Primoz Bozic

Helping online entrepreneurs build a 7-figure online business

Primoz Bozic

Why I Quit Facebook

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My palms were sweating. I was sick in my stomach. I could feel the tension building up in my body.

Then I did it.

I pressed the mouse button to make one of the scariest decisions I’ve made in a while.

I waited for a moment. Nothing.

The next moment, relief slowly started kicking in. The tension in my body slowly started to release. The stomach started to untangle. It felt like a huge rock was dropping off my shoulders. And slowly, a smile formed on my face.

I had just deleted my Facebook account.

When I announced the day before that I would be doing that, and encouraged my Facebook friends to reach out to me via email in the future, the reactions were mixed.

Some of them said “good for you!”. Some said “I wanted to do the same but never did it”. Some said “Are you sure you want to do this?” And some of them were just sad.

But everyone had one thing in common – they were shocked.

Over the past few years, I’ve built a decent following and reputation on Facebook, and whenever I posted something on my wall or in one of the communities I was a part of, I would always get a big response, which would help me spread the word about my work.

I also used Facebook to connect with and stay in touch with a lot of online entrepreneurs. Nowadays messaging with someone on Facebook is one of the easiest ways to start or continue building a relationship. All it takes is to open and app and shoot a message to someone you want to talk to. Being an entrepreneur I had to use the app to communicate with a lot of people.

And of course, if you’re not on Facebook nowadays, you’re “missing out”. You’re missing out on birthday party invites, interesting events you could attend, posts in Facebook groups that could be valuable for your business, potential publicity opportunities, and so on.

By quitting Facebook, I would throw all of those opportunities away and could potentially hurt my business and my relationships.

But even though all of those things are true, quitting Facebook wasn’t a shock or a radical decision for me. It was more like a logical next step and something that I saw coming.

To fully understand why I made this decision (and why it really isn’t that surprising), we need to go back in time for a few months.

THE CONVERSATION THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

A few months ago I was having a conversation with a client and a friend, Allon.

Allon is a high-performance coach for online entrepreneurs and he has managed three #1 tennis players in the world, including Novak Djokovic.

Allon wanted to find a few online entrepreneurs to work with and help them become high performers and top authorities in the online business world.

As he mentioned that, I thought to myself: “Damn, I wish I could work with Allon!” And then it dawned on me. Why couldn’t I? I told Allon that I’d be happy to become his first mentee if he’s interested in working with me – and he said yes.

That single conversation a few months ago completely changed the trajectory of my life in the future months. It was the beginning of my journey to “stop messing around” and become a professional online entrepreneur.

I was sick and tired of running my business as a hobby and in a half-assed way. I knew I could perform on a really high level, but I struggled with doing it consistently. I had times when I would write tens of thousands or words a week and create a ton of incredible content, but I also had times when I just wasted my time on email, Facebook and other addictions without really creating any meaningful work.

I was hoping that Allon would help me break out of that and perform on a high level consistently by helping me build the right mindsets, habits and character. I was willing to do whatever it takes to get there.

HOW I STARTED MY JOURNEY OF BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL ENTREPRENEUR

The first thing that we did with Allon was start working on creating the so-called “power blocks”, which he talks about in his Ultimate Guide to High Performance. These were uninterrupted windows of highly focused work where I would go to a coffee shop for a few hours before and after my workout and just crank out some writing.

This single habit already made a huge impact on my business, and I was able to write 102,522 words of remarkable content in 28 days of writing shortly after we started working together. I wrote the whole email sequence for the Ultimate Guide System plus a few long and detailed blog posts that you can find on my blog.

The next habit we started working on were the so-called “online blocks”. These were block of time during which I was supposed to take care of all my email, coaching done in my Ultimate Guide System community, browsing and checking Instagram and Facebook.

Out of all the habits that we worked on with Allon, this one was the hardest one to form (or rather break). I’ve tried staying off from social media and mindless browsing with limited success in the past, and this time was no different.

Sure, I was able to drastically decrease the time I spent on browsing, and that helped. But I still found myself regularly checking my phone to see “if there’s anything new”. I would check my email multiple times a day. I would do the same with Facebook notifications and Facebook messages. Then I would go on to check my Instagram account and the different news websites. And sometimes over the weekend, I would go on YouTube and start watching random YouTube videos.

I often spent hours and hours mindlessly browsing the internet when I wasn’t at my coffee shop writing. When I had a 15-minute break, I would always check my phone. I hate to admit it but I was addicted to it. I always had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should “check what’s new”.

The worst part of it was that I was “one of those people” that constantly stared their phones. When I was hanging out with my girlfriend in the evening, we were often on our phones. When we were hanging out with our friends the same thing happened. And even when I was visiting my family for lunch I sometimes constantly checked the phone. The same thing happened when I was waiting in line at a grocery store, and (this is the worst of all) sometimes even while driving.

It was clear to me that being addicted to the internet was bad for me. Not only did it put me in danger while driving, it also wasn’t good for my business (I could be reading books during that time) and horrible for my relationships. My girlfriend often got mad at me for being on my phone all the time, and she was right.

This went on for a few weeks, until a few other things happened that helped me get rid of my internet addiction.

MY SERENDIPITOUS TRIP TO ISRAEL

Allon and I are both huge sports fans and we often chat about how our teams are doing. One Monday morning he sent me a random message saying “Hey, if you want to be super spontaneous you can visit me in Israel this weekend. Slovenia is playing Israel in a friendly basketball match, and we could go see it together!”

To most people it would seem crazy to go to Israel on a 2-day notice, and they’d never do it. Me? I love taking trips like these. I needed a vacation anyway, and I loved the idea of spending a few days with Allon and sinking in all of his wisdom. So I bought my flight tickets and made it to Israel the next Thursday.

During our trip we made it to the basketball match (where Slovenia unfortunately lost):

But while the basketball match was nice, it wasn’t the highlight of the trip. Hanging out with Allon for a few days was.

Allon is different than most people. As soon as you start talking to him, you notice that he’s clearly an expert at what he does. He seems like he has a great answer to every single question related to high performance. It didn’t matter whether I asked him about money management, deep focused work, overcoming self-doubt or anything else. He always knew how to give me incredibly valuable advice.

Over the few days that I stayed with him we had countless incredible conversations – more than I would usually have in a year. We were constantly talking about how to become better in different areas of our lives while chilling by the pool or taking a long walk on the beach.

Even though I learned an incredible amount over the few days I spent in Israel, the knowledge itself wasn’t the most powerful thing for me. The most valuable thing of all was seeing the lifestyle of a true high performer.

Allon lives a very different life from most people. He doesn’t spend almost any time on Facebook or email. He doesn’t constantly check his phone. Throughout my whole trip, I haven’t even seen him sit behind a computer once.

Instead, he’s actually focusing on living a life. He’s always present when he talks to you. He spends a lot of time reading, learning, meditating, having great conversations, playing with his son and his dog, or talking to his wife. And it seems like he’s genuinely happy while he does that. He’s not constantly worrying or stressing out about emails or rapidly checking social media.

As I watched Allon and his life, I realized that this is the lifestyle that I wanted to have. I want to live a rich, abundant lifestyle where I help a lot of people, but I don’t want to be checking emails for 5 hours a day.

Seeing Allon living this lifestyle AND being extremely successful made me realize that success doesn’t need to come with sacrificing your whole life. Instead, I had the feeling that this lifestyle that Allon created for himself actually fuels his success.

PURSUING THE ROAD TO EXCELLENCE AND MASTERY

As I spent more and more time with Allon, it soon became clear that he reads and learns a TON. He has taken hundreds of online courses. He has read thousands of books. He has been consistently focused on learning and improving himself for the last 20 years.

It started to make sense to me WHY I was getting that feeling that he “knows everything” and seeing him as an incredibly wise expert. It was because over the last 20 years, he did two things consistently. He learned, and he put the advice into action.

Over the years, he has accumulated an enormous bank of knowledge and expertise that now makes it seem like he effortlessly knows a solution to every single problem you might be having.

I realized that that’s one of the things I haven’t been doing as well as I would have wanted to. I knew that I could learn, improve and grow my business very quickly when I learned a lot in the past, but I wasn’t regularly doing that lately. Allon told me that creating a routine where I for example improve my writing every single day would have a HUGE impact on my business in the long run, and I agreed with him.

When I came home from Israel, I made a commitment to myself to figure out how to truly become an expert and achieve mastery. My chosen area of expertise? Writing. My goal is to become one of the top 5 writers in the online business world – a goal that is absolutely achievable, and a goal that won’t just magically “happen”, but will need to be achieved through a lot of deliberate hard work.

In order to figure out HOW to get there, I began rapidly learning about mastery, excellence and expertise. I read books like So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work by Cal Newport, I read the Talent Myth from Matthew Wallace, I listened to a few episodes of the Finding Mastery podcast from Michael Gervais, I listened to a few interviews from people like Derek Halpern, T Harv Eker and so on – all in a matter of weeks.

The more books I read and the more interviews I listened to, the more clarity I had about how to become a true expert.

Here are a few crucial things that I learned:

#1 – There is no such thing as talent

Mozart wasn’t a musical prodigy when he was born. Tiger Woods didn’t become an incredible golfer because of his “talent”. Most of the olympic medal winners don’t become olympic medal winners because of their “gifts”.

All incredibly successful from different walks of life have one thing in common: They worked their asses off to become insanely good at what they did. In most cases, a lot of them had access to great teachers and opportunities to practice their when they were extremely young, getting thousands of hours of practice in when their competitors weren’t even thinking about golfing.

Because they put in so many hours of quality practice so early on in their careers, they were far superior to their competitors who started training at a later age, and seemed like prodigies, when in reality they really just had the unfair advantage of putting in more quality practice.

