Wedding Business ProfitsResource Guide

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Income Stream Examples

There are lots of different types of income streams and I want to make sure you have examples of all the types we cover in Wedding Business Profits because it often makes it a lot easier than thinking about it conceptually.

DIY Income Stream

This type of income stream allows you to sell to those DIY couples who aren’t going to hire you to do it for them.

Examples of DIY Income Streams

www.weddingbusinesswebsitediy.com www.cutflowergarden.co.uk/courses

Educational Income Stream

This type of income stream puts your expertise to work for you by teaching those other than DIY couples.

Examples of Educational Income Streamswww.emilyquinton.combit.ly/fandpworkshop

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Income Stream Examples

Affiliate Income Stream

Affiliate income streams allow you to earn money by promoting products you love. When you become an affiliate for a product, you get a unique link that you use to promote the product so that the company can track who sent them & pay you when someone you sent purchases.

Examples of Affiliate Income Streamsvendor.missnowmrs.comwww.wedsite.com/affiliates/

Add On Income Stream

Add on income streams allow you to make more from your existing clients without having to market & sell to more people.

Examples of Add On Income Streamswww.sellthebride.com/listing/guide/unique-add-on-product-service-resources

JV Income Stream

JV (joint venture) income streams are all about teaming up with your fellow wedding pros to create something together.

Examples of JV Income Streamswww.trecreative.combit.ly/diystylecourse

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Income Stream Examples

Spin Off Income Stream

Spin off income streams consist of taking 1 piece of what you do and spinning it off into its own product.

Examples of Spin Off Income Streamswww.etsy.com/market/wedding_planner

Stock Photo Sites

Photographers & videographers can sell their work to microstock & stock photo & video sites like..

shutterstock.comdreamstime.combigstock.comistockphoto.comstocky.comfoap.com

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Organizing Your Ideas

You are going to have lots of ideas for new streams of income and you’ll need to flesh each one out. Here are some of my favorite tools for doing that.

Trello (www.trello.com)

If you like writing things on sticky notes to get your ideas out of your brain and moving them around to organize those ideas, you’ll love Trello. You can write things on cards (which are a lot like little post it notes) and drag and drop them into order and then set deadlines on them if you’d like to.

Evernote (www.evernote.com)

Evernote helps me to remember everything and keep it all in order. I keep ideas for blog posts in Evernote and I clip useful websites into it for future reference and all of it is accessible from my computer, the Evernote web client and my phone. Evernote has allowed me to stop writing things down on paper and now I can keep everything in one (searchable) place. There are endless ways to use Evernote and the Evernote blog does a great job of documenting how different people make use of the tool. For me, it’s a great way to collect information and ideas.

Workflowy (www.workflowy.com)

If you like to organize things in list form with bullets and sub-bullets, you’re going to love Workflowy. It’s really simple and it allows you to create really clean outlines using a bulleted list format.

Mindmeister (www.mindmeister.com)

Remember doing those idea map exercises in school where you put the topic in the center and branched out from there? Mindmeister does that for you and let’s you map out an idea in a really visual way. This is probably the way for you to go if you’re more of a visual person.

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Design Resources

If you’re going to create a course, ebook or any other similar product you’re going to want it to look good. If you’re like me and design is not your strong suit, or you just don’t want to do it, you can refer to these resources to find someone to do that design work for you.

Fiverr (www.fiverr.com)

Fiverr is a global marketplace for buying and selling services for as little as $5. Fiverr sellers offer a myriad of Gigs® or services, ranging from web design, logo creation and market research, to custom greetings, video animation and personalized gifts. Fiverr is a great place to get an ebook cover designed or even find a designer to do more in depth work – just check out what they have to offer and their reviews and reach out to them!

Odesk (www.odesk.com)

Odesk is another global marketplace that connects people like you looking to hire someone to freelancers all over the world. You just post what you’re looking for in a job and review the applicants.

Elance (www.elance.com)

Elance is a platform much like Odesk that connects you to over 2 million skilled freelancers from around the world. It’s a great place to find designers and lots of other skilled people.

99Designs (www.99designs.com)

As the name implies this site is all about design. You create a contest and designers compete by submitting their designs and you get to choose who you’re going to go with.

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Design Resources

If you’re going to create a course, ebook or any other similar product you’re going to want it to look good. If you’re like me and design is not your strong suit, or you just don’t want to do it, you can refer to these resources to find someone to do that design work for you.

Fiverr (www.fiverr.com)

Fiverr is a global marketplace for buying and selling services for as little as $5. Fiverr sellers offer a myriad of Gigs® or services, ranging from web design, logo creation and market research, to custom greetings, video animation and personalized gifts. Fiverr is a great place to get an ebook cover designed or even find a designer to do more in depth work – just check out what they have to offer and their reviews and reach out to them!

Odesk (www.odesk.com)

Odesk is another global marketplace that connects people like you looking to hire someone to freelancers all over the world. You just post what you’re looking for in a job and review the applicants.

Elance (www.elance.com)

Elance is a platform much like Odesk that connects you to over 2 million skilled freelancers from around the world. It’s a great place to find designers and lots of other skilled people.

99Designs (www.99designs.com)

As the name implies this site is all about design. You create a contest and designers compete by submitting their designs and you get to choose who you’re going to go with.

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Ebook Resources

Ebook Hosting (www.amazon.com/s3)

If you’re going to be selling an ebook on your own site your ebook has to be uploaded somewhere so that the customer can get the link to it download it. You can upload a PDF to your own website (Here is how to do this on Wordpress – the password for the video is “wordpress”) but I prefer to keep my downloadable files on a 3rd party site with super reliable servers like Amazon has. Amazon S3 is free and has sort of a weird interface but they do have video tutorials. Alternatively you could use Dropbox.

