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Erika Awakening tells a thoroughly entertaining story in this podcast interview. She explains how she went from a full time lawyer, had a near death experience, then started an internet business where she has had individual clients spend up to $100,000 on her products and coaching.
What’s unique about this story are the subjects that Erika found herself making money in. She didn’t plan it, but she started out as a seduction coach, primarily helping men with dating advice, thanks to a blog she started to track her own dating experiences.
The other subject she was pulled towards is EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique – or often called, Tapping.
Erika started as a private coach and managed to make over $100,000 with her business even while still working as a lawyer. Eventually she quit her job and then created video courses to teach people how to release mindset blockages using EFT.
Although at times a controversial figure because she has unconventional views on hot topics like relationships, Erika enjoys walking an unusual path and helping others with her knowledge. You will see this come through during the interview.
The Power Of A Personal Brand
Throughout this interview I continue to ask Erika how she attracted customers and how she could continuously raise her prices.
The answer is in the personal brand she built.
Although she angered plenty of people who don’t share her beliefs, she connected strongly with some people, who would go on to purchase her products and take part in her coaching programs.
Make sure you listen all the way through this interview as Erika explains clearly how each different phase of her business progressed.
If you’re currently working a full time job, this interview will also inspire you to see what is possible to create outside of working hours.
Making A Lot Of Money From A Small Audience
Although I have heard of Erika from many years ago due to my own interest in the dating niche (thanks initially to Davide DeAngelo/Eben Pagan), this interview came about because Erika left a comment to my recent popular blog post –
In her comment Erika noted that she agreed with my point how most people are too fixated by the amount of traffic you have and not the quality of your audience. Here is a snippet from her comment –
The best time period I ever had, I made a quarter million dollars in six months during a time when my main site was getting only 1800 monthly visitors. That’s how much traffic and money were NOT correlated.
Erika is a brilliant example of having a six figure business for many years based on a very small buying audience. It’s her repeat customers, those who love what she stands for and teaches, who she focuses on and helps the most.
Enjoy the interview!
Yaro Starak
EJ Podcast
Relevant Links
- erikaawakening.com
- tapsmarter.com
- Vegas Guy Seduction Series
- Digital Access Pass
- Amazon S3
- Wistia
- Easy Video Suite
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Just curious who does her copywriting for her sales page(s)? For this type of niche/audience It would be better to find a list a recently divorced men/women and send a direct marketing campaign. But if online traffic works, it works.
No idea about the copywriting but I expect it doesn’t matter in this case. Erika is selling based on personal brand to warm traffic, it’s not the copy that’s doing the heavy lifting here.
Copy really matters when you are buying from a cold direct response list, but Erika is by no means selling to cold traffic.
Yaro
I have to strongly disagree that copy isn’t important for both cold or warm leads (definitely if you want to build a strong backend). Erika does benefit from having a presence in a ‘rapid’ niche, comparable to the bodybuilding niche (who will buy ANYTHING you put in front of them) and an interesting usp.
Also, $3000 for a copywriter might sound expensive, it’s actually very cheap! Should hire a person such as John Carlton.
Whether you are offering a money back guarantee has nothing to do with your gut feeling. Your economics has to work. But it’s true that for coaching you might leave it out.
Those of you with a strong info product / direct response marketing background should quickly notice a few very important things here!
1. Revenge story. – a ‘blacky’ story is missing and should do wonders.
2. Most of the leads are coming from going to events, offline.
3. Done on purpose or not, the money from the info products sustains the overall marketing. The real money comes from coaching.
Interesting headline to test out:
“How To Pick Up A Hot Girl As Myself In 48 Hours or I Will Go Out With You – Guaranteed”
Sadly, that headline doesn’t work when men use it…
Yes Yaro, I’m selling a personal brand and absolutely unique method to warm leads. And most of my business is repeat business. I used to generate some leads from speaking engagements. But most of my leads always came from online customers who first tested the water with a low investment product or intro session and loved it so much they wanted more.
I write my own copy. In January 2010, I hired a copywriter for $3000 and after a whole lot of issues getting the work done and all his boasting about how much he knew about the industry, the conversion rate on those pages was zero. Absolutely mis-calibrated to my already very warm audience. I learned my lesson and haven’t hired a copywriter since.
