Ryan McLean : Slightly Unconventional

#59 New Website (DreamyDad.com) And A New Approach To Making Money

iniartworksmallSo today I created a new website to approach making money in my business in a new way and I want to talk through exactly how I did that, what my plan is and how you guys can replicate that if you want to go down a similar path.

So while I was musing about – which I did talk to you guys about, was creating a website around the topic of night terrors. Now, this is a sleep disorder that happens in young children where they wake up and have a tantrum but they are not actually a wake. And there is a solution that I have discovered called Lully, which is a product, and it is now available for sale on Amazon.com.

So I was thinking about it, I have just interviewed one of the co-founders of Lully and I thought there is an opportunity for someone in this market to create good content and I was trying to pitch it to them, to say, “You guys, your product is so awesome! You need to create some good content in this market,” because really, their content is not very good because it was just really short articles that just do not solve the need that parents out there have. They want detailed information. They want to know how to solve it and they probably want it in a format other than written text as well.

So, what I decided to do was to do some research into this and to try and work out if is this a market that I can go after and to monetize this market would be through Amazon affiliates and recommending the Lully, which is selling on Amazon.com. Now, I understand there is an inherent risk with this. I am creating this website based on 1 product. If they pull this product off Amazon, if they stop selling this product, then the website basically becomes useless.

I could put some AdSense on there but yeah, it is probably not going to be as awesome as I would hope. So there is some risk in there, I do want to minimize my risks by not investing a lot of money and not investing a lot of time. And what I want to do to leverage my time is the same thing I do with all my websites. I just create videos, get them transcribed and also upload them to a podcast. So I am going to run a podcast, I am going to run a YouTube channel and I am going to run a blog. And so let me talk you through the process of what I did.

The first thing I did was keyword research because I wanted to understand whether or not I could go ahead and create this. I used a tool called Long Tail Pro, or I have the platinum version so Long Tail Platinum, which you can check out. Go to RyanMclean.net/LongTail, and this is an awesome keyword research tool. I just put in night terror and it searches for a whole bunch of keywords around night terrors and I saw that there is a lot of search volume for night terrors but there is also a lot of competition for night terrors.

So it is not going to be easy to rank for these terms, so that was definitely disheartening but just the sheer volume of what people were typing in as well that I know that there are forums and stuff out there, people asking questions. I now that this is a topic that parents write a lot about, that they are very passionate about so I am pretty confident that I can get some sort of traffic from this.

After I went through Long Tail Pro – that process, I then went to YouTube and I just search for some night terror-related stuff on YouTube and I found that there are only a couple of videos on there and most of them were 1-minute long and that is definitely not solving the need of the parents who want more information on this, and most of them are over 3 years old as well. So even though the competition was quite stiff in terms of Google, it was not as stiff on YouTube. But obviously there is not going to be as much volume on YouTube, but I did see that when I searched night terror the number 1 video that came had about 14,000 views.

While that is not a lot, it is a little bit and so I thought this is something that I am happy to move forward with and happy to give it a go. And also, just because this is such a problem that I had and a problem that I feel like parents need to know about, I kind of feel obligated to do it.

What I did after I did my keyword research is I then went on to GoDaddy to search for a domain, and if you want to buy a domain through GoDaddy, you can check out my affiliate link. Just go to RyanMclean.net/GoDaddy and you can check that out. Anyway, I went to GoDaddy. I ended up finding the domain DreamyDad.com.

I wanted something that was playful, something that was not serious because I did not want people to mistake me for a doctor or something like that. I am just a dad who has a kid with night terrors and who wants to help people. I am not a doctor who knows heaps about this. And so I did not want to appear that way, so I thought that a funny, kind-of-quirky brand would help me to get that message across. So I purchased that domain through GoDaddy. I found DreamyDad.com. I searched for a bunch of different things but that is what I ended up settling on.

I then set up web hosting and I used Arvix.com to host my website. And so I go to Arvix.com and there is a coupon code that I created called PodcastFast, which is another one of my websites, which gives you 20% off. So I went through Arvix.xom and I went ahead and I set up my website just on WordPress, through there. And also, while I was doing that I also decided to create a logo myself rather than waiting the 7 weeks to get one created.

So I just searched logo generator in Google and one came up from Square Space which I found really good. And I found a way to hack Squarespace so I did not have to pay for the logo and pay $10. So not really like a hack but a way to get screenshots and pretty high resolution images of the logo without watermarks or anything like that. That was really cool. Thanks Squarespace for creating that tool and for giving me access to that and sorry that I hacked the system and did not pay you the $10 but hey, you are getting a shoutout on my podcast, so it is not too bad. But yes, I use Squarespace’s logo generator to create a logo.

I also at the same time created some podcast artwork out of that and what I did as well from the keyword research is that I pooled probably about 30 or so articles that I could write. What I did was I got a piece of paper and each line just became a title of an article. I looked through what people are searching for, but then I also just came up with some things on my own like how to handle night terrors – that I came up with on my own, but night terrors in 2-year-olds, that was from Google.

So I got a mixture of Google and a mixture of things that I just came up with on my own just thinking about what would parents search. And I then went through and created outlines for the videos and I have 7 videos recorded. While I was editing some of those videos I went on to Fiber.com and I chose a video-intro bumper and so that will be delivered to me within 2 days, it is said. So that will go in my videos just to make it look a bit more professional. I did not want to upload it and it be like a bit dodgy. I wanted to wait a couple of days, get a professional. I also went to Audio Jungle and spent $20 on a new soundtrack, so I have a soundtrack for Dreamy Dad. That was where I was at.

I spent $12 on the domain name. I already had hosting so I did not have to spend any money on that. I then spent $5 on the Fiber gig. And then I spent $20 or $19 on the audio. So all up, I have spent $26. And then there is going to be some costs in getting the videos transcribed and getting my VA to upload them, so I need to take them into account. Basically, we are probably looking at somewhere between $50 and $100 to launch this site; and the goal is to seed it with 10 articles, somewhere between 10 to 14 articles. I have 14 that I would like to do but I will be happy if I stop at 10. So I have recorded 7 today and the idea is to record another 7 tomorrow, or maybe just to record another 3 tomorrow. And then hopefully, tomorrow I will also be able to edit them and be able to get that pre-roll bumper added in as well.

