Michael Senoff: Thanks Mike.

Michael Lamb: As an interviewer you’re yourself you know I’ve got a ton of questions so I want to get right to it.

Michael Senoff: Okay, great.

Michael Lamb: Every since I found out about you I’ve been dying to ask you, how did you get started doing this online?

Michael Senoff: How I got started doing audio interviews?

Michael Lamb: Uh-huh.

Michael Senoff: Okay. Well, I’ll give you a medium short version. Probably eight years ago eBay was becoming very, very popular and I was single living down in Pacific Beach in a one bedroom apartment – sound like Tony Robbins but its true - and I was interested in marketing. I came across Jay Abraham’s material and just fell in love with it. And I had always been a student of personal development and selling and stuff but I never really understood marketing and when I understood marketing I realized that’s like the ultimate leverage, you know, its sell multiplied. It’s how to do the multiplication of sells, selling instead of one-on-one selling one too many. And so I started devouring this stuff and at the same time eBay was becoming really popular and I was very intrigued by that and I wanted to start selling something on eBay. And when I had that Jay Abrahams stuff I didn’t have $15,000 or $20,000 dollars to go to his seminars and I ended up getting a hold of a list of all the people who paid that kind of money to go to his high end seminars really because I wanted a set of those tapes from the seminars to keep learning. And I found someone in San Diego who had gone to the seminar and had all the tapes and the videos and the books and everything and I bought them off of them for $50 dollars. And then I studied it and then it was time to sell it because I wanted to buy this big blue barbecue grill and sold it on eBay, it was one of the first things I sold on eBay, and it sold for $1700 dollars. And then I realized hey, you know, if I can sell it one time for $1700 maybe I can sell it again. And then I put an ad up on Amazon.com there auction site, sold an additional set that I had already purchased from someone else in San Diego for $900 dollars. And then I got into the business of buying and selling hard to find seminars i.e. Jay Abraham pre-owned seminars. And that is the name of my main Web site and that’s why it started I was just selling pre-owned Jay Abraham seminars. Then I knew that I was not going to have an unlimited resource for this stuff because I only had a list of 900 people and I was telemarketing them and then I was also mailing them but the list was still old, and so I knew I was going to eventually run out and I knew I had to develop my own products that I control because the Abraham stuff was going to be limited and I couldn’t go making counterfeit copies and duplicating his stuff because I didn’t have the rights to do that. So I started creating some of my own products and then I needed a way to get people to this site and it was to sell both my own products and the pre-owned Jay Abraham material that I was selling. And so I remember I had a sales letter up on my Web site and I was kind of learning about recording digital audio and there was a piece of software out that I learned about called Modem Spy and it allowed you to record a telephone conversation, a two-way conversation using this piece of software. And I had a sales letter on my site that sold my pre-owned Jay Abraham stuff and I wanted to make it easier for the people who came to the site to get the information inside their head. And I did a little introduction and I created Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm an MP3 file which gave a little introduction like “Hi, welcome to my Web site, this Web site’s your one-stop shopping to find pre-owned hard to find seminar materials from some of the greatest marketing minds around.” So I just created a simple little MP3 audio and I learned to link it up into my site where people could click on it and it would start to play, I think back then it was the Reel Player, it would have opened up in Reel Player, and it was just a way to make it easier for the visitor who came to the site. And as I played around with that audio software I had recorded a conversation with a marketing guy, kind of in the trenches, and it just kind of started happening. I realized hey I like interviewing people, I like learning what other people are doing. I have the ability to record the call and I just started putting these things up on my Web site slowly but surely and it just started building up. And then I just went all out and kind of said okay, I’m going to kind of move the focus of the site to the world’s largest downloadable business audio interview Web site and kind of move away from the pre- owned Jay Abraham stuff, which I have done. I don’t sell pre-owned Jay Abraham material or any pre-owned material any longer I now just focus on my own information products and creating and producing digital audio interviews.

Michael Lamb: If you were to tell somebody the concept of selling information products online, whether it’s a newbie or somebody out there that’s been on the internet for awhile, what’s your elevator speech in telling people why information products are the way to go online?

Michael Senoff: Information products online it’s two words, personal freedom, personal freedom. And another thing and that is when I learn marketing what was amazing was marketing was going to show me how to stop selling one to one and be able to sell one too many. And the internet is the ultimate delivery system, the ultimate distribution system for delivering your product where it takes you out of the picture. So you and I can create an audio recording which is an information product and that has value to a certain market of people. We can upload it to a site for pennies and be able to market and sell it and distribute it while being totally out of the picture and being anywhere. So that freedom frees you up from inventory, frees your capital up from having to print up CDs and manuals and Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm books and stuff like that so that’s good for business, you’ve got more cash flow, your distribution of your product is almost nothing. The personal freedom to work from anywhere you like as long as you have a phone or a good assistant, an internet access is there. It just allows you to start a business and grow a business for very little money, for very little time investment and the returns the margins are just incredible, the margins are like nothing you could ever find anywhere else compared to selling digital information products. They’re almost 100% except for your initial time and investment in producing your information product, whether its audio printed or even video for that matter.

