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Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 1 of 45
Internet Marketing Success Notes
LFMpire Workshops, BRISTOL, UK
8th - 10th May 2009
Presenters & Panel
Donna Fox
Robert Puddy
Soren Jordansen
Justin Brooke
Tahir Shah
Alex Mandossian
Amit Mehta
Martin Avis
http://www.whyshebuys.com
http://www.launchformulamarketing.com
http://sorenjordansen.com
http://www.sitefling.com
http://www.easilyanswered.com
http://www.teleseminarsecrets.com
http://www.ppcclassroom.com
http://www.kickstartdaily.com
Editor
Alex Poole
http://www.alex-poole.com
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Table of Contents
Editor's Introduction..........................................................................................3
Fri AM – Donna Fox – http://www.whyshebuys.com...............................................4
Fri AM – Tahir Shah – http://www.easilyanswered.com...........................................7
Fri PM – Hot Seat..............................................................................................9
Fri PM – Justin Brooke – http://www.sitefling.com...............................................10
Sat AM – Donna Fox – http://www.whyshebuys.com............................................14
Sat AM – Soren Jordansen – http://sorenjordansen.com.......................................18
Sat PM – Robert Puddy - http://www.launchformulamarketing.com........................23
Sat PM – Amit Mehta - http://www.ppcclassroom.com..........................................24
Sun AM – Alex Mandossian - http://www.teleseminarsecrets.com .........................27
Sun AM – Donna Fox - http://www.whyshebuys.com............................................33
Sun AM – Robert Puddy - http://www.launchformulamarketing.com.......................34
Sun PM – Panel...............................................................................................41
Conclusion – Alex Poole – http://www.alex-poole.com..........................................45
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Editor's Introduction
On 8th May 2009, 80 Internet entrepreneurs with experience ranging from “guru” to
total beginner, sat down in a meeting room in the Holiday Inn, Filton, Bristol for three
intensive days of presentations, workshops and networking.
The event was designed to cut through the confusion and information overload that
exists within Internet Marketing, and to focus on two primary strategies that anyone
needs to master in order to be successful on the Internet:
1. Generating traffic to your website.
2. Converting that traffic into buyers.
I attended every presentation over the weekend and, determined to wring maximum
value from each and avoid missing the “golden nuggets” with which the speakers
peppered their presentations, took a huge amount of notes!
This report is my “type-up” of those notes. I have endeavoured to be as accurate as
possible in quoting the speakers. I've added a few of my own comments where
appropriate – these are clearly marked “editor's note.”
There was a lot of information to take on board over the three days, and this
document reflects that. Not all the strategies and tactics discussed may be directly
relevant to your business.
When evaluating the information below, ask yourself one simple question:
“Is this the quickest and simplest way of adding to my bottom line?”
If the answer is yes, take immediate action to put the information to work. If the
answer is no, move on. Remember there are only two strategies to master:
1. Generate traffic to your website.
2. Convert that traffic into buyers.
Anything that doesn't fall into one of these categories is just a distraction.
I hope you find this report useful, and profitable!
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Fri AM – Donna Fox – http://www.whyshebuys.com
The 4 pillars of Internet Marketing
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Product (you should have many.)
Prospects (you need as many as possible.)
Persuasion (Donna prefers the term “seduce”, but that doesn't start with a P)
Process (you should set one up so you spend as much time as possible on
profitable activities.)
Donna then looked at the classic “sales funnel” analogy and said she didn't like it for
the following reasons:
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It only has one entry point, (there should be multiple ways for people to
become your prospects and customers.)
It suggests “incremental” sales, (in fact, some people might want to jump
straight to your high value products, bypassing the ubiquitous $27 ebook.)
There's a hole at the bottom of the funnel!
Instead of a funnel, Donna prefers the analogy of a target (she used a graphic of a
dart board.)
With this model:
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Every product in your portfolio is an entry point.
Every product allows your prospects and customers to move laterally around
your portfolio, or to move deeper into the (higher ticket) centre of the target.
Whilst we all want more prospects, understand that many more suspects will visit
your site than prospects. You can identify a suspect from checking your analytics, (you
do have Google Analytics or similar installed on all your sites, don't you?)
Prospects spend time on your site. Suspects tend to leave (“bounce”,) within 10
seconds.
Incidentally, Soren Jordansen spoke on Saturday morning about how to monetize the
“suspects.”
If you must use the funnel analogy, flip it upside down. As customers rise towards the
thin end of the funnel they are presented with products which:
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Are delivered in a more intimate fashion (video, audio, rising to full personal
coaching.)
Are more detailed.
Have more “done for you,” (this was a recurring theme of the weekend for me:
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people don't want to learn to fish – they want to visit a fish restaurant where
the fish is served with a fine wine and exquisitely prepared vegetables, on a
silver platter.)
Involve a higher investment – ie more money.
Donna recommended you outsource the low-priced products to save more time for
more profitable activities. Private Label Rights (PLR) products are an excellent source
of content that can easily and quickly be customised by an outsourced ghostwriter.
The world (and the Internet,) is a large place – it doesn't matter if someone else is
selling essentially the same ebook as you.
Instead of concentrating on low ticket products, start by offering a workshop.
Why start with a workshop?
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It only takes a small number of sales for a high-ticket workshop to make a
large profit.
It is as easy – if not easier - to sell 10 tickets to a high priced workshop than it
is to sell 1000 low-priced ebooks.
It requires considerably less web traffic to do this.
New marketers who write an ebook run the risk of pouring all their knowledge
into it, effectively making their higher-priced products redundant. Why would
you spend $1000s on coaching when all the information you need is in a $27
ebook?
You can video a workshop and “chop & swap” the content into many formats
like:
◦ Video.
◦ Audio.
◦ Transcription.
◦ (Editor's note: on Sunday morning, Alex Mandossian detailed a plethora of
ways to re-purpose recorded teleseminar audio content, all of which are just
as relevant to workshop content.)
Make your prospects' journey through your portfolio as simple as possible for them –
think of a “greased chute” instead of a funnel!
Both Robert Puddy and Soren Jordansen spoke later in the weekend about the joy of
seeing integration marketing in powerful action – where a prospect joins a free site,
buys all the upsells, clicks through to a partner's site, buys all their upsells, and so on
and on. Soren said it was “a wonderful thing to watch!”
You should customise at least one PLR product each month. If you choose not to rewrite and edit the product much, do at least change resource links to your affiliate
links. Most people don't even bother to do this!
When the ebook sells well you know the market / subject is a winner. Then you can go
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deeper, (with related products,) and wider, (into related markets.)
A member of the audience then asked how to deal with the problem that Amazon, for
example, has different sites in the US and UK, (and affiliate links to one do not
transfer affiliate credit to the other.) Martin Avis (http://www.kickstartdaily.com) said
that you could link to a script which directed them to the appropriate merchant's site
based on their country, (using the appropriate affiliate link, naturally.)
Editor's note: These scripts do this:
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Maxmind GeoLite City: http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity
Geo Targeter Pro (requires no coding) http://www.geotargeterpro.com
To round off the introduction, Donna quoted Mike Filsaime as saying “Customers are
like a porcupine on heat. When they're ready, they're ready – but only for 15 minutes
a year!” When someone has decided they're ready to find out more about a subject,
they will, in a short space of time, go on a spending spree, buying everything they can
find related to that subject. When this happens it is great, but be aware that – as with
the porcupine's love life - this might only happen for a very short space of time every
year!
You need to catch the customer when they're “hot.”
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Fri AM – Tahir Shah – http://www.easilyanswered.com
The key principles of success:
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Successful people are superb decision makers.
◦ A person's ability to make decisions is directly proportional to how much
they trust themselves.
◦ Make a decision – even the potentially wrong one – but nevertheless be
decisive.
Successful people take action. (The biggest killer of action is indecision.)