So my goal is to spend less than a week working on this website all up, and so at the moment I have spent 1 day. And what I am going to do is actually restrict myself, so I only have a week to work on this website and I do not have any more time. And so until I start to see a monetary return from this website, I will spend no more than a week on it. So that is my plan, that is the restriction that I have given myself and so far, we have done a day and we have done a lot: I have a website set up; I have a domain; I have a logo; I have a podcast at work; I have 7 videos recorded, which will eventually go into podcast; and so yeah, I am just waiting on a couple of things to come back and then we will be ready and rearing to go. And I will launch it and we will see how we go and I will keep you guys updated into how this little test goes and you guys can hold me to the fact that I will only work on this for a maximum of 1 week or about 40 hours.

So, so far it has been 1 day, I have 4 left. And then hopefully we can help a lot of people. Hopefully we can generate some sales through Amazon. I am not expecting anything huge even if I made maybe $500 a year, or something like that. That will be good, and this is just another way for me to diversify my income and a different way for me to make money. See, I have always thought that the best way to make money is to create a YouTube channel podcast whatever, drive traffic and sell your own products.

Selling your own products is great because the margin is high, people trust you so they are more likely to buy. But then the problem is selling your own product, you should then go to support those products. You have to create those products which is a lot of work. And so even though I sell a Lully, which is like $130 on Amazon, I probably make somewhere around 5% or 4, so I might make $6 or something per sale, so it is a lot, lot less than what I get from selling my own product. But if I want to be a media company, maybe I need to explore some of these things where I do not need to spend so much time creating my own products; and I can spend more time of being generous, putting out free content and trying to help more people.

So this is just, I guess, a new exploration into a new way of making money through affiliate sales and also diversify my income away from On Property. So that is where I want to get to with this; that is what I want to achieve. I will keep you guys updated on it. I hope that you are working hard on your business!
Until next time, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.


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#58 Drinking A Beer And Celebrating

iniartworksmallToday I am drinking a beer and celebrating with you guys just like I promised? Long time listeners will remember this promise and why I am drinking this beer.

Hey guys, Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. I am drinking a beer and celebrating because I made a promise to you guys that when I got my first sale of something. Now, can you remember? I will go ahead and drink a beer and celebrate with you guys when that actually happens. So, here we go. I’m going to drink my beer. It’s good stuff.

The reason we are celebrating is that I made my first sale for outspoken.co, which is my public speaking site. I made my first sale on the product for this site, which is the $30 US sale. So, $30 – definitely not life-changing by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m super stoked to have taken this step and sold my first product and proven that at least someone wants to buy this product.Maybe this person is the only person in the world that wants to buy it, but at least someone did.

Yesterday, I got the notification from Snappy Checkout that someone has purchased my course. Snappy Checkout, as you guys know, I’m affiliate for them now. So, best way to collect payments, absolutely. Go to pelt.co P-E-L-T dot C-O /checkout to check out Snappy Checkout.

I definitely recommend them. The guy, Mike, who created it, is a stellar guy. Awesome customer service. But yes, I got the notification from Snappy Checkout through my email that I got a new product. I didn’t really think anything of it, because I get those notifications all the time through On Property.

You know, new subscription to Property Tools, new product sale, new course sale. And I have been marketing my course on suburb research, so I thought, oh, you know, maybe it’s something like that, just kind of left it. And then, I went through my emails to take action on these items and follow them and stuff like that and saw that it was actually for outspoken.co. This was actually a public speaking sale. I was like, Yes! Yes! This is absolutely awesome!

The marketing that I did for it was pretty pathetic, really. I’ve got a products page on the website where I’ve got a little spiel about the product with the Buy Now button, which takes you through to Snappy Checkout, but no good sales page or anything that. And then, I’ve also got an email that goes out about it.

So, nothing super serious that is going on there. But I made a sale. And so, I’m very happy with this, which means I’m making some money through outspoken.co, which means that maybe, just maybe, it’s time to re-invest in outspoken.co. Begin creating some videos for that where I can teach people about public speaking. And now that I’ve got a course and I can send them to the right website because all of my episodes talk about publicspeakingpower.com.

I can talk about the product as well and mention that and try and get people to buy it.

I haven’t actually decided that, yes, I’m going to go ahead and market this product more. But at least, one person bought it and so the day’s work that I did to create this course wasn’t for absolutely nothing. So far, it’s been for $30 and really, we wanted to create this to see whether we could sell it. And also, so we could improve on the product over time. Because, obviously, the more customers you get, the more feedback you get, the better insights you get about what products to create.

So, I’m super excited about that. Super excited to be celebrating with your guys, drinking my beer. Very good. It’s Friday afternoon. In terms of the suburb research course, the sales haven’t gone too stellar. I think I’ve had 2 sales. Definitely considering changing the cost of the product to $99 rather than $100 just to see if that makes any difference. My mate, Ben, said when they tested it, if a number ended in a 9, people were 16% more likely to buy it. So, experimenting with $99 versus $100 could be something to do.

I really just did $100 for transparency purposes and because I had done it on Property Tools, I had made it $5, but that was because Property Tools is so cheap. I wanted people to be able to say, yeah, there’s this tool, it’s just $5 a month. Go ahead and check it out. But I’m thinking maybe I should make it $99. And maybe I should make On Property Listings $49 instead of $50. I’m not 100% sure, but thinking about that.

Also, I’ve created 7 videos for that, so that’ll go out in November. I’ll send out some emails next week. I didn’t get around to sending another email this week, but I’ll send some more emails next week about suburb research because I’ll have content to send out about it as well. And so, hopefully, we can drive some more sales next week for that product as well.

Also, I’ve been working on Instructions Not Included today to get more episodes out to you guys. I had a break in recording, which means there was only one episode that I had missed the publish date for. So, that will go up today. So, that’s good. So, people didn’t miss out on much because I was too lazy to get the episodes edited. And also, for Instructions Not Included, I did a cool interview with the guy from Lully, which is a company that sells this vibrating disc, I guess you would call it, that helps children who have night terrors and I’ve got a child who has a night terror.