Michael Lamb: Now you and I have both been online quite a long time and we’re both doing essentially some of the same things but what are some of the mistakes you think that the average person out there that’s trying to create a business online is making?

Michael Senoff: Well the biggest mistake I think most of us make, probably you included and myself included, is maybe not picking the right market. Understanding your market and having a hungry market to sell to is going to be the most important thing. You know if we’re going to invest our time in developing information products we want to ravenous crowd, someone who is willing to pay good money for the products we’re producing. You can spend your life developing and creating information products that no one wants. So researching a marketplace and getting into a marketplace that there is a demand for what you’re creating is the Number 1 and most important thing. If you get that right you don’t even have to be good at interviewing you could be terrible at interviewing. And I use this analogy all the time, if you’re in the desert and you’re starving of thirst and there’s a safe sitting in the middle of the desert, it’s a combination safe, and you’re dying of thirst and the information product is based with a combination to the safe. Do you care how that combination comes to you? You don’t care. It doesn’t have to be presented in a pretty way it could come to you on a scrounged up bar napkin that was sitting in the dumpsters as long as you could read those numbers, right. But if you weren’t dying of thirst and inside that safe was something you didn’t even want that combination to the safe could come to you on gold foil or it could be delivered to you by 10 Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm beautiful women holding the numbers up on cardboard. It wouldn’t matter how it came to you, how it was presented to you, whether it was in video, written form, audio, if you didn’t want what was in that safe you’d have no reason to even turn the combination lock to open it up. Does that make sense?

Michael Lamb: Absolutely. I think there’s a lot of people out there that think that with all the hype and all the products being sold and all the promotions that are being done that they know that there are people out there making money online but they haven’t figured out what the magic bullet is and I think you just hit on it. Finding the hungry crowd that wants the product that you’re producing is as I said, the magic bullet, that’s the one thing that you have to have. I have a string of clients who’ve created products over the years that they couldn’t sell. They were great products but they created them without knowing what the market was. So they’ve got a great sounding or a great looking product but they just can’t move it because it’s something that nobody really wants.

Michael Senoff: Yeah that is correct. A lot of people will fall in love with an idea and fall in love with a product and maybe create a product based on their expertise but there just may not be a big enough demand for it. You know there’s a demand for anything and if you’re not worried about selling a ton of them it’s okay because you can specialize in a very small niche and with some good marketing you can still make money on that niche. It may not be a huge demand but you got to have people who are kind of looking for the expert that you’re offering. You got to be solving a problem.

Michael Lamb: Now you coach a lot of people on how to create their own audio products. Are there two or three common denominators of what an average product is for the person out there that’s looking to create their own product or help other people create products?

Michael Senoff: I would say two components of a good audio information product are Number 1 digital audio, which is what you’re producing right now we’re producing together, and in an interview style. I teach to do it in an interview style because right now we’ve been talking probably for about eight minutes and we probably have about seven or eight pages of typed transcript. You know it’s not scripted, I’m writing as I’m talking and it’s a lot faster and easier by doing the Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm interview format. The interview format also has a huge advantage because people are programmed to listen to interviews. You know all the major news broadcast shows, 60 Minutes is an interview show, Oprah Winfrey, you know, people are sold on that interview format. And it’s just simply two people talking, one person asking the questions, one person answering it, and it works, and people like to listen to it. And it’s very simple to produce. So once you and I have this audio recording done we may do some editing to it to clean up the ums and the ahs and maybe if there’s something we wanted to take out or even put something in we can do some post production work later on. So you have your digital audio recording. I believe that you’re doing your customer a favor by offering your audio format in a couple of different ways. One is a play option where they can go to a Web site, click on a play button and listen to it because some people like to do that. They can sit in front of their computer speakers press the play button and listen, that’s easy. Then there’s people who are a little more advanced and then they can go and download the recording as an MP3 file and this is really important because as a producer of digital audio you want your customers to be able to download that audio recording and be able to take it with them on the road. And then offering it in a manner that can be taken with them where they can put it on their iPod or they can listen to it on their iPhone or their mobile phone or be able to put it on an MP3 player and when they go exercise they can listen to it. That has a lot of value. Audio is very forgiving. You can listen to it without having to keep your eyes affixed on something. So if you compare that to watching a video you can’t have people watching your video while they’re driving the car but anyone can put a CD in the car and listen. So making your digital audio information product as an interview and as an MP3 downloadable format or two components that I think everyone should have in their information product. Then there’s one additional component which there are a lot of people who like to read. So once you have your audio edited you should have it transcribed by a transcriber. And any of your listeners can find a transcriber by going onto Elance.com or looking in their local yellow pages for secretarial work and someone can take the audio and transcribe it and have it typed up into a word-for-word transcript. And you can create those transcripts in a Word Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm document or a PDF document and offer that along with your information product. And because you’re offering it as a transcript you increase the value of the product. You didn’t really have to do anymore work, you already talked your audio and you just paid someone to transcribe it but you pay them one time, but there are people who appreciate those transcripts they like reading the transcripts, they can read them faster than they can listen. Maybe some people don’t have MP3 players and are just readers compared to listeners. So you’re giving your content in a format that appeals to those reading type people. So that increases the value of your information product and that component allows you to charge even more. So these are your three main components of an audio information product. Make sure it’s in interview format because it’s easier on the ears, easy to listen to. Make sure it’s downloadable and that you can play it online. And make sure you transcribe it and have it as digital transcript. And then if you don’t want to keep this as a digital product you can have it as a physical product. You can create your audios into physical CDs and you can print your transcripts out on paper and mail them and some people appreciate that as well. But then you’re getting away from the total personal freedom and mobility of operating your business.

