BOOK REVIEW: Sell Your Brain by Ikenna Ronald Nzimora

BOOK REVIEW

SELL YOUR BRAIN

2016 Ikenna Ronald Nzimora

ISBN: 978-978-956-654-9

Published by Profit Marketing Systems Limited

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: You’re A Guru in the Making

STEP 1: PREPARE

Chapter 1: First Things First

Chapter 2: How to know what to sell online

Chapter 3: How to identify your ideal future customer

STEP 2: CREATE

Chapter 4: Your product

Chapter 5: Your presell

Chapter 6: The opt-in

Chapter 7: Your free giveaway

Chapter 8: Your sales letter

Chapter 9: Your follow-up email series

STEP 3: PUBLISH

Chapter 10: Build your website

Chapter 11: Set-up your auto responder

Chapter 12: Add a payment gateway

STEP 4: PROMOTE

Chapter 13: Targeted traffic

Chapter 14: Facebook

Chapter 15: Google

Chapter 16: Blogs and content sites

Chapter 17: Traffic exchange platforms

Chapter 18: Print advertising

Chapter 19: Go Big or Go Home!

Conclusion

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CHAPTER 1: FIRST THINGS FIRST- CLEAR THE HEAD THRASH

If you want to see success in anything you do, you must have a Game plan. A plan that ensures you win a game, any game starts right inside your head. And when it comes to business, a lot of people who get started always have what I call ‘Head trash’. Head trash is the negativity that stops you from going ahead and doing the things that deep down in your heart you know that if you do, will bring into your life the results that you want. Your mind is held back by an invisible force, you can’t touch it but it’s there, strong, never letting go. I know what it is. It’s FEAR.

Here are some common fears felt by people who want to start earning money selling their brain.

I don’t have enough time

I think selling is scammy

I don’t live in an area where people pay for this stuff. I’m not confident enough to charge people money

I don’t think this is a real business

And the biggest one of them all is ‘I don’t have any idea, skill or expertise that can be sold for money’.

CHAPTER 2: HOW TO KNOW WHAT TO SELL ONLINE

What you want to sell ideally is a superior version of a digital product, physical product or rendered service that is already selling well, and then sell it with superior advertising. The worst thing that can ever happen to anyone who’s trying to ‘sell their brain’ is choosing a topic, choosing a target market, coming up with an idea for a product, creating it, doing everything to sell it and hearing only…. silence meaning no sale, nobody buys.

The three never-disobey rules for validating a niche are

Rule #1: Never choose a niche unless you know there’s demand for a lot of products in that niche

Rule #2: It’s risky to aim to be the first person in a market.

Rule #3: Do you like this niche?

CHAPTER 3: HOW TO KNOW YOUR IDEAL FUTURE CUSTOMER

If you take nothing else from this book, take this message: “You don’t have a fat chance in hell of ever succeeding in the business of selling your knowledge if you don’t understand to a “T”, who your ideal client is”.

You’ll spend a ton of time and effort creating courses or programs that won’t sell. But your bank balance will remain empty (or worse, you’ll get into debt) because you are not creating solutions that your clients actually want to buy.

When you get inside the minds of your potential clients and audience, you will start to understand them inside and out.

STEP 2: CREATE

CHAPTER 4: YOUR PRODUCT

You need to create and have a suite of products- digital or physical. A product suite is the collection of products you are going to sell to your target customers. You do not need to have all these products lined up before you start, what you should do instead is to have just your front-end product created and selling successfully. As you sell that, you ask your buyers what else they would like to learn to be better and when at least 2%-50% of them mention the same thing, then you create that product, adding more convenience and perks to the offer and price it 2-3 times higher, and on and on like that.

CHAPTER 5: YOUR PRESELL

Your presell is the first piece of marketing content your website visitors sees when they land on your website. Preselling is based on the concept that it’s a lot easier for a person to make a purchase if they are already familiar with you and your work and if they trust and view you as a credible resource. On the internet, trust is an even bigger factor than in face to face sales.

Pre-selling is warming up your cold prospects before sending them to the sales page to buy. Preselling with content develops familiarity and familiarity breeds trust.

CHAPTER 6: THE OPT-IN

When you gain that much needed trust and familiarity, you do not want to lose it. You want them to join your contact database, so that you have a means to keep in constant touch with them, you need them to do the next logical thing which is to opt-in to your list (contact database).

