Archives for January 2019

Of all the business ventures in the world, and especially with regards to the internet, none seem to be more advocated and lucrative than the proposition of leveraging the power of the laptop to generate massive and passive profits in a business model. 

If you’re anything like I was back in 2014 – cold in a dark apartment, at the dead of winter, and wishing I had more money so I could buy a car to stop walking my morning commute where I can blissfully attend a less than pleasant atmosphere where the corporate monsters only compensate me $35k in gross pay.

They wouldn’t even give me a holiday bonus so I can get off my feet and not have to shiver every time I think about stepping out of my apartment in the outskirts of Detroit to get myself all the way downtown!

Metropolis or not, I was cold, broke, and miserable with no way out. 

So – much like how some people are finding this article online, I was looking for something that can get me out of the slump that I had found myself in only a short few years ago. 

I looked at everything, including the popularly referenced business model of E-Commerce. 

If you’re not clear on what that is, by the way, it’s nothing more than selling physical products online. 

It’s a very common thing and there are numerous places to try and find a good that you’re looking for – in fact, tons of people constantly search online with the hope of finding the best bang for their buck…

If they can get the exact same deal in a cheaper fashion somewhere else, then the time invested in their online research for the product they want was well worth it… for some. 

For others, they can’t wait awhile in order to get what they’re looking for and they can’t afford to expend any more time online looking for a good deal; they need something right away and are willing to pay whatever they must in order to acquire what they’ve been searching for right away. 

So, a gentleman by the name of Hayden Bowles stepped up to the plate after his time and experience of being successful in the E-Commerce discipline and made a concise, clear-cut course on how you can start your very own business online in selling physical products – even if you have nothing to sell yet. 

The intent behind Mr. Bowles short course that he posted online at Teachables – a hosting platform for short courses like what Hayden pieced together for an intended audience of, well, us – is that you can get started through the brief course that he created advising you on theoretical options and specific steps to take. 

The drawback that I’m seeing already in this blog post is that this guy must have been one of a baker’s dozen to proclaim themselves as a Shopify online store coach with his mentoring program launching on Teachables in only months recent. 

Add to that the fact that there are already tons of people online that are attempting to push their own marketing training platform that each claim to have the secret techniques and/or special recommendations that can get you to where you want the fastest – they always prey on the emotional insecurity to try and get you to buy instantly. 

As a side note: it’s best to avoid having your emotion drive your business decisions; that’s how bad things happen to a company’s bottom line – we’ve got to be smart and play for the long-term. 

Anyway, dozens upon dozens of self-proclaimed proficient people in the E-Commerce game are interested in telling you how you can achieve all of these wonderful things – but who is the real deal?

Who can we really trust with money, time, and patience in the brighter hope that we, too, can accomplish great things by leveraging their training to make our first few dollars online? 

We can already acknowledge a few things about business – especially anything in retail or physical products, let alone on digital platforms:

• No profits are guaranteed
• Selling products can be tough, and the added barrier of not being face-to-face with the customer can seem to be a greater hindrance than a facilitator of the sales process
• There are investments that must be made long after you purchase a training course

That last point is key and often overlooked by newly-beginning entrepreneurs; yes, business opportunities require a start-up kitty.  Unfortunately, that seems to drift out of our minds – along with other essential aspects of business ownership – when we’re listening to the pitching of course founders that do everything they can to let you know that this course is for you… for the right price, if you can hack it. 

So, how would we filter through all of these coaching courses and select the most ideal fit?

Is Mr. Hayden Bowles really the most ideal person to take your cues from in step-by-step fashion to turn your own deals into profits through nothing more than a laptop and a little know-how?

What about the dropshipping business online, in general? 

Would it be something that any of us are interested in?

Can it be possible to use this as a vehicle to really change our situation in life with just a little effort?

Will I have to work a second job to pay for this? 

Will this turn into another job that takes my time away from what’s important to me? 

These are all excellent questions and many of them I have heard lately –

I’ve thought them as well, even when I was surfing the net in a cold apartment and trying to find my way to the same thing that most who end up reading this blog post will share in a concern:

Where can I turn to that has the right guidance to get me situated to make money online? 

I can honestly say that I’ve tried this course and made my dent in the dropshipping industry online.

I’ve even turned a little bit of a profit from the work that I’ve done in this space. 

Therefore, I can personally tell you that I know there is money to be had.

However, I went at this a little differently than some probably hope to when they’re looking at this.

I’ve had entrepreneurs of all backgrounds read my content so my audience is rather diverse with my blog:

• You could be having a thriving business and are simply interested in adding experience working in drop shipping to your portfolio of monthly income so you can expand your net worth even more
• You could have a job like I did in the corporate life, waking up 9 to 5 and not really having any direction except to be going to the same $35k job for the rest of my 30 years – hoping only to have enough at the end to be able to retire; but what about the immediate lifestyle, I don’t have money to go on dates or turn the heat on in my apartment
• Then there are those that swing by here who are really okay with where they are, but they really are open to considering their options online and wouldn’t mind supplementing their already profitable salary from a career that they honestly don’t mind indulging in regularly

Whether you’re fitting one of the descriptions above or have a unique story all your own, this blog is for you. 

I’m writing it after experiencing each of the programs on here – yes, I’ve invested the purchase price and also put up whatever capital was required in order to make each mentoring program work for me. 

How could I afford to spend the time doing this, let alone the pocket cash?

See, back in 2014, I found a coaching program online that taught how to use free traffic in local lead generation – which was great, because I couldn’t afford to buy any web traffic to get affiliate offers seen or products noticed right away. 

Within a year, I was happy to tell my corporate job to stick it and I walked off my 9 to 5; one of the best days of my life. 

What I did was make a lead gen site (like you see in the image below), ranked it online, and it’s now kickin’ back a lot of money each month — that’s true passive income!

I left a $35k annual salary for the lead gen business model that was paying me a passive income of $10k each and every month; the most important thing that I can share with you about that accomplishment was…

I built that passive income over 1-years-time, and I did it in my spare time –

I’m still working this same give several years later, in my spare time (still), and tuning out the corporate life and woes I once lived to the tune of $50,000.00 in profitable income every single month – whether I work on the business or not.  If you’re interested in learning how I did it —

You can copy and paste the same strategy I used with this coaching program over here that I learned from to build my local lead generation business.

So, I can afford to try these programs now, and spend my time checking them out so you can read my blog posts and see for yourself whether the program is a good fit for you. 

I’m not affiliated with the programs – or, I don’t choose to be – so you can rest assured that these reviews are unbiased because you could still purchase the program after reading my article and I won’t make a dime off of your choice to buy in. 

So what have you got to lose other than some solid research time invested in finding out more from someone who has actually lived the experience of the coaching and mentoring program that you’re exploring right now: The Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course from Hayden Bowles.

So I have my fair reasons for choosing to let go of the dropshipping method to attempting to make money with my laptop –

It’s not because I was doing so well in my lead gen business – although, it is nice to have the reliable, passive income coming in so I didn’t have to stress over whether or not this coaching program worked.

Instead, I invested what spare cash I had into the methodologies introduced in this coaching program to see if there were any tips of actual value that can help make money online for anyone exploring Hayden’s course. 

One thing I always enjoy looking for is whether or not this mentoring training would have worked for me as a brand new entrepreneur, down and out on my luck in this miserably cold apartment way back when. 

That way, if you’re in that same position and looking to make a change, you can get an honest evaluation from someone who has experienced the program and hopefully can collect enough data to make a decision for yourself on whether this is a great fit for you.

With that said, let’s get this adventure rolling and learn more about what this guy Mr. Bowles is intending to teach us about the E-Commerce world of marketing products online…

A Brief Look Over the Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course

Leave it to us entrepreneurs to want to not only cut corners but find the quickest path to getting what we want. 

Why would this blog article be any different, Am-I-right?

So, let’s take a quick look at what you’re going to be going through when/if the time comes that you take the leap into Hayden’s course from Teachables on getting started with your dropshipping business venture from home:

• Introduction: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
• Basics

This guy really digs in and delivers a stellar overview on several aspects of what you’re going to need to be aware of in order to accomplish this major feat of starting a physical products selling type of business from the comfort of your own home, or anywhere that you would like to work our magic with your laptop and in keeping a little bit of internet access handy. 

-Bare-bones of what you need to know

-Finding those winning selections of physical products in the best industry (or “niche”)

-Evaluating and connecting with your future supplier(s) that are currently serving up products on a website called AliExpress

• Establishing your digital presence online

These are the meat and potatoes that everyone wonders about when they’re starting the dropshipping gig.

