Welcome to Episode #59 of the SubscribeMe show from http://SubscribeMe.fm , where I talk about creating membership sites & online courses, how to make, market and monetize digital content, the world of WordPress, and tools, techniques and tips that you can use to create a long term, profitable online business. I'm Ravi Jayagopal. I'm the creator of http://CoolCastPlayer.com , a pretty yet powerful audio player and podcast player plugin for your WordPress site. Asking how long your videos in ...
Jul 17, 2017•18 min
On today's episode, I interview Brian Swichkow from GhostInfluence.com, a brilliant marketer who has some refreshing ideas about creating content that goes viral. Brian has done some really cool stuff in the past.. like, he once pulled of a massive prank on his roommate using Facebook ads, which made his room mate completely paranoid, like... Will Smith in the movie Enemy of the state. Reddit.com is one of the biggest social sharing site and online communities in the world, and is the 4th most v...
Jun 21, 2017•47 min
Have you ever visited JKRowling.com? JK Rowling, as you probably know, is the author of probably one of the greatest ever series of fantasy books, Harry Potter. And I'm guessing you have never visited her blog, or her web site, to buy her books. Have you ever visited GaryVee.com? Did you know his now famous WineLibrary.TV - which most people have probably never even heard of, but still probably know who GaryVee is - wouldn't have become popular if not for YouTube. And there would be no Gary Vayn...
Jun 06, 2017•31 min
Cross-Posting is NOT the same as Repurposing. Repurposing has completely different goals. It lets you take content you create in one medium, say you start with a written blog post, and then later on, over time, whether that is a few days or few weeks or even over a few months, reformat and restructure that content, maybe even recreate it from scratch for a different format, and then publish it on to various platforms or mediums. Repurposing is about leveraging your message. But cross-posting is ...
May 23, 2017•25 min
"Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly", said Robert H. Schuller. I actually recommend cross-posting content, because this is not about "perfection". It's NOT about meticulously formatting content and making it perfectly native to each platform. Most people don't have the time for that. They just don't. Every platform has an "Edit" button - you can ALWAYS go in later and tweak the post to your heart's content. There's nothing wrong with editing your posts. I do this mys...
May 12, 2017•21 min
What I talk about here is not about spamming the social networks. It's not about "auto-posting" or blasting your content and re-posting it multiple times throughout the day or throughout the week and flooding the feeds of your followers. This is not about twitter-bombing where you use a content scheduling tool like Edgar or Social Juke Box and just recycle content endlessly. All of that has its place too, when done the right way, in the right amount. I'll talk about social content recycling and ...
Apr 25, 2017•20 min
Here's How Your Online Course Can Be Better Than Disneyland (hint: Be like Universal Studios). There will always be people who wouldn't mind paying more in order to get faster service, more access to you, premium access, front-of-line access to your products and services, so to speak. People are willing to pay more as long as they get a lot more value from the deal. So it's all in the offer. And how you package it. And how you position it. And how you present it. And of course, it's also in how ...
Apr 11, 2017•23 min
On today's show, I interview Chris Farrell from SetbacksAndSuccess.com . Chris gives you 7 powerful, yet easy to implement, tips for keeping your members. Especially because it is so much harder to get a new member, compared to keeping an existing member. So don't underestimate the power of Member Retention. So listen to the full show to hear Chris' 7 Successful Strategies you can use in your membership site to retain your paying Members. (listen to the show for the rest) Listen online at http:/...
Mar 29, 2017•39 min
There are three ways to pay commissions to your affiliates: Which I jokingly refer to as one right way, and 2 wrong ways. And those 3 ways are: 1. Instant commissions 2. Delayed commissions and 3. Fake Commissions. And I talk about all 3 ways on this episode of the SubscribeMe.fm show. (listen to the show for the rest) Listen online at http://SubscribeMe.fm/
Mar 10, 2017•16 min
I deliver a fun and inspiring State of the Internet Address that throws light on the world wide web in 2017, and how far we've come since I got started online (1998). I also wanted to celebrate the occasion by inviting a very special guest on the show. And that guest is Rohan Prashanth, my 13 year old son, who has started his own podcast called " Zombies and Heroes ". It's a movie and TV show review podcast, and his most recent episode, in which he reviews the movie "Split" starring James McAvoy...
