|
MICHAEL SENOFF: I want to remind your listeners that
the whole point of this audio interview and delivering audio interviews
online is to free up your time. You don't want to be sitting there
answering the same questions over and over again. There lot’s of better
things that you can be doing like going down to the bay, going running,
having lunch with your wife or playing with your kids. The whole point
and the most valuable thing that these audio interviews have done for me
is to free up my time. MUSIC INTRO
BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com and today I am
interviewing one of my personal marketing go to guys Michael Senoff with
HardToFindSeminars.com about how to create your own high ticket
information product using audio interviews. Michael has created over 200
information products over the past few years including one that sells
for $5,970. And he did it without being an expert on the subject or
spending a lot of time and resources. In fact I have worked with Michael
on several projects and it never ceases to amaze me how he cashes out
these high quality and high ticket products so fast. And best of all he
is also an expert at showing other people how to do the same thing. You
don't need to be an expert in anything. You don't need fancy speaking
skills or anything else. And you certainly don't need a lot of money and
resources to do this. Just follow the recipe Michael is going to give
you and you will have a product in just a few days, maybe even just a
few hours that you can start selling for $100, $500 or even $1000 or
more. I have seen him do it many, many times and he is going to show us
how to do it right now. So with that said Michael thank you for doing
this and how are you?
MICHAEL: Ben I am doing well. Thank you for the wonderful introduction.
It was very kind of you and I appreciate it.
BEN: Well I have learned an awful lot from you about the subject and I
know a lot of people listening to this need some good ways to get
started. Maybe they had an e-book or just some ideas and they would just
love to have some product created so they can start selling it and
making some good money but they don't know where to begin.
MICHAEL: Well sometimes it takes people a little time to get going. I
will use you as a perfect example. We have been talking about this stuff
for probably three or four years and I am proud of you Ben because you
are finally doing it. I think you are probably kicking yourself because
you are wishing that you had started doing this two or three year’s ago
because you would have a mountain of stuff.
BEN: Oh absolutely. There is no question about it. It's exciting and
when you start doing it and you start seeing results you realize why you
have been doing this for so long.
MICHAEL: Well hopefully we can show your listeners how easy it is and
some of the magic that happens by starting to do audio interviews and
using audio to sell and market.
BEN: You know what I'm going to challenge you on something. You make a
pretty big claim on your site that you can show people how to turn a $28
book into a $3900 product. Now how do you do that and what is that all
about?
MICHAEL: There is a lot to it but I'll give you a simplified version. I
think the best way to do it is to use an example of how I have done this
in the form of a story. I'll talk about one of my high end selling
products that is called the HMA Marketing Consulting Systems. This is a
home study training where we train people to become marketing
consultants. We have consultants all over the world who have bought into
this home study system. I started marketing it at the end of 2004 and
every year we are generating more and more sales all automatically. Now
there was a lot of work at the very beginning. A lot of audio interviews
but the main outline of this HMA Marketing System was in the form of a
book that sold on Amazon for about $10. And I found a marketing expert
who wrote this book just like there are millions of experts who have
tremendous expertise. And because they are not as educated as you or I
about direct marketing and the information product industry and this
kind of niche that anyone listening is so lucky to be involved in
because 99.9% of the population have no idea about, so they go the
traditional route. And experts believe that what they need to do is put
all their knowledge into a book and that's what most people do. Like you
can go to any expert just like I found this expert who had this book and
I approached him and I said how would you like to take that book and
turn it into a marketing consulting system? Now I do want to add that he
had already turned his book into a system of videos that he was training
people to do marketing consulting. But he had no online presence. So he
had a book and he had a set of videos and he was putting people through
training. But when I contacted him he was doing nothing with that. So
when I approached him I said I would do all the marketing and I would
sell your fundamental ideas on marketing consulting and I would like to
use audio interviews with you and use the marketing that I know how to
do to build the value of this book, to increase it into an information
product that can be delivered both online and in physical form. And that
is what I have and have been marketing for the last three years called
HMA Marketing Consulting System.
BEN: Okay Michael what is it that you did first? And how did you come up
with the outline for the HMA System?
MICHAEL: In a nutshell. First I negotiated a deal. I told him that I was
going to do all the marketing using my skills to do audio interviews.
And he agreed. Then the very first thing that I did was I said let's do
an interview. So I took his outline of this book and we did an audio
interview and I turned the outline of the chapters of this book into
questions and I simply asked him the questions, sat back, listened, I
recorded the interviews digitally and that was the start of increasing
the value of that $28 book. Now over the years I have still been working
on doing more audio interviews on the subject building more and more
value. I talk about the more you talk to more you make. The more audio
interviews you have the more information you have on the subject the
more valuable it becomes. And we’ll talk about why this is in some of
the other questions. But in essence you can find any expert who has a
book. You can look at the outline of that book and take that outline or
subjects in the index and turn them into forms of questions. Then simply
invite them to do an interview or if you have negotiated a deal with
them where they understand that you are going to interview them and take
their knowledge that they have put into that book or any other knowledge
they have and you simply start interviewing and asking questions and
canning and cloning it. And that's a term from the late great Gary
Halbert. You've got to capture that interview, that audio, that word
into a recording whether it's on one of those old cassette tape
recorders or a new digital recorder today that you could pick up at
RadioShack for $50. Once you have that raw material that in the film
industry they call the tape you have gold because you can take that
information and you can start polishing it and editing it if you choose.
You can start packaging it and turning it into transcripts. You can take
those raw contents and build value with it. So that is in a nutshell
what I have done with the HMA System. We will probably talk more about
that in detail.
BEN: You talk a lot about audio why not video or text or something else
what makes audio the best format for doing this?
MICHAEL: You know when I interviewed Vic Conan from Nightingale Conan
he’s the son of the founder of Nightingale Conan the largest distributor
and publisher of audio information products. And in the interview he
talks about how audio is so forgiving because you can listen to
something and you can press the rewind button and listen to it again.
You can listen to the message over and over again. And I have students
who come back to me. Before we got into this interview I had a call from
a guy who said he has listened to over 50 hours of my audio content and
he took what I said to heart and he created some karate information
products and he has some questions and wants some consulting. I have to
call the guy back when we are finished with this interview. I have
testimonials from people. Greg Peary e-mailed me and I'm going to be
interviewing him on Tuesday he ended the e-mail by saying Michael I have
listened to every single one of your audio recordings on
hardtofindseminars.com. But it just shows you if someone is interested
in something and you are giving some value delivering it through an
audio and especially through an audio interview because it is the
easiest way to get it into their head. And let me tell you marketing is
about getting your information inside the mind of your prospect. It's
about mind share and delivering it through audio in a convenient way for
your listener that makes his life easy and convenient where you can
still do other things you’re going to have a better chance of getting
your information, your sales pitch and your ideas into his head. I
started with audio because I'm not really that technical of a guy. In my
mind if I was going to be doing video and you are doing interviews with
video you need camera equipment, you need to go on location and you need
to have a lot more skills in the editing process. It was just way out of
my technical league. I didn't even consider it because there was no way
I was willing to work that hard to do video production. And there are
also some other reasons. Recording audio is easy. All you need is your
digital recorder and your little device that you get from RadioShack and
just like we have done the day before you start talking, I know you are
recording digitally Ben and all you have to do is press the button that
says record. And I have done the same thing. I’m looking at my Sony
Digital Recorder that I picked up years ago for under $100 from Circuit
City. And this is my work-horse. This is really when I started kicking
butt with my audio recordings because before I realized that these
little devices were out there I was using a piece of software online
that was a lot more inferior. If anyone has listened to some of the
earlier recordings on my site you can hear the difference in the
quality. And there were problems with that. I didn't have a reliable way
to record interviews by phone. There is an interview with a guy named
Jason Ryan Isaacson who interviewed me and I will have to thank him
because he is the one who turned me on to the digital devices and that
really freed me up for doing audio interviews without any hassles and
without any problems. Also audio is a lot more natural. It's me and you
talking on the phone. You are asking me questions and I'm answering
them. And this is the natural state of conversation. With video there is
a lot more production, a lot more scripting, a lot more storyboards and
it's not as easy. The interview style is proven to work since the
beginning of TV. You know Eugene Schwartz talks about one of the very
first infomercials that was ever done was called The Piano Man. It was
actually a video infomercial but it was in an interview style. Look at
Opera Winfrey and all the top leading interviewers out there is all
interview style. And the reason I think it's because it's normal
conversation. It's what we have grown up with listening to our parents
or our brothers and sisters or people talking. It's not out of the
ordinary so it doesn't come across pushy or salesy [sp]. It's just what
we are used to in natural conversation. And it is a great way to sell
and a great way to deliver information. Another wonderful reason to use
digital audio is its mobile. And I wouldn't probably say this for five
years ago but think about it now you see the commercials and all the
digital devices; the PDAs, cell phones, the iPod Nana, and MP3 players.