If your presell is good, they can’t wait to give you these details, so

Make the offer match the medium
Offer less than you think you should
Use three form fields

CHAPTER 7: YOUR FREE GIVEAWAY/OPT-IN BAIT

a free giveaway, prospect magnet, lead magnet, opt-in bribe (and whatever other name it’s called) is an offer of an informational resource that you provided to your website visitors who have read your presell content, in exchange for them giving you their contact details-name, email address and phone number.

This achieves two things:

-they exhibit seriousness if they read the presell article or video to the END where you ask for their details. Unserious people and tire kickers who really do not want what you’re selling won’t reach the end. And that’s a great thing!

-they give you their real email address and phone number, not some fake one they put in just so they can see what you have got.

CHAPTER 8: YOUR SALESLETTER

When your prospects have signed up to your list, the page they should land on should be the page describing the merits of buying your front- end product. We call a page like this the sales letter. This page should thank them for signing up, tell them the lead/prospect magnet they signed up for is on its way to their email but they should continue reading for a one-time offer. Before you start writing your sales letter however, here’s one very important thing you have to do: Assume and talk to them like they are going to buy.

To write your sales letter, follow the steps below religiously, do not change the sequence. If you change it, it will perform poorly.

Call out to your audience
Grab their attention with your big promise + curiosity headline
Backup the big promise with a sub-headline
Identify your audience.
Tell a story about the problem/struggle, or challenge that they, you or someone like them is going through.
Provide your solution- and prove it is the best option
Show pain- (with empathy & affinity).
Explain ease-of-use
Show speed of results
Future cast

The remaining steps are inside the book!

CHAPTER 9: YOUR FOLLOW-UP EMAIL SERIES

Follow-up emails (also known as auto responder series) are the hardest working, unsung heroes of internet marketing. They’re a series of emails you write once and set up to send out at preset intervals, automatically, to anyone who signs up to your list/database after they read your presell.

You have to map your auto responder sequence and determine how long your auto responder sequence/series should be. If you’re writing the sequence yourself, it’s easy to make it long, I personally have well over 100 in my sequence.

Best practices for writing and sending auto responders:

Give subscribers what you promised. If you say you’ll give new subscribers a free report, case study, or video, provide an easy-to-use download link so they can instantly get their free gift.
Help your audience get to know and trust you. With each message, reveal a little glimpse into who you are and what you stand for.
Become a fantastic teacher. Your emails don’t have to be lengthy or fancy, but they do need to be useful to your subscriber.

And many more when you get the book!

STEP 3: PUBLISH

CHAPTER 10: BUILD YOUR WEBSITE

The idea of selling online is to build a nimble business that’s fun, lucrative and simple to run. A website makes it so easy to do this. Without a website, it’s hard work. Your website is your virtual office address. Your shop. Your money transfer service. Everyone who wants what you sell comes there, check out what you have on display and makes a decision to buy or not.

All you need is a domain name, webhosting and a WordPress theme built for marketing.

Domain Name is the address people use to get to your site. For example, sell your brain society’s domain name is www.sellyourbrainsociety.com.

Web Hosting is the service that actually stores your website’s files. If you have a free blog through Blogger or WordPress.com, then your host is Google or WordPress, respectively.

Word Press is the base software that powers your entire website. It comes for free with your hosting. All you need is install it on your domain and you’re set to go.

CHAPTER 11: SET UP YOUR AUTORESPONDER

An autoresponder is the best thing that will ever happen with you if you truly in your deepest of hearts want to successfully ‘sell your brain’.

With an autoresponder, you will be able to

Build a list of prospects who want what you’re selling.
Stay in touch with and cult-like following and loyalty of rapid readers, adherents and customers.
Create behavioral-based emails, implement “if then” rules, split-test follow-up series, and other nifty features.

It will make your life simpler and richer.

CHAPTER 12: ADD A PAYMENT GATEWAY

You need to have a way to collect your money when people pay you. That’s no brainer.