Feb 18, 2017•35 min
Why bother setting up a webinar when you can be putting a pre-recorded video on a page that they can consume right then and there, and not have to schedule a time and come back to it at another time? What really is the difference between a webinar and a video on a squeeze page? What are some of the biggest mistakes people make when designing or executing a webinar? Am I an exception in not having time to attend a webinar at the scheduled time? There's the live webinar, pre-recorded webinar that ...
Feb 02, 2017•32 min
MMA is my acronym for Money Making Activities. If you listened to episode #4 of this podcast, titled "Too much content, too little revenue" , which you do at SubscribeMe.fm, I talked about a listener, Michael, who at the time, had been super-successful at creating lots of content, had millions of downloads of his podcast and his YouTube videos, but had not had much success at monetizing 9 years of hard work. Imagine that: 9 years of putting out great content, more than a thousand episodes publis...
Jan 17, 2017•18 min
Let's start with how affiliate links can help your SEO efforts - especially when the affiliate links have your domain in them. As you know, the number of incoming links to your web site is an essential part of SEO. The more incoming links you have, the more "popular" Google believes your web site to be, and the higher your site shows in search results. Sure, “do-follow” is better than “no-follow”. But no-follow links are still way better than no links at all! And that's where having an in-house ...
Dec 29, 2016•14 min
So How Much Should you Pay Your Affiliates? The answer to that depends on a bunch of different things. Let's start with your product funnel - like... is this a lead-generator or a loss-leader followed by one or more back-end products? Is there an instant 1-Click Upsell after the purchase? Do you have a mature product line where you can upsell them in the future? And it also depends on your sales goals: How much do your products and services cost, how much do you wish to make per sale - is it jus...
Dec 07, 2016•20 min
An affiliate program is the lowest hanging fruit that you can grab without even stretching your arms. Like, you can grab this even if you were 4 feet tall. And it always amazes me why EVERY SINGLE business does not have one. Another thing that amazes me, is that people will spend months and months on the technology and all the tricks and tactics in the book, but they won't spend a darn minute on thinking - how the heck am I going to market this thing and get people to come to my site, read my sa...
Nov 10, 2016•14 min
Just in case you are not familiar with this term, this is where, a seller - take my own business for example, at DigitalAccessPass.com. You can sign up to become an affiliate. Then you get a special link that you can promote on social media, to your email list, on your blog, even on your podcast. And if someone visits your special affiliate link, they are redirected to our web site, and a special browser cookie - a small piece of code that all web sites use - is set on that person's browser, tag...
Oct 21, 2016•15 min
This is Part 2: Seth Godin Ruined The Internet. Becoming a Celebrity, building Authority, being perceived as an Expert? Of course, it's easier said than done. Because there were a lot of things that went into the huge success that this "guru" had. There's a whole lot of hard work, commitment, passion, timing and personality and likeability and trustworthiness and so many factors that go into someone ascending to that all-star level. But most people don't necessarily care about becoming the GOAT ...
Oct 07, 2016•20 min
It has been an incredible journey for the last 365 days. Today - September 26, 2016 - is the 1st anniversary of this podcast, at SubscribeMe.fm. Full of excitement, nervousness, apprehension, exhilaration, self-doubt, self-confidence boosting... you get the picture. As many highs, as there have been lows. And that's not only the nature of starting a new marketing channel, but also the boon and bane of Podcasting. I've been chronicling everything I've learned into a book, that I'm shortly going t...
Sep 27, 2016•31 min
No, everyone is NOT an expert at something (that's good news for you and me!). Seth Godin ruined the Internet. Of course, I say that in the most sarcastic way, because I'm one of Seth's biggest fans. I've bought and read every single one of his books - and most of the ones I bought were real paperback books, not just some Kindle download. And he wrote a book called "Everyone's An Expert" - and he released it as a PDF. If you go to the show notes for this episode - at subscribeme.fm/41/ , you'll ...
Sep 14, 2016•21 min
HBO, Netflix, licensing more than just content, and the Publisher or Marketplace Model. One of the most famous content licensing example is HBO, or Home Box Office, and over time, others like Showtime and Netflix have also joined this category. For a long time, these companies were just paying a licensing fees for movies and tv shows and documentaries produced by other people. For eg., HBO pays the producers of a movie a bunch of money which gives them the rights to play that movie on their plat...
