DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online

by Russell Brunson

Conversely, as soon as the audience knows you’re not perfect, that you have character flaws, then they will start to empathize with you. They’ll like you more because you are like them: not perfect.

When an Attractive Character tries to win the votes of everyone, they end up reaching no one. Instead, Attractive Characters are typically very polarizing. They share their opinions on hard matters, and they stick to their guns—no matter how many people disagree with them.

If you search for me online, you’re going to find out there are people who love me and people who hate me. That’s just the way it is. If you’re neutral, no one will hate you, but no one will know who you are either. As soon as you start taking sides on important issues, you’ll develop haters, but you’ll also develop a group of raving fans. Those raving fans are the people who will buy your products and services. If nobody’s talking about you, then nobody knows who you are. It’s time to step out of that neutral space and start sharing your opinions. Bring the things you care about into the open.

People kept seeing me with these other high-profile people, and over time, I became associated with them. My status went up because I was constantly in the company of high-status people. The knowledge and credibility I gained from being a reporter naturally evolved into my coaching career. Becoming a reporter is a great way to start a business in a niche you don’t know much about.

Loss and Redemption: “I had everything. I was on top of the world. Life was great. Then ___________ happened. I had to figure my way out of ________________. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I went through __________, and I learned/received ___________. Now I ___________.”

Us vs. Them: You want to use us vs. them stories to polarize your audience. Remember the power of polarity? Using these types of stories will draw your raving fans even closer and give them a rallying cry against the outsiders.

Before and After: “First I was ______________. Now I’m ___________.”

These are stories of transformation, and they work great in any market. For example, in the weight-loss market, you might say, “First I was fat. Then I tried Program X. Now I’m skinny.” Or, try this with the dating market: “First I was lonely and unattractive. Then I got Program Y. Now, I’ve got chicks all over me.” Here is a transformation for the making-money market: “First I was dirt poor, living in a box under a bridge. Then I tried Product Z. Now, I have a mansion in Beverly Hills.”

Amazing Discovery: “Oh my gosh, you guys . . . wait til you hear about this amazing new thing I just discovered! You’re not going to believe it, but I hit it out of the park on my first try!

Secret Telling: “I’ve got a secret . . . if you want to find out what it is, you need to do ___________.” This is my favorite type of storyline. My whole company, DotComSecrets, is built around “secret” storylines. The lure of secrets draws the reader into your funnel and up your Value Ladder.

Third-Person Testimonial: Sharing other people’s successes with your products and programs provides powerful social proof. Get as many third-person testimonials from your customers, clients, and students as you can. Then sprinkle them liberally throughout your stories. Or use them as stand-alone stories and case studies.

Let’s Review: It’s time to get started creating your Attractive Character. When I say “create,” I don’t mean “make it up.” I mean to zero in on a story and personality you or one of your clients has. It’s real. Start assembling your identity, your stories, your flaws, and your line in the sand. Most entrepreneurs never think about this vital communication tool. And even if they do, they don’t put in the time and effort to do a good job creating a believable persona. Like I said before, c...

When somebody joins your list for the first time, it’s essential that you quickly build a bond between them and the Attractive Character. The way you introduce your character can mean the difference between a subscriber opening your emails consistently or hitting the delete key.

The goal is to create an instant bond between your Attractive Character and the person reading the email.

If your first email is boring, you’re done. They probably won’t open the next one. But if you give them something interesting and hook them with an open storyline in the first email, then they will look forward to the next one, and the next, and the next.

In your Soap Opera Sequence, you’re going to introduce your Attractive Character and build up an open-ended dramati...

The key to making this sequence work (just like a soap opera) is you have to open and close loops that will drag your reader from one email to the next.

For example, I may tell readers in the first email that I discovered the secret to getting rid of their nerve pain forever without expensive pain medications or side effects . . . but instead of telling them all the details, I merely open that loop and tell them I’ll give them the secret tomorrow. Then, in the second email, I will give them the secret, but then I open a new loop that pulls them into email number three.

I learned from Daegan Smith that you ALWAYS start any good story at the point of high drama. Most people mistakenly start their stories at the beginning, but usually stories don’t get good until the middle, so it’s better to start at the good part, and then you can go back and fill in the backstory after readers are hooked.

What legitimate reasons can you come up with that would make them need to take action right away? • Your webinar starts tomorrow. • You only have ten seats left at your event. • You only ordered one thousand books, and most of them are gone. • You’re pulling the video offline.

Whatever the reason, it needs to be real. Fake urgency will backfire on you, and you’ll lose all credibility. Just think of a reason why you might “run out” of whatever you’re selling. If it’s an evergreen product, then create a special sale that ends soon. Or give readers a coupon that expires in twenty-four hours. Be creative! There’s always some way to create real urgency.

Email #1 pulls the reader to Email #2 . . . Email #2 pulls the reader to Email #3 . . . And so on. The emails themselves should be easy to read and fast to scan. So, use one or two sentences per line. Add in lots of white space. Do not use long paragraphs that slow people down. I like to write out the basic structure elements first. Then I fill in the juicy details and emotional hooks.

My emails switched from 100% content to 90% entertainment and just 10% content, and my readership, opens, clicks, and sales all skyrocketed with the change.

You want your Attractive Character to be fun and entertaining. That’s how you’re going to write your daily Seinfeld emails. That’s right; I recommend sending them daily after your initial Soap Opera Sequence is finished.

I used to email once a month, and my response rates were horrible. So then I started emailing twice a month. And guess what? I more than doubled my income.

