Micheal Savoie

I am reprinting this article with permission of Terry Telford to show you
what you can do to increase your income streams. This article taught
me a lot and I hope you get as much from it as I received.

Recurring Income – Your Ticket To Intelligent Wealth Creation
By: Terry Telford
Every single human being on this planet has the potential
to be wealthy. Bar none!

That’s a pretty bold statement, but it’s true. You can
create your own financially independent lifestyle in a
multitude of ways. Today, we’ll look at recurring income
as your wealth creation vehicle.

Recurring income is money that flows into your bank
account on a regular basis. Some of the common business
models that take advantage of recurring income include
subscriptions and membership fees.

The most common recurring online plans, pay out on a
monthly basis. Some pay out on an annual or bi-annual
schedule, depending on the payment plan. Many
independently wealthy people have developed their empires
using these business models.

Subscriptions and Membership Fees

Subscriptions and membership fees work in a similar
fashion. The subscriber or member is granted access to a
product or service in exchange for a regular recurring
payment.

This business model guarantees the subscriber/member
continued service and guarantees the provider a locked
in, guaranteed income.

But there are pitfalls. If you’re thinking about creating
a recurring billing product, you could be in for a wild
ride. The following case study is the real life journey
that I took, while creating The Business Professional
Private Members’ Site.

CASE STUDY: The Business Professional Private Membership
Website

President and CEO: Terry Telford
Vice President: Edwin Ryan
Development Start Date: December 15, 2003
Website Launch Date : May, 1, 2004

In the research phase, I decided to keep everything
in-house except for the payment processing. This gave me
greater control over the entire process, but created a
lot more work in the beginning.

The basic modules that needed to snap together and make
the membership area run, were:

1. Membership software to create logins and passwords

2. Affiliate software to track affiliate sales and
commissions

3. Autoresponder

4. Payment Processor

Discovering what software to use was a matter of trial
and error, but I finally ended up choosing:

1. Membership Manager from GroundBreak

2. Ultimate Affiliate Manager to handle the
affiliate and autoresponder functions

3. PayPal / 2CheckOut to process recurring payments

The next step was to have a programmer connect the dots
and make all three programs play nicely together. This
was the step where I realized I’d done everything
backwards.

Instead of finding the software and then the programmer,
I should have found the programmer and let him decide
how to create the system. I was now at a fork in the
road. Do I scrap the software that I already purchased
and start from ground zero, or do I invest in a
programmer to attempt to make all the software play
together.

To make a long story short, I decided on option two and
paid a programmer a small fortune to attempt the
impossible. In the end, The Business Professional works
90% on autopilot and 10% on manual.

It was a long and costly process, but a fantastic
learning experience. And the adventure was far from over.

Now I had a cool Private Membership site, with a $5,762
price tag. Next, I had to fill it with content. It took
another two months to top up the content and get things
rolling.

Fast forward to today.

CHALLENGE:

Both Edwin and I are spending 80% of our time marketing
The Business Professional and don’t have enough time to
build solid content into the member’s area.

SOLUTION:

Outsource the marketing to a handful of skilled
entrepreneurs, so we can focus on upgrading the member’s
area.

The marketers collect and keep 100% of the membership
fees, and we get a continual stream of new members who
order our products and services. This cooperative
business model builds a stronger, more profitable
business for everyone.

SUMMARY:

Generating a monthly recurring income by building a
membership website is a great concept. In practical terms,
it’s a costly way to learn the ropes.

My recommendation to anyone who is considering a
recurring monthly income is, start out promoting an
existing product or service. You’ll save a lot of time
and energy and can start generating a profit, your first
month in business.

Without expenses, it’s all profit

—
Terry Telford is a business developer with experience on and
offline. Telford’s training system for helping other
entrepreneurs build and develop their own businesses can be
found at
http://www.terrytelford.com/go.php?offer=mirrror&pid=3

I hope you liked the article, I am getting prepared for the workshop that is coming
up in two weeks. I still have that ticket available to join me for $500 (or $1000 and
I share the hotel room, too). If you can be in Orlando November 9 – 12, and want
to know more about it:

http://michealsavoie.com/presents/workshop

And if you just want to contribute to help me pay for it:

http://traf-x.com/hotwater/

Other times I write.