Michael Lamb: Yeah there’s a bit more work to do all of that but it can certainly be profitable to do that.

Michael Senoff: Yes it can it’s your business, if you don’t mind doing that and you can outsource that stuff there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve done both but if I was to compare the two hands down going 100% digital is the way to go.

Michael Lamb: Now you talked about doing the interview format, which I love, I come from a radio background so I actually started doing that early in my career, but when I realized that that was the format that people are really familiar with that talk radio because we all know how huge talk radio has become, that being able to eavesdrop on experts and hear famous people or infamous people or celebrities, you know, talk about themselves their lives or whatever. When you have that familiarity going back and forth you tend to keep listeners longer. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Senoff: Yeah that’s right. Everyone can relate to going to school having teachers, going to college and being lectured to. When you hear a lecture you think of your mom and dad lecturing you or a professor. You’re sitting in the seat of the auditorium and the professor is just lecturing for an hour and you’re just struggling to keep your eyes open. Lecturers are boring, interviews draw you into the conversation and that’s what you want to do. Your audio recordings, whether it’s a product or promotional audio interview is designed to sell something and if you don’t draw your listener in and make them part of the conversation you’re going to push them away and bore them to death.

Michael Lamb: I have a question regarding from your standpoint your opinion on when you interview somebody how much of the interview do you think needs to be or how much interaction needs to be host related.

Michael Senoff: That’s a good question. I think the interview isn’t really about the host I think the interview is about the guest. So when I’m interviewing someone, you know, my job is to deliver the goods, my jobs is to ask the questions and shut up. Now early on, you know, our egos get in the way and we want to talk about our experiences as being the host I mean after all it’s our show and our Web site, but over time you learn that this interview is really all about your listener. And the listener really isn’t here to hear the host, you know, I would say Mike your listeners aren’t listening to this to listen to you, they’re here because they want to listen to your guest...

Michael Lamb: Exactly.

Michael Senoff: …which in this case would be me. And 90% of the interviews I do I’m not the guest I’m usually the guy sitting in your seat doing the interview. So when I’m doing an interview I’m on the side of the listener and I’m kind of representing that listener and asking every kind of question that I think that listener wants to know, and it’s my job to just pull it out of them and get the goods. So my job is to be on the side of the listener and pull out the good, relevant, pertinent information that I believe my audience wants to learn during this interview and there’s really no other job for me than that. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Lamb: Has there been any interviews that you have put on your guest wish list that you’ve recently been able to acquire?

Michael Senoff: You mean future interviews that I have lined up.

Michael Lamb: Uh-huh.

Michael Senoff: No I don’t have any future interviews. You know I go through stages of interviews. Like this summer I kind of took a break I only did a few interviews this summer because I’ve got a ton of interviews already at almost 240 hours, and there’s a point where – like this summer I did a lot of marketing of my HardToFindSeminars.com rather than – it’s very time consuming doing interviews at the rate that I was doing them and I go through stages. So if I feel like doing a bunch of interviews it’s not going to be hard for me to line them up. I have a simple form letter that I send out an invitation. I target who I want to interview and I send it and I can get pretty busy doing interviews and lining them up pretty fast. I’m more backlogged – I do have commitments to do future interviews that I just haven’t gotten around to. So your guest listening, you know, once you get going if you can land a good credible interview you can work off of that it’s not going to be hard for you to get an interview. Even if you’ve never done an interview before there’re ways to get interviews with top experts in whatever niche or field.

Michael Lamb: When you interview somebody in your opinion is there a pre- described length of time you want to stay on with that interview or do you have your interviews scoped out at a certain length like 35 minutes, 45 minutes?