These are devices that are getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Now
with downloadable audio and MP3 files and the ability to deliver them to
your market as simply as downloading it from the Internet you have a
better outlet for distributing your audio. And audio can be listened to
wall you are multitasking, while you are exercising, while you are
sitting at your desk working. So I believe it gets more listenership
than a video would because video you have to have your eyeballs on the
screen and your ears engaged and you can't multitask and do that. Audio
can be turned into a CD that can be played in the car and you could have
someone full attention and have them listen on CD. These are a couple of
the other advantages as well.
BEN: What you are saying about audio is said to have more chances to
sell a person on something because you may only watch a video once or
twice because the TV is always being used by somebody else. But when you
are driving your car around and stuff you're taking that CD with you and
this is for sales pitches obviously that I have been sold on Dan
Kennedy's magnetic marketing thing and I've heard that audio probably 10
times. I decided I finally had to buy it. If that had been a video I
probably would never have bought it that fast. And something else you
said look at the format of a Q&A. Going back to Eugene Schwartz and his
book he talks about adopting and borrowing formats for a media that
people are already using and trust. Like a newspaper he would make an ad
look like a newspaper article if you don't want to make it look like an
ad. Well if you are putting a sales pitch in the structure of a Q&A it
doesn't look like a sales pitch you are delivering it almost like an
editorial style ad in a newspaper.
MICHAEL: Yeah I agree. Look at the news which people are conditioned to
trust. You have news anchors delivering direct content to you but when
there are reporters on location you have a Q&A style delivery. You have
the anchor asking the on location reporter questions. It is an interview
between anchor and reporter. And people are certainly conditioned to
believe the news. And certainly feature articles in magazines are Q&A
style. The question and answer style for delivering information is
proven, tried and true. And people are conditioned to trust it and it
works. For information publishers and even for copywriters to gain
intelligence in their research, I mean, copywriters, let’s face it
researches most your work and if you are not getting the answers to what
your market wants around your product and you are going to fail. And
there is no other way to get those answers but to ask questions if you
are doing the actual interviewing. Questions are the answer.
BEN: Now what if someone doesn't have a book and maybe they just had an
idea can they still used the message that you create your products with?
MICHAEL: The one fear that will stop people in their tracks from
creating audio products or creating any products is 1) they believe they
have to be the expert and they don't have to be the expert. They don't
have to know anything. And you want it this way. Just about all of the
products on my site except for one I position myself as not being the
expert. I find the experts. And I'm just the guy asking the questions. I
am just a deliverer of the answers for my potential customers and
prospects. Looked at my site and you'll see that the only subject I
position myself as an expert is on how to create information products
using audio and using the audio interview format. And I claim to be an
expert because I have done it so many times. And it is real important
when you're creating information products that you don't be the expert
and there to get rid of your ego and be the deliverer of the
information. All you have to be is the guy who asks the expert the
questions. Just like in this interview you are bringing expert content
to your listeners. But you are just Ben Settle and you are asking the
expert the questions. And I am sure you will agree he found some magic
in that when it comes to maybe promoting a product that your expert
offers in the magic is you interviewing the expert elevates your expert
status even though you are not positioned as the expert people perceive
you as being more of an expert on the subjects of the people that you
are interviewing. Wouldn't you agree?
BEN: Oh yeah.
MICHAEL: That’s the trick. That's the magic that people don't understand
of what will happen. But the reality is I'm not much of an expert at
anything except asking good questions and creating and editing good
audio content. But because I have so much of it the magic is I am
perceived as the amazing, world-class, marketing expert.
BEN: I would say that you are perceived as an expert because you told me
about this before that as a celebrity actually people will call you up
and say whoa I'm actually talking to you I have heard all of your
interviews.
MICHAEL: This is just the magic of good marketing. This is the result of
good marketing. I view myself as a somewhat average guy. I work hard. I
love what I do. In the audio that I create I wanted to be the best. But
this is nothing that any of your listeners can't do. And you are
absolute proof of this than. You are doing it and doing a great job. And
you are going to be amazed as you continue to pile on more audio, better
content at the results that it brings.
BEN: May I ask the question to if you don't have a book or just an idea
you mentioned the barter thing that you had joint venture with and we
sold for what $1500.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BEN: And that’s a 45 minute interview. It's basically the system. That's
not like it take you years to create that. It was like a day was that?
MICHAEL: It was a day. I’ll tell you exactly what it is and there are
some good points that we can talk about that product, barter secrets.
This is a product that teaches people about the barter industry. It's
like a trade club. There are members all over the United States and all
over the world who join this common club. It’s kind of like eBay anyone
who signs up with eBay is a member of the eBay organization and they
choose to buy products from each other. What's great about that for eBay
is that every time somebody buys a product on eBay, eBay makes a little
piece of that action right? They make a percentage of the gross sales
depending on how much the products sold for. And they make money on
listing fees, subscription fees and products and services that they
sell. Well barter is the same thing. Look at the barter industry. There
is a company called ITEX. ITEX is a trade organization; kind of compare
them with eBay. ITEX has tens of thousands of members all over the
country and they are inclined to buy from each other. And with barter
you buy with trade credits which are kind of like dollars. They are
dollars that can only be used within the barter organization. I had
learned a couple of different lessons, one playing a monopoly game how
valuable these dollars were and then I had learned how to buy these
dollars at a discount because the dollars didn't have as much value as a
regular US dollar where you could spend a green dollar anywhere in the
world and it's got value, it's expendable. But in a monopoly game I was
playing you can only spend your monopoly money with the other three or
four people you are playing with. So there is not as much value. But I
learned a little trick from someone when I was asking questions from
someone who had more experience in the barter industry than I had. And
she said something; she said you can just buy these trade dollars from
other barter members at a discount. And I said really? And I had her
turned me onto her source for trade dollars and sure enough it was true.
I was able to buy trade dollars for up to 80% off the value. And I had a
free recording on my website that explained the concept on how to do it.
And I had a gentleman out of Washington who contacted me and wanted
consulting specifically on how to do bartering. I think he paid me $700
for consulting and I explained to him in detail exactly how to do that.
And one recording that he paid me explaining to him this technique
became the foundation of our Barter Secrets Product. It's just one 45
minute recording. Remember Rob from Washington?
BEN: Yeah.
MICHAEL: But how did I use audio to increase the value? What did we
first start selling at? $297
BEN: It was really cheap I don't remember the price.
MICHAEL: I think I even had it for free up on the site right?
BEN: You did originally.
MICHAEL: It went from being a free recording on my site to a product
that sold for $297. And then we began to increase the product. But
before we increased the product we had to increase the value of the
product. What is the simplest way any of your listeners can increase the
value of a product without too much time and without a headache? By
adding more audio interviews. So when we sold the product for $297 it
came with a one hour consultation with me. So as we started selling the
product people were calling for a one on one consultation. They all had
different questions things they didn't understand. They all had
different ideas and I did consultations. With their permission I
recorded each one of the consultations and I think we have about eight
hours of our best one-on-one consultations on this one concept. So now a
one 45 minute interview recording turned into eight additional
one-on-one consultations on the subject of how to buy these trade
dollars at a discount and how to do barter. I also did additional
interviews with experts in the retail barter industry. So every time I
did an interview I increased the value of the product. And then we
increased the product to $497 and now we have increased it to $1497.
