| Main » Articles » My articles |
The Maximum Leverage Continuity Income Model
| Where the ‘Freedom Continuity Income Model’ focused on identifying and promoting high quality programs with a recurring commission structure, the ‘Maximum leverage Continuity Income Model’ focuses on creating your very own income producing software service. As mentioned in the previous chapter, there are several different types of products that produce this type of income:
I’m personally against content-based membership sites. There is a huge amount of work required to create the content, and even more work to maintain it and keep it current. If you are interested in a niche such as ‘weight loss’ or ‘self help’ then the information may not go out of date as quickly as a niche like ‘make money online’, but it’s still an extra concern. This Incomizer Model (SaaS) is extrapolated from ‘The Subscription Model’ we discussed earlier. You will get maximum leverage by focusing your efforts on creating these Software As A Service style membership sites. What Is the ‘Maximum Leverage Continuity Income Model’ One of the most powerful principles in ‘passive income creation’ is leverage. Leverage is the ability to control a lot with just a little. It gives you the ability to utilize more than just you. Through leverage, you can effect change much more rapidly. Leverage equals speed, or velocity. The more leverage you have, the faster your journey to wealth. The 7 forms of leverage So what are the seven forms of leverage? Well, they are: 1. OPM (Other People's Money) 2. OPT (Other People's Time) 3. OPW (Other People's Work) 4. OPE (Other People's Experiences) 5. OPI (Other People's Ideas) 6. Scalable Production & Distribution 7. Scalable Customer Base With a ‘Software As A Service’ SAAS you leverage many of these principles for maximum leverage deployment. You can get other peoples money (investors), ... to leverage other peoples time (programmers), ... to leverage other peoples work (graphic designers), ... to leverage other peoples experiences / ideas (the best features of different competitors), ... to leverage a scalable distribution across a scalable customer base. One form of leverage added to another produces a multiplier effect. It removes you from the equation, which is the ultimate form of FREEDOM. What Type Of Programs Fit The ‘Maximum Leverage Continuity Income Model’ In my mind the only type of program that fits the ‘Maximum Leverage Continuity Income Model’ is SAAS i.e. Software As A Service. Once you have the system in place, it takes care of it itself on virtual autopilot. You will not need to continuously update the information as you would on a content-based membership site. Yes there will be inevitable new features you will need to add, but all they will serve to do is enhance the perceived value, which will bump up your customer acquisition rates, enable you to charge more, and mitigate attrition rates. So what exactly is a SAAS? Software as a service (SaaS) sometimes referred to as "on-demand software", is a software delivery model in which software and associated data are centrally hosted on the cloud. SaaS is typically accessed by users using a thin client via a web browser. So instead of you creating an executable software file, that customers could download to their PC, pay for once, and use forever more instead you host the software on your own server and charge them a monthly fee to use it. Now obviously the SAAS will need to be a lot more sophisticated than ‘one time fee’ downloadable alternatives, that should go without saying. A good example of an SAAS would be the mass video submission software Traffic Geyser. Sure there are cheap alternatives that will enable you to upload videos to video sharing sites right from your desktop, but Traffic Geyser’s SAAS properties make it an attractive alternative. Such benefits include:
It has been said that of all the digital products out there, software has the highest perceived value. It thus stands to reason that SAAS is the very best business model any Internet Marketer should aspire to. Provided the SAAS solution you create satisfies a real need, and does it well - then every sale you make can potentially be a new lifelong stream of income. How To Build Freedom Continuity Programs Worth Promoting The Idea Ok so lets takes this from the top. You have conducted market research and have identified an evergreen niche. Having conducted further research you pinpoint a couple of SAAS sites that are doing a good job of satisfying key needs / requirements within that niche. So you write down a complete list of features, come up with a few new ideas, and merge them together into a Business Plan for what would be the best service provider in this niche. For example say that I wanted to create an SaaS product that would dominate the mass video submission niche. I would conduct market research to discover the market leaders. Sites such as Traffic Geyser, SE Nuke, Tube Mogul, and Content Buzz would undoubtedly come up. I would then conduct a detailed competitor analysis of each SaaS offering including: features, benefits, pro, and cons etc. Once I have this data compiled I would pick the best features, add some new features I think are needed (based on market research), and create a detailed business plan. I would then visit a few outsourcing sites such as oDesk and get a few quotations. Having received a list of 5 quotations, I would check the