It really helps with them. So, I had a cool interview with him today, which I’m actually going to schedule earlier just so we can get it out sooner rather than later. I think that’s episode 44. So, ryanmclean.net/44. You can check out that interview. It’s called a [inaudible 5:51] story and how they came up with the idea and the research they went through in order to get it and to create a product that they could market and create a company around, which have now raised funds for and they’re doing really well.

It’s a great product. They’re meeting a real need. That was a great interview. So, that’s where I’m at. Nothing too serious, but definitely, I want to create more and more episodes for On Property and for the suburb research sort of stuff. But then, also, I was thinking after doing the interview with the guy from Lully, they actually sell that on Amazon. And so, I was thinking that could be a cool affiliate site for me.

A site about night terrors because I’m a parent, I have a child who experiences night terrors. I could definitely take that angle on it. Market the product through Amazon and then just have it as an Amazon affiliate site. I’ve been talking to them, shared some ideas about how to market stuff for their product. I really like the product, I would feel very comfortable marketing it and it’s just something very interesting. Obviously, the big risk with that is if they product off Amazon, decide to sell it directly, well, then I just kind of lose my entire revenue stream from that. So, I don’t know.

It’s something that I’m going to mull over and consider this weekend. Should I create an affiliate website on night terrors to market this product? Because I have that experience, I can do some research and some knowledge into it. The product sells for $150 or something. So, a 5% commission is $7. I have to sell a lot to make any decent amount of money, but definitely something worth exploring. So I’ll mull over that and see how I go.

Well, that’s my musings for today, guys. I’ve been working hard. I’m keen to grow my business even more. I talked to Ben. No payments coming through for the end of this month, which is disappointing. But I have had some product sales, $50, $100 here and there. So, I do have enough money. I don’t think I’m going to run out of money. And I do have a lot of personal savings as well, which I’m okay to spend if I need to. But I spoke to Ben, I got 2 extra sales, which is like another $2,500 coming from him eventually.

So, it’s not coming at the end of the month, so cash flow is going to be tight, but I will make it and I am doing enough in product sales to get me through this storm. Even if I’m not, then, I do have some savings that I can work upon as well.

That’s it for me today, guys. Wish me the best of luck in musing about this new website and also dealing with my cash flow issues. I hope everything is going well for you. And until next time, if you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.


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#55 Why I Created A Parody Sales Video

iniartworksmallToday I was working on the suburb research course sales video. I decided to create a parody video as a way to connect with my audience. Here is why.

Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. Basically this is my audio journal where I document my process trying to create a successful online business.

I talked in the last episode about my plans to market my suburb research course which I have now completed. I am very happy to say that the course has been completed. All the training videos are done. They are all uploaded. They are all on the page, everything is a go. All I am working on at the moment is the sales video and that is something that I have trouble with.

I am not a copywriter. A lot of the way to write copy goes against the grain of what I do which is being very upfront and honest and not trying to trick people like exposing bad tactics that the industry does.

So I find it hard to write sales videos and I have an idea from my wife for this sales video was actually to create 2: create one sales video that is like super sleazy, kind of like a parody sort of thing; and then create a second sales video which is the real one which is just me being honest with the audience and saying, “Here is my course. Here is why I created it.”

So that is exactly what I did. I have created 2 videos. One is short. It is less than 2 minutes, just kind of a parody thing. You are going to be super wealthy if you buy this course. I used heaps of stock video as well so it is quite stupid. I talked about being rich and then the printing press appears. I talked about flying first class and you got like the typical plane flying sort of scene, all these sort of dumb stuff. And so I kind of made it like a parody.

I guess my goal is I am going to in some way incorporate that into my sales and marketing. And so I will say there is a salesy video here. I will probably just incorporate it into my emails that I send out. So sales video, working on it today. I was hoping to get it done by today and to get the sales page up. But like I finished the sales videos which is good. they are just processing now. And so tomorrow I will be working on the sales page and hopefully I can send out an email tomorrow afternoon.

The first email in the marketing – the launch of this course and so hopefully I could send that out tomorrow because that allows me to send at least 2 emails this week: one next week or maybe one on the weekend as well. So that is kind of what I am working towards. I am definitely running low on money. I have a couple of weeks of revenue left at the moment.

Definitely do not want to have to approach Ben and ask him, “Hey bro! Like do you mind if I get paid early because I am about to run out of money.” I do have personal savings that I can draw from so I am not going to actually run out of money. But it is getting down to the well.

So I am excited to get this sales video done, to get this course launched and then market this course and create some podcast episodes marketing this course as well. I really need to drive some more sales. I have had a few On Property listings signup recently which had been good.

There have been monthly registrations which is great because monthly because it is the most per month in terms of cost. But then it is not great because I do not get a bunch of revenue upfront. If someone pays for a year upfront, I get almost $500.

If someone pays for 2 years upfront then I get about $750 or $720 or $740 or something like that. And so it is great when people sign up upfront to get that chunk of cash. But monthly is kind of the best long term because it is the largest source of revenue. I guess you would say because people are paying more per month and they are not getting a discount.

So ideally I would love to have 200 members that are all paying $50 per month which would give me 200 times $10 is $2,000 times by 5 that is $10,000 a month. Is that right?! 200 times $50 is $10,000 a month. That is insane! So I guess that is my goal. That is crazy. But I am not getting all monthly people. I am getting annual people. I also have people who are on discounts from back in the day. So I am not aiming for $10,000. But yeah.

So that is what I am working on at the moment. I am also going to sell my old computer so hopefully I am going to get some money on that, $500 to $700 or something for that which will keep me in the black. So I am still working on getting all my old data off that and will need to restore that computer, bring everything back up to scratch. But yeah, I am excited where this is going. I will keep you guys in the loop as to how the marketing goes and how the launch of this course goes and what sales we get and stuff like that. I think that this is a great course.

I hope that my sales message is good enough to get through to people so they will understand what this course is about and why they need it. And I am even thinking like get the draft of the sales video out tomorrow and get the sales page created but then maybe adding video overlays and stuff to the sales video of like inside the course and stuff which I could potentially do at a later date.

So that is something that I will be exploring. That is where I am at. Alright guys, until next time. If you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.