Successful people understand you can't change someone else's mind but you
can help them to chance their own mind.
Successful people understand “telling isn't selling.”
Successful people understand that “if I say it, they can doubt me, but if they
say it, its the truth.”
Recommended reading: “How to master the art of selling” by Tom Hopkins.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Master-Art-Selling-Hopkins/dp/0586058966
In sales copy/presentation:
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Use “tie down” phrases such as “don't you,” “can't you,” and “isn't it.”
Elicit agreement, transfer ownership to the customer and infer without
preaching:
◦ eg. “Bob, quality is important isn't it?”
Avoid “say no” questions like the ubiquitous “can I help you?” when you walk
into a shop.
Instead, ask “say yes” questions - “tie downs” that require the answer “yes”:
◦ eg. “You expect good value don't you?”
Use “link words”:
◦ “When you (do something) then you'll (think something) because
(something)”:
◦ “When you visit our site then you'll love our product because its excellent
value.”
Open-ended questions are dangerous, because you might not get the answer
you want:
◦ Bad: “What will this do for your business?” (er, I don't know!)
Instead provide options with a clear winner:
◦ Good: “What will this do for your business? Increase or decrease your
sales?”
List building
Tahir starting building his list by advertising in Abbi Drew's DEMC ezine (then a list of
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40,000 with a solo mailing cost of $300).
Editor's note: This list now has more than 50,000 members.
You can still book a solo mailing for $300: http://www.demc.com/solo.html
As soon as he found the list responsive and the ads profitable, he booked in bulk and
asked for - and received - a discount. “Always ask for a discount,” said Tahir. “The
worst that will happen is they say no.” He sent this traffic to a squeeze page with a
compelling “can't say no” offer. Subscribers were routed through to a One Time Offer
(OTO) to purchase a $37 resell rights product. Not only was he building his list, but
the process was self-liquidating (ie, it paid for itself,) through subscribers purchasing
the OTO.
Squeeze pages need to:
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Have a clear unequivocal path to the desired action (the sign-up.)
Contain a seriously compelling “can't say no” offer.
Have a strong privacy guarantee.
Tahir demonstrated this concept by having a member of the audience pick a card,
which turned out to be the card Tahir had pre-selected. He achieved this by asking the
right questions which led the test subject to his desired action – in this case, picking
the Ace of Hearts.
Editor's note: Eric Graham “The Conversion Doctor,” (http://conversiondoctor.com,)
tested many different wordings of a privacy guarantee recently and found that ones
that did not mention the word “spam” performed consistently better. This, he thought,
was because reading the word “spam” introduced doubt into the prospect's mind.
Better, instead, to mention just the positive aspects of the guarantee - “your privacy is
important to us,” without the usual negative, “we hate spam as much as you do.”)
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Fri PM – Hot Seat
The panel were asked to critique http://www.alternative-healthzine.com
The site-owner explained that his ratio of conversions to subscribers was poor, and the
panel were asked to suggest how it could be improved.
Suggestions included:
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Show the “please subscribe” popup every time (don't put it on a cookie so it
only shows on the first visit!)
The links on the LH side were distracting to the key desired action – ie users
would click around the site instead of subscribing.
Conversely, the links and quality content were responsible for some good
Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) positions in Google. Justin Brooke
cautioned that removing the links would probably be detrimental to the site's
SERPs
◦ (Editor's note: CSS absolute-positioning could be used here to keep the
HTML flow of the site pretty much unchanged, whilst moving the links
“below the fold” of the page, and hence creating less distraction to draw the
visitor away from opting-in, whilst keeping the SERPs positions unaffected.)
Tests had proven that the optimum number of subscription forms on a site is 1
– no more. It might be worth removing the opt-in box from the RH side of the
site and just using the (interstitial) popup.
The wording of “6 free health reports” was a little vague and did nothing to
promote desire in the visitor's mind. What could the reports do for them? Some
more specific copy could be used to make the reports more desirable and
increase conversions.
The site could be transformed into a membership site. Being a “member” is
psychologically more powerful than “being on a list.”
Monetize the signups by placing ads on the “thankyou for subscribing” page –
the user has just made a commitment, (by entering their name and email
address,) which makes this an optimum time to show them a compelling
related offer.
Editor's note: In fact all the monetization and integration techniques that Soren
Jordansen discussed on Saturday could be used to good effect on this site.
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Fri PM – Justin Brooke – http://www.sitefling.com
The secret to multiple high Google SERPs rankings?
Blog Every Day!
Google loves blogs – WordPress specifically – and especially ones where content is
updated frequently and regularly.
Google knows how long you've bought your domain name for, (they're a domain
registrar in their own right,) and so it is worth buying domains for at least 5 years, not
less. This shows Google that you're “in it for the long haul,” and are unlikely to be
using the domain as a “throwaway” SE spam site. This increases Google's trust in your
site and is likely to lead to higher rankings.
Justin's recipe for multiple top 10 positions
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1 x 500 word article.
1 MP3.
1 AVI (video.)
1 toolbar or other .exe file.
All with ONE key phrase.
How?
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Outsource the creation of the article.
Have someone read it out to create the MP3.
Create a video using the MP3 as the soundtrack along with some slides.
◦ (Editor's note: perhaps using http://www.animoto.com would be a good
option here.)
Use http://www.conduit.com to create the toolbar.
Keyword Research
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Use the free Google Adwords keyword research tool at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to identify good key
phrases to target.
Choose lower volume keywords which are:
◦ Likely to be typed in by “buyers” not “browsers.”
◦ Less difficult to rank for.
◦ Example: choose “tomato growing kit” with 170 searches per month vs.
“tomato growing” with 40,000 searches per month.
Use the keyword difficulty tool at http://www.seologs.com to assess how
difficult it will be to rank for the chosen key phrase.
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◦ If the keyword difficulty is 40/100 or below, it will be easy to rank.
◦ Example: “hydroponic tomato growing” has a difficulty of 27, which means it
will be easy to rank for this keyword.
Search http://www.Google.com for the chosen key phrase. If the number of
results when you enter the phrase “in quotes” is less than 10,000 it will be easy
to rank.
Also check the key phrase without quotes. If there are many established and
trusted sites, (such as .gov sites, .edu sites and other big web properties like
http://www.about.com,) in the top 10, they will be difficult or impossible to
beat.
Content Submission
Submit the article or other media (depending on the type of site,) to the following
Web 2.0 properties :
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http://hubpages.com
http://www.zimbio.com
http://digg.com
http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.podcastalley.com
http://www.squidoo.com
http://www.tumblr.com
http://www.dailymotion.com
http://www.blogger.com
http://www.weebly.com
http://wordpress.com
◦ (Editor's note: Howie Schwartz recommends a similar process but includes
http://www.wetpaint.com on his list. He believes Web 2.0 sites that show
Google Adsense ads are more likely to rank well, though of course Google
strongly deny this link! Squidoo stopped showing adsense some while ago,
and circumstantial evidence suggests Squidoo lenses don't rank as well as
they used to. Hubpages have also stopped showing Adsense, whilst Wetpaint
still does so.)
◦ For further information on leveraging the power of Web 2.0 properties,
download Jon Merrick's excellent resource which, at the time of writing, is
available free-of-charge:
> Social Bookmarking Exposed
For each submission, be sure the key phrase you've chosen is included in the following
places:
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URL – get the closest to the keywords you can.
◦ Example: http://www.squidoo.com/tomato-growing
Put the keywords in the title tag.
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Put the keywords in the sub-title(s).
Put the keywords in the content of the article with a keyword density of around
3%. Certainly no higher than 5%.
Place keyword-laden links in the article, but just 3 links in a 500-word article.
◦ Example, good: <a href=”http://yoursite.com/”>tomato growing kit</a>
◦ Example, bad: <a href=”http://yoursite.com/”>click here</a> for tomato
growing kits
The keywords should form the filename for the video, audio etc:
◦ Example: tomato-growing-kit.exe, tomato-growing-kit.mp3 etc.