The latest floggings of the gurus are becoming a blur.  They are creating products faster than I can keep up.  My credit cards have reached their limit and now I see something else I absolutely have to have.

I give up.

While certain products are amazing and I would love to have them, at some point you just have to say, what good is it going to do?  I purchased a good number of products since me re-entry into the Internet Marketing arena last June. I had taken a 3 year break from it all when I first installed Diablo II on my computer and disappeared from the marketing world and into the dank smelly caverns beneath the Blood Moor.

Upon my re-emergence I found that I had missed out on Butterfly Marketing, but if I purchased another product, I would get it as a bonus.  So I got it.

Next I found myself totally enthralled with MME2 and I signed up for that.  I will admit to the rest of the world that I made my money back with MME2.

Next was Extreme Biz Makeover, which I found to be a disappointment.  A lot of great information, but a LOT of repetition.  While Mark Joyner is an idol of mine and I would love to spend time with him and learn everything he could teach me, the product quality was not very good, although the quantity was high.  The tons of bonuses were cool, even though I am not really happy with the VIral Marketing Blueprint Audios, which were of terrible quality (2 CD’s were blank) and the same material was repeated on the remaining 8 that Mark Joyner had stated in the Extreme Biz Makeover.  But the Hypnotic Library Bonus that I received for paying off the balance I owed for the product, that was worth the entire price of the Extreme Biz Makeover Package.  Every single Hypnotic item that Joe Vitale has put out until 2005 appears to be in it.  I am not even close to having read all of it, there are just so many ebooks, and the physical books are HUGE!

So I had spent $1000 on the above course, and I am just inundated with material.  I am learning a lot, but there is no way I will be able to recover my investment in this material until I get a product out the door and actually launch it.  BUT, I fully intend to do so.  If nothing else, Mark Joyner is a genius, and his teachings will make you money if you have money to put into your projects.  Unfortunately, now that I am cash poor, I am struggling to get a product ready to sell.  I am forced to sell other people’s products in the mean time and most of the summer, I was doing very good.  I had purchased AdWords Miracle, and I put it to good use and tripled my investment in it in four weeks time.  Then I purchased Affiliate Project X and found my sales increased a short while and then fell suddenly off as hundreds of new affiliate marketers all began to use the same techniques.

I don’t know about you, but I get turned off by waves of people promoting the same things with the same tactics.  That is when I launched Your Directory Website.  I am not making tons of money, but I have seen a sharp increase in my traffic to other websites (some affiliate websites, some adsense websites).  If you want to create a complete traffic turnaround to your website, get your own Directory Website.  You are basically just paying for me to set up the website hosting and your link directory and your blog.  And you aren’t paying very much, because I have been told by Dan Lok that I am WAY undercharging for both the hosting and the package itself.  I even offer an upgrade that includes an Article Directory as well.  The best perk of being a Your Directory Website owner is the inclusion of your website in our Master Link Website Directory that will soon be promoted to thousands of eager SEO enthusiasts.  Remeber that inbound links are the holy grail of  search engine optimization, and we provide that service on our link directories.

I am getting way off topic, sorry about that shameless plug for my business.

Now I have spent another $697, and I am getting ready to be totally impressed.  First of all, because I am going to get to meet some of the people who have been mentors of mine (indirectly, I cannot afford to have them be my personal mentors, because their time is worth more per hour than my annual salary) for the last few years (before and after Diablo II).  This is a workshop that is limited to 100 people and I have two tickets.  Since my spouse thinks I have lost my mind worse than when I delved into the caves of Diablo II, she will not be attending this workshop.  I will be willing to sell my other ticket for $500 or $1000 (and I will share the hotel room at the $1000 price).  Want to know what this is all about?  The workshop details are at http://michealsavoie.com/presents/workshop and it tells you who the speakers are and where the event is being held.  What I find cool is that not one of the speakers has tried to sell me either of the last few product launches.  And if they do pitch a product, it is never using the stock emails that you see fifteen of from 15 different people.  They will give you their honest opinion about the product, and whether it is right for certain individuals or not.  Needless to say I respect them a lot more than the affiliate commission ho’s that are out there dancing around with whoever is launching the latest product!

I have really lost respect for some of the people I had once looked up to in the IM world.

I hope to never be seen as one of those ho’s…  I apologize to you right now if I have made myself out to be one of them.