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#54 I Am 3 Weeks Away From Running Out Of Money

iniartworksmallI am trying to create financial freedom and security through my online business. But at the moment I am cash strapped. Can I pull myself out of this hole?

I’m about 3 weeks away to running out of money in my business. But don’t freak out, everything is going to be okay. Hey, I’m Ryan from Instructions Not Included. Documenting my journey creating an online business and trying to achieve some level of financial freedom. Really, just financial stability working online.

I was looking at my finances, recently – within the last 2 days, I bought a second hand computer because my current one is dying up the ass. So, I spent $1,700 on that. I’m about to do my tax return and I’ll get a tax bill for that – tax that I need to pay for the year; which I probably don’t have the money to pay it right now.

Looking at how much my lifestyle is taking from my businesses because it’s my primary source of income. It pays the rent, it pays for food, all of that sort of stuff. I’m looking at about 3 weeks until I run out of money. But I’m not completely stressed about it because I know that I’ve got some referral fees coming from Ben that are $4,500 or something like that, which will really see me through an entire month after that.

I’m just not 100% sure if they’re going to come – because he’s going to pay me at the end of each month. So I’m just not sure if they’re coming at the end of this month or at the end of next month. So, it could be a tight time there.

Something that I really love about my business is that when I’m tight on cash and when things look dire, there’s things that I can do to increase my income.

If I was an employee and I started running out of money for one reason or another, then there wouldn’t be much that I could do to increase my income in order to fill that gap. But something that I love about my business is that there’s things that I can do.

Recently, I just did a 4-part series with Ben, the buyer’s agent, and that’s going to help me create more leads with him to generate more income. That’s more a long term play. In the short term, I am just finishing up my suburb research course. So, I’ve done all of the key videos, all I need to do now, I got 2 videos left – a conclusion video, which talks about what to do now and markets my next course as well as a comparison video comparing suburbs, so people really know how to do it.

So I’m almost done. 2 more videos to do, which I can probably get done tomorrow. And then that course will be complete and then I’m going to re-do the sales video for that. So, 3 videos for that.

So what I’m thinking is when I complete this course, when it’s done, let’s do a proper launch to this course. We did the course on how to find positive cash flow properties. We pre-launched it, we made about $1,000 in sales in pre-launch for this course. However, I didn’t then go ahead and launch it as I had planned. So I didn’t say, “This course is now available. Go ahead and get it, learn how to find positive cash flow properties.

This is awesome! Yada, yada, yada.” For some reason, I didn’t do that. I think it’s because I got caught up in creating the suburb research course that I just forgot to do that.

What I’m going to do, next week, I’ll finish the suburb research course tomorrow. I’ll create the sales video tomorrow/Monday, probably. And then, I’m going to do a launch of it. So, how am I going to do that? I don’t actually know. I haven’t actually had any ideas about that. But let’s think about it now, on the spot. Let’s pretend that you and me are brainstorming on this.

I want to move to daily content, anyway, right? And I haven’t been doing content because I’ve been creating this course. So why don’t I create 7 videos – let’s market this over a week. Let’s aim for $1,000 in sales, which will give me an extra week or 2 in terms of living expenses and just push the timeline until Ben’s money comes in and really sets me up. So, we’re aiming for $1,000.

Let’s start with a podcast because that’s easy. Let’s do 7 videos on how to research a suburb. So we’ll pull out different aspects about researching a suburb. We’ll do videos and then at the end of those videos, we’ll talk about our new course. Now, should I run any specials with the new course? I don’t like doing discounts. I don’t mind doing discounts on pre-sales but I hate doing discounts on full products. It’s just something that I don’t really do.

So the other things I have are how to find positive cash flow properties. I don’t want to throw that in free because that’s worth $100 as well. I’ve got property tools, which is $5 a month, so I could give a month free access to property tools? That’s like $5 but it’s something that I could say you’d get this. A year’s free access is $50, I could give away a year’s free access, but that’s pretty extreme.

I don’t know if I want to go ahead and do that. We could do that. See, but I want to reward the people that signed up early and got a discount, so they got either a 50% or a 20% discount. Alright, we’re not going to give something away, we’re just going to market the course and say that it’s available.

Okay. So we’ll do 7 podcast episodes about suburb research and we’ll release them one day after the other. Market the course in those videos. What about emails? I’ve got a list of about 10,000 people. So, let’s send out a couple of emails. Let’s send out an email announcing the course. So we can do that on Monday. We’ll announce the course. Then, on maybe Wednesday or Thursday and then maybe one on Sunday, so we’ll do 3 emails in total. So, one is announcing the course.

Then on Wednesday or Thursday, we’ll do one about one of the videos we created about this cool technique. And then, we’ll also do a video on Sunday and talk about another free video that we did and within those emails, talk about we’ve got the full course here.

I’m thinking one of those emails can be an awesome tool for analysing properties, because I just found that brand new tool so I can share that with people. Because, really, it’s the analysis of the data that people need to learn – that’s what I teach, it’s not necessarily the tools. So I could share that and then talk about my course. That’ll be one of the free videos and I’ll have to think about the other ones some time. Alright, so that sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty cool.

It’s Thursday today I’ll create the other videos tomorrow and try and get that sales video done tomorrow or Monday and we’ll go ahead and market that. Our goal, $1,000, which is just 10 sales from 10,000 people. So, that’s 0.1% conversion, which I think is definitely possible. Given the fact that I’ve already made $600 on this course and I haven’t done much direct marketing for it. I think with the right marketing, we could definitely do this.

I’m just trying to think if there’s any other way that I could really push it. I guess the other way, let’s also – alright, for the week, let’s say do suburb research week. Starting on Monday or maybe Tuesday, whenever I get my sales video up. Let’s put one of those banners across the top of my website. Just like an announcement banner saying, “Brand new course available. Click here.” Let’s try that as well. That way, website visitors can see that and if they’re interested in suburb research, then they can go ahead and check out that course.

We’ll only do that for a week. I’m not super stoked with those header banners, but I’ll find something and we’ll do that.