They actually encompass just about everything that can be traditionally found in other dropshipping courses because nearly everyone in the game goes through completing these exact steps…

I’ve done my fair share of dropshipping over the last few years, and I’ve put a large amount of time and effort into the process of getting assets in place to be ready to market.

The following points are actually essential to your being ready to have someone buy a product from your online store.

This is the magical part where readers ask me how it’s possible for people to buy from them when they don’t have a store set-up online already.

I’m happy to be available for everyone here because the answer to that reaction is you need to get started with your Shopify store, and this is the module to teach that very concept and theory behind why it’s used and why you need it for your business.

Now, the assets and advice here may not be in the same order or to the same depth that other courses introduce, but they are still very good bits of instruction that you can bet are setting you up for success. 

-The Shopify Store: Breaking your business ground to get positioned for success

-Figuring out what your pricing should be – and what it’s really going to be

-Social signals: why your social media pages are key ingredients to not only getting yourself started but persisting in momentum with your sales process

I liked this module because it really brings into focus the nuts and bolts of the hardware that you need to get squared away with. 

Skipping this module can actually hinder your success, in large part because potential customers won’t be able to buy from you since they won’t have anywhere to go. 

As you can see, this course is already attempting to give valuable content with any student that’s actively participating and following along.

• Implementing Instagram

Part of being solo in your entrepreneurial endeavor means that you have the freedom to choose who you wish to partner with – and you don’t have to ask permission or seek agreement from someone else; not a boss, not a co-worker, and not a co-owner. 

It’s your show; so it’s your call on how you want to operate your side hustle (if this can actually be called one). 

As such, you can reach out to other people on social media and see what you can do to acquire assistance in marketing your products. 

Options can range from buying the product for the person to asking for a testimonial, and many other strategies packed inside of this module that is certain to get you motivated to run your business online. 

In the thick of it all, you’ll learn what an Instagram influencer is and how they can actually be leveraged for the better; instead of just using them, you can build a relationship with this person and consistently ask for them help as you progress with your store and business continues to expand your bottom line. 

Also, there aren’t any quotas to fill or restrictions on how many selling or distribution points you can have with internet marketing.

If you want to have more than one Instagram influencer helping you to pedal your products through cyberspace, you can. 

I won’t sugar coat it for you – there are tons of steps to making this happen and you’re going to earn those partnerships, let me tell you!

Once you have these arrangements, however, you’ll be ready to cook and grind all the way to the bank.

• Filling Up Your Facebook Account with Opportunities for More Sales

This portion is a little bit tricky. 

Most people are familiar with some free access to social media, like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other platforms.

They don’t charge you upfront to be a participant in their network and host a social profile that’s your very own. 

When you start approaching social media with a different mindset, however – like when you’re trying to acquire sales through digital assets online – you’re going to want to position yourself to where you can actually begin pushing your message out to the masses in the social world. 

In addition to the notional concepts of branding – which, let’s be real here, brandbuilding doesn’t always correlate to building a business or generating more customers – it’s a very good idea to understand the paid advertising strategies associated with each social media account. 

For this module in Hayden Bowles’ Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course, you get a first-hand introduction to Facebook Ads and a broad-painting overview of the Facebook Advertising platform – in-part and as a whole. 

Some people tend to shy away from getting started with a module like this because of the perception that one needs to be technologically savvy in order to operate Facebook Ads…

Others hesitate to get started because they realize that it costs money to push out a Facebook Ad and they don’t want to lose money without the possibility of seriously landing a sale.

Unfortunately, I have to tell you that you’re getting ushered into the world of Facebook Ads – where testing is the name of the game.

You’ll need to design, establish, orchestrate, and market with a variety of ad sets and ads within each marketing campaign that you launch. 

Why?

You’re at the mercy of Facebook and the pre-arranged profiles that they’ve collected into groups – so you can target your ideal markets and prospective clients based on the information that Facebook has collected about these people over the years that they’ve been using Facebook and/or other platforms that Facebook can gather information from about those people.

Like this course you’re considering investing in, data is key in a platform like this – because Facebook can now charge a premium for marketers like us to go in and request permission to use their aggregated resources. 

The result is an online auction system where you can try and put your message in front of people that you hope will not only like what you’re talking about but engage with your ad to buy your product. 

Some paid ads simply don’t move people enough to go from merely seeing the ad as they scroll through Facebook to jumping in and becoming your customer. 

I once ran a campaign for wrinkle-free cream that was intended to be a solution for a targeted audience. 

Here’s a sample of one of the ads that was designed: 

As you can see, it’s not all that stellar, but we’ve made multiple ads just like this and pushed them all out into the marketplace in order to see which ones performed the best.

This is exactly what you need to know before you buy a course like this.

If you’re not open to spending money in order to make money, then this probably isn’t the marketing option for you to turn into a home-based business.

When someone leverages the Facebook Ads platform, it’s usually because they want to get immediate results…

• People immediately see the ad
• People instantly decide what they’re going to do after seeing it (click thru or keep scrolling)
• Let the market decide how to respond to your ad…

In order to let them react, however, you’ve got to put things out there and that’s where the complexity of dropshipping comes in – I think this is where the bulk of the time in dropshipping is spent and is why tons of people end up getting burnt out with the work involved in making money through this business model. 

That said, this module will provide you with some solid information on the fundamentals that you need in order to get started, including…

• The differences between a Facebook Ads Manager account and your Business Manager Advertising Platform
• What you must do to get your first Facebook Ad launched (not just “get started”)
• Enabling you to know what to look for as key indicators of good performance versus poor results in your Facebook Ad – and what steps you should take in response to what you see
• Want more money?  Want to reach larger audiences faster so you can have more at-bats to get your product(s) actually purchased?  This section also has a training aspect on what you can to do what the industry popularly refers to as “scaling up” or expanding your reach to hit a larger audience with your offer in a shorter span of time

When you’re ready to get started in the Shopify store space of E-Commerce, then Hayden holds nothing back in getting you situated to have the opportunity to become successful. 

What’s Missing in the Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course

By this point, we’ve been able to address a lot of things about dropshipping – in general, and through this mentoring and advising course – and in E-Commerce. 

However, each course could be either holding something back or not delivering the value that I think it should be.

Now, I’m not knocking the guy that founded something that he intended to present to the market so newbies can have a resource worth tapping into and at an affordable price…

Some of the courses I’ve explored have a higher ticket for admission – some of which can range in the thousands of dollars. 

Coaching is big business, but not every single one of those people who bring the heat in terms of value that you can directly benefit from by investing in what they’re attempting to push your way. 

For Mr. Bowles, however, there are just a few things that I’ve noticed other programs having that you’re not exactly going to realize from investing in Hayden’s course that you’ll benefit massively from knowing:

• Facebook Advertising that you can do in 2019 that include Video and Facebook Messenger

Facebook has done a lot of revamping of their Facebook Ads platform, and they’re going to just continue changing things because that’s how Facebook rolls. 

Instead of trying to fight the possibility of losing money to the competition, learning how to tap into these resources and leverage them for your gain is something that I hope you can use to further your experience in making dropshipping work for you. 

That’s not something that I’ve found to be touched on – or available – with this course people purchase from Teachables.

• Implementing Clickfunnels software for convenient operational structure

If you haven’t heard by now, Clickfunnels is a company – and a website software – that Mr. Russel Brunson brought to the market in hopes of helping digital marketers to more easily create funnels. 

Intended to be a quick, down, and dirty solution for those implementing paid advertising strategies, the more expensive website builders charged a lot of money to host each individual website – even if it were only 2 pages that you might need from the hosting account:

• Landing page
• Thank you page

The simplicity of Clickfunnels is perhaps brought up in other coaching and mentoring programs because you can leverage it for one product at a time and find out whether the marketplace will find it worthwhile. 

There are numerous steps to setting up your Shopify Store online, including the steps necessary to just have a 1 product not only viewable but clickable for more information and easy to purchase by a visitor. 

There’s no sense in building out your Shopify store with several products that no one in your target market (that you set up with the ad set in the Facebook Advertising platform) will see value in purchasing your advertised product. 

I think it’s an excellent approach to testing the selling potential of physical products online! 

I’ve also used Clickfunnels before and I think you would benefit from this strategy, but I just don’t see it in Hayden Bowles viewpoint of making dropshipping work for you. 

• Copywriting Tips for Killer Email Follow-up Sequencing

Sometimes information can be more valuable than an upfront sale.

Here is where you’ll be advised on what you can do to with collecting emails and putting them into a database where you can later selling them other items, or maybe even recommend an additional product based on the one they purchased; the possibilities are endless. 

• An Advanced Strategy of Retaining Bulk Orders in a Local Warehouse to where most of your customers are and how to reduce shipping time to save on the cost of products and overseas delivery of goods

There are definitely some hot items and knowledge bombs in this course – even without the aforementioned points that I would personally classify as exclusions from Hayden’s training. 

