Here are the three things that make us the
most money on the Internet.

FIRST is our membership site, the Academy.

SECOND is our group coaching courses.

THIRD we earn commissions from recommending
and selling products and services as an
affiliate.

But just knowing the revenue streams is
not enough to mimic this profit model.

We apply this simple formula to actually
bring in the cash.

C + C + C = $$$

Lots a lot of C’s!

Here’s how it breaks down.

1. COMMUNITY

The first C is a COMMUNITY of loyal customers
that look to you as a trusted advisor.

Our business magnetically and continually
attracts people to our community by offering
stellar free content through our show,
Internet Business Mastery.

Through the content they come to see us as
trusted advisors because we offer great value.

2. CHANNEL

The SECOND C is CHANNEL.

Channel is the way you communicate with
your audience to build trust and get them to
take action (buy).

The most effective channel for making money
online is an e-mail list.

The show attracts people to our community,
but it’s the e-mail list that gets people
to click and buy.

So the primary goal of your content should
be to get people on your e-mail list.

3. CALL TO ACTION

The third C is CALL TO ACTION.

Once you build influence, your community
will be ready to take action (buy).

The most effective way to get people to take
action and buy is using a launch sequence.

We learned this from Jeff Walker. He just
released a video answering the biggest
questions about launch sequences.

Launch sequences are a powerful way to make
as much money in one week as you might
have made in one year otherwise.

So here’s the formula that you can put into
action today.

Community + Channel + Call to Action = $$$

Definitely check out the video from Jeff.
It’s worth submitting your e-mail to get
access.

He’s very candid and gives some shocking
insights into product launches.

Best,

Sterling and Jay

P.S. At the end of the video, Jeff talks a bit
about his upcoming Product Launch Formula course…
and some of the REALLY new stuff in it.

We’ve taken the course several times and the ROI
has been huge.

Watch it here now.

.

We had way more questions come in than we had time to answer live on the show, but I made sure to get back to as many people as possible through the live chat as I could.

For a limited time you can watch the recording of the webinar here.

It will be taken down on Sunday, November 29. Enjoy!

They say that the best business plans can be written on a napkin. This afternoon I decided to boil my business model down to four basic steps. While I didn’t write it on a napkin, it’s still simple enough that a four-letter acronym describes it — P.A.I.D.

Using the word “paid” works out nicely since in every episode of my podcast I invite you to engage your market and “get paid.” So, here it is. The four-step business model that I use to launch six-figure businesses using new media.

The Business Model

1. P – Pinpoint your market
2. A – Attract a loyal community
3. I – Identify what they want most
4. D – Deliver the solution as premium content

While I could go into a lot of detail about each of the four steps, I wanted to boil them down to their bare essence. As simple as it seems, there are some very deliberate words in there (e.g. pinpoint, community, want, premium).

Where’s the New Media?

You might be wondering why the phrase “new media” doesn’t appear anywhere in the model since I spend so much time talking about using new media. Well, the truth is that this model works independent of what tools you use to put it in to action. That’s one reason why it’s so awesome.

New media (i.e. online content) is just my favorite tool for putting the model into action. I use new media extensively at all four stages.

What Do You Think?

I’m not going to go into detail here about the model. I’ll be doing that more in the future both here on the blog as well as in my premium content offerings. For now, I wanted to present it for you consideration and feedback.

What are your thoughts about the Get PAID Business Model? What questions come to mind?

Go here now to watch the video.

You’ll also get a hint about a new podcast I’m launching soon.

With the help of this secret weapon, I launched a site that started making five-figures PER month from the very first week we opened the doors. Enjoy the video.

A while back I sent out a survey to the community to find out what podcast producers wanted to learn about most. I was intrigued by how things had changed since 2005 when I first started podcast consulting. The results also offer some very important insights for your own podcast.

In the survey I had podcast producers rate a number of topics on a scale of 1 (not at all interested) to 5 (extremely interested). The following is a list of the top three most highly rated topics followed by the percentage of respondents that indicated they were either extremely interested (rating of 5) or very interested (rating of 4) in the topic.