The emphasis here is on QUALITY practice. Anders Ericsson, one of the top sports psychologists out there called this “deliberate practice”. Cal Newport calls it “deep work”.

Regardless of what we call it, the reality is that if you want to get really freaking good at something, you need to put in the high quality, focused, and often uncomfortable work.

If I for example played tennis for 10 hours a week for 10 years with a friend, would I get better? Absolutely. But if I never actually practiced it and just played, I wouldn’t become a world class tennis player.

If on the other hand I hired an amazing coach for 1on1 lessons and spent 5 hours a week practicing with him, while spending the other 5 hours playing matches or attending tournaments, chances are I would become a world-class tennis player over the course of 10 years as I would put in thousands and thousands of hours of high quality practice.

This was an important realization for me because until I dug into it, I subconsciously believed that some people are just “more gifted or talented” than me, and made me feel helpless. Now I see that’s not true, which made me realize that I can become an expert at anything I want to, IF I’m willing to put in the hard work.

#2 – You can be an expert at anything in 10 years

One of the things that Allon constantly reminds me of is that you can achieve anything you want to in 10 years.

Originally I had trouble believing that, and imagining it for myself. Could I really become a Hollywood actor in 10 years? Could I really run a billion dollar business? Could I really become a professional footballer in that time frame?

As I explored “the talent myth” and realized that the practice is really what turns you into an expert, it all started to make sense.

You’ve probably heard of the “10,000 hour rule” to become an expert. Cal Newport talks about this rule in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, where he makes the point that just 10,000 hours isn’t enough – 5,000 of those 10,000 hours need to be deliberate practice.

He proves that thesis by a study that was done on professional chess players. The chess players that spent 9,000 hours out of the 10,000 hours playing tournament games (and not studying how to get better at chess) became intermediate players. The players that spent 5,000 out of the 10,000 hours studying their game and the games of other people became grandmasters.

Coincidentally, you can only get about 1,000 hours of really highly focused practice in every year (as highly focused practice is tiring and straining), which means that you’ll likely need about 10 years to put in the 10,000 hours and become really great at what you do.

Hearing about this I started to BELIEVE that I could achieve anything I wanted to with 10 years of deliberate practice and constant improvement. It would be hard NOT to become great at what I do if I really put in the years of hard work and daily improvement.

#3 – Removing distractions is the key to consistently progressing towards mastery

As I listened to some of the Finding Mastery interviews with Michael Gervais (he’s the mental toughness coach for Seattle Seahawks and from Felix Baumgartner, the guy who took a balloon to the space and jumped from it), I could see the same pattern repeating over and over again.

The athletes that became the best in the world at what they did were focused on improving themselves every day through deliberate practice, and spending as much time as possible “in the zone” of presence, calm and focus. This focus is what enables them to get in the thousands of hours of high quality practice that helps them become the best in the world at what they do.

This made me realize that just “trying to learn something new every day” wasn’t enough. I needed to find big blocks of focused, uninterrupted time in my schedule where I could learn and improve my skills. If I managed to do that, then failing to improve really wouldn’t be an option any more.

This is where quitting Facebook and social media comes in.

THE COST OF BEING ON FACEBOOK

As I’ve mentioned in the beginning of this article, Facebook has a lot of benefits for an online entrepreneur. But few people really consider the cost and the downsides of being on Facebook.

For me, Facebook (and other social media like Instagram) was not only a considerable time suck. It was also something that my brain was constantly thinking about, and taking my focus away.

I constantly thought to myself “I need to see if there’s something new.” “I need to check if someone messaged me.” “I need to see how people liked my blog post that I just published.”

Even if I logged out of Facebook, set myself set hours to access it, or even blocked my access to it through apps like Freedom, it didn’t help.

I still felt like my brain was wired and addicted to it. It was always in the back of my mind. I need to check Facebook. I need to check Instagram. I need to check my email. I need to check news websites. I had that thought in the back of my mind over and over again, and it took away my focus from the tasks at hand.

On top of that, there was the obvious browsing Facebook (which isn’t really helpful), responding (or feeling guilty for not responding) to messages from random people who would message me, or replying to questions in the Facebook comments that would continue to suck out my time and energy.

Even if I managed not to check Facebook when I was writing, I still checked it every chance that I would get. On the toilet, in the elevator, sometimes even in the car. I often spent a lot of time on it in the evening, rather than spending quality time with my friends, family or my girlfriend, or reading to improve myself.

Being on social media was hurting my business and my lifestyle, and I knew I had to do something about it.

WHY I QUIT FACEBOOK

By the time I quit Facebook last Saturday, the decision was quite easy to make. It was a “gut feeling” decision. I knew it was the right thing to do.

As I’ve spent a lot of my time thinking about what my big vision of what I want to achieve in 10 years is and studying the HOW to get there, I realized that I was SAYING that I wanted to achieve these incredible feats, but what I was DOING wasn’t getting me there as fast as I could.

I realized that if I really wanted to become an expert at what I do, reach all of my goals and live this incredible life that’s similar to Allon’s life, I needed to live a lifestyle that would help me get there. I would have to spend a lot of time each day on deep, focused work to get better at my craft. I would need to spend a lot of time learning, reading, and listening to rapidly gain new knowledge. I would need to spend the rest of the time doing the things I loved and spending quality time with loved ones.

Being on social media didn’t fit into either of those things. It wasn’t deep work. It wasn’t deep learning. And it wasn’t spending quality time.

In that moment when I had that realization, I knew that Facebook needed to go. I was nervous when I made the decision to delete my account, but on the other hand I knew it was the right thing to do.

I pulled the trigger and pressed that DELETE button. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

“BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE BENEFITS OF FACEBOOK?”

In the grand scheme of things, quitting Facebook was an easy decision for me. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t worry about “missing out” on all the benefits of it. I definitely had a bitter taste in my mouth as I pressed that button.

There were 3 major concerns I had towards quitting Facebook, and this is how I worked through them:

#1 – “I won’t be able to promote my content through Facebook anymore”

When I share something remarkable on my Facebook account, many of my Facebook friends read, comment or share it. It’s one of the easiest ways to spread my work in a matter of minutes, and can bring hundreds or even thousands of new visitors to my website with the small viral effect that happens.

Not posting my content on Facebook any more will take away from my website traffic, email subscriber growth and sales for sure. And yet, that’s the sacrifice I’m willing to make.

As I’ve built a bigger and bigger following and a reputation on Facebook, it became comfortable to just create content and spread the word about it there. A lot of people in my audience would read whatever I wrote anyway, and a lot of them would share my content with others if they saw that I wrote something new.

I was also a part of a few online communities where I had a lot of authority, and where I could continue to spread the word about this content.

The problem with all of this was that it became too comfortable for me. Yes, sharing my content on Facebook would attract thousands of visitors to my website every month, BUT that number wouldn’t drastically go up. It would consistently stay the same.

I realized that by focusing so much on promoting my content, I was taking away the focus from what REALLY matters – creating high quality content that people will read and feel compelled to share with others because of how good it is.

That would allow me to actually GROW my audience in the long run, and not only keep my existing audience engaged. I took it a step further and decided to create content that’s so good that people who know me (and people who don’t know me) will share it on Facebook and in different online communities even if I never share it there.

This new focus on really creating stellar content that people won’t be able to resist talking about is more in line with my goals and my future, and will be better for me in the long run than spending time promoting content on Facebook.

One concern down, two to go.

#2 – “I will miss out on all the relationships I could build through Facebook”

Facebook makes it easier than ever to connect with new people, or “stay in touch” with old friends and people that you meet through conferences and online.

I’ve been able to connect with quite a few people through Facebook and even chat with a few major online influencers regularly to stay in touch.

For a long time, I thought I would be “missing out” on these relationships if I get off Facebook. And the reality is that that might be true to some extent. Some people are more responsive through Facebook than they are through email. I might fall out of touch with some people that I used to talk to regularly.

On the other hand, it’s important to realize that Facebook is just a medium of communication. The way I see it, if you really want to connect with someone and they want to connect with you, you can usually reach them in another way. You can email them or jump on a Skype call with them.

One of the downsides of Facebook is that while it’s easy to “stay in touch”, I don’t think the relationships that you build through Facebook messages in MOST (but not all) cases are pretty surface level, and not the deep, lasting relationships.

I would argue that spending the same amount of time on Skype as I would spend messaging people on Facebook would actually be a lot better for creating a new relationship or staying in touch as that would add a lot more depth and focus to our conversations.

Looking at it from that angle, not being on Facebook might not be that bad. I’d rather do a few Skype calls with the people I want to stay in touch with every month than to spend the same amount (or even longer) messaging back and forth with them. It’s a bigger bang for your buck for everyone.

I believe staying off Facebook will actually be better for my relationships in the long run, as I won’t build the relationships the lazy way, and rather create deep, lasting relationships by focusing on actually spending quality time with people I care about.

#3 – “I’ll meet out on all the events that are happening around me!”

Facebook Events tool is pretty damn powerful. You can use it to organize meet ups and birthday parties within minutes and invite the cool people from your network to them in just a few clicks.

I acknowledge that by not being on Facebook, I’ll likely miss out on some of these events, as I might have no idea they were even happening.

Still, if I look at it from a similar lens as on building relationships, that’s not necessarily so bad. I know that the people who I’ll have strong relationships with will invite me to those events that they’re hosting anyway (another reason to focus on building strong relationships the old fashioned way).

I also know that if I regularly spend the time staying in touch with people that I care about, they’ll let me know if some cool events are happening out there, even if I don’t find them on Facebook myself. I know that I might still miss out on some of the events, but I’m sure I’ll still make it to the important ones.

These were the major reasons that prevented me from leaving Facebook. There are others of course (like not being able to do research in online Facebook groups etc.), and for every one of them I simply asked myself “how would I do this if Facebook didn’t exist?”. I was always able to find an answer within minutes, and in many cases it ended up leading to a higher quality activity than spending time on Facebook.

