90% of clients are an absolute pain in the you know what.

Let’s be honest, most consultants suck at consulting and most clients suck at being clients.

It’s not like you can read a book on how to be a better client and make people who work for/with you love you.

And at the end of the day, most client/consulting relationships usually don’t end up good.

So let me help you break this crazy cycle.

If you’ve ever heard that “clients suck” from a consultant, it’s normally because they allowed the client to…

1. Dictate the terms of the agreement
2. Control the conversation at every step
3. Ask for more work after the agreement is agreed on
4. Nag every day while the work is being done
5. Whine because you didn’t increase sales by 10X with your work
6. Etc, etc, etc…

And trust me, the list goes on.

Now let me explain my biggest tip that will help you manage clients and their “expectations”. If you do what I’m about to tell you I believe that you, the consultant, and the client will have happy endings, and no, not that type of happy ending.

Alright, here we go…

You must always understand that it’s impossible to manage a client. Remember, we’re talking about human beings who are generally emotional, don’t know what they need or want, and have baggage deeper than you probably imagine. So when you’re speaking with them, you’re never going to make them bend to your will, and you don’t want to either.

But what you do want to do is manage their EXPECTATIONS. And this process starts before you even talk to a single client and it happens in two ways. The first way is in YOUR head. You have to realize that you can never manage another human being because that will make you go insane.

The second way is to manage their expectations. Expectations are defined as “the act or the state of expecting”. So here’s the big tip… You must ALWAYS LOWER their expectations without sounding like a delta bravo (douche bag).

So you understand how this can be done, here’s a quick example of what a conversation may sound like as you present it…

“Alright John, that sounds great and I really think we’ll be able to increase your conversion for sure with some new positioning, a better follow up e-mail sequence, and a better video script. But John, you know I’ll never BS you and I’m always going to be honest with you. So with saying that, do know that all of this can fail and even cost you money. But do understand that on average only 3 out of 10 promotions normally work anyways so even if it does fail, at least we know what we created didn’t resonate with the market and we can do a 180 and try a completely different model/technique. So no matter what, it’s not like we did this for nothing.”

And once you lay that foundation, you move on to more benefit driven conversation.

This approach has never NOT worked for me. I said a lot in the paragraph above but what you need to understand is that I totally set them up for possible failure which is VERY important and you MUST do this before you even dare talk about details of the project, fees, etc.

I’ve closed more consulting gigs BECAUSE of this paragraph than anything else I’ve said in potential client phone calls.

And it works so well because they know I’m honest and real. Which I always do my best to be.

And guess what, everybody else they are talking to is telling them how great their product is, how much more money they are going to make, etc. I completely flip that around and say “Hey, this could fail…”, “It may not work because we have to see how the market reacts…”, you get the point.

So that’s my big tip and it’s so easy to implement. I highly recommend you try it. Remember, you can’t manage a human being but you can manage expectations. You manage expectations by the sample conversation I wrote above or a variation of it.

Now, I don’t personally do much consulting at all anymore because I’m working with my wife on our businesses and we’re launching a ton of new stuff in the future.

But if you are a consultant or want to be in the future, then you must sign up for my good friends e-mail list at ClientsSuck.net. I get nothing for mentioning Jason, I just believe in his in depth knowledge of making money and getting clients. Hopefully you learned something today and if you haven’t check Jason out and also make sure to grab his Monday Hotsheet. I’ve been a member of the Monday Hotsheet since the beginning and always come away with something new from his research.

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I’m a marketing nerd, there’s no doubt. But when it comes to Internet Marketing things can get tricky because you’re dealing with so much rehashed crap it’s pretty tough to break through and find the good stuff.

Well, for the last year I’ve tested a ton of print newsletters and I’m here to let you know my findings so you can make the best decision for yourself. Some newsletters I purchased, some were mailed to me for free, and some I did free trials on and went through all the material so I could write this blog post so I could see what the newsletter was all about.

There are some I bought that I didn’t even review because they were pretty and not worth a review… I’m not here to bash and name names because that’s not my styles but you know who the Internet Marketing guys are out there with the spammy stuff, I don’t need to go into it here.

