email list, what happens after?

Create an email sequence that warms up your leads and preps them to convert.

My favorite email tool is Convertkit. I did the change literally few days ago so I am still building up my sequences.

Sales Page

Create a sales page for your service / product. When you subcribers move in your sequence there will be a point you want to sell them something.

Make it long form, short form, video, autowebinar or any other type but just make sure you have one ready.

My favorite sales funnel tool is Clickfunnels.

If you are interested in Clickfunnels, you can download free CF templates.

Smooth Check Out

Most sales are lost during check out process!

Forgotten logins, credit card problems, too many steps, click here/there/everywhere etc. and you sold a sale.

Do not allow that to happen to you and use a dedicated and customizable check out with Thrivecart. They had a killer lifetime deal going at the moment - just saying!

And there’s more…

You can get converting Pinterest funnel with above tips and get those leads knocking on your door and fattening your bank account.

While we are here, you might want to check out below posts:

- Pinterest Marketing Tips- Even More Pinterest Tips- Complete List of Online Business Tools I Use

Online Course Platforms Review

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

In this online course platform review I review main marketplaces and hosted solutions based on my years of experience as an online instructor.

Online courses are one of the best ways to generate passive income online. In order to sell online courses, you need to select Online Course Platform that hosts and delivers your course.

I have tried and tested all of the leading marketplace and hosting platforms. So check out my list and sign up with one that fits in best with your business.

I’ll cover the following platforms: (click to jump directly to review)

Udemy Skillshare Amazon Podia Teachable Thinkific

I am able to offer a partner/affiliate discount/offer for a few of the options below, so don’t forget to take full advantage of it.

Here is an overview of all available online course platforms for you to sell your online course.

This post has affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or info. To learn more about how you can make money as an affiliate - click here.

TWO OPTIONS FOR ONLINE COURSE PLATFORMS

There are two ways you can start selling online courses: use an online marketplace or host your own courses.

The biggest difference between the two options is in the area of marketing of your courses.

If you use a marketplace, you may make sales without having to spend a single minute on marketing, but you will also have to share a big portion of your profits. I’ll talk more about this later though, let’s get to the platforms.

I’ll start with the leading marketplace options followed by hosted option.

ONLINE MARKETPLACE: Hosting + Marketing

When you host your courses on a marketplace, you are able to tap into their existing client base. You upload videos, add sales page text and you are pretty much ready to go.

You can make sales on the first day without having to market your course at all.

The main upside of using a marketplace is the ease of getting started and running your courses. They host your courses, they market your courses and they handle all customer support activities. This leaves you with the responsibility of only creating the course!

The downside of using a marketplace is they also take a big cut from your profits for handling all of the heavy marketing work for you, This amount can reach up to and over 50%.

They also may force you into a marketing calendar and a variety of discounts of their choosing. Changes can be frequent on these platforms, so you may suddenly face a pricing revision or other types of changes across the platform.

Why Udemy

Largest course marketplace in the world with millions of students.

Why Skillshare

If you have creative / design courses, Skillshare is best choice.

Why Amazon

World’s largest e-commerce site with tens of millions of credit cards ready on file.

Read full reviews below…

Udemy.com

Udemy is an online course marketplace with a whopping 65,000 courses on the platform along with millions of active students. It is by far that largest online course marketplace in the world in terms of number of courses and number of students.

Udemy is where many online instructors get their business started. With millions of students already signed up, it is an easy way to start selling your online courses.

Udemy is great for both B2B and B2C courses. They also have an Udemy for Business section which allows selected course creators to market to businesses.

IT courses and business courses are the most popular categories on Udemy. Having said that, you will find the platform offers courses on nearly any topic you can think of!

BENEFITS:

Large pool of existing clients
Large marketing team at Udemy
No need to do marketing (it is still recommended though!)
Easy way to get started
Community of other instructors
Free to start / host

DISADVANTAGES:

High competition between instructors
Set pricing structure $10-$200
Occasional changes in the platform (eg. pricing)
Commission up to 70% of course sale

My Experience

I have been an instructor on Udemy since 2016 and over time I’ve hosted 8 courses on the platform. Udemy is howIgot****started selling online courses.

In 2018, I decided to leave Udemy and hid my courses on the platform.

This decision is based on a number of factors but it shouldn’t stop you from using the platform, especially if you are fairly new to course creation.

Udemy was a great platform to help me get started. I also hosted the courses on my site all along and never drove any outside traffic to Udemy.

I primarily used the platform for their internal traffic - and did pretty well doing so! So now I am taking what I have learned over the past couple of years and focusing on marketing my own courses.

My Recommendation

Udemy is fantastic way to get started selling online courses. With their internal marketing team, you can literally make money while you sleep.

All you have to do is create your course, upload it on Udemy and write some compelling sales text. At this point you are ready to go.!

**New Online Instructor:**Go for it! it is an easy way to get your first sales online.Use Udemy for market research!

**Seasoned Online Instructor:**Better to host courses elsewhere but use Udemy as a traffic generator. Host a teaser course on the platform and then drive traffic to your premium course.

Skillshare.com

Skillshare is another online course marketplace where many instructors start. Skillshare has 3 million students learning anything from logo creation and business strategy to design and development and more.

Skillshare has a totally different business model from Udemy’s single course pricing. On Skillshare students pay an annual fee and have access to all courses on the platform. Skillshare favors shorter courses so you could split a longer courses into multiple mini-courses.

The most popular courses on Skillshare are in the creative field. It is a great option for painters, copywriters, designers, etc.

ADVANTAGES

Large pool of existing clients
Skillshare handles marketing activities
Community of other instructors
Membership site model is good for student attraction
No need to do marketing (it is still recommended though!)
Free to start / host

DISADVANTAGES

Geared towards creatives
High competition between instructors
Student accesses all courses with one payment which limits instructor earnings
Occasional changes in the platform (eg. payment)
Instructor payments guided by student minutes watched

My Experience with Skillshare

I joined Skillshare after Udemy and found it a great way to get extra income from my courses. Having said that, I never thought it would become my main site to sell courses because of their pricing structure.

You can earn only so much no matter how great your course is. Your course income is based on minutes watched and a large number of students will just sign up to a course and never watch it.

I also found Skillshare’s payment structure change from number of students to number of minutes watched to be quite abrupt.

I still have some courses on the platform but I rarely log in to the platform because the income I get is fairly small.

My Recommendation

My recommendation for Skillshare is pretty much same as Udemy with one exception: if you are in any creative related field then Skillshare is perfect fit!

**New Online Instructor:**Go for it! Easy way to get your first sales online.Use Skillshare for market research!

**Seasoned Online Instructor:**Better to host courses elsewhere but use Skillshare as a traffic generator. Host a teaser course on the platform and then drive traffic to your premium course.

Amazon.com

You can pretty much sell anything on Amazon now and this also includes online courses. Amazon opened their video direct option over a year ago.

This allows people to purchase online video courses on the platform. Amazon is not really known for video courses yet, so you will need to take some responsibility for marketing. I do not have personal experience selling courses on Amazon even though I have an account there.

I had problems uploading subtitles which were not accepted by Amazon no matter what I did. So it can be frustrating, but I do know some course creators who have earned income this way.

BENEFITS

Credit cards already filed for millions of potential customers
The world’s largest online seller
Huge potential in sales

DISADVANTAGES

Not known as online course platform
May require heavy marketing
Amazon fees

My Recommendation

If you are already selling on Amazon - with books, for example - uploading a video course is a natural extension to your existing account.

Amazon is not known as an online course platform, so expect to do quite a bit of heavy lifting in terms of marketing.

Competition is stiff on Amazon but the upside is they offer millions and millions of potential clients with long term relationships with Amazon.

You may want to host your mini-course on Amazon and then drive traffic to your premium course hosted elsewhere.

**BENEFITS:**Massive pool of existing clientsWell-known brandSomewhat easy way to get started Free to start / host

**DISADVANTAGES:**High competition - lower pricingOccasional changes in the platformHigher quality requirements than other platforms

COURSE PLATFORM: Hosting

A course hosting platform allows you to set up and deliver your online course. The biggest difference from an online course marketplace is that a course platform does not handle any of the marketing for you. They are only set up to effectively host and deliver it for you.

Why should you use a course platform when you could just upload videos to your WordPress site? Because Wordpress is a content management system and is not built for online courses.

When you use a dedicated course platform, you get the best possible hosting and student experience for your students.

Yes, these are usually paid services but on many of them you are able to get started for free as well.

I also looked into Wordpress + a plugin option when I created my first online course but pretty quickly decided against it. I am not a coder and I realized I definitely did not want to be responsible for any security breaches.

I highly recommend staying away from the WP+Plugin option unless you are a coder and/or you have a WP professional on a speed dial!

Websitea are hacked all the time and this can create havoc on your online course business.

Why Teachable

Superb upsales and customizable check out process!

Why Thinkific

Superb customer support that goes the extra mile!

Why Podia

2-step minimalistic checkout means more “ka-ching” for you!

Read full reviews below…

Teachable.com

Teachable is one of the largest online course platforms available and, if you ask me, it is one of the best as well. You can host an online course with Teachable and also create a membership site.

You have a few options about how to run your Teachable school and the good news is you are able to start absolutely free! Once your school grows you can upgrade your account to a paid option to get better customization and results.

Watch Teachables Free Webinar: 7 Steps To Launch Your Own Profitable Online Course

ADVANTAGES:

Free to start for brand new course and low monthly fee later
Suberb customisation options
Handles EU VAT on the two lowest tiers
No transaction fees on higher tiers
Upsells!

DISADVANTAGES:

Might take a little time to get a handle on it
Monthly fee
I’ve seen some complaints about slowness of customer support - my experience has always been good though.

My Experience

There are few reasons why I chose Teachable as my online course host. Firstly, they have superb customer support (even for free account), great user interface for students and instructors, possibility to translate complete platform fairly easily, fantastic upsell opportunities and checkout options without having to purchase external shopping cart, affiliate program and more.

Yes I am biased but I have also tested all platforms and in my experience it is the check-out process that really kills your sales!

Pricing: Range from Free to $299 Transaction fees on payments: 0% - 5%Click here to check out Teachable’s pricing in detail.

If you would like to see my free workshop on how you can sell more with a better checkout experience, click here.

Recommendation

Teachable is an awesome option if you want smooth course experience both for you as an instructor as well as for your students. Their upselling and checkout customizations are incredible - do take full advantage of these!

If you do not want to worry about payments and setting up Stripe, Teachable’s two lower tiers are great options.

In both the free and $39 / month options, Teachable handles all payments for you. The downside of this is that you need to wait 30+ days to get your funds but they also handle EU VAT for you. Read my platform comparison here.

**New Online Instructor:**Go for it! Easy way to get your first sales online.You can start with a free but I do recommend spending $9 to get premium options such as the affiliate program.

**Seasoned Online Instructor:**Sign up for Teachable to sell your courses with zero worries! Both the instructor and student experiences are beautifully designed and really user friendly. Monthly fee pays back very quickly!

Thinkific.com

Thinkific is a Canadian start up with highly-regarded customer support and active Instructor’s Facebook Group. They currently have over 25,000 instructors in 164 countries. Many big name course instructors host their courses on Thinkific.

Thinkific’s CEO and founder Greg Smith is an online instructor himself and started Thinkific with Matt Smith, Miranda Lievers, and Matt Payne after not being able to find suitable software for courses. Thinkific has three fundamentals: Complete Control, Better Learning and Scalable Business.

Thinkific’s payments are handled by you. They do not process any payments for you, which means you are in charge from Day 1. This includes refunds if you allow refunds, but this aspect can be handled quite easily on Stripe.

Watch Free Thinkific Webinar: 7 Ways Authors Increase Revenue Using Online Courses

Pricing: Range from Free - $279 Transaction fees on payments: 0% - 10%Click here to check out Thinkific’s pricing in details.

ADVANTAGES:

One of the largest course platforms
Superb customer support & active Instructor’s Facebook Group
Founded by online course instructor
Free to start, reasonable monthly fee for higher tiers
Good customisation options
Payments via Stripe & PayPal - access to funds immediately
Multi-language option with 15 language options

DISADVANTAGES:

Might take a little time to get a handle on it
Monthly fee might put off some course creators
EU VAT compliance addon of $30 per month
Limited upsell options - Thinkific is actively improving this though

My Experience with Thinkific

Thinkific was the first course platform I signed up with. At that time I needed a Linkedin Integration and Thinkific was the only one offering it at the time.

They also had an incredible customer support and I learned so much what I know today from using Thinkific.

Thinkific is great option to host online courses. If you are looking for solid Stripe & PayPal integration, smooth interface and great support in your instructor journey go with Thinkific. They have active and very supportive Facebook****group as well.

Recommendation

**New Online Instructor:**Go for it! Easy way to get your first sales online.You can start with a free but I do recommend spending $49 / month to get premium options such as affiliate program.

**Seasoned Online Instructor:**Sign up for Thinkific to sell your courses with zero worries! Both the instructor and student experiences are beautifully designed and really user friendly. Monthly fee pays it back very quickly!

Podia.com

Podia differs slightly from Teachable and Thinkific as you can also sell digital downloads like books and printables.

Sure you can create a course on Teachable and Thinkific and just add your book as single lecture but that is not a great option in the long run.

Along with selling digital products you also get powerful email marketing with Podia. On the higher tier plan you can also create a membership****site and offer an affiliate****program for your products.

Lately, Podia added WEBINARS to their higher tier plan! This alone makes Podia the best option in my mind!

Pricing: Range from $39 - $79 Transaction fees on payments: 0%Click here to check out Podia’s pricing in details. You can get FREE TRIAL without credit card!

BENEFITS

Can sell both video courses, digital products and memberships
Very responsive customer support
Webinars to market your course!
Reasonable monthly fee
Good customisation options
Zero transaction fees
Payments via Stripe / Paypal with access to funds immediately

DISADVANTAGES:

Newer platform (backed by VC though!)
No free starter plan
No EU VAT handling (but provides report for you)
Limited upsell options (you can use external service without additional cost)

My Experience

What I really like about Podia is their incredibly smooth and simple 2-step buying process. It really makes a difference on your bank account. A smoother and quicker checkout process can increase your conversion 12%!

If I was not already heavily invested into Teachable, I would likely sign up with Podia. the checkout process is just so good - it only asks for an email address and credit card number - reducing customer cart abandonment drastically.

My Recommendation

New Online InstructorIf you also have other digital products such as books, printables, checklists, etc., then Podia is an awesome way to go. The small monthly fee gets paid back very quickly with less cart abandonment with Podia’s checkout.

**Seasoned Online Instructor:**If you also have other digital products such as books, printables, checklists, etc., then Podia is an awesome way to go. The small monthly fee gets paid back very quickly with less cart abandonment with Podia’s checkout. If you are already signed up with other platform, Podia offers free migration on the $79 / tier!

Your Turn Now…

Where are you going to host your course, on a Course Marketplace or host on your own at a Course Platform or both?

Alternative to Clickfunnels – Save Thousands with This Tool

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read full disclosure f__or more info.

Your sales funnel pages are the gold mind you are sitting on. If your funnel pages are not converting, you are not making money. But if they are, could they work better? To know this, you need A/B testing. Normally this means signing up with Clickfunnels or Leadpages and paying high monthly price for their service. Not anymore. Thrive Themes have just launched alternative to Clickfunnels - ThriveOptimize.

For a one single payment you get to A/B test your heart out on ANY page you want on your Wordpress website.

HEADS UP! Limited time offer! TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS? GET THIS NEW TOOL A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

ThriveOptimize is the Best Clickfunnels Alternative

Why so? Firstly price since this is a big decision point for many.

Clickfunnels costs you $97 / per every single month.

ThriveOptimize costs you simply $97 one-time-fee!

*please note ThriveOptimize is a launch price and will not be live for long so take up on the offer now*

Major Differences between Clickfunnels and ThriveOptimize

Clickfunnels is a SAAS sales funnel software. You can build complete funnels, even complete websites with Clickfunnels. If you opt for full suite you can run your complete business on Clickfunnels using their email and affiliate management services. You are able to run your business without ever needing a hosting service or worry about managing a Wordpress site.

ThriveThemes / Optimize is Wordpress based plugin and theme service. You will need a hosted Wordpress based website in order to use TT. You can either purchase single plugin/theme or opt for full suite membership for $19 per month - this gives you access to all their plugins and themes. Their themes by the way are the fastest and most conversion focused themes out there!

Read What Other Tools I Use in My Business.

Which one Should you Choose?

There are of course multiple factors to take in to account when deciding which one to choose. I listed couple of common things to consider.

If you already have a Wordpress site - go for ThriveOptimize or the complete suite with membership (highly recommended)

If you do not have website, email service etc. - consider Clickfunnels that potentially can run your complete business under one roof. No need to worry about hosting charges. Please note that if you plan to add a blog to your business, Clickfunnels is not great option. You need to host your blog elsewhere most likely a Wordpress site.

You want to start blogging - ThriveThemes is awesome for bloggers! Lightning fast pages and posts together with focus on conversion (ie. more money to you!). You should be blogging as it is fantastic way to get FREE traffic from Google. I get 60% from my site traffic on Google by simply posting blog posts. And once you rank, you have free traffic coming to your site day and night - no Facebook ads necessary!

Why ThriveOptimize could beat Clickfunnels

Firstly price.

Second ease of use.

One more, speed!

ThriveThemes wins Clickfunnels on each of those, and by quite a big difference. Speed is crucial to your success. If your site loads more than 3 seconds, you loose the potential customer. People do not stop and wait for your site to load, they just click “back button” and go check out your competitors.

Clickfunnels is known to be on the slow to load.

You can check your site speed by Google by clicking here.

Thrive Themes all plugins and themes are really easy to use. They are not only functional but come with great designs that are focused on converting your visitors into email subscribers and buyers.

I did mention price early on the post and I must mention it again.

$97 per month vs $97 one time fee.

Not much to say after that statement…

As mentioned earlier ThriveOptimize is currently on launch mode so you can crab that awesome $97 one-time fee offer by clicking here. Warning, launch price will go away very quickly so sign up and test it yourself in peace as you have 30 days no questions ask refund policy.

I’ve also recently reviewed Kartra vs Clickfunnels, you can read the review by clicking here.

5 Ways to Use Messenger Bots for Your Business

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

One of the prediction for 2018 on digital marketing is the growth of Messenger bots or chatbots. These will be the key components of a marketing strategy both in B2B and B2C marketing. AI-based bots may seem really impersonal and not useful, but when built right these can be extremely beneficial addition to any business regardless of industry. People want answers immediately and a bot can help you offer that immediate reward, and of course increase your sales.

Facebook’s Messenger is the way to go if you are thinking of creating a messenger bot for your business.

Messenger Platform connects you to over 1.3 billion people each month.

The future of bot looks really good. It has been estimated that 85% customer interactions are managed by bots by 2020. Of the generations millenials are most open to bots with 71% having positive attitude towards bots. It wont be long before AI is the norm or the new normal.

Before we get into how you can use Messenger bot, lets talk why you should be using a bot in your business.

BENEFITS OF USING A MESSENGER BOT

First benefit is relationship building which does not sound right because it is not a human relationship, it is AI working. You still can build relationship as you are able to connect with potential customer when they want the information, not when you are available.

Most people read Messenger messages immediately where are email is not read immediately. We all get a “ding” when a message arrives. A lead / customer has to start the process so you will never run into “spam” problems as lead has given you a permission to contact them via Messenger.

Well built bot allows you to personalize your content to match with the potential lead. This will eventually lead to boost in sales and increased profits. A lead is able to find what they are looking for faster than any other way plus it all happens on a Facebook Messenger.

Chatbots are interactive and offer versatility in messaging. You can use quizzes, video, messages and more to interact with your lead/customer.

HOW TO USE MESSENGER BOT FOR YOUR BUSINESS

There are numerous ways you can use Messenger Bots for your business. It allows you to automate your business and offer extra services to your customers. Plus you are able to reach your lead and/or customer way better than via traditional email. Having said that you should not stop building your email list even if you use bots for your business! Use both to get most out of both communication types.