references of the different programmers and go with one of the quotations in the middle e.g. not the cheapest, not the most expensive. Then I would decide whether I wanted / could afford to take the risk myself, or whether I was going to secure investment from other people. That takes me on swiftly to our first pillar of leverage: OPM. Leverage Pillar 1: OPM Other Peoples Money You pitch this idea to a group of investors. Show them that the risk is low as there is a real demand for the service, and that current competitors are thriving with a lesser product offering. Convince them to invest X amount of capital for Y amount of share holding. Never lose heart keep pitching til you find someone willing to invest. Always get the potential investor to sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) before you pitch to them. However an important note here is that you should only ever use other peoples money if you have to. There are SaaS scripts you can buy now that make entry into an SaaS business very affordable. Check out Pilot Group limited for the cheapest way to launch a quality SaaS of your won. They provide you with scripts from as little as $300, that will enable you to launch SaaS sites ranging from dating sites to social networking sites. Click here to see their full range of exciting programs. Leverage Pillar 2: OPT Other Peoples Time Go back through all the competitor’s sales pages and compile an ultra detailed list of every single feature these combined services have. Take up free trials, join these sites, take screenshots / videos of how the sites / services are laid out and how everything works. In that context you have leveraged the time inputted by your competitors to come up with these features and processes in the first place. Now use a tool such as ‘Survey Monkey’ or run a Facebook poll to ask people what additional features they would like to see. Focus in on the most requested features and decide to build that into the service on top of all the best features from your existing competitors. Leverage Pillar 3: OPW Other Peoples Work Ok so having leveraged OPT and OPM you now have a blueprint for the ultimate SAAS product in your niche along with funding from investors. The next step is to find programmers who will program this SAAS service for you. Create a detailed product spec and post it to several outsourcing sites. The best outsourcing sites are oDesk, eLance, Free Lancer and Guru.com. Having posted your spec, revert back in a few days and take a look at the different responses. Ask them have they ever developed anything like what you are asking them to do. Check out their portfolio, reviews and rating. As a general rule never go for the cheapest or most expensive quote, always settle for something in the middle. Having conducted your due diligence give them to the go ahead. Make certain that they work to strict deadlines. As they are working on the programming, come up with a name that embodies the service. Buy the dot com domain name. Post a further job on one of these outsourcing sites for a full graphics package. You will need:
As the programming and design is taking place, create a JV page. This is a simple process using a WordPress Theme such as Optimize Press. Target potential JV partners sending them to the JV page. Pick a launch date and post it to sites such as JVnotifypro. Allow at least one full month of testing time in between programming completion and product launch date. Leverage Pillar 4: OPE Other Peoples Experiences Give a small test group access to your product when it finishes programming. Tell them it’s in Beta edition and that they will get FREE lifetime access in return for helping you to test it out, and uncover any bugs. Ask them for feedback. Any things they find confusing. Any improvements they would like to be made. Any additional resources or information they need. Use the feedback of these ‘user experiences’ to fine tune your service, make improvements, create quality user manuals / videos and perfect your product pre launch. Leverage Pillar 5: OPI Other Peoples Ideas Take the feedback you received from your BETA group, and use their ideas to enhance your product offering. They will have identified features that are missing, processes that are confusing, bugs that need fixing. Making these amendments will have a positive impact on your user experience, and reduce your attrition rates. Leverage Pillar 6: Scalable Production & Distribution SAAS sites are browser-based so they are not restricted to any one operating system. They will run on Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. They will not have compatibility issues, which will ensure you gain maximum leverage from a scalability perspective. You should ensure you have adequate server resources to scale with your membership as it grows. Usually a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a good starting point and you can progress to a dedicated server if the need be. You need to orchestrate a big scale launch for maximum distribution leverage. Do some research, find product owners in the same general market as you, send them emails, Skype them and drive them to your JV page. Get them signed up to promote. Leverage Pillar 7: Scalable Customer Base You need to offer ‘one time offers’ on the backend of your sales funnel, in order to leverage your new customer base. Provide related WordPress Plugins or templates that complement your front end SAAS. Get