It may not be intentional; he may or may not know them, or he might have an upsell to his course that includes advanced concepts like the ones I had listed up above here.

If you’re looking for something that is beginner-friendly in regards to the vast world of E-Commerce, you can sell in confidence with the information delivered in this package. 

The Shopify Drospshipping Industry: Is It a Sound or Poor Investment?

Let’s look at the platform that you’re considering getting involved in for an online business in 2019. 

Should you get involved with E-Commerce and selling physical products, or should you herd along with those that shy away from the challenging world of digital marketing in this fashion?

Let’s discuss… PRO/CON TIME!

First, the awesome stuff…

• You can get started from the comfort of your own home
• Low barrier to entry – just launch a few digital assets and land a partnership with a seller
• The vast world of products awaits your selection of them to be sold online
• If you can land a product that sells faster than hotcakes (that’s a weird expression to use in describing this industry), then Facebook would be willing to back your play and let you expand your reach to get more buyer attention
• You can refine your target audience down to only the most ideal people on Facebook that you would hope become sellers – meaning you don’t have to cast that wide of a net if your product is catered to one specific kind of audience
• If you’re looking to cash-in after some time in your E-Commerce venture – and I mean “BIG TIME” – you now have the potential to expand your company name to a household reach that larger entities will be throwing money at you and begging for you to sell your company to them

That last point, by the way, is what the industry identifies as an “exit.” 

When you own a company and have an exit strategy in place, that means that you are getting a lump sum cash payment for the reputation and clout of your company being handed over – and with the ownership of that company – to another business entity or person. 

The payoff can be extraordinary if you’ve done your homework and did really well with this here! 

Now for the not-so-awesome stuff…

• You don’t have exclusivity to the product you’re pushing out into the marketplace.  Others can see what you’re doing, and if it’s going well then they can try and steal your strategy to profit off the same things you’re advertising – including product, ad copy, etc.
• Your commissions are a joke!  You’ll be lucky if you see 10 percent or more in cash coming your way – then, you still have to negotiate with the payment processors online to ensure you’re getting a good rate in handling money from the deals you’re landing

Tangent here: Are you starting to see why there are tons of E-Commerce courses that target newbies now? 

I’m under the impression that some coaches just want more money than to actually do what they’re suggesting you can “retire with,” or some nonsense like that. 

I’m not saying that this can’t work for you, but I’m not a fan of the 10-20% “profits” being sent your way – I’ll even have the guts to call them peanuts that you’re compensated with for your efforts in digital marketing with this business model. 

Back to the lack of awesomeness in dropshipping (as a business model)…

• The complexities with physical product selling can consume tons of time and frustrate owners

Think about all the things that you have to balance in this business model…

-consumer complaints

-foreign manufacturers doing things on their schedule or missing a shipment

-product returns (which cut into your profits and now you don’t know what to do with the product)

-what if the product ordered is out of stock – how will you fill it now, especially if the manufacturer or supplier didn’t keep you informed of the issue ahead of time so you could take the product out of your store and not waste your advertising dollars in Facebook Ads…

It’s as if you’ll always be in defensivemode just to keep your business alive and thriving; is putting out fires really an exciting way to run a business? 

To me, that sounds more like corporate life – something I left a long, long time ago! 

• Spending on Facebook Ads cuts into your profits

It’s a harsh reality in this business and a rather common complaint that I hear far too often than I care to admit. 

Your profit margin is extremely low to begin with…

You’re pushing the product that someone else made and ships on your behalf so you can have a satisfied customer that you’ve done the work to sell the product to. 

Add to that the reality of your needing to find a way to get reimbursed for all of that ad spend that is dinging your credit card – how great is this business model looking so far, now?

You’ll eventually have to change products while you’re doing this business model. 

Why? 

In addition to a concept called paid ad fatigue – it looks like this…

This occurs where the Facebook Ad reduces in its performance and effectiveness, an occurrence that is usually met with a rising cost in ad spend online – you will also run out of an audience volume that has yet to see your ad. 

While it’s good that you have an audience see your product and make a decision of buying (or not) from you as fast as possible, there’s always going to be a cost attached to that when you’re buying the attention for your product through a medium like Facebook’s Advertising platform. 

• Your competition can get fierce

What if someone else is running the same product before you did – and moments ago?

You’re now attempting to market a replica of that same product to the same target audience… and you’ll never know that this happened – but you will notice that you haven’t sold a single product and scratch your head in wondering what it could have been that caused you to lose so much Facebook Ad expenditure but never arrive at a single sale.

Further, if someone is attempting to match your ad copy and product delivery advertisement, even though you came up with it all by yourself, we need to keep something in mind since we’re using someone else’s platform to run paid ads through…

If you’re not careful, or not successfully getting sales or attention through social media fast enough, Facebook can suspend your account…

This means you’re done with trying to advertise on Facebook. There are ways to get around this, but if you’ve been banned or suspended from advertising once with this type of business, who’s to say that you wouldn’t be stuck again for trying to do the same thing in a new ad account?

Facebook Ads is an auction system. 

That means that someone else could be running something similar to what you are, and Facebook Advertising will have to decide which ad gets more credit and will get shown more to that desired audience. 

With the competing ads and want for attention from the same audience, we run the risk of the advertising costs going higher and higher until the cost in any given day is meaningless because it’ll either be too high or not reach enough of the audience in time for us to actually land a sale before our ad budget runs out? 

The drawback I see in self-proclaimed coaches attempting to advertise the successfulness of their training course is that they’ll take one incredible success story and exploit that to imply (but never directly say) you can do this too – just pay this amount of money to me to learn how. 

The catch to this situation is that those coaches might be showing the incorrect numbers on the video or social media post.

Instead of actually having landed those types of large successes in E-Commerce, I have a hunch that those people are exploiting their own profits from another income stream – maybe their own coaching commissions from their course being sold – and you’ll never know what the difference is because you’ll never have a way to validate or verify what their claims are. 

What would be a more reasonable request would be to ask those mentors with a coaching program on E-commerce how much they had actually spend to put that advertising into the marketplace that resulted in that kind of revenue. 

Was it enough to at least cover the ad spend?

Could those people simply be breaking even with their advertising – especially if they actually have a large amount of premium, paid-in-full students into their coaching program?

We need to keep in mind that the profit margins in this space are 20 percent – and that’s on the high-end… meaning a maximum income margin per unit of product sold (but it’ll almost always be lower). 

When you have a bigger picture to look at, you can better evaluate what’s really happening – including the struggles that go into running a physical products’ selling business model. 

What about all the disasters that could arise – and you’ll be expected to handle the customer inquiries and be expected to come with a solution (especially if you want to keep your commission), such as:

• Consumers demanding returns and refunds
• Manufacturers expanding their operation but allowing your customers (and your business) to suffer in the process
• Products breaking during shipment – or shortly after arrival
• More, ongoing product issues that we don’t have time to list here
• Want to hire someone to address the nonsensical calls you have to face from your buyers?  The demand for a solution will still come to you and that’s a headache in and of itself

When you’re down to a measly 10% in commissions for selling a product, is that really a business model for success or is that your business venture shifting into a full-time, corporate-style of a career?

When one fire goes out, there’s a very good chance that another one is going to float in out of nowhere! 

If that profit margin for physical products marketing were higher, maybe there wouldn’t be so many digital marketing coaches in the E-commerce space; maybe they’d stick to their guns and try to keep the money for themselves instead of inviting more students to learn the process and become their competition in selling products online.

When a coach markets a course, all they really need to do is keep in touch with the student and deliver a password. 

Some coaches may argue that there’s more to the process than that.

At the core of your obligation, as a coach, you are receiving something of value (money) in exchange for something delivered to the buyer (the information that they are agreeing to purchase from you). 

That means that they have little to handle and manage, very little overhead, and nearly 100 percent in profit from the sale they have just made with someone like you (the student – if you were to purchase the E-Commerce course, that is). 

Unlike the higher education world of the American economy, there seems to be more profitability in teaching someone how to run an online business than there is to actually own one and run it oneself. 

Ask yourself this reasonable question about the E-Commerce world:

If coaches know how to make tons of cash in selling products through digital advertising…

Why, then, are the E-Commerce coaches shifting from doing this (which they claim to be an expert at) to coaching and mentoring in the first place?

Can it be that value can be collected from running a business model online through Shopify if this so-called expert left the industry to pursue a teaching gig with recorded videos online – where he makes YouTube videos promoting that he knows how to sell online and can teach you, vice actually doing the selling of those physical profits for his own gain? 