So, there we go. We’ve got a few different ways to market it. And you’ve literally seen inside the thought process of how I run my business. Running out of money, I need to make some money. I’ve created this course that I think is really valuable for people. How am I going to achieve my income goal for this and get people to sign up for it? And really, the goal for me is to reach those people who are interested in suburb research. So, by doing those lessons, I’ll reach those people and I’ll reach them over the long term as well.

My list is people who are interested in investing people generally by themselves anyway. So, I can definitely market to them and I think there’ll be a bunch of people who will be interested. So I’m very excited about this. I hope you are too.

I’m going out tonight to play some Super Smash Brothers Melee with a couple of mates on the Gold Coast here. I’m a Peach player. The two guys that I’m meeting up with, they both play as Marth, which is this guy with a sword and he’s the hardest character for me to play against. Because his sword is so long, he can just hit me from far away and it’s just really hard for me. So it’d be really good for me to practice my Peach against Marth. I’ve been kind of studying that match up and try and get better at that. That’ll be good fun tonight.

That’s it for me today, guys. Until next time, if you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.


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#51 My Best Customer Ever

iniartworksmallOf all the customers you have in your business what is the absolutely most a customer can make you. For me it was previously $400-$500, but that just got increased.

What is your best customer worth? Of all the customers that you have in your business, what is the absolute most a customer can make you or has made you? For me, with OnProperty, my best customer – up until a couple of days ago, made me probably somewhere around maybe $400, maybe $500 or something like that.

They might have purchased an annual subscription to OnProperty Plus for $300, maybe some eBooks or courses up to the value of maybe $500. Or, I could have had some that was a subscriber for $300 subscribed to 2 years. Okay, maybe $600 is my best customer ever.

Well, there was actually a customer the other day, on Sunday – a day when I wasn’t even working, that beat that record and spent somewhere around $800-$900. Almost $1,000 and this was absolutely awesome to see. I through phases where I get a bit worried about money.

Last month was really good in terms of I closed down OnProperty Plus, changed it to OnProperty Listings and as a result, increased the prices. So, I got a big influx of income – about $4,000 or something like that from that promotion and people signing up as a result of that promotion.

So, I’m going into this month, into October, thinking, “Okay, a bit more stressed about this month.” I don’t have $4,000 automatically coming in. I’ve got about $1,000 revenue from Property Tools as well as OnProperty Plus/OnProperty Listings monthly subscription. So I’ve got about $1,000 coming in. I’ve also been working closely with Ben Everingham, recommended a few people to him. So, it might be $2,000 coming from him, but it’s never certain with buyer’s agents.

They’re working with a couple of clients and if they can’t find the property, then, Ben is so honorable, he gives the money back. So, that could potentially result in no money coming in. So, I’ve got about $1,000 guaranteed and I’ve got about $2,000-$3,000 a month in expenses now. Things just go up as you become a more profitable company.

So, going into the month, just a little bit more stressed about how much money I’m going to make. What am I going to sell? How am I going to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah… And then, I get this customer on Sunday who spends $900 – almost $1,000 with me. And I go, “What am I stressing about? I’ve got people who want to spend this amount of money with me. I must be doing something right.” And anyway, there was one offer – I had 2 conflicting offers, one for $50, one for $80. So, I emailed this customer, I said, “Thanks for being the best customer ever. I just want to let you know there was an offer on this for $50 for people who bought this other course.

I’m going to honor that and refund you $30.” emailed them, blah, blah, blah… I got an email back from best customer ever yesterday and they said something really interesting to me over the course of this email, which was quite long. But they said, “Ryan, don’t underestimate yourself.” He said, “I wanted to buy everything that you had and it was a lot of work for me to go through and to find all your products and to purchase all of your products individually. So, don’t underestimate yourself and why not have a ‘buy the lot’ option as a way to convert every customer into your best customer ever?”

I was like, “Oh my goodness! You are a genius! Thank you so much. You’ve just gone from best customer ever to absolutely best customer ever because you’ve given me an awesome idea.” This customer has shown me that the buying process that I have isn’t ideal for my customer. I create videos, audios and blog posts so customers can consume my content in whatever way they want. But when it comes to my products, I haven’t exactly made it easy for customers to purchase everything.

I guess part of that was I wanted to break things down for customers and service their needs. So, kind of like a supermarket where you go to the supermarket and they’ve got thousands of items and they never intend you to buy everything in one shop, but what you need is there for when you need it and when you need something else, then you come back.

I guess my product strategy was the supermarket sort of strategy where I’ve got a whole bunch of different things there that service different needs. Come and purchase this product when you have that need. And when you’ve got a different need that I can serve, come back. But I never thought that maybe there’s customers that are passionate enough they just want to purchase everything all at once and I need to make their experience better. So, definitely going to add a “buy the lot” option to my products page.

At first, I was like, “Well, how am I going to do this?” Because OnProperty Listings has monthly, annual and 2-year options. Property Tools only has monthly and yearly. How am I going to do this? But I think the way I’m going to do it is I’ll scrap the monthly because if someone wants to buy everything, then they’re pretty keen on spending money and I’ll just offer a yearly and 2-yearly options. Yearly for OnProperty Listings is $480.

Yearly for Property Tools is $50. So, that’s $530 plus everything else. And then, the 2-year option for OnProperty Listings is $720 and then I’m just going to leave 2 years for Property Tools at $100, so no discount for getting property Tools for $100. So it goes $720 to $820 plus then I’ll have 3 courses at $300 each so that’s $1,120. Plus I’ve got the eBooks that’s $7 so it’ll be like $1,127. So, I could, eventually, once all my products are out, I could have a “buy the lot” where someone could spend $1,127 with me in one go.

All of a sudden, I only need 4 customers a month in total in order to achieve my income goals that I set for the year. Obviously, not everyone’s going to do that, but maybe get 1, 2 or maybe 3 of those customers a year and that’s a nice little kicker. Definitely, big thank you to my best customer ever who has now spent the most money ever with me and has also given me a great idea in order to improve how much my customers are potentially worth. That was a really cool breakthrough for the week.

Bit of an update from last week, when I worked 25 hours a week, took me a little bit to get used to it. The first 2 days I think I finished the day and I was a cranky shit. I was like, went down and I was just cranky for some reason.