I just want to let you know what I feel is worth it out there in the marketplace.

Also, I was going to actually rank the newsletters from #1 through #7, but decided not too at the last minute because it just didn’t feel right.

And lastly, you’ll find no affiliate links in this post because it’s not a promo piece, it’s just what I’ve found going through these marketer’s materials. It’s a quick recap of their newsletters so you can make a decision to try them, or not.

Alright, let’s go…

Review #1:
Doberman Dan AKA Dan Galapoo
Print Newsletter Link: http://secrets.dobermandan.com/three-free-gifts/
Price: $49.97/mo

I’ve been a subscriber to Doberman Dan’s newsletter since the beginning. Dan is a very sharp marketer who was a Gary Halbert protégé. What I really love about his newsletter is it comes from real experience from building real businesses. Unfortunately as you’ll see in my reviews coming up, this isn’t always the case. But Dan always has a real world story from the trenches to share, something that always resonates with me on a personal level. His stories grab you because you know they just happened and are fresh, or they are from a real world experience.

There’s been a few times while reading his newsletter that he’s actually compelled me to rethink something I was doing within my own business and evaluate it. This is possible because Dan actually runs real businesses. It’s also possible because Dan hasn’t always succeeded, he’s failed a lot which is great, because it means he actually had the balls to try a bunch of stuff that did fail, which I love and try to do often myself.

Not only that, he’s one of the few print newsletters where you not only get an in-depth marketing education in each issue, but you also get to be part of a Q & A live phone call every month which if you take advantage of it, should easily pay for your membership.

I highly recommend Doberman Dan’s print newsletter. If you only buy one print newsletter from my review today, I recommend this one.

Review #2:
Ben Settle
Print Newsletter Link: http://emailplayers.com/
Price: $97/mo

Ben settle is a unique character. When I say unique I mean that in a good way because when it comes to studying and implementing direct marketing, he’s on it. But he’s done something pretty different… Yes he writes sales letters, understands marketing, etc. But what sets Ben apart is his email savvy. I can say this with confidence because I purchased his Street Smart E-Mail Secrets course http://www.streetsmartemail.com/ and it’s 100% legit.

The cool thing about Ben is he writes e-mail in a ton of different markets. This means he has testing data that NOBODY else has. He also is able to let you know what’s working and what’s not working faster than anybody in the Internet Marketing arena.

One of my favorite parts of his newsletter is the way he’s able to stuff about 40 pages of content into 12 pages. I distinctly remember one newsletter where he was showing us how to get media/radio interviews though a special marketing technique he had figured out that made it so easy to understand anyone could figure it out. At the end of the day, I’d recommend Ben’s newsletter for sure. If you send e-mail to customers or prospects, his print newsletter is an absolute must have.

Review #3
Perry Marshall
Print Newsletter Link: http://www.perrymarshall.com/adwords/renaissance/
Price: $39.95/mo

I respect Perry because I think he tries to always be honest and be himself which is pretty rare online, especially when being fake can sometimes allow you to make a lot more money.

Anyways, Perry focuses on more than just Google Adwords in his newsletter, he focuses on all aspects of marketing but most people pigeonhole him to just PPC and he’s far from that. Perry also takes a more analytical approach to marketing than most people, but that’s probably due to his electrical engineering background.

If you do PPC, then you absolutely must be on his newsletter. If you want marketing advice that’s somewhat contrarian, you’ll really enjoy his newsletter. At the end of the day, I highly recommend Perry’s newsletter.

Review #4
Russell Brunson
Print Newsletter Link: https://clickdotcom.com/illuminati/
Price: $97/mo

Next up is Russell Brunson’s newsletter, which you can get if you’re part of his “Illuminati” membership. I have to be straight up here, I know Russell makes money and I’m sure he’s a cool dude… but his marketing is a little corny sometimes. For instance, on his sales letter in his headline graphic it says, “You’ve Got Only 24 Minutes To Decide… and the clock starts now.”… HUH?

And his body of his letter starts out like this…

“Are you alone?