I’m not saying that he does or doesn’t, but the thought makes reason stare… wouldn’t you think?

Conclusion

If you’ve been following this blog of mine for any amount of time longer than a few blog posts…

1. THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING ALONG!
2. I’ve ventured into a ton of different business models to try my hand at them – this includes the dropshipping industry with a Shopify store

The reasons that I had experienced burn out from this business model (dropshipping, that is) is for the same reasons that were discussed up above…

• Difficulties in the selling of physical products and all the associated headaches in keeping the business afloat
• The laughably tiny margins of profit
• The dip into those tiny profits with Facebook Advertising – at least, since that’s what’s taught in some courses like Hayden’s

In the spirit of complete honesty, I was generating an okay profit on a monthly basis – the nature of which some coaches pitch and claim is possible in their mastermind. 

Perhaps burn out from the hard work and stress of E-Commerce are why people have shifted to instructing and selling their E-commerce business courses online instead. 

At a price point of $497, Bowles’ E-Commerce overview course just might be something sensible for a newbie to get oriented in the selling of physical products online. 

Local Lead Generation vs. Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course

What is local lead generation? 

It’s simply using free traffic – yes, free organic traffic from search results – to generate local leads that small businesses are happy to pay a premium for.

Why would I prefer Local Lead Generation over Dropshipping?

• No tangible products that have to be handled
• Nothing that needs to be shipped
• No risk of products breaking prior to arrival
• No need to purchase web traffic from Facebook Ads (or anywhere else)
• Higher Profit Margins
• More Opportunities to Serve
• Easier Access to Prospective Clients
• Customers Can Benefit from Service: We’re Bringing Them More Customers!

Why I Love Local Lead Generation in 2019

When I got out of my job in 2015, I was able to collect a respectable $10k per month in passive revenue. 

Today, that income has reached an excess of $45k every single month. 

When you’re making lead gen sites to post online and have them spit off cash flow while you sleep, you’ve found a method of virtual real estate properties that you can now rent out for a premium. 

You can begin stacking these resources and expanding your bottom line by simply making more of these virtual web properties in your spare time. 

That’s how I was able to get out of a corporate job that under-compensated and overworked me to the bone: 

I built up my side hustle in my spare time until my side hustle was bringing me more in a few months than my annual salary. 

Some people like their job and only want some additional income on the side; there’s nothing wrong with that.

To make real money online, however, that’s what got me excited to join this lead gen coaching program. 

As a result, I’m able to generate massive profits for less than 6 hours of work anytime I want more cash. 

A good example is this limo site that I ranked to the top of search engines – this is what it looks like online (see the image below):

Now, this is what it looks like and why it pays me so well: $750 every month to bring more customers to the company that rents this from me! 

Since I’ve built my business in local lead generation from free traffic to a steady level of tens of thousands of dollars a month – and yes, that’s real (or I wouldn’t be able to afford to write these review articles about these coaching programs in my spare time from my hefty salary that has allowed me to quit my full-time job) –

I’m now permitted to promote our coaching program above and beyond my business venture. 

Even if I weren’t promoting it, I’d still say that lead generation is – hands down – the best business model online for 2019. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION on starting your very own business online and learning the same things my coach and I both did in our spare time to change our lives (and that of our families) forever. 

Cut the reading and hit me up so we can talk about what you’re looking to do for your side hustle now!

There’s been a significant amount of attention given to the social media platforms lately. 

It’s been said that social proof is essential in selling online in this day and age – or for any business to have an elevated web presence. 

From likes to comments, shares and Facebook page fans, the evolution of social media seems to be drawing more attention and consideration from business owners who might not actually understand what those metrics mean when it comes to actually their bottom line expansion through seeking more revenue.

All they seem to really understand — from their time in conversation with local fellow business owners’ dialogue at parties and conventions — about how they hire and fire social media guys and gals because the business owner was under the impression that these things would really bring in more customers. 

Depending on the industry, it may be a valid belief that social media is a waste of their time; for others, they can’t get enough social presence in order to garner more attention and trust in the local commerce climate. 

As Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other social media get established, grow, and become more mainstream in today’s open communication with digital platforms, the notion that a picture really can be worth thousands of words can hit the nail right on the head when it comes to trying to garner attention and move products or sell services. 

For those that are crafty with prose and hope to bring content that carries a sense of value to the marketplace, Facebook and Twitter are the better places to leverage their use of typing words on a computer screen to serve and engage an audience from as far as your message could reach in cyberspace. 

When Facebook Ads require adjusting, it’s no longer a secret that the image of the paid ads campaign strategy could be one of the contributing factors for the desired result simply not being achieved –

This, of course, is assuming that all other aspects of the Facebook Ad are professionally sound, locked on solid, and ready to roll with what you’re trying to accomplish as your end goal. 

Still, the image can be implored to a brand’s credit or detriment (more than anything) on the ever popular – and rapidly growing – social media smartphone app called Instagram.

For those that are less savvy to the native tongue of English or would rather handle pictures instead of make the effort to type out what they’re hoping to say – not only would blogging be a poor fit, but your key forward would definitely be found in Instagram (which is often casually referred to as Insta).

Like all business owners, I once found myself in a funk and seeking a way to simply acquire more customers so I could grow my bottom line and my credibility in serving more customers at the highest level in my industry. 

For those who haven’t been following my blog thus far – thank you, first and foremost, for checking out this article. 

I really hope that it helps you to find what you’re looking for and made more sound decisions when it comes to exploring what coaching program or business venture you’d want to start and the mentor that you would most prefer to invest in to guide you to your dreams and goals. 

I actually have been running a very profitable local lead generation business ever since I was looking for a side hustle of my own while working a corporate job in the heart of the urban terrain of Detroit, Michigan. 

It was 2014, I was sitting on my couch during a wintery blizzard of an evening, and I was searching online for a way to make some money from my laptop so I could find a way out of my financial rut that had me in this joke of a low-rent apartment complex where any gust of wind that evening was chilling me to the bone. 

Shivering under a pile of blankets and miserable at my time sitting “at home” in the discomfort of my parka that I never took off since leaving work, I came across a coaching program by a guy named Dan – he seemed really cool and was willing to offer me a chance to learn what he has been doing for years. 

After some people that he was friends with asked him to teach how he was making boat-loads of cash online in his spare time, he decided that it was best to make this lead gen coaching program and reach out to the world to give people like you and me a chance to have something better with a reliable, honest, and credible system that is proven to work if you put the time and effort into it. 

Fast forward a year later, I’m raking in $10k in passive income each and every month, firing my boss at the 9 to 5 that I couldn’t stand, and all I really left in the downtown Detroit region was my $35,000 annual salary from a corporate career that wasn’t going to give me any more cash so I didn’t have to walk in the cold mornings to work. 

It’s all thanks to this lead gen coaching program that I learned this from that I was able to put up lead gen properties online — like virtual real estate — and have businesses rent them from me for $750 to $3000, and they pay me monthly… as this tree service does in Grand Rapids, MI!

(See the actual lead gen site for tree service below)

Now I’m making $50k every month and have the time freedom to write something like this article each and every morning for you to gain some leverage in your life and be armed with unbiased reviews of coaching programs so you can gain some better insight about where you think you should be going with your entrepreneurial-minded goals of having more cash to change your life for the better. 

With this passive income, I’m able to invest in coaching programs that require a ton of time in order to really get the most out of the training and be in the best position to see if it can make money for you online. 

Today, I’m reporting on what I’ve experienced with Instagram Mastery, which was founded by someone named Josue Pena. 

I had tinkered with Instagram here and there, maybe had a couple of followers and was willing to engage with some content on occasion; I was just never into the hype until I discovered that there were people raking in tons of business through just their online presence with this platform alone. 

When I heard that, I chose to up my game on Instagram and find a coach. 

Although, if my memory serves me correctly, I may have explored other coaching programs that suggested they would mentor me in growing my Instagram account just the same.

This is an ongoing problem – borderline pandemic, actually – as the internet is littered with tons of coaching programs and self-proclaimed experts that suggest they can mentor you to your desired financial goals if you would only pay them a hefty lump sum. 

While that can be shady, some people actually find value in the coaching programs and the testimonials that some of these things have is rather incredible – even to the point of believability. 

I’ve never actually seen someone have success online with Instagram turning into a passive side hustle and generating the kind of cash that I dreamed about when I was shivering on that cold evening’s dirty couch in the apartment downtown.  

As the winds raged, the cold sank deeper into my blankets and clothing, I decided that I needed to try something. 

Years later, I crossed this Instagram program again and could afford to invest in it – so this blog article is my effort to deliver an unbiased review of whether Josue Pena delivers on his Instagram Mastery program and open claims for helping his followers and students to achieve something better. 