I was quite rude to my family. I don’t know why exactly, but I think it was just the stress of it. And the mindset of working less and feeling like my family is taking away from my work time, which is not the intention at all, you know. I value family over work, so I don’t know why I was thinking that. But I kind of felt like that and I was like, “Oh, well, this is crap. I don’t get to work” So, the first couple of days were hard.

Third day, I had about half an of being cranky after I finished work. And then, by the fourth and fifth day, I was quite happy with the work schedule that I had and what I was doing and I was less stressed. So, I had a great day on Friday with the family. I had a great weekend. And then, Monday was a public holiday up here, it was super hot. So, we ended up going to my mother-in-law’s place to swim in her pool.

Even though technically, I’m not doing 25 hours a week anymore, my stress levels – oh my goodness, have they gone down so significantly! Because I was like, “Yup, absolutely. Let’s go for a swim in the morning.” We went for a swim. I started work at 11:00 and then I finished work at 3:30 of 4:00 or something. I actually wasn’t feeling very good that day. I had a super sore back and ended up passing out asleep at 5:00.

My stress levels have gone down significantly. So, Tuesday, I did 8:00-4:00, that was yesterday. Today, I’m doing kind of 7:30 until 3:00-ish because as soon as the kids come home from school, we’re going to go for a swim because it’s hot again. Then, tomorrow, I’m going to see The Martian, which is an absolutely awesome book that I read and apparently, it’s a good movie, too, so I’m going to see that. And then, hopefully, got Smash Brothers tomorrow night. We’ll only work a few hours on Thursday, which I’m fine with. And then Friday I’ll probably do a full day there.

I think the 25 hours a week, definitely something that I want to move towards. It was great to that example and to do that week. As well, to work with my wife and to be able to help her out more with the 3 kids. Because having 3 kids and taking care of 3 kids is really hard. Not just for her, but just in general. And so, being able to help her more reduced her stress levels, leads to a better family balance, better emotional health; which leads to a better relationship that we have together. Definitely something that I want to pursue more is work less and be more focused.

Another thing that I realised about working 25 hours a week is I’ve got more important shit done! Often I’ll spend a day and I’ll just fat ass around. I’ll get some emails done. I’ll do some admin stuff. I’ll get stuff done, but it’s not stuff that’s super important. When I got 5 hours a day, I lean on my virtual assistant more. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got 5 hours. What am I going to get done? Alright, I’ve got to get some videos done.

Let’s get these videos created, let’s get these videos edited and uploaded.” Bam, they’re done. Off to Dipti in order to manage them and publish them. So a lot of work that I was doing was more valuable work. I can actually potentially achieve more working 25 hours than I could working full time. Because I just do less stupid tasks that I probably shouldn’t be doing anyway. So I’m going to have to think about this.

We’ve got school holidays again in about 8 weeks. The kids have 9 weeks off or something like that. So, I think, over that Christmas break, I’m probably going to do 25 hours a week for maybe 8 weeks or 9 weeks or something like that. In Sydney for a week, so that’ll be a holiday. Probably have another week of holidays, but I was thinking and talking to my wife and we’re saying, “Yeah, well, let’s just do this.” At least we know if I run out of money or we start running out of money or I’m not making enough, I can just increase my work hours again and find out ways to make more money.

So, yeah. That’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re at. Enjoying my Smash Brothers, practicing that pretty heavily and getting into that. So wanting to become good and, eventually, would love to be able win some competitions, win some tournaments in Smash Brothers as my Peach player. But that’s another topic for another day.

That’s it for me today, guys. Until next time, stay positive.


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#50 We Are Not Drinking Beer Today. Zero Sales :(

iniartworksmallSometimes you just get lucky first go…and sometimes you don’t. This is an example of me not getting lucky.

Sometimes you just get lucky first go, and other times, you don’t. I remember, it would have been 3 or 4 years ago, I was still working as a pharmaceutical rep and I had a property blog and I had a little over 1,000 email subscribers, over 100 articles, less than 120.

Were getting a decent amount of traffic and I thought, you know, I need to make some money from this – I want to make some money from this. And so, I decided to create and launch a membership site where I would teach people how to find positive cash flow properties. So, what I did was I created a single page.

Literally, a single webpage that was password-protected. That was it. It’s a functionality within every single WordPress page or WordPress post – you can set a password on it.

So, I created that and I put a video on it or a couple of videos or something like that. It wasn’t even complete, the product. I sent out an email to my list saying, “Launching this product.

Here’s a 50% discount.” or something like that and I sold it for $50 and I had $2,000 in sales in the space of 1-2 days. Before then, the most I’d ever seen in terms of a month was maybe $300-$500 in AdSense revenue. So, for me, this membership site was a big kicker for me.

This membership site, eventually, over the course of a couple of years evolved into OnProperty Plus, which is now OnProperty Listings, which makes me a good 4-figures per month and means that I can work from home and I don’t need to have a job.

That was striking it lucky. I was very lucky to launch that and to get so much success off the bat with that. Just really struck a cord with the market and what they wanted. One that’s not so lucky is my public speaking course. Yup, no sales. We are not drinking beer today. We are not celebrating and getting drunk together because there are no sales for my public speaking course.

I sent out an email to my list of about 700-800 email subscribers talking about the course. Had a bit of traffic to the page, but absolutely zero sales, nada.

I was thinking that maybe today I create some free videos for outspoken.co, but at this point, I just don’t see the point because I’m not making any money from the site. I haven’t “nailed the coffin” so to speak. I haven’t given up on outspoken.co or given up on this product.

I will still give it probably a month to see do people go to it? Are people interested in it? Do I get any sales? All I need is one sale to really encourage me to push this site forward. But I know this is my first product that I’ve ever created and it may not be aligned with the market, it may not be what they want. It has a good learning experience for me, but I definitely did not strike it lucky with this course.

It’s not something that I just launched and I sold a whole bunch of copies to this course. So, I don’t know if that means it’s a dud course, I don’t know if that means that public speaking is a harder niche to monetise. I’m not 100% sure what it means, but definitely didn’t strike it lucky. So, I’ll wait a little bit longer and see what happens and then, maybe go again and create another course or try and market it in some other way.