Don't worry about re-writing the articles for different sites. The “duplicate content
penalty” is only an issue where the same content appears more than once on the
same domain.
Use the following tools to speed up the submission process:
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http://articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com for article submissions.
http://www.trafficgeyser.com for video submissions.
◦ (Editor's note: a free alternative recommended by Jeff Johnson is
http://www.tubemogul.com)
http://www.extralabs.net/rss-submit.htm
http://www.develab.net (Promosoft software submitter.)
◦ Put the keywords in the “company name” field.
◦ (Editor's note: you could create the PAD file with
http://www.padgenerator.com/ )
Editor's note: for more information about creating software and submitting it to drive
traffic, see Chris Rempel's “Lazy Marketer” product at:
http://www.thelazymarketer.com
Domain extensions:
• Don't bother with a .info – They're cheap and Google knows this!
• Always try to get the .com first and foremost.
• .net is OK too.
Outsourcing
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Hire 1 writer for every 2 submitters.
Consider outsourcing to the Phillipines, where wages can be as low as $200 per
month
Advertise in:
◦ http://manila.craigslist.com.ph
◦ http://www.bestjobs.ph
◦ http://ph.jobstreet.com
Allow average and poor applicants to filter themselves out by advertising for
“superstar assistants,” and saying something along the lines of “don't even
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bother to apply unless you're an over-achiever and can prove it.”
Ask applicants to complete a short test project – unpaid. If they won't prove
themselves with an unpaid project, they don't really want to the job anyway!
◦ Editor's note: Craigslist doesn't allow the posting of “unpaid” jobs so be
careful with your advertisement wording around this.
Train staff with online video:
◦ http://www.jingproject.com
◦ http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
◦ (Editor's note: another free alternative: http://camstudio.org )
If you start to employ many outsourcers, consider employing a project manager
so you can manage one person instead of a whole team.
Get the staff to “sign in” every morning by simply logging onto Skype (or other
Instant Messaging service.)
Don't give the staff the “full picture” of what you're doing – the bright ones will
take the model and do it for themselves instead! - Give them enough
information for them to complete their pieces of the puzzle, but no more.
Workflow
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Project Manager (or you,) assigns a keyword to the writer for them to write an
article about.
Writer creates article.
Writer creates the audio and video from the article and hands over to submitter
2.
Submitter 2 submits media using Traffic Geyser.
(Meanwhile,) Submitter 1 creates and submits the .exe file (toolbar or other
application.)
Submitter 1 bookmarks the web 2.0 properties using
http://www.socialmarker.com
Submitter 1 submits the article to the article directories.
Project Manager checks the work is complete.
Web2.0 promotion
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RSS submission and aggregation sites (there are 1000s of them!)
http://shoutwire.com
http://digg.com
http://www.mixx.com
Any other sites as provided by http://www.socialmarker.com
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Sat AM – Donna Fox – http://www.whyshebuys.com
Donna spoke about “persuasion” this morning, firstly saying she preferred the term
“seduction.”
Recommended reading: “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Dr Robert
Cialdini:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-RobertCialdini/dp/006124189X
Robert Cialdini's 6 principles of persuasion:
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(1) Reciprocity - give first – whether it be a free report, video or other high
quality valuable content. If you give the customer more than they expected, (by
way of unexpected bonuses etc,) they will feel indebted to you and will buy
more from you.
◦ Example: In a restaurant, it was found that waiters who gave one mint per
diner when they delivered the bill, consistently received a more generous tip
that those that did not. However, waiters who gave one mint per diner, then
started to walk away, then turned around and gave another mint per diner,
saying something like “because you're such great customers,” received a
considerably more generous tip again. They had used the law of
reciprocity in their favour.
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(2) Commitment and Consistency (“baby steps”.) - As with dating, (we don't
meet someone in a bar then ask them to marry us immediately!) Taking
customers through a series of small steps to reach a desired outcome is more
likely to achieve that desired outcome than going straight for the “wedding,”
(the high ticket coaching program etc.)
◦ Example: Political canvassers who asked voters to place a large sign on their
lawn were usually rejected. When the canvassers took the voters through a
series of more granular “baby steps” - first giving them a leaflet, requesting
a small donation, then a window poster, then, finally, the lawn sign, were a
lot more successful.
◦ With this principle, Donna reiterated the point that Tahir Shah had made on
Friday, of the need to phrase questions to elicit a “yes”.
▪ Example: Instead of saying “can I help you grow your business?” you
might instead say, “You'd like to grow your business, wouldn't you?”
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(3) Social Proof – Testimonials are extremely important – people like to do
what others do. Similarly a “units sold” countdown on a sales page is powerful,
as long as it does actually count down! A “buy within the next 5 minutes and
get a freebie / discount,” statement needs to work like it says – in other words
it does actually count down and if you refresh the page it doesn't start again.
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(Editor's note: this is simple to do with a cookie and some javascript.)
◦ Example: Donna used 2 hilarious examples.
▪ Next time you're in an elevator, she said, try facing the back, or even
sitting on the floor! See how many people follow suit.
▪ Next time you're in a city, try looking up, (at nothing,) and subtly
observe how many others do the same.
◦ Editor's note: this reminds me, (although its not totally related,) of the
“100th Monkey” story which you can read here:
http://www.businessperformancecoaching.co.uk/articles/monkey.html
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(4) Liking – people must like and feel affinity towards you and your product.
Donna said “People like people who like them.” This is human nature. Its
not easy to show liking for people you've never met through a web page, but it
is easy to show respect for the reader and to show that you “like,” (or respect,
or value,) their problems. That's why people buy products – to “scratch itches,”
or solve problems. If you can show (non-judgementally,) that you
understand their problems, then they will feel affinity towards you.
◦ Furthermore, people like to see pictures of, and testimonials from, people
like them. If you're selling an internet marketing product, for example, do
you have testimonials from seniors, single mothers, people of races other
than Caucasian etc? People want to see that people like them have had
success with your product.
◦ Think diverse and wide - If you're selling a skin care product for example, is
there a picture of a man somewhere? Men buy skincare products too!
◦ Editor's note: When I used to work for a marketing agency, we proved this
to be true. On a squeeze page for a double glazing site which had one
picture of a typical white middle class family with 2 children, we added
pictures of older people and people of other racial origins. Nothing else was
changed. Conversion immediately increased by, (if I remember correctly,)
around 6%!
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(5) Authority – people like to learn, and purchase products and services, from
the expert. Are you an authority in your market? If not, can you interview one?
Can you obtain a testimonial from one?
◦ Would you buy an Internet Marketing product from someone who admitted
they'd never made a penny online?
◦ Would you buy a weight-loss product from an obese person?
◦ Would you buy a “how to quit smoking” product from a 40-a-day chain
smoker?!
◦ Sometimes its hard to be seen as an authority – you can use surveys to
appear authoritative – (“9/10 respondents said this was important to them”
- you might have only asked 10 people!)
◦ Editor's note: one well-known and successful marketer, (who shall remain
nameless,) said to me over the weekend, “faking it 'til you make it is
downright wrong, but you can use clever wording to sound
authoritative. If you haven't made a million dollars online with a product,
talk about how others have, using the same techniques as you're selling.
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'Borrow' their authority.”
▪ This makes a lot of sense. For example, how many sales letters written
by people other than John Reese and Jeff Walker talk about John Reese's
famous “million dollar day” when he released the original Traffic Secrets
(http://trafficsecrets.com/)? They're borrowing a little of John's authority
by associating themselves, (and their product,) with his success.
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(6) Scarcity – people will naturally put things off. Scarcity will “scare” them
into taking immediate action. There are three types of scarcity:
◦ Limited number, (be careful with this one with digital products; most people
aren't stupid!)