NURTURE THE RELATIONSHIP

Bots can be used to nurture the relationship. You can use same as an email sequence where you send lot of value to prime the lead into a pitch. Bot can be used exactly same way. Only difference is that interaction that can be added to a bot which increases your open/read rates drastically.

Do make full use of videos and images on a bot, don’t just use text like on an email message.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Answering common customer support questions takes a lot of time! You can use bot a bit like FAQ and the only difference is that bot is actually read whereas FAQ pages rarely are.

SELL

Yes, sell on a bot! You can sell any type of product or service with a bot. As an example Domino’s Pizza sells their pizza with a bot.

If you do use bot to sell, make sure there is an option to contact human sales rep as well. Also do tell them that they are using a bot to make their order. Never trick customers thinking they are interacting with a human on the other side. Be open about bot and give is a name too!

Also a bot can be designed to boost sales by showing customers products/services they are looking for. You can use carousel images of your products and ask lead to select which one they are interested in.

ACCEPT PAYMENTS

Goes together with previous, if you sell on a bot, make sure you can accept payments as well. Stripe or Paypal can be integrated with a bot allowing you to securely collect payments.

BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST

I mentioned earlier that you should not ditch your email because of bot. You should use both at the same time. Email list still today is an asset to any business. The aim of a bot is to get people off the bot into your email list.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? ARE YOU GOING TO START USING A MESSENGER BOT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

How to Find Clients Online

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Before you start looking for clients online, it is crucial that you have done your research and already have your ideal client mapped out. Competition is fierce online so you must know who you serve and what problem your product/services solves for that person. Here are my tips on how to find clients online.

How to Find Clients Online

Here are ways I get clients for my business month after month. Depending on your situation you may want to go for paid option such as ads where you also get much quicker return on your investment.

If you are not in a position to use paid ads I’ve given few options you can use.

FREELANCING SITES

There are many misconceptions about freelancing sites. When I mention freelancing sites, many immediately tell me that those are “full of low-balling clients” and there’s “too much competition”.

First is quite incorrect, yes there are low-balling clients on freelancing sites but way less than you think!

There are low-balling clients everywhere, freelancing sites reflect that as well. Truth is that if you offer a high quality service to a narrow niche, you can make seriously good money with freelancing sites.

There is next to no competition in the high-end market on freelancing sites! You are most likely one of the few freelancers offering specific service and you can pick new projects even without interviews.

I had no interview/discussion for last 10 projects I won on Upwork! To be honest I don’t remember when I last had an interview! I offer niche service on the platform with next to no competition so I have the option to pick projects I work with.

Last point, freelancing sites are not just for coders and designers! You can get great clients as a business/life coach, health coach, copywriter, tech virtual assistant, customer support, consultant and more.

BLOGGING / VLOGGING

If you like writing one great way to get visibility is to start a blog on your niche. It will put you on the map and can quickly raise your status as an expert on the topic.

Even better way though is vlogging! If you are comfortable (or willing to learn) on camera, vlogging is really powerful way to get traction online. Starting a Youtube channel and posting frequent content can literally transform your business in 12 months. Video is one of the most consumed content type today and it will only increase - better start now before everyone is doing it.

Ads are quick way to get more clients. You can advertise on Facebook, on Google’s search results and many other online ad spaces. Before you do ads I do recommend doing your homework. It can be a costly project if you are now well prepared for it.

Before using ads make sure you have funnel in place to handle all the leads you’ll get. Here’s an example of a simple ad + funnel is a webinar funnel - ad -> webinar sign up page -> email sequence -> webinar -> sales page etc. Click to read more about creating an Online Sales Funnel.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is an effective way to find clients online. With so many social media platform out there, pick the one that you personally like to use and what your clients are using. Bit of research is necessary as Linkedin, although being a business social network, may not work the best for you.

Neither does Facebook pages (read about recent Facebook algorithm changes here). Groups do still work, but many groups are bombarded with spam & sales messages join fews groups with aim to be helpful rather than sell your services. Even better create a group for your niche! That way you can have complete control what happens in the group - plus you get lot of leads just being an admin in the group.

If you do blogging or vlogging I highly recommend using Pinterest to drive traffic. You can automate the whole process. I get 40% of my traffic from Pinterest with next to no effort required. Here’s my Pinterest Marketing Tips.

OVER TO YOU… HOW DO YOU GET NEW CLIENTS ONLINE?

5 Tips to Stop Analysis Paralysis

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Being an entrepreneur means you are in a constant stage of decision making: where to advertise, to start a blog or not, hire someone to build a funnel, to choose ActiveCampaign/Convertkit, are webinars right for my business…. Analysis paralysis is the silent killer of your dreams and sales.

Analysis paralysis is a state of over-thinking a decision to the point of never making a decision. It happens when you…

over-complicate a decision, make it bigger than it actually is
you want to make the “right” decision or “perfect” choice
fear of making a wrong decision
are overwhelmed with options

5 Tips Stop Analysis Paralysis

If anything I mentioned earlier rings a bell, you are in right place. From my experience working with clients for years, analysis paralysis hits each and every business owner and most likely many times during their career.

Analysis paralysis is really common with new business owners.

Reason behind this is that when you finally do something you always wanted to do, you want it to be perfect. Nothing wrong with getting this right, but it also halts everything.

JUST PICK ONE…

A good example of analysis paralysis is choosing online business tools to use in your business.

For example email service… It is a financial and time investment to sign up email service provider. It takes money and effort to learn a new platform and it can be time-consuming to change later on.

To ensure you find the “right” email service provider you read blogs, you ask advice on Facebook groups, you call a friend, read another 10 blog posts… you know what I am talking about? Analysis paralysis has arrived…

I totally get the thinking, getting it right is a big thing but…

It is much better to just pick one (literally any) and start using it in your business to generate income than wait another month (or months more likely) to gain clarity which one is the best.

That same scenario can be about any other business tool like webinar software, funnel app, hiring a coach or mentor for your business etc.

OK is OK

I think one of the most important parts is to be ok with ok. Perfection is business dreams killer. Nothing will ever be perfect, nor timing will ever be perfect so you might as well just dive into the deep end and go with it. Especially in business, decision are quite small in the end of the day.

Sure it is time-consuming to change email marketing provider later on, but to be honest, once you are at that stage in your business, you’ll just hire someone to do it for you!

One thing that often stops entrepreneurs is picking a logo and color scheme for your brand. Logo and colors have literally stopped some amazing businesses to launch for months and months.

I am a very visual person and me too, want colors just to work and logo be creative. I got over this by sticking with same typographical logo template for all my brands and using just a few colors across brands. This stops me from the get go and does not allow me to go to analysis paralysis.

At the end of the day a buyer does not care the least bit how your logo looks like or how the colors work together - all they want is a solution to their problem.

Be ok with ok, pick one today and fly with it. You can come back to it later one if needed.

PUT YOURSELF ON THE CLOCK

Whenever you realize that you are tossing over a decision for too long, put a timer on the decision. Set a deadline when you must make the decision and to act on it.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Parkinson’s Law

This means you will use whatever time you gave yourself to do a task or decision. If you do not put a deadline on it, analysis paralysis will run wild and take over your decision process.

How much time you should give yourself depends on the importance of the decision. There are no set rules about this but if you suffer from major paralysis, try giving yourself a short time to make a decision just to get over it. Longer the time, more likely you are also trying to talk yourself out of it again and paralysis again takes over.

CALL COACH/MENTOR

Stuck in the endless decision process that gets you nowhere? Calling a coach or mentor is a great way to get some clarity on your decision. We have a bit of a habit to make things bigger than they are, especially after we’ve been going over and over it in our heads, hearing other peoples opinion is golden at this point.

Especially with business decisions, nothing better than calling a mentor or coach who can help you gain clarity and lead you to a decision point. They’ll give you a trusted and experience opinion what should be the next step.

SMALL DECISION vs BIG DECISION

Take time to think if the issues you are thinking is a small or big decision.

What is the impact of the decision to your business?

Does it directly impact on your sales or is it really a nice to have?

Going back to logo and colors. Yes both do impact on your income but to the same extent as hosting a webinar where you sell your products or services. Hence logo and colors is a small decision, webinar a big decision. Once you have sales coming in, you can focus on logo and colors as much as you want - and hire an expert on the subject to really make an impact on your bottom line.

I am going add one one more here… what is the impact on your business.

BUSINESS IMPACT

This goes closely on the previous tip - sit back and think what is the business impact of this decision. Does it directly affect your bottom line results and your bank account balance?

Many ponder over sales funnels and should I choose Clickfunnels, Convertri, Leadpages or (add your choice here), should I hire someone or do it myself or, or, or… analysis paralysis working over time.

A funnel has potential to transform your business and your life making it a critical business decision. I bet once you decide to invest into funnels and seeing the results you’ll be kicking yourself in the but for not making the decision earlier.

If you are pondering on what tool to use for your business, pick one from my Online Business Tools list and start making money.

YOUR TURN NOW

What was the last thing you pondered over for too long?

Clickfunnels Templates

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Want to steal some funnels? I collected best perfoming Clickfunnels funnel templates for you to use. Just click the link to add to your Clickfunnels account, adjust templates and start selling. Simples!

Heads Up! If you are new to Clickfunnels you can sign up for $19/month account only by clicking below shared funnels links. Otherwise just add funnel to your existing account by clicking links and following the screen prompts.

TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS?

GET THIS ONE A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

Clickfunnels Templates

One of the great things about Clickfunnels is that you do not need to start from scratch when building sales funnels, you can just “steal” other peoples funnels and be sure to get a powerful and effective funnel for your business.

Let’s start with funnel that Clickfunnels is most known for, the free book + shipping funnel.

The Free Book + Shipping Funnel

Click here to add Funnel to Your CF Account

Clickfunnels have used this kind of funnel for their business for years with huge success (download Russell’s latest book here). Great way to grow your email list and customer base. Edit to match your branding, publish and start shipping books.

Fish Bowl Funnel

This funnel is great example of a lead generation funnel.

The fishbowl funnel is the best example of a simple lead generation to customer funnel. You use a simple free offer on the front-end to convert traffic into leads, then use a discount offer or deal to convert that lead into a customer almost immediately.

Below is another funnel that I use in my business.

Opt-In Funnel with One-Time-Offer

Click here to add to your Clickfunnels Account

Here’s an opt-in funnel that uses OTO instead of redirecting to a thank you page. I have personally used this funnel on my site successfully. It is bold to add OTO right after opt-in so be sure to test if this works with your audience.

Those that hate it, most likely would never purchase from you anyways… they just want free stuff as much as possible. You will loose some people this way but those that stick with you are way more engaged and easier to sell later on.

Complete Funnel with Opt-in, Sales Page, OTO, Checkout

This funnels offers you powerful pages to sell your product. Edit images, copy, graphics to make it your own.

Perfect Webinar Funnel

Webinar is one of the best lead generation and conversions tools for many products and services. If you are not using webinars in your business, start today! I have two different funnels for you, automated webinar and hourly webinar, test which one works best for your audience.

Hourly Webinar Funnel

_Start your career as a Pinterest Marketing in just 6 weeks - Learn more here

Hourly webinar is an awesome way to engage with page visitors as it is almost just on time. Last thing you want is someone signing up to a webinar and then having to wait for a week to webinar to start. An hourly webinar works really well as you provide what you promise within an hour. You can see an example webinar here.

Be careful not to delete the hourly webinar code from the pages!

Some of the funnel examples includes my videos, images and text, be sure to adjust those to add yours.

PS: If you need help with copywriting, check out Funnelscripts by clicking here.

Best Freelancer & Service-Based Entrepreneur CRM System

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Do you send contracts as emails, do invoices in Excel, project manage with Asana, use Google Forms for questionnaires, and use many other apps just to manage your clients? If this dare I say mess sounds familiar, you are not alone! Many freelancers and service based entrepreneurs end up with numerous apps and tools just to manage clients. Good news is that I have better solution for you. Here’s best freelancer and service-based entrepreneurs CRM system to use that provides all-in-one solution.

If you are in a hurry, click here to check pricing Dubsado.

BEST CLIENT MANAGEMENT & FREELANCER CRM

Freelancers and solopreneurs are know for being totally overwhelmed with tools, apps and systems they are using. It is really hard to find solution that is affordable and suitable for small business needs. Corporation have awesome systems but those are too expensive and just too big for solopreneur.

I am in this boat too as I am small business owner with just me and freelancers working on my business. I need a system but I do not need a massive system to cover my needs. I just needed a freelancer CRM that is affordable and simplifies and automates my life.

DUBSADO FEATURE OVERVIEW

Dubsado has superb list of features which also is continually growing! You get access to new features as they are published. Here’s a short overview of main features as well as a list of pros and cons to consider.

Contract Management
Workflows
Email integration
To-do lists
Contracts
Questionnaires
Invoicing
Calendar Sync
Payment Schedules
Email templates

CONVINCED? CLICK HERE TO CHECK PRICING

Contract Management

This is one of the best features of Dubsado. No more email attachments, printing, scanning, another email, start over… With Dubsado you can create (beautiful) contracts that clients are able to e-sign and send back in a breeze. This is a life and time saver.

Invoicing

Yes it is awesome to send out invoices as that means money in the bank account but hands up, do you really enjoy invoicing process?

I doubt many hands would go up!

Dubsado does invoicing so well, how about this scenario: send invoices within Dubsado, get paid quickly, accept credit card / e-checks (Square, Paypal, Stripe), money in the bank account.

That’s it. Check out Workflow next to see how you can automate this.

Workflow

Workflows allows you to automate whole client process from lead to quote, reminders and emails, and after project is done send them thank you email and schedule with conditions (status, date, event etc.).

Automation at its finest!

Every minute you spend on doing repetitive tasks takes money away from your bank account! Admin and back office tasks are sales killers and these take so much time.

To Do & Calendar

Forget post-it notes and start using Dubsado’s To Do and integrate it with Workflow to get most out of it. You can get reminders of important events straight from Dubsado - never forget anything again.

Client Management

Manage clients within Dubsado and store important data and see breakdown of invoices and more. Your clients can also keep everything in one place too with Client Portal. No more back and forth emails!

Forms & Questionnaires

Want to learn more about your lead or client? Use Dubsado’s forms and questionnaires and see your interaction from lead to closure in one place. Send custom questionnaire templates with a single click, or use Workflow to automate whole thing. Dubsado has 50+ strong template library so you don’t even have to create one, just use their templates.

Other Features

On top of mentioned features you can also use canned emails, brand everything to match your own brand and of course Dubsado is mobile friendly.

Affordable All-In-One-Solution

Dubsado offers free trial, click here to sign up now, for their monthly and annual pricing.

*Disclaimer: I am Affiliate Partner and a user/tester of above mentioned services – I only partner up with products that I’ve tested and tried myself. You pay nothing extra by clicking my links, but often I am able to offer special offer only for my readers.*

Quiz Funnel - Segment Your Leads with Couple of Clicks

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

*this post has affiliate links*

A quiz funnel is basically set of questions that you ask from your lead in order to find out more about them and their business. It is also a highly effective opt-in tool to grow your email list. People love to know more about themselves and a quiz is a quick way to learn something new - people love quick solutions to their needs. Lastly quiz results are often shared with friends to compare results giving you extra exposure.

Quiz Funnel - Why & How

One of the main reasons to use a quiz on your website is to separate or segment your leads/customers. For example for funnels I could have a quiz on my site that would tell me why person is interested in funnels and what type of funnels they want.

I provide done-for-you and DIY funnels for various businesses including online course creators, local business, book author and coach/consultant. With a quiz I am able to segment each lead into those categories and then push them into a specific email sequence.

This way I always talk about issues that they are interested. A book author and a local brick and mortar business owner have totally different needs and different funnels and without a quiz I would not be able to separate the two. I would just push the same message to both and end up with lot of unsubscribes from my list.

With segmentation I can customize each message to match the exact need for a lead. This increases trust and more importantly conversions.

How to create a quiz without coding

Ok here’s the great part - you can create a quiz easily without knowing a single line of code. I will showcase you two options for quiz funnel - Interact and Thrivethemes.

Interact Quizzes

Create quizzes you can use to grow your email list, drive sales, and increase your social media presence.

Interact is really an easy way to get started with quizzes. You can use their done for you quizzes so you don’t even have to come up with questions or answers. You can customize all quizzes to match your business and branding.

Let’s look at Interact in more detail.

Quiz Templates

Interact provides huge list of done for your quizzes that you can implement to your website in minutes.

As you can see there are tons of quiz options for multiple niches. See full list here.

What I really like about Interact is the templates - I don’t have time (or interest) to design a quiz from scratch. I use template as a starting point and then customize it to match my business needs. I run multiple websites for different audiences and so far I found exactly what I needed from Interact’s template collections.

Building a Quiz

Creating a new quiz is such an easy experience on Interact. Below you can see an image of the user interface when using one of the templates.

Below you can watch a video how I use Interact to build a quiz funnel.

Click here to access one of my quizzes built on Interact.

Interact starts from $29 / month all the way to pro level $209 / month (I have pro level in use as a part of being Interact’s partner)

What I like

Huge template library
Ability to implement a quiz onto a website literally in minutes
Easy to use and user friendly interface
You also get Giveaways (really powerful tools!) and polls

The only downside to some might be the monthly pricing model.

If you like what you see and want to give it a try, click here to get free trial on me.

Ok, that’s enough on Interact. To be fair I though show you another tool you can use to create a quiz. Just a note, I do not personally use this tool in my business at the moment!

Thrivethemes Quiz Funnel Builder

Thrive Quiz Builder’s under the surface system will help you increase your email list, social shares, AND give you data to grow your business.

If you already use Thrivethemes for your business/website, their quiz builder is great way to go. It is also great option if you do not want to use a paid monthly service. You can get Thrivethemes as a one of fee per plugin or as a membership accessing all their themes and plugins.

Let’s get into details

Thrivethemes quiz builder comes with just 3 templates to start with so it does require little bit more work on your side. If you already have a quiz ready, Thrivethemes might be better option for you. Even if you don’t, you can head to Upwork and get a freelancer working on your custom quiz at a very affordable price.

Visual builder is easy to use and you are able to create quizzes quickly and smoothly.

Thrive offers couple of pricing options. You can purchase a single plugin license for $67 for one website, $97 for 5 websites and $147 for 15 websites. Or you can opt into getting a $19/month membership (paid annually) that gives you access to all Thrivethemes plugins and themes.

What I like

One of pricing option ie no monthly membership
Part of Thrivethemes that are built for conversion
Complete design freedom
Powerful A/B testing ability

Downside for some could be lack of templates and learning curve to start using Thrivethemes quiz builder.

Check out Thrivethemes Quiz Builder here.

Quiz Funnel Recap

A quiz is a really powerful lead generation tool that can take your business from unknown to viral in matter of days.

I highly recommend using lead segmentation tool in your business if you are serving distinctive niches that may have slightly different needs. By separating the leads you are able to convert in much higher percentage.

I reviewed two tools that you can use - both have their distinct differences and benefits.

My recommendation is…

if you do not want to do any customization or create a quiz, use Interact.

if you want to build quiz from scratch with powerful A/B testing abilities and want one-off pricing, go for Thrivethemes Quiz Builder.

WHICH TOOL DO YOU CHOOSE TO BUILD YOUR QUIZ?

A Beginners Guide to Starting a Sales Funnel Consultant Business

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

If you never sat in your cubicle wondering “there must be more to my life”. Starting your own sales funnel consulting business could be your answer. It is a business that you can run from anywhere in the world - I’ve worked in five continents in countless locations all the while serving clients all over the world. When I mention sales funnels, people always assume I am a coder. I am not. I cant write a single line of code, yet run digital marketing / funnel business. This means you can do so too. So here’s A Beginners Guide to Starting a Sales Funnel Consultant Business.

This post has affiliate links. If you sign up to any of my recommended services, I earn a commission - you still pay the exact same price. You can learn more about affiliate marketing here and maybe start doing it yourself too!