Unclear of what I was getting myself involved in, I chose to take the leap and give this program a try. 

If it failed, I still have my passive income from the lead gen business spitting cash flow to keep me afloat. 

I know that there are people that might be reading this who aren’t in such a position to give something like this a try – or maybe the reader is fiscally stable but also pays a much bigger price in never having the spare time to get something like this done. 

For everyone that reaches this blog, I want to deliver to you the most unbiased review of this platform that you could possibly find. 

Let’s learn more about the Instagram Mastery by Josue Pena and figure out if this is where the action is at in the laptop lifestyle – or mobile phone lifestyle – in 2019. 

What’s Up with Josue Pena, Anyway?

This can be a really cool part of the blog, by the way. 

Even though I can get excited to learn about the person behind the founding of a coaching program, this guy really takes the cake with his life story. 

A fit, young man with strong ties to faith and an unwavering commitment to achieving his dreams, this guy – native to the Dominican Republic – was ready for more than life had delivered to him. 

Multilingual and driven to succeed from his younger years, this dedicated entrepreneur learned and honed his craft with commitment, finding a financial solution to his woes – and so he learned about digital marketing and making success in business a priority in his life.

Beyond his marketing competencies, Mr. Pena is the CEO and Founder of a fitness brand called Elation Athletics. 

A renaissance man, to say the least, Josue is constantly exploring ways to elevate his net worth; as such, he has now earned a variety of professional skills and trade-specific, insider knowledge in the disciplines of:

• Videography and Photography
• Personal Fitness Training
• Electrical Engineering
• Social Media Marketing

I anticipate that it’s his wide skillset and intense loyalty to achieving more that Josue Pena was ready to take on the world and make something out of what little he had in the early days. 

If you’re attempting to operate a business through an online presence, one of the stronger points you can position yourself within our digital era is by having what is known as influence thru social media. 

To earn that clout, however, Mr. Josue Pena valiantly pursues his social media following with massive and regular activity in:

• His Instagram Account
• A large subscriber base to his YouTube channel
• Syndicating content across his social media as liberally as is conveniently available for him to do

While it’s vital to have unique content posted in order to get individual credit from free traffic that can come from your content being found within search engine results, it’s a safe bet that Josue has his process down solid. 

In tandem with Mr. Josh Forti, these two launched the Instagram Mastery – and a second venture called the Digital CEOs – with the primary focus of advising entrepreneurs – targeting those that are brand new to the digital marketing side of our global economy – on how they can get started right, and well, in leveraging social media for their (hopefully) long-term success. 

Monetizing Social Media: More about the Instagram Mastery Course

As we speak, this information is deliberately revolutionizing my Instagram presence in ways that I had never thought possible before. 

Fun fact: did you know that the total amount of businesses (in our days of the most advanced resources in technology and digital communication) – who are even attempting to promote their solutions, products, or services via Instagram – are rated to the statistic of a whopping 33 percent or less? 

I’ll be honest – the pitching that this guy did was on-point: I’m a successful entrepreneur with no real or desperate need for more profits, yet I was hooked from hearing their message about Instagram Mastery. 

In addition to the volume of businesses that are actually trying Instagram out – their sampling and toe-dipping efforts are leaving tons of potential return on investment (ROI) on the table; the efficiency in their efforts are minimal, at best. 

We live in an era where tons of information is available at our fingertips and the Instagram platform – at least to start with – is absolutely free! 

How could businesses not be taking advantage of this? 

It’s madness, I say!  I’ll shake my fist to say it again: Madness, I say! 

The Instagram Mastery course by Josue Pena and his fellow co-founder (Josh Forti) seem to be an excellent fit for what I’m trying to accomplish online – especially on Instagram. 

The accessibility to this content is supremely flexible and available for just about anyone who has any sort of business or scheduling conflicts in their daily regimen:

• Since the course has complete online availability, I was able to tap into it on lunch breaks or whenever I had a spare few minutes
• If I were going to take a bus somewhere or sit and wait for hours to get my car registered (and we all know how boring that can be), I was able to do something productive and learn something new as my turn comes to get something done in this governmental office
• A wealth of video training modules to keep you focused and interested in the possibilities that are available on Instagram – and to be completely forthcoming, I haven’t even had the chance to watch all of the content; yeah, it’s that in-depth of a mentoring and coaching program. 

I won’t keep going on the point that there’s a lot to be taken in with this coaching program once you become a member and invest in the knowledge that’s available here. 

There were some specific points that I found especially helpful in the Instagram Mastery training:

• Account Security

It’s incredible how many people really don’t pause and consider the value of their brand on a social media platform like Instagram. 

Spoofing is a real thing on social media, and it’s important that you do what you can to protect your image and reduce the chances of spoofing happening to you. 

• Fundamentals in Branding

Yeah, I thought that I knew everything there was to know about Instagram and how to effectively use it. 

The truth is that these guys taught me some things that I didn’t know where possible – and I had been using it (albeit, passively) for years. 

• Options and Approaches to Funneling Traffic

There are actually ways that you can take web traffic and visitors on Instagram and motivate them to take your desired result – that ultimately redirects them elsewhere so you can get more content and pitching seen by your viewing audience and following. 

I had no idea this was really possible – or how to do it! 

• Recommendations and Advice on Market Research

Okay, I get it; there are tons of repositories that claim they can provide market research, but how do numbers that I have to look up actually help me to turn a profit online? 

With the Instagram Mastery by Josue Pena, you can rest assured that the things you’re looking into are very well worth your time and effort to explore. 

• Essentials in Networking

I hate that word in business: Networking. 

There’s this theory that you can determine someone’s net worth by evaluating the size and value of their network. 

On the same token, your network – especially in conversations of a business sense these days – are less about the relationships that you build and more about what you can get out of these so-called networks. 

Especially with the dawn of the internet, one major concern is that these networks you’re trying to build become so impersonal that the value of them – which was once perceived to be a great thing – is now a community of contacts that know of you but wouldn’t loyally move a finger if you were in need of medical attention, let alone if you reached out to them to ask for information, advice, or ideas. 

The level of value and responsiveness in your network always begins with you and in what you bring to the table that others can benefit from. 

When they see that you’re not out to simply game the system and be in it to win it just for yourself, then there’s a higher chance that you can build the type of connections that have been talked about for years – the connections that can establish you as someone that others like, trust and know, so much so that they are willing to respond whenever you reach out. 

That’s a different kind of networking. 

Which type will you be in this era of communicating through digital-based audience engagement?

Instagram Mastery: Additional Thoughts

It was a frustrating thing to get through what content I did, see the results I had achieved, and wonder why I didn’t get involved with Instagram Mastery earlier.  

I guess I didn’t have someone putting content about it on a blog post for me to gain insight from (see what I did there). 

From epic growth hacks and follow on tips that for building a loyal following, my results were:

• My initial volume of an Instagram following (when starting this program) doubled in sizing and loyalty within 4 days of starting to implement the tactics and procedures outlined by Josue.
• 4 weeks later: BOOM!  The size of that new following from only a few days into the mastermind had doubled again!

I’m kicking myself for not having done something with the Instagram Mastery when I had first heard about it. 

At this point, I am still not completely through the mastermind training; there really are tons of tidbits and expert wisdom contained in this series of online training modules. 

Think about this though, especially when it comes to the use of pictures in social media:

• Are you a photographer (or willing to take pictures of various things to share on Instagram)?
• Are you seeking a digital-based method for driving greater return on your marketing investment dollars (ROI) – to include time and money – so that more business opportunities come your way?

If I were in your shoes, then, I would pounce on this right away and begin demonstrating your expertise to a vast array of audience that could potentially end up leading you to someone that will ultimately hire you and throw their hard-earned dollars your way since the value you’re bringing is perceived as beyond incredible! 

Your 2019 Top Choice for Landing 6 Figures with an Online Business

The cool thing about most of the social media platforms is that accessing and using them are free. 

While there are resources online to try and help you to manage the variety of social media platforms that you could be juggling in a given day – and let me tell you, it can get out-of-hand sometimes – it doesn’t change the fact that these free access points to getting your message in front of potential customers can be worth the squeeze. 

That said, your ability to scale and expand your social media presence comes at a cost. 

When you’re spending time doing this, you’re not spending your efforts landing more opportunities to close business. 

You can build up a loyal following over time, but to do it right – and that’s the best way to do it from the beginning – you’re going to need to pace your effort and spend your spare time working on your social following clout. 

That means that you – if you were anything like me in 2014 – are probably in a position where you need to turn something into cash immediately. 

Maybe you’re not in need of that but you still want to invest in a coaching program that can do more than just teach you theories and wish you the best of luck. 

