John Piteo’s Story: My WordPress Crash Course
John’s story is one of success and a desire to get to the next level.
The hardest part of internet marketing is making that first dollar, but the next hardest part is scaling the business. Turning that 1 sale per day into 10, then into 20, then into 100.
It’s not as easy as it may seem, but let’s hear John’s story…
John Piteo’s story
My name is John Piteo and I live in Wellington, Florida, USA. I’m a full-time Internet marketer and I sell my own product and affiliate products. My product is an online video training program that teaches people how to make blogs and websites using WordPress. I’ve been full-time since 2007. Before that I worked for 20 years in sales and management.
I haven’t had much time to develop hobbies, because I seem to spend all of my time either working on my online business, learning new skills, or researching how to make more money online. However, here are my areas of interest in no particular order…
- Photography and photo editing in Photoshop.
- Online video, I enjoyed making my online course and especially the sales video. I consider myself a pretty decent copy writer. I also enjoy learning about online video and video editing.
- Woodworking projects – My garage is set-up as a small shop.
- I like video games (yes, even at my age), but I’m not that good at them.
I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on courses, seminars and training over the years. I can’t even remember them all.
- In the beginning it started with all of the “Get Rich Courses” then I learned my lesson.
- Made for Adsense sites
- Article Marketing
- Website Design Courses
- Affiliate Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Marketing
- Blogging Courses
- SEO Courses & Content Marketing
- Keyword Research Products & Training
- Building Sniper Sites (5 Page Websites)
- eMail Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Video Production
- and more…
I’ve also made money with made for Adsense sites. But these days that doesn’t really work as well as it once did. And I still make a little money with affiliate review sites.
I do have an online business and website. You can see it here…
I make some pretty decent money with the site and I could probably grow it bigger.
But, I’ve been at it now for about 3 years and I’d like to do something different, start a new business.
I’ll keep this business because it doesn’t take much of my time now, but the entrepreneurial bug is biting me again so I want to start another business from square one.
Sort of like how you started in the Model Train niche then you moved on and reinvented yourself, because you love coaching more than model trains.
One of my ideas is to create a video training program that teaches people how to make videos for their websites or businesses.
Maybe focus more specifically on just “how to make sales videos” or “how to make training videos and tutorial courses” like I’ve done. To teach people I would still need to learn some additional video production skills and techniques which will require a little time.
I’ve been bouncing niche ideas around in my own brain for a long time and it gets confusing and overwhelming. So, I’d welcome any niche ideas at all that you may have, that would help me achieve the goal listed below from an online business.
I want to be making $8500 per month by December 31, 2013!
From what I understand when you started you created a bunch of sites and the model train site rose to the top as having the most potential. If you had chosen one of the other topics and only pursued that one it may have been a dud and not nearly as profitable.
That is one of my biggest fears and I think what is holding me back, choosing the wrong niche, putting a lot of time, effort and money into it and it turning out to be a dud.
I think one of the most amazing aspects of your story is how you were able to start a business in a niche that you were not an expert in and grow that business into a great success.
My comments to John
John, congratulations on your success so far. I really like your Crash Course Training website. The domain is just awesome…
You are clearly a well experienced internet marketer with a huge amount of sales experience… This makes it a no-brainer that you should stay in the niche you are already in. We need people like you!
However, you should consider how you are going to position yourself in the future.
Creating a course on “how to make sales videos” or “how to make training videos and tutorial courses” is an awesome idea and I don’t believe you need any more training or equipment. You’ve got everything you need already…
I’ve only seen your sales video which is very good. It may be a voice over artist, but the construction of the message and the slides are awesome and obviously convert well.
So, if you have something that is already converting well, you should look at ways of scaling it.
A person buying a crash course on WordPress is going to want so much more training after they have their blog built… And you could create all of these under your ‘Crash Course’ brand.
You could do a crash course on email marketing, on sales videos, on product creation using video, free traffic strategies, paid traffic strategies and so much more…
It is all about increasing the life time value (LTV) of each customer.
Once a customer buys one quality product, they get to like and trust you, and will buy the next and the next… But then, I am preaching to the choir by telling you this.
Having a suite of branded products allows you to have monthly deals, were you can combine 2 or 3 different products and sell them at half price for 3 days. There is no extra cost to you, but it adds massive value and will sell well.
I have plenty of ideas for you, but initially I would like to know what you think of the idea?
I also had a quick look at your affiliate page and have many suggestions to improve that significantly. If you remember when Yaro interviewed me, I spoke about my only traffic source for the model train membership being affiliates. This makes life so much easier, and we can discuss this further in the future.
I look forward to your comments.
Have Fun,
Ian
