How to Be Your Own Case Study & Profit in The Process WPCP: 116

The last few months in my business have been interesting to say the least.

And by interesting, I mean good.

I’ve been taking consistent small action in a number of areas in my business and the results are paying off. Every day. And I love it.

Before we get into ‘How to Be Your Own Case Study & Profit in The Process’, let me share a little bit of how this all came up.

I’ve been sharing with you guys a little bit about my affiliate journey on this site and on the Freedom Papers Podcast site (which by the way is getting a complete brand makeover, but more on that in another episode. Let me just say that the decision didn’t come lightly but it’s one we’re really excited about).

When I made the decision to start shifting away from service work (and by the way, if you’re a current client please know that I’m not abandoning anyone. This is more about who I choose to work with and the type of work I choose to do) I had to step back and get clear on what I DID want to do (yes, this is uber obvious, I know).

This is the beauty of making changes. It requires you to find a different perspective on things and fortunately, my personal life provided that perspective.

The most obvious choice for me was to increase my affiliate income on The WordPress Chick.

You’ve heard me talk about CPA marketing and affiliate marketing with niche sites and through things that aren’t related to this brand, but I’ve calmed down about that. It’s still something I’m going to pursue but not right now. Trust me though, there is a method to my madness.

I have to admit that as I acknowledge all this it seems so obvious… the problem with obvious is that you have to be in the right frame of mind to see it.

And I wasn’t.

The changes I was going through in my personal life were a little consuming (I’m sure you guys were as sick of my house move as I was). But hey… that’s one of the reasons we run our own businesses, right? So we can live our lives too and not have our schedules dictated by what someone else dictates.

Now that all of that is behind me and I’m settled in my new place, I feel a fresh excitement and clarity with everything. Yes everything. My business and my personal life. For the sake of not boring you, I’m going to stick with the business side of things today.

Let’s talk about Being Your Own Case Study

When I got into my first big mastermind group the model was: Create a case study, record a video, drive traffic to an opt-in page so the lead can then watch the case study video, then get them to apply for a strategy session where you can offer a high ticket service.

Simple enough, right?

But what if you don’t have any case studies?

You go get them.

What I did at the time was send an offer to my list stating that I was looking for case studies (I never said it would be free). I got about 8 responses immediately to my email and I set up the calls. Of the people I talked to I got 3 to sign up for a 3-month coaching program so I could get some results.

At the time I also had two other coaching clients so I was gaining traction with what I was doing.

From there I created my ‘case studies’, made my case study video and went into promotion mode.

This was in late 2013 so Facebook ads were much cheaper, but it worked. From less than an $90 ad spend I made $500 in strategy session calls ( I charged for the appointment) and $10k in coaching clients (this was paid over a 3 month period).

The next time I did case studies was for my Influence Podcasting program (done-for-you podcasting). We produced podcasts for 3 different people (show, show notes, website… all of it) at NO charge so we could get this process down. Only one of those people is still doing their podcast but it’s worked extremely well for him (he got a $5k coaching client within the first two months directly from the podcast). We built our systems and ironed out the bugs in doing that. The trick with podcasting is that it’s a marathon strategy. Can you get some traction right away? Absolutely. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

At this stage in the game I have zero intention of ever doing a ‘free’ case study again (unless I decide to venture into something completely different, but I doubt that’s going to happen).

I’m going to be my own case study. 

I’m testing this in a few different ways, but I’m going to get as much leverage from this as I possibly can.

The first example will be what happens when I change my site over. More obvious message, clear on how people can work with me and what products and services I offer.

I’ll measure my traffic, subscribers and sales both before and after.

I’ve got a new content strategy I’m implementing and will be sharing that as well. So that will be case study #1. I haven’t quite decided the best way to organize all of this but here’s what I’m thinking off the top of my head:

• Content on the site and in the podcast: I’ll do regular updates on my progress (which really means I need to use an editorial calendar now! haha… Amen for CoSchedule)
• I’ll have to decide what my KPI’s are going to be (key performance indicators). These won’t just be conversion percentages, but list growth and sales (more on that later)
• I’m going to look at a few case studies from bigger marketers to see how they’ve structured their case study posts (thinking Brian Dean of Backlinko and Neil Patel)

The second case study is going to be around affiliate marketing.

This will be done with Thrive (and all their products that I use) and Click Funnels.

Thrive will be done through this site, content and promotions (I haven’t run any ads for Thrive plugins but am thinking about doing that). I have one content upgrade for Thrive and will be adding that into all my Thrive posts (if you haven’t listened to the episode on content upgrades, I’d go back and listen to that if you’re unfamiliar with them). From there I’m going to create a page on my site for Thrive Themes Plugins (I don’t use the themes… not because they’re not good I just don’t have the time or inclination to get into anything outside of Genesis and my page builders) that links back to all the content I’ve created for the different plugins (think a resource page that is linked to all the posts. This is for two reasons: SEO & ease of use for people looking for content around Thrive plugins).

Click Funnels is a different story.

I’ve had Click Funnels for a couple years and have gone back & forth in using it. Because I love the Thrive Content Builder it seemed like kind of a waste of money because I found myself always coming back to Thrive.

I do like using Click Funnels and think it’s a good product, so when they launched their latest promotion for affiliates, Affiliate Bootcamp, I thought, why not?

It’s a 100 day affiliate bootcamp that is supposed to get you to 100 referrals (which would be a minimum of a $4k recurring revenue stream from Click Funnels… it could be more if anyone signs up for the higher package).

Here’s the problem I have with this.

You have EVERYONE trying to do the same thing. For people that are new and following it to a “t”, it’s probably a little overwhelming.

For people that are experienced and have the time (and money to invest in FB ads, because that’s part of the strategy), then you’re competing with everyone else doing the same thing to.

Then I took a step back and thought, “how could I put my own spin on this?”

Because I’m a firm believer in creating content, that’s the route I’m going to go. But it can’t be done in the same way that everyone else is doing it (and I’m not remotely concerned about hitting the 100 referrals in 100 days. Remember… I’m all about the marathon strategy).

I’ll be creating content for my site as I create funnels for my own products and services (novel idea, right?).

I’m also going to create a niche site (I have the domain clickfunnelsvideos.com) where I’m going to put all of their content (Russell has given permission to everyone to use their content). I’ll have to do some digging in terms of SEO, tweaking things and organizing it in a way that makes sense for the everyday user, but then it’s just a matter of driving traffic to that site (and linking that site to my content on this site).

Keep in mind this idea is a TOTAL experiment.

I have no idea how it’s going to go or how well it will work (I do think it will work… it’s just a matter of how long it takes).

The magic will happen as I record the process and create content on this site while I’m testing all of this.

That’s how I’m going to be my own case study AND profit in the process.

Implementation, complete transparency and provide value.

I’ll be creating a list of people interested in Click Funnels along the way ( I already do this with Thrive plugins) and will continue to market to them over time.

This ‘test’ will begin next week.

I’m still in the planning stages but will pull the trigger whether I think I’m ‘ready’ or not. Imperfect action beats no action any day, right?

Checkout Thrive Visual Editor here

Checkout Click Funnels 14 day trial here