WHAT MY LIFE IS LIKE AFTER FACEBOOK

I quit Facebook last Saturday, and today it’s Friday. This means that I’ve been off from Facebook for almost a whole week now. You might be wondering what my life is like without Facebook. Is it really that different?

And for me, I’d have to say YES. It feels like so much has changed to the positive over the past week that it’s crazy.

First of all, I no longer have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I “should check what’s new”. It’s gone. It’s like not having the feeling that I really need a beer right now. Not having this feeling is incredibly freeing and allows me to focus a lot better on what I’m doing – whether I’m writing or spending time with my girlfriend.

I notice that I now check my phone WAY less than I used to. I only really use my phone to send messages, make phone calls, read books or listen to audiobooks, and record videos in the gym. I don’t have Instagram and Facebook accounts any more, I can’t access email from my phone, and all of the websites I used to mindlessly browse are now blocked (Freedom app is awesome). The same thing is true for my laptop.

I can only really check email on my iMac that I have at home, and it’s incredibly freeing to not even have the option to check it otherwise.

Because of this, I find myself reading and learning a lot more, which feels awesome. I also feel like I’m really getting the most out of life by spending 95% of my days on high quality activities, whether that’s working, learning or spending quality time with people I care about.

Do I miss Facebook? Honestly, I don’t. I like feeling more free and less wired and addicted. I feel so much happier now that I’m not obsessing about all the things that are happening around me or things I’m missing out on, and just focusing on living a happy life where I’m steadily refining my craft and building a business that will impact millions of people all over the world.

Am I on Allon’s level yet? No, but I’m getting there. There are definitely things I still could be doing better like being even more present and concentrating better, letting my mind wander less etc., but that’s not something you change in a week. It’s something that changes through years of deliberate practice.

Quitting Facebook definitely feels like the right decision for me, and I have zero regrets about it. Now the question is… Should you do the same?

SHOULD YOU QUIT FACEBOOK TOO?

My opinion on whether you should quit Facebook / social media is two part:

– I don’t think EVERYONE should quit social media
– I do think that a lot of people would benefit from quitting social media

As mentioned in the beginning of this post, Facebook CAN be a great tool for building an online business. A lot of the business relationships I’ve built in the early days were through Facebook. I got a lot of help through different Facebook based online communities of online business courses when I was starting on with my online business. Being on Facebook definitely helped me jump start my online business and make a name out of myself online.

If you’re just starting out with your online business, Facebook can be a great tool that you can leverage for building an audience and the right relationships, if you actually use it very wisely and strategically to build the right relationships, do customer research and spread the word about what you do.

Having said that, there are two questions remaining:

#1 – Is Facebook the BEST way to achieve those goals? Or are there other alternatives that could be better / more powerful for what you want to accomplish?

#2 – Are you REALLY using Facebook in the best way possible (or are you wasting a ton of time on it)?

If you tend to spend way too much time on Facebook, limiting your time on it daily to a one hour block might be a good idea – or removing it completely (if you notice it distracts you from your important work way too much).

If you really want to dig into this, Cal Newport talks about quitting social media in his book Deep Work, which I highly recommend. He shares a framework that will help you decide for yourself what’s best for you.

What I can say is that quitting worked way better for me than limiting it to an hour a day because I tend to think about it a lot if I do have daily access to it. I’m the type of person that likes to either go “all out” on something or to not do something at all.

For me, this is definitely the right choice.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

What about you? Have you ever quit Facebook? Considered quitting it? Are you considering quitting it right now? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

Also – if you’re reading this and you’re running an online business, you’ll love my free e-book where I talk about the #1 strategy that I used to attract 278,958+ website visitors, 6,150+ email subscribers and made $300k+ in revenue with my online business. You can grab your free copy of it below!

P.S. Have a friend who’s addicted to Facebook and would benefit from reading this article, or a friend that’s successfully quit Facebook themselves? Send this article over to them!

-Primoz

How Nick Earned $3,049 (And Got a JOB OFFER) Within Days of Publishing His Ultimate Guide

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Here’s a question I get a lot…

“Can I actually make money with an Ultimate Guide?”

The answer is yes. HELL YES.

Today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Ultimate Guide System graduate Nick, who used his Ultimate Guide to bring in 4 consulting clients (worth $3,094) AND a job offer within days of publishing his Ultimate Guide.

Meet Nick Wolny:

Nick is known for two things:

  1. Eating peanut butter & scrambled eggs for breakfast during the Ultimate Guide System live calls
  2. He’s establishing himself as the go-to expert in Facebook Advertising and Digital Marketing for local fitness and yoga businesses

A few months ago, Nick was still working as a general business coach for fitness businesses. He saw some initial success with his business idea as he got the first few clients through his network, but then the things slowed down.

He exhausted his network and knew that he needed to build an audience.

He knew that in order to do that, he would need to stand out and find a more specific niche. He decided to pivot to digital marketing consulting, as he saw a gap in the market when he worked with his first few clients.

As he did that, he had a huge imposter syndrome when he thought about writing about digital marketing, as he felt like he was competing with companies like Digital Marketer. Those people had 10+ years of experience, while he acquired his skills just over a year ago. Why would anyone listen to him?

Still, he put himself out there. He started writing. He tried to create truly remarkable content.

And that’s where he got stuck.

He knew he needed to create remarkable content to cut through the noise, but didn’t know HOW to do it.

He didn’t know how to create remarkable, meaty content that people would find insanely valuable and want to work with him after reading it.

“The content i created wasn’t research driven, and wasn’t rigorous (which makes the difference in content). I tried to be too charming in my writing. I tried to wriggle my way into creating valuable content by making people laugh. But the content I created wasn’t deep and valuable. It was charming surface level content, and that was it. There was no meat in my content.

My email subscribers responded to my emails with responses like “LOL”, and not with detailed emails about how they’d implement my strategies in their businesses. I wasn’t attracting clients that wanted to do the work. I attracted readers that wanted to be entertained.

Every time I tried to write a post longer than 1,500 words, I failed. I couldn’t deliver a long, valuable piece of content. I didn’t know how to do it, what to talk about or how to structure it. There were so many tripwires where I got stuck and never finished my writing. From coming up with a title, to validating the idea with my market, to creating a table of contents… I was never able to finish my pieces.”

That’s when Nick joined Ultimate Guide System. In fact, he was the first person to sign up for it.

“I wanted a system that would help me get email subscribers that didn’t feel like sh*t”

“I noticed how I behaved through Ramit Sethi’s Ultimate Guides. Whenever I saw one, I stopped everything I was doing and read them. I wanted to get every single bonus with the guide. I wanted to read everything. There’s just something magnetic about Ultimate Guides. I wanted to do that for my audience too.

I wanted a system that would help me get email subscribers that didn’t feel like shit. I didn’t want to do things like 5 day challenges or messenger bots. I wanted to focus on ONE QUALITY way of getting email subscribers. I knew writing an Ultimate Guide would force me to focus on one thing that works. It would put guard rails around what I’m doing, and allow me to go really deep on a topic.

I really just wanted to say “hey, I’m Nick, I’m going to offer this super valuable thing to these people who think just like me, and see what happens”.”

Nick ended up successfully writing his first Ultimate Guide with Ultimate Guide System:

The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Monetizing Facebook Live For Your Fitness Or Yoga Business

Just a few weeks into the program, as he was doing the research with his Ultimate Guide, Nick not only got one, but TWO paying clients:

Nick sharing his wins in the UGS community

Nick’s first client with his Ultimate Guide

This essentially paid for the whole course within WEEKS of joining it.

So how did it happen?

“Two people reached out to me when they saw me do the market research validation on my Facebook wall. We sat down, talked about what they needed, and they signed up with me as consulting clients. I made my full investment for the course back within weeks of joining it.”

Once he published his guide, he got 2 more consulting clients from it that reached out to him:

A potential client reaching out to Nick after he published his Ultimate Guide

Nick’s $1,500 3-month retainer client

This brought the total revenues from his guide to $3,094 within a few days of publishing his first guide.

But here’s the best part of Nick’s story.

Shortly after publishing his guide, a CEO of a company reached out to him to offer him a job interview for a marketing director position because of his guide:

Since then, Nick has made it to the 5th round of interviews over the past 5 weeks, and he might very well be getting a new job because of his Ultimate Guide. Even I never expected that something like that would happen through an Ultimate Guide. That’s absolutely insane.

“People now perceive me as an expert. They want to work with me because I know what they need, even if they don’t.”

Here’s what Nick loved the most about his new clients:

“With all of my 4 clients, they came to me and said “I’m not sure what I need, but I’m ready to pay – just name the price.” This was super interesting to me and SO AWESOME, because I was never good at sales, pitching or cold calling.

I didn’t need to “sell” these people, they were already sold. For them to come to me and for that to happen multiple times, and to say “I’m not sure what I need but I want to pay you because you know what I need”, that’s incredible. It feels like people perceive me as an expert. They want to work with someone who will know what they need, even if they don’t, and that person is now me.”

“More and more cool things are happening to me because of my guide”

“After I published my guide, Leadpages reached out to me and wanted to interview me about my guide. They’re planning on featuring me as an expert in their next Ultimate Guide that’s coming out later this week.

Another cool thing that happened was that some of my idols and heroes from the online business world that I followed for a while signed up to my email list. Now I know I really gotta bring it. I need to keep my email list engaged, and I’m expected to bring my A-game.”

No more “LOL!” email responses!

And guess what? He’s no longer getting “LOL!” email responses, but actual detailed emails with questions from his potential clients instead:

“Now it’s EASY for me to consistently create remarkable content”

Remember how Nick struggled with creating remarkable content?