Then I decided to email once a week, then twice, then every other day, and what I’ve found now is that if I don’t email my list every day, I lose money every day. I strongly recommend emailing every day, and if you do it with the “Seinfeld style” I’m going to show you now, readers won’t get annoyed because they will be so entertained.

The secret to keeping your subscribers happy to hear from you every day is using the Seinfeld format. Be enterta...

These are emails about nothing. Just random episodes and entertaining stories. EXCEPT . . . they have a purpose. The goal is to lead people back to whatever you’re selling. It might be your core offer or some other product or service. It might even be someone else’s product. Every story needs to relate back to something you’re selling. That’s the secret. That’s how you make money.

If you just send out entertaining emails and don’t tie in your products or services, you won’t make a dime. Not even if you’re the best storyteller in the world. EVERY EMAIL and each story must be tied back into some type of offer for your audience.

Let’s Review: Your Soap Opera (auto-responder) Sequence is your Attractive Character’s introduction to your new subscriber. If you follow the outline I provided, you’ll notice an increase in your sales simply because people can relate to your backstory and epiphany after they read about it.

Seinfeld emails continue the conversation on a daily basis. The goal is to be fun and entertaining while you sell stuff.

When you know your demographics, you know who your target market is and where they are likely to be hanging out online. You know what sites they’re on and where they get together to talk to each other. Once you have that information, it becomes very easy to scale your offer and build your business quickly.

When I want to find out what my successful competitors are offering, I buy their products. Remember, the first offer you see probably isn’t the primary offer. It’s more likely to be what gets people in the door, while the real moneymakers are down the line somewhere. The first offer is just the tip of the iceberg, and I need to see their ENTIRE iceberg during this research phase.

It always comes back to modeling what’s already working. It amazes me how so many people put up random sites they think look good, without first investigating successful sites in their niche. Then they wonder why they’re not making any money. It’s because they’re not following a proven model.

You need to model what is working. Do NOT try to re-invent the wheel. That’s the secret. That’s how you take a decade of hard work and compress it down into a day’s worth of time and effort. Find what someone else has already done and model it. Start there, and then you can tweak your funnel, test it, and try to improve on that model after you’re already making money.

Isn’t it amazing? You can literally reverse engineer everything your competitor is doing in less than ten minutes. Just plug in the website and go where they have already gone. Sell to the customers who have already shown interest in this type of product or service. Redirect them to buy your products!

1 Make a list of your direct and indirect competitors. 2 Find each landing page URL. 3 Enter a URL into the online research tools. 4 Collect data, dig deep, click on links, buy products, and see what the competitor is doing. 5 Create a swipe file of ideas to model.

The real difference between having a six-, seven-, or even eight-figure business is whether you understand the phases of a funnel and can successfully monetize the different points along the line.

I’ve broken the customer experience down to seven specific points in the funnel. At each point, you can test, tweak, monetize, and build your business to whatever level you want. Once you know these seven points and how to maximize them, your life will change. It’s awesome!

I can sell more if the visitor enters my website through a good pre-frame. The frame through which he entered my website completely changes what can happen on the actual page. So the trick is to figure out how to control the frame that your traffic is coming through.

If you understand all seven points in the funnel, your business will likely explode without any additional traffic or tweaking.

If your prospect is aware of your product and has realized it can satisfy his desire, your headline starts with the product. If he is not aware of your product, but only of the desire itself, your headline starts with the desire. If he is not yet aware of what he really seeks, but is concerned with the general problem, your headline starts with the problem and crystallizes it into a specific need.

You have to figure out where your prospect is along the product-awareness continuum: product aware, desire aware, or problem aware. Where they are determines the temperature of the traffic.

Hot Traffic is made up of people who already know who you are. They’re on your email list, they subscribe to your podcast, they read your blog—you have an established relationship with them. You’re going to talk to these people like they’re your friends (because they are). You want to use personality-driven communication. Tell them stories, share your opinions, and let them into your private life a little bit. Remember the Seinfeld email examples from the last chapter? They each brought me over one hundred thousand dollars because I had hot traffic, and I knew how to talk to them.

Warm Traffic consists of people who don’t know you, but they have a relationship with somebody you know. This is where joint venture (JV) partnerships work well. Affiliates or JV partners have relationships with their lists, and they endorse you or your offer to their subscribers. They lend their credibility to you so their followers feel comfortable checking out your offers.

Cold Traffic is made up of people who have no idea who you are. They don’t know what you offer or whether they can trust you. These may be people you find on Facebook or who click on your pay-per-click ads. Maybe they stumble across your blog somehow. Most likely, you’re paying for this traffic somehow, so it’s important to pre-frame them correctly to get the highest return on your investment.

A Hot Traffic Bridge is typically very short. You already have a relationship with these people, so you don’t have to do a lot of credibility building or pre-framing. You can probably just send out a quick email with a link to your landing page, and that’s about it.

A Warm Traffic Bridge is a little longer than a hot traffic bridge, but not much. All that traffic needs is a little note of endorsement from a person they trust; then they’ll be in the right frame of mind to go to the landing page. This is where the lift letter or personal email from a JV partner comes in.

A Cold Traffic Bridge is the holy grail of online marketing. If you really want to scale your business, you have to learn how to convert cold traffic.

If you learn this one skill—converting cold traffic—you’ll know the secret behind growing seven-, eight-, or even nine-figure businesses. This bridge is the longest. You need to do a good bit of preliminary work to get the prospect into a desirable frame of mind before he hits your landing page.