existing customers to promote your SAAS to their own lists, by sticking a banner on your download page inviting them to go to your JV page to make money as an affiliate? Important Things Worth Considering Pre Selection Like any initiative worth undertaking; there are important considerations one needs to think about: Critical Success Factors Hit A Large Target Market You need to conduct adequate market research and ensure there is a large market that needs the software service you are providing. If there are some big competitors doing well in the niche for years, then you can be sure that there is a target market of sufficient size for your venture. All you need to do is come to the market with a more attractive feature rich proposition. Exit Barriers Are High Enough To Keep Customer & Low Enough To Get New Ones Exit barriers are an important consideration. They refer to the ease with which a customer will leave one software provider to go to another. Sites like Facebook have high exit barriers because people will have spent a huge amount of time and effort building relationships with people in the communities, groups, uploading photos etc. They have invested too much time and effort to leave and switch to a competitor. So I don’t advice launching an SAAS to compete with Facebook  However certain companies have sprung up a unique product offering that has attracted that target market. Think Pinterest. Unique slant on the social networking model. The more time, money and effort that your target market have expended the more difficult it is to get them to move. If you are building an SAAS it can thus be advantageous to build a community around your product. Get your customers to create their own content via groups or a forum. This community effect will help to raise your exit barriers and make it more difficult for them to leave. The Cost Factor There are running costs associated with SAAS sites. They will most likely require at least one dedicated served which can cost the bones of $300 per month. Many of these SAAS services require subscriptions to support services, that provide critical information and ‘add on’ services necessary to support your SAAS’s functions. For example SE Nuke embeds an automatic Captcha solving service from a third party company. Private affiliate networks such as Nanacast can cost up to $250 per month for their top program. It is thus essential that you compute all the costs associated with the day to day running of your SAAS. You then need to find your break-even point. This is computed by dividing the total cost of running the service by the subscription rate, to get the number of members you need to have to break even. So if the cost of running a service was $470, and you were charging $47 per month, then you would need 10 paying members to break even i.e. $470 / $47 = 10. Unless you keep a minimum of these 10 members paying $47 monthly, your costs will exceed your income and you will go out of business. The Sales Process You need to have a hyper optimized sales process to maximize sales volumes. Your sales page needs to hit all the buyer’s hot buttons. The greatest sales copy selling tactic of all is to have a compelling story that shows this SAAS was conceived out of a need you identified in your own personal / professional life. As Seth Godin says in his Best Seller ‘All Marketers Are Liars’ ‘people don’t buy products, they buy stories’. You need to show them the opportunity cost of not using your service. Show that it will really hurt them from a time and money perspective. You need to have a product walk through video that showcases the features of the service. What makes it the best solution on the market? You need an exit script that offers traffic leaving your site a free trial. Always capture their credit card details by offering them a $1 trial instead of a FREE Trial. This will thus convert to a paid member within 7 to 30 days depending on the term you set. Use a service such as Kayako Fusion so that you can have a live chat box on your sales page so that you can answer any queries site visitors have. This is the best time to dismantle their natural resistance to purchase. If they turn down the $1 trial have a second exit script that gives them a Free eBook that subtly pre-sells your SAAS to them. When they subscribe to get the eBook have 7 - 12 emails in your auto responder that pre-sells the benefits to them over a period of time. Exit splash is the top exit script on the market in my opinion. Creative Monetization Opportunities SAASs provide multiple revenue opportunities beyond the subscription model. One of the most lucrative models being adopted by SAAS sites is ‘fee per transaction’. This might not suit every SAAS but it is a viable opportunity. Think a Paypal, Warrior Plus or A JV Zoo. These platforms take a tiny percentile commission on every transaction. They effectively make money by facilitating transactions between a buyer and a seller. A great model if you can leverage it. However there are many different types of monetization opportunities for you to consider: Network enables services:
Non-Subscription revenue models include:
It’s really worth your while considering the application of these revenue models. It is important to strike a balance however because customers will leave in their droves if they feel your interests are primarily commercial. The monetization opportunities open to you will depend on many factors including the nature of your business, the attitudes of your customers, and the sophistication of your product. The Niche I’ve already mentioned the importance of niche selection, but I need to really emphasize the point here. You have to focus your efforts on Evergreen Niches with year round demand. There is little point having an SAAS with seasonal demand. For example while it may be a great application, an SAAS that enables users to create ‘point and click’ Christmas eCards is not going to provide a continuous flow of income. Whereas by expanding the features to enable eCard creation for every occasion its application transcends the seasons and transform it into an evergreen niche with year round demand. Many Internet Marketer’s think they have to focus exclusively on the ‘make money online’ niche. They believe that it is the only niche for a viable ‘SAAS’. However this is not the case. There are hundreds of evergreen niches worthy of your consideration:
The list really is endless. You can setup an SaaS in many of these categories for really cheap by clicking here. The only criteria it needs to satisfy is that it represents a huge target market, and has year round demand. Ironically the ‘make money online’ niche is probably the smallest niche of them all. The Cloud Cloud computing has been one of the biggest buzzwords for the last 12 months or so. It refers to the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams.  Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation. In fact SAAS is a version of cloud computing. I hope the dollar symbols have just started flashing in your eyes, as you realize that with your SAAS you will be riding the wave of this huge technological trend towards integrated computing. In fact SAAS is only one form of cloud computing. There are many other types for you to be aware of:
You can really explode your money making power by coupling some of these cloud computing variants together into a hybrid solution. For example a ‘Platform As A Service’ could sit nicely inside a ‘Software As A Service’. Think about it. You could set up a dating sites (Software as a Service), and provide an eCard Maker as a (PaaS) on a pay per usage based revenue model. This wouldn’t even be expensive. You can get a ‘dating site engine’ now for as little as $300 i.e. check out Dating Pro Factors That Can Lead To Failure Launching Without An Online Trial Not providing an online trial is like selling a car to a customer, but telling them they can’t test-drive it in advance. Modern Internet Users are accustomed to ‘Try Before You Buy’. Amazon do it with their ‘Look Inside’ feature, Microsoft do it with their ‘Trial Versions’ of Microsoft Word, dating sites do it, SAASs targeting Internet Marketer do it, in fact all your top competitors will be doing it as well. If you don’t offer a free trial then your customers will think that you have something to hide. There are many benefits of offering the FREE trial:
Lack of Quality Customer Support SaaS solutions need to be deployed with adequate customer support. Customers need to know that their queries are going to be comprehensively answered in a timely manner. You should have a quality help desk set up using Hesk or Kayako (an SaaS in the Help Desk Market). Do not mess around with online web forms, or having customers send all support queries to one email address. The ticket based system is far superior, will cut down on the time factor considerably, and with features such as FAQs with Possible Solutions -- it will lighten your work load. In time you might be in a position to offer real time support via online chat facility. Kayako again provide this service. This dedication to customer support or lack thereof can often be the difference between success and failure. Poor / Incomplete instructional Materials All software has an inevitable learning curve. When designing the SAAS you should have spent a great deal of time simplifying the Graphical User Interface, removing unnecessary complexities, and making it as intuitive as possible. This task is done for you with an off the shelf solution that’s proven to work. Consider Apple’s iPhone or iPad, they’re so intuitive that a novice could get the hang of them in 5 minutes. Always strive to create a solution like this. You need to create a library of instructional videos and written guides. Some people prefer to watch videos, others prefer to read instructions, you need to provide both. Remember the better your instructional materials are the less frustrated your customers, the lower the refund rate, the lower the attrition rate, the lower the level of customer support queries, the more passive income you will make. All you need to create step-by-step instructional videos is a copy of Camtasia. Its easy to use and you’ll have professional grade videos in minutes. Launching A Bug Ridden or Incomplete Product Recall how I suggest that we leverage OPE or Other People’s Experiences in order to test the product? This necessitates bringing in a ‘Beta’ group of people a few months before you launch, and get them to use the software extensively and to report any feedback. They are of course happy to do this for you because they are getting all the benefits of using the software for FREE. That’s right they are getting a FREE lifetime license for their efforts. It’s well worth it for you because you will uncover bugs that would have not been uncovered if it wasn’t for these