I think once your bank balance reaches a certain level, your mindset changes, you really do not need to promote everything that comes around.  You then can focus on promoting those things you believe in.  Which is actually a lot easier to do.

This post has gotten a lot longer than I wanted it to be.  I had just finished writing a long comment on John Delavera’s Blog, and I wanted to mention the insights I had gleaned from it on here…

But I got sidetracked again!

I will say one thing about membership websites.

If you want to make money with a membership website, deliver more value than the price you are selling the membership annually ( the annual membership cost…) every single month.  Then you will be getting wealthy.  People who deliver value tend to do that.

I am going to leave you with that.  If you go to John Delavera’s Blog, you will see my in depth comment on that topic.  If I had the link I would include it here.

DOn’t forget to change the clock.  I am doing it right now.

Micheal Savoie

I attended the final home game of the Crystal River Pirates vs. the Lecanto Panthers at my daughters’ High School this evening.  In a game that saw the Crystal River defense play roughly 16 to 20 plays the whole game, the Crystal River offense made good use of their time with the ball.  The final score of 43 – 0 correctly showed which team was there to play.

I love a good football game, and I had a blast watching these kids giving it their all.  I could easily see some of these players playing in college a few years from now.  The whole football environment is one that creates a sense of teamwork and work ethic.  The victories are the reward for their hard work, and the losses are ways to reveal weaknesses to be overcome with more training or assistance from teammates.

In business, you can see the people who understand this environment.  They are the ones who continue to do what needs to be done, test out a new strategy, overcome obstacles by becoming better themselves or by enlisting the help of teammates who are stronger in a different area.

If you are the member of multiple email lists, you know what I mean.  You see the various joint ventures that bring in $100,000 for one launch day, the partnerships that take the strengths of two or three people and develop into a force more powerful than each individual part combined.

In the game, there were some amazingly well executed running plays that looked identical except for who was actually carrying the ball.  Sometimes  the runnning back had it, other times the quarterback faked it to the running back and ran in the opposite direction and in another the fullback ended up with the ball and both the quarterback and running back split off in different directions to totally confuse the defense.

Extremely well designed plays made mincemeat of the Panthers defense.  And on the few occasions that the Pirates had to punt, the special teams took advantage of mistakes made by the receiving team to get the ball deep in Panther territory twice.  This, of course, kept the momentum solidly on the Pirates’ side of the field, which allowed them to score repeatedly.

How can we help shift the momentum in our businesses?  By doing certain things so well that we can create momentum through carefully orchestrated victories.  If you are a magnificent writer of sales copy, but you do not relate well with email lists, then use your skills to create small victories that you can build upon by first writing a killer sales page for getting people to sign up for your list.

Use this victory to design a sales letter for affiliate programs you are promoting.  Build on each of these victories with successive victories to overcome the weaknesses that trouble your business strategy.  After all, if you are afraid to start because you know that you aren’t good at one aspect of your business, you are failing before you even start.

Build on your strengths.  Become very good at one thing, then use that one thing to make a name for yourself.  Mine is writing.  I stink at many aspects of business, but I am not afraid to write.  I allowed some of my weaknesses (like fear of rejection, distaste for the phone) to overshadow my abilities ( writing, personality, ability to understand people, perception) and I failed for a long time.

I had grown some businesses a few times and allowed them to shrivel up and die because of the perceived size of my weaknesses.  Think about that.  How can a weakness be stronger than a strength?

When you allow it to defeat you.

I am sure Lecanto had many strengths in that football game last night.  They were overshadowed by their weaknesses, by their fears, by the perception that  they could not overcome their weaknesses.  Yet they had many opportunities where they could have done just that.  But in hindsight, we can all see where we could have done better.  The winners are those who accept the constructive advice of our mentors.

That is why football teams have coaches. A coach is someone who will tell you what you are doing wrong and recommend corrective actions that you can take to better yourself.

The Pirates have only won two games this season.  And both of them were against Lecanto.  If anyone should have been feeling like it was a foregone conclusion that they were going to lose, it should have been the Pirates.  After taking a beating against so many teams, they could have admitted that they were not capable of winning.

Someone believed in those players.  Someone instilled in them a sense that they had what it took to get better at what they did best, and then do it on the field with their teammates.  The coaches’ mission to assemble the correct mix of specialized players was accomplished when the kickoff was muffed and a Pirate player was there first to grab the ball.