You’d better be.

Because you’ve been personally selected to read a letter that stays between us.

And I mean that.”

Need I say more on this? Now I know Russell probably doesn’t mean to come across as a cornball with these hilarious statements so I’ll just blame his $5/hour writer from Elance. But hey, people believe they’ve been personally selected right?

Anyways, about his newsletter. I’ve read it when it first came out a few years ago and then I joined his trial so I could read some back issues before I wrote this blog post. At the end of the day, it’s pretty basic marketing information. It’s not really personality based and I found it quite boring because it was very generic information about Facebook, Twitter, time management, etc. I just had a hard time making it through his newsletters.

But that’s just me. Maybe if you’ve been online for only a year or two and are struggling to build your first website, you might get something out of it. Bottom line is for Russel’s newsletter to work in my opinion, he would probably have to take it over completely, take away the corny fake marketing in his sales letter, and build a following around HIM in the newsletter and share more personal stuff vs. the general boring information currently in it.

I’m not sure what his retention rate it, but I’m sure it could probably be better if he did what I just talked about.

Review #5
Dan Kennedy
Print Newsletter Link: http://dankennedy.com/incrediblegift/
Price: $19.97

I like Dan Kennedy. It was in 2003 when I was first exposed to his work when I bought and read “No B.S. Sales Success”. I really like Dans work and I really like his newsletter. Now, if you don’t feel like spending almost $60.00 on his Gold Letter, just get with his customer service and downgrade to his “Silver” letter which is his main newsletter and it will only set you back $19.97. This is the letter I’m currently subscribed to and it’s a great value.

Dan does a lot of the writing within his newsletter and I always come away with an implementable idea I can use in my business.

At the end of the day, I highly recommend Dan Kennedy’s newsletter.

Review #6
Terry Dean
Print Newsletter Link: http://www.monthlymentorclub.com/
Price: $29.95/mo

Terry Dean has been marketing online for a long time and has stayed committed from day one to being a no hype kind of guy. And that’s what I love about his newsletter, it’s just straight to the point marketing information you can use TODAY.

Terry has probably one of the most practical marketing newsletters online. When I say practical, what I’m saying is Terry will literally give you a step-by-step blueprint to many different marketing techniques within his newsletter that you can plug directly into your business, and he does it in every newsletter and totally over delivers.

If you run an online business, you need to get Terry’s newsletter. If you have a brick and mortar and are thinking about going online, you need his newsletter. If you never plan on going online, you can pass as Terry focuses on online businesses.

Review #7
Craig Garber
Print Newsletter Link: http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl/
Price: $49.95

Craig seems like a good dude. I tried his newsletter and went through his interviews, bonuses, etc. The only problem is I can’t really find where Craig has started real businesses of his own other than selling marketing information to other marketers.

I know he’s the “King of Copy”, but in my book to be a real world marketer/copywriter you have to be OR have at least in the past ran an actual business dealing with product creation, customers, shipping, etc. in a niche other than positioning yourself as a marketer selling to other marketers.

I could be wrong about this, I did do research, but I just couldn’t find anywhere Craig has actually sold anything else online other than marketing info to other marketers.

But, I’ll give this to him… his newsletter, although it’s in like 9pt font and is extremely disorganized has some okay information. It does seem that Craig works with clients and does consulting so he must be able to pull information from his knowledge of people that are actually on the front lines and then he can package all that up for his newsletter subscribers.

Of course this is fine and like Russell Brunson, I have absolutely nothing against him personally, this is solely about marketing newsletters and of course I could be wrong about him not having any other business but that’s just what I’ve seen personally by my research.

As for whether you should buy his newsletter? Maybe. If you’re a copywriter trying to sell yourself and get business then it may be worth it to you to order his newsletter and pay attention to his PROCESS of his positioning, USP, etc. that gets people on his newsletter.

As for Internet marketing and building a business I would probably pass, but that’s just me.

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Want to see the inside of actual lead generation campaigns, using real money, with a nice pretty little picture also? I know this will be really weird considering that people never use real numbers and only talk about fictitious “businesses” they run and how successful they are.