◦ Limited time (“This offer will expire at midnight..”)
◦ Price (“Only 5 available at this introductory price.”)
▪ The nickel script (http://www.nickelscript.com/ ) allows marketers to sell
a product which increases in price every time a sale is made. This is
strong driver for a visitor to “buy now” in order to lock in the best price
for themselves.
◦ Guard your credibility carefully – if your “offer” didn't expire at midnight,
people will see that you're “playing the game,” and not take your scarcity
plays seriously next time.
The next 3 principles were not from Dr Cialdini, (who is an offline specialist, not an
Internet Marketer,) but by Donna.
The 3 further principles of persuasion specifically in an online environment are:
•
(7) A charismatic leader / Guru - How many people follow “gurus” in
different fields?
◦ The “guru” doesn't even have to be a person – Twitter is a good example of
where the brand is the guru!
•
(8) A “secret” language – every field has its own language – Internet
Marketing is an obvious example, with our autoresponders, OTOs, SEO, PPC,
FTP, HTML and PHP etc. Being “in the know” about niche terms makes people
feel like they “belong.”
◦ Editor's note: My wife is a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT,) which is a
Profession Allied to Medicine (PAM.) She works with Adults with Learning
Difficulties (ALD.) She's currently getting her record of Continuous
Professional Development (CPD) up-to-date. My point? Every walk of life has
its own exclusive terminology which helps the people who are “in” feel like
they belong, and also helps keeps the “outsiders” out.
•
(9) Transfer of Power – cults have leaders, section leaders, team leaders etc.
So do forums. So do traffic exchanges. So do religions. Distributing power, (or
being seen to distribute power,) downwards to different membership levels
rewards the “faithful” and helps maintain the fabric of - and grow - the
organisation.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 17 of 45
◦ Editor's note: see Robert Puddy's answer to the question “How do you find
support staff?” in the panel Q & A section towards the end of this report.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 18 of 45
Sat AM – Soren Jordansen – http://sorenjordansen.com
The Membership Model
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•
•
•
Doesn't have to be monthly content or a continuity model.
Can be any product or service wrapped in a script such as Launch Formula
Marketing (http://www.launchformulamarketing.com.)
Gives unlimited opportunities to sell.
Gives many opportunities for integration marketing, (where you advertise other
people's membership sites through affiliate links on your own site.)
Is sticky – ie you can get people back to the site for any number of reasons:
◦ Who wouldn't want to return to download fresh content?
◦ You can “accidentally” reset the One Time Offers so users see them
whenever they return.
◦ You can make offers when users log in.
◦ You have automatic affiliates, so everything is geared towards members
referring more members.
Integration traffic accounts for around 80% of all the traffic to Soren's portfolio of
sites.
Integration points
These are all the places in a membership site where ads for other membership sites
can be placed:
•
•
•
•
•
•
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•
Exit popup on sales page. (“Sorry you're going, try this site instead, you might
prefer it..”)
Login page, (opens in new window – Soren says this is his best performing
integration point.)
Fast action bonus page within member's area.
Member's area upon login.
Download pages.
Free bonus page / recommended resources.
“Free Bonuses” folder within any .zip files that people download.
◦ Editor's note: most people apparently don't even bother to replace affiliate
links, so whenever you give people material – even if you give them PLR to
it, make sure it contains your affiliate links! This technique is used to great
effect by Calvin Woon and Jonathan Teng at
http://www.imbuzzsoftware.com.)
Affiliate tools, (links to traffic resources, safelists, affiliate marketing products
etc.)
Commission or referral notification emails:
◦ (“Congratulations, you've made a sale – if you'd like to make more sales, try
this recommended resource.”)
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 19 of 45
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•
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◦ People feel positive when they've just made money, so this is prime real
estate.
Masspay email to affiliates, when you pay their commissions:
◦ People are happy when you've just paid them. In Soren's words, “they love
you!”
◦ “Retry Bonus,” for people who didn't confirm their Aweber subscription –
place this page into Aweber as the “thanks for confirming your subscription”
page.
◦ This has boosted Soren's opt-in confirmation rate by an additional 10-15%
Delete Account page:
◦ “We're sorry to see you go – you might like to try this site instead.”
Lost password page:
◦ Jane Lewis (http://linesofexperience.com,) suggested that Soren place a link
to Roboform, (http://www.roboform.com,) on this page.
▪ “Always losing your passwords? Try this product.”
Free Bonus Page, (don't place this behind a login – you can link to it directly
from an email so people can access it without needing to log in. They can also
then forward the email to friends who are non-members, who will also be able
to access the resources.)
Case Studies
Floating Action Button - http://www.floatingactionbutton.com
Open source-derived script.
$27 front end – 100% commission.
JV partners can give free access to their paying customers.
This builds Soren a, (massively more valuable,) list of buyers.
•
•
Nearly 9000 members.
$32K front-end sales.
TweetMyBlog - http://tweetmyblog.com
Wordpress plugin for Twitter users.
The salesletter is particularly “hypey” to put off non-Internet Marketers from joining –
this keeps the average revenue per member high and lowers support costs and
complaints.
•
•
Nearly 12000 members.
$14K sales.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 20 of 45
IMSuccessFormula.com - http://imsuccessformula.com
A high quality ebook written after Soren surveyed his list to discover what they
needed to know in order to succeed in Internet Marketing.
Editor's note: you can set up a free online survey at this site:
• http://www.surveygizmo.com
As well as surveying his list before starting, Soren published chapters on his blog as
he wrote them.
This:
• Provided him with instant feedback while he was writing the ebook.
• Made his blog readers feel a “part” of the product.
The site uses multiple OTOs, including the opportunity to rebrand the ebook with the
customer's own affiliate links.
•
•
Over 25000 members.
Average member value of $2-3.
◦ Author's note – I'm not certain of the accuracy of these numbers – this slide
disappeared very quickly indeed ;-)
InstantBannerCreator.com - http://instantbannercreator.com/
Script derived from easily available script, “wrapped” into a member's area. The point
was to make it so simple that anyone could use it.
•
•
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Online access.
Full WYSIWYG – absolutely no markup or coding required.
Your banners can be hosted for you so you don't even need web space.
The upsell was a $147 lifetime upgrade with a $97 downsell, but this offer failed to
covert. Instead, Soren changed to a $10 per month membership model which was far
more successful.
•
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Over 25000 members.
$53K in sales.
Recurring revenue.
Cindy Battye's Daily Niche Idea - http://www.dailynicheidea.com
•
•
Was delivered (daily) by email.
Now updated in the membership area to get members to log back in more
frequently, which allows all the integration points previously mentioned.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 21 of 45
•
Member's area heavily customised with rich graphics, demonstrating the
flexibility of the Launch Formula Marketing script.
Product Creation
•
•
•
“Spud gun” method:
◦ Send traffic to a squeeze page.
◦ Invite them to “ask your top 5 questions about XYZ.”
◦ You could advertise the squeeze page on forums in your signature.
◦ Editor's note: see Alex Mandossian's presentation from Sunday morning.
Ask your list.
Ask your Twitter followers.
Trends in Internet Marketing
Soren shared his insights into how IM had changed over the last few years, and the
direction he believed it was heading.
Editor's note: Please read these a few times and take them to heart – in my
opinion this list alone was worth more than the cost of attending the
conference!
•
•
•
“Moving the free line” - more and more higher-value products are available for
free.
◦ To compete in the space, your freebie's must be high quality – something
that people would be willing to actually pay for.
◦ This builds trust and loyalty.
◦ Your list think “if this is her free stuff, how good will her paid stuff be?!”
“The fish syndrome” ◦ Whilst it is honourable to “teach a man to fish”, in reality newcomers to
Internet Marketing don't want to learn techniques and methods, they want it
all done for them.
◦ To extend the metaphor, (this is something Mike Filsaime blogged about 18
months or so ago,) “They want their fish perfectly prepared and cooked with
baby vegetables, served on a silver platter with a bottle of perfectly chilled
white wine.”
◦ Products like the “red packet” that is being promoted currently are taking
advantage of this trend and providing a “done and hosted for you” product.
◦ Some new products nowadays even come bundled with traffic – there is
literally nothing for the customer to do!
◦ When you understand this trend and start building products that require as
little learning and action as possible from the customer, these products will
sell extremely well.
The days of asking an affiliate to send traffic to a $27 ClickBank ebook on 75%
commission with no further commission potential are long gone. Good affiliates
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 22 of 45
•
increasingly realise they control the flow of money in the market, and can
demand their cut of the lifetime value (LTV) of the customer on an ongoing
basis.
◦ The simplest way to make sure that affiliates receive recurring commission
across your product line, even for products you haven't yet created, is to
add their affiliate ID from whichever network you use (Clickbank,
PayDotCom etc) into your autoresponder as a custom field. You can then use
this custom field in every link to each of your products you send to your list,
making sure the original affiliate is credited for any sales.
◦ Some affiliates misuse traffic exchanges and other “cookie stuffing” methods
to overwrite affiliate cookies and “steal” the commission – this method
(above) avoids this happening because the original affiliate cookie is
renewed every time a prospect follows a link from one of the merchant's
emails.
◦ Editor's note: The logical next step of this trend will be for merchants to
place the original affiliate's link in some product recommendations to their
list as well as in links to their own products. Whilst this will obviously reduce
their income per list member, it will also make it far more attractive for
affiliates to send them traffic in the first place, which will allow them to build
their list much larger. Its already happening in reverse with major product
launches, where affiliates rebate some or even all of their commission in
freebies, physical goods or even cash (after the guarantee period expires!) to persuade the customer to purchase through their link. It will be
interesting to see how far this trend goes!
The Internet Marketing space is growing rapidly. Thousands of people type
keyphrases like “make money online” and “home based business” into Google
every day for the first time, and thus begin their journey into the world of
Internet Marketing.
◦ There will always be newbies to see your offers for the first time!
Take-aways
•
•
•
Provide affiliate tools for newbies – assume your members and affiliate don't
even have their own website yet.
Hard-code your affiliate's ID into your autoresponder so you can offer them a
share of the customer's full lifetime value (LTV.)
Provide “made and hosted for you” products as opposed to “how to” products.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 23 of 45
Sat PM – Robert Puddy - http://www.launchformulamarketing.com
Robert shared a couple of “golden nuggets” following on from Soren's presentation,
before introducing the next speaker:
•
•
When a customer buys from him, a checkbox on the order page says “check
this box if you'd like to receive a 75% discount on an upgrade to a 'gold'
membership.”
◦ The checkbox has no function – the customer is shown the OTO whether
they tick it or not!
◦ Adding this increased the OTO conversion by a considerable amount, literally
overnight.
◦ Psychologically this:
▪ Conditions the customer to be ready to receive a further offer, so the
OTO comes as no surprise to them.
▪ Makes them feel that the OTO they are seeing is a real - and deep –
discount. After all, who wouldn't like 75% off a purchase!
• Editor's note: it would be simple with a few lines of javascript to send
the visitor to different OTO pages depending on whether they checked
this box or not. Whilst you might not actually want to show them
different offers, this would enable you to see – using any web stats
software, (like Google Analytics,) what percentage of people were
checking the box.
Instead of dropping the price of a product, RAISE THE PERCEIVED VALUE!
◦ Example: the list price of the full Launch Formula Marketing
(http://www.launchformulamarketing.com,) software is $997. It is the
leading membership site software on the market and has a plethora of
flexible and money-making features, so is certainly worth the asking price.
However, Robert has discovered the optimum price to generate maximum
profits on this product is $497. Instead of selling the software at $497, he
asks $997 for it, gives away a free “lite” version with a OTO to buy the full
software at $497.
▪ Asking $997 for the software raises the perceived value.
▪ Due to this, more people are happy to buy at the “discounted” price of
$497, which is the price at which Robert wanted to sell it in the first
place!
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 24 of 45
Sat PM – Amit Mehta - http://www.ppcclassroom.com
In this presentation, Amit shared the simplest method for making money as an
affiliate using PPC:
“5 Easy Steps to Making £10K Per Month With PPC”
1 – Pick an affiliate program.
• Go to http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm
• Choose a product with at least a $15 payout and a decent gravity, where a
majority (60%+ ideally,) of the sales are referred by affiliates. This is a popular
product that affiliates are already making money with.
• Expect 1-2% conversion ratios – so out of every 100 clicks you send to the
merchant, 1 or 2 people will buy.
• On these numbers, you'd want to pay a maximum of $0.15 per click.
◦ Editor's note to UK users: Adwords UK charges in UK pounds whilst
Clickbank pays in US dollars. Run the conversion numbers before calculating
the margins!
◦ When you're running on tight margins, bear in mind the cost of paying the
USD ClickBank affiliate cheque (check) into a UK bank account.
• Editor's note: It is extremely useful to be able to track conversions at the
individual keyword level in order to optimise the campaign later, so especially
consider promoting affiliate programs where the merchant is willing to place
your conversion tracking code on their thankyou page.
• When you've chosen an affiliate program to promote, get the Clickbank
“hoplink”- this will be the destination URL for your Adwords campaign.
• The merchant's site will be your display URL.
2 – Conduct Keyword Research.
• Brainstorm the type of keywords someone might search for if they wanted to
BUY a product like the one you've decided to promote.
• Paste these into the Google free keywords tool here:
◦ https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
◦ Get the synonyms.
• Always keep in mind you're looking to bid on keywords which people will search
on when they're in “buying mode.”
3 – Set up an Adwords account.
• Sign up for Adwords if you don't yet have an account.
• Start a keyword targetted campaign.
4 – Set up your campaign.
• Write an ad.
◦ The second line of the ad should be in the form of a command.
▪ Example: “Start reverse lookup now!”
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 25 of 45
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•
•
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◦ Your affiliate link is the destination URL.
◦ The merchant's site is the display URL.
Start bidding a little higher than you want to settle on – perhaps around $0.25
depending upon the market.
Set the daily budget
◦ Unless you wish to spend a lot of money “testing the water,” start out with a
low daily budget of around $5 to $10
Choose to show the ad only in countries where the visitors are most likely to
convert into buyers:
◦ UK
◦ US
◦ Australia
◦ New Zealand
◦ Canada
◦ Especially NOT China and India, where conversion rates are poor and click
fraud is more likely.
Note, some products may only be relevant to specific markets.
◦ Example – the “Reverse Phone Detective” product is specific to the US.
5 – Monitor and Optimise the campaign.
• Look for the keywords that are converting poorly or not-at-all and remove
them.
◦ Editor's note: This is where individual-keyword-granularity conversion
tracking is crucial!)
• Look for keywords that require a higher bid to show, and adjust your bidding
accordingly.
• Lower your bids to get a lower CPC and a higher ROI.
• Aim for your ads to show in positions 3-8 to for a lower CPC and best ROI
(you'll get less clicks, but at a much lower price.)
Amit shared some successful niches (which are the type of niches PPCClassroom
members receive ready-made landing pages for):
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Dating
Flowers
Forex
Cooking
Dogs
Fishing
Medication
Yoga
Music downloads
He specifically mentioned that trying to do PPC promotion in the Internet
Marketing niche is very difficult to make a profit with.
He also mentioned http://www.revenuewire.net as an alternative affiliate marketplace
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 26 of 45
to ClickBank.
Mistakes new PPC affiliates make:
• Not having a system to work with.
• Not having coaching.
• Giving up after the first campaign isn't profitable, (it took Amit many attempts
before he had his first profitable campaign.)