One more thing… if you are interested becoming a sales funnel consultant you need to learn the tools of the trade. Click the below image to sign up for FREE to start your learning :)

A Beginners Guide to Starting a Sales Funnel Consultant Business

I started digital marketing and sales funnel consultant as a freelancer on Odesk and Elance (nowadays Upwork). I did not have prior client experience in funnels but got into it with existing clients who needed help in that area. I said “let me give it a try”, and rest is history.

I had multiple websites over the years and had done quite a bit of testing, trial and error with those so I was not complete newbie in the area area but I had never done it for clients. My current client wanted something changed on their existing funnel and I got into work, and to learn more.

Why Sales Funnel Consultant?

Let’s start with the big question… why funnels?

Well every business owner needs more leads and more money in the bank. This means they need funnels. Any business owner will not say no to automated marketing/sales and more income which a funnel can easily deliver.

It is an easy sell from a sales funnel consultants point of view!

What skills do I need?

General digital marketing skills will help you get started. If you do not have marketing background you can learn the basics on Udemy for example.

What services can I offer?

There are numerous combos you could come up with.

Sales funnel OR sales funnel + FB ad OR sales funnel + email marketing sequence OR….

There are numerous options depending on your interests and willingness to learn. You can also join forces with another freelancer and offer JV services. A great JV is with a copywriter. Or you can use this tool to get your copy, read my Funnelscripts review.

Do you need to learn to code?

No, you do not need to be a coder in order to sell funnel consulting services. There are tons of tools out that allows you to build funnels with easy & simple drag-n-drop interface such as Convertri and Clickfunnels.

Knowing basics will certainly help but it is not necessary. You can learn basics for free by Googling CSS, HTML and so on.

How to get first client?

If any of your friends have a business you could offer to help them out so that you get experience. If you dont have anyone around you, dont worry. You can join a Facebook group and offer to do a free funnel for one client in exchange for reference. Bit of a warning though, you are flooded with responses so be picky who you choose to work with!

Ideally you already signed up with either Clickfunnels or Convertri and have funnels you can show as an example.

Clickfunnels or Convertri, or both?

There is no right or wrong answer here. Both will offer same end result - working sales funnel. I do recommend trying to both to see which one you like most. I am personally signed up with both as I offer client an option to choose which one they want to use.

I do not offer to build funnels on any other software. If client wants Squarespace, WP, Leadpages or anything else, I decline to work with them.

How long it takes to make full-time income?

That’s the beauty of sales funnels - it is a high-end product/service. Every business owner is willing to invest into a tool that allows them to sell more. You can be making income in a month if you have your niche and market research done the right way.

One-off service or maintenance

You can offer one-off sales funnel service or ongoing maintenance - it is up to you. I personally prefer one-off funnels rather than ongoing work with client.

Do I have to know how to design?

No, but it helps. You can learn design from Skillshare for example, with free trial you get access to all courses on the platform. Plus both Clickfunnels and Convertri offer lots of templates you can use and only do minor adjustments where necessary. Good thing about templates is that those are tested and proven to work!

How many hours do I need to work in a day?

That totally depends on how many clients you want to work with at any given time. I go with less is more approach as I do have other businesses running nowadays.

Can I really run the business anywhere?

Yes!

You can do clients calls on Whatsapp, Messenger, Skype or any other app. You can do screen share, share docs and more across the world. It is best to do couple of calls with client to touch base and solve issues quicker and that may mean waking up early/staying up late depending on where you are in the world. But hey, one early morning a week is not bad price to pay for location independent business!

*Disclaimer: links on the blog post are affiliate/partner links, but I only link tools that I personally use in my business.*

How to start a career in digital marketing

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing is one of the most exciting, challenging and fast-paced industries you can work in. It is also one of the most in demand skills right now. Online businesses are popping out like mushrooms in fall and to for them to get visibility and sales, digital marketing is a crucial part of the equation. The digital marketing economy is growing fast and there is no better time to get into digital marketing than right now. It’s a very exciting industry and here are some simple steps you can take to get ahead.

How to start a career in digital marketing

Digital marketing is a career choice that allows you to learn constantly. It never stops evolving so the number one skill or attribute you need to have is…

Eagerness to learn and stay up to date

As a digital marketing some of your time is spent learning latests tools and trends. It is competitive market out there and one must always know the “in” tools at any given times. Strategies change, Google changes algorithm, Facebook their post visibility and so one - you need to know all these as it happens. If you love to learn and test, digital marketing is the best career choice.

Love of experiment

No digital marketing campaign brings million dollars in the first go around. Experiments and testing is required to create the winning combo. As a marketer you need to thrive to experiment, test and analyze. An improvement of 2% in conversions does not sound much but can mean tens of thousands of dollars more in the bank account.

Learn the lingo

Do you know what PPC, SEM, A/B testing and SEO means? If not, start learning the lingo used in the industry. Google is your best friend in this case, as are digital marketing blogs.

Love Pinterest? Did you know you can make money with your browsing?!

T-shape

“T-Shaped basically refers to having a light level of knowledge in a broad array of skills, and deep knowledge/ability in a single one (or a few).” by Moz. Digital marketing is huge industry that covers many skill sets that one does not need to know in-depth, but overall understanding is required. Of all digital marketing aspects deepen your knowledge to an expert level in one or two. If you love social media, go with it.

FAncy a line of code?

Coding is not a required skills but understanding code makes your life easier as a digital marketer. It is data driven role and technical in nature so the more comfortable you are with code, better you’ll do (and happier you’ll be). You don’t need to be a coder but learning basics will help you a lot. You will interact with coders a lot as they may be executing your ideas into reality. If nothing else, learn HTML and CSS.

Data and metrics

Learn to read data and metrics, and learn Excel! You’ll end up reading lot of data, analyzing it and A/B testing various scenarios. You need to know the difference between CPC, MCM and CPA. Goes back to learning the lingo and meanings behind the words.

Test and try

Nothing is better way to learn that actually doing it yourself. Create a simple website, start driving traffic with SEO, use social media, check your Analytics, add Webmaster to your site and more. It does not matter what the site is all about, it is the learning you’ll be rewarded by. Creating an affiliate website is one great way to start and if successful you’ll end up with money in the pocket too!

ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BECOMING A DIGITAL MARKETER?

Digital Nomad Lifestyle

Anonymous — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Digital nomad lifestyle or running an online business is the most requested topic from my followers and people I meet while traveling. I have resisted it for a long time mostly because there are tons of nomads and travel bloggers already out there. I have no plans of becoming one. :) But since you asked, here’s how I achieved it and my tips how you can too.

Digital Nomad Lifestyle

Let me start with saying that a Digital Nomad Lifestyle is totally doable for anyone!

You do not need to be a developer, designer or a writer to become a nomad. Those are professions where remote working has been possible for years and years. I started my nomadic lifestyle in 2009 and I was not a developer, designer or a writer.

I quit my corporate career because I wanted to travel and to do something else with my life. Nothing wrong with corporate career, but at that time I really just had to leave so that I could figure out what to do with my life.

Since I did not have any clients or even idea how to find one I spent quite a bit of time on Google trying to figure out how I could make this lifestyle possible.

Nobody talked about nomads at that time and nobody even blogged about it. When I landed in Chiang Mai I met few travel bloggers but that was it.

So I searched and searched and found…

Odesk (now Upwork).

Online Freelancing

Odesk, which nowadays goes as Upwork after merging with Elance, and is the worlds largest online freelance marketplace. I signed up with Odesk and Elance, filled out my profile and sent out hundreds of proposals.

Wanna guess how it went?

Yep, not very good.

In hindsight it is easy to see why I was not winning any projects, but at the time it was really hard to take.

Since my dream of remote lifestyle was so strong I just refused to give up. My mindset was “Nothing is going to stop me figuring out how to win freelancing work online!”

I searched, tested, and just kept trying…

And finally it paid off.

I got my first project via Odesk and was hired by one of Odesk largest clients at that time (no names due confidentiality clauses). I got lucky as they did not care that I had no previous history on the site, they cared about my skills and what I can do for them.

So I got my first gig. And once you have one, it was easier to get second. My profile started to look great and eventually clients were headhunting me on platform.

If you are new to Upwork and have hard time getting your profile approved, check this blog post of Upwork Profile Approval Tips.

So now I was making some money but not enough to really travel where I wanted… so the search continued. And I found…

House Sitting

House sitting basically means to live in and look after a house (and pets) while its owner is away. Once I heard about it, I was hooked. I did my first house sitting gig in Chiang Mai, next in Sydney, Australia and then have been all over the world.

When I was in Americas (USA, Panama, Ecuador, Dominican, Colombia) for 12 months I house sat for 11 months.

I had to pay just one month of accommodation during that 12 months.

I saved tens of thousands of dollars by house sitting all over the Americas. I stayed in New York for 6 weeks, beach property for 2 months, Panama city high-rise for weeks and more.

Digital Nomad Lifestyle the quick way

So like I mentioned you do not need to wait for months or years to achieve nomad dreams - you can achieve it with freelancing and house sitting in matter of months or even weeks if you are really motivated.

Because so many ask me how they can have this nomadic lifestyle like I do, I created ThriveNomad, a result focussed program to help you get started with the lifestyle in weeks, not months. We open doors again summer 2018 - add your name to the waiting list now so you don’t miss out when its open again.

How to get more website traffic

Anonymous — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Website is a lifeline of an online business and one thing that dictates business success is traffic. You could have the best website in the world but if you do not have consistent traffic, you are out of business pretty quickly. On the other hand you could have the ugliest website ever but have lot of traffic and as a result a successful online business. Here’s tips on how to get more website traffic.

How to get more website traffic

There are of course multiple ways to get more traffic to a website but here are few things I have done personally. Of these my main tools are SEO and social (especially Pinterest, read more here)

SEO

First we should look at Google as it really can be your best traffic source, especially if you want free traffic. It is not necessarily an easy or quick way to get traffic though. Google is tough on who it lets on the 1st page - and that is where you want to be. Nobody is going to find you from 2 onwards. You can hide your biggest secrets on page 3 on Google as nobody ever goes there.

Reality is that getting on first page on Goole will not happen with keywords like “life coach”, “business coach” or any other general term. You need to look into longtail keywords, like “business coach in tampa”, “sales funnels for online courses” and ever narrower than that. Narrower you go the better leads you also get. Those that search for niche keywords are really looking for a solution.

I use Keywords Everywhere on my Chrome browser to see what kind of terms get searches. I highly recommend it, plus it is a free tool.

There are few blog posts that are on first page: Clickfunnels Alternative and WithCoach Review and more.

Guest Blogging / Podcast Guest

Guest blogging or being a guest in a podcast gives you backlinks - or if it does not, maybe not do it! It is great way to get more visibility for your message.

You can either write a guest blog posts to preferably popular website in your niche. Most website owners are happy to receive submission ideas from fellow bloggers so do some research to find blogs in your niche and pitch your post idea.

If writing is not your thing, podcast could be for great way to get more traffic to your website. Research podcasts in your niche / closely related topics and contact podcast owner and pitch your idea.

Both are great ways to get visibility and traffic to your website as then there are two people promoting one piece.

Social

Social is the obvious option but not always free though, or easy for that matter! Research your options and dig in deep to figure out where you audience hangs out. You do not need to be in all social networks, just one social is totally ok, as long as it is one where your “people” hang out.

My main traffic generator is Pinterest, it is almost at Google’s level. I do use automation tool for Pinterest but so technically it is not a free. You can post to Pinterest absolutely free though, but to maximize the benefit an automation tool is a must.

Fix Your Site

One simple solution could be making your website mobile responsive if it is not that already. Google penalizes non-mobile optimized sites on their ranking. Most use mobile devices to access websites (and to do pretty much everything these days) so you got to make sure you are not losing eyeballs because of your mobile website.

Same goes for speed - use this free tool to check your site speed. If you get bad result, you’ll see list of suggestions you can do to your website to speed it up. One big issues with many websites is large image files. Use image compression tool to reduce size of your images - this alone helps, and then check Google’s recommendations.

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR TRAFFIC FROM?

My 60 Day Traffic Challenge

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I though I write post on traffic and what I have been doing lately to increase it.

It is one of the hardest parts for new website owner but also one skills that must be learned. I have done a lot of experiments lately to figure out where my traffic comes from and what to focus on going forward.

I have two clear winners as traffic sources for NinaKolari.com:
Search engines
Pinterest

Here’s details:
64% of traffic from search engines/SEO - this is pretty much only Google. I have not done anything with regards Bing or Yahoo.
27% of traffic from Pinterest
And rest 9% comes from Facebook, Instagram and other sources.

As a result I actually stopped posting on Facebook as it is now a pay-to-show media. This does not mean stopping ads or hosting groups but I have pretty much stopped posting on my Facebook pages.

The great thing about my traffics that it both sources are free! For Pinterest I do use tool that automates it but it is just $10 / per month so I don’t even count it.

Pinterest is really picking up compared to last quarter. I have been trialing a couple of tools that work really well for Pinterest and re-designed my pins to get more clicks.

It has worked like a charm! My Pinterest followers are growing and so are clicks.

Here’s a blog post I wrote about Pinterest and how you can use for marketing: http://ninakolari.com/pinterest-marketing-tips/

I also continue to work on SEO across all of my websites and am getting more and more page 1 positions for my targeted keywords. One of my affiliate partners had a promotion last month and I saw big jump in search engine traffic (+ affiliate commission, yay!).

So that is where my websites are now. I will continue to focus on SEO and Pinterest but I am adding one more thing to the mix going forward.

Youtube. My YT channel is ok’ish… it has few videos but I have not consistent in posting new videos.

Looking at the stats though, I should. I have steady rising viewership for my videos and slowly also more subscribers. Since Youtube = Google, it is great for SEO purposes.

So my goal with Youtube is that by end of Dec 31, I want my YT channel to be filled with videos and subscribers tripled. Click here to subscribe.

I’ll report back monthly basis so you can follow up how my experiments keep going.

What do you do to get traffic to your business?

Pinterest Marketing Tips

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

My favorite social media platform is Pinterest by far and it is that for a simple reason - free traffic! Pinterest have been one of the best traffic drivers for my websites along with SEO. I do also have Facebook Page and Instagram account but neither produce the results like Pinterest does - plus I don’t have to pay for visibility. So here are my Pinterest marketing tips and tools I use to do Pinterest marketing in 10 minutes.

Pinterest Marketing Tips

I’ll cover few things on this post - couple of Pinterest best practices and how it differs from other social platforms, why you should focus your marketing efforts to Pinterest, as well as tools I use to do my social media in 10 minutes.

Why should you focus on Pinterest?

Reason why I recommend using Pinterest is really traffic. Free traffic that is. It works quicker than SEO or trying to get to first page on Google.

Also people use Pinterest to shop - they are actively looking for services and/or products to buy. Or they are looking for information and are about to buy something.

It is not like Facebook where people are just browsing and get annoyed with your sponsored post or an ad. They may take you up on your offer but less likely than Pinterest. On Pinterest people are searching for information or something to buy.

Big difference.

Lastly Facebook is nowadays pay-to-show platform meaning they do not give you visibility for free. You must pay in order to gain some visibility with your followers. On Pinterest there is no need to pay for anything!

One more thing… where as posting on Facebook your post disappears in matter of seconds, on Pinterest as time goes by your pin gets stronger and stronger and more and more views!

I actually stopped using Facebook, read here why, and focus solely on Pinterest.

Pinterest Marketing Best Practices

Pins

Use vertical images on Pinterest. Facebook is for horizontal images, Pinterest is vertital (image you see top of this post is the best size). Use text overlays on your image to make sure title stands out.

Use Description to tell viewer more about what is behind the pin and encourage them to take action (Calls To Action). You can also use hashtags on description - focus on your key search terms.

You can also add price to your pin in case you are promoting a product or service.

Profile

Not many people look at profiles but I highly recommend using time to fill out your profile with image, keyword heave description and all social links. It gives you credibility and you are then found on Pinterest search.

Group Boards

These are your new best friends as posting into a group board gives you way more visibility than just posting on your own board. You help someone else by posting their content and in return someone helps you out. Group boards are crucial part of Pinterest marketing.

Consistency

Pin often and consistently. It is practically impossible to pin on Pinterest manually to really see an impact. Of course you can do it but it takes quite a bit of time - and there is no need to do so as there are super affordable automation tools available. Tools allows you to schedule pins to show up at the most effective times of the day.

How to do Pinterest Marketing in 10 minutes

Pinterest is really an awesome way to super charge your marketing efforts as you can also automate your pinning pretty much completely. It is really a hands off social platform. I personally use two tools at the moment. You do not need two tools for automating Pinterest - I test platforms and create courses so I need to know how all tools work hence the double usage.

I use Tailwindapp and Boardbooster. They really are only effective Pinterest tools out there. One is not over another and both are pretty much on the same level on pricing as well. Tailwind is around $15 / month for unlimited pins, Boardbooster between $5-50 / month (two lowest plan are more than enough for most people).

I am a partner for both services and I can offer you free trial on both - click here to access Tailwindapp and/or Boardbooster.

With either tool you can do your Pinterest marketing in pretty much 10 minutes a week! This is huge time saver that potentially brings lot of traffic ie eyeballs to your service/product.

WANT TO SEE HOW I USE PINTEREST?

Click to sign up for my FREE Business on Autopilot Course

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

One of the most popular ways to make money online for beginners and bloggers is affiliate marketing. You may have heard the term “affiliate marketing” and if you have read my posts you may have seen mention about being partner/affiliate to services. This is pretty popular topic and many ask me to write more about what is affiliate marketing and how does it work

[caption id=“attachment_7770” align=“alignright” width=“200”] Pin to Pinterest to Save for Later.[/caption]

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work

As an affiliate marketer you refer someone to a product or service and if that person makes a purchase on your recommendation, you receive a commission.

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest online businesses one can create. You can literally start in minutes. Amazon for example is one of the biggest companies that uses affiliates to promote their product. In this case you could go to your Amazon account, sign up as an affiliate and then write a post about a product you recently purchased and loved, and then see if any of your friends decide to follow your recommendation and purchase a product.

Affiliate Marketing for bloggers and businesses

If you have a blog with readers or you are planning to create a blog. You can monetize your work with affiliate marketing. Quick and easy to start and you can link products and services that matches your blog posts.

If you are a business, you can still use affiliate marketing to supplement your income and to earn passive income.

I am almost in between those two - I have a blog and a business which all uses affiliate marketing to bring in extra revenue. On this blog I ofter write reviews and create tutorials around products that I use in my business. People then find me on Google, read/watch my posts and (hopefully) click links and purchase a product.

Where do I find products to promote?

First I recommend thinking of what products or services you use yourself and would recommend to a friend. Once you have few ideas search the company name + affiliate on Google to see if the company has an affiliate program and instructions how to sign up.

Many companies have affiliate programs via third parties - affiliate platforms - such as Shareasale.com or JVzoo.com.

How much does it cost to join affiliate program?

Nothing! If you come across a program that you need to pay to join - run!! There are numerous network marketing companies where you must purchase before you can promote them. There may be some good ones out these but I do recommend staying away from these kind of pyramid companies.

What do I need a website to start marketing?

No you could start with just using your social media account(s) and email. If you are serious about making money online, I recommend starting a blog or website that is based on your interest. I love talking about sales, marketing and business, so I write about those things on my blogs and earn commission when someone buys product/services on my recommendation.

How much time does it take to make money?

This really varies depending on what you promote and where you promote. My first multiple hundreds commission took 4 weeks from publishing blog post, but I have earned from Amazon within hours.

How much money can you make as an affiliate?

As much as you want! There is really no limit how much money you can make. I know people who make $1,000,000/ year as an affiliate marketer. Yes, that is correct amount of zeros! I am not at that level yet, but affiliate income makes a difference in my business each month.

WHAT PRODUCT COULD YOU PROMOTE AS AN AFFILIATE?

3 Platforms To Sell Online Courses from Your Own Website

Anonymous — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

If you have online courses or you are planning on creating one, one of the first decision you need to make is where you are hosting your course. There are numerous options for you to start selling your online course.