BEN: And I am sure it will probably go up as you add even more.
MICHAEL: You’re right. As a matter of fact and I just had a call from, I
don't know if you remember Marcelo he was one of the students and he
contacted me. I haven't talked to him in years. He is one of the one
hour consults. He had a lot of questions. And I remember that consult
because he didn't understand. And he called me yesterday and I have an
additional 20 minutes of consulting that I'm going to tack onto the end
of that original recording that we did years ago about a successful
transaction that he did and some problems he had as well.
BEN: So this just proves you can start with something that's only a half
hour consultation on getting a client and you can start selling that and
build on it and just keep increasing the value.
MICHAEL: You’re listeners are talking on the phone every day and if they
are not capturing and cloning and not recording their calls. If they are
not recording their questions and answers, the same ones that they are
giving over and over again if they are not recording their free advice
they are going out for no money and their consulting that they are
probably doing for free automatically they need to go to Circuit City or
go on eBay and buy themselves a digital recorder and get the thing from
RadioShack said they can start recording their calls even if they turn
their recorder on and to start saving and collecting their recordings.
Now you always want to get permission to record the calls from the
people that you are talking to. But just by pressing that will record
button you are capturing gold. You are capturing value today you can use
and create into information and products.
BEN: Another thing that I wanted to ask you and I'm really glad that you
were talking about that was how do you arrange it with people that you
are interviewing so that you can keep the rights and you don't have to
pay them a royalty or anything?
MICHAEL: When I first started I had this audio release agreement that he
used to use but I found that it was a real pain in the butt. So if you
contacted me and said Michael you want to do and interview and let's say
we didn't know which other and I said yes. You are going to be all
paranoid because you want to market and maybe sell this interview down
the road or repackage it and you want to rights. And that's going to be
a deal killer 50% of the time because little agreements and contracts
like that scare people. So the way I handled it I didn't even mention
anything about rights unless you're getting into larger products that
something that you want to discuss. But on the day of the interview when
he first talked to get ready to do an interview you say I'm going to
start recording now, press the record button and then I would say
something like Ben you understand that you are being recorded and you
say yes and you understand that I am going to interview you on this
subject and you understand that I have a full rights to do what ever I
want with this interview. I can sell it. I can market it. I can
repackage it. And you understand that you do not have the rights to do
anything with it. You make the terms.
BEN: Does anyone ever get mad and ask why can't they use it?
MICHAEL: Anything’s negotiable. I'm just saying depending on what you
want to do, whatever you want you can negotiate it right there before
the call and you have it recorded. And you have an agreement, a legal
agreement between two people. Now we can talk about negotiating rights
and how to do that a little bit later on if you'd like.
BEN: Yeah I was just thinking if worse comes to worst you can say we
both have the rights to do whatever we want.
MICHAEL: You know as you get more experience under your belt and as you
become more confident and as you have more successes you are going to
ask more for what you want. A lot of people who don't have the
confidence and start doing interviews they are viewing it as a person
they are interviewing is doing them a favor. The reason the interview
process works if they are agreeing to an interview because they know
that they are going to get some potential exposure. It's no different
than the press and the media or when Opera has on stars. They come onto
a show not just to come onto her show that they come onto her show
because they have a new movie coming out. Like Sean Penn has a new movie
coming out. You doing the interview there needs to be something in it
for the person who is doing the interview with you and that is going to
be that promotion; more exposure of their name, you may want to agree to
do a joint venture where you promote their products. So there does have
to be something in it for them. What is really important is you need to
have the attitude from the start that you are doing them the favor they
are not doing you to favor and that will take you a long way. Does that
make sense?
BEN: Yes it does. You mentioned the HMA System and the Barter System can
you give us some more examples of how you created high ticket products
like this?
MICHAEL: My highest end product is when I’m actually working with
clients to create an entire information product. Now I did an interview
with a gentleman named Joe McVoy and he is a marketing expert and he had
tons of experience of selling products into Wal-Mart. And after the
first interview we were talking and we said we should create a product
on how to get into Wal-Mart. And he said I have an entire outline for a
product already written up in outline form on how to do that. So he and
I negotiated a deal and on the negotiating partner I'll tell you exactly
how we did this in a nutshell. I agreed to co-create this product with
him. I would be the interviewer. I would do all the production of the
audio interviews. I would do all the editing. I would create audio
transcripts and that the entire package together; the CD artwork,
promotion, his copy and the sales letter. He agreed to participate as
the expert and to be interviewed. And what we negotiated was he would
have total rights to the product to market and sell and then I would
have total rights to the product to market and sell. We agreed to
private label the product where he called that one thing that I called
it another thing. And basically we would both be rewarded based on our
ability to market. And that was a great negotiation. So this is a
perfect example of how to negotiate a win-win deal. And as your
confidence increases and you realize that you can interview anyone and
be able to create any kind of information product that you want you’re
going to want to get paid more for your own time and for your
performance. So I would tell you again and I keep coming back to
confidence and imagine that you have the confidence already and that you
really are an expert at interviewing because all that you need to be
able to do is ask the questions and you will make more money from your
negotiations because you will negotiate a right. Plus I have a great
recording on negotiating on my site which any one of your listeners
should listen to.
BEN: Okay. Can you give me another example of another product?
MICHAEL: Now here's another product and I marked it on my site. I'm
going to tell you the story of how this all came about. It's kind of
similar to the HMA. About four or five years ago I was selling products
on eBay and I was looking for seminars on eBay to sell. I found this guy
selling this business buying course. And I contacted him and I said I'm
really interested in this business buying course how many of these do
you have? And the guy's name was Art Hamill. Now back in the mid-80s,
1985 this guy was all over TV. He was in the seminar business putting
people through a seminar. He put over 100,000 people through a seminar
in Southern California area on how to buy a business. He was traveling
on the seminar circuit with Robert Holwin and E. Joseph Cosmen and this
guy was a big wheel back in the mid 80’s. But he had just turned 70 and
he was dumping his entire remaining inventory and I was looking for
products to sell on my site. That very first time I talked to him he
allowed me to interview him and anyone can listen to that very first
interview on my site. I met him through eBay, he already had a seminar
product, he was clearly an expert and I bought his remaining inventory
on cassette tape. And for years I must have sold a couple hundred of
them in its original form until we ran out of them. And then I got the
exclusive rights to re-master those cassette tapes into a digital
product. We had it put on CD. We turned his workbook into a digital
workbook. We had transcripts made. Out of his 12 cassette tapes I had
them transcribed and increased the value of his product by having the
audio transcripts of cassette tapes. I took his cassette tapes and
turned them into digital products so they can now be digitally
downloaded from the internet. It was now a more convenient way for the
customer to absorb and digest the information rather then listening on
cassette tape or rather then listening on a CD, therefore increasing the
value again. I what then of in binder and had bad digitized into a PDF
which made it more accessible for people with a laptop or people online
to go to the audio therefore increasing the value again. Now I increased
the value three times right there without doing one interview. But I did
start doing interviews with him. He sends 2004 I have done an additional
audio interviews with Art Hamill but here's the catch or we give away
specifics on how to buy a million-dollar business for free. And I give
them away for free in the form of audio interviews up on my site. Then
you and I worked on this and you created a sales letter for the product
which we have pasted right under all those three audio interviews. Now
if I had the chance to gain some mind share and get into the head of
those people interested in owning their own business and they want to
learn from an expert and I have given away 12 of 13 hours of free audio
interviews, transcripts that they can download. I'm getting mind share I
have gotten their attention and there is no resistance for them to
listen to the information from my expert and I have a better chance of
selling them that product, that workbook or that course and then some
additional bonuses which they don't get for free. And we started selling
a product for $297 and we increased the price to $497 and now we are up
to $1497. This is a $1500 product which is making us more money then
when we were selling it for the lower price.