There are two ways you can do this:

Direct bank deposit
Online payment gateway

Here’s some of the ones available for you to use:

PayStack: paystack.com
AmplifyPay: amplifypay.com
Vogue Pay: voguepay.com
Simple Pay: simplepay4u.com
Cash Envoy: wwwcashenvoy.com
Interswitch WebPay

I recommend you use either www.paystack.com or www.amplifypay.com because they have a far better easier to use and navigate platform than the other platforms.

STEP 4: PROMOTE

CHAPTER 13: TARGETED TRAFFIC

You must drive targeted traffic to your presell page so that the marketing and follow up sequence can kickstart. You want to make sure that only people who are interested in your kind of product see it.

Most marketers DO NOT KNOW how to get targeted visitors, and that’s because they really do not know on a neutral level who their ideal customer is.

Find your own prospects, pay for them and convert them into customers! When you pay for prospects, you are guaranteed to get them. And when you put those prospects in front of a marketing funnel THAT CONVERTS, you make money, every single time you do that.

CHAPTER 14: FACEBOOK

The first place to go for traffic is Facebook. Facebook is one of the most profitable places online to advertise today. It contains an array of targeting options that allows you to effectively reach your ideal prospect with accurate precision.

How to set up ads in Facebook

There are basically 6 types of ads you can set up on Facebook:

Send people to your website (website clicks)
Collect leads for your business (lead collection)
Get video views (video watching)
Raise attendance of your event (event attendance)
Get installs of your app (app installs)

What I advise you do is to create one or more Facebook accounts, right now, just in case you need them, so if you ever get banned, you’ll already have accounts ready to go. DO IT NOW!

CHAPTER 15: GOOGLE

It contains an array of targeting options that allows you to effectively reach your ideal prospect with accurate precision. You can target prospects by age, country, location (within the country), language, interests, education, work, position at work, sex, marital status, mobile device used, pages liked, religion, race, activity (Google can detect when people travel outside their current base), etc.

There are three ways to advertise on Google:

Search advertising
Display advertising
YouTube

Rules to follow when setting up ads in Google

Your ads must not contain words Google doesn’t like. Words like -sex, bet, porn, sugar mummy, vagina, etc.
Your domain name must not contain these words too, period
Google also on explicitly frowns on some topics like -dating, weight loss, cures, male sexual enhancement, spy, etc.

Google will NEVER un-ban you. Once you’re banned, you’re banned forever. You also cannot go open another account. They somehow will find out and then ban you all over again. Do your best to never run foul of Google and their rules. They are that important.

CHAPTER 16: BLOGS AND CONTENT SITES

Content sites and blogs here in Nigeria have really taken off by storm in the last few years and its drawing huge readership.

The blogs that get the most traffic are:

Nairaland (nairaland.com)
Linda Ikeji Blog (lindaikejiblog.com)
Pulse (pulse.ng)
Goal (goal.com)
Information Nigeria (informationng.com)

And much more.

The three types of ads to run on blogs/content sites are:

Link text adverts
Blog post ads
Banner ads

CHAPTER 17: TRAFFIC EXCHANGE PLATFORMS

Exchanges are advert networks that brings you traffic from a variety of sources on the internet and they are divided into sub groups as follows:

Native content distribution
Cost per view (CPV)
Display advertising
Media buying
Retargeting
Mobile
Pop-unders

CHAPTER 18: PRINT ADVERTISING

Print advertising may seem out of place, especially with the explosion of online advertising media but it still works, if you know how to work it.

Before you ever spend money on newspaper print adverts, you must make sure you avoid doing the kind of adverts that ad agencies do for their big corporate clients. Your goal with every advert you do is to make profit on each one always.

The #1 Rule of Advertising- TEST YOUR AD!

CHAPTER 19: GO BIG OR GO HOME

You ultimately decide what size of business you want to build, big or small. For many people, all they want is a business that will afford them the nice things of life they want, pay their bills, and have some to put away for retirement. For others, me inclusive, we want to build epic businesses, one that employs hundreds if not thousands of people.

CONCLUSION

The rules of business success are as follows:

Rule #1: Only sell what the markets wants to buy

Rule #2: Always be building your list and your relationship with your list.

Rule #3: The worst thing to depend on in business is the number one

Rule #4: Build your own assets

Rule #5: Live below your means

And many other rules, buy the book to find out the remaining rules!

Contact the Author of the book at

sellyourbrainsociety.com