Well, over the past few months, he:

  • Successfully published his first 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide
  • Wrote 3 Huffington Post articles that were between 1,500-2,000 words long
  • Is 6,000+ words into writing his second Ultimate Guide

Nick’s new Huffington Post articles

“Now I’m confident from start to finish what creating remarkable content looks like. One of the biggest confidence markers is that I wrote my Ultimate Guide in the time frame of the course. Now I know that writing a new blog post won’t last for 6 months or 10 months.

I’ve written 3 pieces for Huffington Post in the last month. I’m building a digital footprint and writing regularly. I reached out to a few gyms, wrote about them in Huffington Post, which allowed me to connect with the local gyms, they’re sending me contacts, and creating buzz for me.

I’ve had the opportunity to post on Huffington Post since September, but never did it. Now I’m creating 2k word rigorous blog posts ON THE SIDE, and it’s not a big deal to do it.”

“I’m coming from a position of power, not force”

“I’m increasingly confident about building my business with power, not force. I’m not saying hurry the fuck on my list and i’ll take your money like a lot of people in my industry do. You want to join my list because we have a similar mindset, and I’ll show you a quality approach to digital marketing for your business.

In the marketing space there is an abundance of join now, buy now. For me, less is more. I know there’s people out there that are looking for solid information, without being sold to like crazy. I want to help those people.”

Nick’s future: from $3,000 online courses to becoming a Forbes contributor

“I eventually want to create a high end group program, with a live call approach like in Ultimate Guide System, with a community for a period of time, where I work together with fitness business owners on their marketing. I know that to have a 6-month semi-personalized experience at $3,000 is a steal for them.

I also want to become a Forbes contributor that talks about the intersection of fitness and capitalism. A lot of people are tapped into how people want to feel and look. It’s a multi billion dollar business. There’s a business conversation to be had around that, and also exercising together, working out together, talking about community, and the transformation that comes with it.

Fitness is leadership, needs to be talked about, and in a platform like Forbes, people will take it seriously. Now I’m working on building my digital footprint to be able to get there.

Now I’m more savvy than before. I want to get media attention about my work, not about me. I don’t want to be quoted in Time, I want to write an article for Time. I don’t want to be mentioned in media to put a logo on my site. I want to write a killer guest post that people will actually find valuable.”

3 Changes that Nick made to his online business with Ultimate Guide System

Let’s talk about some things that worked really well for Nick, that you too can use to grow your own online business.

1. He gets feedback on his writing early

“One of the big things I learned from Ultimate Guide System is to get feedback on my work early. It’s so powerful.
In the course I asked for feedback on everything. My title, my table of contents, my writing. Even when it wasn’t great yet. It helped me get things right and move forward.

Now I always ask for feedback if I’m not behaving the way I want to behave. I know that if I wrote just 500 words in 3 days that some feels off, and I need to go talk to someone about it to figure out what’s going on.”

This is a great habit of high performing entrepreneurs. They get feedback on their writing earlier rather than later, which helps them move forward whenever they see they might be getting stuck, and keep the momentum going.

2. He writes daily (for the last 70+ days)

“When I started Ultimate Guide System I did this thing where I would write 1,000 words/day each day to finish my guide on time. I streamed it on Facebook Live from a coffee shop every morning.

I’m still doing it to this day, for 70 days, and I’m going to do it for a year. I have this Facebook page where I go live every day. This is where the rigor comes in. I do it every day. I’m doing this, I’m here. Even if I feel like shit and I’m on my couch, I’ll write for at least 15 minutes.”

“When I do it for a year, I’m going to document my experience and share it, and how it changed my business. I already know there’ll be 50 ways in which I could talk about it. How my attitude changed. What changed in my business.

And I know I’ll be able to create more remarkable content and Ultimate Guides consistently this way.”

You don’t have to write for a year, write 1,000 words/day or stream yourself to the world like Nick – but there’s a lesson to be learned here.

If you commit to writing every single day (at least during the week) before you go to work, even if you write just a little bit, writing can become a habit, and creating remarkable content consistently gets easier.

The more uninterrupted time you block off for writing, the more writing you’ll get done.

3. He committed to attending every call and completing the course on time

“When I joined Ultimate Guide System I said to myself I would come to every call and make sure I finish my guide on time. I made it to all but one call. I asked for feedback whenever I could. And I finished the course on time. It took a lot of time, and more than just 3 hours a week, but Primoz told me that right off the bat when I asked him how long it would take. So I was ready.

I loved the live format of the course. I feel like it’s really the best structure out there, to have a lot of concentrated work in the beginning and then support for a long period of time. There’s just SO much value in having the opportunity to work with someone live. But you have to do the work. You have to come to calls, ask questions in slack, get feedback and move forward. And if you do that, it just works.”

This is something that I noticed with my students. The more calls they attended / watched, and the more active they were in the Slack (our chat community), the more they got out of the course and the faster they wrote their guides.

If you really dedicate the time to go through the course as planned, and use the community and all resources available to help you out, you WILL have an Ultimate Guide written by the end of it.

Writing an Ultimate Guide on your own is hard unless you’re the type of person that can write 10,000 words like nothing by themselves, and having a community to support you and to turn to for help is a big piece of consistently creating incredible content.

Here’s what Nick said about Ultimate Guide System:

“Ultimate Guide System was the BEST online course I’ve ever been in. I feel like a schmuck for stealing from Primoz.”

“I’ve learned so many things in Ultimate Guide System. How to methodically define and validate a piece of content before you start writing. I’ve written things that didn’t go anywhere because I missed that step in the past. Now I’m more clear than ever that the first step is the most important.

I now have really strong tools that I can use and leverage to write really remarkable content. It’s getting harder and harder to do it as more people come into the space, but I’m confident I can stand out from them and continue to grow my business.

It was cool to have a list of places in the course where people historically got stuck, so I could pay attention to it and avoid it. Primoz always told us “this is where my 1on1 clients got stuck, this is what might happen, this is how you avoid it”. He was always keeping an eye out for us.

It was great to have a community of 30+ people, writing their guides, each in a slightly different way. Some of them spent more time designing these gorgeous guides. Others like me just wanted to keep moving. Now I know that there’s no one way to create remarkable content, you need to find your own way. This course was really different than any other course out there.

It’s a joke, it’s so cheap. Compared to other things I spent this kind of money on, I feel like a schmuck for being in this course. I got exactly what I wanted out of the course. My guide wasn’t even published and I already made back my investment. And I know that this is just the beginning for me.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed Nick’s story, and I have more stories of our students coming your way in the future, plus exclusive resources that will make writing your first Ultimate Guide easier than ever before.

To make sure you receive those exclusive resources (I’ll only share them with my email subscribers), and be the first to know when Ultimate Guide System opens again, download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.

You can use it to get started with writing your Ultimate Guide, and learn all about how you too can use Ultimate Guides to get your online business off the ground (or take it to the next level).

Download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.

Source: 1daybanner.com

CASE STUDY: How this community management expert DOUBLED her email list (and started establishing herself as THE expert in her industry)

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Do you ever feel like…

  • you’re great at what you do
  • that you have the skills and knowledge that can help thousands of people
  • the world NEEDS to hear about what you have to say

…but nobody knows who you are, what you do, and how you can help them?

That’s exactly how Ultimate Guide System graduate Diana felt just 3 months ago.

Diana Tower, “The Community Ninja”

Diana was one of my co-workers at Ramit Sethi’s Accelerator program, where she managed the Accelerator community.

She was always doing a kick ass job, she helped us build an incredible community, and she was literally living and breathing online communities.

She read books about them. She took online courses about them. She spent every second of every day thinking about how to make the Accelerator community better.

While she loves her work in Accelerator, she always wanted to have a side business of her own.

She played around with different business ideas over the past few years, but none of them really clicked with her – until she found the one that did late last year.

She realized just how good she became at creating profitable online communities over the last year, and wanted to help other people create them too.

At first, she was really excited about her idea. She started doing research around it, having conversations with potential clients, and started thinking about building an email list.

She planned out what her business would look like.

She did this for months, but her business wasn’t really going anywhere.

The problem was that nobody outside of Accelerator knew who she was and what she did. She didn’t have any way of SHOWING people that she knew what she was talking about.

She knew she was great at what she did, but didn’t really know how to show and prove to the world that she’s the go-to expert that everyone should talk to and work with.

She didn’t want to spend years writing blog posts, she didn’t have the time to send out tens and tens of guest post pitches, and she felt like she wasn’t really moving anywhere.

She also didn’t want to be one of those people who worked on their business all day long and sacrifice her family to do it. She wanted to have a great side business AND have plenty of time for her husband and her son.

She didn’t want to do 10 things to get her business off the ground. She wanted ONE thing that works.

That’s when she joined the Ultimate Guide System.

Here’s what she said immediately after she joined:

She was ready to create her first Ultimate Guide that would put her on the map as an expert in her niche, help her grow her email list and get the first few paying clients.

Over the next few months, she worked hard to create and launch her first Ultimate Guide:

The Ultimate Guide to Building a Profitable Online Community From Scratch

As soon as she published her guide, everything changed. People loved her guide, read it and shared it

“I published my guide around midnight, shared it on Facebook, and went to sleep. Next morning, 6 people already shared my guide and a lot of my friends were reading the guide and congratulating me on it. It was great!”

A lot of people raved about how awesome her guide is and opted into her email list:

Many of them shared her guide with their friends:

And even top influencers like Selena Soo shared it with their audiences:

She even got an opportunity to talk to a top influencer in her niche about improving their online community

“This wasn’t all though. As I was typing out an email to an influencer that I featured in the guide, I was shocked to receive an email from them. They reached out to ME!”

Here’s what the email said:

“Congrats on your Ultimate Guide! It’s truly phenomenal and really showcases you as the incredible expert that you are. =)

On a related note, I was wondering if you might be available for a call with me and a team member.

We are trying to figure some things out with our course communities, and would so greatly value your input on a few key decisions we’re trying to make.”

