CDC 5 Day 41

2a - 5a friday, logging hours for Thursday

02:00 - 05:00: OBJ.2.1c (16.5/25)

Guide to Storyboarding / Designing Slides in Long Videos

1. Take video script, put on Google Docs (if not already there)
    
2. Break it up into short slides - always go shorter than you need to.
   
   NOTE: Any pictures or other variables associated with the slides should have a different type of naming system, for example "photo a, photo b", DO NOT NUMBER to go with slide #s unless complete and final and even then not a great idea.  Better to write inside of the slide details "photo a".
   
   Note: skipping sentences will make editing in the slides MUCH easier since it wont be as awkward if the editing isn't PERFECT down to the millisecond.
    
3. Title slide based on which effect, theme, etc you will use and make each title a HEADING.  Do not manually number.
    
4. Use "Add-on" table of contents to auto number the slide titles.  This way, if you add as you go, you don't have to renumber dozens or hundreds of slides every time.
    
5. Once complete and final, make the slides using whatever photo or video editor and name each slide with its associated number.
   
   NOTE: If you add content later, either make a separate file for "add on slides" and do a whole separate thing for them, or you will have to re-number all slide files.  Add on slides are assumed to fit inbetween slides, so if there's 3 slides adding between 13 and 14, you could simply note that in the file for the adds ("addon slides 1-3 fit after original slide 13")
   
   NOTE: With animoto, it may help to time out all the slides very precisely ahead of time and include the time to run on the slides sheet.  Then, render all the slides at once, and cut them into the video.  This should save A LOT of time vs. rendering in one by one.
    
6. Add slides to video editor and your done - since they are named in a numbered order, the video will be nice and organized and easier to edit.
   
   NOTE: As you add, jot down which slides are awkward, and what you'd change to fix them, but save this in the editing notes to be fixed in a separate batch of slides.
    
7. Once all slides are edited in, repeat steps 5-6 with the batch of edited slides, so you are making all edits in batches.  Do this more than once if needed.
    
8. Final touches - now is the only time you should edit and render in single slides.

New Tag / Label

FYI, new tag:
HTCI = How To Cure Insomnia = Insomnia area of ROARS at large.

Use this for listing ideas on this blog related to the product development or business development moving forward.

Content Ideas

Slogan (maybe for the news letter): Insomnia advice that is so good it will put you to sleep.

5th Cliff Hanger technique: Hypnosis

Easier than meditation since it's guided, and designed to slow your brain down to the point of sleep.  Then, "more on this at the end of the video, as I actually have a guided hypnosis i want to share with you."

Then, AFTER the benefits, throw in a "$20-40 value.. free" of your moms hypnosis cd, included with the cure insomnia series.  Offer her $5 royalty per sale to include it with my product.  Keep them as separate products, but they get hers when they buy mine.

Google Apps Script

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/

This is significant.  You can add code to any google docs to make it do whatever you want.

Even MAIL MERGING, like with M$ Word -> Outlook.

Whatever you can think of, someone's probably already coded it, you'd just need to find that code and copy and paste.

This is a big insight that will serve me well down the road.

Using your wakeup alarm to fall asleep

You know how the easiest time to fall asleep is in the morning right after you hit snooze on your alarm?

What if you could create that feeling when you actually needed it the most?

This concept goes along the lines of "trying to stay awake" to fall asleep... but taking it to an entirely more insane level.

If you don't fall asleep within 30 min, trying to stay in bed so it will happen is setting yourself up for failure anyways, so don't let that happen.  What kind of sleep would you get anyways?  Even if it does happen, it'll be light, fragmented sleep, and you'll be awake 2 hrs later and even more miserable.

Instead, put into practice a meditation or other tactic that you need to practice, and instead of trying to fall asleep... or even trying to stay awake, but really, subconsciously, STILL trying to fall asleep whether you realize that's what you're really wanting or not... go to the next level and set an actual alarm to go off at the end of your practice.

If trying to stay awake really puts you to sleep, then setting an alarm is the ultimate way to set yourself straight that staying awake is really the goal.

This requires 2 goals to be achieved - one within the timer, and one to follow the timer.  For me, it's to have a legit meditation session, and the timer is the way to dedicate as much as possible into a 5, 10, or 15 min integral and be interrupted at the end to see if I achieved the goal or ended up getting lost in my head.  

The SECOND goal of a SECOND, NON-TIMED (or second timed, third non-timed... etc.. END goal is non-timed) practice to follow up the main one.  You know, so I'm both (A) Not going to go back to trying to fall asleep and (B) So that I also don't keep getting woken up by alarms all night.

When I legitimately make the mediation my goal and set a 5 min alarm, then something *MAGICAL* happens.

I get the EARLY MORNING SNOOZE AFFECT on my ability to fall asleep.  When the alarm goes off and it's on to the second goal, I feel like I'm snoozing the alarm a little bit.

If it doesn't, that's good too - it means I'm achieving my goal of staying awake.  Which means the human nature is going to kick in and start fighting me soon - I just need to set another alarm or two to trigger it.

Q4 2016 PTC Day 15

6p - 7p

Obj 1.4: 1/4 -- Top 10 Insomnia Remedies / Item 3 of home page.

Up first: Do I want top 10 I/R or something else?

The Fate of Top 10 Insomnia Remedies

Is not on my website.

Here's the thing -- I had a great idea making it a separate website, because the kind of traffic that is searching for "quick insomnia remedy" isn't the same kind of traffic looking for a deep, permanent cure to chronic insomnia.  They are the 1/4 that is more common.

Of those 1/4, there's 3 kinds of insomniacs:

1. The person who's having trouble sleeping right now, but this isn't normally a big deal... it's honestly not THAT big of a deal right now.
• This guy isn't going to buy anything, and makes up at least half of my traffic.
2. The person who's been having a lot of trouble sleeping recently and is so frustrated that they are ready to buy something that'll get this problem solved in a snap
• This guy's ready to buy sleeptracks and other affiliate offers that can be sold here.  Uncommonly, some of these guys, maybe even just out of curiosity, can be reeled in to my content at the remedies stage and will buy the basic product.
3. The 1/10... the serious, chronic insomnia who's looking for a new fix to help them out.
• These insomniacs are used to spending money, and may as well help me out buy buying some affiliate stuff.  They might even come back a few times and buy everything... eventually even my product... which should then ultimately result in their purchase of mastery.

Why separate them?  Wouldn't it be better to drive ALL traffic back to my site so I make more sales that actually matter????

This is a very good question, and it's worth a lot of thought:

KEEP ON 1 SITE	MAKE 2 SITES
After all, more than half my keywords, and certainly the VAST MAJORITY of the insomnia traffic lies in the "remedies" set of keywords, and I want AS MUCH TRAFFIC AS I CAN GET.	These are two entirely different markets -- so any selling worth while in the remedies market is going to be far more powerful and credible on a remedies based website, which means more affiliate commissions.
It's always going to be MUCH HARDER to get them to jump through hoops like 1 site to another vs. wandering around my website and stumbling into my product.	More qualified traffic to howtocureinsomnia.com, which means better SEO performance on my core site and will improve everything else I do with regards to SEO.
More anchor links to 1 site means building authority faster at one site and roping in more traffic with a google listing like:   How To Cure Insomnia          -Top 10 Insomnia Remedies	2 SEO-AUTHORITY-SITES supporting each other giving eachother credibility will be naturally much better for SEO building long term.
One Strong Weapon to approach the market, potential partner sites, etc.	Two Weapons for more versaltility, sneaky promotions, etc.

Keep working on this... although I'm leaning towards two sites.  Short term, it's probably a bad idea, as I would be able to mine the max traffic to 1 site easier.  Of course, I can always do it for a little while to howtocureinsomnia.com/top10insomniaremedies anyways... but it'll suck when I have to remove all internal links going to that page to hide the fact that my top10 site is a fraud.  But that will work.

Long term, there just needs to be 2 sites just because it's that much more legit.  That way I can forge relationships from 2 different angles, sell affiliate products with authority, have 2 SEO-AUTHORITY-SITES supporting eachother, etc.... all natural reasoning and logic points to this.

ONE THING DOES NEED TO BE SAID -- IN THE PAST, TOP 10 HAS BLATANTLY PROMOTED HOWTOCURE.  THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED NEXT TIME AROUND, IT HAS TO BE WAAY SNEAKY.

So plan is:
2017 -- all traffic and links to howtocureinsomnia.com (home or /top10insomniaremedies)
2018+ -- start focusing all traffic building in the remedies arena to top10insomniaremedies.com

ALSO, this will let me start an alter-ego that can go back into the forums that mr. cahoon posted in and be like "man, cahoon, what 'choo talking about?  top10ir.com dawg, just go there!"  So I can hit all the familiar places AGAIN, and in theory I'll have all that saved (i can at least trace my own backlinks) so it'll be really fast driving all these links since i'll have done it already!!

Anyways... EITHER WAY, the top 10 list does NOT belong on the home page.  This is not the place to go sending people to 10 different websites / product pages / etc... I want my home page to actually be more focused on "How to CURE insomnia."  Top 10 here is kind of a sell out.

SLEEP TIPS, however, are HUGE value for the home page.  That catches all the category 1 & 2 insomniacs who are about to leave the site but then go "Oh shit, what's this?  THERE WE GO!"

And having a "featured product" high commission sleep tracks thing going on would be pretttty sweet.

SO, NEW ORDER:
1. video
2. TIO
3. Sleep tips
4. Product Review: SleepTracks
5. Blog
6. About James Cahoon

Yes, I know you want your stupid FAQ.  There's no reason to do that tho... it's just clogging up space, you have no value proposition for it or real purpose.  Toss 'er out now.

Q3 PTC Day 30

6p - 7:30p

Dad's idea review then onto editing part 2.

Dad's email:

There is a paradox about all this that is really difficult to overcome.  That is they already have read many claims that say " I have the one and only final solution that they are looking for."  Reminding them of the fact only makes it more unlikely that they will be willing to try your cure.

Other wise good quality personable and genuine. 

My Reply -- "Handle this rebuttal right away":

In the long version i say things like about "a solution taylored to your personal problems" that i believe we put in to address this.\

Thinking I need to say early on "This isn't some balony 1 size fits all solution like other things you've probably seen before, but it is an idea you need to know about if you're serious about fixing your insomnia." or something like that.

Need to handle that rebuttal right away.  At the same time, I have to thing AIDA (Attention -> Interest -> Decision/Desire -> Action) -- I have to catch their attention

So it would start:

"Hi, my name is James Cahoon and I run the website HowToCureInsomnia.com, and unlike other things you've seen this website isn't about some phony magic solution that'll fix everything for you.  That being said, if you're serious about fixing your insomnia, you need to know some fundamental causes of it, and I would like share a new breakthrough idea with you that you’ve never heard about before."

----

For now, I need to sleep on it.

I definitely want to handle this right away, but you can't argue with hard #'s.  The #'s, the "people" if you will,  have spoken.  Here is the path PROVEN successful through years of data:

“At Last! You Can Fall Asleep When Needed — Even If You’ve Already Tried The Doctor, Pills, & Other Useless Remedies!”
I’ll show you step-by-step how to stop your insomnia - no matter how hard you’ve tried before.

So, my 2% sales conversion ratio comes from telling people exactly that -- "I have the one solution" -- and dad wouldn't buy it, but hey, dad is a lot smarter, a lot more cautious, and also isn't suffering from dehabilitating insomnia to the point where he's practically forced to listen to crazies like me express their amazing "secret" solutions.

I've got to test with this first... and keep in mind:

1. This is why, within a couple of minutes, I actually SHARE what the solution is all about -- that's where I go from "showoff liar" to "this might be for real"

2. I address it in the long version of the video.

In conclusion...

-DO follow dad's advice and try to address this rebuttal in the first 10 seconds.
-DON'T scrap the "secret magic" formula that's proven successful.  This stuff WORKS, and it's PROVEN.  What I need is TRAFFIC, not a new entirely different marketing strategy.

REFINED:

"Hi, my name is James Cahoon and I run the website HowToCureInsomnia.com, and unlike other things you've seen this isn't some phony magic solution that'll fix everything for you.  That being said, isn't it time you got some information that gets down to the fundamentals about how insomnia ACTUALLY works?"

The rest of the video is good... but this first line... well... it is PARAMOUNT... and an easy fix at this point.  So I've shared the above with dad and I will give this 24 hours for some feedback.  In the mean time, I have a lot of work to do.