1. Tell us a little about yourself and your
business.

Right now I’m 30 years old, and I’ve been
marketing online since 2001 (5 years). I got
started the same way so many of us begin… by
trying out every scam and business opportunity
scheme known to man. I wasted thousands of
dollars on that type of garbage until I finally
started to understand what it really takes to
make money online.

I was fascinated with the whole concept of being
able to create “money on demand”. I’d never heard
of that before, and I wanted to learn as much as
I could about it.

I looked around and saw that most people who were
trying to make money online weren’t actually
making money online. I also noticed that many of
the people who weren’t making money were the ones
who were teaching others how to make money. I
quickly learned that if I was going to make big
money online, I couldn’t listen to what people
told me to do. I decided to learn by modeling
what the big name marketers were doing.

What makes me different than so many marketers is
that I have hardly bought any eBooks or courses
on how to make money online. I learned by
modeling… by watching people make money, not by
reading books and listening to the advice of
broke people.

My business, as it now, is pretty amazing. I now
have the ability to literally produce money on
demand. My email list is over 150,000 strong, and
so any promotion I send to them usually makes me
a killing. I grew my list by working extremely
hard to promote my rather unique marketing forum
The Free Advertising Forum.

2. When did your big break come and what was the
turning point that changed everything.

I don’t really know that I had a “big break”. All
the opportunities that I had when I was getting
started were ones that I created myself through
networking with other marketers and working hard
on promoting my business. Eventually, I started
meeting so many people online who actually WERE
making money, and it eventually reached a
critical mass where people started coming to me
and calling me a marketing guru.

3. In your opinion, what are the real secrets to
becoming wildly successful online.

I can think of three off the top of my head.

Focus on building relationships with successful
marketers. Nothing will make you more money
online than the help of other successful people.
And that means that you don’t send them canned
emails either. You need to put in the time to get
to know them.

Focus on making small money first. Don’t start
out thinking you’re going to make six figures
right away. Focus on building your income up to
50 dollars a day, and then once you can do that
pretty consistently, focus on doubling it.

Don’t associate with negative thinkers both in
your real life, and in online discussion forums.
Look, there are always going to be whiners and
complainers who say that life’s unfair. Those
people won’t contribute to your income online, so
it’s best to avoid them.

4. Which Internet business model would you
recommend for maximum success?

Honestly, I think the best model is to build a
relationship with a list of subscribers and then
only promote products to them that you can
wholeheartedly recommend. A good model for this
is my newsletter. Create a website that is
content based, and use that site to develop a
nice optin list. Then, learn how to monazite that
list.

5. What are the 3 most useful skills an Internet
marketer must have?

Networking. You need to know how to meet and form
friendships with other online marketers. That
doesn’t mean that you should try to befriend
every guru out there just because they’re a guru.
People only have so many hours in a day, ya know?
But find other likeminded people like yourself,
and help each other grow and become successful
online.

Copywriting. Bottom line, you need to learn how
to persuade people with your words. If you can’t
get people to buy into what you’re selling, then
you will have to hire someone who can.

Salesmanship. This is different than copywriting
(but similar). You need to learn HOW to sell
people on your ideas. You need to learn how to
sell people on YOU, so that they want to do
business with you, and be associated with you.

6. What’s the fastest way to get targeted traffic
for free or on a shoestring budget?

Easy. Become an expert in a field by studying it
every single day, and then create content in the
form of articles, forum posts, and blog entries.
Let people see that you know what you’re talking
about, and they will come to you after reading
your content.

7. What’s the most critical factor for long-term
business survival and success?

You need to stay current to what’s working in
your industry. A technique that worked last month
is no good today. You must stay involved with
what’s going on in Internet marketing by spending
an 30-60 minutes a day just checking the forums
and reading GOOD ezine newsletters.

Aside from that, I’d say also be willing to
continually grow and expand your business. If you
don’t take your business in your own hands and
grow it, it won’t grow on it’s own. It will
wither and disappear. You need to be proactive in
order to make it online.

1. What Is A “Fire Sale” And Why Should I Create
One?

A fire sale is actually very simple. It’s a
special type of sales promotion that starts out
selling something at a very low price, and then
every few days, the price goes up. This usually
lasts for 7-days, and then the offer is pulled
off the table forever.

