The goal of this guide is to show you that there are many ways to be right.
There are some things you’ve heard over and over again and you may be thinking you NEED to have or do those things.
For example sales funnels, Facebook Live, writing articles, a mentor and much more.
And there’s always something NEW and it seems you need to be doing it too.
You don’t necessarily need some of those things, or at least you don’t need them right away.
I’m not saying you don’t need ANYTHING, but for a LOT of things there are alternatives or they’re just not required at all.
Believe it or not there’s even an alternative to email marketing. Technically it’s not an alternative, you can use it in combination with email.
This is business not maths, there isn’t a single correct answer. You can truly do what you love (in most cases).
There are different routes you can take to build a successful business.
In this guide you’ll also discover what’s actually important in your business, what really matters the most!
In the final part, the conclusion, there’s a list with more examples of techniques, strategies and other things you don’t necessarily need.Table of Contents
You Don’t Need A Product
The first thing you need to do is find a profitable niche. This basically means a niche where prospects want information and they’re willing to spend money to get it.
If you find a profitable niche it also means you can actually sell products to your audience. But you don’t need to create a product right away.
The only reason to create your own products immediately is if you plan to use paid traffic methods like Facebook Ads.
It’s best to use a sales funnel when using paid traffic and for that you’ll need at least 1 product for the one time offer page of the funnel.
It can be a video course, audio program or any other Info product.
But other than that the first thing you’d have to do is produce content on a regular basis and setup optin forms to build an email list.
Sure you’ll only get very little traffic, if any at all in the beginning, but still you want to have those optin forms in place to capture their name and email address.
It can take a long time to build a big email list, especially if you don’t use paid traffic so the earlier you start the better.
Likewise it takes a long time for your content to rank on Google or Youtube (depending on the format you use, e.g. articles or videos), so the earlier you start the better.
Google and Youtube are both search engines and they are one of the best long-term traffic generation strategies you can use.
Having lots of quality content on your blog (or Youtube if you choose to use videos), is the best way to convince your website visitors that you can help them.
You’ll build an audience that likes you, for the obvious reason that you’re helping them with your quality content.
But again it takes time to create a lot of content, so the quicker you start the better.
At first you can promote affiliate products to your list, or even nothing at all, just send short valuable emails.
Over time you’ll start to understand better the needs and wants of your audience, from the comments they leave, emails they send you and from the knowledge you gain while producing content.
So then you’ll find it much easier to create your own products that provide the value your audience needs.
Miles Beckler is a successful marketer and he started his business in a profitable niche, but he had no product.
He created content regularly, approximately 1 video a day and linked to an optin page in the video description, so he could build his list.
But it took about 6 months to start getting more than just 1-5 email subscribers a day.
Now, about 2 years later his channel has over 110K subscribers and obviously his email list grew bigger as well.
If you’re going to write blog posts instead of videos it will also take you a long time to get traffic from Google… so the quicker you start the better.
Watch him explain how he grew his Youtube channel and email list… without a product.
He built a product later on, a membership site.
You Don’t Need To Write Articles
You don’t need to write articles if you hate writing. The best 3 content formats are articles, videos or audio podcasts.
If you hate writing you have two other options, you can make video or audio podcasts.
Likewise if you just don’t feel good making videos you can make audio podcasts or write articles.
The most important part is to produce quality content on a regular basis.
Some gurus recommend doing a 90 day challenge. The challenge is to produce one piece of content every day for 90 days straight.
The quality of the content matters, and if you prefer writing then it may take you a couple days to write a single article.
For that reason you can’t produce 1 article a day, but you can produce up to 2 articles a week.
But if you prefer audio or video you can produce 1 audio or video a day.
Of course this is not easy, perhaps you’ll only be able to make 1 audio or video every other day, that’s also great – just try your very best!
This 90 day challenge is not easy, that’s why it’s a challenge.
The goal is to develop the habit of creating content on a regular basis! Of course after 90 days you won’t stop, you keep producing content.
Now here’s why we need to create content consistently:
- When you create videos consistently and upload them to Youtube over time you’ll start to get more channel (and email) subscribers.