BEN: You know me another good thing you did but that was when we first
started selling that we were getting questions from people about
business plans. So what you did was found some more experts and added
that the course just using audio.
MICHAEL: That’s right. If you're creating information products and you
are using an outline of a book or stuff that expert has there is another
way which we describe in detail in my audio marketing secrets products.
Let's say Art Hamill didn't cover some subjects that we were getting
questions from students about. Then all I had to do was find another
expert and interview them and include that in the package. So another
great way of increasing and bumping up the value of your existing
product is still additional interviews with other experts other than
your main expert of the product that you're selling. So we did. We did
interviews on financing with a bank financer. We did two additional
interviews with Angel Investors, from the UK and one from Australia.
Another thing which I thought was the question you're going to ask which
is really valuable for online marketers is when I would get questions
about the course from students I would get lists and lists of questions.
I would save up all of these questions and in three of the interviews I
have questions and answer Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 with Art Hamill I
would have all the questions from the students and I would call Art and
I would say I have some more questions from students why don’t we just
record these and we’ll have them and we don’t have to keep answering
them. And then I would just ask him questions directly from the
students. And those became question and answer interviews. Answering the
specific questions from the specific students of exactly what they
wanted to know. So answering the questions about your products that
you're selling can become interviews that will help you sell your
product but more importantly it puts your sales process on automatic
because those questions and answers are sitting right there for your
prospect to listen to in the form of an audio or to read in transcript
form. And I want to remind your listeners the whole point of this audio
interview and delivering audio interviews online is to free up your
time. You don't want to be sitting there answering the same questions
over and over again. There are a lot of other things that you could be
doing like going down to the Bay, going running, having lunch with your
wife or playing with your kids. The whole point and the most valuable
thing piece of audio interviews have done for me is to free up my time.
And again I'll go back by you not having a recording device to record
the things that you're saying over and over and over again wasting time
is a shame. You need to start capturing and leveraging your time by
delivering the answers to things that you're dealing manually in the
form of digital audio on a website.
BEN: The next question I have for you is, and I know a lot of people are
probably thinking this is how long it takes to create these things?
MICHAEL: That all depends. It depends on the price of the product. If it
depends on how detailed the product is. It depends on how much time you
want to put into it. We’ll use the example of the first Barter secret
recording when I did that 45 minute interview with Rob. That only took
45 minutes to do that audio interview and I didn't have to edit it. It
could be raw and unedited and could have still sold for the same price.
I'll give you another example. I took on a client and a guy named J.D.
Miller who is a CPA and he approached me to develop a full on
information products on all his teachings on financial mastery in
investing strategy. And I will tell you if you are creating products
with clients using audio interviews of yourself twice the time that you
think it's going to take. We started this time last year and we agreed
that we would have it finished by January so three or four months was
the ETA for the time and we are not even finished yet. It’s almost a
year later. So when you are developing full on information products it
can take several months, maybe even half a year it depends on how much
stuff you are doing. And I guess the mistakes that I made and that I
would do differently when committing to a big project like that is 1) I
would always get at least half your money up front before you start the
project. 2) I would get a schedule that they can commit to of what we
are going to do, win and I would get a time of when the product is to be
complete. And I would get an agreement in writing. See I am always ready
to go to create the product on time enter copywriters can probably
relate to this when they are hired to do copywriting. You are probably
ready to go to the copywriting but you're at the mercy of getting all
the information you need from them. They have to prepare and they're the
ones dragging their feet. So is reported to get half the money up front
and to get a time commitment. And if they can't to fulfill on the time
commitment and they are on-time payments that they have to pay you on a
certain time schedule then they have to have some leverage or money in
the game to keep from dragging their feet.
BEN: This is if you were going to do this for someone else at the
service.
MICHAEL: Yeah that's the high end or the longest ever taken could be a
year. I just completed a product with Nick Gilbert called Gorilla
Internet Marketing Tactics. It's a product on Internet marketing and
that took us probably three months to do. It consisted of about 10 hours
of audio recordings and audio interviews. But I want to tell you your
product is really never done because you can always keep increasing the
value of it. For instance with Nick maybe today or maybe tomorrow then,
if I had an idea, you note your minds always thinking and I'm always
thinking how can I bump up the value of this product. And I had some
problems online where someone hacked into my michaelsenoff.com site. A
phishing scam you know, those eBay phishing scams.
BEN: Yeah.
MICHAEL: Well there was a phishing scam on my michaelsenoff.com site and
I started getting e-mails from people saying hey what's this you are
trying to get my username and password for eBay and I don't have an eBay
account. And I would ask for the league and they would send it to me and
you could see that it came from michaelsenoff.com. Now Nick Gilbert, the
host of my site, fortunately I have a great relationship with him and he
handles my server and everything. We got on it right away and took care
of the problem but it just made me think how vulnerable curse of servers
and people who are running websites really are. It made me realize how
people can take any website and really destroy your business so I said
why don't we do an interview and add value to this Gorilla Internet
Marketing course that we put together and let's come up with 15 Internet
security blunders that most people are making and how to avoid them. And
you should see the stuff that we have on this is amazing. And it is all
about how hackers can destroy your site and how you can protect
yourself. You simply won't find information like this anywhere. And this
is extremely valuable information that I had to dig out of him because
he is so knowledgeable about all of this hacker stuff and Internet
security and that is very valuable information. And we are going to add
that to the product. So you are always going to be thinking about how we
can increase the value of the product. The more you talk the more you
make. The more audio you have, the more transcripts you have the more
you can sell your product for. So you should always be growing your
product or at least thinking about how you can increase the value of
your product by doing another audio interview. If you just dedicated
yourself to nailing out a product and that's all you did you could do 10
or 15 hours of audio interviews in a week and you could have a full on
product. I have a lot of other things going so you just want to pace
yourself and if you really needed to get a product out you could do it
within a week a full on product. If you have other things going you just
have to schedule it.
BEN: You were talking about that. You hear the seven dollar reports
going on. Well you could probably do that with every interview while you
are building your product. You could sell the first one while you're
building the rest of them and every time you do a new one you could sell
it by itself and then put it all together into one big course later. But
you would be making money the whole time.
MICHAEL: You could do that. As you're building a product you could sell
it. You could give it away free. You can have the little advertisement
at the end of each interview that directs them to a call to action for
more information go here and direct them to a sales letter. It's all
about packaging. It's just like I have 117 hours of audio interviews on
my site. You’ll notice that I have started packaging them. I have gone
through the ones and I have created categories. For instance I have a
category called Fast Cash Audio Interview Series where there are
interviews on how anyone can listen to one of these interviews and go
out and make $100 a day. For instance there is an interview with a
window washer and I get specific information and we do three-way calls
where we go get window washing accounts. You will hear us do it over the
phone live. Anyone can do it if they are really motivated. It doesn't
take a lot of money to get started. There is an interview with the guy
who does a cleaning business where you can start your own cleaning
business just by using your phone and getting other people to do
everything for you. I have an interview with a guy who is in a lawn care
business. These are labor intensive things but if someone needed to make
some fast cash. We interviewed him on how to make money cutting yards,
how to make money cleaning gutters and how to make money delivering
mulch. There are two or three interviews on how to install door viewers.
Where you go around with your drill and installed the little peep holes
in the door and you provide that as a service. I have a whole category
of audio interviews where I have taken all of my interviews related to
sales and sales training. I have an interview with Tom Hopkins. I have
an interview with a master sales trainer out of Australia.
BEN: This is the end of part one. Please go to part two. If you would
like to order my information product creation system you can go to
http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/AMS.htm
MICHAEL: So now I’m creating categories and packaging my audio
interviews. And they can be packaged a thousand different ways. In this
interview Ben we are talking about a lot of different things. We can
market or package this interview and gear it towards copywriters on how
to do better research using audio interviews for your copywriting
clients. Bur we could also take the same interview and you can include
it with a package of interviews for information on marketing to
publishers, people who create information products. Each one of your
interviews is very flexible. It’s all in the headline and the
description of how you position the audio interview. So it can be
repackaged. I can take one interview and package it for 5 or 6 different
products. Does that make sense?
BEN: Yeah. The number things that you can do with it are unlimited.
MICHAEL: It’s endless and it’s easier and faster then writing it all
out. That’s the bottom line. Writing is painful. It’s hard work.
BEN: And that’s one of the reasons the transcripts help so much. All
your research as far as the product is concerned is in there.
MICHAEL: Well for copywriters and you know this, you have been a
copywriter for a long time. There was copywriting before you used audio
interviews to write copy and there’s copywriting after you started using
audio interviews to write your copy. You tell me from a copywriters
standpoint which one do feel is more effective, better research and
easier to do.
BEN: The interviews easily cut the time and effort in half if not more
then that.
MICHAEL: Now I’m not the first person doing this and neither are you.
Eugene Swartz in the board room, this is exactly what he did with Marty
Olson. He interviewed him. They met in person he sat back, shut his
mouth, and Eugene Swartz listened to the dreams and ideas of Marty
Olson. And he just took notes.
BEN: And then he just asked the right questions.
MICHAEL: He asked the right questions and that was 90% of his letter.
You know copywriters need to be better listeners. They just need to
listen when they are doing their research and they need to use those
exact same words in their sales letter. But they also need to use their
copywriting skills and their headlines to create the transitions and
everything. But any copywriter listening, hiring someone to interview
their subject would be extremely valuable in the form of saving time, in
getting better quality research. You really need someone who knows how
to ask questions. The copywriter should really dig deep and do audio
interviews, more so by phone using audio in an interview process
one-to-one rather then just writing questions down and submitting them
through e-mail because you are able to dig deeper when you are on the
phone with them one-on-one with them.
BEN: They won’t answer anything in an e-mail. Most people don’t want to
write and I don’t blame them.
MICHAEL: You have to make it easy for them.
BEN: You’re right. You have to ask them and dig it up. This is why I
don't like e-mail interviews. You have seen those before and what people
say I'm going to denote the guy some questions and he'll send me back
the answers. But he is not going to give you detailed answers in
writing.
MICHAEL: No because it's hard and no one wants to work but it's not hard
to talk. That's what makes it all work. It is not hard to talk. Everyone
can talk and everyone's got ideas that they want to share and everyone
wants to talk about themselves. And if you are the guys it's a good
listener and willing to listen then they will tell you everything you
want to hear and they will tell you for free.
BEN: Yeah. I'm thinking about the scooter report we interviewed the guy
for about an hour at the most and that was the whole letter. I didn't
have to research the whole subject it was all there.
MICHAEL Right in major job a lot easier. If I said Ben do you want to do
a copywriting project here's this guy's name Buck Gladden and he has
this invention and here is the link to the site and you can go ahead and
whip up the sales letter.
BEN: Yeah that would have been hard.
MICHAEL: You would have said hell no.
BEN: That wouldn't even have worked because you are getting the stories.
MICHAEL: I’ll tell you this quick story. This is the story you and I had
an idea to sell a high ticket product from this guy with an invention on
eBay. He was selling this thing called a scooter port. It was sort of a
kickstand for a kick scooter like those little razor scooters. You put
the front wheel in this plastic device and it holds the scooter upright.
Normally these razor scooters don't have kickstand. So this guy
developed this thing with a classic injection mold and he had sales in
some of the big catalogs like Front Gate and QVC and he was selling the
business on eBay. So I contacted him and I asked if we could help sell
the business and in you and I were going to help create a sales letter
and we were going to sell it using a sales letter and using audio
interviews to promote and sell the business. So you agreed and I called
him up and I did an intensive interview and then I gave you the
interview and that's how you created the sales letter.
BEN: Yeah there was very little outside research. I think I had two
questions or something and that was it.
MICHAEL: This is a great example of another way you can use audio to
sell something. Just like every copywriter knows you could use a sales
letter to sell anything from BMWs to Rolls-Royce is to million-dollar
mansions. Well you can use audio to do the same thing probably just as
effectively may be even better.
BEN: There are the two mediums and you have a powerful set up there.
For anyone who would like to see the actual sales letter that I wrote
for this invention directly from the audio interview that Michael did
with the guy that invented that scooter port I will show you where to
get it at the end of this interview.
MICHAEL: Now let's talk about that for online marketers something that I
just started doing and it did in the economy. I have all kinds of sales
letters all over my website. Well now I'm actually reading the sales
letters into a digital audio recording and offering for download. I say
if you don't have time to read the sales letters here download the MP3
file of the word for word sales letter. You know the whole idea of the
sales letter is if you can get opened and you can get it read you have a
better chance of selling what you're selling. But a lot of people don't
have time online. They are at work, the phone rings, they get distracted
but if I can give them the option to download the word for word sales
letter in the form of an MP3 file they can take it home and put it on
their iPod and listen to it on the way home or burn a CD real quick and
put it in their car. So I had increased my chances of getting in their
mind, getting my sales pitch into their head by offering a downloadable
audio.
BEN: Well you think about it selling by voice is way more powerful than
reading it.
MICHAEL: Right.
BEN: And you're just adding extra layer of persuasion.
MICHAEL: There is definitely another dimension when you're selling by
voice compared to paper absolutely.
BEN: Now I want to shift into more of the technical. We have talked
about what we can do with these things and all that but I want to get
down to the nitty-gritty here as to how we start preparing here to do
these interviews whether you're creating a sales letter type interview
or a product. First of all you outline what you say? Do you ask the
questions first or do you just kind of wing-it?
MICHAEL: You know when I first started I used to wing it. If I said to
any of your copywriter is listening to write a letter and asked them if
they'd just wing it or do they prepare before they write a sales letter
obviously preparing and doing your research is the most important thing.
Now it depends on the type of interview I do and they are different
formats of interviews that your listeners or anyone interested in
creating audio information products can do. If you have a list of
customers by far the easiest and one of the most powerful ways is simply
by asking your customers to submit questions. So anyone on my list has
probably in an e-mail that says I'll be interviewing Vic Conan CEO of
Nightingale Conan and this is your time to ask him questions. All
questions will be answered and I will be doing the interview this
Tuesday so go ahead and reply to this e-mail. Ask as many questions as
you want about Nightingale Conan, about how to create winning audio
information products and I'll submit that to my list and I will get
dozens sometimes over a hundred questions from my subscribers. And then
I know that I'm going to get my listeners exactly what they want to
know. So I'll take those questions and I'll remove the duplicates and I
will prioritize them. The best most compelling questions are put in
front. So I will go to this question and I will list them and I'll
organize them in a way that will make a great interview. And this from
an interviewing standpoint is cake. This is easy because my customers
have already done all the work. And I know that I'm going to be
delivering exactly what they want to know. So it's a question and answer
style interview. So I call Vic Conan I don't have to dream up anything.
I just say Vic how are you doing. Are you ready to get into it? I have
questions submitted from my listeners at Hard To Find Seminars and the
first question is from Ben Settle who is a copywriter and he wants to
know, and I read your question. And I listened for his answer. Now when
he gets the answer a good interviewer will really be listening and I can
dig even deeper. And I can sample why is that or if he talks about
certain aspects in the answer to that question than I can go off on a
tangent. So once I get the ball rolling I can keep expanding on that
question. It's just like when a copywriter start writing once he starts
writing he can get into a mode where he never stops.
BEN: You’ve been doing that right now. I've been asking you questions
based on other questions that I wasn't even an intending on asking. So
that is a perfect example.
MICHAEL: That’s right. You’re the interviewer. You’re doing the
interview. This is a little different because I'm the guy being
interviewed. I'm usually the guy giving the interview and its much
easier being where you are and being the guy answered the questions.
That's also what's great. I am right now positioned as the expert and
it's a lot harder on me than it is on you Ben. I would rather not be the
expert and just be the guy asking the questions and just get all that
free marketing benefit.
BEN: Milk all the money from the expert without doing any of the work
really.
