- Redefining Retirement
- Posts
- Unique Story-Driven Path To Income Diversification - Part Five
Unique Story-Driven Path To Income Diversification - Part Five
Next up, Education... How To Use Your Story To Transform Risk Into Resilience
Welcome to part 5 of the Corey Story Blueprint.
Last week, in part 4, we finished defining our philosophy. And answer the question, “How does one live their best life.”
Today, we’re going to talk about educating the audience.
And I’m going to try keeping this one short for you.
So, let’s dive in…
The Corey Story Blueprint Continued
Here’s what we covering on the Blueprint today.
we’re going to teach our audience a little somethin’ about the skills and interests that lead to our version of the good life.
Introduction
Where did you start the transformation?
What was the climax of your journey?
What did you achieve that is desirable to others?
What topics, interests, or skills helped get you there?
Section 1: My Philosophy (Answers the question: How does one live their best life?)
Describe your ideal future and lifestyle in detail. What goals are you leading your followers toward?
Describe the enemy. What is the future and lifestyle you want to avoid, like the plague?
What are beliefs you have that others would find extremely offensive?
What is the importance of each topic, interest, or skill you've learned to help you on the way toward your ideal lifestyle?
Section 2: Education
Educate your audience on the skills you learned that lead to your version of the good life. What are those skills and interests?
Section 3: Practice
Coming soon
Let’s do it.
Section 1: Education
Here is my answer to…
Educate your audience on the skills you learned that lead to your version of the good life. What are those skills and interests?
The most important skill I learned was pay-per-click marketing (PPC for short).
PPC is a type of online marketing where advertisers pay when a user clicks on their ads.
When you know how to do it, you can promote almost any product or service, whether it's your own or someone else.
Being able to market anything online is a super valuable and high-demand skill.
In fact, there are millions of businesses seeking digital marketing services, such as PPC.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were 33.2 million American businesses in 2023[1]. These businesses include a wide range of entities, from small to large enterprises. Small businesses, defined as independent businesses having fewer than 500 employees, account for 99.9% of all U.S. firms[2].
While the exact breakdown of how many of these businesses specifically need help with marketing is not provided in the search results, it can be inferred that a significant portion of these businesses may require marketing assistance. Nearly 60% of small businesses use digital marketing[5], indicating a substantial demand for marketing services among businesses in the United States.
The great thing about PPC marketing is if you can get the math right, it is a pretty passive way to make money.
When you do right, you can put a dollar in a machine, like Google Ads, and get two, three, or more out.
This is what I learned about selling DVD Guitar Courses as an affiliate.
Back then, the product sold for around $150; my commission was $55.13. If I could make one sale a day with a daily ad budget of $25, I would make $25.13 (a dollar in, two dollars out) if I sold two or more, even better.
And I only had to set it up once - my favorite kind of work.
Once you find the right combination of audience, ad, and offer, you don’t have to do much more work to keep it going.
Outside of some small changes you could make to the campaign, like increasing the budget or optimizing ads to ads to squeeze out some more profits, you don’t need to do much else - they just run on their own.
You just need to check in on it to make sure things aren’t going off the rails.
You can then go on to work on other things like another campaign or do nothing.
The skills I learned to sell DVD guitar courses are fundamentally the same as the skills I’m using to sell products and services for my clients today: everything from custom software to 3d Printing to beef jerky, chiropractic, and heavy equipment.
And search ads aren’t the only type of PPC ads you can use to market your or your client’s products and services.
Here are the different types of PPC marketing:
Search Ads: These are ads that show up at the top of search engine results when you search for something. They are usually just words and are related to what you searched for.
Display Ads: These are ads that you see on different websites. They can be pictures, words, or videos and are meant to make you more aware of a brand.
Video Ads: These are ads that play before, during, or after online videos. They can be skipped or not and are a good way to get people interested.
Shopping Ads: These ads show a picture, price, title, and description of a product. They are often used by online stores to promote what they sell.
Paid Social Ads: These ads are on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They are targeted to specific groups of people based on their interests and information.
Search ads on Google and Bing are how I promoted the guitar course and the majority of my clients’ stuff over the years.
Here’s an example:
(as you can see, people are still running ads on this keyword).
But these days, I use a combination of these types of PPC marketing.
I’ve been running video ads on YouTube and, although I haven't run any myself, TikTok, and Instagram video ads are huge right now.
And the reason you are reading this newsletter might be because of my Paid Social ads - you likely clicked on one of the following Facebook Ads.
Learning PPC marketing has literally changed my life.
It’s a skill that will keep me relevant for years to come. And has given me both time freedom and the freedom to work on projects and interests I like working on.
To be continued…
Up Next
Next week, we’re going to work on Section 3: Practice.
Here is the outline for that section…
Subscribe to keep reading
This article is free but reserved for Gen Xers like us who are serious about figuring out what's next. Subscribe to get weekly email updates on using AI to stay relevant, make money, and create lifestyle-focused work you'll never want to retire from. You in?
Reply