Here’s an example…

Let’s say that you’re holding a fire sale for a
bundle of eBooks, and the sale lasts for 7 days.
The price structure could look like this:

Days 1-2 $97
Days 4-5 $117
Days 5-6 $157
Sale Ends $197

The reason this works so well is because the
prospect is afraid of losing out on a tremendous
bargain, and so they will often buy what you’re
offering even if they don’t need the product
right away.

But there’s a lot more to a Fire Sale than just
the price going up every few days. That’s why I
created my course, Fire Sale Profits.

2. If You Had To Narrow A “Fire Sale” Down To
Five Simple Steps, What Would They Be? (Please
Give One Solid Tip For Each Step)

Step 1 - Get everything done first. That means
that your product offer must be 100% complete.
Your sales copy has to be tweaked, edited and
ready to sell. All of your pre-written emails and
the pre-written emails for your JV partners
should also be written ahead of time. You should
have all support emails already typed out and
ready to fire away if you get any support
questions. Your thank you pages and back end
offers should also be ready to go. It’s best if
you upload all the backend stuff into an
autoresponder, and let that do your selling for
you.

Step 2 - Now it’s time to do some legwork. You
need to find people who you think would make a
great JV partner and contact them directly. That
means getting on the phone, sending them a
physical letter, or sending a personal email.
This is not the time to be sending out canned
emails, because you’ll just insult your potential
partner, because you didn’t take the time to
write a unique email for them.

Step 3 - Start building anticipation by sending
teaser emails to your list. You can also build
anticipation by making some really good
discussion forum posts with a little line of
teaser copy at the bottom telling them that
something big is coming. Let that signature URL
lead them to an email capture page where they can
get all the details on launch day.

Step 4 - Launch the offer. Expect to not get much
sleep on the first day. You’ll encounter
everything under the sun, and you want to be
ready for it. Make sure you answer emails
quickly, and enjoy watching new sales pour in
like crazy. When I launched my fire sale, I got
addicted to checking my email, because even if I
checked it only 60 seconds after the last time,
there would be more sales that just came in. God
that was so great! J

Step 5 - Keep promoting all week long. Your sales
will drop after the first price increase, so you
must be prepared for that. There are some really
important things you need to know about exactly
when you should send your email promotions. I
cover that, and a whole lot more in my newest
course, Fire Sale Profits.

3. What’s The Biggest Mistake People Make In
Creating A “Fire Sale”?

The biggest mistake that I’ve seen people make is
creating a “pile of crap” fire sale. Just because
you bundle a bunch of cheap eBooks together and
charge 97 bucks, that doesn’t mean you’re going
to actually sell any of those sets. A fire sale
should have an offer that is unique, high
quality, and priced low enough that any person
could see that it’s clearly a bargain compared to
what they’re getting in return for their money.
It should be a no-brainer for the prospect. If
they have to ask themselves if your product offer
is really worth the money, then you did not
structure the offer properly.

4. What’s The One Secret No One Knows About For
Creating A Successful “Fire Sale”?

Ever since my huge fire sale back in May of 2005,
I’ve seen dozens of marketers trying to emulate
my success by just copying what they saw on my
site. Listen, the stuff that makes a fire sale
successful is the stuff that you can’t see. It’s
the “behind the scenes” stuff that makes it all
work. It’s the secret psychology behind the
offer. It’s the relationships that you develop
with your JV partners. It’s setting things up in
advance to run smoothly so that both your
prospects and your JV partners are kept happy.

If you want to become a confident person, you
have to learn what’s going on inside a confident
person’s head and emulate THAT. You can’t become
confident by just copying their words and body
language. You need to learn the stuff that is
going on inside their heads, the stuff you can’t
see. It’s the same with fire sales, which is why
merely copying someone else’s sale without
knowing the secrets behind it just won’t work.
That’s why you need someone to show you how it’s
done from the inside out.

5. Share 3 Or 4 Tips For Making Extra Money From
A “Fire Sale”.

Tip #1 - Your product offer is not enough. Before
you launch your sale, you need to have your
product offer, your upsell (also called a
one-time offer), and your backend offer ready to
go. People are more than happy to spend extra
money with you if you just give them a good
opportunity in the form of extra products or
services that they can buy.

Tip #2 - Try creating a basic and deluxe version
of your product offer. There are some people who
will buy the more expensive version of just about
anything if you give them the option.