Yaro is correct that it doesn’t matter much. For my best sellers, I have written sales pages. For most of my advanced products, I don’t even bother anymore. My repeat clients will buy them without sales pages based on the concept of the new 30-Day Challenge. And I found that writing sales pages was a lot of work and was not really generating more sales on those higher-investment products …
Most of the advanced products these days are literally one paragraph and a “buy” button 🙂
To me this story is ironic, funny and sad.
Oh well, such is life.
Could you elaborate Dennis?
For me its a amazing story. I am really surprised that she made quarter million dollars in six months during a time when her website was getting only 1800 monthly visitors.
~Diana
Diana, that’s because ‘most likely’ Erika is getting all her leads/customers from going to events. I recommend you read the book The Game by Neil Strauss to understand how and how rapid buyers the pick niche is/works. This book might offend a lot of women, but those that are serious about info marketing should understand one thing when reading it… it’s actually a sales letter in the form of a book.
Hi Jay,
I have had some leads from events but actually have mostly stopped speaking at events at this point. Now that I’ve moved away from the seduction community, most people first hear about my 30-Day Abundance Challenge and start with that. A solid percentage of them like the method so much and get such great results that they keep buying from me. The vast majority of my earnings are repeat business.
I’ve been a bit of a slacker lately but in the last week made some effort with sales. To give you an example: I generated nearly $10K in sales during this week. Every sale came from someone who has bought from me before …
Internet business is far, far easier if you keep the clients you attract by over-delivering on their expectations and taking care of them. For example, I don’t farm out my customer service. If a customer has an issue accessing a product, they get a personal response from me and they get a happy resolution as quickly as I can give it to them. This is a relationship business.
I don’t know Yaro’s numbers but I would imagine he gets a lot of repeat business too.
Thanks for joining the conversation 🙂
– Erika
Hi Erika,
Now that you have shut down your facebook I am curious how you will find new customers?
Obviously you can continue to do well with repeat customers for a long time, and that will make up the bulk of your income, but you do need at least a small source of new customers otherwise eventually things will dry up.
You have to find a few new people in order for them to make that first purchase and eventually become repeat buyers.
Maybe referrals/word of mouth from existing clients? Or just people who find your blog posts through google?
Yaro
Hi Yaro,
Another good question. I may return to Facebook at some point. I really needed a break from it.
Meanwhile though I am very open to new doors opening. I find sometimes if I focus too much on doing the same things every day that I get in a rut. I like exploring the unknown. We’ll see … maybe something better will come along … 🙂
Neil is an author, The Game was not written as an overt sales letter like I believe you are referring to Jay.
If it sells anything, it’s Neil’s other books, but that’s like saying Harry Potter 1 was a sales letter for Harry Potter 2 and so on.
I know many books by small business owners, consultants, and speakers are created much more specifically to be sales letters for their products and services. Many of my friends, who are not what you would call “writers”, have created books just for this purpose. I’ve even been in one myself.
Neil did not have a business teaching pick up advice. In fact he didn’t even have a product until he was convinced after the success of his book to do a launch of a recorded seminar.
Before the game Neil had written books about celebrities and was a journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine, he was not a seduction trainer who decided to write a book to get more clients.
That’s like with Tim Ferriss and the 4 Hour Workweek. Tim released that as a book to educate and entertain, not as an overt front end product to sell something else.
I actually asked Tim at one stage if he wanted to partner on a 4HWW course and he said he had no desire to teach anything more than was in the book about the subject.
Whether or not the book was written on purpose as a sales letter isn’t really the main point since the book does function as a sales letter.
Neil only source of income is from his books? Oh really? JVs *cough*
‘Neil did not have a business teaching pick up advice.’ Um… have you actually read the book? He clearly states that he is giving workshops himself.
‘Tim released that as a book to educate and entertain, not as an overt front end product to sell something else.’
What a complete waste of time for Tim to go on all those talks shows promoting his book then. If you followed his launch and know who his mentor was.
This doesn’t mean Tim isn’t a great person, educator, motivator. But he is, definitely as very good salesman.
I don’t understand what you mean whether the book was written on purpose or as a sales letter? Purpose of what?
I did not say Neil’s only source of income is his books. I said he was a journalist writing for Rolling Stone Magazine too, although I cannot confirm whether they paid him, but I assume they did. I suspect he has a bunch of other income streams too, although I don’t really know the private financial details of Neil, do you? And when you say “JVs” what are you referring?