Sep 01, 2016•24 min
Basically, with content licensing, you pay your content partners a fee for the right to use their content on your web site, and have your members benefit from it. The payment itself can be structured in many ways, and it doesn't always have to be a cash payment: 1) You pay for the content upfront and purchase it outright, 2) You pay a small royalty on every sale, on every new membership sign up. 3) Which is basically a combination of the two, which is cash PLUS royalty... you pay a little bit up...
Aug 24, 2016•24 min
I want to tell you a true story, that delves into the psychology of a rabid fan, and how you can use those insights to create better content and better offers for your membership site or online course. In case you don't know, Ventriloquism is where someone has a puppet - or a dummy - on their lap or on a stand next to them, they talk without moving their lips, they make the dummy's mouth move, and through a combination of a funny script, good comedic timing, and decent lips-not-moving skills, it...
Aug 15, 2016•25 min
When I say "User" in this context, it means users of your product or service. Your members, your community, your subscribers. Forums and Discussion groups are a great way to get your members communicating with each other, creating great discussion threads and contributing great online content that search engines love, and can bring you a lot of organic traffic, even if they are sometimes of the long-tail variety. Facebook groups are easily one of the most popular forms of online forums today, fo...
Aug 06, 2016•21 min
This is part 4 of the series, 6 Ways To Create Content for Your Membership Site - where I talk about The Oprah method of creating content for your blog, your online course or your podcast and even your webinars and seminars. #4) The Winfrey Way - a.k.a the Oprah Model of generating content for your web site. This is one of the oldest, time-tested ways of generating content: Which is to invite Guests who create the content FOR you. I call this the "Oprah Model". Oprah Winfrey became one of the wo...
Jul 13, 2016•19 min
In last week's episode, I said that some of the best membership sites I’ve been a member of, offer content in multiple formats. And one of my pet peeves, is when I see someone wanting to prevent their members from downloading their content. They don't want their members to download videos, don't want to download audio, not even PDF reports, because they don't want anyone to quote unquote "steal" their content. You're probably not one of them, because you're smart enough to be listening to this s...
Jul 01, 2016•18 min
Some of the best membership sites I’ve been a member of, offer content in multiple formats. The first thing you have to accept - is that recycled or re-purposed content is NOT low quality content. It's mostly a psychological barrier that you have to overcome. And remember, your followers are not following you on every channel. So re-purposing can be HUGE when it comes to content marketing as well, and not just for membership content. Let me give you my own example of content re-purposing... (lis...
Jun 25, 2016•27 min
In today's episode, I talk about 6 different ways to create content for your membership site This is THE podcast to listen to, to learn about creating membership sites & online courses, making, marketing and monetizing digital content, WordPress, eCommerce, digital marketing, and tools, techniques and tips that you can use to create a long term, profitable online business. I'm your host Ravi Jayagopal. I am the co-founder & co-developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, a leading membership plug...
Jun 16, 2016•24 min
We gonna party like, it's my birthday, sippin' on Baccardi like it's my birthday.... Well, I don't drink rum any more - I'm a bourbon guy. So I will be sippin' on bourbon, because it IS my birthday on May 26th! And for MY birthday, I want YOU to buy one of these really cool gifts for yourself - because I have bought all of them for myself... cuz I'm worth it! Ready? Let's go... And please note - these are in no particular order... 8 Life-Changing Gift Ideas For You - For My Birthday... ( Listen ...
May 26, 2016•26 min
How To Get Audio & Video Feedback and Testimonials from your Audience If you want your web site visitors or your members to leave you audio or video feedback, whether it is to give you a testimonial, or ask a question, or offer a review, or just about any kind of feedback, then for a very long time, there have been only a few good options. Option #1) A very popular service that a lot of podcasters use, is called Speakpipe. I've heard the audio feedback left by listeners of a few podcasts I l...
May 17, 2016•20 min
3 must-have tools that you absolutely need, to help secure yourself, as well your web site. TIP #1) What is the first WordPress plugin I install on every new WordPress site I create? Nope, it's not DAP. It's Wordfence. It's the #1 security plugin for WordPress, and I will not do anything with a new WordPress installation, until I've installed this plugin. And the makers of the WordFence plugin have discovered a vulnerability in the Ninja Forms WordPress plugin. So if you're using Ninja Forms, ma...
May 09, 2016•23 min