Still, what better way to build your business than with methods that are completely free?

My recommendation, then, is to use free traffic in search to build my #1 pick in an internet-based, digital business for 2019:

Local Lead Generation! 

Think about how real estate people own properties and rent out some of them instead of sell outright. 

Your lead gen sites can operate in the same way…

You can generate leads to send to small businesses who rent out your own virtual real estate from you, so you can get paid month after month. 

If you were looking for a genuinely passive income option, I think you’ve found it with Local Lead Gen. 

Want to know how I used this online business approach to walk away from a $35k corporate 9 to 5 gig within a year of launching my lead gen business? 

Here are the steps, and these are the same steps I use to this day to keep building my bottom line past $45K+ in annual revenue in 2019:

1. Figure out where you want to place your virtual real estate online
2. Build the lead gen site and rank it on Google search results
3. Rinse and Repeat

There really aren’t too many more steps to this – not that I’m leaving anything out, but I can’t give the whole coaching program away in a blog post. 

Needless to say, you land a partnership with a local small business who services the leads you send them, and they will gladly cut you in on part of their marketing budget.  

Why would a business owner do that? 

You’re hooking them up with more customers! 

How could you not be valuable to them when you’re giving them more opportunities to do good in their community?

To better illustrate what I’m trying to get across here, take a look at this lead gen site that I had pasted to the top of Google – I used the industrial strength adhesive equivalent in digital Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques from this coaching program so it keeps paying me — and has since 2014!

(Take a look at how it’s dominating the local market in the image below):

Now, I know that this placement doesn’t mean much to anyone that isn’t familiar with the tasks or steps involved with search engine optimization (SEO) – FYI, for those that don’t know, that’s the popular acronym given to the way that websites climb to the top of search results to be seen first by customers. 

For me, it means that I’m getting paid $750 every single month – and have been for years. 

Why is local lead generation so awesome of a business model for 2019, besides the passive income?

• Passive income means more time to do what you want – even sleep in or not walk to a job in the cold mornings, which I had done for years
• If you really don’t want to work a full-time job, this business model can give you the long-term solution to walk away from it if you really want to (but make sure that you have your lead gen sites in place and spitting off cash flow before you make any rash decisions here, please)
• These lead gen sites work off of free traffic, which means they’re virtual real estate that can keep making you money while you sleep, go on vacation, or indulge in a hot date on the weekend
• This passive income can build up over time, enabling you to generate more profits annually than the typical salary of specialized attorneys or resident fellowship medical practitioners
• Work from home in your pajamas, or go somewhere that lets you access the internet with your laptop
• Leverage the exact same business strategy big companies use (like Uber or Airbnb) to make their business work for them in 2019 through the internet: generate leads and refer them to people who gladly pay you a premium for the work
• Make a living out of helping people that are seriously looking for more customers; I remember meeting a business owner that had tears in his eyes after our conversation because his business was past the point of no return and wished he had only found me sooner to help him with more customers – lead gen can make a difference in the local market by benefitting all involved!

There are tons more benefits, but I’m going to shut up now and let you reach out to me to learn more about how you learn the same steps and strategies I used to quit my job in under a year with this coaching program.

Here’s proof of the actual lead gen site that paid me a whopping $750 each and every month from the 6 hours of work it took me to get it where it is staying today (have a look for yourself below here):

Yeah, yeah… the whole results aren’t typical disclaimer and stuff bores me, but it’s necessary to say. 

My question to you is whether or not you’re going to venture into starting your life on the path to raking in 6 figures (or even 7 figures someday) online by learning how to use free traffic in lead generation in 2019…

Stop reading now and check it out for yourself! 

Of all the digital advertising courses on the market today, none seems to be more popular than the ones that advertise the ability to help train you in the swift art of getting results immediately through a medium of paid traffic. 

Currently, the two big places to acquire that type of traffic are the top beasts that own probably all the web traffic on the internet; they’re very popular and you have heard of them:

1. Google (the search engine)
2. Facebook (the top social media platform in use today)

Why are these two so good of an option for you to acquire immediate results from? 

Let’s face it – you can launch an instant marketing campaign that can be live and getting attention online within minutes, quite literally. 

It’s absolutely incredible the way that digital assets have revolutionized how marketing is done – especially with the internet in 2019. 

Facebook hosts a social media-based advertising platform that allows you to reach an audience on both Instagram and the Facebook profiles (at least).  Facebook has grown rapidly in the short few years that it’s been around and progressing in business over the years. 

At the near founding of the internet, Google was formed as a search engine that could help anyone who wanted to host a web property to be found online with nothing more than a few clicks and button-pushing actions by their ideal audiences. 

It wasn’t until a lot later, however, that Google came out with something that was formerly known as AdWords – it’s now currently just named Google Ads. 

This is their own version of acquiring paid traffic through the search engines; it still works the same was as free traffic but instead of the advertiser just paying to host a property…

They’ll pay a premium to Google for each and every click (PPC, or Pay Per Click) that their audience takes in response to the ad that shows up on search results in desired positions based on the rate that the buyer of the ad is willing to pay. 

Well, before we go any further I think it’s important to identify that paid traffic strategies through digital advertising can be an ideal start to a marketing campaign – especially due to the possibility that, assuming the marketing campaign is so on-point that it produces desired results instantly –

You’re still dipping into one’s profits in order to attempt to acquire results in the game of producing online traffic. 

That’s largely why I decided that another coaching program that taught free traffic methods to generate passive income online – all from a laptop – really fit what I was looking for; the business method was called Local Lead Generation for small business. 

It’s treated me so well that I’ve been able to rake in large incomes online from working on a project for (usually) no more than 6 hours (over the course of a month) and it produce results that pay me for months and years long after I’ve finished messing with it – like this tree service lead gen site that generates profits for me over in Grand Rapids, MI; check it out for yourself (see below):

While paid traffic strategies can be ideal for a beginner in entrepreneurship, I personally have a bias against it.

It’s a very simple explanation as to why, as well.

Since the free traffic from search results have helped me to make over $10k per month in my first year, walk away from my corporate job, and get a better place to live than the crummy, downtown Detroit apartment I used to live in – the cracks would let the below zero winds in to chill my bones at night. 

Fast forward to today, I now collect a hefty $50k in revenue that is passive income for me, all from the local lead generation business model that I learned in this coaching program. 

Now, I get to write blog posts like this for your benefit – and I don’t mind it. 

That said, I have used Facebook Ads and other paid forms of buying attention and ad traffic online. 

I’m very familiar with it actually. 

So in this article, we’ll explore this gal named Ms. Cat Howell, and the coaching program that he had pieced together called Facebook Ads that Convert; it even has its own famous acronym “FATC Academy.” 

After all, there’s nothing more exciting to someone who dreamed much to the effect that I had back in 2014 in that old, rusty apartment, about nothing being more exciting than actually having some additional income arriving into my bank account. 

There had to be away, so I just kept searching. 

So today, I’m able to afford to invest in the programs of others because I love continuing to learn about the virtual business possibilities online these days – it’s just fascinating to me how so many people have found ways to generate a side income online and I’m ready to learn more and blog more about it. 

Stick with my blog as I progress through my journey of evaluating business coaching programs and report back what my experience has been. 

I’ve spent a lot of time doing this and I don’t mind delivering my results and perspective on it in an unbiased manner.  Yes, that’s right… I’m not trying to push you into an affiliate offer with the coaching or mentoring platform that I am reviewing. 

Even if you decide that the thing I’m reviewing is for you and seek it out to join up, I won’t get a commission. 

With that concern for credibility out of the way, let’s make a concerted effort to get to:

• know our mentor of the day, Ms. Cat Howell,
• deliver our unbiased review of her coaching program,
• what value Facebook can bring (or not bring, as the case might arise), and…
• where my preference in new entrepreneurs beginning an online business venture really is.

Behind the FATC Academy: Learning about Cat Howell

Proficient in the Facebook Advertising platform and possessing a deeper knowledge than most claim to of what it takes to turn a social media paid traffic ad in Facebook from questionable to profitable, Cat Howell has been named as a co-worker and assistant for some of the larger, household name brands that we’ve grown up with over the years, including (though not limited to): 

• Coca-Cola Bottling Company
• Fuji Film (the photography company)
• And many, many more that she has been privileged to learn from during her time with each of them

Does she have a secret? 

Is there a reason that her course’s value is only $297 per month (or should it be higher)? 

Perhaps it’s just her radiant confidence that permits her to step up here game and charger higher pricing than most of her supposed competitors in the Facebook Advertising space. 

Facebook Ads that Convert (FATC Academy) Quick Review

Okay, so you’re here and reading this blog because you’re looking for a way to get started online with a side hustle that really could turn you some magical business tricks for quick cash. 