MICHAEL: That’s right. I don’t know anything.
BEN: And that’s probably the best way to do it because if you’re amazed
or astonished by something you didn’t know it’s going to come across. I
mean you’ve been saying things that I didn’t know you’ve doing. I didn’t
know you were reading sales letters into the mp3. That’s a great idea.
MICHAEL: So that question and answer interview style is the easiest and
just one format. Now there is another interview style and I’ll give you
an example. I just did a 2 hour interview that was like a mini-seminar
with a guy named Paul McCord. And he has a best selling book called
Million Dollar Referrals. It’s all over Amazon and I was referred to
him. I was approached to do an interview to promote him. I negotiated a
50% affiliate deal where I would do the interview and I would start
creating audio interviews around his expertise similar to what I have
been doing in the past based on referral marketing. And he has a high
end referral coaching program which is multiple thousands of dollars per
year which is what my intentions are to promote. Now in that interview
there was a lot more preparation. But I’m going to show your listeners
how easy that is to do especially, with Amazon. The first thing I did
was I went to his website. He has a great website with questions and
answers. So I can take those questions and answers where he’s answering
the most common questions that he believes visitors to his website
wanting to know about referral marketing need to know. So I’ll look at
his questions and start reformatting his questions for my interview.
I’ll look at the products he has. He has a couple of audio products he
sells and he has a book. But first I’ll look at the products, I’ll look
at the headlines he has and the descriptions with all the bullets so I
can form more questions from those bullets of the descriptions of the
products he is selling on his website. Then we have his book. I go over
to Amazon and search for his book. Amazon allows you to look inside the
book. You can look at the table of contents. Now you better believe when
someone produces a book that they put a lot of time and thought into
creating that table of contents. And now I have additional content for
more questions as an outline for my interview. Then what I’ll do is
print out that table of contents and I can reformat more questions for
my interview. Then I’ll look in the index. In Amazon.com you can usually
see the index in the very back of the book. There is even more detailed
stuff. So I will look through the index and try and find, kind of like
when you are writing copy you want to look for hooks and bullets. You
want to look for really cool stuff that you can talk about and I’ll
write that down and include that in my list. If I wanted to do
additional research I may Google referral marketing. I may look at other
people who are marketing and selling information products based on
referral marketing. I’ll look at their sales letters and look at their
bullets. So it’s not hard to do the research on the internet and find
plenty of content of people who have already done the research before
you and to put that in the form of questions for your specific interview
and start with that. So you are never going to be drawing a blank. You
will have plenty of questions to draw from on the interview. Another
thing that is really important and you and I talked about this recently
is story sell. I now make it a point before I do the interviews and with
Paul McCord I said Paul this is what I need you to do to prepare for the
interview. I want you to think back and write down 10 case studies, 10
stories of students that you have worked with for your referral coaching
and in the interview we are going to interject these stories all through
the interview. So stories sell. People like to listen to stories. And
this worked really well in the case of the Paul McCord interview because
we picked 5 case studies to include in the interview and what I found
when I was doing this interview with him we started off with stories
from the very beginning. And it was kind of cool because I positioned
him as the expert but when I said Paul can you tell me a case study of
some stories of people you know or worked with who have really increased
their income using referral marketing or using referral’s. So he goes
into this story about some of his clients. So he’s talking about another
guy who used referrals to increase his business so it’s almost two
people away. I’m listening to this story, he’s listening to this story,
the listeners listening the story about someone else in the interview
and then as he’s telling the stories I had all these additional
questions in my research with all the bullets but I found that in the
story I was already answering the questions from the bullet and the
research that I found from his site. So as I ask more questions about
that story and by the time we got through all 5 of his cast studies and
all his stories. I was able to get through most of the content in the
questions that I already had prepared for that interview. Does that make
sense?
BEN: Yeah it just cuts your workload down even more at that point.
MICHAEL: You jut want to be prepared and never run out of anything. If
you’ve prepared and read though your questions and you’ve don’t your
research. You really don’t have to look at them. Like before we were
doing this interview I prepared answers for your questions but honestly
I haven’t even looked at it. But it’s like a just in case because I
don’t want to leave anything out and I want to give your listeners as
much values as possible.
BEN: If you would like to order my information product creation system
you can go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/AMS.htm
You just talked about getting people to do video stories and that can
carry the interview. But some people are scared of the internet and web.
I don’t know, I guess some people are really different. Some people you
really have to dig those stories out. What do you do when you are
interviewing somebody who is quiet and it’s hard to get them to
elaborate on anything?
MICHAEL: Well it depends on why you are doing the interview. And there
is another thing that your listener’s should understand. All your
interview subjects are not going to be dynamic interviews. It depends on
what the interview is for. Are you building value to an existing product
that you are already selling? So Art Hammel interviewed an expert named
Barry on bank financing. He was not the most exciting guy but he didn’t
have to be because the people were already buying the product but I had
additional valuable information on how to get bank financing. He didn’t
have to be exciting. He wasn’t really selling anything. I was using him
to increase the value of my Art Hammel product. Along that same line if
you have a product that you want to increase the value of a big name in
the industry would be very valuable. That’s called marquee value. What
you want is his big name. You want to be able to say included with this
package is an interview with X. It doesn’t even have to be a long
interview because that interview’s purpose isn’t to sell anything the
purpose for that interview is to increase the perceived value of your
information product. Are you with me?
BEN: Absolutely. It’s like you have someone who is the super star but
you just have that name to put on the actual interview or sales letter.
It has done its job.
MICHAEL: That’s right. It has done its job. That’s called marquee value.
Now another thing to keep in mind is that you need to ask yourself why
am I doing this interview? So from my sight HardToFindSeminars.com I
needed an interview on the subject of negotiation. So I sent out a
couple of e-mails to experts in the field and the purpose of me doing an
interview on negotiation was to round out my portfolio on my website on
different subjects. So I found a great guy in negotiating that I
interviewed and the only purpose of that interview was to increase the
variety of the interviews. So now I can say I have an interview with a
master on negotiating. Now I want interviews on my site to be kick-ass
so I want to make sure that interviews on the stuff I am giving away for
free are great because if you’re putting out boring interviews for free
that aren’t on a backend for a product that people are selling. It’s
going to hurt your brand. It’s going to hurt your image. You don’t want
to publish anything that is boring. If you are picking interviews and
you are creating a product which you are selling and it’s a collection
of interviews. You really do want to find the most exciting and best
interview subjects because no one wants to listen to a boring interview.
BEN: All these people who are willing to tell us a couple of stories
they can’t be reserved and tell back.
MICHAEL: Yeah if you get into an interview like that and it’s to build
an information product that’s okay. But I wouldn’t publish 3 interviews
that are really, really bad because you only have one chance to make a
first impression and your listeners may believe that your other
interviews are really that bad. It just all depends on what the purpose
of your interview is. You have to ask yourself that question. And
another thing that I am always asked is how do I get these interviews
with these experts. And in your special offer at the end of this
recording I’m going to provide for your listeners the exact e-mail and
letter that I use to get these interviews. Any one of your listeners can
take this letter and modify it and use it to set up great interviews
with experts just like I have done. Does that answer your question?
BEN: Yes. In fact you just led into the next question. I assume that’s
one of the mistakes that people might make when they are making audio
products like this. What are some of the other mistakes people might
make?
MICHAEL: My current interview is that at least for the last couple of
years I edit these things meticulously. Now I used to edit them all
myself, the entire interview. I have built up to where I have an editor
that does all the preliminary editing. Now when we are talking about
editing what are we talking about? When we do this audio interview it’s
sort of like when a producer shoots a movie. Then it goes to editing and
probably 80% of the film is destroyed and you just have what’s left, the
finest of shots. Copywriters can relate to this. Audio editing is like
your final draft compared to your first draft. You get rid of all your
mistakes, all the um’s and ah’s, the double talks and beeping of the
phone. You want to clean that recording up. And why are you doing this?