Michael Senoff: If I’m lining up an interview I got to decide okay, what’s this guest willing to give me? What’s his content, you know, how much of an expert is it? Is it a subject he could talk for days on? It really all depends, you know if it’s a hot guest and high profile I’m going to try and get them as long as I can so I don’t want to be so greedy about hogging his time. Let’s say if I want to really stretch it out I may say that I need 90 minutes of his time for this interview and out of 90 minutes after the editing I should have maybe a 50 or 60 minute audio interview after all the editing. Now if everything’s going really good and there’s good chemistry and the interview’s going well, he’s enjoying it, I’m enjoying it and we Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm run out of time I can say “God we’re out of time already can we reschedule for a part two.” Sometimes we could just say can we keep going and we can keep going. If it’s a part two and that interview guest has something to do right after your scheduled time you can set it up for the next day or next week or in a couple of days and you can do a part two. And I’ve done that multiple times where I’ll do a part one and a part two and you can end up with two and a half, three hours of audio.

Michael Lamb: When you look at how people are marketing today online, especially with niche products and you have a lot of niche interviews what are some of the ways that you think the person starting out needs to focus on.

Michael Senoff: The way I see a lot of marketing online I do see a lot of video and I see a lot of just straight web pages with sales letters and sales copy. I think anyone who is marketing a product who has a sales letter and straight copy and is relying on that solely to market and sell their product is making a huge mistake. I think that at worst they should either hire some voice talent or do it in their own voice. At worst they should read their sales letter into the microphone and have an option for the site visitor to download the sales letter in an audio format. Because like I said people are busy, long sales letters are great for the person who’s really hungry and interested in your product and certainly they will read the whole thing provided they don’t get interrupted. But with an audio if they can download that audio and they know how to put it on their MP3 player or burn a CD and they want to listen to that you can have uninterrupted time getting your sales letter into the mind of your prospect and it just increases your chances to sell your product or service. So any person selling anything online with just straight copy and a site that doesn’t have any audio can certainly really ramp up their sales by doing that one simple thing, reading their sales letter into a microphone and posting it as a play only or download MP3. So someone can download and listen to your sales presentation. Now that’s at its easiest form. But then you can get into audio interviews you can use an audio interview and interview your expert, depending on what product or service you’re selling, hopefully there’s someone who’s an expert at this, and you can interview them about it and add that as additional sales and promotional material to help sell your product or service. So Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm using audio it works like magic, it really does and it’s so easy to do. And if you can’t do it hire it out to someone.

Michael Lamb: Your thoughts on audio versus video. I know that we talked a little bit about, you know, audio and I know this because my audio background and radio background it’s easier to absorb information in audio form than it is in video because you have to look at what’s going on. In your opinion are there any other differences from a marketing perspective?

Michael Senoff: If you compare the strength and the power of selling using video and audio, video is going to win hands down. But I believe that with audio you have a much greater chance of getting your entire and complete sales argument or sales message into the mind of your prospect because your prospect doesn’t have to have its eyeballs on the screen. Like I said there’s many opportunities for someone to get interrupted when their eyes are affixed on a screen, whether it’s a TV at home or whether it’s your computer monitor, because audio can be listened to while you’re driving, while you’re exercising, while you’re walking, while you’re on the bus, while you’re standing in line at the post office these chances greatly increase your ability of getting the message into the head of your prospect. So I think for that reason alone audio is my chosen form of marketing and selling compared to video, plus there’s a lot more production work with video. You and I are creating audio right now, we’re each at our own locations, we’re on a regular old telephone we’re using digital recording software or devices to capture the audio. Video, if we had to do a video Mike you’d have to fly out here, you’d have to come to my office, you’d have to bring your lighting, your camera, you’d have all this video editing equipment you’d need, even though a lot of it can be done on a computer, but you have time and labor and expense that audio – there’s none of that. Does that make sense?

Michael Lamb: Absolutely.

Michael Senoff: Audio is simple anyone can do it. Video is hard, it’s expensive and not everyone can do it. And that expense and that time and that labor is going to bog you down. In many cases you’ll never make progress. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Lamb: For the person that wants to do audio interviews or audio for themselves talk to me about editing, because a lot of people are fearful of the editing process.

Michael Senoff: Well first of all it’s not that hard, everyone does editing already. If you’re typing on the computer or you’re typing a Word document you’re already editing but you’re editing words. You may remove a word, you may add something you may correct something. Well audio editing is the same thing but in an audio format. And there’s a little bit of a learning curve but you pull your audio up just like you’d pull up a document and then you start working at it and refining it and making it better. When I think of editing - we do meticulous editing, for an hour’s worth of raw audio we may edit four or five hours of editing. We try and remove every pop, hiss, um, ah and we do it for the benefit of the listener because, again, my job is to make that audio listening experience as easy and pleasurable as possible. So my listeners will come back more and more. If I had jokes and ums and ahs and kids crying in the background and, you know, all kinds of distractions in the audio recording; that’s disturbing and I’m not doing my listener a favor. So I invest the time and money to meticulously edit every audio that I put out on my site because I want to make it easy to listen to and I want to respect the time of my listener because there are a million other things my listeners can be doing than listening to my audio interviews. So I want to respect that and pay them back and provide them a clean audio interview that is easy and enjoyable to digest so they’ll want to come back for more. If you’re going to be lazy and not edit your recording or be cheap and not invest the time and money and not edit it you’re making a bad first impression and you are going to repel your listeners, especially when they compare it to my audio they’re going to choose mine over yours any time of the day.