OPEs. Furthermore you will be able to get positive testimonials out of this Beta group, which will be an essential element of your sales page. Not Evolving With Customer Feedback You need to leverage your existing membership for ideas to enhance your product offering. Use tools such as Survey Monkey to find out what they think of your SaaS. What they like? What they don’t like? Things they feel need to be improved? New features they can’t live without? Take their feedback into consideration and tweak your SAAS accordingly. What you will find it that your potential prospects are looking for the same things that your current customers seek. By adding these features to your product, you can update your sales page accordingly and you will find that your conversion rate will increase. Product evolvement based on customer feedback is thus the most powerful form of leverage I know. How To Promote Maximum Leverage Continuity Programs Maximum Leverage Continuity Programs are best promoted using the same strategies as the Freedom Continuity Programs. These strategies include:
Other strategies worth considering for promoting ‘Maximum Leverage Continuity Programs’ are listed below: Cross Sell Like SAASs Create 2 or more different SaaSs that complement each other. You can then cross sell one SaaS from the other. You could offers coupons or discounts for members that join both services. This strategy has explosive monetary potential. You could also set up a joint venture / partnership with other SaaSs in your niche, and cross promote each other. A WIN-WIN solution. Create Upsell Packs For One Time Product Vendors Build an ‘Upsell Pack’ and give it away to product vendors to build into their sales funnel. This is extremely powerful. Take this example. I sell a cutting edge course on how to get your videos ranking on page one of Google for ultra competitive terms. Its called ‘Video Marketing To Page One’. Imagine if ‘Traffic Geyser’ came to me (a complementary SaaS product) and said here is a high conversion upsell page that you can just slot into your backend. Customers that buy your ‘Video Marketing To Page One’ are automatically sent to this page, and you get recurring commissions on every upsell. Now Imagine if ‘Traffic Geyser’ offered this to every vendor they could find that offered complementary products? They would be creating multiple streams of high conversion traffic. Furthermore its traffic that vendors of the front end products had to work for, not the SaaS owner. Guys really think about this it’s so powerful. It’s the perfect example of leverage. You are leveraging other people’s time ‘OPT’ to do all your traffic generation for you. It won’t cost you a cent, it won’t cost you time, and you will be getting ‘pre-qualified’ customers with a proven propensity to purchase. The only cost is the affiliate commission, and that’s not even a cost because they are self financing. Create An Affiliate Page that Goes Beyond Anything Seen Before Most affiliate pages features access to affiliate links and one or two swipe files, but why stop there? You need a multi faceted approach that will enable your affiliates to create multiple streams of traffic to your site. Swipe files are useful but not every marketer has a list, fewer still have lists that will bring you in 100 sales plus. I highly recommend that you create a mammoth affiliate page that contains as many of the following items as possible. • Long Swipe File • Short Swipe File • Solo Ad Copy • A Sequence of ‘Follow Up’ auto-responder emails they can permanently add to their auto-responders • A list of quality long tail keywords worth targeting • Review Articles of your SaaS that can be posted on blogs, article directories etc. • Video Reviews of your SaaS that can be posted on blogs, video sharing sites, social networks • 20 to 30 different tweets that they can program into SocialOomph for a continuous stream of social media traffic to your site • Viral Reports that enable them to enter their affiliate links and distribute around the Internet. • Email Signatures that they can add to their email client sig files for automatic sales • Forum signatures they can use • Graphical banner ads that feature strong call to action • Direct Response Ads • eCover graphics • Badges your customers can post on their sites • Video animations • Viral software • Upsell Packs • Resell Packs - give them the resell rights to a related eBook complete with website, copy, and upsell of your SaaS. They do the work getting the traffic, that makes you autopilot sales. • Free Reports that help them to pre-sell your product • Bonuses they can use to incentivize action • Badges they can put on their download pages • Webinar slots you have available • Exit scripts they can use to send exit traffic from their site to your • Pop unders and pop overs they can use to send traffic to your site Partner With Marketer’s Selling Complimentary Products You could and should track down Internet Marketers that are selling products complimentary to your SaaS. Target big bloggers that come up from Google searches on keywords related to your niche. Get them to put your banner ads on their sites. Use sites such as JVnotify Pro to find upcoming launches for products that would be complimentary to yours. Get them to put badges promoting your product on their download pages. Some might even agree to promote you to their lists. Source: Incomizer | |
| Views: 8899 | |
| Total comments: 0 | |