“As I got this email, I ran to my husband and I was so excited that I was freaking out! At first he thought that there was something wrong, but it wasn’t. I was just that excited that someone who I admired wanted to talk to me about their online community!”

After publishing her Ultimate Guide, her email list started to grow

Since she published her guide in the end of June, Diana’s email list has been steadily growing:

Her new readers quickly became her raving fans

Her readers have been absolutely devouring her guide, some of them even while eating crepes:

She received emails like this from her readers explaining how much they loved her guide:

As well as with the favorite takeaways from her guide:

These are the kind of people that not only come and check out your website. These are the people that will buy your online courses and work with you in the future.

3 months later: Diana got from 130 to 303 email subscribers and got her first consulting client!

It’s been a few months since I wrote this post, so I asked Diana to share an update with me of where she’s at in her business now.

Here’s what she told me.

Since she’s published her first Ultimate Guide, her email list has been steadily growing (from 130 to over 303 email subscribers):

She’s now got her first consulting client (that reached out to her and asked her to hire her):

Plus, she’s getting referrals to more paying clients!

And the best part? She just recently published her second Ultimate Guide (about engaging your community members):

And I know this guide will do wonders for her business.

Diana’s big transformation: How she feels after publishing her first Ultimate Guide

Diana didn’t just write an Ultimate Guide and get some email subscribers with it. Now she feels completely different and runs her business with a brand new approach and attitude.

She knows that the Ultimate Guide was just the beginning of her online business success. It was a stepping stone for bigger things to come.

Here’s what Diana said about how she feels after writing and publishing her guide:

“I don’t just think I’m an expert… I FEEL and BELIEVE that I’m one.”

“Before I wrote my guide, even though I worked with Ramit Sethi, that wasn’t enough for me to say I’m an expert.I didn’t have anything to show, to prove it.

Writing an Ultimate Guide changed me. It changed the perception of myself. Now I BELIEVE that I’m an expert. I see that people are reaching out to me to work with me.

Now that I get emails from my readers that love my guide, I see that I’m ACTUALLY helping people. It’s not just in my head any more.

Now I no longer feel like I’m good at this but nobody really cares about it. I know and feel like what I do is actually valuable.”

“Writing a 5,000 word article feels like nothing for me now.”

“Before I wrote my guide, I constantly felt like I had to prove myself. Like I was fighting an uphill battle. Everything felt difficult, and not that fun.

Writing an Ultimate Guide was hard in the sense that it was 3 months of writing, but it was also fun and interesting. I learned how to find out what people really want, give them all the information they need, and go to town on it. It makes everything so much easier.

Whatever I do now feels so much easier. I could create another guide. Writing a 5,000 word article feels like nothing. I know how to do it. I know how to write a great guest post. All of my writing feels so much better, even in my every day social media posts. Everything feels better and easier.”

“Now I finally believe I can create and sell a $1,000 online course”

“3 months ago I wasn’t nearly in the same situation in which I was right now. I had doubts that anything would really happen out of my business idea. I knew I was going to do something eventually, but I didn’t feel like these huge things that would happen would be right here.

I wasn’t dreaming big. I thought maybe I could get a few clients. Maybe I could build a $200 course one day. I had really small and conservative dreams. I never thought about helping people who are really influential because I didn’t feel like I was good enough and these people felt so out of reach. I wasn’t sure if I could help them.

Now I know I can get 3 highly influential clients, and by helping them I’ll help them impact thousands of people. I like the idea of a $1,000 product that will help people significantly. I feel like I can help ANYONE now. Any entrepreneur that has an online community, no matter how large their business is. I know I could help them with at least a part of their community.”

So how did she do it? How did she write the Ultimate Guide that helped her go from feeling like nobody really cares about her business to becoming a go-to expert in her niche?

3 changes that Diana made to running her online business that helped her become an overnight success

Diana was one of the first Ultimate Guide System students to publish her Ultimate Guide. And while it was a lot of work, I never stopped believing that she would publish her guide. And she did.

There’s 3 specific things that helped Diana write a 21,000+ word Ultimate Guide over 3 months and become an overnight success.

1. She STOPPED doing everything else to focus her Ultimate Guide

First, she stopped doing everything that she was doing in her business to just focus on writing her Ultimate Guide. This helped her create the mental space and time to do the research, create her table of contents, write and publish her guide.

She was no longer worrying about all of the other things she “should” be doing like guest posting or finding potential clients because she knew that publishing her guide would make that so much easier.

This also allowed her to find the time and energy for her family and friends and take weekends and afternoons of, so she wouldn’t burn herself out.

2. She CREATED something she’s proud of, that people noticed

“I used to spend a lot of time just planning, researching, and not DOING anything. This was the first thing that I publicly released for this business idea. I created something, put it on the internet, and got a great response.

People actually noticed and appreciated it. They read it, commented on it, and shared it. This wasn’t just something in my head any more. It was real, it was out there, and it gave me permission to dream bigger.”

Putting all of her ideas on paper, creating something incredible and putting it into the world allowed people to actually SEE how awesome she is, and start thinking about working with her. If she just kept doing the research and planning, this would never happen.

If you want to establish yourself as the expert in your niche, you need to put something incredible out there that gets people’s attention – and an Ultimate Guide is the perfect way to do that.

3. She found a community of people just like her to support her along the way

In Ultimate Guide System, she found a community of people with the same goals with her who wanted to write incredible Ultimate Guides, and had big visions for their online businesses.

It was with their support that she was able to write and publish such an incredible guide from start to finish (and set up a brand new website in-between).

“I don’t think I would have ever written a 21,000 word guide on my own. I would get stuck in procrastinating it, getting it designed, and spend time on things that aren’t important.

As I wrote my Ultimate Guide, I could always rely on the Ultimate Guide System community to have my back. Whenever I got stuck, felt that one of my chapters sucked, I could just turn to the community to get their feedback and move forward.

The other students really helped me with every step of my guide. From creating the table of contents, designing my guide, to setting up my WordPress website. It wasn’t so overwhelming any more.

When I finished writing my guide, I started freaking out. I had a crazy resistance to publishing it. I thought to myself that this is a shitty guide, that nobody would read it, that I didn’t know what I’m talking about. Deep down I knew that’s not true, but that’s how I felt.

The community really helped me work through that, push through it and successfully publish my guide.”

Writing an Ultimate Guide is a big project, and a lot of people might never finish writing one or get stuck if they try to create one on their own.

That’s exactly why we have an incredibly supportive community and weekly calls in the Ultimate Guide System, so you can actually finish writing your amazing guide.

So what are Diana’s thoughts about Ultimate Guide System?

“Ultimate Guide System is like taking the red pill in the matrix”

“Joining Ultimate Guide System was a no brainer for me. As soon as I joined, I knew it was worth it.

I’ve now published my Ultimate Guide, people are asking me to work with them, I’m positioning myself as an expert, and I know I’ll get more email subscribers from it for life.

But it’s not just about writing an Ultimate Guide. By writing an Ultimate Guide, you are investing in yourself. And if you invest in anything, you should invest in yourself.

I know that my entire business is based on content. Not just one awesome Ultimate Guide, anything else I’ll create will be fucking amazing. I can’t go back to writing shitty and short “top 5 tips” type content.

It’s like the matrix where you take the red pill, you take the UGS pill. You can never go back.

Now I’m writing with my audience in mind. I’m no longer thinking that I’m “supposed to write 3 articles a week”. Now it’s like I’m going to write this article about this problem and it will be so awesome that everyone will read it. I know how to create really good content. It’s easy.”

You can read Diana’s guides to see what incredible Ultimate Guides look like:

And if you’re interested in using Ultimate Guides to grow your email list and get your first paying customers, you can now join Ultimate Guide System – a one year program where I’ll teach you, step by step, how to create incredible Ultimate Guides and finally get your online business off the ground in 2018.

-Primoz

CASE STUDY: How this weight loss expert gained 500 new email subscribers (and TRIPLED her email list) in 3 Days

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Meet Leslie.

Leslie is the founder of Rice Lean and the author of the Asian-Inspired Ultimate Guide to Naturally Losing 30 Pounds.

Just 2 months ago, Leslie was sitting on 238 email subscribers. Not a bad start, but considering she’s been hustling and focusing on growing her email list for over 6 months, she knew that she could be doing better.

She was doing everything she was “supposed” to be doing – from guest posting to creating influencer roundup posts – and her email list barely budged. At most she got 50 email subscribers from a guest post that she spent weeks and weeks writing.

Nothing seemed to work as well as she thought it would, and she was frustrated that her hard work wasn’t paying off.

Fast forward to today – Leslie has TRIPLED her email list in just 3 days after she created her first Ultimate Guide. Not only does she now have 500+ NEW, highly engaged email subscribers, she also has 29 raving testimonials from her Ultimate Guide readers and people waiting in line for her to create her first online course.

Today, she’ll tell us ALL about how she did it in this post – and how you can too.

Leslie, take it away!

HOW I GAINED 500 EXCITED EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS IN 3 DAYS WITH MY FIRST ULTIMATE GUIDE

By Leslie Chen from Rice Lean

How are you doing with growing your list so far?

For me, it has been tough.

The idea of guest posting makes my stomach churn. And for most of the time, pitching felt like shooting in the dark.

Besides guest posting, I’ve also ventured in writing an influencer roundup post. After about 80 hours of hard work on researching, outreaching, and writing, all I got was crickets.

To really speed up my list-building progress, I decided to reach out to 10 influencers each week. But knowing the chance of getting a “yes” was slim, my motivation sank right before I wrote the emails.

So after about 6 months of work, I’ve only got 238 email subscribers.

The situation felt like a cold, hard deadlock. And if you ever asked me then, I’d tell you I’ve never believed that I could have my own story of getting 500 new email subscribers just within 3 days – UNTIL IT HAPPENED 3 DAYS AGO.