Publishing on Amazon Kindle

Amazon has made it possible for anyone to write and publish a book using their platform and that’s pretty fantastic. You do have to format your ebook a certain wait and know about some other things like pricing but Amazon lays this out in their Kindle books about Kindle books here.

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Video & Course Resources

Google Hangouts On Air (plus.google.com/u/0/hangouts/onair)

Google Hangouts On Air allows you to run a webinar or live course and it records it to your Youtube account. There is a lot you can do with Google Hangouts but I usually use it to share my screen and present from that. There are lots of very handy features and it’s free!

Screenflick (www.araelium.com/screenflick)

Screenflick is a low cost really handy piece of software for Mac that lets you record your screen while talking over it. This is what I used to record the videos for my Book More Weddings Academy.

Camtasia (www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html)

Camtasia for is a screen recording tool with a pretty robust video editing suite built into it. If you know you’re going to be creating and editing videos, this may be a good choice for you.

Screenflow (www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm)

Screenflow is a is a screencasting and video editing software specifically for Mac people who are familiar with the way Mac software like Garage Band or iMovie work will love the way this tool works.

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Video & Course Resources

Vimeo Plus (www.vimeo.com/plus)

If you’re going to be recording these great videos for a course you’re going to need a place to host them that isn’t accessible to just anyone. Vimeo Plus is a great place to host your videos so that people who haven’t paid for access can’t watch them. Compared to other options it’s really affordable too.

Wishlist Member (member.wishlistproducts.com)

Wishlist Member is what is known as a Membership Plugin for Wordpress. That means it protects the content you want only members of your courses or programs to see and requires them to log in to get access. Wishlist Member works on your own website and has lots of tutorial videos along with a great support team to help you out. I’ve been using Wishlist Member for a few years and I love it!

Kajabi (www.kajabiapp.com)

If you’d prefer not to host your course on your own website or if you don’t have a Wordpress website Kajabi could be a great user-friendly option that requires no technical know-how.

Udemy (www.udemy.com)

Udemy is the world’s online learning marketplace and you can sell your course there to their 6 million+ students.

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Selling Your Products

Selz (www.selz.com)

Selz makes it incredibly easy to sell digital products and creates a really clean and simple user interface for both you and your customers. It allows you to manage your orders, process and receive payments & build relationships with your customers all in one place and the pricing is a small % of the purchase price of your item. It also takes care of tracking your sales information for tax purposes which is incredibly helpful come tax time.

Gumroad (www.gumroad.com)

Gumroad makes selling your digital good really easy. It will let you do some really cool things like pre-sell an item before you launch it which is incredibly helpful for testing your idea. The guys at Fizzle love Gumroad so much they put together this guide along with some great resources to help you get started.

Etsy (www.etsy.com)

Etsy is known as a marketplace for buying & selling creative & handmade items and it’s a great place to sell your spin off items as well as on your own site using a tool like Selz or Gumroad. Selling on Etsy allows you to get your products in front of nearly 20 million active buyers.

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Testing Your Ideas

SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com)

You need to test your ideas before putting in a lot of effort to turn them into a product that might not sell. SurveyMonkey makes it really easy to put a survey together and get it out to your potential customers and their free plan is really all you’re going to need.

In addition to surveying your potential customers be sure to actually talk to them and find out what they’re struggling with. Businesses are all about solving problems so you need to figure out what those problems are for your potential clients.

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Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are places where you can find a huge array of affiliate programs in all sorts of different industries. Some focus on one industry in particular while others host a huge variety of affiliate programs. In the context of affiliate networks you would be a publisher and the companies listing their affiliate programs are advertisers.

ShareASale (www.shareasale.com)

ShareASale is one of the larger affiliate networks and they have built a good reputation with their customer service. They also publish a lot of helpful affiliate marketing posts on their blog.

CJ (www.cj.com)

CJ, formerly known as Commission Junction, has been around for a looong time. They started up in 1998 which is pretty much forever ago in internet years. You’ll find a lot of big brands on CJ within their huge catalog of affiliate programs.

Clickbank (www.clickbank.com)

Clickbank has previously had a reputation for more spammy fitness and internet marketing affiliate programs but they are definitely worth checking out.

Sell The Bride (www.sellthebride.com)

Sell The Bride is different because it’s focused on the wedding industry and it’s not quite an affiliate network but does have a directory of lots of affiliate programs that could be perfect for your business.

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy & Tips

Affiliate marketing can be great if you do it the right way so I wanted to provide you with some strategy & tips from the best minds in affiliate marketing.

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/affiliate-marketing-strategies/

http://thinktraffic.net/affiliate-primer-for-bloggers

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/affiliate-link-conversion/

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/8-principles-for-effective-affiliate-marketing-on-a-blog/

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/02/4-more-tips-for-affiliate-marketing-on-blogs/

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2013/04/24/the-ultimate-guide-to-making-money-with-the-amazon-affiliate-program/

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If we don’t take some time to reflect and integrate what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve learned over the year so far, chances are you’ll find yourself half-way through this month, feeling burned out and not quite sure where you spent your time. Scheduling regular times to reflect on the progress of your business is essential — not only to your business success — but for your own happiness and fulfillment. These are CEO dates and they are the most important dates on your calendar.

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At some point you may want/need to delegate some tasks and you can do that with a virtual assistant. Here is truly the ultimate guide to doing this.