I’ll review platforms on the following:

Pricing
Checkout experience (this is crucial!)
Reliability
Transaction fees
Affiliate marketing
Gamification

There is no right or wrong answer here as most offer more or less the same service and pricing. But there are few features that I value more than others - mainly checkout experience and affiliate marketing. I just added one more course platform to the mix so now you can choose from 4 options.

*Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links. You pay the exact same price and the commission I earn helps me writing these review.*

Here’s a short list on features and which one I recommend:

If you want smooth Checkout and Community… Choose Podia.If you want Most Popular Platform…. Choose Teachable**.If you need other languages besides English… Choose Thinkific.**

3+1 Platforms To Sell Online Courses from Your Own Website

Here’s a list of online course platforms in no particular order – there are more of course, but these three are my favorite of all thinking of pricing and value you get.

I have personally tried and tested all and each has great features for online course sellers.

All pricing below is for an annual payment plan, but monthly options are available.

Teachable

Teachable is one of the largest online course platforms available and, if you ask me, it is one of the best as well. You can host an online course with Teachable and also create a membership site.

Watch Teachables Free Webinar: 7 Steps To Launch Your Own Profitable Online Course

ADVANTAGES:

Free to start for brand new course and low monthly fee later
Suberb customisation options
Handles EU VAT on the two lowest tiers
No transaction fees on higher tiers
Upsells!

DISADVANTAGES:

Might take a little time to get a handle on it
Monthly fee
I’ve seen some complaints about slowness of customer support - my experience has always been good though.

My Experience

Yes I am biased but I have also tested all platforms and in my experience it is the check-out process that really kills your sales!

Pricing: Range from Free to $299Transaction fees on payments: 0% - 5%Click here to check out Teachable’s pricing in detail.

If you would like to see my free workshop on how you can sell more with a better checkout experience, click here.

Recommendation

If you do not want to worry about payments and setting up Stripe, Teachable’s two lower tiers are great options.

**New Online Instructor:**Go for it! Easy way to get your first sales online.You can start with a free but I do recommend spending $9 to get premium options such as the affiliate program.

Podia

Podia is a solid platform to host and sell your online courses, memberships and other type of digital products like books or printables. This is not offered anywhere like Podia does!

If you want a simple, functional course host for a couple of courses/digital products I highly recommend Podia. Their storefront works so well for a few products and presents well.

Update September 2021: Podia launched Community feature which basically allows you to interact with your students right on the course! No more FB groups! This is a huge for any course creator who offers community as part of their program.

*Click to steal my autowebinar*

If I was signing up to my first course host, I would now choose Podia purely because of the Community function!

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have Community as part of a course and having it under one roof makes it so powerful.

Creating a community helps you not only sell your first course but all the other courses as well!

Their support is super responsive and they genuinely care about their customers. They also often f****eature their customer’s courses on their social media platforms!

Their slogan is: “Sell online courses and digital products from your own beautiful storefront in seconds.”

Lastly, Podia offers WEBINARS as part of their package! This is an awesome add-on service that the other two platforms do not offer.

Pricing

Highlight

Potentially all-in-one business solution including emails and pages
By far the best checkout experience of all three (reduces cart abandonment rate)
You can sell courses, memberships and digital downloads
Super responsive customer support
Host Webinars to sell your course
Free migration****service from other platforms!

-> Podia is the best option if you sell both courses and digital downloads!

It also wins hands down on checkout experience. The average cart abandonment rate online is whopping 68% aka people do not finish the purchase. Podia has this covered with simple and powerful popup checkout.

Podia truly has the best checkout experience as you can embed the checkout to your website or sales page!

Teachable

Teachable is currently hosting over 20K courses for over 10K instructors, who have together earned over 50M over time. They have a user-friendly interface that is easy and quick to use.

They also offer Teachable School which means your student can sign up for multiple Teachable Instructor schools with just one login. Saving yet another login details from students can help your sales – I mean who does want to remember yet another password?

They have some big names in their books like Pat Flynn, Shopify and the New York Times.

Slogan: “Your skills and experiences are unique and valuable. Easily build a beautiful course website, share your knowledge, and be rewarded for it”. I agree.

Pricing

Pricing below is as of May 2020. If you have checked pricing before, you’ll notice quite a spike up on Teachable Pricing. Personally I no longer recommend Teachable as there are other platforms that offer better features at a lower price. Price from Basic to Professional is just too much.

Highlight

One page, customizable check out (super important for sales!!)
Smooth design and great sales pages
One login for all Teachable courses
Reliable and easy to use

Teachable is a great option if you know your students probably have already purchased a course from another Teachable teacher. Students can then use a single login to access all courses from all Teachable instructors. Who needs to remember yet another password?!

Thinkific

Thinkific is a Canadian online course platform that has been around for years. They offer solid online course hosting and superb customer support. Their slogan is “The online course platform you can trust with your business”.

Their client list includes Hootsuite, Lewis Howes, and many more big names.

I used to be a Thinkific Expert and hosted my online courses on Thinkific (technically you still can purchase my courses on Thinkific, but I don’t link to the school anymore).

Why did I change?

For me, the deal-breaker was lack of customization options for checkout. (yes I keep coming back to checkout experience). Thinkific is currently (as of May 2020) in BETA for custom checkout.

I could have hired someone to customize it for my business but that would have just been a hassle.

Thinkific checkout is a two-step process where the first step is signing in / signing up. This can increase your cart abandonment rate.

Other than that, Thinkific is a wonderful option who offers truly amazing customer support for the course sellers!

Pricing

Highlight

Linkedin integration (fantastic if you have a certification program)
Solid student experience
Really helpful customer support and active Facebook group
Zero transaction fees
Affiliate program

The only downside to Thinkific is the lack of customization on the checkout process. If there was customization available, I might just move back to Thinkific.

So what about my courses

So I guess you want to know where my courses are hosted now?

Teachable.

The reason is their awesome checkout experience, but if you want even further checkout customization I highly recommend Thrivecart, read my Thrivecart Review here. That is where many sales are lost.

The easier (aka least clicks and forms to fill in) the checkout, the more money you make. You can read more about checkout abandonment and conversion rates here.

If I had to move my online courses to a new platform, I would choose Podia for sure. I just really like their user-interface, super smooth checkout popup and support I’ve received from them as a partner and course creator.

Update on April 2020: I may just take up on Podia offer on FREE migration as Teachable has announced pricing change and reducing features on their plans.

Clickfunnels Automated Webinar – Steal My Exact Funnel

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

One of the most effective marketing tools is a webinar. A webinar allows your prospects to get to know you in a more intimate level than with a simple PDF freebie. To get most out of webinars I highly recommend automating your webinars. This allows you to have people in your funnel all the time, rather than when ever you have time to do a webinar. Clickfunnels automated webinar is a great place to start hosting automated webinars and as a bonus you have great drag-n-drop funnel tool in use as well.

If you use my template as a starting point, you can literally start selling in under 30 minutes. Check your archieves for suitable video, set up your pages and you are ready to go live.

TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS?

GET THIS ONE TOOL A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

Clickfunnels Automated Webinar

When you decide to implement autowebinars to your digital marketing efforts, I listed five best practices when using automated webinars. Plus I added a free template for Clickfunnels that allows you to start hosting your webinars in 10 minutes.

Record the Webinar

I know lot of people recommend doing a live webinar and recording it and then using it as an autowebinar. Yes it is good to do live webinar as well but I do recommend recording autowebinar from scratch.

Why so?

Webinar is highly effective marketing tool and it should be as “perfect” as possible. With perfect I dont mean that there are no mishaps at all but that all sales elements are at the right spots. We tend to forget things when doing live webinars but when you record the webinar in advance you can be sure you have all elements in place.

Neutral webinar

When doing a autowebinar it is important that you do not use phrases like good morning, good Monday and so on. Viewer could be watching in different time zone and on a different day.

Same goes for do not say this is a live webinar! You may get caught on this and you’ll lose your prospect in an instant.

Q & A

Even if you are doing a autowebinar, you should cover Q&A’s at the end. Just be mindful that you mention that you dont have time to answer all questions but that you’ll get back to everyone (you can contact those with direct email). What you should cover here are the most common questions you get from your ideal clients as well as common objections you get from non-buyers.

Sales

The whole point of the webinar is to sell. So with automated webinar this will be a breeze. Since you record the webinar in advance you can perfect (and adjust) your pitch as you get more feedback or data.

Once you have prospect “on the call” you need to use this opportunity to sell them something right away.

There is no one size fit all sales approach and I highly recommend testing and analyzing your sales pitch. See next step to encourage viewers to take action now.

Reward Action Takers

Expiring bonuses are great way to encourage people to take action. When someone has stayed to the end of your webinar they are really keen on what you offer. Make sure they take action right there and then.

You can use tools like Deadline Funnel or timer on Clickfunnels.

Add really compelling bonuses for those that take immediate action on the webinar. Re-target those that watched webinar but did not take action.

Clickfunnels Automated Webinar Template

If you would like to use Clickfunnels for your autowebinars, here’s a link to a Clickfunnels Automated Webinar template:

https://app.clickfunnels.com/funnels/4845426/share/nbvrwi9j8nbedcvl

This template allows you to set up your autowebinar in minutes! Just change text, graphics and video - and you are done!

If you are new to Clickfunnels and use the above (affiliate) link to sign up with Clickfunnels,send me a message and I’ll give you FREE access to my Clickfunnels Course.

Evergreen Funnel That Sells Your Courses on Autopilot

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

One of the best things about selling online courses is that it is a product funnel that can be automated. It is really easy and simple to create an evergreen funnel to sell your online course. Your evergreen funnel could be tripwire, webinar, mini-course or any other kind of funnel you would like to build. I have multiple courses with evergreen funnels.

Evergreen Funnel for Course

Evergreen funnel is an automated system that runs in the background and automatically generates sales for your business. Once you set it up you could forget it, although in reality regular maintenance and A/B is required or recommended.

As an example of an evergreen funnel for a course could be something like this:

Facebook Ad/blog Post -> Landing page for webinar -> Thank you Page -> Email sequence -> Webinar page -> Sales page -> Check out -> Sign into course.

All above can be automated with right tools and apps. For above funnel at minimum you would require Email Service Provider, Webinar software (or Facebook live for free option), course hosting and checkout. Cheapest this could run with few dollars a month. Having said that I highly recommend investing into business tools that automate your business. It will always pay back many, many times over.

I’ll walk you through the core elements of an evergreen webinar funnel. I’ll show you step-by-step set up for webinar and tools you need to create one for your course.

Tools I Recommend Using

Clickfunnels (landing pages & webinar, or dedicated webinar software like Everwebinar - recommended if you plan on doing lot of webinars)

Activecampaign (email sequence and action based automations)

All this can be done without hiring a developer.

Evergreen Funnel Step-by-step

No matter how you drive traffic the first part of any funnel, it starts with a landing page. You could drive traffic from Pinterest, Facebook ad, SEO, blog post or any other way.

With webinar you’ll need a webinar landing page or sign up page. I’ve used Clickfunnels Hourly Webinar.

Reason why I have hourly webinar is that many people are lost if they have to wait for webinar to start more than day or two. The high they have at the sign up moment, will disappear pretty quickly. With hourly you can kinda keep them in the moment as they at most need to wait 59 minutes.

Downside is of course that viewers will most likely realize it is not a live webinar but having said that it is not a big deal as long as you do not promise a live webinar.

When someone signs up they are added to a webinar sequence, but with hourly webinar sequence is not that important as my thank you page asks people not to leave the page. The page will automatically re-direct to the webinar page when time is up.

Pitch Your course

Example funnel is just a free training webinar with not pitch. If you are pitching your course, you should add Buy Now - button to your webinar page. You can time your Buy button to appear anytime you want.

At this point you should definitely add email sequence that sends emails to people depending if they watches or missed the webinar. With dedicated webinar software you have way more high level options to target people depending on what action they took on the webinar - for example sending targeted message to those that left just before pitch, left after pitch but did not buy and so on.

From webinar page the next step is…

Sales Page or Check out

Depending on your pitch on the webinar itself, you might send viewers into sales page or check out page.

If you only give short into into course, sales page might be way to go. If you have full walkthrough, send directly to check out page.

I do recommend using shopping cart software that allows you to customize your check out experience (watch my webinar to learn how using Thrivecart could double your sales with few minutes of work!).

This step is only applicable to those that did stick around whole webinar and took action. If they did watch it all but did not take action, they should be taken into email sequence trying to convert them after. Activecampaign is awesome tool to customize your email sequence depending on prospects actions, Convertkit does pretty good job on this tool).

No matter how much we try so people will not show on the webinar or purchase immediately - these cases needs to be covered with your email sequence to try to get them back on board.

Sign Into Course Platform

Those that purchase your course, you should direct them automatically to your course platform where they can access the course. I personally use Teachable as my course host.

Did not Show Up for Webinar

Make sure you have multiple reminders going out! Even if you use hourly webinar, do send a reminder couple of minutes before webinar starts.

If you do not have hourly webinar but there’s at least few days before webinar, send multiple reminders. You should send reminder at least 24 hours, 1 hour before and preferable final reminder few minutes before webinar. All this can be automated fully.

If you are using Clickfunnels, you should use their email service for webinar as well. You do need STMP service, free options are available (including Gmail).

Watched webinar, did not buy

There are always going to people who do not buy immediately not matter how attractive your expiring bonuses are! Plan for these cases carefully.

You should create automated sequence that keeps reminding these prospects about you and your course. But do not just pitch on these emails! Do offer lot of value too.

Evergreen Funnel for Course

So there you go, that is a evergreen webinar funnel that allows you to sell your courses day and night. And we all love making money while we sleep! :)

*Disclaimer: I am Affiliate Partner and a user of above mentioned services – I only partner up with products that I’ve tested and tried myself. You pay nothing extra by clicking my links, but I am able to offer special offer for my readers.*

Writing copy that sells

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Writing copy that sells is pretty hard for business owners, unless of course one is a copywriter. The only way to make sales online is to have a compelling sales pages and copy that sells.

Hiring a copywriter is very expensive and as a beginner business owner hiring one may not be possible. That was the case for me too. It is a catch 22 where you need copy that converts to make sales but you dont make sales until your copy is converting.

[caption id=“attachment_7684” align=“alignright” width=“255”] Save to your Pinterest by clicking the image.[/caption]

Writing copy that sells

I have multiple online courses hence I have had a need for multiple sales pages and copy that sells. I am not a native English speaker yet I sell to native English speakers… not an easy combination.

With that in mind I had to come up with a new way to create copy on my sales pages.

I discovered a total lifesaver - FunnelScripts

What is Funnelscripts

Funnelscripts writes your landing page copy for you. Their slogan is ““How To Get ALL Of Your Sales Letters, ScriptsAnd Webinars Slides Written (In Under 10 Minutes) WITHOUT Hiring An Expensive Copywriter!”“

And it truly delivers what it promises. Click here to watch free webinar demo how you can get copy that sells in minutes and without hiring a copywriter.

I have used Funnelscripts on my webinar copy, landing pages, webinar pages, sales pages, emails, blog posts and more. It is really great tool get highly effective copy with minimal effort.

How to Use FunnelScripts

Funnelscripts is really easy and quick to use.

Below you can see the start screen and some of the many options you have.

One of the best things about Funnelscipts is that is easy and quick to use - writing copy that sells happen in minutes!

No copywriter can produce that kind of results.

Another great thing about Funnelscripts is that the copy you get from them is proven to work. If you have ever heard of Clickfunnels and/or Russel Brunson, you already know that they test everything. They literally test everything time and time again to get the best results for their business, and their clients.

So if you are looking for a copy for your webinar slides, sales page, opt-in form or just need hundreds of proven viral blog posts titles - Funnelscripts is the best investment you can make. Fire away your copywriter and take control of your sales today.

Be an action taker!

If you are not sure yet, why not read my Funnelscript Review.

*Disclaimer: I am Funnelscripts Affiliate Partner and a user – I only support products that I’ve tested and tried myself. You pay nothing extra by clicking my links.*

Clickfunnels Course

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Before you read this Clickfunnels Course post, please note, this promotes my Clickfunnels online course! I don’t want to waste your time. If you are currently happy with Clickfunnels and know ins and outs of CF, you better check out my other blog posts.

If you recently signed up with Clickfunnels or you are looking into signing up, you may know that although Clickfunnels is really easy to use funnel tool, it may be quite confusing in the beginning. This happens if you are like me, not a web developer. I got caught up in connecting CF with Wordpress, using Cloudflare, and so many more integrations. I created Clickfunnels Course to help business owners like to me to help get started with Clickfunnels quicker way, and without hiring an expensive developer.

Clickfunnels Course

When I needed help with Clickfunnels my only choice was to waste lot of hours. I read blog posts, Clickfunnels support pages, watch numerous Youtube videos… wasting many hours looking for “how to do XYZ”. I spent lot of time on Google, yet still got nowhere.

I pretty quickly realized that I was not the only one. Many Clickfunnels clients were googling how to videos on various things that must be done before going live with CF funnels.

So I created a Clickfunnels course.

And I wanted to create it in a way that really helps someone to build their first funnel without hiring a developer or Clickfunnels certified consultant.

My course offers free landing page funnel template with landing page and thank you page so that you can get started quicker and easier. Template is fully customizable and easy to use.

Free Funnel Template

This is the template I use in the course -> https://app.clickfunnels.com/funnels/3785808/share/vmm23chv14hns284

The course itself uses this same template to explain how to use Clickfunnels. You should use this funnel as your test funnel where you practice and test how CF works. You should copy the funnel immediately in your account to ensure you have two funnels in place

one as a test funnel that is used for testing only
actual funnel

This allows you to try things in the testing account and then use the actual funnel for your public funnel. Worst thing is to mess up your live funnel!

Why You Need Test Funnel?

Clickfunnels does not have Ctrl/Command Z (undo) which is a huge pain! This is why it is important you have a test funnel and not mess up your live funnel until you exactly what you should be doing.

If you are new to funnels, check out this blog post about online sales funnels.

Clickfunnels Video Course

In the course I cover integrations, sales funnel, page structure, editing and adding videos/images/text and more. It is a comprehensive beginners Clickfunnels course. You also get free 30 minute coaching call with me with you purchase the course using this link.

If you are ready to sign up with Clickfunnels, click here to get my free funnel and access my Clickfunnels Course.

Funnel Scripts Review

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

One of the most important elements of a successful landing/sales page is copywriting. And as an online entrepreneur you will most likely have multiple landing/sales pages trying to entice prospect to convent into a lead and eventually a buyer. Text you have on the that page, dictates the action your prospect takes - sign up/buy or leave. As copy is so important, and hiring a copywriter so expensive, I personally had to come up another way to get high quality and high converting copy for all my landing/sales pages. I use this tool all the time so here is my Funnel Scripts Review.

Importance of a high converting copy:

Great copy separates your brand and your products/services from competitors. You want to be the big fish in a small pond, not small fish in a big pond. Copy creates your story that is compelling to your target audience.
Measurable results ie. ca-ching. Copy dictates how much money lands on your bank account. If your copy does not work -> no money. If it does work -> ca-ching. Simple and easy to measure. Measuring your sales page effectiveness is crucial, make sure your sales funnel builder has powerful analytics and A/B testing (I personally use Clickfunnels)
A great copy converts. It converts browsers into leads and leads into buyers. No graphic can ever do as much as copy can.

Copy is crucial part of selling online and if you are not copywriter by trade (or have big budget available), the next best thing is to invest into copy software that helps you get results.

Funnel Scripts Review

This is tool that I have used multiple times in my business. It makes my life so much easier and helps tremendously with my bank account too!

What is FunnelScripts?

Funnelscripts is a copywriting software that helps you get high converting copy without hiring a copywriter. It can help you with following:

landing page
webinar slides
sales page
email sequence scripts
viral headlines
Facebook ad copy
CTA
Video sales letter
and much more.

As you can see Funnelscripts can do a lot for you. Why should you look into it then?

