Earlier today, I was talking to a business owner who has 1) an audience and 2) dreams of passive income. He said something to the effect of (I’m paraphrasing):
I’d love to make money from this audience without having to constantly produce content for them…
… which I figure is a noble goal. Unfortunately, I don’t have a passive content machine for you today. But I can tell you what I told this business owner:
Having cool offers to promote takes care of about 75% of your content creation.
Say you have a cool new offer.
There’s the inevitable announcement email, which is exciting if the offer is exciting.
There’s the deadline emails, which are exciting if the offer is exciting.
In between, there are the case studies… the explanation of the mechanism… the objection handling… the price reveals and justifications… and testimonials from people who have just bought the thing you are promoting.
If you have a cool new offer, something that has people on the edge between “Whoa I want this” and “Whoa I’m not sure I want to pay this much,” then all this content writes itself, or rather, almost writes itself.
On the flip side:
No amount of well-written, insightful, inspiring content will ultimately make up for the lack of good offers.
I’m telling you that from first-hand experience.
I spent years — YEARS — of my life writing this newsletter with ZERO offers to promote.
Yes, it got me better at writing. I told tons of stories… collected and shared tons of interesting information… and gave people tons of insights. Results:
Zero money, and list growth of close to zero.
Maybe most importantly, the people on my list at that time were less committed and less engaged than the readers of other marketers, who were writing emails like mine and who were pitching offers day in and day out.
Coincidence?
I don’t think so.
Because after I started creating and selling exciting offers in my emails every day, my status (and bank account) grew… my readers became more engaged… and my content, even when it was really just an announcement email or a “last call” email, got the kinds of audience engagement I never got while I was simply contenting my life away.
So that’s my lesson for you. If you’re dreading creating content, get yourself some cool new offers.
And if you don’t have any cool new offers right now:
Next Wednesday, Sep 1, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a paid live training (for $97) about putting on a paid live training, which I call the Most Valuable Offer.
Before you start to think I’m pulling ye ole leg, I am not. I’m being 100% serious.
I’ve put on a dozen or more of these Most Valuable Offers. They are most valuable because of the following math:
1. Value = earnings – expenses
2. Earnings = money today, money tomorrow, leads, relationship, connection, status
3. Expenses = time, effort, despair, actual deliverables
The fact is, a paid live training:
* Has much higher perceived value than a book, and is comparable to a course
* Takes just days to prepare instead of weeks or months or never (books, course)
* Is relationship-building (people get to see you, interact with you) rather than relationship neutral (course)
* Is forgiving (you can make all kinds of flubs and it will still be ok, while a single typo in a book that took a year to write will get you a 1-star review from some would-be nemesis on Amazon)
If you’d like to learn what I’ve learned about running Most Valuable Offers, so you can run them yourself whenever you’re short of a sexy offer, and so you can almost passify your content: