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Welcome To The Raine Report

I am greatly misunderstood by politically
correct idiots. - Brigitte Bardot
Apologies in getting this issue out a few days late but alas I was struck down by
one of the worse kind of maladies...
Yes, ManFlu. Which as you all know is one of the most virulent forms of the flu
virus and to be fair it was touch and go there for a while ;)
Anyhoo, I don't want to bore you with my misfortune, I have now made a
remarkable and speedy recovery and I am currently enjoying putting together
this months newsletter and have received a couple of questions from you on
how I actually put together an issue, so I will endeavour to answer those later
on in the newsletter.
I have also learned a couple of new things this week, the first of which is the
origin of the phrase The Dogs Bollocks.
The reason I had to look it up was actually related to the second thing I learned
this week but I will get to that shortly.

The Dogs Bollocks for those not familiar with the term, is an English phrase
similar to The Bees Knees, The Cats Pyjamas, or to state its actual meaning
The Very Best Of.
It originated in the printing industry in the late 18th century and came from
how lists of items were displayed on paper.
Today one of the characters we use denote the starting a list of words, phrases,
sentences etc. is : but back then the following collection of symbols was used :which graphically resembles when using a bit of imagination a set of dog's
bollocks.
A century or so later it started to enter the
mainstream, and it really became popular in the
1980's after Viz magazine used it repeatedly to
promote it's best of issues.
So there you go, a brief history lesson to start
you o today, but what started me down that
little rabbit hole was an email from one of you
fine readers which used the phrase bollocks to
describe last months content, and a couple of
other emails where I also learned that a bunch of
you are to put it kindly:mad as a fish
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a few pennies short of a pound

or to clarify complete stark raving bonkers.
Yes I know I am not supposed to actively go and oend my readers here, but
quite frankly, for some of you I have short listed for a darwin award in the not
too distant future.
You see, I have always known it is better to be either liked or hated by your
readers than have a bunch of them sitting on the fence. Ambivalence in any
market is a killer. But last months issue really brought out the nut-jobs
amongst you.
For instance, I had one interesting fellow threatening to report me to the FTC
for illegal business practices because he said what I was doing was
tantamount to industrial espionage.
Another kind gent promised me in no uncertain terms to sue me to the ends of
the earth and back if I so much as investigated his niche, which then like a
complete bafoonish idiot promptly told me the business he was in, so I did...
touch!
And they were the nicer of the many emails I received.

I want to make it absolutely clear to you all now that the methods I taught in
last months newsletter are bone-fide 100% legal, i.e. not just to, but within the
letter of the law.
Market research and competition are not in any way, shape, manner, or form
illegal. Period.
The methods that I teach here will give you a much better chance of making
money in this world than almost anything else.
If you sit down and follow the steps of the Overachiever System you WILL
make money, tons of it, and that I assume is why you are reading this
newsletter, and not just looking for a way to pass a rainy afternoon.
Now a couple of you sent in genuine questions which I will answer later on in
the newsletter and in a future update, but for now let's get on with this months
content.

Overachievers Part II:

Breaking Apart The Funnel
Curiosity is the lust of the mind. - Thomas Hobbes

So first of all let's take a quick recap of the Phase I process of The Overachiever
System and have a look at the niche example I used now that we are a month
on.
If you haven't read last months issue then you can download it for free at my
back issue page here:
Grab your back issue
If you remember, one of my golden rules was that the site had to have been
getting advertising trac for at least six months.
At the time of writing the last article we only had just about three months of
data, so if we revisit SimilarWeb again we should get an update.

Well it looks like site is still growing with visitor numbers at 3.9 million
compared to last months 1.9 million.
But this might not be an accurate measurement of growth as just after writing
the last report SimilarWeb changed their algorithm to more accurately
measure trac.
Just as a sanity check we should also run those numbers through follow.net
and here is the result:

So on the whole this looks like a contender and would be a niche to consider
going after in a couple of months once you have a full six months of data to
look at.
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WARNING: I don't say this lightly, I have been burned in the past when not
allowing a full six months data collection. A lot of marketers these days are
willing to spend three to four months of advertising to refine their process, get
the perfect trac sources etc. and a lot of them fail.
The Overachiever System is about taking that risk away from you. Let them
work out what is profitable on their dime then replicate it.
Last month we also talked about the type of trac the site was getting, and we
needed to make sure that the majority was paid trac which is still the case so
let us move on to the next phase of the system.

Analysing The Funnel

Hopefully by now you have done a bit of research into some niches, and if you
have gone through the numbers then there is probably one or two products
that stand out as having a good potential, so the next phase is about breaking
down their business model.
Often when you take a first look at what they are selling you are only seeing the
front end of their business, and that front end may actually be losing money or
at best breaking even, so that they get you on a buyers list and attempt to sell
to you over and over again, so it is important that we do some thorough
research at this stage.

So you are going to need to put up some money and actually buy their
product, and remember, almost all sites these days have a money back
guarantee so you can go and get a refund after you have done the research if
you so wish.
Now before we get started on this you are going to have to get prepared,
because throughout this process you are going to want to save all the web
pages you visit and all of the sales videos that might crop up.
I use a couple of tools to do this:
vGet Chrome Extension
And because Google do not allow chrome extensions to download YouTube
Videos I use a free service which you can find here:
Download YouTube Videos
This allows you to paste in the URL of the video and download it to your
computer.
You will find a lot of marketers host videos on YouTube to save bandwidth and
then embed them in their page. You can get the YouTube URL by right
clicking on the YouTube icon in the scrub bar when the video is playing.

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The next thing you are going to need is an individual email address for each of
the products you are researching so you can analyse what type of marketing
they do, and whether they try and upsell you on additional products further
down the path.
In Gmail this is easy, you simply use
youremail+productname@gmail.com

and that will go into your gmail account.

This really is the simplest way to do this, or if you have a catch all setup on
your domain then you can use product@yourdomain.com. If you are unsure
then go for the Gmail option.
So let's get started.
The simplest and easiest product to go out and replicate is one which only has
a single item for sale. There are no additional steps in the sales process. You
just buy it, download it, and you are done.
These however are few and far between, and if anything are usually only there
to grab your email addresses to be marketed to later (this is why we need a
unique email address so we can monitor this kind of marketing).

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Typically what you will encounter, and I am sure you have seen this many
times if you have bought any kind of Internet Marketing product in the past, is
a series of upsells, downsells, etc.
These may comprise of complimentary products, audio versions of the
product you bought, access to membership sites on a $1 trial, professional
versions of the software you just bought etc.
The key thing here is making a detailed list of everything that they try to sell
you. So what I typically do is visit the webpage, download the sales video and
save the actual page to disk, and finally bookmark every page I visit on the site.
I also make a note of the price of the current oer and the exact name of the
product. Then I click away to a dierent page.
If get a popup asking me to stay on the page I hit OK and am often presented
with a discounted oer.
I do this going through the full checkout process, first reject upsells to see what
the downsells are, then backing up and taking up the oer until I have gone
through the full sales process.
Let's go through the diabetesfree.org sales process so you can see what Im
talking about.

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Here is the Diabetes Free sales page:

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And if I click away I get the following:

I have seen a few variations of this so it looks like they are split testing the
page.
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When I click through to purchase the product you will see a countdown timer
in place to create urgency. Now I know in the Internet Marketing world we
have all seen them before (and they still work, see the next article), but they
are rarely used in other niches, so when you see something like this in play
you really need to make a note of it.

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Once we have purchased we then get the up-sell which is for a product called
Revitalize, which is designed to help you body get back to full health after you
have gotten rid of that pesky diabetes.
This is a $47 dollar product and has a lengthy sales video to get you to buy:

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If you decide not to purchase this then you get the first of two downsells, I
wont put a screen shot of here but it is for a Genie in a bottle for $37, which is
again accompanied by a long sales video, and if you reject that magnificent
oer you get the final down-sell of the day which is ironically for a higher
priced product all about negating the side eects of prescription drugs for a
bargain basement price of just $47.
I want to point out though that if you bought the first up-sell then you were
taken directly to product after than and not oered any of the spurious tripe
they try to sell you if you do not.
The most important thing here is being thorough. The key to making
The Overachiever System work it to understand every aspect of their sales
process, because when it comes to launching your own product you want to
copy the exact steps they use.
And just to say it one more time - this is why you need to make sure a business
has been getting trac for at least six months, so you know that they have
tested and refined the funnel to the nth degree.

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What Are We Looking For In An Ideal Product?

In the next part of The Overachiever System I will be showing you how to
choose whether to go after a niche or not and how to attack it, but for now let's
break down what makes a good Overachiever style niche.
I ideally like digital products. True, there is a lot of money to be made with
physical products, but then there are also a lot of logistics to handle.
If you look at Ryan and Perry's survival niche, they attract the majority of their
customers through marketing to them by oering a free credit card knife.
This is a great play but also requires a lot of cash to be spent upfront, a storage
and shipping facility set up, and for the purpose of Overachievers is just too
much like hard work.
I also like sites without continuity initially.
You will come across some sites in your research that oer trials to
membership sites, newsletters, software clubs etc. as part of the up-sell
process.
These are usually great businesses because they increase your earnings per
click and therefore how much you can spend to acquire a new customer. But...
they are a lot more work to replicate and maintain every month.

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If this is your first Overachiever type business then go for simple.

The type of sites I would typically be looking for are digital based, so selling a
course, ebook, audio, software etc. with one or more upsells to increase the
revenue per customer (upsell rates are typically 20-45% so they can make a
huge dierence to your income).
So I am going to leave it there for The Overachiever System this month. Make
sure you buy at least one of the products you have been researching and make
detailed notes about every page of the sales process, because next month we
need to check to see if there are any back end promotions in place and look at
testing the market and building a product.

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Bankrupt To Billionaire
In Just 48 Hours
Being broke is a temporary situation. Being poor is
a state of mind. - Mike Todd
I love inspirational stories. I love reading how people go from being on the
bones of their ass to making it, their struggles, their successes, and most
importantly their resolve.
I was reading a copy of Bloomberg Business Week this morning and there was
a piece about a man you probably have all heard of by now but probably never
understood his story, and I think it is one of the best accounts of how to
persevere even when the whole world is against you.
Read This Article
I had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of years ago at a Singularity
University event and never really understood what he had gone through to get
where he was today.
I am talking about Elon Musk, the guy who created SpaceX, Tesla, and
previously founded PayPal and Zip2.

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He had such belief in what he was doing (i.e. creating a private space
enterprise) that he put his entire fortune on the line, even going so far as to
end up over 40 million in personal debt just to make payroll and risked
destroying both SpaceX and Tesla.
He really was on the bones of his ass.
But he had self belief and with just 48 hours to spare turned it around, took a
HUGE GAMBLE, and became a multi-billionaire.
This is an amazing story and if you are looking for something inspirational to
read then you should check out the article.
Go take a look

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The Super Simple Kick-Ass

Method To Boost Your Sales
In Just 4 Days!
"Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money,
no hurry, no desire, no trust." - Zig Ziglar
Over the next few pages you will learn a very powerful method to boosting
your sales in a very short space of time.
This method can be used either on brand new products and services, or on
your existing products and services, it can be used in any niche or market, and
it can be used over and over again to great eect.
As you know, Im all about testing. So theres a very high probability youve
actually seen this method live in action, because I used it quite recently across
a few of my more targeted email lists.
What Im going to outline is why this method works so well, and after reading
this quick article youll be able to take what you learn and put it into action to
make yourself some money today.
Lets start o by outlining what makes a good sale, and the crux of it all boils
down to that quote above from Zig Ziglar.

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Every sale does indeed have five basic obstacles, so lets take a brief look at
them, and how we could potentially overcome these obstacles:
No Need: If your prospect has no need for your product or service, then

its a no brainer that they wont be in a mindset to purchase no matter

what youre oering.

You get round this by spelling out the reason why they need your
product or service on your sales page, and your sales copy should
explicitly tell them what the problems are, and why they need to get
your product / service to overcome their specific issues.
No Money: No matter how great your product or service is, if your

prospect can't aord to pay then this can be a very hard obstacle to
overcome.

In real terms, the only way around the no money obstacle is to either
oer split payments, or oer a massive discount so that you bring the
cost down to a manageable level for the prospect. The only thing to
think about when oering a discount is to ensure that youre not
devaluing your product or service.
No Hurry: People dont like parting with their money, and if theres no

pressure to make the purchase right now then more often than not they
will click away to something more interesting.

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To get around this obstacle you have to make the purchasing decision
something that needs to be actioned quickly, and this can be done by
limiting availability, limiting price, or limiting time.
No Desire: Eective marketing and eective sales all boils down to

making your product or service desirable. If you look at the most

successful products of the last decade, then youll see that the ones that
made the product desirable far outsold the competition (the iPhone is
possibly one of the best examples I could oer.)

To smash this obstacle you dont need to go out and deliver PR like
Apple, but you do need to emphasise all the sexy parts of your products
and services in your sales copy.

People dont buy on features they buy on benefits. They need to know
what is in it for them, and what the product will help them achieve (get
more money, save time, save money, increase their wellbeing, etc.)

People might tell you that if you build a better mousetrap then people
will beat a path to your door, but to be brutally honest with you - thats
total bullshit. The guy who wins is the guy with the better marketing,
every single day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
No Trust: This is a big obstacle, especially when selling online and your

prospects have no idea who you are.

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In todays world its actually quite easy to start building up trust, as you
can communicate directly with your prospects on social media, and you
can get out there and provide excellent value and help first hand. The
more you give and the better the quality you deliver, then the more trust
you will get over time (as well as the added bonus of word of mouth
marketing).
These five basic obstacles are nothing new, theyve been around forever. To
overcome them you have to be able to check o each one as part of your main
sales proposition, and also in all the communications you send to your
prospects when trying to make the sale.
Which brings me on to the actual method for getting more sales in a short
timescale :)
The method Im now going to outline hits a few of those basic obstacles
directly, and the two in particular are around No Hurry and No Money, and to
do this were going to be utilising scarcity.
Scarcity is where you restrict your product or service, and it usually takes three
forms - price, quantity, or timescale; and the most eective scarcity campaigns
normally have a combination of all three.
With the campaign Im going to show you I actually utilised all three of these
scarcity factors, but before I go on theres something I need to tell you.

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Scarcity is a killer tactic, but its absolutely crucial that you dont build or use
any fake scarcity, and you must always stick by your promises.
For example, how many times have you seen emails or promotions that say
Act quickly, this oer ends at midnight, only to see it still live 36 hours later.
Or my personal favourite is where they say I will never oer this again at this
ridiculously low price, and then because they havent made their sales quota
they go and run the exact same campaign less than 6 months later, or do some
shoddy smoke and mirrors routine where they tweak the price by a few
dollars, so its not the same low price but pretty close to it.
These people dont know how much they hurt their own credibility.
It might give you a quick bump in the sales figures, but the amount of lost trust
in your future promotions can be catastrophic, because no one will believe
you - theyll just think its another case of the boy who cried wolf. Your
reputation will suer, and people will start to ignore your promotions.
So, the main point here is this: If you say the promotion is going to end at
midnight, then end it at midnight. If you say that there are only 100 spots
available, then only sell 100 spots, and close it o when you hit that amount.
Now that Ive got that out of the way, lets look at the method, and this is
something I like to call The Enhanced 4-Day Flash Sale.
Snappy title, but it really does what it says, so lets take a look.
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The Enhanced 4-Day Flash Sale

The whole process of this is to oer a limited time sale for your product or
service, and as well as limiting the time were also going to limit the price
discount and the availability - hitting all three at once.
The method is very simple, you send out an email every day over 4 days
promoting the price saving on your product / service.
And thats it.
Yes, really, it is that simple.
Seriously, theres no rocket science to this (unless your product is on space
travel), it literally is oering a short term flash sale to generate quick sales.
There are of course some important factors to consider, after all, just sending
out an email wont guarantee sales - but after youve read through the next few
pages youll hopefully see why the scarcity process works, and youll be able to
take it away and use it in your own business.
The first important factor is of course having a product or service to sell, and
having the sales page and website ready to receive your trac.
The second important factor is making sure youre only sending your
promotion to the right people, and if youve been following my advice on
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building separate email lists for separate topics and themes then youll already
be o to a good start, and if youve gone the extra step and used the 2 tools I
outlined in the first Raine Report Gold then youll definitely have lasertargeted your prospects.
The final important factor is the content and structure of the emails
themselves, and were going to look at the live emails I sent out as part of this
process, so I can explain why each section of the email is important.
Before we look at the emails, I just want to talk about another test I ran
alongside this 4 day flash sale, and this was all to do with delivering the
product itself.
With my 4-day flash sale I promoted one of my stand alone courses, The
Newsstand Bootcamp, which is a full self-contained course which details how
to use completely free cutting edge tools to publish a Newsstand App on the
iTunes App Store.
Now, all my courses are released first and foremost inside the private
members area of The Immediate Edge, which is where I teach my most
advanced techniques.
Once Ive run the course live inside The Edge I sometimes oer it separately
on a dedicated website, and this is the case with this particular course, which
is oered for sale at newsstandbootcamp.com

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However, Im all about testing dierent products, services, and tools, and Ive
been itching to try out Udemy as a delivery platform. The reason for this is
because I like to see what benefits I can get from using other tools and
services, especially if they allow me to deliver quickly and take away any
hassles.
In a nutshell, the main reasons I wanted to test Udemy were down to potential
increased trust, reduced cost of delivery, ease of delivery, and reduced
headaches.
Let me explain what I mean by each of those.
The cost of delivering a video based training course can get quite high, as you
have to set up your website with your training area, host all the videos on
servers that require decent bandwidth, and you also have to plug in all the
payment systems and provide a support desk for queries etc.
With Udemy they host all the videos for you, all you need to do is upload them
as part of the course creation process (reduction of costs), they have all the
website ready to go (ease of delivery), and they will also do all of the payment
transactions and customer support (reduced headaches).
As there are already thousands of courses on Udemy, with a strong base of
existing customers, hosting the course there could also potentially increase
the trust factor - as the prospect isnt just buying o a single person theyve
never met before.
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There is an obvious downside to using Udemy, in that they take 50% of each
sale to cover their costs for hosting, payment processing, etc.
However, this is a cost Im happy to pay, because after delivering video courses
over many years I know first hand how those costs can easily rack up, and how
dicult it can sometimes be (especially for the non techy folk) to setup and
run.
The other key thing that I wanted to test with Udemy is that they have the
ability to oer discounted coupons which can be limited by time and amount,
and the really good thing about the coupons is that if you use them then
Udemy only take 3% of the sale instead of 50%
So, thats why I wanted to test Udemy, and without going too much further
into detail, Id definitely recommend them if you want to get a video based
training product out to market quickly, because theyre very easy to set up and
get live.
Using Udemy also gave me a starting point for my promotion, because the
product I was oering was something that Ive had live both inside Immediate
Edge, and also on its own dedicated website for a while - so by putting it on
Udemy it gave me a focal point for the promotion.
Im going to now run through the email sequence, and Im going to detail the
emails themselves, and explain why each section is important.

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The Promotional Emails

Each of the emails contains pretty much the same core content, with only
small tweaks for each day to emphasise the scarcity elements. The core
content of the emails themselves are written in much the same way you would
to promote any product or service, and as youll see the emails are written to
try and hit those 5 obstacles we covered earlier.
Im going to screenshot sections of each email and then explain as I go along.
The subject line of the first email on day one said this:

The subject was of course designed to get the click to open, and it already sets
the scene for scarcity with the general wording.
Then comes one of the most important parts, as soon as the reader opens
theyre faced with a countdown timer, which basically screams scarcity:

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This particular countdown timer was a remote dynamic image from my server
which actually ticked down the seconds and minutes live on the screen inside
the email.
Right below the timer the email content kicks o with a brief outline of why
were writing the email, and introducing the flash sale:

As you can see, the opener is about why were sending the promotion
(launching on Udemy), details a benefit to the reader (new customers, build a
list), and introduces the time-limited discount. Now that weve introduced the
oer we go right into more benefits and why the course is important:

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As well as those initial benefits of what the reader will get and learn from the
course, we then go on to outline an enhanced benefit (business models to get
started and earning money), and we give our first call to action:

We then immediately follow on with an outline of the scarcity, detailing how

there are only 100 coupons available for the 51% discount, and that the link
will also expire in 4 days time (which is reinforced by the countdown timer at
the top of the email). We then follow up with another call to action:

As I said earlier, its important that your scarcity is 100% real, and that you end
your promotion when youve said. With Udemy this made it very easy for me,
because when you set up your discount coupon you select how many coupons
are available and can set an expiry date on them, so they automatically expire
when the number runs out or when the deadline is reached.

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The next paragraph goes back into what the reader will get from the course,
and tries to answer some barriers in the prospects mind, and again this is
followed up by a third call to action:

And then the final sign o is friendly, but once more outlines the scarcity
element of the situation:

Hopefully by reading that email breakdown youll see how weve tried to
address those 5 obstacles we talked about earlier, and as with any email
promotion the main focus is to pre-sell the reader and get them to click.
Once the reader has clicked through, the sales page should then follow on
from that pre-sell in the email and further build on the main points to try and
get the conversion.

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Lets look at the second email.

The subject line was aiming for curiosity:

The email again had the countdown timer at the top, but obviously the
number of days, hours, and minutes had decreased.
There were very few changes to the core content of the email, however, as this
was a follow up email the opening paragraphs go straight into the scarcity
elements and give a call to action straight away:

Its important to note that all of my four emails were written in advance of the
promotion being sent, but they were tweaked on the day they were sent to give
some real facts and figures. For example, paragraph two says a quarter of

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them have already been snapped up, and this was amended on the day to
reflect the amount of coupons that had actually been used up.
The main core of the email remained pretty much the same, outlining the
benefits of the course, and then once again prompting for the click with
another call to action:

The next scarcity paragraph was again tweaked on the day to reflect the
actual number of coupons that had used up and the remaining days left until
the end of the promotion, and then another call to action to get the click:

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And then the final section is identical to the first email:

As you can see, theres not a great deal of dierence to the first email, and as
youll see from emails 3 and 4, the main push is all around the dwindling
number of remaining coupons, and that time is running out.
Email three was scheduled to go out with around 24 hours to go, and had this
as its subject line:

Again, the subject line outlines that there is a time sensitive element to the
message, and once the reader opens the email they are again greeted by the
countdown, which is silently ticking down the seconds live on the screen to
create that sense of urgency.
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The opening paragraph this time sets a hard deadline to take action, and also
outlines that the discount might actually expire before them because there is
limited availability, and the call to action here is quite strong:

Again, the core content is identical, with no changes at all to the email copy:

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I have in the past added bonuses in at this point to make the oer even more
irresistible to the reader, and if youve got some that are relevant and of a
decent quality, then by all means add them into the mix.
The next paragraph has again been tweaked to reflect the number of coupons
that had been used and the impending deadline, and this was updated right
before it was sent out:

And once again, the final section is identical to the previous email:

NB: Ive run these types of flash sales plenty of times across many dierent
niches, and I find that the majority of sales come in the final few hours.
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The final email in the sequence is scheduled to go out in the last 15 or so hours
of the promotion (so it hits the email inbox with about 12 hours remaining
until the deadline), and the subject line is straight to the point:

I actually split test this subject line with one using the first name, so the
alternate said Dan - FINAL NOTICE, and the subject line with the first name
included got 18.24% more opens than the control. So, if you can add some
personalisation Id say its worthwhile doing :)
As with the other emails, the countdown timer is front and centre, but this
time there are plenty of zeros on it and not a lot of time left:

Incidentally, I used a plugin for this automatic dynamic timer image, but Im
working with one of my lead developers on putting something together for you
which will let you do this in your email campaigns. Once its ready and out of
testing Ill get in touch with you to let you get access :)

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The opening paragraphs now really hammer home the deadline, and that
there are a very limited number of coupons left, so the deal might expire
before the countdown reaches zero hour. There is also another strong call to
action, telling the reader to act quick before its too late:

Im not going to screenshot the core email content, because its still identical,
and the only change to the previous email is again in the second scarcity
paragraph which now says this:

Again, the amount was changed immediately prior to sending to reflect the
remaining coupon situation with the timeframe being highlighted. As with
the previous emails, the last paragraph and sign o are again exactly the same.

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As this entire coupon and discount process was automated at Udemy the
coupons indeed expired at midnight on the last day, which meant that if
anyone visited using the special link after the deadline they were greeted with
this message at the top of the screen:

And at the other end of the process inside the email the countdown timer has
been automatically replaced with this image:

I like this touch, because it not only shows that youre true to your word (i.e.
you dont use fake scarcity, and you stick to your promises), but it also lets
people know that theyve missed out, which conditions them to take action
more quickly next time you send out a time limited oer.
If I want to I could run this 4-day flash sale process again later on in the year,
and the only thing I need is an initial focal point for running it, and you could
literally just choose an event from the calendar to get started.

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For example:
To celebrate Independence Day, this 4th July were running a 4-day discount
flash sale...
Halloween is just 4 days away, and to celebrate were oering a terrifyingly
shocking 50% discount...
Christmas is a time of giving, and Id like to give something to you. For the next
4 days I want to give you half-o my...
Do you see how easy this is to get started?
You can run this on any product or service, in any niche or market, and as
youve seen from my email examples above, you can have this all set up
quickly and running in no time at all.
Scarcity is a powerful tactic, but you need to use it wisely.
If youre running 4-day flash sales every two weeks, then all youre doing is
conditioning your list to ignore your emails because theyll just think that
youll be oering the same deal again in a few weeks time.
And remember -never, ever use any form of fake scarcity. The damage you do
to your trust, reputation, and credibility really isnt worth the quick buck you
might make from the short term focus.
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What I Am Reading Right Now

The first chapter of this book really drives home
what ambition and determination are all about.
Dan Spivey had realised early in 2008 that the time
it took to make a trade, which was a round trip
between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the
Nasdaq Stock Exchange in Carteret, New Jersey
varied from 14 to 17 milliseconds.
A millisecond is one thousands of a second.
The traders who got the Golden Line (the 14 millisecond one) could place
trades faster that anyone else, and make more money by taking advantage of
the price discrepancies between the two exchanges.
Dan decided to build a faster line.
Now although it was only a distance of fifty miles that line had to go through a
mountain, under dozens of small towns (carving up the main street of each of
these), going through existing businesses all to keep the line as straight as
possible and shave a few milliseconds o Verizon's 14 millisecond line.

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This project was estimated to cost 300 million dollars and nearly everybody he
approached thought it would be impossible. But not Dan, he managed to get
the line built in secret using 240 dierent construction crews on budget, and
nearly on time.
That story in itself is worth reading the book for, but is only chapter one. The
rest of the book opens your eyes to how the financial world really works today.
High Frequency Trading was a BIG change and it happened quickly. I bet if
you think of the stock market you still think of hundreds of men in blazers
crowded into a room shouting at the top of their voices and holding up little
tickets to get a deal done.
They have gone the way of the dodo. Trading these days happens in a bunch
of black boxes running match making software connected to by hundreds
more servers in buildings physically close to the exchange.
People still sit at desks and trade but more often than not a bunch of these
trades are becoming automatic, handled by machines programmed to
manipulate the market by acting before a human could possibly do so, and
this is the story of Flash Boys.
It really is a fascinating read, and if you just want to broaden your knowledge
on how the financial world works today and how the little guy gets screwed
over, then have a read or download the audio book, you won't regret it as
Michael Lewis is an truly entertaining and engaging writer.
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Your Questions
I have had so many questions from you guys this month so I have put a bunch
of similar ones together to answer them. If I get a chance then I will put out a
special Q&A bulletin with more in a few weeks time.
But let's start with the first one.
This is from Keith B. in Wyoming, USA. How long does it take you to put
together The Raine Report each month?
I usually spend three days actually writing the content for the report
(including the Gold edition which topped 80 pages last month).
I tend to start as soon as I finish the previous months issue with building a
mind map of the key topics I would like to cover, then put that aside for a few
days and let it mull around my head a little whilst I do other work.
Over the next couple of weeks I will come back and add content to the mind
map to flesh it out a little until I am comfortable with what I am going to be
covering.
Then in a two to three day block I will just sit down and write the content as
long as I am in a writing mood.

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For example, last week I was supposed to start the report on Monday with the
aim for getting it out on Friday but was knocked out on Sunday with ManFlu
and really didn't feel better until Thursday. I tried to sit down to write over the
weekend but just couldn't get started so instead started it this (Tuesday)
morning with the aim of getting it out on Friday.
Unlike other writers I tend to edit as I go along and write the way I actually
speak rather than in a writing style, it makes the tone of my writing dierent to
other people's. It probably makes the job longer but I hate the editing process
more, I would rather get an article written in one go than revisiting it again
and again.
People write in a lot of dierent ways so take my method with a pinch of salt.
The key thing is figuring out when is your best time to write (mine is in the
mornings), and work out the best way to write.
Most people I know use the pomedoro method, which is to set a 20 minute
timer and just write whatever comes into your head then walk away and come
back later or the next day to do the edits.

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The next question mixes together and condenses a bunch of questions I have
received from a variety of you on The Overachiever Method.
Isn't the Overachiever System just like stealing other peoples content and
hard work?
The short answer is no.
The slightly longer answer is as follows...
The Overachiever System is about researching viable markets which are
already profitable, identifying advertising sources that generate a good ROI,
and being an intelligent marketer who goes where the money is.
I am not trying to teach you to steal things. You will be creating your own
version of the product, and your own sales page with your own video.
We are just modelling what works and taking most of the risk away.
When Henry Ford created the Model-T and built a huge production line to
manufacture the cars, he was taking a huge risk. People asked Why would we
ever need one of those?
But when his gamble paid o and the motor car became a must have item, the
competition that inevitably came along had significantly less risk and were

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able to innovate - because they knew there was a significant demand for the
product already.
Far too many people go after niches with little or no research, they put months
of hard work into creating products and sales pages, and then they go ahead
and launch - only to find there is not a large enough market, or that the market
they have gone after don't actually buy shit.
Can someone take legal action against me for teaching their methods?
Not really, think about a topic like Clicker Training which is a method used to
train dogs, there are dozens of books out there which teach the exact same
method just written in their own words.
How many Yoga books, or cooking books do you think are out there? What
about fishing, kite surfing, survival?
Even something very specific such as Dan Raines guide to walking a
tightrope wearing a Robin Hood costume (theres an image you will not easily
get out of your mind) are almost impossible to protect. As long as you dont
use my name you most certainly can write a book on walking a tightrope in
whatever costume takes your fancy, even a Robin Hood one.
So thats a couple of questions answered and I have condensed quite a few
into those two above.

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I will probably shoot you a Q&A update during June, but as always if you do
have any questions then email them to me at dan@danraine.com.
I do read every single one of them, it might take me a while to get back to you
personally, but I will.

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