(Please note: I do promote 1ShoppingCart & Aweber in the post because I actually use them and believe in them. If you click the links I would earn a small commission. If you’re not cool with that, just go directly to their website and order and you’ll get the same results)

Alright, now let me go ahead and show you what really goes on behind the scenes of a real business trying to make real money.

Okay, then – let’s roll!

There are 4 basic parts to successful lead generation.

1. Landing page with good call to action
2. Qualified traffic
3. Good follow-up
4. Simple A/B split testing

Don’t overcomplicate this.

The easy part is driving traffic, because you can buy it. Usually, if you’re doing lead generation with follow-up, the hardest part is figuring out if the campaign you’re running is working. If you’re straight up asking for the sale, it’s simple. Here’s why I’ve found this to be true…

Let’s make this easy. If I buy 100 clicks for $1.00 each, I just spent $100. If I’m selling a product for $50 and have a 3% conversion rate, then I just made 3 sales, which means I made $150.

If this is the case right out the gate, then I’m going to try to scale this bad boy as hard as possible and really push it. This is all easily done with Google Adwords.

But what if you’re driving traffic to squeeze pages and only asking for an e-mail address? How do you know it’s paying off for you? Sure, you can forward the visitor straight to an offer after you get the visitor’s e-mail address, but what if you’re losing money, even though you’re getting a 30% opt-in rate and a ton of e-mail addresses?

THAT is what I want to explain to you today. I want to let you in on how to do and track lead generation if you’re just asking for an e-mail address (which can kind of suck).

To do this I use 1ShoppingCart, Aweber, and AdTrackz. You can use any tools you like, but these are what I use and they work great.

Here’s what to do…

When I create my campaigns I’m cool with breaking even every time. If I make a profit it’s great, but I’m cool with breaking even.

So, let’s start with the keyword “how to golf.”

I would take that keyword and create a campaign in Google Adwords for it. And let’s say that I pay .50 per click for that keyword and I drive each click to a well SEO’d page that Google likes.

It’s got all the fixin’s: great design, big call to action button, great copywriting, high quality images, good video, etc.

Now, let’s say I spend $500, which buys me 1,000 clicks. Out of those 1,000 clicks I have a 30% opt-in rate, which gives me 300 leads.

Now, I’m using double opt-in, so in reality, only 80% of the people will double opt in and go to the free video or whatever you’re giving away. So I REALLY got 240 straight-up leads – so basically I paid $2.08 for a real e-mail address from a real human being.

Except that you also have the people who unsubscribe right after they get your free stuff because they couldn’t care about you, your life, your products, or your business. I’ve found that about 5% of all leads do this.

So that leaves us with 228 real, breathing human beings on our e-mail list, at a cost of $2.19 per e-mail address at the end of the day.

Can you see why people go broke online and give up? They aren’t going this far, they usually give up after this step because they think they lost. But not us, we keep rolling.

Now, I’ll usually follow up with 5 e-mails, for which I use Aweber. And THIS IS THE KEY right here: in each e-mail you need to tell great stories and always do a soft pitch at the end of the story, offering your product as the solution to problem that you’ve described.

Don’t be afraid to tell your readers about your products. If your products are good, they NEED to be told as long as they work and are what you say they are.

So here’s what to do next…

We NEED to know if you’re follow-up is allowing you to break even. Remember, we spent $500 to generate 228 e-mail addresses. We need find out if it’s even possible to get our $500 back.

Here’s how to do that…

In 1ShoppingCart create an AdTracker for your follow-up for that campaign. So I would create “AR1 – How To Golf Campaign,” “AR2 – How To Golf Campaign,” etc.

What’s great about 1ShoppingCart is that their AdTracker tracks EVERYTHING down to the dollar once the person clicks. It’s beautiful.

But don’t be lazy and use the ugly link the AdTracker spits out. Make sure to make it a “Pretty Link” with AdTrackz. I recommend that you create a folder on your server called “link” for tracking purposes.