(This is the report of the above-mentioned Mailchimp list. 0 subscribers before 6/9, almost 500 after 6/12)

This mind-blowing experience almost felt surreal.

(If you don’t know what an Ultimate Guide is yet, here’s a 30-second explanation of it:

An Ultimate Guide is a comprehensive, remarkable, in-depth piece of content you create to solve a burning pain your audience / clients have. It’s the BEST piece of content on internet around the topic you write about.)

By showing me a highly implementable roadmap for how to write an Ultimate Guide, Primoz removed the mental barrier I’ve had against list-building for months. And I knew by doing what Primoz recommended, I would easily get my first 1000-2000 subscribers particularly because of a few reasons:

  1. Many experts including Neil Patel believe long, remarkable content works extremely well for driving organic traffic.
  2. People have already achieved sizeable list-building success with Primoz’s Ultimate Guide Strategy. Some even got featured on premium media, such as Selena Soo on Business Insider and Peter Nguyen on HypeBeast.
  3. Primoz used his first Ultimate Guide to create his first business as recounted by this Business Insider article. He himself is a living proof of this strategy he proudly shared.
  4. Knowing Primoz and his work ethics, I knew he wouldn’t let his audience down by offering something that wasn’t significantly meaningful.

With all the newly sparkled excitement, I started working on my Asian-Inspired Ultimate Guide to Naturally Losing 30 Pounds right away.

It’s an Ultimate Guide which teaches women the little-know secrets that Asian people use to effortlessly stay in shape without dieting, counting calories, banning carbs, or being a slave to the treadmill. It’s inspired by my own experience of losing 50 pounds in 10 months.

I knew this piece of content, once published, would bring me a continuous stream of traffic and email subscribers.

What I didn’t expect was to gain 500 new email subscribers BEFORE I released it.

How did that happen?

The secret was a “beta-reading” campaign, which I launched simply by making a post in a Facebook group to tell people about this Ultimate Guide, asking if they’d want to be a beta reader.

Within a few hours after that post was made, hundreds of enthusiastic readers have already subscribed to my email list, screaming “HELL YES!”

Sounds simple, but nothing was random.

Let me show you exactly how I:

  • Found the right Facebook group that helped me get 500 enthusiastic email subscribers
  • Wrote a non-spammy Facebook post that offered the community members the beta reading opportunity
  • Collected 29 persuasive testimonials from my Ultimate Guide readers

I’ll also show you how you can implement ALL of my techniques to grow your own online business.

1. How I’ve found the RIGHT Facebook group that helped me get 500 enthusiastic email subscribers

Taking a step back, beta-reading wasn’t something that Primoz recommended to me. But realizing how big of an undertaking creating an Ultimate Guide was, I decided to make the most of every step of the way even if that might require me to wander afar a little bit.

Interestingly for me, list-building wasn’t the goal to start with when I launched the beta-reading exercise. Instead, I was hoping for getting the following 2 from the experience:

  1. Get readers’ feedback for final editorial changes so that the released final version would be truly remarkable.
  2. Get reader testimonials so that I could use them to drive my business in multiple ways.

And if you remember I mentioned earlier that I posted about this beta-reading opportunity in a Facebook group, you’d probably wonder how I found the group that could delivered such a great result for me.

It was a strategic win, following a 3-step method below:

Step 1. Define your audience – from demographic, lifestyle, needs, to mindset

Primoz, when he was a business coach at Ramit Sethi’s Zero To Launch, once coached me on doing in-depth market research to find who my audience really were.

My business is about Asian-inspired food and nutrition wisdom for natural weight loss, and based on my research, I listed down a few loose parameters around my audience’s profile:

  • Demographic: North American women in 20s and 30s.
  • Lifestyle: single / married, working professional / entrepreneur, with or without kids, dieting, counting calories, limiting (fearing) carbs, cooking frequently.
  • Needs: losing 20-50 lbs; gaining confidence, inner-freedom, long-term health, positive social images, better relationship life, career success, being a better mother.
  • Mindset: ambitious, culturally open-minded, sick and tired of self-deprivation.

If you look at these parameters, most of them indicate a strong drive towards personal improvement, career development, and mental, physical well-being. This tells me what my audience cares about.

But what about weight loss communities in particular?

Since I’ve already found out that people who are big believers in FAD diets don’t usually have the fitting mindset for what I do, I excluded most of the online weight loss communities from my list because FAD is what they are focused on.

At this moment, knowing who exactly my audience were and what truly needed, I was ready to find where they were.

If you want to find out the best places to connect with your audience, start by listing key parameters around their demographic, lifestyle, needs, and mindset, using the same framework above.

Step 2. Create a list of high-quality sources of traction

“Source of traction” refers to the place you can gain traction from, it can be online or offline – online communities, blogs, magazines, webinars, podcasts, offline workshops, networking events etc.

In my case for this Ultimate Guide, the source of traction I used was a Facebook group which I’ve done research in and posted my beta-reading request.

Speaking of Facebook groups, they can be an overhead because every time when you search for a common keyword, hundreds of groups show up. You don’t know which ones are for you, and vetting each one of them takes too much time.

So after learning exactly what types of groups I should pay attention to in Step 1, I used a hack to quickly find out the groups which were worth investing time in.

It’s very simple: just go to the profile of other entrepreneurs who share the similar audience group with you, and check out which groups they are in.

The following image shows you where you can find that information.

Ideally, this entrepreneur you are looking at is a few steps ahead of you in their business.

In my case as an example, I checked out my friend Camille Virginia’s Facebook group list as a reference for myself.

Camille is the girl behind MasterOfflineDating.com – a relationship coaching site which teaches women authentic, proven skills to find love and romance in the real, offline world. Since she already runs a successful brand, I was confident that her sources must be of premium quality.

This simple hack enabled me to quickly amass a list of 20+ highly engaging Facebook groups within just 10 minutes.

And all I needed to do next was to find out which one works the best for me.

Step 3. Run simple and meaningful tests.

As you can see, Camille’s audience and mine have a significant overlap in-between because many women who struggle to find love simultaneously desire a sexy, lean body.

And since her market is mostly professional women, another parameter that I have for my market is automatically covered.

But how do I know if women in these groups she follows meet my other parameters? After all, being culturally open-minded is the key considering the theme of the business I’m running.

To find out, I ran a test by asking the following questions in these groups:

“Do you like Asian food, and do you feel you might be a little bit healthier if you lived in Asia?”

Close to 200 people responded, with over 90% saying “of course!”

This was the green light pass that showed me this Facebook group would work for me.

But just having a list of working Facebook groups wasn’t enough.

As an entrepreneur, your resources are limited, and finding out the HIGHEST performing source of traction for the time being gives you the shortest path to your goal because this enables you to maximize your results by focusing your time and resources on activities with the highest ROI.

This realization was inspired by my mentor Marc Aarons. Marc is the guy behind 80/20 Solutions which helps companies grow into 7 to 8 figures, often time by increasing their conversion by 500% through optimizing business strategy, content strategy and copywriting.

To really find my ultimate, primal source of traction, I posted the question mentioned above in all 20+ Facebook groups I’ve collected.

To my surprise, some groups which I thought would be high-potential groups (such as food-related groups) did not turn out to be high-potential at all. Others which I didn’t prioritize really surprised me with blooming results.

When you are running this test, there are two numbers that you can use as an indicator of effectiveness for each Facebook group:

  1. The number of positive responses to your post.
  2. The response rate among people who have seen this post.

Since I had no clue if “seen” was equivalent to “read” in the book of Facebook algorithm, I chose #1 just to be safe.

After 2 days of data collection, I found my top Facebook group and went with that one.

Here’s the screenshot of an excel tracker I used – nothing complicated, just two columns:

2. How I wrote a non-spammy Facebook post with my beta-reading opportunity

By now, I already knew which is the Facebook group I should go to in order to get the maximized conversion for my beta-reading campaign. So I created the post where I asked people if they wanted to be a part of my beta reading group.

I was totally blown away with 106 people enthusiastically saying “YES!” in the very first hour, handing me their email addresses without a second of hesitation.

It was a moment of ecstasy!

More importantly, even though I made it very clear on the post that beta-reading was free, people kept telling me that they’d be happy to be a paying customer!

Below is what they told me exactly:

Even after the beta-reading sign-up window has closed, I still kept receiving requests from highly enthusiastic readers:

This meant massive validation for my business idea, and it made me mentally alive again.

So what was leading to all these?

Besides finding the primal source of traction as I just showed you, it mattered infinitely to write a compelling copy.

And to me, it wasn’t a home run to start with.

The first version of my post, while being nicely written, only got me 16 lukewarm “okay”, with a neutral, I-can-spare-some-time-to-help-you tone.

You can take a look at the copy here:

Thankfully, I only used this copy as a test by dropping it into a working Facebook group within my Top 5 list, leaving the highest-performing Facebook group for the ultimate winning copy, which was yet to be made.

Realizing that copy would not work, I took it off and rewrote it with a completely different approach.

This time, I wanted to make it highly personal and deeply relatable to my audience by following the 2 principles below:

1. It’s not about taking, but giving and helping.

Felicia Spahr, my business coach at Ramit Sethi’s Accelerator program, wrote in her book that “people want to hear what you have to say if you’ve created something that will help them.” After analyzing the result, I realized neglecting this rule was the biggest mistake I made in that copy.

Here’s why: my entire Ultimate Guide was about over-delivering value to solve my audience’ problem, but the post I made didn’t really show how it would help them. Instead, the post sounded more like a request for an transactional exchange – free time for free reading. This instantly downgraded my value proposition and turned off people’s interest.

2. It’s not about talking, but showing.

One question I asked myself was: what do my audience desperately want at this moment?