• Using only direct linking
◦ Editor's note: The strategy detailed above is called direct linking – this is
where the affiliate links directly from their PPC ad to the merchant's site.
This works fine in less competitive keyword spaces, but note that Google will
ONLY SHOW ONE AD, per keyword, per destination URL, so only one direct
linking ad will be shown. If a competitor is also direct linking and bidding
more per click they'll beat you and you ad won't show for that keyword. To
improve impressions you'll need your own landing page which pre-sells the
merchant's product.
• Bidding to be at the top – the best ROI is usually on positions 3-8.
• Buying expired domains in the hope they'll confer a good quality score, (quality
score is what Google uses to rank ads and depends on a variety of factors
including domain age.)
◦ When the registrant information changes for a domain, Google resets its
records for that domain, making the purchase of expired domains a waste of
time unless you just wanted that domain name anyway.
• Using completely duplicate content for landing pages.
◦ Whilst you'll get a higher quality score for landing pages where the exact
keywords are used in the title, H1 tags etc (this is pretty much the same as
standard on-page organic SEO optimisation – see Justin Brooke's
presentation above,) you can't get away with a “placeholder” system where
just the keywords are placed in otherwise identical copy.
◦ Amit said at least 30% of the copy on a landing page should be unique to
that page for the best results.
◦ Editor's note: this means if you use a product like SpeedPPC
(http://www.speedppc.com,) or a similar script that creates “madlib” sites
(see http://www.bluehatseo.com/madlib-sites - NB this article is written
with organic SEO in mind, not PPC,) you can't expect to do so well if you just
load in a data feed and press “go” – take some time to customise your
landing pages at least to a small extent in order to get the maximum benefit
from such a system.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 27 of 45
Sun AM – Alex Mandossian - http://www.teleseminarsecrets.com
Alex spoke to us live over Skype from his home in California. Donna Fox moved the
presentation in sync with Alex – this system actually worked really well!
“Tested Methods That Can Transform Your Annual Income into Your Monthly
Income by Unlocking the Revenue-Generating Power of Your Telephone”
The benefits of conducting teleseminars:
•
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•
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•
You don't have to memorise a speech.
No cold-calling required – everyone calls in to the teleseminar.
No coding required.
No selling skills required.
No hardware required other than your own 'phone.
You don't have to “be there”!
To conduct a teleseminar all you need is:
◦ A message.
◦ A mouth.
◦ A mouse.
◦ Clearly you also need a 'phone, but that doesn't start with the letter M...
When Alex moved from a high-flying advertising position in New York City to San
Francisco, his income dropped from $300K+ to considerably less than $100K.
Partly through the power of teleseminars, he was able to turn this annual income first
into his monthly income, then his weekly income, then (sometimes,) his daily income,
then, with a successful call, his HOURLY income!
Alex called traditional “message-centered” push marketing “the fastest way to go
broke.”
Instead, he evangelises “market-centered marketing” where it is not about the
message and/or the product but instead about the market and what people want
and need.
“If you do what the market desires,” he said, “you'll bring in the big money.”
Stage presentations, where people arrive before the start and leave after the end,
don't work in the same way as teleseminar presentations. On a teleseminar
presentation, people drop out mid-way through, come back later etc – in fact they
come and go as they choose.
Thus the point where you invite the prospect to make an investment, - the call-toaction - should be in the middle of the presentation, not at the end where many
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 28 of 45
participants will not hear it, (more detail on this further down..)
The call-to-action can just be asking people to click a link – through to your sales
page of course.
Alex showed a great video (see it at http://www.alexyoutube.com,) to illustrate the
power of the “actionizer” - a small “ethical bribe” token good for a discount, available
in limited quantities.
(Editor's note: whilst that video is truly impressive, using teabags as “actionizer”
tokens early on a Sunday morning when the audience was mostly pretty tired from a
late night's networking, didn't produce quite such a dynamic result..)
The same thing works online however – instead of a physical token you'd use a
“voucher” or “promo code” at a specific URL.
Editor's notes:
•
•
The Launch Formula Marketing script
(http://www.launchformulamarketing.com,) allows you to use a promo code
that ties in perfectly with this strategy.
It would be a breeze for a programmer to write a script where the promo code
disappears after x number of visitors have hit the page – making the scarcity
genuine.
Alex moved on to talk about how he “stood on the shoulders of giants” and helped
them build their business in order to build his.
He approached many “rockstars” in different niches and asked them the following
simple questions:
(Editor's note: Note how these are exactly the kind of “yes” questions that Tahir Shah
discussed on Friday?)
1. Do you have more prospects than customers on your list? (who doesn't!)
2. Would you like to make money from those prospects and turn them into
buyers?
3. Would you like me to show you how to do this in one hour or less?
One of the people he approached like this was Bob Proctor, a “human potential” - or
self-development – guru. Of course Bob was intrigued.
Alex set up the domain http://www.askbobproctor.com
See how this simple squeeze page invites the visitor to ask Bob their most pressing
question whilst adding them to an email list.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 29 of 45
Note the following features of the page, all of which add to its ability to convert
visitors into question-askers:
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•
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•
Simple headline – instead of a “yes” question it actually uses an “assumptive
close” - assuming the visitor does want to ask Bob a question and finishing
“what would it be?”
Flashing call-to-action.
Simple audio recording of Bob inviting the visitor “personally” to ask their
question.
Clear call-to-action on the form submit button (“Here's My Question, Bob >>”)
Red border, green rollover on the submit button.
◦ Editor's note: This submit button was cutting-edge in 2006! However, Eric
Graham (http://conversiondoctor.com ) regularly tests every minute element
of page design, and both him and Marlon Sanders now seem to be favouring
the subtly flashing red border around the submit button – see the form at
the top left corner of http://www.amazingformula.com for an example.
The “Ask(name).com” page needs to go up around 2 weeks before the teleseminar.
The questions asked, of course, become the subjects for the teleseminar where Alex
interviews the expert.
For http://www.askbobproctor.com the teleseminar took $85K in one hour. Alex's cut
was 20%.
The concept of “ask first” is a powerful one.
Most adults are constantly in “tell mode.” Children lose the ability to “ask first” at
around the age of 5 or 6.
(Editor's note: Yes! My 5 year-old, who'll be 6 next week, is just starting to bear this
out..)
At this point a member of the audience asked Alex the following question:
“How do you establish credibility when approaching the really big names to
set up teleseminars?”
Alex replied that at this point, when he had no credibility or “name” himself, he:
•
•
•
•
Made a list of 40 people to approach.
Was looking for a 10% response – ie 4 people to agree to try it.
Just asked the 3 questions, (above,) and didn't worry about rejections.
Was willing to “sacrifice short-term profit for long term wealth.”
Another “guru” that Alex works with using the same system is Jack Canfield.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 30 of 45
The site is http://www.askjackcanfield.com
Alex drew attention to the picture of Jack appearing to lean on the opt-in box, and
explained that all the little details on the page added up to make the page convert the
maximum number of visitors into question-askers.
Editor's notes:
• Did you notice the tiny yellow “bouncing” arrow drawing the visitor's attention
to the submit button?
• I wonder whether Alex has split-tested the yellow headline with the heavy drop
shadow? His sites are the only place where I've see this effect used..
• As I noted on Tahir Shah's presentation, Eric Graham says that squeeze pages
where the word “spam” is used in the privacy policy perform less well that
those where only the positive elements of the policy are pushed. In contrast,
this page's privacy policy does mention the word spam.
◦ The clear point to be made here is that when it comes to the minutiae of
conversion, every situation, site and page is different - The use of
split-testing software, (or Multi Variate Testing software such as Google
Website Optimizer,) allows us to know for an absolute fact which variations
perform best in each specific circumstance. There need be no guesswork.