So if you have 5 follow-up e-mails for this campaign, your links will look like this…

http://www.domain.com/link/1.php (AR1 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/2.php (AR2 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/3.php (AR3 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/4.php (AR4 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/5.php (AR5 – How To Golf Campaign)

Now your links are “pretty” because your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker link is wrapped in Adtrackz, and you can track all your follow up e-mails down to the dollar.

I recommend that you send the e-mails 5 days in a row. So let’s say you just did all that. You’ve logged into 1ShoppingCart and found out that out of those 228 people, you made a total of $414 in sales from your soft pitches. Do you quit there?

I wouldn’t, although I would consider that a success because we got pretty close to breaking even and didn’t lose much money.

But the part that’s not truly quantifiable is what these e-mail addresses are worth to you 3 months, 1 year, and 3 years down the road.

Here’s where it just gets funky. Sure, the math is right in front of us in black and white, but consider this…

1. Maybe your customer buys an affiliate product related to your product because they like and trust you now.

2. Maybe your customer buys another product from you that wasn’t related to the one they originally opted in for.

3. Maybe your customer clicks on an ad in your website.

4. Maybe you have a big Christmas sale and your customer buys that.

5. Maybe your customer tells 8 friends about your website.

6. Maybe your customer posts your website or one of your blogs on their Facebook or Twitter page.

Why do I mention all of these possibilities? Because, at the end of the day, math only takes you so far in this game. Yes, it’s absolutely necessary to be on top of your numbers like crazy, but never forget that part of this game is an art, and that you can be as creative as you want.

What I’ve just explained to you is exactly how I create and track all of my lead generation. It’s one of the best ways I know, and I hope you can take something away from this you can use.

I’ve also attached a screenshot of my 1ShoppingCart account so you can actually see how they break the numbers down; it’s pretty cool.

And the nice part is you start to notice cool trends and things that work and don’t work with your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker data. This data allows you do more of the stuff that works for your market.

At the end of the day just remember that this game is never pretty, in fact it’s usually an ugly mess until you get all this stuff figured out. But once you do, everything is a lot more fun.

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I think THE biggest reason people fail at making money online is that they are simply not themselves. I’ve been in the game for a minute, and the biggest problem I see is that people in general are a bunch of copycats.

Here’s the problem…

First of all, you’re not me, and I’m not you. You’re not the (more…)

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Who do you believe? Who do you trust, online and in life?

I want to share a story with you, something I hope can help you as you move forward in business.

When I was 22 years old, I was in the Air Force and working at Langley Air Force Base, at a place called MILSTAR (Military Satellite And Tactical Relay). It sounds complicated, and the job itself could be, but thank God all we did was play PlayStation on the 3 p.m. – 11 p.m. shift.

Because of the cake hours, that job became the birth of my online career. I had no clue what I was doing; I just knew that the Internet was the future, and I hated being in the Air Force.

(more…)

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After working with so many people in different industries, and monitoring human behavior of those whose goal was “Internet success,” I came up with the 80/10/8/2 People Principle.

If you pulled 100 people out of a crowd and monitored their lives for 30 days, here’s what you would discover…

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I hit an affiliate website last night and decided to make a little recording on my interesting findings! Press play on the video below and prepare to be a bit surprised. I dive into some of the tactics these affiliate players are using.

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A lot of people get stuck on what type of internet business to run. Most people start out with Affiliate Marketing because it’s cheap and easy. I don’t oppose affiliate marketing, but I don’t think it’s the best internet business model. The fact is, there’s a ton of different ways to make money online. But I want to share what I think is the BEST internet business model.

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Trying to remember statistics, facts, and the whole body of content is not only difficult, but at the end of the day, remembering those things won’t open big doors for your business.

Remembering all those factoids will only make you feel better because you learned something new and can sound smart when you talk to others. Unfortunately, feeling better and acting smart won’t make money for you. That’s why I recommend you avoid this strategy.

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If you’re not offering alternative payment plans, you’re probably leaving a ton of money on the table. Since we began offering payment plans in our businesses, we’ve seen the amount of our average order almost double, along with a significant increase in total sales.

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