If only business were that magically simple; well, sometimes it is, if you’ve got a lot of things lined up that you need in order to work smart and efficiently (wasting little in the way of funds, time, etc.). 

When you want to get up to speed in a hurry with Facebook Ads and are genuinely interested in knowing how you, too, can deliver results – Cat’s program of the FATC Academy may give you what you’re looking for. 

When you get a Facebook Ad up, you’re voluntarily entering into an auction system where you are competing for the same audience with others. 

As luck might have it, the more similar your ad it to someone else (which, as far as I am aware of, you’ll never know about it unless you know about it and see it outside of the ads platform), the higher you’re agreeing to be charged for the same traffic that your competition is trying to get – and that’s simply how their auction system works. 

That said, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, the cost of your ads can shoot through the roof if you’re not careful and give the proper or necessary attention to the results and performance metrics of our ad campaigns – paying sufficient attention while they’re running so that you know if/when you might actually have to:

• Replace the ads
• Change your targeting
• Switch up the ad spend
• (dare I say it) maybe even need to turn your ad off that you’ve been running for some time now, regardless of the amount of ad spend, length of time, or bits of data that you have to work with (after the first trial or successful campaign)

The awesome thing about Ms. Howell’s leadership in her training program – Facebook Ads that Convert Academy – is that you can figure out how to correctly approach your marketing on Facebook with the insight that she provides…

Then, you can confirm what you’re learning by actually going out into your own Facebook Ads account and trying things out as proof that you know what she’s talking about – and those little wins of yours will help you to gain greater confidence and enthusiasm as you progress in your knowledge and skill here. 

When you’re just starting out in the business world, the last thing you want to do is spend all this money trying the platform out – there’s so much to test that I was worried at how I might go broke if it weren’t for the training platform that she provides. 

An asset in its own right, I was grateful for this because I’ve personal spend a projected amount of $200k+ on the Facebook Advertising side of the social media company – and I’ve got a rude awakening for you:

It didn’t produce the results that I was hoping for – which really means that I didn’t see any sort of return on investment (ROI) that put me into profit mode with my attempts to market on Facebook. 

Yeah – I know what you’re thinking…

How did this guy (meaning, me) get qualified to write a blog post about the FATC Academy if he couldn’t get a quarter of a million to convert enough to gain a profit? 

The Game of Paid Social Media: Things Everyone Should Know about Facebook Ads

I guess that just goes to show you that the Facebook Ads platform isn’t perfect.

Also, your efforts to do everything right can still result in things that you hadn’t wished nor hoped for (like no web traffic and/or no sales that day).

Such is the reality of paid traffic online – and something we all have to grin and bear. 

I would hope that you don’t end up like the stereotype that everyone thinks of but no one wants to be:

• Testing on the Facebook Ads strategies that you think you know, or casually learned might work on a YouTube video or do-it-yourself article
• You’re grinding away and seeing revenue come in from your marketing efforts
• Web traffic is blowing through your ad spend and flying in to see your offer by the swarms
• Then, you barely break clear of the debt you’ve just incurred from your Facebook Ad comes to the end of the month – you find out that all of this wasn’t what it was cracked up to be and get frustrated that you now have a debt that you didn’t have before you started trying this “online business venture

Why go through all of that and hesitate to experience this kind of – potentially – avoidable issue? 

I acknowledge upfront that no sort of results can be guaranteed – and anyone who might in the digital world is lying to you. 

Yes, this blog is about telling the truth and keeping you well-informed.  Refreshing, isn’t it? 

So what’s the secret that one has up your sleeve to be profitable in Facebook Ads instead?

I wish I could tell that there’s a secret, but the answer is a rather obvious and mind-blowingly simple concept that people seem to get angry with me for sharing. 

Experience is usually the best teacher, but even Ms. Howell admits that she’s not really any more or less special than you when it comes to the possibility of an ad campaign succeeding or failing in its objective for web traffic.

What all boils down to is: you must be willing to apply lots of ads to your experimental process and test them – even split-test them, if you really need/want to. 

What It Takes to Get Good at Paid Social Media Marketing (Facebook Ads)

Look, you want to get good at a skill. 

We also agree that Facebook Ads hold the potential to return a high payout for anyone and on anything. 

That’s the risk we take, and the price we pay, for seeking the use of Facebook Ads in our business model; you pay upfront and hope for the results – test away and try to get your desired result, adjusting along the way. 

This means you have to be extremely willing to make trips to your laptop several times a day to analyze your:

• Ad and Campaign (to make sure it hasn’t been removed, banned, or turned off by Facebook Advertising staff
• Watch your cost-per-click, relevancy score, and tons of other detailed points to gauge how your Facebook Ad is actually doing since you’ve launched it (or, since your last revision)
• Find which ad sets and ads are performing the best – because you’ve divided the aspects of your campaign up so tremendously that you can see specifically which kind of audience is performing better with your targeting structure
• Still make time to adjust and change things as key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics suggest

This is what it takes – in large part – to win at the game of Facebook Ads; it’s like gambling against the house, really, because whether you acquire attention or not…

Facebook will still gladly spend your money if you leave your ad campaigns running. 

Other Things to Know about Facebook Ads Implementation

Depending on what you’re doing with Facebook Ads, especially if you’re running campaigns involving affiliate products, you’d better be prepared with some contingency plans for your business model because getting your ads shut off and your campaign banned are simply part of the game. 

If you’re not willing to get to this point, then maybe Facebook Ads strategies aren’t going to be a good business venture fit; you have just got to be willing to take adventurous guesses and risk if you want to find a creative Facebook ad copy that wins in your market and with your target audiences that you’re attempting to appeal to. 

Case in point:

2 Ads that are ridiculously similar will be performing completely different – and that’s just how the industry works. 

Take this first wrinkle cream ad (see below):

Now imagine this with a younger woman but still applying the cream on.

What sense is made of this?

For some, not much. 

The creative side of the paid traffic strategy suggests that 2 similar ads can perform differently for a variety of factors. 

None of the reasons for this could end up ever being clear for you. 

The ambiguity is something that must be okay with and learn to go with the flow while allowing the analytical side of your brain to do its magic as well. 

What I’m Disliking about Facebook Ads and Paid Traffic

Here’s one of the primary things that actually pushed me away from the practice of Facebook Ads. 

There seems to be far too much organization in the Facebook Ads platform; some people like that while others don’t. 

At the end of the day, it’s up to Facebook how they want to handle their ads and all we can do is try our best at letting the third-party software of an ads platform work in our favor at random. 

We can increase the odds of that randomness working in our favor, but it goes without saying at this point: testing is required and ad spend has to be something that you’re really okay with in order to collect sufficient market data and decide what your next steps with your campaign are going to be. 

This one detail really gets under my skin and I’m still kind of upset about this realization of this:

All Facebook Ads fall under 5 categories in terms of automated quality-checking in the most random of ways (and, unless someone from the Facebook headquarters can manually do something to help you along, there’s absolutely nothing that you can do to influence the decision-making that this software exhibits on your published ad). 

The Categories are as follows: 

5. Horrible

4. Not Good

3. Reasonable

2. Decent

1. Prime

I can already hear the groans coming from the peanut gallery, and I’ll be sincere in saying that I absolutely agree with the people that disapprove of this conduct as well. 

Your luck could be in favor of you for the publishing of your new ad – or not. 

You might get decent performance on your Facebook Ad in nearly all metrics, except for the one that you’ve been counting on this whole time:

• conversions
• sales
• money in your pockets

Think back to the discussion about using the same ad with a different audience – or only slight variations to the same ad and running that to the same target markets: 

• One will generate your desired result and one won’t
• Both will perform well
• None will perform well

That’s essentially your options – especially since Facebook is pushing your ads out to the markets you’ve designated (at least, as best as you told it what to do). 

Even with all of that work, you’ll still run the risk of not seeing a profit; that’s the bottom line truth here.

Maybe one of your Facebook Ads published hits a home-run (metaphorically speaking) and gets ran around to all of the higher-level, more relevant audiences and that brings in more revenue for you. 

This is why fabricating ad sets and a variety of ads for each of the attempts that you put into Facebook Ads are pivotal to your success on this platform? 

Sounds like work to me, which is why I still venture into the whacky and adventurous world of free traffic with local lead generation. 

Unlike Facebook Ads, your lead gen sites can feed you free traffic from search results (that you don’t have to pay per-visitor, per-click, per-conversion – meaning action, which could often-times be a sale if you’ve set that up correctly – or per impression). 

That means that not paying per visitor reduces your volume of monthly costs for your virtual real estate – which you can now rent out to small businesses who can give you a cut of the sales you bring them each and every month. 