At this point the workshop became more interactive as Alex asked each member of
the audience to write, (in a blank template given as a handout,) 2 “niches of
expertise” where they could conduct a teleseminar, filling in the blanks thus:
“As a __________ what is your single most important question about
___________________ ?”
A member of the audience chose “small business owner” as their niche but Alex said
this was too broad and that “If you have a niche, polish it. If you have a market,
narrow it down.”
The example finally became “As a new small business owner, what is your single
most important question about outsourcing the tasks you don't like to do?”
Another finally became “As a harassed householder, what is your single most
important question about finding reliable people to work on your home?”
This technique boils down into what Alex calls the “ATS formula”:
1. Ask your target market for content.
2. Thank your target market for supplying your content. (When the visitor asks
their question and fills in their details, they are shown a list of the most popular
questions that have been asked before, immediately seeing the type of
questions that will be answered on the teleseminar.)
3. Sell the re-purposed content for profit.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 31 of 45
For maximum impact, the teleseminar should take the following format:
1. Welcome – encourage audience introductions.
2. Introduction – Who is on the call; How the call happened, Why you should
listen.
3. Content – case studies, stories, how-tos, endorsements.
4. Call-to-action 1 (at around 15 mins.)
5. Call-to-action 2 (at around 30 mins.)
6. Call-to-action 3 (at around 40 mins.)
7. Ethical bribe (“actionizer”, contest etc.)
8. Summary – repeat the key points of the teleseminar and repeat the call-toaction.
9. FAQ session (after the “formal” teleseminar has ended.)
Once your teleseminar has finished, the recorded information can be re-purposed into
all of the following product formats:
•
•
•
•
•
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Ebook (a “formal” PDF document with pictures etc.)
Mini e-course.
CD.
Blog posts.
Booklet.
Article series.
Paper transcript.
Digital transcript (a simple text-only PDF transcript.)
Audio postcards (an HTML page with audio that looks like a postcard.)
Youtube videos.
USB thumb drive.
Pre-loaded MP3 “learnpod” (a photo-branded MP3 player containing up to 48
CD's-worth of audio.)
Who owns the content?
Of course this is up to the agreement that you make with the individual expert, but
normally the agreement works like this:
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The speaker agrees to you both having “mutual ownership” of the content.
Either you or the speaker can give-away or sell the content in any format you
choose.
Neither you nor the speaker pays the other any royalty on the content.
◦ Except during the live even itself, where normally you'd agree a 50/50 split
of sales, though you may need to make more one-sided agreements to start
with, as Alex did with Bob Proctor.
Alex's List Building Strategies
•
Swap email PS messages with partners – up to 3 lines.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 32 of 45
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Follow at least 5 blogs in your marketplace – post thoughtful and relevant
comments.
◦ Alex gets 45,000 visitors to his blog every month, many from this technique.
◦ In comparison, his website gets 10,000 visitors per month.
◦ Editor's note: You can use Neil Shearing's Real Link Finder
(http://www.reallinkfinder.com,) to find blogs that don't use the “nofollow”
link attribute to post your comments on.
The benefit of conducting teleseminars:
When someone comes to your teleseminar, you have their attention for 60 minutes.
When someone comes to your web page, you have their attention for 60 seconds!
The key points to remember about teleseminars:
1. Ask your target market what they want to know, so you can create top quality
valuable content faster, better and more easily.
2. Repurpose your teleseminar content to accelerate your revenue growth
quicker, better and with greater ease.
3. Deliver your call-to-action at 15 mins and 40 minutes – NOT at the end of the
teleseminar.
You can read more about Alex Mandossian's “Teleseminar Secrets” training at
http://www.teleseminarsecrets.com
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Sun AM – Donna Fox - http://www.whyshebuys.com
Donna shared her 3 strategies for overcoming fear of public speaking.
Instead of sharing them herself, she asked her coaching student Sunny Suggs of
http://allabouttrafficexchanges.com - who had not spoken in public before – to share
them for her.
These are the 3 strategies:
1. Anchoring – Think about a presentation you've made in the past that was
successful. It doesn't need to have been made in front of a crowd, it could have
been in a one-to-one meeting, but think of a specific concrete example.
2. Gratitude – Say – and believe – something like “I appreciate the fact that
you're listening to me and that you are on my side.”
3. Remember, its not about you, the speaker, its about the listeners. If they
don't like what you're saying, its not a reflection on you and its not a personal
insult – instead its their inability to derive value from your information that is
their problem.
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Sun AM – Robert Puddy - http://www.launchformulamarketing.com
This was Robert's “headline” presentation for the weekend. He discussed a number of
his sites along with some others, and the process and psychological triggers that
make them successful.
http://www.forumknowhow.com
This site is an Internet Marketing forum with a paid membership, unlike the majority
of IM forums which are free.
The price to join is $10 per year, which sets a real value on membership and
discourages tyre-kickers and freebie-seekers.
JV partners can give away memberships to their paying customers, which allows
Robert to build a list of buyers.
(Note – a small list of people who have bought products in the past is almost always
more responsive and profitable than even a MUCH larger list of freebie-seekers.)
This site did $27K in sales in 12 months.
http://www.instantsqueezepagegenerator.com
This site allows users to create their own squeeze pages with no technical knowledge
required.
It is designed for absolute beginners, so it hosts their squeeze pages for them,
meaning they don't even need their own web site.
The upsell is a product to sell, giving the user everything they need to start making
money online, hosted for them. The upsell is priced at $197.
This site did $79K in sales in 12 months.
http://imsuccessformula.com
This is Soren Jordansen's site, that grew to 3500 members and $10K in sales in just
10 days!
Traffic Generation
Robert joked that SEO stood for “Search Engine Optimist” because your success at
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 35 of 45
organic SEO is totally down to Google.
Martin Avis (http://www.kickstartdaily.com,) asked, smiling, that Robert should credit
him for this phrase!
Robert replied that, when public speaking:
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The first time you quote someone, you should give them credit.
The second time you quote someone, you should mention that you “heard this
from someone else.”
The third time you quote someone, the phrase becomes your own!
Returning to traffic generation, Robert mentioned that most marketers, especially
newbie marketers, suffer from “information overload” - they “can't see the wood for
the trees.”
The remedy for information overload is to understand the difference between
tactics and strategy.
Tactics are the specific steps we take to achieve a strategy, and they're not
desperately important.
Strategy is the long-term desired outcome, and is crucial. In Internet Marketing, the
strategy should be “Convert Visitors Into Buyers” - its really as simple as that!
Robert advised that with traffic, you need to be really good at one traffic
generation tactic. You can “dabble” in others.
His main traffic generation strategy is traffic exchanges, where he started out online,
and from which he now gets 3500 people onto his list every month. He dabbles in
SEO, Social Media traffic generation, (like Twitter – see
http://twitter.com/RealRobertPuddy,) and other tactics, but his overriding traffic
generation tactic is traffic exchanges.
Over the years he has built a list of 140,000 email addresses, primarily through this
tactic.
He details exactly how to use traffic exchanges to maximum benefit in his product
http://www.hiddentrafficformula.com
Editor's note: If you are new to traffic exchanges you should download the guides
written by Sunny Suggs. She's authored a full library of 24 ebooks – one for each of
the most popular traffic exchanges. Get them free-of-charge at
http://www.allabouttrafficexchanges.com
Marketing Funnels
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Every business should have a marketing funnel
The smoother your marketing funnel, the more successful your business.
A typical marketing funnel within Internet Marketing might look like this:
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Free front end product (membership using LFM / ezine / e-course / free ebook.)
$27 product (ebook.)
$67 product (upsell.)
$97 product (further upsell or membership.)
$197 product (home study course – physical product.)
$1997 product (consultancy / coaching.)
Set pricing by what value the product will have to the customer, not how long it has
taken – or how much is has cost – for you to create it. Instead, consider how long it
would have taken the customer to do the work without your product.