Michael Lamb: I completely agree. We just had sirens go by so I had to mute my microphone.

Michael Senoff: I know, you know, I had a siren go by too just a little while ago.

Michael Lamb: It’s one of those things that I think the more and more you do it you get better at it. Editing’s the same way. Is there Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm certain software that you recommend for your students to use for audio editing?

Michael Senoff: I don’t, you know, I’m still using what I learned on and it’s called Gold Wave and I just understand and I’m using an older version 4 point something and it’s just easy for me. I’ve done hundreds of hours of editing on it but now I don’t really do all the major editing I now have a full time editor who does all my editing. After she does her initial editing I’ll go through and do some final stuff. It’s kind of like when you go to the dentist you got the hygienist that will clean your teeth and then the dentist comes in at the end they just make sure everything’s okay, that’s how I operate it. You know editing is like finding a web designer, they’re a dime a dozen. You can find plenty of editors who can edit your audio and train them on how to do it. It’s not hard it’s just meticulous work.

Michael Lamb: Yeah you need to find somebody that will welcome the opportunity to sit and listen to the content and I know a lot of people that edit and learn from the information that they’re editing but their goal also is not just to remove things but it’s to make the interview itself sound good without compromising the integrity of the content itself.

Michael Senoff: Yeah that’s correct. Usually in editing you’re just cleaning things up and taking things out to make it easier to listen to for your listener.

Michael Lamb: You nailed it when you said, you know, remove the distractions remove the things that cause listener fatigue…

Michael Senoff: Right.

Michael Lamb: …because you listen to a conference call or you listen to audio that’s been recorded at a seminar, a conference or a workshop and you pay for them. You pay a lot of money many times for these recordings and you get them and you think oh my gosh I know it’s raw and sometimes it’s cool to have the raw stuff but still you definitely need to be aware that that is the impression again that you’re making on this customer.

Michael Senoff: Yeah I agree. I think that’s a mistake.

Michael Lamb: So how many interviews have you done total? Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Senoff: Probably done I’d say maybe 300, 350 maybe.

Michael Lamb: Really.

Michael Senoff: It’s hard to say I’ve never really counted them up. Yeah I’d say about 300, 350 would be fair to say.

Michael Lamb: Now you do most of them on the phone, do you do any live in person?

Michael Senoff: Nope, I don’t do any live they’re all on the phone.

Michael Lamb: Really.

Michael Senoff: Yep.

Michael Lamb: Interesting. Just a personal preference or do you not like doing it one-on-one with taking the equipment out and microphones and faces?

Michael Senoff: No, no I don’t have any of that equipment it’s just what I’ve always done it’s simple. All I need is my phone and it’s simple and it’s easy. Where are you located Mike?

Michael Lamb: I’m in the Midwest in Wichita, Kansas.

Michael Senoff: Okay but, you know, to come meet you I’d have to fly out there and get on a plane and be away from my family and my wife and kids and I’d do the interview face-to-face. You know so I’d be looking at you eyeball to eyeball and that’ll be nice and everything but everything else is the same when all I have to do is just come into my office, get on the phone, relax and do the interview. We’re going to get the same outcome…

Michael Lamb: Exactly.

Michael Senoff: …only we’re not producing video.

Michael Lamb: Yeah exactly.

Michael Senoff: There’s no reason for it unless you want to get out there and meet people face-to-face and there’s nothing wrong with that it’s just a factor of how am I going to use my time and resources in the most efficient and wise manner. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Lamb: Well you my friend are very consistent in what you do and that’s a huge part of your success I know.

Michael Senoff: Well I appreciate it. I try and be. I try and keep knocking them out and getting better and better and providing new topics that I think my listeners are interested in and I really enjoy it. I mean every time I do one of these interviews it’s really for me first; it’s all based on a selfish motive. I want to interview the guy to listen and pull out as much information as I can for selfish reasons so I can learn. And then I use this site and everything to get them to say yes and get them to spill their guts and give me all the goods and then I just share it with the listeners for free.

Michael Lamb: Now I don’t know if you’re doing this or not but I’m more curious than anything and if you want me to cut this out I will, but are you using your interviews to promote other people’s products.