It’s not a pay-per-lead model in terms of trying to pay for attention for another business, or for a crummy product that can only deliver a laughable 10%-15% of profit from every sale that comes through your Facebook funnel. 

Instead, you’re sending more business over to someone who could use it and they give you a sliver to deliver; that’s what I call genuinely passive since you don’t have to maintain the web property – unlike a Facebook Ad that requires tons of attention and more than once a day. 

Conclusion

If you’re seeing more and more people test the Facebook Ads training that is on the market for themselves, I think you’d be spot on in regards to the trend that these coaching programs are bringing. 

It is an extremely hot commodity to have this skill – you can command clients out of thin air for businesses you might partner with, or for the affiliate products or otherwise physical products you could intend to sell through dropshipping marketing approaches taught elsewhere online

Just like business owners who question me when I approach them with referrals from my lead gen sites, I often question the self-proclaimed experts that coach these online programs – I want to know what makes them a credible and reliable source for the information they’re trying to share with me in exchange for my hard-earned money. 

Not only am I a successful entrepreneur – which, I think, gives me a little different outlook than I might have had if I were still sitting on my apartment’s living room couch, freezing my tail off in the dead of winter, looking for a way to make more money online from home – I’m also interested in finding a coaching program that anyone can start and see a really passive income develop. 

Unfortunately, we just don’t know who to trust these days. 

I can assure that I trust Ms. Cat Howell and her abilities to demonstrate – as her credentials support – her expertise in running social media’s advertising campaigns for big brands and may have a thing or two to show you about what to do with your next Facebook ad. 

Howell has been known to cut through the noise and deliver very clear, no-nonsense training series that you can follow along with as she attacks each topic head-on – which is an approach I can sincerely appreciate. 

There’s something to be said about investing in the program of a quality mentor like Cat Howell:

• They’re genuine and believable when they teach and advise
• They know what they’re doing from personal experience and having done what they’re advising
• They know that getting good at something requires an upfront investment
• Mastery is a process (in anything)
• And leveraging momentum to go fast and acquire a high-income skill rapidly is what separates the okay Facebook Ads marketing people from the outstanding performers of Facebook Ads

All of the above leads to helping a student understand what’s going on and confidently have their methodology in order as they personally venture into the unknown land of Facebook Ads for the very first time. 

I’ve seen a positive return on investment (ROI) after investing in Facebook Ads that Convert (FATC) Academy, so I can attest to the validity of this coaching program. 

Without a mentor in the Facebook Ads game, you’re liable to miss one extraordinary detail that was a tip in someone’s Facebook Ads training that could have kept you from losing out on tens of thousands of dollars in ad spend that you could have otherwise avoided. 

If you’re still serious about leveraging Facebook Ads and using it for the purpose of getting money online for yourself, then feel free to establish your confidence and knowledge base with Facebook Ads that Convert by Cat Howell (FATC Academy). 

How Local Lead Generation is Taking Over in 2019 as the Best Online Business Model

One thought that crossed my mind included the potential crossover of skills that you could have by combining the training of Facebook Ads with the high-income, passive income generating skill of local lead generation with free traffic. 

Why am I still harping on the need to seriously consider lead generation? 

Doing so doesn’t eat away at the minimal profit margins that newest entrepreneurs tend to experience – and there’s no more room in the beginner stages to be cutting corners, so I don’t know why you would find it to be a great idea to spend more money online with Facebook Ads than you’d just as soon invest in our coaching program where free traffic is taught and leveraged for profits.

If you were to produce the same amount of leads from free traffic that passes through your lead gen site on Google search results, your profit margin would be bordering 100 percent upon the site hitting the top of search results. 

That also means no maintenance to keep the lead gen site superglued to the top of the results for the key terms that are bringing in more and more customers for the small business owner to reward you within monthly, passive income of a large and enjoyable nature. 

If you’ve been looking for a lifestyle that stems from financial and time freedom, then consider local lead generation – the same thing that helped me to get started in business in 2014 and quit my full-time job within 1 calendar year of launching my own online digital lead generation business – straight from my laptop. 

Why am I bringing up the issue of profit margin? 

With lead gen, you don’t have to pay for each and every lead that you are able to send over to your client; if you were to try and do the same thing with Facebook Ads, you’d end up still going into the whole – and potentially financially deep because of the fact that you can increase your ad spend and burn through a target audience quickly (and fast doesn’t always mean profitable). 

Therefore, more money can go into your pockets with the local lead generation business model. 

Also, you can generate more profits with fewer clients; fewer businesses that you have to arrange your time around means that you have more time in your days to enjoy doing whatever it is you wanted to do when you started getting involved in businesses way back when. 

I know that the “way back when” is like present time for you –

You are reading this, after all, and possibly deciding which program to explore further: Local Lead Generation or Facebook Ads. 

While fewer headaches can come from attempting to manage fewer clients that are all compensating you and your business model, think about how much time it must take to manage the campaign of one client. 

Especially if you’re brand new and still trying to figure things out, it could take you several chunks of time to figure out what each component is, does, and how or why you would want to select the things in your Facebook Ad to make it run different ways (including the way you want it to). 

As for the reviewing of your target marketing, the nature of your Facebook Ad copy (in and of itself), and other things; it’s not the most scalable business model – the more you get Facebook Ads clients to work with, you’re going to be stuck to your computer for that much longer in trying to figure things out. 

Lastly, there’s also the issue of what we’ve been talking about a lot here – not having a second job to your daily grind. 

With the lead gen business, I was able to establish one of my first websites in Lansing, Michigan, that is still paying me $750 to this day – and this is all I did with it on search results (see below):

You can’t really step away from a laptop for an entire weekend with Facebook Ads; you’d go broke in a heartbeat. 

Okay, that might have been somewhat of a stretch, but it’s not too far from the truth. 

If you’re not carefully attending to the Facebook Ads that you’ve set up brand new, you could be losing clients or owing money back for failing to deliver your services at the highest of quality for those who’ve trusted you to deliver on what you were going to do. 

So, I’ve been organically ranking lead gen sites and getting leads through free traffic, for years! 

I identify it as a stable and long-term solution to businesses getting more customers because they don’t have to take the time to watch a Facebook Ad’s performance metrics, and you don’t have to go back to maintain the lead gen property once it’s positioned right where it needs to be to get the phone ringing with cash ready to be sent over. 

Beyond passive income and high-profit margins, here’s what else you can anticipate with lead gen: 

• The ability to stack your income to the point that you’re making more than your local physician and an attorney in your local neighborhood
• Use a straightforward business model that can yield high-income and long-term returns: make more leads thru the internet and send them over to businesses so you can get paid well!
• Have that good, warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from helping business owners actually get what they’ve already been looking for – more customers
• Maximum control of the marketing process – Facebook isn’t telling you where you can and can’t be seen with your lead gen site, and they’re not charging you to send you to the sandbox where you don’t really get seen by anyone in your target market (and yes, it’s happened)
• Leverage the passive income of stacking your lead gen sites (and their profits) each and every month so you can walk away from a full-time job or just wake up late and stay in your pajamas to work on your business (if you really want)
• A joke of competition here: you’re not competing with affiliate marketers across the entire world for the opportunity get seen first in search results; instead, you’re getting the chance to hit a huge victory in a short amount of time with your lead gen site by beating out only 10 to 30 different local businesses for the chance to be the dominating force and take all the buyers in the market that you can now redirect to your partner in that city, and for that service
• While I’m advocating to join a coaching program that talks all about the world of lead generation for small businesses, the truth of the matter is that there are far too many businesses and plenty of business to go around that we could continue to grow our mastermind and mentorship here and it wouldn’t affect us very much
• Get to know the true meaning of financial freedom as we build up our assets that spit of cash flow so we don’t have to be a slave to our 9 to 5 any longer
• We can do this anywhere that there’s a city with Google and internet access, and we already know that there are several local service industries in just about any urban and metropolitan region of a major city so there are tons of industries that this business model can work for – if you can find a business owner that wants more customers, then we can show you how to make some money (and we show you how to find business owners too – so you’re not really alone here)

Oh yeah, and that lead gen site I was telling you about, that’s making me $750 — that’s real, too; see it for yourself here (see below):

If you’re interested in the business model that helps me make a multiple 6 figures every year on autopilot, granting genuine time and financial freedom, with digital assets that you own – and not having to pay a third party, like Facebook Advertising platform, to get seen by more targeted, free traffic that are using search results with high-buyer intent search terms, money in-hand and ready to buy to anyone that’ll solve their problem –

Then CLICK HERE and learn how our coaching program on how local lead generation can move you forward in your aspirations and get free traffic to help you do it.