Yes I have read the game and I’ve also watched some of his training videos from one of his workshops. I also read the book he wrote after the game, Emergency, which had nothing to do with being a pick up artist. Was that a sales letter too?
Tim did a marketing campaign to sell his book. If you are saying his book is a sales letter, then what did Tim sell with the book? What product was the sales letter selling?
The most ultimate product any guru, consultant, and expert can sell. Mainly the person itself.
Concerning books, authors and publishers. Study the royalties structures. If that’s your only frontend you might live a modest life, but not a rich life.
If you know all the great elements of a sales letter, you can find it his book.
That’s marketing, not selling.
Copywriting or marketing is salesmanship in print or these days, digital.
So Yaro, for you marketing is a whole separate entity/subject than selling?
I know ‘selling’ is such an ugly word for most people, even very successful once.
I think Peter Drucker summed it up best –
“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself”
I wouldn’t call marketing vs selling different subjects, especially because they are both about persuasion to cause action. It’s about how people deliver a message.
A sales letter says here are all the reasons why you should buy this product/service and the person knows clearly they are being asked to make a transaction.
Perfect marketing means you never have to sell, people already want to buy. This is why Erika does so well with basic short sales messages – her followers are already “sold” because she has done such a good job of marketing herself.
She charged $100’000 per ‘healing’… so she needed just 3 customers to make that 😉
Thanks on your marvelous posting Jay! I really enjoyed reading it. I will ensure that I bookmark your blog and will come back very soon.
🙂
Hi Yaro,
I just saw this link! So excited to share this with my audience – I sent you an email with a quick question before I do that.
I’ve actually had long-term mentoring clients who’ve invested more than $75,000 and even more than $100,000 with me. It’s not like they put down that kind of money on the first sale. Most started with an investment of $47 to $297. They keep coming back for more over long periods of time, that to me is the best testament to how powerful the method is.
I’m going to respond to some of the comments above too 🙂 Hope we can get some great conversations going here and help some people with their internet businesses.
cheers,
Erika
Hi Erika,
I got your email and will make that adjustment to my post regarding the $30,000 being too low.
I’m sure people would love further elaboration about what kind of person would spend $100,000 on coaching? What were they asking for help with?
I realise you can’t reveal personal details about a client, but that’s a huge amount of money so anything you can share to help clarify things would be great.
Yaro
Good questions, Yaro. Well, I’m the kind of person who spent over $100,000 on coaching to learn what I now teach. I didn’t spend it all in one place because I didn’t find anyone with a method this comprehensive. I was willing to do pretty much anything to get out of the pain I was in, so I dumped money into books, DVD training, workshops, seminars, learning various healing modalities, non-violent communication practice groups, and private one-on-one coaching.
The people who’ve invested the most with me wanted to go really deep with the method and tackle one problem after another. These issues could be anything from negotiating for a higher salary or stipend, getting a stable place to live (in one case manifesting an entire house), getting rid of social anxiety, saving a relationship, averting bankrupcy (got rid of $1.5 million in debt for one client in the 15-week program), renegotiating relationships with children, releasing past guilt and grief that never got expressed, learning how to raise their rates and make more money, learning how to be more assertive with friends and family members, healing physical ailments, and so forth. Because the method can be applied to anything, once we’ve solved one problem we just move on to the next …
Also because I can help people with financial abundance, the coaching has often paid for itself and empowered the person to continue with sessions.
Erika, you should consider going on the talk radio circuit.
This story is not a surprise. There are some coaches who earn huge money. They don’t need a lot of clients because they charge a lot. Some of them mainly use referrals.
For example: Steve Hardison (ultimate coach), Michael Richard Litvin, Stever Robbins, , Michael Neills (supercoach) and so on.
Love what Erika pointed out about her small list making significant money.
We’ve noticed the same exact thing with our site. For years now.
One of the big keys we’ve noticed helps to make big profits from a tiny list is getting in sync with the conversation your perfect prospect is having with themselves or start conversations they want to engage in.
We’ve been lucky in nailing this like I’m guessing Erika has and I’m hoping lots of your followers use your guidance to nail this for their markets themselves. 🙂
Yet, another example of the value of building a personal brand. I also like that she wasn’t afraid to “anger” some people. I think too many people are afraid to be controversial. I think it’s necessary to get attention.