After re-reading all the frustration and pains they’ve revealed in their posts and comments, I realized what they desperately needed was to be assured that they could reach their goal without experiencing another failure.

This is exactly what my Ultimate Guide could give them, and to highlight that for them, I needed to take them into the moments and let them feel the feelings of both their deepest vulnerability and the most wanted success.

Soon the new copy was ready:

It turned 16 lukewarm “okay” into 106 resounding “YES!” in the very first hour after I posted it.

And within 72 hours, I got 500 passionate email subscribers.

Now having read this copy, you might wonder why I didn’t include a landing page URL in the post.

This is because it might feel spammy to the audience, which was the very last thing I wanted to happen. Once the trust is broken, nothing can be done.

Instead I just asked the people that were interested to comment or private message me.

The result was that I had to manually create entries for everyone who wanted to join, switch back and forth on Facebook messenger windows to find their information, and go through everything again and again to make sure the names and email addresses were documented correctly.

It was 5+ hours of work, and every minute of sweating was well worth it.

3. How I collected 29 passionate, persuasive testimonials from my Ultimate Guide readers

As I mentioned earlier, collecting testimonials was really the main goal of running beta-reading. To achieve that, making this experience truly valuable for the readers meant everything.

To create an interesting, inspirational, and transformative experience for them, I converted the Ultimate Guide into an email course series.

As Primoz advised, I also sent them the full PDF version so that they could have the flexibility to read it in one sitting.

Besides receiving a substantial lesson and guided action items from me each day, my readers were invited to email me for any questions they might have.

This really excited the readers because with a guided path of transformation designed for them, they were able to see in their own eyes the immediate changes on their daily habits, mindset, and scale number during the 17 days of beta-reading experience.

Also, an Ultimate Guide would bring you highly engaging readers because people who want to read the 100+ pages you created are usually committed, high-potential customers to start with.

This explains why 46% of my beta-readers have been following every single email I’ve sent to them, which is about 250% higher than the industry benchmark:

So now I’ve created some happy readers. How do I get them to provide me high-quality testimonials which I can use to grow my business?

Selena Soo gave me the answer.

In her INFLUENCE program, she shared this technique of using a few simple questions to guide your clients or audience in this process. She also shared some word-for-word scripts for requesting testimonials, which I found very helpful for getting me what I needed.

Within 24 hours upon my request, I received 29 strong, passionate, and persuasive responses from the readers:

This again blew me away.

The biggest benefit I got out of creating my Ultimate Guide

So far, this Ultimate Guide experience has truly been an eye-opener for me. However, getting 500 new subscribers in 3 days, even though enormously gratifying, wasn’t the biggest win for me.

What is it then?

Two things.

  1. Validation – seeing this business which I’ve put my heart and soul in actually has a future made me feel mentally alive!
  2. Clarity – through Ultimate Guide beta-reading, I’ve gained invaluable insights directly from my potential buyers, which could help me strategize a winning product in the near future.

At this moment, I can finally take an afternoon off, sitting in my backyard, sipping the homemade mojito while visualizing a blooming business that is entering my life.

And I’m finally close to telling everyone this is a “business”, not a “side hustle.”

For the first time in a long time, I stopped feeling frazzled.

And I know something very promising is coming.

What’s next?

Now, what are my next steps for my Ultimate Guide strategy?

There are 2 things I’m currently working on:

  1. I’m making the final editorial changes to the content based on the beta-readers’ feedback. Primoz’s new article about 7 Mistakes to Avoid While Writing Your Ultimate Guide has given me some new ideas which I have to incorporate.
  2. I’m brewing more interests, traction, and momentum before the release of my Ultimate Guide by letting more people know about it. This includes forum posting, guest blogging, and influencer outreaching.

Beyond these immediate to-dos, I want to write a cookbook which goes hand-in-hand with this Ultimate Guide.

Many of my readers have demanded it, and it could be a great idea for my first information product.

Perhaps I’ll see it in Barnes & Noble some day.

Now I know I have a lot of great ideas for the future and this is just the beginning.

And to think of it, none of these would have been close in sight before I wrote the Ultimate Guide 2 months ago.

So what are you waiting for? Start working on your first Ultimate Guide!

-Leslie

Leslie teaches ambitious women the little-known secrets that Asian people use to effortlessly stay in shape without dieting, counting calories, banning carbs, or being a slave to the treadmill. Download her FREE copy of the Asian-Inspired Ultimate Guide to Naturally Losing 30 Pounds.

P.S. If you’re interested in using Ultimate Guides to grow your email list and get your first paying customers, you can now join Ultimate Guide System – a one year program where I’ll teach you, step by step, how to create incredible Ultimate Guides and finally get your online business off the ground in 2018.

CASE STUDY: How a Personal Stylist Doubled His Traffic by Publishing Just One Post a Month

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Do you ever feel like…

  • Your blog posts aren’t getting enough traffic?
  • You’re spending hours and hours on your business each week and it doesn’t take off?
  • It’s sometimes easier to do nothing than to try to do everything that you “should” be doing do grow your online business?

If you answered YES to at least one of those questions, then I have good news for you.

My friend Peter Nguyen from Essential Man used to struggle with all of that.

He was writing 3-4 blog posts each month. He was juggling that with 1-on-1 client work, managing his Facebook group of paying clients, and living a life.

Yet his business wasn’t growing nearly as fast as he would’ve wanted to. He was putting in a ton of work, and not reaping the benefits of it…

…until he started writing LESS posts each month. In fact, he now writes just ONE blog post a month.

And guess what?

By writing posts like:

His monthly traffic DOUBLED.

His email list grew to thousands of email subscribers.

He brought in tens of thousands of revenue with his business.

And today I’m SO excited, because he’s going to share EXACTLY how he did it with you guys, in this very post :).

He’ll share the high level strategy, specific tactics and systems he used, as well as reveal the numbers of how publishing LESS helped him grow his online business.

Peter, take it away!

HOW I DOUBLED MY TRAFFIC WRITING JUST 1 POST A MONTH

By Peter Nguyen from Essential Man

At the end of 2016 my personal styling business was making more money in a month than it did the entire previous year.

I had a steady stream of private clients, and thousands of daily readers.

So what was the problem?

Like many online entrepreneurs, I’m a one man show.

Between working with my high-end 1-on-1 clients, managing the Facebook group for my course students, and tackling outside goals like my fitness, I couldn’t continue churning out 2-4 posts and emails a week my readers were accustomed to.

I was going crazy.

I felt overwhelmed.

It got to a point where it was easier to do nothing than try to juggle it all.

I started to go weeks without a single new post or email.

I knew something had to change.

THIS WASN’T THE BUSINESS I WANTED

I did what any smart business owner would do: I sat down, poured myself some tequila, and took a hard look at my business.

Here’s what I found:

1. What I was doing wasn’t sustainable.

I had two options when it came to my current business: cut back on the work I was doing, or hire someone to take some of the workload off of me.

Despite my growth, I still wasn’t at a point where I could hire someone. If I continued on the same path, it was inevitable that I was going to get burned out and end up hating my job.

2. The bigger the post, the bigger the impact.

When I looked at the numbers, shorter, often rushed posts had a lot less impact on traffic and subscribers (and ultimately sales).

According to my analytics, the top 10 posts on my site consisted entirely of long, in depth posts. And posts with opt-in bonuses garnered 4x more opt-ins than shorter posts.

Don’t just take my word for it, two of the biggest names in SEO, Neil Patel and Brian Dean have both done experiments that show longer form content is the way to go if you want to grow your traffic and authority.

LESS WORK BUT GREATER IMPACT

There was a third realization I came to: That it was ultimately MY business, and I could run it however I wanted!

I know a ton of great sites in my niche that churn out daily blog posts, tweets, and instagrams, making the bulk of their revenue va advertisers and affiliates.

That wasn’t the business I wanted.

I wanted a business that could continue to grow and earn revenue even if I decided to take a few weeks off for a vacation.

I didn’t want more work, I wanted more impact.

So here’s what I decided: In Nov 2016, I decided to switch exclusively to writing long form, in-depth content, limiting myself to 1-2 posts a month.

The results?

The Essential Man analytics from 2016-2017

Within 2 months, my traffic and subscribers nearly doubled, and have consistently been increasing month after month!

Here were the posts from Jan – June 2017.
(Note: Feb and June are the only months with 2 posts)

January:
A Beginner’s Guide: 16 Essential Style Tips For Guys Who Want to Dress Better

February:
Post 1: I Asked 101 Women What a Man Should Wear on a First Date
Post 2: How to Create a Minimalist Wardrobe

March:
How to Attract Your Dream Woman

April:
The Ultimate Guide to Spring Style for Men

May:
Friends of The Essential Man: Meet Megan of Style Girlfriend

June:
Post 1: How to Declutter Your Closet in Less Than an Hour
Post 2: The Essential Summer Style Guide For Men

Has hell frozen over? A nice comment on Reddit!

I started seeing more shares, more comments, more subscriptions, and yes, more sales.

Payments from 1-on-1 clients

Stripe payments from course launches. Notice the small peaks at the end of 2016 vs the peaks in 2017

Between Jan and June 2017, my email list size doubled, giving me more potential customers to pitch my course and services to. I made more revenue in the first 3 months of 2017 than all of 2016.

HOW I WRITE 1-2 HUGE, ULTIMATE POSTS EACH MONTH

For many writers, churning out 3k+ monsters can be a huge undertaking, often taking months.

I’m confident anyone can write high quality post in half the time (or faster).

Today, I’m going to share how you can write amazing, high quality, long form ultimate content as fast a week. I’ll also be sharing how you can use your new long-form posts to consistently grow your traffic, subscribers, and sales completely automatically.

STEP #1: MAKE WRITING EASIER BY CRAFTING A SYSTEM FOR CREATING CONTENT

It’s Sunday morning.