Pros of Funnelscripts

Quick and easy to use
Helps you define your core message/pitch
Saves time and money
Editable scripts
Training videos if you get stuck and live monthly training

Cons

Bit of fine tuning may be necessary to match it perfectly to your niche

How Funnelscripts Work

To start with, it is super easy to use! It may just be the easiest online business tool out there - and most profitable for you.

It is a web based software where you answer series of questions and click submit and you’ll end up high converting copy. You can then edit the copy if necessary or just upload to your website.

If you have ever written copy for your website, you already know it takes for ever! It also takes quite long time if you decide to hire a copywriter (not to mention big bucks!).

With Funnelscripts you save not just money but lot of time. It will also makes you really think about your core offer and make it laser focussed.

There are extensive training videos available if you get caught at any point.

Extra Resources

On top of everything else you also get fantastic copy tool, you can download following script wizard software designed to help you create copy for webinars, surveys, VSL and storytelling scripts! This is priceless.

Funnelscripts Investment

You can get all of Funnel Scripts features and bonuses for a steal of a price at $497 annually. Imagine that! It will only cost you a little over $40 a month and you get unlimited access to Funnel Scripts wide selection of script writers.

Funnel Script Review Conclusion

Funnel Scripts is a perfect tool for online entrepreneurs, freelancers, coaches, business owners - if you sell anything online, Funnel Scripts should be your go-to-tool!

It is easy to use tool that produces results that have direct impact on your bottom line (ie. bank account!)

To me, investing into Funnel Scripts is really a no-brainer. It helps me sell more of my products every.single.day.

A must tool for online hustlers. So if your sales are not at a level you want, reason is probably in your copy. Change it now and sign up with FunnelScripts now.

*Disclaimer: I am FunnelScripts Affiliate Partner and a user – I only review products that I’ve tested and tried myself.*

Convertri Review

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

*This post has affiliate links. These affiliate commissions helps me write these reviews as I only review products that I’ve personally used. Thank you*

When it comes to selling online, funnels are a crucial part of the equation. When you decide that your business needs funnels, the next hurdle is to choose your funnel provider. For many business owners, the choice is Convertri. To make your decision easier this post is a Convertri Review to assist you making the decision. Read what I liked and if I found something I did not like.

Convertri Review

UK based start-up Convertri is lead by Andy Fletcher. Their slogan is “Faster Funnels, Higher Conversions”. Over 2,500 business owners chose Converti as their sales funnel software and I don’t blame them - I am one of them too!

GET FREE CONVERTRI TRIAL AND TEST HOW INCREDIBLE FAST PAGE LOAD SPEED YOU GET FOR SALES PAGES!

See my results below:

Hosted on CONVERTRIHosted on WP with ThriveThemes>Even milliseconds matter when selling online!

Convertri’s highlights are: speed, price, as well as being an all-in-one solution.

The landing page is dead. Long live the sales funnel.

Building funnels with Convertri is super easy even if you are not super confident with computers. It is literally drop-and-drag builder that anyone can use.

On top of easy builder, you can also get everything you need with their service - landing pages, sales pages, OTO’s, checkouts, upsells… you can run your complete business within Convertri.

Convertri Review Highlights

There are few things that Convertri just does better than its competitors. Here are few reasons why you should seriously consider Convertri if you sell online.

Speed

This is a big one and Convertri wins this by a mile, or multiple seconds to be honest. Converti landing pages are lightning fast and wins competitors by more than 3 seconds when tested same page built on Clickfunnels and Convertri.

Those seconds matter in terms of money in bank account! Shorter the loading time, more money in my bank account!

Speed is key to conversion. People leave the page if it has not loaded within 4 seconds so if your page takes longer you’ll lose a sale.

Convertri claims to get 25% better conversions that its competitors and I bet majority of this is because of the speed.

You might think that 4 seconds is nothing to worry about but if you do split testing, you will quickly see huge difference in conversions - and in your bank account.

GET FREE CONVERTRI TRIAL AND TEST HOW INCREDIBLE FAST PAGE LOAD SPEED YOU GET FOR SALES PAGES! See my results below:

Funnel Planner

Convertri has an interesting “funnel planner” which is great visual tool to use to design your complete funnel. This allows you to stop using whiteboards to draw up your funnel - just do it directly on the platform and move parts around freely. This is really powerful. Their pages builder is also free form editor allowing you to design the pages as you like.

Undo Button

One of the most annoying thing about many funnel builders is lack of Undo button. This may sound like nothing to worry about, but believe me, you’ll start missing this functionality very quickly.

UNDO functionality is a must!

I can’t tell you how many times I have accidentally deleted a section on Clickfunnels and only way to get it back is to build it again from scratch. So frustrating! (And if you ask me, big enough reason to move to Convertri!)

It’s always the little things.

Advanced Drag-and-drop Funnel Builder

Convertri’s interface is really easy to learn and you really do not have to be a geek to figure it out. It is simple and straightforward, and if you get stuck at any point, there are plenty of how-to-videos available on Convertri support pages.

GET FREE CONVERTRI TRIAL AND TEST HOW INCREDIBLE FAST PAGE LOAD SPEED YOU GET FOR SALES PAGES!

Mobile Optimization

If your audience uses mobiles to check out your website (that is the case for pretty much anyone who sells online), your website/landing pages must be optimized for mobile screens.

This is where many go so wrong, and get penalized by Google <- yes this happens all the time.

If you see your website disappear or loose ranking on Google, poor mobile optimization could be the reason.

Features

Convertri is feature rich funnel builder.

Price

Convertri is currently promoting seriously awesome annual offer where you get it for $297 for the first year! Compared to Clickfunnels for example, you’ll save $867, that you can use for Facebook marketing for example.

Final Thoughts

If you are wondering where are the things that I did not like about Convertri, you will be happy to hear that I did not find any! Yep, that is pretty awesome as I rarely find a tool that I like this much. Clickfunnels for example is great example, as much as I like it (and still use it), I really dislike that they do not have UNDO feature - this is a big issue.

Online Sales Funnel in 5 Simple Steps

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Online Sales Funnel - one of the most crucial parts of your business and one that should be on your agenda on a weekly basis. Without marketing your business will eventually fail as you will not get new paying customers. Good thing with online sales funnel is that it can be automated for the most part. You build it once and then just update it when necessary. I call this #automagic and a first step towards passive online income.

Online Sales Funnel

Let’s start with the basics and what a sales funnel is.

An online sales funnel goes like this: the top category is the biggest one and represents the largest number of people. From this awareness stage leads go through the funnel, and eventually become paying clients. Not all people convert from lead to client, no matter how much work we do to convert them. They are not just our idea clients.

This journey may differ depending on your business, your niche and the types of products and services you sell. You can have as many or few stages on your funnel, but in general a funnel has following stages: awareness, interest, decision and action.

Now that we have basics covered, let’s look at how you can build an online sales funnel in 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Free content

The top of the funnel is where your potential clients first see you. This includes blog posts, social media posts, videos, and other marketing content. Videos on Facebook and Youtube work really well for this! The funnel is widest at this point because the majority of people will stay here and not move any further in the funnel.

Step 2: Opt-in

One of the main reasons for giving out this free content is to get prospect to give you their email address in exchange of an opt-in offer. This could be mini-course, download, cheatsheet or report. At this stage your email marketing provider must provide you automations, meaning emails are sent without your involvement and as per your defined actions.

Step 3: Low-priced offer

Once people trust you enough to give you their email address, you have gotten over the biggest hurdle. But there are more to come. Now you need to convert them to paying customer.

You could do this immediately after opt-in, One-Time-Offer, where you offer them to purchase your low-priced offer right after downloading your freebie. This works really well on many niches and I highly recommend testing this. You will loose people because of OTO but those would never buy from you anyways, so do not worry about this.

You can see my Sales Funnel Funnel with OTO here.

Step 4: Mid-priced offer

As you have people going through your funnel - at this stage on an email - you need to warm up them to your next offer. If they bought the low priced offer from you, you should offer the next logical step in the process at this stage.

Fewer people will purchase at this stage, but those that do are already invested into you and your offering.

S****tep 5: VIP program / 1-2-1 coaching or consulting

And finally, at the narrowest part of the funnel is your coaching or consulting program or high-ticket offer. Bigger investment at this stage means that people who buy at this stage know you already and the value you offer.

There are multiple steps in coming up with a funnel that works for your business but the more time you spend on this better your results. That is a guarantee!

Online Sales Funnel without Coding

If you think “sounds awesome, but how do I get all this without hiring a tech freelancer?”

Do not worry - I have great option for you that is drag-n-drop. No need to hire anyone and you can use saved money on Facebook ads!

My Funnel Choice

This funnel is a starting point to a funnel with landing page, OTO-page and thank you page. You can optimize it to your liking. I use Clickfunnels for all my funnels and I highly recommend it due to their analytics. Without analytics your funnel is useless as you do not know at what point people drop off your funnel meaning you can not fix what you do not know.

Want Copy Too?

Here’s a handy tool to get your Copywriting done in matter of minutes - I use it on my funnels and emails.

Once your funnels is set up it is matter analyzing it and optimizing it for conversion. Watch my 4 Ways to Sell More Without Paid Ads - Free Training Webinar.

*links on this blog post are partner/affiliate links. They allow me to keep writing free tutorials and videos.You do not pay anything extra by clicking above links.*

Thrivecart Lifetime Offer

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

If you have been shopping around for a shopping cart option, you may have come across Thrivecart lifetime offer.

Thrivecart is currently on a private beta and does not allow access directly via their website, one way to access ist via partners. Luckily for you, I am a Thrivecart parter for their Lifetime offer.

HEADS UP: Thrivecart Lifetime offer is available for a limited time - do not miss out! You won’t find more affordable custom checkout anywhere!

And you definitely NEED a dedicated checkout software for your business. Abandon cart is a huge problem when selling online - on average 67% ABANDON cart during checkout process. This mostly happen because of too complex checkout. I’ve seen a drop in cart abandonment rate since implementing Thrivecart!

ThriveCart Lifetime Offer - should you sign up?

Let’s start with money first - it is a shopping cart we are talking about.

Why should you sign up with a lifetime with a business that is currently in private beta? Good question and one that you should consider before signing up.

Price

If you choose Thrivecart now, you will be signing up as a lifetime member. This means you pay today, and that is it! You have a fully functioning shopping cart available for your business for life.

Normally shopping cart pricing starts from US$47 / month so savings are significant. For this level of customizations that Thrivecart offers, you would be paying a minimum US$97 / month and more. Larger your account, more you pay.

HEADS UP: Thrivecart Lifetime offer is available for a limited time - do not miss out!

Private Beta

Private beta means that software is currently being developed. It is not a final product, although software is never “finished” anyway. Updates are normal practice for any software.

Private Beta Upside

The upside to joining now is being able to influence on the final functions and options - this is priceless! If you have customizations that you really want in your checkout with Thrivecart you have the possibility to influence in the final result - with others not so much.

Does private beta have a downside?

Yes, it could have. Technically it is not a final software so glitches could happen. Things can go wrong with beta stage software, but things can go wrong with any software.. so I would not worry too much about this.

Also at this stage developers and founders are in close contact with customers and problems are fixed super quick if and when they arise.

HEADS UP: Thrivecart Lifetime offer is available for a limited time - do not miss out!

Thrivecart Review

If you would like to check out full-blown feature review of Thrivecart, read this: Thrivecart Review

So what are you waiting for, sign up now so you don’t lose the amazing opportunity!

I’ve been using Thrivecart in my business and absolutely LOVE IT! I use it to sell my Pinterest Marketing service and Thrivecart offers smooth and professional checkouts for my clients. And keeps the money coming each month!

PS: If you sign up with Thrivecart using my partner link and keep the offer (not refund within 30 days), I’ll offer FREE business 30 minute consulting session with me. Contact me for details.

Why I Stopped Using Facebook for Business

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I use my own online business as a guineapig for all kinds of testing, and social media is one that I constantly test and analyze. For a while now I have been keeping Facebook under a microscope to see much effort it requires and what results it provides.

After months of testing and analyzing I came to a conclusion that I need to stop using Facebook for my business!

My Facebook Page

I have Facebook page for my business that has now 430 followers / likes. A decent amount but no means large following online. Honestly I have not done that much to grow the following except link on my website. Read later why not.

I have used Hootsuite and Smarterqueue to post articles, blog posts, quotes and more. Both have been optimized for my audience and post 2-4 times a day.

Result for this posting has been poor if not even non-existent. Facebook wants me to pay for visibility for each post. Even though some posts do get likes, comments and shares, results are far from impressive in terms of traffic and income.

Why I Stopped Using Facebook for Business

One of the main reason why I stopped using Facebook for my business is the effort it requires compared to results is gives.

Pay per view

Facebook is nowadays a pay to view/show social media. Meaning nobody sees your posts unless you pay, or very minimal audience will see you post in any given time. Your only hope is that your post gets lots of likes, comments and shares which will ultimately give you more visibility.

Facebook wants you to pay to increase post visibility.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong paying for visibility or for Facebook charging for it. My problem is the result I get even with paying for visibility.

Effort vs Results

Lot of efforts in terms of coming up with new content all the time and then reviewing/commenting each post that does get some traction.

Loss of time

Facebook is the worst time suckers in the world! I cant really check my Facebook without seeing my own newsfeed at the same time… and that is biggest time wasters in the world!

It is no secret that one starts reading just one thing and end up browsing Facebook for hours and hours.

Yes I could be using Facebook Page App to limit me seeing my newsfeed but I do not upload any business apps on my mobile! When I am not working I do not want to see any work related stuff and when I don’t have any work apps on my mobile there is no way I can work while I am off. I highly recommend deleting work related apps & email accounts from mobile!

I have also stopped using Facebook in general, I just really dislike seeing ads every 4 posts - especially on the weekends. It is just too much and I am not seeing stuff I really want, I am seeing what Facebook thinks I want to see. And they do not seem to know at all. Same goes for Instagram by the way - I practically never see what others posts as I only see posts from few people. Big waste of time nowadays. I guess Instagram is going to be pay to view/show just like Facebook.

So Facebook is not exactly working for my business, what does then?

What I use Instead of Facebook

Pinterest.

I get way better results for free using Pinterest. And results I mean traffic, eye balls and paying clients.

Facebook has never even come close to traffic I get from Pinterest. And good thing about Pinterest is that many are actively shopping rather than just browsing on Facebook. This is the main reason why I have not focussed Facebook that much - I get better results elsewhere (and with very little effort too!)

I have 1400 followers on Pinterest that is steadily growing each day with next to no effort on my side. My monthly visibility is roughly 300K - yes that is correct 300K! This means I get way more eye balls on my content that I could ever get on Facebook unless something went viral (pretty hard to achieve). I get traffic from Pinterest every single day - for free!

Choosing Pinterest over Facebook is really a no-brainer decision for my business in terms of traffic.

Like I mentioned earlier this does not mean that I quit Facebook completely, I still have groups and post ads for my webinars.

Check out this post on my 10 Pinterest Tips for Online Entrepreneurs.

Your turn…

How is it for you - do you use Facebook Page to bring traffic to your online business?

How To Generate Income Online

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I bet you have searches how to generate income online few times already and read numerous blog posts how to do it. I know I have. Reason why I kept searching instead of acting is that it all got too complicated and I got stuck before I even got started.

I got stuck because at that time I did not know how to create a website. It felt way too hard to learn about Wordpress, hosting and domain. And without a website or any kind of web presence, I was not able to get ahead at all in my search for how to generate income online.

How To Generate Income Online

It is totally possible to make money online. Since starting out 9 years ago I have made money online by freelancing, affiliate marketing, consulting and selling various products. When I started there were very little services for newbie online entrepreneurs. I just had to learn Wordpress, hosting and even how to by a domain and direct that to my hosting provider… I spent countless hours on Youtube watching tutorial and tutorial and got more confused by each minute.

One of the easiest way to get started making money online is affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer you promote other people’s products - you do not need to create anything! The only thing you need to become an affiliate marketer is to create a website where you promote the other people’s offer.

Affiliate marketing is highly lucrative and passive way to make money online. It is ideal if you are employed full-time and there is no need to be working every day. You just need to set the website up and add links to the offer and you are good to go. Affiliate marketing is truly passive income.

I do affiliate marketing in my business and I highly recommend becoming an affiliate marketer to start your online journey.

Take the Shortcut

Great news is that you do not need to suffer like I did! There is a shortcut available nowadays. I recommend checking out this webinar on how to generate income online to learn more.

This webinar shows you have you can start making $300 / per day online even if you are complete newbie to the online world. Richard shows you how you can how to make $100K / year or more using simple affiliate marketing strategies, how you can start making money within 48 hours (not months!) and how to multiply your sales by 395% with easy system.

*links on this blog post are affiliate/partner links. This is one of the ways I make money online and with this link you can start generating income online too! Do not wait anymore, take action today and watch the webinar.*

How I Run my Location Independent Life & Business

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Writing about my nomadic lifestyle or running an online business is the most requested topic from my followers and people I meet. I have resisted it for a long time mostly because there are tons of nomad and travel bloggers already out there. I can’t ignore the requests anymore so here’s a download of how I run my location independent life and business.

How I run my Location Independent Business

Locations

I have some favorite locations in the world and one of them is Chiang Mai, Thailand. I visited Chiang Mai first time in 2003 and felt like home instantly. When I started my location independent lifestyle Thailand was my first destination.

Nowadays Chiang Mai is bustling nomad hot spot which means I feel like home with like-minded people around. There are lots of events and co-working spaces to mingle with fellow nomads and meet travelers. Chiang Mai has been my winter destination for years, and this year is no different. When in CM I rent an apartment around Nimman which is full of cafes, co-working spaces, and great restaurants. I rarely cook when I’m in Chiang Mai - no point since I get better food cheaply from the street.

Another favorite is Sydney, Australia where I often go to house sit. I have been in Sydney multiple times over the years and may go back this Christmas again.

Of course I also spend some time back home in Finland - less so by each year though.

Rest I kinda leave open for adventure and what comes along - read below how.

Housing

For me, the worst part of the nomadic lifestyle is the constant search for a place to stay. I absolutely hate this process. It takes lot of time and effort to find suitable accommodation in a great neighborhood in a new location. This was fun for the first year… not so much anymore. My solution to this has been house sitting!

If you are not familiar with house sitting it is an exchange of services where live in and look after a house while its owner is away. This way I walk into a house/apartment with working internet and often also an office. Plus house owner picks me up from the airport so I literally don’t need to do any preparations except get a visa where required. No house, hotel, sightseeing search required!

As an added bonus (and one of the reasons why I do house sitting) is all the best friends I get around the world. Below is a pic of few of my best buddies around the world:

I have house sat in five continents both in cities, countryside and beach destinations. My house sits highlights have been Sydney Australia, Montanita Ecuador, Brooklyn New York and Singapore. I don’t sit full-time, just when I find great sounding house sit somewhere in the world. I often make my travel plans according to house sits.

House sitting is an awesome way to go to new places and see how locals live. I live in a house or apartment, do grocery shopping, cook my meals, walk the dog or feed the cat. I often get to know neighbors and owners friends who are my local contact persons.

I don’t spend that much time with the owners but I still get to know them as I live in their home, and especially looking after their most precious part of their family, their cat or dog. Many house owners have become friends who I meet for coffee when ever I’m back in their city.

House sitting also enables me to have a bit of an adventure as home owners find me and ask if I could sit for them. That is how I ended up in the Dominican Republic for 2 months, French countryside for 3 months and many other locations in the world.

When I do not house sit I use Airbnb. I rarely stay in hotels, I prefer to stay in apartments.

Business

Running a business is really easy these days because of technology. No need to be anywhere in person as all can be done via chat, video call or email.

None of my clients get my mobile number, they only get my Skype so I am contactable only when it is suitable for me. This has never really been a problem for clients. They only care about what I deliver, not if they can call me.

I guarantee 24 hours response time excluding weekends for all clients but honestly, I rarely get urgent requests anyways.

In terms of tools I have list of tools I use here -> http://ninakolari.com/online-tools/

Meeting People

This is a bit of life and business issue.