Michael Senoff: Oh yeah, absolutely. So what kind of interviews can one do and I do multiple kinds of interviews. There are interviews that absolutely – it’s like creating an audio infomercial I will target a prospect, let’s say there’s a product that I want to promote, I’ll give you an example John Carlton. Let’s say I wanted to become an affiliate of John Carlton, what I really wanted was the interview. John Carlton and Ted Nicholas would be in the same boat, they’re both high profiled copywriters, those interviews would be nice to be able to say on HardToFindSeminars I’ve got exclusive interview with John Carlton and Ted Nicholas, which I do, but they both have products to sell. And the way I was able to acquire the interview was I approach them or their affiliate manger and said I’d like to become an affiliate for them and I would like to market it by doing an interview with them and then putting that interview up on my site. So there was a reason for them to take time and allow me to interview them because I was going to be marketing them on my site and that made it easy for them to say yes. So they said yes, I did the interview, and the interview’s up on the site at HardToFindSeminars.com and they were great interviews and they get listened to a lot. And at the same time I direct them as an affiliate to my affiliate link and I generate income from both of these marketers by promoting their products as an affiliate. And they’re not the only ones; I Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm may have 10 or 15 different affiliate relationships where audio recordings on my site are promoting and marketing products and services. We’ve got to be realistic I am operating a business and my business is to market and to generate sells for products and services. And a good portion of those products and services are products of my own that I create and control 100%. A good amount of those products and services are affiliate relationships that I’m just acting as an affiliate and I don’t control but I don’t have any headaches whatsoever, all the way from the selling system and the backend support and the delivery that’s all on the affiliate’s shoulders, which is really nice. And so I’ve got my own products and I’ve got affiliate products. And then there’s interviews that I’ll do that, let’s say it’s a big name I call it Markey Value where you want to be able to say you got an interview with this guy on your site, and that name goes a long way. And you may not be able to sell anything but just having the interview helps boost your credibility. So I’ll do interviews with experts that I’m not selling anything for them it’s just straight content and they may even promote their own seminar but there may not have been the opportunity for me to promote anything and generate and income off of them, but that’s okay. So I have a combination of totally free stuff that I don’t make anything on and affiliate marketing and then my own products and services that are designed to sell my own stuff. Lots of different ways you can go with it. And then there’s interviews that you’ll do for your product creation for your content. You do a series of 10 interviews and those 10 interviews will be your product but at the same time you can use those interviews to promote your product. You can give one away for free and say for nine more like this go to this link and you can direct them to a sales letter or an audio interview describing each one of those interviews and sell the other nine. So there’s a lot you can do with one interview. It can become your own product, it can be promotions for a product, it can be promotion for another product that you don’t control, it could be promotion for your own product, there’s so much you can do with it.

Michael Lamb: Don’t you just love affiliate marketing?

Michael Senoff: I do love it. It’s wonderful. It really is. When the PayPal comes in and, you know, you see you’ve got money from Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm Diane, John Carlton’s assistance and, you know, you forget about you just see the money come in. You know the interview’s done it’s up on the site, I’m not looking at it every day but it’s selling day-after-day, hour-after-hour, month- after-month, year-after-year. I have audio interviews that produce me easily over $1000 a month with affiliate relationships. They’re little moneymaking systems. Every audio you do a good audio interview can be very valuable for the right product or the right affiliate relationship extremely valuable and it’s just like you set it and you forget it, but do it right the first time. Invest the money, invest the time, get it edited right, do your post production, get a good copywriter to write your description. It’s all worth it, it really is. There’s challenges at first but I’m telling you I can’t think of a better business.

Michael Lamb: No you create an evergreen product that is going to be timeless with information that will be presented for years and years and years. You’re right you can just walk away and that income stream continues to be profitable for you month after month, year-after-year.

Michael Senoff: Yeah, and that is a very good point. Evergreen. When I’m creating audio interviews on marketing, marketing is evergreen because it never changes. So the audio content I’m creating can be used and sold for years and years. I mean compare that to if I’m creating audio interviews on how to build a Web site with HTML, six months or a year down the road there may be no such thing as HTML and all that time and all that effort and all that money and editing and everything is gone in a year because the technology changed. So if you’re going to create a product it’ll be nice to pick something evergreen and how to market, how to sell, how to get along with other stuff, you know, relating to human beings and human emotion is always good and always evergreen.

Michael Lamb: Now you have your own affiliate program.

Michael Senoff: I do not have my own affiliate program open to the masses. I do, do joint ventures and I do have individual relationships with marketing people but it’s all on an individual basis.

Michael Lamb: Do you manage it through certain software or…? Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Senoff: I don’t. I do manage it but I have my own system for managing it. I don’t use like a Click Bank or anything like that it would be setup individually. So if you came to me and you said “Hey Mike I want to promote your HMA Marketing Consultant System” I would set it up. I’d go onto my site, I’d setup a page that you could promote to, it would ask for a name and an email address, it would go into a database so we would know who you sent to that page and then we would compare those names and emails and information to any orders that came on out the other end.

Michael Lamb: Actually, I do want to promote your program. I also want to promote your audio – what is it the speed…

Michael Senoff: Audio Marketing Secrets.

Michael Lamb: Well that and also the software that speeds up the interviews.

Michael Senoff: Oh the Speed Up My MP3.

Michael Lamb: Yeah. What a cool idea. How did that come about?