So, yeah, I was hoping to strike it lucky. Hoping to get a little bit of traction with this course so I could then justify working more on oustpoken.co, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. So, I’m back to just focusing on OnProperty, focusing on creating more marketing materials for that. So, more free content and driving people to my products.

I am thinking about the long term and longevity of OnProperty and me and this business and what it’s going to look like moving forward. And something that I’m doing is at the end of each of my videos, I’m doing a call to action to one of my products. So, rather than just trying to get more and more email subscribers now – which I actually think is becoming less and less relevant, less and less valuable over time. But the content is going to hold it’s value and so I really have this sense that the value is in the content. The value is not in the email list, as people say.

Obviously, collecting people’s emails are very important. But when you’ve got people who are so segmented online now, so many people surfing the web through apps. So many people go into a lot of different websites using Facebook and stuff like that. But you still develop a relationship with the person.

So, whether you’re watching someone on Youtube or you’re watching their video on Facebook or you’re interacting with them on their website or they send you an email, it’s all the same person. And I think that as I grow this brand, as I build up this brand, I think email will become less and less important over time.

I can’t remember the last time I actually bought something from an email that was sent to me; which is really interesting. But I do know that I follow people like Gary Veynerchuk, I love all the stuff that he does. I follow his podcast or his Youtube channel. And he’s the same person there. He’s the same person on iTunes as he is on Youtube and when he has a book out or a call to action, I find it through the videos he does and I then go ahead and take action.

So, I’m thinking that emails aren’t as important as they used to be. Still important, but they’re not the be all and end all. And so, what I’m doing, because I believe the content will hold value for longer into the future than collecting email subscribers, I’m actually marketing my products at the end or within each of my videos. So, I’ll do a subject like I just did one about the biggest mistakes that people make when doing suburb research, when investing in property.

So, at the end of that and throughout that video, I was talking about I’m launching a course on suburb, which you can get at onproperty.com.au/suburb. So, I’m integrating it into the videos. I did other videos and marketed other products, like my course on how to find positive cash flow properties or my membership site, OnProperty Listings.I’ve been doing more of this free content with a call to action.

So, we’ll just see how that goes and see whether that’s going to work. But I think in terms of long term strategy, I think that’s going to be the most successful way to do it, is to just have in-content discussions about my own products. I think that’s going to be pretty cool.

I am considering moving back to daily videos. I did this back in 2014, so last year. What I did was I release a new video, podcast, article every single day. So, the video gets transcribed into a blog post. It also gets converted into an MP3, into a podcast. And I saw huge growth over my site in that period of time and I’m still seeing upwards of 1,500 people visit my site every single day from the content that I produced partially during that period. Some of the content was before that.

I have noticed that as I release articles talking about the courses that I’m creating, like I’ve released some of my videos are sales videos, I’ve noticed that I’ve had sales that I feel are related to that – not to the emails that I sent out. And I know this because some of the people who purchased my product weren’t even email subscribers of mine. So the only way they could have found out about it was through the actual episodes themselves or through the menu tab on my website.

I think that it’s powerful. I think that getting people in the routine of listening to me, I think the idea of getting more and more content out there and just smashing my competitors in terms of how much content I have, how much I can be found in Google and have people find me is going to be super valuable. And I think the long term strategy of absolutely owning this space in terms of the market and getting people to come to me really allows me to have a more positive impact on people’s lives than if I was to do affiliate deals to try and sell my products and stuff like that.

I want to be like Apple and basically be fully integrated. Everything from my marketing to my products. I don’t want to make money selling other people’s products. I don’t want other people acting as affiliates for me. I want to do everything myself, which is, I guess, less like Apple, more like James Shramko and what he does over at SuperFast Business where he doesn’t have any affiliates marketing his stuff, but he just does it all himself. And I think that’s going to be the best long term strategy for me and for my business. And if I’m creating all these free content now and I’ve got the backend, like my virtual assistant Dipti, she’s absolutely awesome.

She can get all this stuff up. So I can create 3 videos in the space of a couple of hours. I then upload them, let her know about it and then, bam! She’s away, gets everything scheduled, gets everything ready and published on time. So I don’t have to worry about all that backend stuff anymore. It’s not sucking my time. So, I think it’s more achievable for me to do daily videos now than it used to be.

So I’m excited about that. That’s going to be good. I think we’ll move towards that I was doing 2 videos a day for a while and I’ve just started moving to 3 videos a day. I’m going to get my way up to 5 videos, so Monday to Friday there’s going to be a video every single day. And then, as soon as I have enough content and I feel like I can keep it up, then I’ll go ahead and I’ll do fully a video every single day.

I think that’s going to be exciting because then once I’ve created this course on suburb research and then I’ve created the course on how to evaluate an individual property, then I can just focus on marketing those courses.

The free videos could be all I do. That could just be the only stuff that I have to do on my business. It’s just, I do free videos and I do customer service, like emails and stuff like that. And then I could definitely work 5 hours per day. Working 5 hours a day has been pretty rough.

It’s been getting difficult to get into the habit. But I think now that I’m starting to do it, starting to get used to it. I think there’s massive value in it for me, for my family, for my wife – to help her out. But then, also for me, in terms of socially, I will then have more time. My wife will be less stressed, so she’s okay if I go for a surf or if I go to someone’s house and play Smash Brothers or something like that. I think it’s going to be good, I think it’s going to be long term.

I think I can definitely make enough money – if not more money doing just 5 hours a day than doing 8 or 9 hours a day. So, it’s definitely something that I’m going to be working towards and it’ll probably happen faster than I expected.

Anyway, I have rambled on enough. I’m excited to get on with the day to go ahead and make some videos. I’ve got 4 hours until I finish work. So, let’s see how many videos I can get done. If I get 3 done, I’d be happy. But why not push for 4 and then I’ve done 7 this week, hey? Well, we’ll see how we’d go. Hope you guys are having an awesome day. I hope that you are working on your business. I hope that sometimes you get lucky and you get a quick win like I did when I first launched my membership site for OnProperty.