1. Keep the audience coming back again and again – 92.2%
2. Increase audience participation and build community – 88.4%
3. Promote their podcast – 84.4%

Changes Over the Last Three Years

In 2005, podcast promotion (#3) was at the top (#1) which is why I wrote the book, Promoting Your Podcast. This is still clearly of importance, but has since slipped to the #3 position. This shows an interesting trend.

Podcast producers have been releasing their shows and steadily growing their audiences, but now they realize that it’s just as (and really even more) important to keep their current listeners coming back again and again as it is to constantly find new listeners.

What About Making Money?

Making money with podcasts has been a hot topic for some time. Surprisingly “How to make money with your podcast” appears much farther down on the list of topics at 69.7%.

You could conclude that the people responding to the survey were not “business-minded.” However, 55.5% consider themselves entrepreneurs and the majority of the remaining respondents consider themselves self-employed or a professional (e.g. lawyer, CPA, etc.)

I would would venture to say that most of them podcast to establish their personal brand, attract new clients or accomplish other similar goals. So why does podcast monetization rank so much lower than expected?

This trend is actually why I’m so pleased with the outcome of the survey.

It would seem that podcast producers have realized (whether consciously or intuitively) that THE most important asset they can build no matter what their goals are is…

A loyal community of fans that come back again and again
and frequently interact with them

I hope you see your audience that was…as a community. I hope you interact with them in that way. If you can establish this kind of community, you’re only one step away from accomplishing whatever it is you want from your podcast (e.g. getting people to act, buy, vote, refer your business, etc.). If making more money is one of your goals, it will flow very easily and steadily from the relationship you have with your community of listeners/viewers/fans.

Giving Podcast Producers What They Want

As a result of this survey I’m adding a brand new module to the Professional Podcasting Course 2008 and significantly expanding other modules to include more information on building your audience, interacting with your them and getting your them to come back again and again.

I mentioned last week that I needed to postpone the start date of the course due to these changes.

Today I’m announcing that:

The Professional Podcasting Course will start on June 11

This is the official and final date. The course will start that week “rain or shine.”

Enrollment will open the week before that. More details are on the way. If you want to be on the “front of the line list” for enrollment, you can sign up here. That is also the email list where I send all the latest updates about the course.

I also announced last week that I was going to make the first module of the course from 2007 available for free. This module is titled Mastering Social Media: RSS, Blogging and Podcasting 101. I’ll be releasing this in parts to this blog and some other things to the “front of the line” email list.

What Do You Think?

What do you make from these survey results? Do they offer any insights for your own show? Please share in the comments below now.

Is there deliberate shock value in that statement? Sure. But it’s incredibly important to understand what I mean if you’re podcasting and have financial aspirations.

Although my views on podcast monetization have been the same since I published my first podcast, I realized I needed to be clearer on my communicating my stance when it comes to the whole idea of making money with podcasting.

So I stayed up late last night (later than I usually stay up and despite the fact that I have a 10 hour flight back to the States today) and put my thoughts into a podcast. There was just too much to say to to put it in a blog post.

Part of what sparked this was Michael Geoghegan’s recent crackdown on podcasters that are waiting for for sponsors to come in and make them rich. To hear my thoughts on the post (and much more regarding my stance on podcast monetization), listen to this episode of The Podcasting Underground.

In Q3 of this year I I used an often overlooked strategy to generate over $70,000 from my podcasts and blog. You might be thinking that I’m referring to advertising or sponsorships. But if you listen to my podcasts you know that I’ve never run a single ad (at the time of writing this post). Yes, advertising is the most talked about monetization method (and quite lucrative for many podcasters), but it is the one I use the least.

The strategy that has made me the most money is selling premium content. The content could be in the form of CDs, downloads, a home-study course, a teleseminar, a webinars, a member-only site or any number of other media. There are those within your community that will jump at the opportunity to get more from you. They want to go beyond your free podcast episodes and blog posts. A-to-Z, insider info organized in an easy-to-consume manner has value to your market.

Here are seven steps for making money with premium content.

1. Choose a Targeted and Hungry Market

This should be a well-defined niche of people that are hungry for a specific kind of information and/or entertainment. It’s also good if they have money to spend. It’s easier to define and serve your niche if you’re a member of the target market.