For the business side, I use Meetup and Eventbrite to find local events, networking opportunities, and seminars. This is the part of my nomadic lifestyle I love. I get to meet entrepreneurs all over the world, share ideas and strategies and learn. It is also an awesome way to find joint venture opportunities. When ever I am in big cities, I fill my calendar with events and meetups.

I was recently in London for 5 weeks and had 3-4 events each week. I’m going to Chiang Mai next where there are events but totally different kind of events so I got to make most of my time in big cities.

There are numerous nomad groups on Facebook that caters nomads and finding people in locations. I am a moderator for Digital Nomad Girls Group which is a great place to meet fellow nomad girls.

Travel

I search for flights on Skyscanner and Momondo and then book directly via airline. The reason, why I book directly with an airline, is that if there are any delays, missed connections or any other problem, it is way easier to deal problems directly with the airline than travel agent in the middle.

I am also pretty lazy when it comes to flights. I book most direct route even if it cost more. I am not looking for the cheapest flight, I look for easiest travel.

I don’t use any apps on my mobile for travel. Or print out anything. I take screenshots of my flight ticket and boarding passes.

Luggage

I travel with roughly 20 kg and that is all my worldly possessions. As in everything I own! I used to have furniture and all in storage but I gave it all away… I do have couple of boxes of winter clothes at brother house in case I ever visit Finland in winter (has not happened a while..).

I have suitacase, carry-on and handbag. When people see my luggage, they are surprised that it is all my stuff. I guess I have made this into an art form after 8 or so years, plus this is another thing I hate - carrying my suitcase. This means I try to keep my possessions to a minimum. If I buy something, I got to throw away something.

Most kilos comes from tech stuff. I have so many cables, tripods, laptop stuff that I’d like to admit.

For clothing, I buy cheap stuff that I don’t mind throwing away in a couple of months. Not the most sustainable solution but when you are limited to a couple of kilos, no other solution has worked. I do like to change my wardrobe at times too. I have three pairs of shoes - sneakers, flip flops, and closed toe shoes.

I rarely am somewhere with cold weather which saves a lot of space and kilos. I have escaped winter for quite a few years now.

It was hard in the beginning to only have few things but nowadays I do not miss anything I had before, that includes a home to a certain extent. The whole idea of not owning anything is quite “out there” in today’s world where we are supposed to buy, buy and buy stuff.

========

So there, that is my life in a short blog post. If you have any questions about nomadic / location independent lifestyle do let me know below in the comments. Now that I have opened up about my crazy lifestyle you’ll see more posts on topic and would love to know what you would like to read.

Best Business Books I’ve Ever Read (or listened)

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last 9 years as a business owner, I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal development as well as business products and services to become the best version of myself.

Some were good purchases, some were not so good.

I’ve listed my fave books below and I hope that these will guide you on your journey to success – as they have for me.

*Click on any of the recommendations below to learn more about them.*

WEALTH & BUSINESS

Here are the best books I’ve read that have had the most positive impact on my wealth & business.

-> The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

-> The Success Principles(TM) - 10th Anniversary Edition: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

-> Rich Dad Poor Dad

-> Grow Your Sales, Do What You Love: Mindful Selling for Entrepreneurs and Freelancers

HAPPINESS & WELLBEING

-> Power of Now

-> The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

-> Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway

TAKE SMALL ACTION TODAY…

Remember that overwhelm is the enemy of progress. I recommend you pick ONE book that will make a meaningful impact on your life TODAY and start reading. Just ready one chapter a day. Commit to one chapter a day. That is all.

To help you read it, there’s a very useful service that I use to quickly read through books and efficiently learn the material called…

Audible.

Audible Allows you to listen to books on-the-go - anywhere, anytime. Stuck in traffic, no worries, use the time to improve your business and life.

Thanks to the sponsorship from Audible, for a limited time, you can get your audio book for FREE!

Audible Free Trial

If you are more of a reader - Kindle is my another best friend. I carry it with me pretty much everywhere I go.

Check out Kindle Here.

*Disclaimer: This blog post includes affiliate links and like always I only recommend products I personally use*

Thrivecart Review [UPDATED]

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Shopping cart - one big question every online entrepreneur has to consider in the business journey. If you sell anything online, you soon will need to consider a shopping cart solution. This Thrivecart Review talks about benefits of choosing Thrivecart over popular competitor Samcart and why every business needs to have dedicated shopping cart rather than using just Paypal.

HEADS UP: Thrivecart Lifetime offer may END AT ANYTIME! Don’t lose the lifetime offer!

_“This is the new Tesla of online marketing…”_Sotiris J Bassakaropoulos

Thrivecart Review

I wrote this review and I use Thrivecart in my business EVERY DAY. There are few reason why I chose Thrivecart:

Lifetime deal (saving me $$$$$)
easy upsells, downsells and order bumps
tax - they handle all my tax including EU tax (nothing beats this) plus I save tens of dollars each month as I don’t need separate tax solution.
Superb affiliate program
One time fee for all the above

Why You Need Dedicated Shopping Cart

With Paypal, Stripe and solutions you get from many sites, you of course can make sales smoothly and considerably easily. But. There is a big problem in this method.

No upsells, downsells or order bump.

Sure you can run a business without a funnel but if you are serious about your business, you’ll need upsells, affiliate program and more.

If you do not do any upsells, downsells or order bumps - you are leaving money on the table!

Easiest sell in the world is to a person who just bought something from you!

With dedicated shopping cart you can do these sales with breeze and within same cart so buyer just clicks to ad upsell to cart and pays at the end. Simple from buyers side -> profitable on the sellers side.

HEADS UP: Thrivecart Lifetime offer is ENDS SOON! Take action now, full 30 days refund so trial with confidence!

Who should use ThriveCart

ThriveCart is great for online course creators, service sellers and anyone selling any kind of digital products and who want ability to sell more to their current customers and ability to sell more within same shopping transaction.

Customers pay using Paypal or Stripe but you have the added advantage of upsells and building funnels.

You can set up 1-click bump offers, 1-click upsells, build a funnel, A/B testing (crucial for any business), subscriptions, free trial and more.

Thrivecart is great for businesses selling digital products online, you can of course sell physical products as well. It is great when you need further customization in your shopping cart and really want something better than Paypal and/or Stripe as standalone carts.

See below the impressive list of features:

A/B Testing

This is a huge benefit of using dedicated shopping cart. There is staggering 80%+ dropping rate from checkout page. If you know why people leave and you can test what might work better, you can reduce checkout rate drastically. Even if you reduce it with 5% that will most likely be thousands of dollars more into your pocket!

A/B testing is crucial part of business and selling. If you do not know where people drop of your funnel, you have no way of fixing it. It may be simple color change that explodes your sales but if you can not do that or test is - you are leaving money on the table.

HEADS UP: Thrivecart Lifetime offer is ENDS SOON! Take action now, full 30 days refund so trial with confidence!

ThriveCart Integrations

Good news if you are using following services - they’ll integrate smoothly with ThriveCart.

Email Marketing: Activecampaign, Convertkit, Aweber, GetResponse, Mailchimp, Ontraport
Membership: Membermouse, Optimizepress, WishList Member
and many more…

High-converting Templates

How would you like to use a Done-For-You Template that has proven to convert leads to buyers? With ThriveCart you have lots of templates to choose from.

You just literally change text and images where necessary and start selling. How simple is that?

ThriveCart Benefits

Cart Templates with proven high conversion rate
Mobile Friendly & 2 Step Checkout Forms
Fast Loading Times
Upsells & Funnel Builder
Split Testing
Affiliate Setup
Integrations with many Email Marketing Solutions
Coupons, Trials, Subsciptions
Detailed Customer Stats and Management
Digital Sales Tax Done For You (this is priceless!)

Thrivecart Alternatives

Thrivecart has great alternatives suchs as Samcart, Infusionsoft, Activerelay and Gumroad. All those have great points and weaknesses and depending on your business status, one of those could be better fit for you.

Is ThriveCart worth it?

Yes, three times and more.

With current lifetime offer it is really a no-brainer offer. I have also listed few reasons to sign up here.

I am not the only one who things ThriveCart rocks - here’s what others think:

Get ThriveCart for your Business and Start Effortlessly creating high converting checkouts and watch your bank account grow.

Thrivecart currently has limited time private offer for lifetime access during beta (will be priced USD97 month after lifetime deal is over), so if you want to get hands on amazing shopping cart that enables you to sell effortlessly - this is an investment to take up on.

But do hurry, lifetime access offer may go away anytime. Thrivecart offers 30 money-back guarantee if you sign up and do not like it for any reason - that is hardly going to happen once you get your first upsell!

Would you like me to review another tool or software? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll see what I can do. I already have following: Convertri - Sales Funnels, and here’s a list of tools.

*Disclaimer: I am Thrivecart Affiliate Partner and a user - I only support products that I’ve tested and tried myself.*

Clickfunnels Alternative – Convertri

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

When it comes to landing pages and funnels, one has lot of options to choose from. One of the most talked about - both positive and negative - funnel tool is Clickfunnels. In this blog post I’ll review Clickfunnels Alternative Convertri, and talk about similarities and differences of these platforms.

Click to Check Pricing Now

I just discovered awesome sales funnel tool that is currently FREE to sign up and use! How cool is that?! Click the link below to claim your free funnels.

HEADS UP! Limited time offer! TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS? GET THIS NEW TOOL A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

You’ll thank me later you did! :)

Clickfunnels Alternative - Convertri

Convertri is UK based start-up Andy Fletcher that provides landing pages and sales funnels with a slogan “Faster Funnels, Higher Conversions”.

Convertri is the new kid on the block and one that certainly deserves a closer look. Their slogan promises faster funnels and after testing I can say that they win on download speed hands down comparing to Clickfunnels. More on this later though.

Pages load INCREDIBLY FAST! And we all know speed matters when doing business online.

What Makes Convertri Better than Clickfunnels

This is not to say Clickfunnels is bad but there are few things that Convertri just does better.

When using Clickfunnels you pretty soon find out the limits it has on the page builder, and on few other things.

Their marketing message is to “abandon your website now” and just use Clickfunnels of course can kinda be done, but it is not recommended as you will run into so many problems and issues with their page builder and lack of intuitive interface.

If your business required nothing more than a landing page, you can build the site with Clickfunnels or any other landing page app, otherwise you just can not.

Here are couple of reason why Convertri is better than Clickfunnels.

Speed

This is a big one and Convertri wins this by a mile, or multiple seconds.

Converti landing pages are lightning fast and win Clickfunnels by more than 4 seconds (more than enough to lose many, many sales!) when tested same page built on Clickfunnels and Convertri.

Speed is key to conversion. People leave the page if it has not loaded within 4 seconds so if your page takes longer you’ll lose a sale.

Funnel Planner

Both offer same features and integrations so I am not going to focus on those in this post.

Below you’ll find how Convertri works slightly different than Clickfunnels.

Their pages builder is also free form editor allowing you to design the pages as you like where Clickfunnels you are restricted by columns!

Click to Sign Up Now

Undo Button

One of the most annoying thing about Clickfunnels is lack of Undo button - and believe me if you work with funnels or any website, UNDO is a must!

I can’t tell you how many times I have accidentally deleted a section and only way to get it back is to build it again from scratch. So frustrating! (And if you ask me, big enough reason to move to Convertri!)

Convertri has an undo button. This is big, honestly, really big thing!

Once you work with funnels for a while, you’ll know what I mean and feel the frustration… and I can guarantee you’ll be checking out other tools that offers the undo button.

It’s always the little things.

Drag-and-drop

First of all ease of use - Convertri’s interface is really easy to learn and you really do not have to be a geek to figure it out.

It is simple and straightforward, and if you get stuck at any point, there are plenty of how-to-videos available on Convertri support pages. Both offer drag-and-drop for their pages but one does make this way easier than the other.

Convertri has an awesome interface with genuine drag-and-drop function. Clickfunnels does have one too but it does not work as well as Convertri’s.

Price

Price is often an importantdecidingfactor when choosing a tool to use. It should not be the main factor by any means as it is an investment into making more money.

Clickfunnels starts at $99 / month for basic account.

Convertri starts at $99 / month, but offers $79 / month when paid annually.

So pretty even pricing as of June 2020.

Trial

Both offer trials to test out. And I highly recommend testing both!

Click to sign up for free trial with Clickfunnels & Convertri. Converti also has a Template Club - you can sign up by clicking here.

Marketing & Hype

Clickfunnels wins this 10-1. But is that a good thing?

I am not so sure it is. There is lot of hype around Clickfunnels and #funnelhackers are popping out everywhere on social media.

Yes, Clickfunnels are awesome in their marketing - they truly know how to create a “cult” of followers who buy anything and everything they offer. They do offer great things don’t get me wrong, but their marketing works like well oiled machine.

Convertri on the other hand is like the quiet high achieving student in the corner who no one really knows much about - yet.

Convertri marketing is lacking compared to Clickfunnels, and they are lead by the lead developer - which may be the reason for lack of focus on hype marketing and focus on tech that matters aka page load speed.

There is market for every type of business and marketing.

Which is Better

If you ask me, Convertri does offer a lot for someone looking to build landing pages and funnel. Page Load speed and undo-button are big enough reasons to make the move from Clickfunnels to Convertri.

So there you go, Clickfunnels Alternative - I will be posting others as well do sign up to get updates.

Are you moving?

*This blog posts has affiliate links and I may earn a commission should you take up on my offer and use the mentioned services. You still pay the same amount and these commissions keeps my business going and these blog posts written.

How to Use Interact Quiz to Get Leads

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

When was the last time you saw a post on Facebook titled something like this… “What country suits your personality”, “Do you have an entrepreneurial mindset” and many, many others. People love taking quizzes, sharing their results and comparing results with others. This is why quizzes are great to use as a lead magnet and grow your email list. But how does one use a quiz to get leads?

[caption id=“attachment_7387” align=“alignright” width=“333”] Pin to Pinterest![/caption]

How to Use Quiz to Get Leads

Recently I became a partner with TryInteract.com who offers quizzes, polls and giveaways. I had always wanted to use these for my business but never really got around to creating them. So when Interact contacted me to become their partner I was overjoyed!

I have been testing the site for over a week so far and I’m in love! I am kicking myself that I waited so long to implement quiz as a lead magnet… I knew I should do it but procrastinated. My experience is only with Interact so can only write about that website. There are many sites offering similar services and you can find those searching on Google.

You can take my quiz clicking here.

Why a Quiz is Fantastic Lead Magnet

Like mentioned earlier people love to take quizzes. They also love sharing their results and getting friends to take same test to compare the results. This means one person takes the test, shares is and asks friends to take same test so that they can compare their results and talk about it.

Quiz takes literally do the work for you!

“you’re giving them an opportunity to learn something interesting about themselves and a chance to start a conversation with their friends”

No freebie, checklist or book will do this for your email list. Sure all those are helpful and will grow your list, but not shares as much as quiz results.

With a quiz you can also segment your followers based on their results. For example, running an online business, a quiz about running one tells you in which state your prospect is at so you know exactly what kind of content to send them. Someone who is just starting has totally different needs than someone who is already a year in and making money.

How to Use Interact

The best thing about Interact for me is that I don’t have to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, as they have hundreds of quizzes ready to be used. Saves hours and hours of time as I can use template and upload it to my website and wait for people to sign up.

Of course template is quite general but for most businesses template is more than enough.

What I did change was the results page and added links to blog posts, course and related content.

I did take two template quizzes and adjusted the quiz itself to fit my audience. That was easy to do on Interact!

Watch below video to see how easily you can start using Interact:

10 Must-Have Chrome Extensions for Entrepreneurs

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I am a big fan of Chrome and extensions it provides. Chrome is my main browser and many of the extensions are use daily as well. Super charge your Chrome with these awesome marketing extensions that help you become a better marketer of your products & services. So here are 10 highly effective Chrome Extensions for Entrepreneurs.

10 highly effective Chrome Extensions for Entrepreneurs

Bitly

Make the URL’s you share nice and short for the web. Bitly is super easy to use and also provides great analytics on how many clicks you got. Bitly is great especially for social media where space is often limited and long URL’s just do not look good. You can personalize URL’s which is great for branding!

Grammarly

An easy way to check your writing anywhere on the web! It is spot typos in Facebook posts and more. Grammarly is an online proofreading tool and you can use both online and offline. It does not just fix spelling mistakes but also grammatical errors. Highly recommended! You can also copy/paste text to Grammarly itself and use it without installing Chrome Extension. (Grammarly corrected multiple spelling mistakes on this blog post…)

Momentum

Momentum replaces boring new tab / open page with a personal dashboard with a beautiful image, task list, and inspiration. Not really a marketing tool per se but you could use it as a daily task list of your marketing plan.

Loom

Need to capture a quick screencast to share on social media? With one click you can record your screen, finish and share your screencast swiftly and easily. Loom is 100% free to use.

StayFocusd

Find yourself on Facebook while you should be working on your online course? StayFocusd is the solution for procrastinators as it will limit the time you spend on time-wasting websites. This. Is. A. Must. Tool.! Go ahead add it now, you’ll thank me later!

Check out also: Online Business Tools I Use & Recommend

BuiltWith

Found a nice looking website and want to know what is it built with? Or want to spy your competitor’s advertising channels? All can be done with BuiltWith that will tell you what technology is used the build the website itself as well as any advertising trackers. Find the website you want, activate BuiltWith and spy!

Last Pass

Tired of typing out password again and again? Last Pass saves you from typing passwords and enables you to use very secure passwords and you only need to remember one password -> Last Pass. It remembers all your passwords and you can even set up an automatic sign in if you like.

If you have Virtual Team Members, ask them to sign up for Last Pass and you can then share your password securely without ever showing the password to your remote team member!

Zoom Scheduler

Zoom is awesome easy to use meeting, conference and webinar tool. I use it for client meetings as it provides high-quality audio and video as well as option to save all conversations. To use Zoom Scheduler, sign up with Zoom here and then head over here to download Zoom Scheduler Chrome Extension.

Evernote Web Clipper

Saw an awesome ad on Facebook or in a blog but don’t know how to save it? Evernote Web Clipper is an awesome extension and addition to Evernote (if you are not using Evernote yet, sign up now!). You can say goodbye to never ending list of bookmarks and instead of saving it to Evernote and use tags so you can always find it easily and quickly.

Similar Sites

If you find yourself at your competitor’s website and want to find other competitors so you can get a better idea who your competitors are and how you can improve your marketing plan, then Similar Sites will help you out. Activating Similar Sites gives you immediately 10 related websites. Works pretty well finding similar sites so definitely a must tool before creating your marketing strategy and activities.

I did promise 10 Chrome Extensions for Entrepreneurs… but I just have to add one more… this is THE traffic tool for my business.

Tailwindapp

By far the best social media tool for driving traffic -> Tailwindapp for Pinterest. When it comes to social media and traffic, there is just no better than Pinterest, and Tailwindapp makes is super easy and quick to pin your pins to your and group boards ensuring no matter what time it is in the day or night, your pins are always on the top. That means traffic. And tons of it!

First, sign up for Tailwindapp (get 100 free pins on me!) and then download Taiwind Chrome Extension here.

This blog post is also shared on Pinterest exclusively using Tailwindapp - and visibility is guaranteed. I know I speak highly of this tool but it really deserve all the praise!

What Extension are you using / did you start using?

*Some links may be affiliate links where I earn a small commission if you choose to sign up for the service. You do not pay anything extra, at times you may get service for cheaper, by using my link. Affiliate commissions allows me to continue writing blog posts.*

How to Create An Online Course

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

An online course is an awesome way to create passive income and to have multiple income streams in your business. In this blog post, I walk about how to create an online course for your business. Let’s get started.

READ ALSO (opens in new tab): > 3 Platforms To Sell Online Courses from Your Own Website

How to create an online course

Let’s start this whole process backward, and start with selling the course first!

Yep, read it right, let’s sell the course before creating a single lesson! This posts covers Selling the course & Creating the Course and you only move to the second part if you have sales.

If not, then back to the drawing board, market research and another round of selling.

Why sell first?