What are you good at?  Where do you excel?  Don’t worry about where you suck.  Get better at the things you are good at.  The rest will follow, or, you can hire someone who excels at what you do not!

Don’t worry about  the money to pay for the help.  As you excel at the things that come easy for you, the money will come, because people will want to rent out your talents, or trade you their talents for yours.  Your goal should always be to improve your strengths.  Make them better, become the best.

Victory is worth the hard work.

The feeling you get following a hard fought victory is worth all the struggles you have faced to get there.

If you want to save a cool $50 on Rob Benwell’s Baby Blogging Bonanza before he takes all of the bonanza off of the product, then you only need to go to this link: http://www.michealsavoie.com/presents/blogprofits

Then look for the $1860.11 in red, and there is the order link for $50 off.  He does not tell anyone this, because he set this link up for friends of his to be able to get a break.  That is why it is not exactly common knowledge.

I am still working on finding someone who can use the extra ticket I got for the workshop that I am going to on November 9-12 in Orlando, FL.  Willie Crawford, Mark Hendricks and Joe E. Clayton are just 3 of the featured speakers.  Just the three of them is worth the $697, but I am letting one ticket go for $500.

All you have to do is reply to this post to let me know you want it, and I will contact you with a payment link.  If you want your own ticket for the event, the page to get the info is http://www.michealsavoie.com/presents/workshop

If you are just in a good mood and want to donate to help pay for my hotel while I am there, I have a package of items that will knock your socks off:

http://www.michealsavoie.com/presents/orderpage

Have an amazing day!

Micheal Savoie

It was a Wednesday evening, I opened the door to my office after working my first job to find a package had arrived. The label said Dell, so I knew it was the power supply that my moronic office manager made Dell send to us overnight. Except it wasn’t really overnight, because I had been in the office until 12:15 PM earlier that day, and the package was not there when I arrived.

A Dell computer comes with a warranty, and in the warranty, it states that a technician will be there within 2 business days to fix your computer. So the part arrived, and it was up to me to install the power supply. On a system I had never seen before. I am not an expert, but I am very close, and this computer was like nothing I had ever seen, and I have been inside of servers and IBM workstations, even Compaqs…

My blood pressure had to have reached near fatal levels at that point, because there was a spaghetti jungle of wires coming out of the power supply and twisting away in all directions: under the fan, under the motherboard, between the processors, even into the secretive RAM cage! I began writing my resignation letter in my head as I saw the clock speeding toward midnight, my inadequate set of rinky dink tools not even close to what I would need to extract the old power supply and install the new one.

Why did he say to the technician that he needed to get the part here overnight? Didn’t he understand that I work two jobs, and since I am part time at this one, I sure as heck was not intending to pull an all nighter for a stinking power supply. Especially when the tech support could have been scheduled to arrive on Thurday, which, if they are lucky, will be the day they get their damn power supply installed.

So what did I learn about Internet Marketing from my moronic office manager?

1. Why pay someone in house to do something you can outsource for free?

2. I am in more of a hurry to make Internet Marketing my FULL TIME career!

3. Good thing I purchased Affiliate Project X last night! http://michealsavoie.com/presents/projectx

If you are in a similar situation, get yourself a copy of Affiliate Project X and begin to earn the affiliate money you were always capable of making. All of the strategies revealed in Project X were proven to work by test groups in two months prior to the launch of Project X. The resounding success of the test group indicated that the sound principals exposed by Project X really do increase your affiliate earnings.

http://michealsavoie.com/presents/projectx

If you take the time to read project X in full and then commit to using the techniques taught within, you are virtually guaranteed to add $300 per week to what you are currently making! Now we can’t actually guarantee something like like, because a lot depends on how much you are going to do. If you let the ebook gather electron dust in your hard drive, then don’t bother getting it. This material is outstanding, it teaches tricks that I didn’t really think about before, but they make perfect sense and a lot of money!

Make the purchase today!

http://michealsavoie.com/presents/projectx

Yours in success,

Micheal Savoie

http://michealsavoie.com/presents/AdwordsMiracle

PS – I learned that channeling ones anger to constructive use will fatten your wallet. http://michealsavoie.com/presents/projectx