Youtube is a search engine just like Google. Your videos will start to rank well on Youtube especially if you do some basic Youtube SEO. - Likewise if you’re going to write articles over time they’ll start to rank well in Google. Once again you can do some basic SEO so they’re more likely to rank better.The key here is time – you need to keep producing content, you may need up to 50 quality articles before you start getting any traffic from Google.Quality is important but even length. Longer articles get ranked better! The minimum recommended word count is 1,800 and the ideal number of words is about 2,000 to 2,500 (or more).
We got those numbers from research performed by Brian Dean and Neil Patel. They made a study of 1 million Google search results and found that the average word count of a first page Google results was 1,890 words.Neil made a detailed analysis of the ideal article length for better Google rankings, complete with statistics and everything.He also suggests that the ideal number of words varies from one industry and another. He lists down the recommended word count for every industry.
I personally aim at 2,500 words. And of course articles with some images, videos and links to other websites perform even better – they get better rankings, more shares and people like they more. - Another reason to create content consistently is to have something to share with your email list.
Each time you create a good video or article share it with your list. It’s a great way to encourage them to visit your website again and again. - Content can also be used to get traffic by using content repurposing and distribution strategies.
This traffic strategy consists of taking 1 video, audio or article, transform it into other formats for example mp3 files, quote cards, Infographics – and then share it to various social media and content sites like SlideShare.net, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
If you really dislike writing there’s a software solution that transcribes automatically what you say.
It’s not cheap but it can be used to write emails, reply in forums, write articles, ebooks, etc. It’s Dragon Professional form Nuance.
You Don’t Need A Sales Funnel
You’ve probably heard about sales funnel from pretty much everyone. It’s true that if you use paid traffic it’s best to use at least a basic, simple sales funnel.
But you don’t necessary need to use a complicated funnel with 3 upsells and what not. Many successful gurus don’t even use sales funnels.
Some gurus send paid traffic to a simple optin page. They’ll focus on lowering the cost per lead (CPL), so they pay as little as possible per lead.
They might be happy paying $1 – $3 per lead – usually a sales funnel will recuperate (liquidate) that cost but some gurus don’t even use that.
And of course the real profit comes from the email list they build.
So you can even use paid traffic without a sales funnel.
You just have to master the particular traffic method so you pay the lowest price per lead, and as your skill improves perhaps use retargeting and other techniques to get the most out of that traffic method.
You Don’t Need To Be An Expert
A common obstacle is to think you shouldn’t produce content because you’re not an expert in your particular niche. That was also my problem.
I’m not an expert about paid traffic, webinars and a whole other topics in my niche. I didn’t make millions of dollars or grew lists with 100K subscribers.
I build smaller lists and made far less money selling affiliate and my own products.
But still I can help people who have never built a list, and never sold anything!
I’m constantly learning about my niche and I keep getting better results. I share my results with my audience.
Likewise you just have to know a little bit more than your audience. Share with them with you already know, your successes and the new things you’re trying and learning.
You don’t have to know everything to start producing content.
You Don’t Need The Warrior Forum
It’s a popular forum but the problem with that and forums in general, is that they can waste a lot of your time.
I joined that forum in 2004 but after many years I figured that if I do my own research using Google I’ll get more and better answers to my problems.
And I started to develop the habit of taking action when I perform the research myself, instead of waiting for answers.
So just try it. The next time you’re going to ask a question in a forum, ask Google. Perform the research yourself.
You might find new gurus that you like, new tools and much more than just some text-based replies.
The only forums worth your time in my opinion are some paid forums. You’ll usually get a lot more value and benefits. The owner can be a successful marketer and can help you one on one in such forums.
You Don’t Need To Accept Credit Cards
It can be a real hassle to accept credit cards from your website especially if you’re not from the US or the UK.
JVzoo allows you to accept paypal payments from your website. It’s the quickest way I know of. They provide you the order form and everything else.
The point is that accepting credit cards isn’t that much of a big deal. You can get started with just paypal.
You don’t have to waste a lot of time figuring out how to accept credit cards, you can do that later on.
Remember over time your knowledge and skills will improve and things will become much easier.
In the beginning it’s important to gain momentum and keep it. You don’t want to waste weeks trying to figure out how to accept credit cards.
You Don’t Need $97 Ecovers
Professional looking, nice ecover can cost you a lot of money. Some designers charge insane fees for a simple ecover. KillerCovers.com charge $97 for an ecover.