Well, because you do not want to end up in a situation where you have ninakolari@gmail.com with 10+ hours of content and then find out that course topic is not what people want to pay for. So you wasted tens of hours (or even hundreds of hours?) of work creating something that market does not want.

This part shocks most and when I say it I often hear - you can’t sell something you have not created yet!

Yes, you can and you should.

Think of this process like Kickstarter or Indiegogo where people pitch their ideas, wait for the market to respond and fund. If funding happens only then the product is created. If not, then you most likely learned what did not work and can come up with a new way to present your idea.

Sell First

I’ve made the mistake of creating a course I though people want, but was wrong and wasted a lot of time and made NO MONEY!

Just like with any business activity, market research is an important part of the process. So that starts the process even before selling but is directly linked to selling your course idea.

Where to get ideas?

Facebook groups! Find groups where your ideal clients or target market hangs out. Instead of spamming the group with a market research questionnaire, read what people ask help with regarding your topic. Answer those questions and start the conversation.

You can learn so much from Facebook groups and what people really want to learn.

Create an Outline

Once you know what people need help with you can start drafting an outline for your online course. Already at this point, it is good to ask if people are interested to participate in market research so you can dig deeper into what problems they face.

Try to figure out what is the solution these people would be willing to pay for.

Also, think the course type - is it an email course, video course or mix of all.

Once you have an outline, it is time to start selling. Although your outline most likely changes along the ride it’s good to have a broad outline at this stage.

Sales Page

The next step is to create a sales page for your online course. I personally use Clickfunnels for sales pages - and one that I recommend (get a free trial with my affiliate link). No matter what tool you use to create your sales page, hire a copywriter to write your sales text and graphic designer to design any graphics.

Once your page is up, selling starts!

It is recommended to build a small funnel that leads to a sales page.

You could provide a PDF, mini-course or something small in exchange for an email address and then provide tons of value before pitching the course.

Many Facebook groups have specific promo threads where you can post a link to your freebie and even direct to sales page.

Try to find JV opportunities and webinars, consider affiliate program and make sure your social media is full of valuable content leading into your freebie.

On the sales page, you do not need to disclose that course has not been created yet! Whether you do or don’t it is up to you.

You could mention that first students will be founding members of this online course and will get an extra help throughout the course. And you could offer a lower price point for founding members.

Yes, first round of students will take more of your time but you learn a lot from this to ensure high-quality course going forward. And then you can automate the whole sales process.

So when do I create the course?

When selling a course prior to creating it, it is good to host a timed course starting on a certain date. Let’s say you are working on the outline/market research in month 1, start selling on month 2 but the actual course starts only on month 3. This gives you time to create the course once you have sales. You can either create the whole course during month 2 after you’ve reached enough sales or drip the course and only create lessons as needed as time goes by.

READ ALSO (opens in new tab): > 3 Platforms To Sell Online Courses from Your Own Website

Once you have sales it is time to pick a platform that hosts your course. Good thing is that you have many, many options for your host. You could choose Thinkific, Teachable, Podia, Udemy, Skillshare and many more. But which one to choose?

I recommend testing out 2 options to get a feeling of how user-interface works both for you and your student.

10 Pinterest Tips for Online Entrepreneurs

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Pinterest is one of the best social networks for getting free traffic. Pinterest is not just a social network; it is more of a search engine. Pinterest is great way to get traffic and eye balls for your content and best thing is it’s free! Facebook is nowadays pretty much a pay-per-show network as they restrict post visibility to get you to boost posts. That does not happen on Pinterest!

Pinterest Tips for Online Entrepreneurs

Pinterest is especially great if your target market is women as majority of users are women, but men are finding Pinterest and joining in masses. Third of my audience reach is men right now, and growing fast. Majority of business profiles are by women entrepreneurs giving a distinct advantage for men to sign up with Pinterest and take over the market!

To be visible on Pinterest, here are my tips how to get most out of it.

Profile

Pinterest profile is your home or business card and it requires attention. Firstly complete profile with your “elevator pitch” and great photo of you. Don’t forget to use keywords your clients/customers would be using when searching for services/products you offer.

Custom URL

One of first things you should do is reserve custom URL for your business/name. Use same custom URL that you have in all other social media to ensure you only have one slug you give out. Mine is pinterest.com/ninakolaricom <- Click to connect with me on Pinterest.

Change / Add Custom URL: Go to Settings -> Username -> add custom URL

Boards

Boards are collection of pins and great way to divide your pins based on topics. It is recommended to add main images for your board to make it easier to see what the board is about. You can create these quickly and easily with canva.com. I am using my brand colors white, black and orange in my main images.

Add pins to all new boards at least 10 to start with. You can make a board secret if you are still working on it and finding suitable pins. Organize your boards based on popularity, keep popular once at the top.

Pins

Be little bit critical with what you pin! Don’t pin just anything, pin high quality content from you and from others. Do not pin only your content - followers will get board quickly and many won’t pin yours. Pinterest is all about collaboration - pin mostly other people’s pins!

When creating your own pins, always use vertical pins, horizontal pins do not look good on Pinterest. Use images, typography and colors to stand out from the crowd. Again canva.com is great tool to create pins, they have a Pinterest pin template ready to use.

When creating a pin always add description, pin title and domain. Do not use shortened URLs like bit.ly - use your own full domain. Visibility on Pinterest requires effort and it is highly recommended to use an automation tool that does all the work for you!

Automate

More the merrier is good quote for Pinterest! You should pin consistently all day long. But it is hard to do manually… Invest into automation tool that reduces Pinterest management to max 1 hour a week! That is pretty awesome considering how much traffic Pinterest can bring to you.

I personally use two automation tools with Pinterest - Tailwindapp & Boardbooster. I started with Tailwindapp but lately have been playing around with Boardbooster. Of the two, Tailwindapp is much easier to get started with. Boardbooster has great tools but I find user interface a little complex.

I recommend trying both and seeing which one works best for you. My preference is Tailwindapp but I know many love Boardbooster. You can get free trials with both Tailwindapp & Boardbooster if you click links above.

One of the great things about Tailwindapp is their Tribes - you can join a tribe of like-minded people/in similar niche and collaborate to ensure everyone gets most out of Pinterest and higher visibility. Join my Digital Marketing Tribe.

Create and Sell Online Courses

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Planning on creating and selling online courses? Great choice by the way! What should you consider prior publishing an online course? Of course quite a bit, but here are few necessary elements to consider prior creating a single lesson of your online course.

Student Transformation

What is the transformation student is going to get from following your course? This is by far the most important aspect of your course. What is the students starting point and where do they end up.

This dictates price you can charge for your course, how well your sell your course, and student engagement and happiness after the course. Students pay for, or buy, transformation, not knowledge. What does your course offer student to do after the course?

Take time to valuate this part, do research, ask your clients to ensure your course matches exactly what students want.

Course Host

Where do you host your course? Good new is that your options are endless, bad news is that so many options could feel overwhelming. I have reviewed multiple course hosts, for example Coach *Now Podia* Review, to help you get started. There is no host or platform over another, it really comes down to preferences and what you need from the platform. With you many you can start for free, but need to pay for affiliate program for example (which is crusial for your success by the way!).

Also consider user interface, is it simple for student to figure out? Can you provide different languages within your school? This could be an issue if you have lot of international students and bring lot of extra work. Thorough FAQ and ticketing system is great in these cases.

Video, Text, Audio

Is your online course build with video, text, audio or combination of all? Your chosen media dictates how long it takes to create the course and also how much you can charge. Text course is by far the easiest to create for a newbie and a great starting point. Both audio and video seems hard at first for many but I personally think are crucial parts of successful online course. The more personal you get with your students, the better engagement you’ll get. With audio and video, the more you do, better you get. It is ok to not to like listening your own voice! You’ll get used to it in time.

Best course is generally a combination of all three. It brakes up longer courses and provides various ways to learn enabling you to serve various learning styles.

Anytime or Certain Dates

How much interaction do you provide with your course? Can student sign up anytime or on specific date only?

Both have advantages and disadvantages and you could trial both to see which one works best for your audience. Don’t forget to consider which one works best with your life as well! Anytime course is the easiest as you can automation sales funnel to drive traffic. Offering only certain starting dates brings urgency to the purchase which may bring higher return on investment.

You can also drip your course content or offer all classes available right after payment. If you offer longer refund period, dripping content is best way to go. Although refunds are rare events!

Hands off or Hands on

Do students get your time during the course?

Hands off course is often offered anytime and with very little interaction with instructor. You could offer Facebook Group where students can connect with other students and help each other. This does require your time as well even if you do not answer any questions within a group. Managing a group takes time, but also gives students huge benefits. Hands off allows you to lower your course price and hands off course is great starter course early stages of your sales funnel.

Hands on course offers your time, maybe you plan to have weekly Q&A session where you answer students questions live. Live Q&A sessions are great bonuses you can offer on your sales page - these convert really well! You can give support in various way: email, Skype, Facebook group, Live Webinar, Calls, Ticket System and more. Hands on takes more of your time so add that time to your course price.

Final Words

Creating and selling an online course is exciting and truly transformational business decision to make. A course could transform you business completely and give you total freedom of your time and location. Before you run to make your course, do consider above elements of an online cuorse.

A Plug-n-Play Sales Funnel For Online Coaches

Anonymous — Mon, 15 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Sales Funnels are “the” thing right now. Surely you’ve seen the Facebook ads, the blog posts promos on Facebook groups and more entrepreneurs offering something for free. This is the starting point of a sales funnel and one that every business MUST have in place. Often when I mention Sales Funnel as a concept to entrepreneurs, they freeze and get instant tech overwhelm… and never actually implement a funnel in their business. So I though I better write a post how every entrepreneur can implement a plug-n-play sales funnel the their business with just couple of clicks and tweaks.

FAMOUS ONE CHANNEL AWAY IS BACK! CLICK AND SIGN UP NOW - IT’S GONE SOON!

Plug-n-Play Sales Funnel

Sales Funnel does not need to be complex with tens of pages, upsells, downsells, mutliple Facebook ads all followed by tens of emails. The most important thing is that you implement a funnel into your business. Just one is enough. And capture emails with that funnel. That is all you must have, rest is optional and good things to have but can be implemented later on.

Depending on the source there are few ways to describe a sales funnel but here is one simple one:

1. Awareness - let them know about you and your business 2. Incentive - offer a bribe in exchange of their email address 3. Lead - connect & communicate with them by perhaps sending them to your Facebook Group. 4. Sale - from lead to a customer.

Example Sales Funnel for an Online Coach:

1. Awareness - Facebook ads, blogging, Facebook Live - anything that gives value. 2. Incentive - checklist, report, book, video mini-course, free call 3. Lead - add to value email sequence, Facebook group, etc. 4. Sale - from lead to a customer.

Click here to watch my video on Youtube talking about Sales Funnel.

I often see that it is not hard to create awareness or create the incentive, but hard part is executing or implementing the funnel with tech. There are so many options to choose from which works against you as tech overwhelm hits and nothing happens. I hear and see posts every day from online entrepreneurs crippled with total overwhelm that stops any kind of progress.

I was there too before and believe me I tried all the tools out there hoping that the new one would be easier to use than the last one. But all this trial actually stopped me going forward with my business and I was suffering total shiny-object-syndrome. Once I realized what was going on I knew I had to stop and pick one and go with it.

Plug-n-Play Sales Funnel

I chose Clickfunnels for my funnels. Why? Because I did not have to start from scracth I could use sales funnel templates from other people to get my funnel up quicker and to get easy-to-follow analytics on how my funnel is doing.

That got me started in the road I am still riding on but with different destination. I started just to get a funnel for my online courses but I ended up becoming a sales funnel consultant for other businesses and a Clickfunnels expert. I know the overwhelm online entpreneurs face every day when they are starting or growing their business. I totally can relate to it.

So I created a plug-n-play sales funnel template for online coaches to capture leads for their business to grow their business.

I did this so that you can get out of the shiny-object-syndrome and take ACTION!

Here’s the link to the plug-n-play sales funnel:

https://app.clickfunnels.com/funnels/3711592/share/vnbodr63y8r5zwy2

When you upload a Funnel template to your new account, Clickfunnels guides you all the way through. Using my link, you will also get a FREE TRIAL of Clickfunnels. If you already have an existing account, template will be added to your funnel list once it has been uploaded.

If you are existing Wordpress user, check out this blog post how you can connect Wordpress and Clickfunnels with few simple steps.

If you would like little bit more help with Clickfunnels and how to do integrations and more, do check out my course on Clickfunnels (course uses the exact same template I just shared with you).

Podia Review – Online Course Builder Platform

Anonymous — Mon, 08 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

FINE PRINT: I am a Podia Partner/affiliate, so if you do click a link on this blog, I may earn a commission. These commissions keeps me going and providing reviews and creating how-to courses.

As you know I am all about Online Courses and testing out new tools, apps and technologies. I have already used Thinkific, Teachable, Udemy, Skillshare and many more in my research for best online business tools. And I recently discovered a new kid in the block, Podia. I discovered it initially by accident when I was reading a business blog and they hosted their courses with WithCoach.com - so of course I had to check it out and do a Podia review.

Click here to Take Action Now and Trial it Yourself

Podia Review - Online Course Platform

Let’s start with the basics; what is Podia and who are the people behind it. Podia is a SAAS (software as a service) platform for online entrepreneurs. It is a platform where you can host and sell digital products, courses and even your time.

You can have both digital products and courses with Podia, which is a huge bonus for those with both in their portfolio. Many course platforms are fantastic with courses but not so good with digital products/downloads like books, but Coach does great job in both areas.

The nearest competitor to Coach is Gumroad. They both have similar interface and provide bit more than just online course platform. Of course, they compete with other platforms on other aspects and Podia claims following in their website: “The number one reason people switch from other platforms to Podia? Our customer service.” That is pretty strong statement and I believe their active customer support will be a great help once you go full in with online courses. Choosing a platform that is unbeatable in customer service is always a wise step to take.

First Glance

For whatever reason, Podia, reminds me of ConvertKit. Something about the user experience and feel just reminds me of CK - and that is a good thing. Their website and course interface is smooth and logical - a big plus! It is a pleasure to use and it is easy to find what you are looking for. Bigger course platforms can suffer from information overload and it does not happen here at all.

Podia is great for anyone who wants a simple online course platform that is super intuitive to use.

Click here to Take Action Now and Trial it Yourself

Who Should Use Podia?

Podia is ideal for anybody with a digital product (book etc.) or an online course. It is a self-hosted platform where you will need to do all marketing in order to make sales. It is a great add-on with Udemy and/or Skillshare in case you host courses there. Podia offers very affordable pricing tiers and you can start for free.

If you have a book - you can easily sell it as digital download.

If you have a course - smooth user experience and video hosting.

If you are a coach, consultant or a service provider, you should plug into the online course market and provide products for your clients to buy. If you have not done so yet, start today!

Podia is especially great for those that who do not want to integrate their email marketing with course platforms (it can be challenging with Zapier in the middle!) as you can drip content and emails within Podia! That is a huge bonus that I have not seen with other providers.

Read also: http://ninakolari.com/sell-online-courses/

Course/Product Building Experience

As mentioned before, the user experience on Podia is so smooth, easy and intuitive. There is nothing extra to confuse you, just what you need when you need it. You could have a course up in an hour for sure!

As you can see below you have two options - Digital Download or Online Course.

Uploading is easy with the Drag & Drop feature and the upload speed is fast. You can have both free and paid courses, offer coupons, FAQ and more.

CONVINCED? Click here to Take Action Now and Trial it Yourself

Pages

The sales page is pretty simple but still offers everything you need. If you need complex sales pages, then it is better to host sales pages elsewhere (like Clickfunnels). A great thing about Podia is that you can see your conversion rate (visitors/buyers) which tells a lot about effectiveness of your sales page. The higher the conversion rate, the better.

Update 27th July 2017, Podia just confirmed adding affiliate program to their service! This is golden for anyone with digital products as there is nothing better than to get sales with zero effort.

Podia Has Cool Tool that helps you see your profit from your membership - click to see it yourself.

Payment Providers

You can integrate both Stripe and PayPal with WithCoach. Paypal is a premium option, Stripe can be conneted at all levels.

Integrations

Podia integrates directly with Convertkit; for others you need to use Zapier in the middle. This is not an issue as it is same case with literally all other course platforms as well. If you do not want to sign up with an email marketing platform you could handle all within Podia which is a unique feature compared to other course platforms.

Email Marketing within Podia

Podia offers a unique feature to send one-off-newsletters or drip campaigns. This feature has potential of replacing your autoreponder! A feature that is perfect for someone who wants to learn just one platform and still “have it all”. Having said that I do recommend having a dedicated autoresponder as your list is truly where the money is.

Click here to Take Action Now and Trial it Yourself

Podia Pricing

There are three pricing levels each giving you different services. One of the best things is definitely membership site option! This is a game changer as membership is pretty hot topic at the moment. Check out pricing details here.

Conclusion on Podia Review

Podia is a great option when you are shopping for an online course platform for your courses.

If you sell courses and/or digital products, I think Podia is the best option out there. With combo possibility of course and digital product, it is really the best.

Their intuitive and uncluttered user interface is one of the best I have seen - and used! Thumps up for sure!

And finally, their support is really awesome and response time short.

Clickfunnels and WordPress – Guide to Connect the Two

Anonymous — Wed, 03 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

This is a guide how to connect Clickfunnels and Wordpress. If you already have Wordpress website, integrating Clickfunnels pages is easy and simple process. Follow the steps on this blog post and get your pages online in minutes.

Before we connect or integrate these two, let’s talk why you should do this. If you have an existing website with Wordpress it is easy to connect or integrate Clickfunnels with it.

HEADS UP! Limited time offer! TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS? GET THIS NEW TOOL A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

Why you should connect the two?

You are able to use your domain that you own i.e. yourdomain.com/ClickFunnels. When you use yoursubdomain.clickfunnels.com/landingpage, you are using ClickFunnels domain that you do not own. Most likely you’ll have no issues but it is always best to own it all pages you put out on the internet. When you use Clickfunnels domain as described, it could become a problem if for some reason Clickfunnels shuts down then you’ll end up having lot of links around the net that goes nowhere. When you own the domain (yourdomain.com/landingpage), this will not happen.

Why should you not use Wordpress with Clickfunnels?

Clickfunnels is responsible for updating the plugin and at times updates may not be that frequent. This could hurt you if Wordpress itself does an update making Clickfunnels plugin nonfunctional within Wordpress platform. Sounds scary, but quite unlikely to happen.

Below you find step-by-step guide with images how to connect Clickfunnels with Wordpress Website. If you would rather watch a video me doing this -> Click Here to Watch.

How to Connect Clickfunnels with Wordpress Website

To start with build your pages on Clickfunnels. Once you have your pages ready to connect, head to your Wordpress website as an admin. Go to Plugins and add new plugin.

Once you find Clickfunnels plugin, click Instal Now and then Active.

Now you have Clickfunnels on your Worpress website and it is time to connect WP and Clickfunnels. Head to your Clickfunnels account and go to Account Details.

You need to copy WordPress API Key to Wordpress, red in image above. Copy the API key and head back to Wordpress and open Clickfunnels from the left menu.

Paste API key to Authentication Token and add your Clickfunnels Account Email Address, click SAVE.

Next you need to head to General Settings (third on the menu).

You need to decide which way you display Clickfunnels pages on your Wordpress website.

You have three options:

Download & Display

Embed Full Page iFrame

Re-Direct to Clickfunnels

Then choose which favicon you want to display - most likely your Wordpress Favicon.

And lastly you can add Tracking code (Analytics, Facebook etc.) if you wish.

First option is mandatory, the other two optional. Once you have done required steps, click SAVE.

Now you have connected Clickfunnels and Wordpress and you can create your first page.

HEADS UP! Limited time offer! TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS? GET THIS NEW TOOL A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

How to Create a Wordpress Page using Clickfunnels Pages

Click Pages and then Add New.

Choose Page Type, you have three options:

Regular Page

Home Page

404 Page

Next, choose your funnel from Clickfunnels and Choose step. If you have funnel with multiple pages/steps you can choose any step/page on the funnel. Often though you would choose the first page - squeeze page.