Sometimes you just don’t get lucky and you need to re-evaluate and think, “What did I do wrong? What can I do better?” And also, I want to encourage you, it’s not about doing the grind and working 12-16 hour days. It’s about achieving what you want to achieve, having the biggest influence that you can – positive influence on people’s lives. And then living the life that you want. Living the life that you want is super hard to work out. So hard to work out what kind of life do I actually want. What I want to do for work? What I want to do with the rest of my time when I’m not working? But it’s totally worth it if you can work it out.

I’ll keep you guys up to date on that. Until next time, if you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.


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#49 Hoping and Praying To Sell A Copy Of My Course

iniartworksmallI finished my public speaking course but it took me 4 attempts to create a sales page for the product. I also added a sales email to my autoresponder.

Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. I just want to give you an update on my week. I had Monday off which was great. Working today, doing a shorter week this week and today I was just focusing on my course on Outspoken.co on How To Become A Better Public Speaker In Private. You want to check that out, just go to Outspoken.co/private, if you want to see the course and the sales page over there.

So basically I spent the day finalizing that course. So once they purchase it, there is a page that they go to that has all the videos; I had to set that up. And I have also gone ahead and created the sales page for the course which actually took me 4 attempts to create the sales page.

First I did a text-based sales page which was pretty average. And then I started writing an email to send out and realized how bad it was. I then created a second sales page and while I was creating that I realized it is probably better if I create a video or an audio for this. And so I recorded an audio for it. And then I created a page on that. And then I realized that this is just overkill, the audio went for 7 or 8 minutes for a $30 course.

It was not even an awesome audio either. And then the last thing that I did was just create a products page at Outspoken.co/products and just have a little description of the course, a little square image like a title cover for the course and then a buy-it-now button down the bottom.

And so I decided to sell the course for US$30. I just thought US$20 was not enough and made it sound like a cheap and crappy course so I upped it to US$30. I would like to go for $50 or $100 but I just do not have a good enough relationship with my readers and stuff. I do not think to charge $100 for a course. So I thought $30, happy medium.

I also went ahead and added like a salesy sort of email to my order responder for Outspoken.co and so that will go out to everyone who signs up for my course which is probably about a person-a-day or something or maybe even less than that. I do not actually know. I have never tracked it.

And then I have just sent out a broadcast email as well to my subscribers and I have 750 email subscribers for people that are interested in learning more about public speaking and who have signed up for my public speaking crash course. So I am hoping and praying that one of those people actually buys the course. And the next time that I am recording, the next time that I am talking to you guys, I will have a beer in hand.

I will be drinking the beer and we will be celebrating the first sale of this course and also my first US dollars in a long time. And if this course sells and i this course is something that people are interested in, then that all of a sudden makes Outspoken.co a profitable side project and will make me more inclined to invest more heavily in that site because at the moment the site is in shambles. It is a bit buggy.

It is missing a lot of things that need to go on there but I just have not done anything with it because it does not make me any money. So if I fix it I might get more traffic. People might stay engaged longer on the site but it is not going to result in any profit for me and so it has not been worth it.

But if this course proves profitable, if this is something that people are interested in then I will go ahead and invest more in the site. And I will also try and think of some other courses that I can create that I could sell to people and try and make this site profitable.

I would definitely like to diversify away from On Property because at the moment 99% pf my income is coming from On Property and if the Australian property market was to crash then that would severely affect my income. Or if something was to happen to this site, I am too exposed and I would rather spread my risks across the 2 sites. And as well, if I can make money from Outspoken.co then I feel like I could then teach how to make money from a podcast through PodcastFast.com.

So we will see how it will go. That was what I was up to today, not as many hours to work today which I am finding a little bit difficult, a little bit stressful. But I will get whatever I need to get done this week.

There is nothing urgent that I need to get done so it is no big deal. But I am working less this week. Spending more time with the kids and doing my test for working 25 hours a week. So we will see how we will go. We will see how I can handle it, not working as much. Can I do it? We will see how it works with the family and stuff as well. So I will keep you guys updated on that.

I am bout to finish. I am about to go pick up the kids from kindergarten in about 20 minutes. They just have vacation care today. I will pick them up soon and hopefully we will sell a copy of this course. Come on! Let us sell a copy! Hopefully tomorrow you will be hearing from me that I sold a copy. Or you will be hearing that I have not. But hopefully I will have.

Alright guys, that is it for me today. Until next time, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.


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Stuck

I am now on my 3rd iteration of my product for CashFlow Investor and I am stuck.

Not because the product won’t work (I think it will) but because it isn’t scalable and I am not passionate about it. Each new user will create more work and I don’t think the return on investment will be there for me.

I believe my market wants a low cost way of finding tailored positive cash flow properties.

My solution was a bulk approach to show them multiple random properties in the hopes that one might be suitable or give them insights into how to find positive cash flow properties…but this proved to not be valuable to potential investors.

If I went full scale and indexed all properties on the market and formed relationships with real estate agents to have a steady flow of properties coming in then it could work at scale…but I’m not ready for scale. I need something that works with 1-100 customers.

Maybe the goal should just be to provide a minimum service JUST to get paying customers. Then talk to these customers and find out what they want.


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Minimizing Batch Time For Web Based Start Ups

Recently I tested a new service on one of my websites. I released a paid BETA version to my email subscribers and had a low but acceptable conversion rate (1% conversion from free subscriber into paying customer).

I then put an adjusted service offering on my website and just let it sit there. In 20 days I have just over 100 pageviews and a total of 0 sales.

The basic premise has merit (I proved this in the beta launch) but the service offering needs some tweaking.

My problem is this: I don’t want to wait 20 days to find out if it is working or not. I want faster batch cycles because I want to get something of value up as quickly as possible so I can grow the website.

My solution – I took the sales page from simply being one page on my website (getting about 150 pageviews per month) and I added it to my home page also (700 pageviews per month).

This should give me about 850 pageviews for the month and should only take 4 days to get the 100 pageviews it previously took me 20 days to get.

I have now cut my batch time down by a multiple of 5! Or increased my data set by a multiple of 5 allowing me to make more intelligent decisions.

Now it’s time to just wait for the results or see if I need to change tact again.

What I like about this website is that I have readers (potential customers) constantly coming to the site without me having to do anything. What I can focus on now is making products for my customers…instead of trying to find customers for my products.

Love it


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