The point is that your ecovers don’t have to be jaw dropping.
On Fiverr you’ll find designers that will do quick, cheap and poor quality designs, but there are some good designers too and they can make a decent ecover.
And of course you make find more sites like Fiverr.
I personally pay $30 for an ecover from DesignInca but you can find cheaper than that.
Save your money for more important things such as paid traffic.
An “Alternative” To Email!
It is called Facebook Messenger Bot.
Strictly speaking it’s not an alternative because everyone should building an email list.
However you can now build a Facebook Messenger List as well. This is essentially a list of subscribers located on your Facebook page.
Now you can communicate with your audience via two channels, email and Facebook.
Always build an email list, but if for some reason Facebook Messenger really appeals to you, perhaps because you’re already using a Facebook page, then I’d suggest you try it.
When you do what you love the results will be much better!
If this thing interests you, but you’re not particular eager to try it out just use email. Overcomplicating your business will halt all progress. You can always invest time in this later on.
You can send your Facebook Messenger list broadcast or follow up messages just like you do with emails. Only they have to be a bit shorter. You can send them mini courses, download links to lead magnets, and much more…
People can optin to your Facebook Messenger list in several ways. The easiest method is to ask them to leave a specific comment on one of your Facebook posts.
When they do they’ll be added to your Messenger list automatically.
You can also place the ‘Send to Messenger’ option on your website, underneath the usual optin button.
Example:
The best part with Facebook Messenger is that you can use it to build your email list as well.
Facebook users can become your messenger subscribers, but they can also give you their name and email and become your email subscribers too.
The whole process is explained in this article How to Collect Email Addresses Inside Facebook Messenger Using Chatbots
Max van Collenburg shows you how to do the same thing with a different chatbot, ManyChat.
ManyChat is more popular and affordable Facebook Messenger bot, currently it’s only $10 / month.
The chatbot is required in order to build a Facebook Messenger List, in essence it’s like an email autoresponder. It stores and delivers all your messages and much more…
Here are the basic pros and cons of building your Facebook Messenger List.
- You’ll have a new channel to communicate with your audience.
- Facebook Messenger is still a new thing. A lot of your competitors aren’t using it yet, so it can be your competitive advantage.
- It has higher open and click through rates than email. Facebook Messenger messages have on average an 88% open rate and 56% click through rate.
Email has on average 18% open rates and 2.6% click through rates. This is one of the sources for that data: Email marketing benchmarks for 2021.
- Your messenger list is technically speaking owned by Facebook.
In the very worst case scenario Facebook can decide to shut down messenger, or update some features and render the whole thing much less effective, similarly to what happened to the organic reach of Facebook posts.
Nowadays it’s much harder to get views on your Facebook posts (without using paid ads).
Facebook is now giving preference to pages that produce Facebook Live videos.
On the other hand the email addresses you have of your audience are yours. Email is not going away anytime soon. There are no rules or regulations being updated all the time.
Even if you’re getting thousands of visitors every month you still need to collect their name and email address. Because you need to communicate with your audience on a regular basis.
Email is still the best thing to do that. However you can now use Facebook Messenger as well (not instead of).
Constant communication with your audience builds a positive relationship with them (assuming you’re following some basic email marketing principles, for example sending them helpful emails instead of constantly trying to promote products).
That positive relationship ultimately means that you’ll turn your website visitors into fans.
Instead of visiting your website once or twice and leave forever… they’ll visit your website more often, they’ll buy the products you recommend, they’ll tell people about you and so on.
Conclusion (And More Of
What You Don’t Need)
There are definitely more techniques, strategies and other things you can do without (or find alternatives).
For example you don’t need a mentor, you don’t need to attend seminars, you don’t need to use paid traffic, you don’t need to hire a copywriter…
Those things can be great obviously, but if they’re out of your reach find other options and ways to achieve success with your business!
And then there are a wide range of little things that are promoted all the time as conversion boosters and so forth. For example copy doodles, live chat bot, web seals and the like.
These things are just not that important. They’re an unnecessarily time and/or money expense. Use them only if you can easily implement them and they’re free.
What’s important is that you produce content and get website traffic to build an email list.
So what do you think is the obstacle that’s halting your progress? Is it something I’ve mentioned?