Next one is Clickfunnels URL - you can not change this field, leave as is.

Finally type in your Custom Slug - yourdomain.com/customslug

Click SAVE and you are done.

HEADS UP! Limited time offer! TIRED OF PAYING MIN $79/M FOR FUNNELS? GET THIS NEW TOOL A GO AND PAY NOTHING!

PIN to keep this Guide for Later!

5 Proposal Mistakes Upwork Freelancers Make Daily

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT

I have hired hundreds of freelancers via Upwork over the years, and I worked with hundreds of clients via Upwork as well. So I know online freelancing and Upwork inside out. I know what works and why some freelancers make it or break it. Many of those who do not make it are guilty of these common proposal mistakes on Upwork.

The decision if a freelancer is in the shortlist or the bin happens in seconds! Yes, that is the reality how long a client looks at a freelancer proposal before deciding whether to open the proposal or not.

That means you got mere seconds to impress the clients! And here are most common proposal mistakes freelancers make on Upwork.

So here you go…

Most Common Proposal Mistakes on Upwork

Generalist Freelancer

When you portray yourself as a generalist or a freelancer who serves any client doing anything that is in the offer, you do not stand out.

Clients are very selfish, they only care that their project gets done and easiest way to get it done is to hire an expert. Too broad niche means you are fighting with thousands and thousands of freelancers for the same projects. It is highly unlikely you’ll stand out in the crowd when you offer pretty much same as everyone else.

Saying no means actually more $$$ - meaning choosing a narrower niche you will earn more and win premium clients! That is how I’ve made well over 100K from Upwork!

I am very picky on who I work with and serve a very narrow niche. I literally do not send proposals or interview for projects, clients invite me to work with them!

Too Low Hourly Rate

Yes, you read it correctly - too low!

Clients often want an expert for their project to ensure it is done right. When you portray yourself as an expert but have a low rate, that does not add up.

If you are a new Upwork Freelancer you may need to lower your rate in order to win that first contract, but you still need to have high hourly rate and then proposal a lower rate and explain why you do so.

Ignore Additional Questions

Adding additional questions is by far easiest way to shortlist candidates!

It works wonders as most freelancers do not bother to answer or comment “see proposal letter above”. But the thing is, freelancers answer to the additional question is before the proposal!

Again clients are lazy and selfish, they actually want you to answer their questions.

Copy / Paste Proposals

I can not believe how many copy/paste proposal letters I get per job post.

Canned proposals are the total waste of freelancers time, and clients!

Copy/paste proposals have one thing in common - they fit any job post that is remotely relevant, yet they provide zero value to the client.

This is by far biggest mistake freelancers make. I don’t know if it is laziness or what but I so do not understand why freelancers keep doing it - nobody has won any jobs with copy/paste general proposal!

Client Value

Kinda goes with the first point and definitely goes together with the previous mistake. If you try to serve everyone you are most likely also sending copy/paste proposals.

The client is only interested in what they get and they want value for their money. If your proposal does not clearly tell the client what is the value they get - you are in the bin.

A proposal letter is very little about you, it is about the value client is going to get by hiring you.

What Will You Do Differently?

So there you go, these are the mistakes I see daily on Upwork and as a client, it drives me nuts. But then again as long as freelancers keep making these, I keep win the contracts :) No, but seriously winning work is actually quite easy when you put some effort to your proposal letters.

Let me know in below comments, what is your take away from the post and what will you change in your proposal letter?

What is a Niche and Why Should You Choose One?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Whether you are a consultant, coach or a freelancer choosing a niche is one that should happen early stages of your business. Having said that, still today I meet many entrepreneurs that “just want to serve everyone”. I kind of know that feeling and have been guilty of it myself. So what changed my mind and what happened after?

What changed my mind was that I heard successful examples from many entrepreneurs. I analyzed their business model and realized I am actually missing out when I try to “serve the world”. When I did narrow my niche down, I actually sold more of my services than ever before! I was working with right clients and doing perfect projects for me. Before choosing a niche I was doing a bit of everything and working with clients that did not match my ideal client. It is time consuming and does not pay enough compared to the effort necessary.

What is a niche?

A niche is an area of a market you choose to focus on. If you are building or running an online business finding a narrow niche is critical! You want to stand out from the crowd and be different from millions of other websites.

Imagine someone finds your website on Google or Facebook and lands to your website because of an awesome blog post on copywriting for lawyers and after reading your blog post they browse around your website only to find nothing more on the topic and all about copywriting for hairdressers. So they leave… and never come back. But imagine same scenario and all your content is focused on copywriting for lawyers so this person hangs around much longer, reads about you and your expertize and will most likely also sign up for your newsletter when you have great incentive to do so. This is what we want!

Latter is your target market and already loves your content and is more likely to convert to paying client (make sure you have a funnel ready to monetize it!). In the first scenario, that would never happen. This visitor would never convert to a paying client as they are not interested in beauty stuff you put out. Sure you get bigger website hit number in Google Analytics, but you also had to take a lot of time to write blog post for the wrong audience. Time wasted. Income Lost!

Big Fish in a Small Pond

You may wonder why I am talking about fish here but here’s a great example of what I mean. It is better to be a big fish in a small pond than small fish in a big pond. You see what I mean? When you choose a narrow niche you are the big fish! It is far easier to become a recognized expert in a small area than a large area. Being a recognized expert means… more qualified clients, more income. By saying no to people you actually make more money! Sounds totally wrong, but it is right. Guaranteed.

What is my niche?

I work with entrepreneurs & freelancers who are to the online world and can’t wait to take over their niche and become a recognized expert in it. My previous niche was quite narrow focusing on Upwork freelancers and you may know me from my Upwork courses. It is totally possible to change your niche, and as your business grows it is natural that more people come to your way outside your niche. A narrow niche is just a starting point. As your business grows, so does your niche. This happened to me. Lately more and more coaches and consultants have been around hence it makes sense to expand/divert my niche a bit. Sometimes clients actually tell you what your niche is so have a think about who’s knocking on your door and what do they want.

If you would like little more support on finding your niche on Upwork, check out my Upwork Niche course.

5 Reasons Why You Should Be In a Mastermind Group

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Over the years, I have heard so many great stories about mastermind and also how beneficial it is for an entrepreneur. But with my traveling lifestyle finding one has been bit problematic as quite often masterminds are local groups. As I could not find one, I decided to create on. I am now part of a small mastermind group with fellow online entrepreneurs and am loving it.

What is a mastermind group?

The term was introduced by Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich. Add this book to your reading list if you have not read it yet! A mastermind group is a “group is designed to help you navigate through challenges using the collective intelligence of others.” The size of the group varies but generally it is under 6 people. Less people makes it easier to handle and meetings takes reasonable time. Meetings can be weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, totally depends on members and one can be part of multiple masterminds at the same time.

Accountability

we all certainly need it and especially when you are working from home it is crucial to have. it is just so easy to lose an hour or so just browsing Facebook or doing laundry or any other housework (cleaning for me!) when you really should be working on your business. A mastermind keeps you on your toes as you will report back to your group on your progress! Nothing worse than confessing to your mastermind group that you did not meet your target because of ended up browsing Buzzfeed for good three hours!

Think big

The energy that comes from people excitedly talking about their business and their business plans is priceless! By hearing other business owners plans you just cant start to think the same way as well. If you are not thinking big enough, the group will force you to. And that leads to the next reason…

Support

Being an entrepreneur can be pretty lonely at times, working at home, no boss checking on you, or colleagues to have a coffee break with. To be honest, friends and family can only listen so much about your email marketing plans and how your course launch is coming up… Mastermind is perfect place to talk about your big plans and get support from fellow members and advice how to do it the best way.

Learn

You also learn so much about running a business each time someone comes up with an issue they have on their business. You not only help but learn when listening to others. Same goes for successes, you don’t have to do all the mistakes but you get a short cut to success from fellow mastermind group members.

Collaboration

Everyone should be collaborating especially in the online business world – strategically of course! We all can do so much better if we find and support each other, and that shows also in both of your bank accounts… Looking to partner up – drop me a message!

5 Questions Freelancer Should Ask From A New Client

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Over the years in outsourcing business, I have noticed that few freelancers ask questions from potential clients. Which is bad from a clients perspective. I feel that freelancer is not interested in the job or working with me if they don’t ask any questions. I know some are afraid to ask because they fear to lose the opportunity, but for the overall success of the project, it is good to have a list of questions handy when a new client calls.

So here you are…

5 Questions Freelancer Should Ask From A New Client

How often do you want updates on my progress?

A critical question to ask from all new (and existing) clients. You may have used to do bi-weekly updates, but your new clients might want an update twice a week. Always check how many and what way client wants to be notified of project progress. Some way prefer a simple email with details, some might want you to use their project management software or even a weekly chat.

I’ve used all various progress systems over the years. Some clients wanted a weekly Skype call always on the same time, so actually never wanted any update - just an email once I was done!

How many freelancers have you hired before?

A great question to ask as then you know your role better. If you are the first freelancer do expect to be guiding the client along the way and also to the work you do. If a client is a seasoned in the outsourcing industry, then you can expect easier project coming up - generally, that is!

I have worked with both new and seasoned clients and both have pro’s and con’s, just like anything in life. With new clients, do make sure finances are to ensure you will be paid as well. On Upwork, this means checking that they have verified payment method.

How will you be making your payment?

A question that is often not asked by freelancers, but one that should be cleared during the first client discussion. Before you do a minute of work for a client, you will need to know how will you be compensated on the project. Will you pay based on hourly work or project. What way will you making the payment (if outside Upwork). Don’t be afraid to ask money questions from clients, they

Don’t be afraid to ask money questions from clients, they understand that you are running a business too. This is on my client question list and I will not accept a project/client without a clear understanding of the payment.

Do you prefer quality over speed - or vice versa?

This question should only be asked when client themselves mentions urgency on the project, and when the quality part fits in well. Of course, we always want to provide top quality as soon as possible, but that is not always the case. In some projects time is a critical factor and then it is not possible to provide top notch quality at a moments notice. A good example would be in writing/translation services when often you have another person to proofread your content. In that case, it is perfectly normal to ask if a client would rather have the job done quickly or wait a bit longer to get proofreading done as well. So be bit cautious with this question and consider how well it fits in with your tasks.

What is the best way to contact you and when?

You may prefer Whatsapp for all communication but your client might want you to use Skype - and be online 9-5 as on-call. Because of the global economy, you might be working when your client is sleeping or vice versa. check how the client wants to be contacted and what day/time is best, or if they prefer email only - then stick to it.

I have stickt rules on communication so this is on top of my question list. I do not take on clients that require me to be available on Skype whole work day or give out my mobile number. Sure I have lost clients because of the rule, but that is ok as I found many that do not mind.

What do you ask from your potential clients?

Productivity Hacks For Freelancers

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Working solo at home can occasionally bring a whole new set of problems when it comes to productivity. In an office environment, you are constantly surrounded by colleagues, noise, and of course, your boss. It is easy to be productive when people around you are too. So what to do when all you are surrounded by is walls and nobody checking in once in a while? Here are my productivity hacks for freelancers.

I always found problem being that I am the one making the deadlines, although it is great, it does comes with a big responsibility of actually executing according to the plan. That is the hard part! I have read many books on productivity, have set up various follow-up templates and used a number of online project management apps to keep me busy and on track. But, those kinda did not work too well… I kept missing deadlines and I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. so I created my own way or looking at productivity. Simple, effective and works beautifully for me.

Routine

I find this critical to success. When I follow a routine for my work day, I get things done. Right now my routine is breakfast, exercise, snack, write one blog post before 10AM and only after that I do client work. Routine is based on “paying myself first” so to speak. I also have a routine for my client work, but it is a small one, since I currently only have two clients I work with and those take anything from 5 minutes to 90 minutes a day. Rest of the day is dedicated to business, social media and time off.

Three Tasks A Day

My particular productivity tackler system. And only that I have had any real success with. Partly because it is more than just keeping track of tasks I have done or will be doing for the day, but it looks at the bigger picture and focuses heavily on what is going well and what I learned that day.

I made an Excel sheet with my goals, deadlines, three tasks a day, gratitude and lessons learned. On the sheet at the top is space for my goals for the year and deadlines. Rest of the sheet is a list of calendar dates and space for three tasks for each day. Pretty simple yet effective. I often do way more than three tasks a day but three are a must-do tasks. I also add daily gratitudes and lesson learned for the day. Having gratitude integrated makes the day just so much better already in the morning: clear tasks for the day and what I am grateful in my life/business. This is also a great way to end the day, I can see clear results of my achievements and what I learned during the day.

I also use it as a reminder of things I need to be doing later on.

Why Excel? For me, I wanted a template where it’s super easy to move tasks from day to another. I don’t always follow the tasks I need to do for the day, at times I move a task to the following day but then I do add an extra task I did instead.

Specific Email / Call Times (and social media!)

I must admit that this one I struggle at times but do try to keep it as much as I can. Social media is a difficult part as it is also a big part of my business and marketing. I do have strict rules about calls with my clients, one being I do not give my mobile number! Yes, my client can only contact me via email or Skype (which nowadays is hardly ever even on…). Why do I have this? A couple of reasons really. One being simply becaue my mobile number changes every couple of months as I travel around the world. Sure I could get Skype number or something similar but I love that clients can not contact me while I’m off. Another reason is that nothing is that important that it can not wait till next day. Same goes with email, I never check work email from my mobile! When I’m off I am really off. It is good to check email couple of times a day (set times) or even once if you can do that. A simple thing like email time will improve your productivity by a mile!

PS: I have heard that coffee shop noises make you more productive. If you think daily latte or two is too much for your budget, head here to where you can listen to ambient coffee shop noise in the comfort of your own home (and possibly an instant cup in front of you).

How do you tackle productivity?

Top 10 Things Headhunters Want to See in Freelancer Profile

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Listed below you can find top 10 things headhunters look for in Online Freelancer profile. Generally speaking headhunters or clients spend seconds viewing a profile meaning you need to catch their attention immediately in order for them to read more about you and what you offer. When hiring team members for teams I follow these rules.

For a client headhunting is a must if they want to attract top talent, and you want to be found by each one of them. Being headhunted for an online freelancing job is like hitting gold mine! You have a client who is very interested in your offering, they have already invested money for headhunter meaning they mean business (to you!).

Many freelancing websites are filled with thousands and thousands of profiles and to be found you need to ensure your profile is top notch.

Top 10 Things Headhunters Want to See in Freelancer Profile

Public profile (nobody can find private profile, also consider opening it to search engines as well)
Professional photo (first impression are made in seconds)
Your expertise and what you can offer to a client
Sufficient career details
Evidence of being a top performer (what clients have said about your work quality?)
Straight to the point title
Your minimum / project rate
Your current / future availability
Up to date portfolio with your absolutely top work
Links to LinkedIn, Twitter or any profile they may get further information about you.

No matter if you are writing your profile or sending a proposal, always consider the reader and write it from their point of view.

The 5 Best Udemy Courses for Freelancers

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

*This post has affiliate links. You pay the same price but commissions earned helps me keep writing these posts. Thank you!*

As a freelancer you are your own HR & Training Manager and developing your skills is critical for long term freelancing****success. Udemy offers high-quality courses from thousands of instructors and has over 1,000,000 students across the globe. You not only learn but become part of a community of the course. Here’s my 5 Best Udemy Courses for Freelancers.

I’m a Udemy instructor so I thought I select 5 Best Udemy Courses for Freelancers in various niches. This post showcases courses that are loved by students and instructors alike so here are 5 best Udemy courses for freelancers.

This post has courses on following categories:

IT courses Business Courses

Here are Top IT courses on Udemy.

The Complete Web Develper Course 2.0

“Web development from scratch in 6 weeks. HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Bootstrap, Wordpress, APIs, Mobile Apps all covered. Lifetime access with no subscription on Udemy.com.”

Rob Percival is one of the top instructors on Udemy with whopping 219,000+ students and 19,000 reviews of average 4,7 stars! If you are looking to learn web development this is the course to take! You’ll build 14 websites and learn while doing. The course starts from the basics of web development and expands from there. It covers hosting, responsive design, CSS, HTML, PHP coding and so much more.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020

Want to pass the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate Exam? Want to become Amazon Web Services Certified? Do this course!

Our course material, like the AWS certification exams, are continually evolving.

This course covers all you need to know to pass the 2019 exam AND the new 2020 exam (now available in Beta but will be generally available in 2020). Over half a million students have done our courses on Udemy. This course will be updated for free throughout 2020 and is the one stop shop for everything you need to pass the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam.

The Complete iOS8 and Swift Course: Learn by Building 15 Real World Apps

“iOS App Development from scratch in 6 weeks - build full apps including Instagram and Snapchat Clones. With free Ebook”

With over 22 hours of lectures, this course covers inns and outs of IOS App development. No pre-knowledge required so it is a perfect course for a newbie.

Join over 110,000 students to learn again from Rob Percival - a top Udemy instructor. You will learn how to program real apps with Swift.

Cisco CCNA (200-120): The Complete Course

“Take this complete Cisco CCNA course - it will cover everything you need to prepare for the 200-120 certification exam!”

Lazaro Diaz has tough already over 36,000 students on Cisco with 120 lectures and 25 hours of content. The course covers all the required subjects to be successful in passing the CCNA 200-120 exam; also the knowledge and practice labs acquired in this course will be transferable to real world use as a Cisco professional. You’ll need basic network understanding and Cisco Packet Tracer or similar simulators to start.

JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts

“An advanced JavaScript course for everyone! Scope, closures, prototypes, ‘this’, build your own framework, and more.”

With 37,000 students and 85 lectures this course teachers you Javascript, the language that modern developers need to know, and know well. Truly knowing Javascript will get you a job, and enable you to build quality web and server applications. You will need to have basic Javascript knowledge prior signing up to get most of this course. The course offers multiple previews so you can check the course out prior purchasing it. Javascript course currently has impressive 4.9 Star average from over 4,300 students!

Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from zero to hero in Python 3

“Learn python and how to use it to analyze, visualize and present data. Includes tons of sample code and hours of video!”

Join Jose Portilla and 30,000+ students to learn python and promises the following: You’ll get a full understanding of how to program with Python and how to use it in conjunction with scientific computing modules and libraries to analyze data. If you are a beginner you may like to check out Jose’s another course; Complete Python Bootcamp.

Here are TOP Business / Finance Courses on Udemy.

An Entire MBA in 1 Course:Award Winning Business School Prof

** #1 Best Selling Business Course! ** Everything You Need to Know About Business from Start-up to IPO.

Over 300,000 students in 208 countries.

Are you ready to take your career to the next level? In this course, you will learn everything you need to know about business….from starting a company to taking it public. This course covers all of the important topics you will learn from getting an MBA from a top school + real life practical business concepts that will help make you more successful!

The Complete Financial Analyst Course 2020

Excel, Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis, Business Analysis, Financial Math, PowerPoint: Everything is Included!

**Updated for April 2020!**

The Complete Financial Analyst Course is the most comprehensive, dynamic, and practical course you will find online.

“Even in the toughest job markets, the best candidates find great positions.”, Forbes

You simply have to find a way to acquire practical skills that will give you an edge over the other candidates.

But how can you do that?

You haven’t had the proper training, and you have never seen how analysts in large firms do their work …

Stop worrying, please! We are here to help.

Beginner to Pro in Excel: Financial Modeling and Valuation

Financial Modeling in Excel that would allow you to walk into a job and be a rockstar from day one!

**Updated for April 2020!**

Do you want to learn how to use Excel in a real working environment?

Are you about to graduate from university and start looking for your first job?

Are you a young professional looking to establish yourself in your new position?

Would you like to become your team’s go-to person when it comes to Financial Modeling in Excel?

If you answered yes to any of these, then this is the right course for you!

Join over 85,330 successful students taking this course!

Microsoft Excel - Excel from Beginner to Advanced

Excel with this A-Z Microsoft Excel Course. Microsoft Excel 2010, 2013, 2016, Excel 2019 and Office 365.

Microsoft Excel all in One Package