Michael Senoff: Well I’ll tell you I kind of borrowed the idea from somebody. There was another guy out there – what did he call his – oh it’s called FasterAudio.com and it was a guy, I think he was in Canada, I saw it and I said man what an idea because I was an advent listener of audio and I listen to audio all the time. And what a great time saver to be able to speed up my MP3’s not have that chipmunk affect and be able to blow through audio and comprehend it faster than listening at the normal rate. I contacted him and I wanted to market it with him and I wanted to private label and brand it. And then we just couldn’t come to an agreement that I felt like was equitable if I was going to do all the marketing. And at that time I was learning about script plants and some of the Web sites were you could hire programmers to create your own software, but I didn’t even have to do that. I did a search on Google and found someone who already had similar software and then I made an agreement and bought a private label right to software and branded it. So the software was already out there and I just rebranded it and licensed the software from a developer.

Michael Lamb: That’s a great marketing lesson right there. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Senoff: Yep, you don’t even have to make it. You know if someone’s doing it there’s someone else who’s done, it’s all in the marketing. I approached them, I said I like your product, I’d like to private label it and I kept 100% rights. So I paid one upfront fee for them to develop it and to support me and then I don’t have to pay them anything on any sales, I totally control it.

Michael Lamb: No royalties.

Michael Senoff: Nope.

Michael Lamb: Wow, that’s a good deal.

Michael Senoff: Yeah. So you can negotiate anything. And then if I couldn’t do that I may have looked into having it developed and programmed myself but this worked out real well.

Michael Lamb: Yeah it’s a great piece of software. I actually have audio software that I have been that for a long time and…

Michael Senoff: Yeah that’s right. Yeah in the editing that’s right, I didn’t even mention that because when I edited audio recordings to speed up the process for editing I would accelerate to audio as I was listening for stuff to edit. So I was already listening to accelerated audio but it had the chipmunk effect. I didn’t understand what pitch was on my editing software. The Faster Audio guy did some great interviews with some real experts on the subject. I would encourage anyone to go to FasterAudio.com and I don’t know what he charges for his piece of software, I think it maybe $20 or $30 bucks, but even if you bought his the educational content that comes with it is pretty good, it’s worth it.

Michael Lamb: Alright do you have a list of don’ts that you can share with us from the standpoint of creating audio?

Michael Senoff: I’d say don’t be lazy, don’t cut corners, don’t be cheap, do it right the first time. Like I said, one little audio recording – if you’re into real estate or something and you buy a property and you have to get a loan for a couple of hundred thousand dollars for a home that you’re going to rent out and get rental income, then you may end up with a positive cash flow about $300 or $400 dollars a month, okay, but look at that huge investment you made in that home. With audio it’s the same thing your one little audio recording can produce a lot more Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm income than that home that you invested a couple of hundred thousand dollars in. So don’t be cheap do it right. Spend money on editing or do the editing yourself. Research your listeners and find out what they want to learn. You know I’ve been doing what’s called Ask Campaigns with a lot of my interviews if I interview an expert instead of me dreaming up with the questions or even doing the research I go right to my list. So if you’re fortunate enough to have an email list or a mailing list you can send out to them, do an Ask Campaign that says “I’ll be interviewing this expert here and I need your help” is an example. Any of your listeners can go to AskMichaelSenoff.com, AskMichaelSenoff.com and you’ll see what an Ask Campaign looks like. And actually anyone there can submit a question to me on how I make money with audio interviews. So I get all the questions in a database and then when I do the interview these are the questions that I will answer. So you’re giving your listener exactly what they want. So don’t provide audio content that your listeners don’t care about nor aren’t interested in. Do your research and find out what’s important about the subject that you’re doing an expert interview with. Do your research on your guest. Pull up his Web site. Learn a little bit about his history. Look for any kind of magazine articles on him. Take the time and learn something about him so you’re asking intelligent questions about his life because you want to pull out the most interesting information. So don’t be lazy, don’t be cheap and do it right the first time. When I first started I didn’t do it right I was lazy and I was cheap because I didn’t know where I was going with this. So I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning that I think caused me a lot of money, audio quality sound was poor, a lot of the stuff I put out didn’t have editing. But that’s okay I’m doing it right now. So I would tell you to do it right from the very beginning. Another thing to when you’re selling your products sell it for good margins don’t give it away for free. I’m not saying don’t give it away for free don’t sell it for too little. It’s not an eBook that sells for $19 dollars, just with three or four or five audio recordings on a good subject you can sell something like that anywhere from $100 to $500 dollars or more it just depends. So don’t give it away. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Lamb: All the students that you’ve had what’s the percentage of them that don’t come from any kind of a broadcast or voice over background that has some kind of entertainment or production career.