You head over to your local Starbucks, laptop in hand.

You order your usual latte, open up Google docs, and start a new document.

You start writing the intro to your post due tomorrow and hate it. You smash that delete it and start over.

This dance continues for what seems like hours, and now you start freaking out.

Sound familiar?

You’re not alone.

This is how I used to tackle writing in the early days of The Essential Man.

It was a frustrating rollercoaster.

On some days I’d feel like a genius when posts just flowed out of me after a couple sips of coffee.

On most days I’d feel like the world was going to end when I’d notice it was 7pm and I didn’t have anything ready to post the next day.

Thankfully I now take a methodical, systematic approach to writing. It’s not only allowed me to churn out great posts consistently, I don’t dread writing anymore, actually ENJOY and look forward to it!

Here’s the three part system I use:

PART 1: HAVE AN INFINITE SUPPLY OF POST IDEAS BY CREATING A “MASTER BRAINSTORM DOC”

As an entrepreneur, I’m sure I’m not alone when I talk about how my mind is constantly churning out “great” ideas.

I’m always thinking of a new post I could write, a new person I could reach out to, a new program I can offer. Old ideas are always getting pushed out by new ones.

Couple that with the fact that I can barely remember everything I did yesterday, it’s easy to forget that one topic you thought would be a great post idea.

The solution is pretty simple: start writing your ideas down!

I’m not going to tell you you should sign up for Evernote, or try to implement some complex Spreadsheet system.

Keep it simple.

The best tool to record your ideas is the one that you’ll use most often.

I still carry this around to jot down ideas

When I started writing blog post ideas down, I used a pocket sized Moleskine and a pen simply because I found an unused one in my cabinet.

Now I have a master brainstorming doc on my Google Drive that I can access anywhere.

Sometimes when I want to jot something down fast I’ll open up my iphone Notepad, or even just email myself.

The lesson here is to constantly write down any idea that pops in your head that might be good to write about. That way when you go to sit down to write, you’re not wasting time hoping and praying for an idea to pop up. You can simply open up your brainstorm doc and pick something to write about.

PART 2: 1 DAY, 1 TASK: BREAK DOWN THE WRITING PROCESS TO WRITE FASTER

Constant task switching was a huge struggle for me when I was first starting out. Your brain isn’t equipped to juggle multiple tasks that require different types of thinking from each other.

If you’ve ever been interrupted during a writing session with a text or email, you know how hard it is to get back into that flow.

When I talk to other writers about what they find most challenging about writing, they often talk about how it takes them so long to write.

When I dug a little deeper, I noticed a lot of them were editing as they wrote, or even worse, doing research as they wrote.

They were constantly switching back and forth between different writing tasks, it’s no surprise their posts would take weeks, even months to write!

To minimize this, I break up the writing process, creating an efficient system for producing high quality content fast.

It’s pretty simple: 1 Day, 1 Task.

It looks something like this:

This is the exact 7-day writing schedule I’ve used for the last 6 months.

Now that I’m writing even bigger (5K+ words) content, I’ve expanded the calendar to give myself a bit more time to write.

Here’s what my current schedule looks like:

There’s no right or wrong amount of days you should give yourself for a specific task.

Some of you might write extremely fast drafts but need more days to edit.

Some of you might have an editor on staff you can just hand off drafts to.

As long as you remember to break down the process and not to do more than one task per day, you’ll find you’ll be producing better content faster.

Experiment to find your sweet spot.

PART 3: SPEND 2X THE TIME WRITING A SOLID OUTLINE

Outlines are the recipes of your epic content.

Think about the last time you cooked following a well written recipe.

You probably left thinking you were a master chef that could have her own cooking show!

I can tell you from experience from writing long form content exclusively these past 6 months, posts where I spent time fleshing out a solid outline were not only easier to write, but they were much more useful to the readers because I didn’t forget anything.

If you want to write better and faster posts, spend 2x more time on crafting great outlines.

STEP #2: OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT FOR EVERGREEN TRAFFIC

Now that you have your overall game plan for creating amazing long form content, it’s time to fine tune your work so you’re consistently getting better traffic, more subscribers, and climb that Google rank.

#1: BE THOROUGH

Ultimate guides and epic posts aren’t a time to skimp over important details.

While Google is generally secretive about how certain posts become top search results, one thing is clear: content that is useful is content that readers engage with and share, and content that’s shared is content that ranks.

My first ultimate guide guest post beat out GQ on Google!

Take, for example, my Ultimate Guide to Buying a Leather Jacket. This was my FIRST ever ultimate post, and I didn’t hold back.

It’s a 3.6K word post that walks a guy through the steps of buying the perfect leather jacket. It covers everything from the different styles, pros and cons of different leathers, even how to tell the difference between a high quality leather jacket and a piece of junk like a pro.

And now if you search “How to buy a leather jacket” on Google, it’s a top result!

#2: DON’T USE DATES IN YOUR PERMALINKS

Keep permalinks clear, easy to remember, and date free

Readers will sometimes have a bias against old posts. Readers could be turned off by seeing that a post is 1-2 years old, automatically thinking the content isn’t relevant anymore. (Tim Ferriss recommends not having dates on your posts for this reason.)

I also don’t recommend you have a date in your URL permalinks, especially If you’re in a niche like me (fashion) that is heavily dependent on timing or trends.

This is also particularly useful if you’re updating old content to reshare. If you had a date in your permalink and update the date to bump it to the top, you could lose old backlinks. (More on bumping posts later)

There should be an option in your blog service backend on formatting your URL.

Here’s how to change it in WordPress, which is what I use.

Log into your WordPress and click on “Settings” then “Permalinks”

Choose “Post name”, click save.

#3: LINK TO OLDER POSTS IN YOUR NEW POSTS

Interlinking has a lot of SEO benefits that I won’t go too deep on in here. (If you want to read more, Neil Patel has an awesome guide on it.)

An even bigger benefit that isn’t discussed enough is that linking to your old content builds trust and credibility between you and the reader.

As they discover more of your amazing content, you become the go-to source in your niche. By interlinking, you make your amazing content easier for them to find.

That’s why I’m constantly referencing and linking to older, relevant posts, and why I’ve seen consistent traffic increase on old posts.

It also gives you more opportunities to convert them into future buyers by linking to older posts that might have opt-in bonuses.

A great example of a high converting interlink heavy post you can start on today: The “Start Here” beginners post.

This kills a ton of birds with one stone.

  1. New readers can find a step-by-step guide to get started with your material and not feel overwhelmed.
  2. You increase traffic and SEO authority on older posts.
  3. You increase your authority as an expert.
  4. You increase your chances of converting a new reader into a subscriber, which in turn makes them more likely to become a customer.

If you need an example, check out my Start Here/Beginner’s Guide Post for The Essential Man.

#4: ADD YOUR BEST CONTENT IN YOUR SIDEBAR

Similar to interlinking, make your best post easier to find by adding your best content in sidebars or on the menu.

This simple addition has increased traffic on older posts by at least 4x.

#5: SCHEDULE SOCIAL MEDIA TO AUTOMATICALLY SHARE YOUR POSTS

Social media can be a fulltime job.

Luckily, services like Buffer make it much easier to schedule and consistently share your content so it doesn’t get lost in noise.

I recommend blocking out one hour a week to schedule an entire week’s worth of shares between your newest post and any older post you want traffic on.

STEP #3: CREATE “NEW” POSTS 10x FASTER BY UPDATING OLD CONTENT

My biggest secret of all: I often refresh old content and share it “as new”.

Refreshing and resharing old content is a great way to not only put it in front of new readers who might have missed it the first time, but it also gives you an opportunity to make it relevant again.

If you have a niche like me where things are constantly changing, you might be left outdated information and broken links on an amazing post you spent weeks on.

For example, I often recommend specific items to buy in my posts. Thanks to the nature of fashion, my recommendations become irrelevant after a season. They also become useless if a certain item sells out after a few weeks.

Taking an hour or so every so often to update the links makes the post useful again.

That’s just one way to update a post, here are a few others:

1. Increase your credibility by changing your opinion on something

Nobody likes to admit they’re wrong, but changing your mind can actually be beneficial and increase your credibility.

Take, for example, Ramit Sethi in a email where he makes fun of his younger self’s bad advice and opinions.

2. Make a post more readable

No doubt the more you write, the worse your older post might be to you looking back.

This simple tweak of making it easier to read and understand can turn a C+ post into a A in less than a day.

Use a service like Hemmingway or Grammarly to improve readability or, if you’re at that level, shoot an old post to your editor to fix.

3. Add new information

Whether you forgot to include something, rushed through your old post, or learned something new, you can add more value by giving your readers new information not previously shared.

It’s important to make sure that anything new you add is useful and relevant, and that you’re not adding something for the sake of making the post bigger for big sake.

4. Create a better opt-in

Didn’t include an opt-in in an old post?

Opt-in no longer converting?

Take this opportunity to create a new opt-in bonus to grow your subscribers.

I also recommend adding a shareable thank you page to make your posts more viral.

One last tip: You can bump the post to the top of your blog feed by changing the post date (at least in WordPress). Simply go to edit your post and change the publish date to today’s date and it will be bumped to the top of your feed.

GET TACTICAL, NOT EMOTIONAL

If you find yourself overwhelmed, stressed, and dreading waking up to start work like I did at the end of last year, it’s a good sign you need to take a look at how you’re operating your business.

Implement this system for creating epic content smooth and fast, and take back your time and sanity.

Once you have your writing system in place, I highly recommend checking out Ultimate Guides to start creating epic content that gets you more traffic, more subscribers, and more sales.

-Peter

***

If you’re interested in using Ultimate Guides to grow your email list and get your first paying customers, you can now join Ultimate Guide System – a one year program where I’ll teach you, step by step, how to create incredible Ultimate Guides and finally get your online business off the ground in 2018.