2. Regularly Create Valuable, Relevant Content

By creating content that your target market can’t live without, you’ll attract an audience. You’ll also brand yourself as an expert. Podcasting and blogging are great channels for doing this due to their interactive nature. Note that choosing your market comes before creating the content. You don’t create content first then find a market that wants it. You find the market first, then create the content that the market wants.

3. Build a Community Centered Around Your Brand, then Develop a Relationship with Them

When you attract an audience with your content, the objective is not just to build a list of potential customers. Build a community. Talk to them. Let them talk back to you. Help them talk to each other. Build a relationship of trust. Trust is the foundation of a powerful brand.

4. Use Multiple Channels to Deliver Your Content

Don’t think of yourself as only a podcaster or blogger. Think of yourself as a content creator. Use multiple media channels to deliver your content and interact with your community. Re-purpose your content across multiple channels. For example, one piece of content can be a podcast, a blog post, an article and a video. Do NOT overlook the importance of having an email newsletter list. Start one, build it up and use it often. Here’s the service that I use for my email newsletters.

5. Find Out What Additional Content Your Community Wants

I want to emphasize that you find out what they *want* not just what you think they *need*. What problems do they deal with on a regular basis? What part can you play in helping them solve those problems? What kind of information are they ravenous for? If you’re interacting with your community regularly, you’ll get a sense for what they want. You can also survey them to find out.

6. Create Premium Content

Based on what your community wants, create additional content. Give them valuable information that fulfills a primary need. Provide a solution. Offer incredible value. I offered several examples above. For both of my podcasts I created an eight-week coaching course. Participants were given access to weekly video and audio programs that took them through a step-by-step system. In addition they had access to email consultation.

7. Sell Your Premium Content at a Premium Price

Don’t undervalue your knowledge and content. There are things that you do every day and experience you have that others would love to have access to. They will pay to get that information and benefit from it.

The Prime Directive

If I were to sum this strategy up in one phrase it would be to offer the best value you can to a carefully targeted community with whom you have developed a relationship. Really, this is a basic premise for success in any business. You get what you want by helping others get what they want.

I want to make that clear because I’ve come under fire in the past after sharing my premium content strategy.

Short-Sighted Criticism Offered Out of Context

Jason VanOrden is pimping tele-seminars and webinars. Sounds like Network Marketing and something I would buy on late night TV.

This is a quote from Todd Cochrane’s blog about the podcast monetization panel at BlogWorld Expo. During the panel discussion I outlined my seven steps for making money with premium content. Todd posted nothing but the phrase above in response to my message.

I understand that premium content may not be his preferred method of monetization, but he makes me out to be a shady character when he posts information out of context and uses words like “pimping” and “something I would buy on late night TV.”

Here are three posts that I especially recommend.

The Importance of an Insertion Order | by Susan Bratton

Susan talks about the importance of having a document called an insertion order (IO) if you plan to play in the big leagues. I’m admittedly less familiar with this arena since I’ve focused on monetizing my podcasts with alternate means. She explains what an IO is, what it should include and points out that the ADM will take up the task of helping podcasters create and use such documents.

The Challenges of a Global Market | by Duncan Perry

One of the advantages and challenges of internet media is that it reaches a potentially worldwide audience. This introduces a number of interesting questions. This blog post discusses a few of them.

Adages, Ads and Analytics | by John Federico

John defines the problem of measuring audience size and engagement.

What would you like to see discussed on the ADM blog?

If you’ve ever used the Amazon Associate Program to create affiliate links on your site, you know that it’s not the quickest process. Well the process just got a lot easier for WordPress users.

I’ve been using a WordPress plugin for awhile called WP-Amazon. It definitely speeds up the process of finding products and grabbing an affiliate link to include in your posts. You can do it all from within your WordPress admin screen while you are writing. The WP-Admin plugin just got a lot better with the release of version 2.0. Now it has a slick Ajax interface.

The Amazon Associate Program isn’t going to make you rich anytime soon, but when it’s this easy to insert affiliate links into your show notes and blog posts, you may as well pepper some in for books and other products that you talk about.

The nice thing is, even if someone goes to Amazon from your link and buys something other than the product you recommend (even in the future), you still make a commission. I’ve made money from selling electric razors….go figure.
Go here to download WP-Admin and to watch a screencast demo of it in action.