You want to make the listening experience for your listener as enjoyable
as possible. They don’t want to hear you telling jokes and laughing.
They don’t want to hear um’s or ah’s. They want to hear a clean
recording. They want to hear the information delivered to them as
cleanly and efficiently as possible and they want to hear it in a timely
manner. They don’t want their time wasted. They want the good stuff, the
information, the valuable stuff. So I would say that one of the biggest
mistakes is people developing and putting out audio that is unedited.
First a copywriter would never put out a rough draft to sell a final
product. Those final sales letters are polished. They are meticulously
checked for spelling mistakes. Words are edited and added. That is a lot
of hard work to edit audio. One hour of audio can take up to 5 hours of
editing so one mistake is not editing your audio. Another big mistake I
see if people go to a website they may read a description of an audio
online and then they may download it. And that audio, you have to keep
in mind is shared and passed along. It is burned on CD’s and uploaded
for friends. You need to have an introduction to that audio. You need to
have an introduction that says who you are, who is doing the interview,
who are you interviewing and what is the listener going to here before
that interview starts to play because you put everything into
perspective. Doing audio recordings without an introduction is a big
mistake. If you’re marketing and selling you also want to promote
yourself in the audio. You’ll notice that throughout all my most recent
audio interviews 10 minutes into an audio you’ll hear a blurb that says
“Hi you’re listening to an audio from Michael Senoff’s
HardToFindSeminars.com” and then 30 minutes into the interview “For more
interviews on sales, marketing and advertising go to
HardToFindSeminars.com”. And then you want an ending. If you have a two
part interview you want to end part 1 by saying something like this ends
part 1 please continue to part 2 because you need to assume that the
people listening to your audio interviews are stupid. You have to tell
them exactly what to do. A lot of my interviews are all posted on i-Tunes
so I’m using these audio interviews on i-Tunes to get people to my site.
Another costly mistake people make when they are doing audio interviews
and they are posting them online is to not have the ID tags. Now when
you put a CD in your player when you are listening to radio you see who
the artist is and what the song it called. These are tags that you can
code your audios with. Now I have my assistant do all of this for me so
I can’t explain exactly how that’s done but I have over 200 audio
interviews that are available through i-Tunes. If you search Michael
Senoff on i-Tunes you will see them all and you will see when it holds
that listing you will see the artist is Michael Senoff and you will see
my url from HardToFindSeminars.com. And also the iPods can alphabetize
their play lists, their song listings. So you need to keep in mind that
it always goes back to paying attention how the end user is using your
audio and there are fortunate people using the audio. They are
downloading it and they are sharing it with their friends. They are
organizing it on their iPods, cell phones, PDA’s, Blackberry’s and on
multiple devices that are coming out. So that’s a mistake not doing the
ID3 tags. Another mistake like in copywriting is not having a call to
action at the end of the interview or even through out the interview. If
we are doing an audio infomercial designed to sell a product I may want
to direct the listener several times through out the interview “for more
information go to” and you give them a url. Or for more information call
1-800-982-6487. Give them a call to action throughout the interview but
at the very end of the interview you want to thank the listener for
listening. Thank you for listening to this audio recording with referral
expert Paul McCord. If you would like more information on his coaching
program please call and then you give the number. Now I have a whole
series on the call to action and this is really, really important when
you are creating and developing information products. I have a
proprietary way that I learned based on an experience how to get paid
for what you are doing. If you negotiate deals with somebody and you are
using audio recordings to promote and sell them. With the internet you
don’t want other people using your audio to sell a similar product they
are using. And I’ve got ways and tips and tricks that will show you how
to keep people from stealing your audio content and from profiting from
your audio content which we can talk about later maybe. Ben here is one
of the biggest mistakes. When you are doing your audio interviews, yes
you are there to ask questions. But the biggest mistake is not
listening. And because you are doing the interview you’re ego is going
to get in the way and it’s going to say ask the question, talk more, I’m
doing the interview, I want to be heard more. You’re going to want to
pipe in and talk more in the interview. And I think that’s a mistake
because you’re doing the interview and you’re really just the guy asking
the questions. They don’t want to hear you they want to hear your
expert. And by you piping in and talking more I think that’s a big
mistake. I think bad language in an interview is a mistake. I think
joking and laughing in the interview, in my opinion, lessens the
effectiveness, the selling power in the interview. There is nothing
funny about making money. You know, ask the wife of the guy who’s having
a hard time paying the mortgage and he’s trying to make some money if
there is anything funny about that. It’s not. I would edit out any kind
of giggling, laughing and jokes during the interview.
BEN: When I was going through your audio marketing secrets course what I
thought was one of the highlights was when you show us how to make
multiple sales from that one sale of that one product. You show us how
to make multiple sales once they buy that one product without doing
anything. It’s just automatic. Can you explain that a little bit?
MICHAEL: Sure. I’ll give you 3 examples of how this can be done and 2
examples of exactly how I’m doing it in current products that I’m
marketing. Let’s say one of your listeners wants to create an
information product on information publishing and it’s going to be a
collection of 10 different audio interviews with experts in the
information products publishing industry. Well let’s say that I’m
putting that product together and I’m going to set up 10 interviews with
experts on information products and I do those 10 interviews. Those 10
interviews are my product. That’s my product, 10 audio interviews that I
have on CD and on transcript. It’s a complete expert’s guide on
Developing and Creating Information Products. So there is my product
that I’m selling whether in digital form for $97 or $497 or I could
build the value up and it could sell for $1,997. But if you really want
to be smart about it before you agree to interview these 10 experts
because there are probably 200 experts on information product
developing. You want to negotiate back end deals with each one of these
experts. You can bet that these information product publishers have an
inventory of information products. They have sales letters already
developed. They may already have audio content that helps sell their
information products. And you want to negotiate affiliate deals with
them. You want to say I’m going to interview you, your interview will be
part of a product that I’m going to sell but if I direct people to this
product that you have I want a deal where I make 50% affiliate
commission or you could negotiate a product that they are currently not
doing anything with. You want to talk with them and get to know what
they have that they have not done anything with. You might be able to
negotiate rights to a product to where you can pay them 20% of the gross
sale and you make 80%. So at the back end of each one of the interviews
that audio interview is going to be designed to give real good value to
your listener but you are also going to be selling, pushing and
promoting that information product that you set up an affiliate deal
with each one of those 10 experts. So now your 10 audio interviews not
only can you sell them and make money but you can also give those away
for free still with the potential of making you money. Does that make
sense?
BEN: Yeah. You can basically sell the product and then there is instant
built in back end sales within the product itself without having to do
anything.
MICHAEL: That’s right. And some can be very high end. And example of one
of my products that I sell, I don’t want to mention which one but there
is a product that I sell and it’s a product that sells for over $1,000
on my site and I make good money from selling that initial product but
there is a back end potential on that product that can make me anywhere
from $30,000 to $100,000. Here is another example: As you create
products out there and audio interviews. You have to understand that if
you are getting them played you want to be able to create different
products and services that you can sell. Now as you go through any of my
interviews on my site and all the different products you will hear me
promoting on the end of my audio interviews some of my higher end
services. One is an audio infomercial service where anyone who has a
product sitting there and they want a hard hitting audio recording
that’s designed to sell the product, and I charge $2,000 for that
service. Then there is the audio creation product. This is where someone
wants me to work with them and create an entire product from start to
finish. Now I can charge anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 for something
like that. Now here is another tip and it has to do with tips. At the
end of each one of my free recordings you will hear “Here’s another tip
from Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com. If you go to Page H on my
site you’ll hear 20 hours of free recordings on how to become a
marketing consultant” or you’ll hear on another recording “Here’s
another tip from Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com. Go to the
section on my site that says products”. So I am directing the listeners
of these audio recordings. I am informing and educating them about
different parts of my site designed to sell them something. I have said
in other interviews that my site is like the monkey maze at the county
fair. You know when you go into the fun house and it has all the mirrors
and you go in and it’s like a maze of mirrors and you get lost in the
mirrors. You know what I’m saying?