Tip #3 - Whenever you get a customer support
email, take some time and answer it thoroughly,
and then turn it into a “canned” response. This
will save you a lot of time and frustration on
the big launch day when you’re getting tons of
emails.

Tip #4 - After you increase the price, make sure
you remove all references to the cheaper price
that the prospect missed out on. Nobody will buy
if they think they are overpaying. It’s not your
fault that the prospect missed out on the
deadline, but you don’t have to rub it in their
faces by reminding them of that on the sales
page. If they didn’t check their email until that
4th or 5th day, then that’s fine. Don’t ever let
people feel like they are paying more than
everyone else. Also, don’t tell people what the
prices are in your emails, or you’ll never sell
any products after the first price increase. If
they see in your email that it costs 97
initially, but when they go there it’s 147, you
won’t get the sale.

6. What’s The Easiest Thing Anyone Can Do To
Profit From “Fire Sales”.

If you already have a few products in your
lineup, you can just bundle them up with some
unique bonuses that have not been available
previously. That might mean just hiring a
ghostwriter to create a few extra bonus reports
that are based on your current products, or maybe
you could record and audio version of your
products that weren’t previously available. Maybe
create 2006 editions of your products, and launch
them fire sale style. Then, just release this
offer to your list.

7. What Have You Done Differently That Has
Allowed You To Be Successful?

I focused on building relationships with my joint
venture partners. I always made sure that they
got paid on time, and that I was there to answer
any questions they had. I also rewarded some of
my top producers with unexpected cash bonuses.
When you’ve got a small army of people who are
eager to promote your next offer, it’s a heck of
a lot more motivating to create more products.

There are too many Internet marketers who are
just out to make a quick buck and don’t care who
they step on or which JV partners they burn. I
focus on building long-term relationships with
people, because ultimately, it’s other people who
are going to help make you rich.

8. If You Had One Piece Of Advice To Pass On To
Others About “Fire Sales”, What Would It Be?

Sit down for a few hours and write out every
possible unique selling proposition you can think
of for your fire sale. Do this before you start,
and your product offer will be a lot more
compelling. Don’t just slap together an offer
just for the sake of having a fire sale. Really
think things through and come up with something
unique.

My fire sale was called “The Instant Ebook
Author” Fire Sale. It was unique, because I
offered people the private label resale rights to
four best-selling eBooks on Internet marketing
for a super-cheap price. It cost me thousands of
dollars to have even ONE 200 page eBook written,
so the opportunity to get 800 pages of premium
content for under 500 dollars was very
compelling.

Come up with a theme or a unique angle, and
you’ll be rewarded with a lot more money than if
you just threw something together and hoped for
the best.

Bonus: Tell Us About Your Own Experience With
Fire Sales And About Your Product: Fire Sale
Profits.

Fire sales are a relatively new phenomenon (at
least in the internet marketing world). I sat
back and watched my buddies Mike Filsaime and
Jeremy Burns raking in huge paychecks with their
fire sales. I studied their sales very closely,
and I decided to do some things differently that
I felt would make me even more money, and boy,
was I right!

I followed each and every step that I talk about
in my new course, Fire Sale Profits. I gotta tell
ya, the week that I held my sale was one of the
craziest, most exciting, and most stressful weeks
of my life. Why? Because my wife, Marisa was in
the hospital having our baby while all this was
going on! Just imagine trying to juggle hospital
visits with answering hundreds of emails every
day (literally) from prospects, customers, JV
partners, people who wanted to BE JV partners,
etc. It was nuts!

But it was worth it, because when the smoke
cleared and all was said and done, I brought in
over $162,000 dollars that week, and $81,000 of
that was mine (the rest went to the JV partners).
Imagine that, 81 grand in one week!

Never in my life did I imagine that I would make
that much money in such a short period of time,
but it happened, and it’s all thanks to the
detailed process that I followed while creating
this sale. It’s all laid out for you in my new
course, Fire Sale Profits. I’ll walk you through
every step of the process, and when you’re all
done, you will be ready to launch a smoking hot
fire sale of your own.

Here’s the URL. If you’re interested in creating
a fire sale of your own, go ahead and check it
out now, while it’s fresh in your mind.

http://www.FiresaleProfits.com

Your Friend,
Michael Rasmussen
CEO, Bulletproof Marketing, Inc.