Michael Senoff: Yeah most of them don’t, probably 99% don’t; they’re just ordinary people. And so anyone can do this. Now I know your listeners, because I researched this I did an Ask Campaign on what your biggest fear about doing audio interviews and, you know what one of the Number 1 answers was, they don’t like the sound of their own voice. They think they’re going to sound silly, they think that their voice sounds bad and this will actually keep them from getting started. Someone who says that they’re just so off based because I hate to tell you they don’t care about how you sound, they’re not even interested in you, they’re only interested in the guest, in the information that you’re going to get out of the guest. They could care less about you, how you sound, they’re not even listening to you. So get over it, they want to hear the information from your guest. You are just a conduit you are a messenger, a deliverer. Your job is to extract the information from your guest on the behalf of your listener. So if you think you sound squeaky or your voice sounds funny or your accent is to thick or that your English isn’t good, get over it, it doesn’t matter, they don’t even car and that should not get in the way from you getting started.

Michael Lamb: In fact most people probably say they don’t like the sound of their voice. Some have never heard their own voice because you don’t hear what your voice sounds like yourself. So I know people that are professionals actors, voice over people, radio people, that can’t stand the sound of their voice but that does not prevent them from going out and using it to create a new career or a new revenue or whatever.

Michael Senoff: That’s correct.

Michael Lamb: So do you like the sound of your voice?

Michael Senoff: I don’t dislike the sound of my own voice. I don’t mind it, I guess I do.

Michael Lamb: Good. Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm

Michael Senoff: I don’t dislike it at all; I’m comfortable with the sound of my voice. How about you?

Michael Lamb: I haven’t like my voice for years.

Michael Senoff: Oh you haven’t.

Michael Lamb: Yeah.

Michael Senoff: I think you sound great. You’ve got a good voice. You definitely have a radio voice for sure.

Michael Lamb: Yeah that’s what everybody says. And you know what my answer is, my answer is I learned to pronounce my words and now it’s just part of who I am and part of what I do. So I don’t even think about specifically saying a syllable or whatever it’s just who I am.

Michael Senoff: That’s good. That’s a good asset to have.

Michael Lamb: Well Michael it’s been a pleasure talking with you. I’ve kind of watched you online for awhile and because we’re some of the same things, some very similar things I hesitated about getting in touch with you and then I realized, you know, that’s ridiculous. And that’s a lesson for everybody listening because you want to learn from the people that you respect, you want to learn from the people that are doing things that you want to do and you want to learn from people who are doing what you’re doing because the world’s a big place, we’ve all come from different places, we’ve all done different things and, you know, you’re a prime example of all of that.

Michael Senoff: Well I appreciate it. Yeah my pleasure. Yeah I don’t look at you as a competitor or anything, I mean it’s a huge world, huge market out there, it really is.

Michael Lamb: Well we can be each other’s customer but we can also be each other’s advocate.

Michael Senoff: Yeah that’s true. Absolutely, and I’d be glad to do that.

Michael Lamb: Alright. Well any closing thoughts for people listening that want to do what you’re doing?

Michael Senoff: If they want more information on what I’m doing, if they really want to get inside my head, I have put together an audio Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm information product it’s called Audio Marketing Secrets and it consist of an actual product with a system for developing your own high selling information product. And included with it is probably about 15 hours of one-on-one audio consultations that I’ve done with students who have purchased the product. So students who have purchased the product get a 30 minute to an hour consultation with me where I personally consult with them on what I would do if I was them creating and developing their information product. And there probably isn’t a concern or a question or a challenge that we haven’t covered in these 15 hours of consultation. Each one of these consultations is recorded as an MP3 file, you can play it online or you can download the printed word-for-word transcripts. And I offer that product on my site at HardToFindSeminars.com and you can go to the product section on my site and you’ll find it there or you can go directly to HardToFindSeminars.com/AMS.htm, Audio Marketing Secrets. You don’t even have to pay me a dime for 30 days. Only if you’re happy do I charge your card after 30 days and the details are at that site.

Michael Lamb: Really.

Michael Senoff: Yep.

Michael Lamb: That’s a heck of an offer.

Michael Senoff: Yep, you can steal it from me if you want.

Michael Lamb: Excellent. Really appreciate your time, this has been very enjoyable. I’ve even gotten some ideas while we’ve been talking which I’ll share with you off mic. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. You’ve done a tremendous job of building a library of interviews of people that are really successful that are doing some really cool things and just listening in on some of those interviews for anyone it’s a great opportunity to, not just learn from them, but also spark your own imagination of what their information is going to trigger in your own brain. And it’s happening with me all the time and it’ll happen with you too.

Michael Senoff: Thanks Mike.

Michael Lamb: We’ve been talking with Michael Senoff from Our thanks to Michael and all of his guest because inside this library that’s yours for the Learn How I Turned a $28 Book Into A $3,900 Information Product - FREE 60 Day Trial... Go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Audio_Marketing_Secrets.htm taking at HardToFindSeminars.com is a wealth of knowledge regardless of what business you’re in. And if you’re interested in doing audio seminars and audio interviews and creating audio products highly recommend you get into Michael Senoff’s Audio Marketing Secrets and see what’s in store for you. I’m Michael Lamb. Thanks for joining us.