BEN: Yeah.
MICHAEL: I want people to come get lost in my site. And as they start
listening to these audio interviews I want them hooked. But make no
mistake my site is designed to yes give away more value then anyone else
on the internet is but it is also designed to create a sale. And I’m
using every part of that real estate which is my audio recording; the
beginning, middle, end, empty space on a 70 minute audio CD is real
estate. If you are putting out audio recordings on a CD that are only 40
minutes then you have 30 minutes of additional listening time that you
can fill up with additional sales material in the form of audio.
BEN: You could put a bonus audio on there couldn’t you?
MICHAEL: Absolutely. And I have on the end of CD products added “here’s
a bonus recording.” Because when someone listens to an audio on the CD
they are in their car and let’s say that the recording is only 30
minutes and it comes to the end, that’s it. But you’ve got their
attention. You have them listening. You can say “here’s an unexpected
bonus for the last 20 minutes of this CD and it’s a recording about”. It
could be one of your other audio recordings designed to sell one of your
affiliate product deals. Don’t ever put out a CD that isn’t filled up
with all 70 minutes of listening time. Another great idea and it’s kind
of an advanced marketing tactic, and Ben I was going to ask you about
this. When you put out all of your audio recordings why don’t we do a
deal where you give me the last 20 minutes of each one of your CD’s to
put my stuff on.
BEN: Yeah.
MICHAEL: You know what I’m saying. I’m kind of joking but it’s serious.
You have people putting out CD products with this empty real estate at
the end of their CD.
BEN: It just adds value to it.
MICHAEL: That’s right. It adds value and you can buy that piece of real
estate. You can buy that chance to get your products message and get
ahead of the listener.
BEN: If you were putting these on your website you could actually sell
that as advertising space to other people doing audio.
MICHAEL: Yes you could. That is audio advertising space.
BEN: And you could change it every month whenever you want.
MICHAEL: Yeah if you wanted to, as digital download you could.
BEN: So you have given a lot of information away in this interview,
probably more then enough for someone to at least get started. But you
and I both know that these types of basics only get you so far. But when
you want to get into the upper level and make a lot of money doing it
the way you have $5,000 product and such you probably need a little more
instruction on this. So I know you created this product called audio
marketing secrets and I know you have agreed to give my subscribers a
very, very huge discount on that, probably more than anyone else is
getting, even those on your own list. Can you tell us a little about
that and where they can find it?
MICHAEL: Sure. Audio marketing secrets like I said earlier in the
interview, every other product that I market on my site, I am not the
expert. This is the only product that I position myself as an expert.
And it is a product that I developed called audio marketing secrets. And
in a nutshell it basically gives you a systemized step-by-step way of
turning your $28 book or just an idea in your head into a $3,900
informational product. Now it could be a $5,900 informational product,
it could be a $100 informational product, $497, $297, $1,497. It all
depends. The more you talk, the more you make. And this product goes
into detail and step by step of exactly how to do it. It is a digital
product where you download the MP3 audio recordings and there are word
for word transcripts and some of the topics we talk about are how to
turn the $28 book into a $3,900 information package. We cover 7 fatal
mistakes that will kill the creation of your audio program dead. You get
the full report in audio downloads. There are front line secrets from
the trenches, break through audio creation report, 17 road blocks that
can stop you from making your information product and how to get around
them fast. There is fast track audio creation guide. These are 17
secrets to planning your audio in the fastest possible time. And also
with your paid order you get a half hour one-on-one audio informational
product consultation. That’s worth $350. I charge $700 an hour for
consulting by phone and you’ll get a full 30 minutes with me to discuss
anything you want about an idea in your or any information product that
you are trying to ad value to or you’re trying to market. Now the real
value in this is I have been selling this product for a number of years
and I have done a lot of these consultations. And I have gone through
all my audio consults that I have done with people with ideas of
information products and I have picked out 15 of the best ones. So you
get 15 hours of me consulting one-on-one with people on ideas on
creating their information product. Now I’ve given you a lot of
information in this audio interview Ben but you have an additional 15
hours of me giving my best advice when I’m really on my game to help
these people create and develop information products. So by the time
someone studies these 15 hours of consultations they are going to really
have all the knowledge, every trick I use, how to do the editing, the
software, what to get from radio shack and you will have step by step of
exactly what I have learned based on my experience developing and
creating all these information products in this product.
BEN: Thank you Michael for doing this a lot of people are going to get a
lot of value out of this.
MICHAEL: Ben it was my pleasure and I hope I have educated and answered
questions on how to create audio and turn them into information
products. I would just encourage your students who have thought about
doing this to just go for it. Why don’t you tell Ben, I know for years
that you thought about it? What were your fears and what finally kicked
you in the butt to actually do it?
BEN: I have to tell you it has taken enough hassles with writing copies
for other people to get to the point where you realize that you have all
this talent, you’ve been reading all these books, you’ve been writing
all these ad’s and you are pouring all your energy into someone else’s
stuff. And for me at least it has been an awakening and I decided why am
I not doing this for my own stuff and how do I start creating my own
product. And I don’t know if every copywriter looks at it that way but I
think you are going too eventually. I guarantee it because it takes a
lot of time and effort and you are only getting paid peanuts compared to
what you could be. If you sell a $5,000 product twice you will make more
than what you would in an upfront fee. And as you have proven with your
HMA thing you can just sell this thing over and over and over. And it’s
like as you said a vending machine.
MICHAEL: Right. One of the funniest things when people call me and they
want to talk I’m telling you 9 out of 10 times this comes out of their
mouth “oh Michael I really appreciate you talking to me I know how busy
you are”. I know how busy you are. And many times I’m picking up the
phone and I don’t have shit going on. And the reason is my audio online
is doing all the work. Michael Senoff’s recordings are talking 100 times
at the same time to people all over the world. The audio is doing all
the work. It frees up my time and gives me a life to do what I want. You
do the work once and it can pay you for your life.
BEN: You asked me before what was the hang up though as far as if there
were any fears or not. So yeah there’s that fear of how do I get
started? How do I know I’m not going to screw this thing up? What do I
do if it doesn’t sound right? How do you find someone to do the edit?
All these things are things that you cover in your course. It’s not hard
at all it’s as simple as picking up the phone and pushing record and
that’s it. All the technical stuff is no big deal. You can find someone
on Elance or something if you really need to.
MICHAEL: Yes, absolutely. If you are so fearful that you cannot do an
interview then I tell people all the time that you need to pay someone
else to do it for you because what you pay for them to do your
interview, if you get it out there and do a little marketing with what
you have will make you much more then what you will pay that other
person. So hire it out. One of my secrets is outsourcing. I have a team
around me. I have an editor, copywriters, webmaster, and writers. There
is no way you can do it all yourself. But your audio interviews are like
your letters, your copywriting. Those are just as powerful sales forces
as your sales letters. And you have to do that right. If you don’t do
that right it can hurt you. So in this course I show you how to do it
right or what I believe is the right way to do it.
BEN: You have done enough of them that I think the proof is in the
pudding.
MICHAEL: Another thing I want to know. I continually add to this course
so as I learn more and develop more and get more ideas I will add to
this audio product. So it is never ending if you want to keep checking
back with it.
BEN: Once again I just want to say thank you. And Michael is giving a
very big, big discount to my subscribers and people who are listening to
this interview. You guys out there because Michael and I have been
working together for awhile and we made this deal. I’m telling you it’s
almost a no-brainer to get it. You can only get by going to
BenSettle.com/audio. Anyone who orders this special offer from Michael’s
audio marketing secrets Michael will include a special link to a sales
letter that I wrote for the scooter port invention directly from
Michael’s interview with the inventor. And once you see this you will
have a blue print and see exactly how I took 95% of the copy directly
from the transcripts that Michael did. And you will get a link to those
transcripts as well.
FREE REPORT
reveals in detail how you can take your own ordinary $28 book,
e-book or even an idea you have in your mind and turn it into a
valuable information product you can sell for $97 up to $3,900 or
more.
click here
|