Editor's example: Whilst it might only take a dentist 10 minutes to extract a rotten
tooth and fill the cavity, this is something the patient could not do themselves,
and it will relieve them of a huge amount of pain, so it is a service that is very
valuable indeed to the patient, (and goes some way towards explaining why dentists
are so expensive!)
Robert explained the role of a sales letter in one pithy line:
“Turn on the pain. Rub salt in the wound. Then offer to provide a cure.”
The next slide showed a picture of a colander. Compared to a funnel, it is shallow and
full of holes!
To keep your funnel as watertight as possible:
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Use bonus pages.
Use login offers.
Use One Time Offers (OTOs,) when people subscribe to your list.
Use all the other integration techniques Soren Jordansen outlined on Saturday.
Condition your list to expect to receive sales messages.
◦ If you condition your list to expect freebies, they'll be surprised and angered
when you pitch to them.
What is the biggest mistake most Internet Marketers make that loses them the most
money?
They don't look for ways to monetize most of their visitors!
Bear in mind that most people who visit a web page will neither buy a product nor
sign up for a list, (unless your squeeze page conversion is very good – some do
convert more than 50% of visitors into subscribers but its not the norm.)
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Finding ways to make money from the “no's” is one of the most profitable
things you can do.
Editor's note: this goes back to Soren's presentation on Saturday. Some ways to
monetize “no's” might be:
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Exit popup with recommendation for another similar site.
Exit survey with squeeze and / or free gift.
Exit popunder.
No doesn't mean never. It just means that you haven't yet made the right offer to
that visitor.
Develop a “tree” of offers that are shown depending on the visitor's choices.
Editor's note: this idea of a “tree” has recently been popularised by Anik Singal and
Mike Filsaime's brand new product the Launch Tree (http://www.launchtree.com,) but
in reality, successful sites have been using these revenue optimisation strategies for
years.
The following diagram demonstrates a fairly simple version of this.
Many sites have a more complex offer tree.
Example: Look at the process you move through when you purchase a domain from
http://www.GoDaddy.com – the complexity of their offer tree is mind-blowing!
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 38 of 45
Typical offer tree to optimise revenue
4 Ways to Get More Traffic
1 - Use other people's traffic through integration marketing
Here Robert gave a powerful example:
Louise Puddy (http://www.successfulbusinessblogging.com,) who does not yet have a
large list, wanted to do an ad-swap with Matt Garrett (http://mattgarrett.com,) who is
a more experienced marketer with a larger list. Because a simple ad-swap would have
been rather one-sided in Louise's favour, (and something Matt would be unlikely to
agree to!,) she offered to place an advert for one of Matt's sites permanently in her
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 39 of 45
autoresponder sequence, in return for Matt doing a one-off mailing to his list,
advertising Louise's site.
Everyone gains from this deal; especially Matt's list, who learn of a new free resource
in their area of interest, (Matt's list is blogging-related.)
The point of this example is that, even with a tiny list, or even no list, there are still
ways to do a deal for integration traffic.
2 – Co-registration
This is where, (in its simplest form,) you place someone else's signup form on your
signup thank you page, and they do the same for you. Its another form of integration
marketing!
Some services such as http://nitrolistbuilder.com have taken this many stages further,
to a fine art form.
Its also possible to simply purchase co-reg leads from companies such as
http://www.GetResponse.com.
3 – Joint Venture Partnerships
This is, in essence, where someone promotes your site for a revenue split. However
there's far more to a successful JV than that having an affiliate program, and in fact
many entire books have been written on the subject of securing lucrative joint venture
partnerships.
See http://www.instantjvsuccess.com for more details.
4 – Affiliates
Running your own affiliate program is one of the most powerful ways to build up a
constant stream of targetted high-converting traffic.
Author's note: see http://thelazymarketer.com/vip-product for more details. This
ebook is actually about how to create your own product, but the section on running
your own affiliate program is highly valuable.
You can find affiliates in any niche using Neil Shearing's Internet Success Spider
software. This used to be a $97 product but is now available free-of-charge.
Read more about Neil's Internet Success Spider here: http://www.grabthespider.com.
When you use Launch Formula Marketing (http://www.launchformulamarketing.com,)
every one of your members is automatically an affiliate.
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The LFM software:
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Builds your list.
Builds residual income.
Creates affiliates – not just subscribers.
Gives you an instant traffic source for your next site.
Offers many ways to monetize your members including:
◦ Upgrades.
◦ One Time Offers (OTOs.)
◦ Email marketing (LFM works with all major autoresponder providers and also
has its own built-in mailing system.)
◦ Login offers.
◦ Many other integration points (see Soren Jordansen's presentation from
Saturday.)
Even if you don't have a product its possible to be up and running in less than a week
with a bespoke made-for-you LFM site. See http://lfmpirebuilders.com/choosesite.
With all these monetization strategies available, the most important thing about
having a membership site is you must get your members to return to the site and log
in.
To quote Robert: “If you don't do anything else, just find innovative ways to
make people come back and log in. This is so important.”
Seminars
To finish up, Robert ran through some reasons why it is worthwhile attending
seminars:
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Mastermind group sessions.
Potential JV partners (the big one!)
You'll find people who:
◦ Have skills you don't - and need skills you have.
◦ Can be your accountability partner, to help you keep on track and focussed
(and you do the same for them.)
◦ Give you feedback on your work.
◦ Combine resources – Example: You might need a squeeze page template,
someone else might need a PLR ebook – you could swap.
To demonstrate this practically, Robert showed Randy Smith's copywriting site http://
www.yourcopysmith.com which would benefit from a graphic makeover, and Sunny
Suggs' site http://www.allaboutaddons.com which would benefit from a copywriting
makeover.
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Sun PM – Panel
This was the final session of the weekend and involved an open Q & A session with a
panel of Internet Marketing Experts. The panel were:
Donna Fox
Robert Puddy
Soren Jordansen
Tahir Shah
Justin Brooke
Martin Avis
http://www.whyshebuys.com
http://www.launchformulamarketing.com
http://sorenjordansen.com
http://www.easilyanswered.com
http://www.sitefling.com
http://www.kickstartdaily.com
Question: Should you use double-opt-in or single-opt-in for lead capture?
Answers:
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Double opt-in allows more integration marketing points (the “thankyou for
confirming your registration” page.)
Most autoresponders (including http://www.getresponse.com and
http://www.aweber.com,) allow single opt-in for new leads, but once you move
to double-opt-in you can't move back again.
http://www.icontact.com is the only autoresponder service the panel knew of
which allowed single-opt-in for list imports.
In Aweber, if you think you might want to use single-opt-in at any point, leave
your default account as single-opt-in to keep that avenue open.
Question: Which domain suffix is best for UK sites? The dot.com or .co.uk?
Answers:
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The dot.com will get more “type-ins” - where people automatically enter the
dot.com version of the domain straight into their browser adress bar.
UK sites are ok with .co.uk addresses.
If possible get both, host the site on the .co.uk domain to rank higher in UKspecific searches and 301 the .com to the .co.uk.
Question: What keyword research tools to you recommend?
Answers:
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Google Insights.
Google Trends.
Google Adwords tool (mentioned in Amit's presentation.)
Wordtracker (http://www.WordTracker.com)
http://www.dogpile.com (turn the family filter on!)
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 42 of 45
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http://www.Keywordspy.com
http://www.Spyfu.com
http://www.KeywordLSIspy.com (This is Martin Avis's product, which extracts
“Latent Semantic Index” related terms from high-ranking web pages to show
you which related phrases should be found on your page.)
Question: What have been your biggest challenges?
Answer – Tahir Shah:
• Had a site hacked recently - there are always new challenges.
• Working out how to deal with distractions when working for yourself.
◦ Lots of people manage to look busy without getting very much done!
Answer – Justin Brooke:
• “What he said.. and...”
• Dealing with your own impatience and frustration.
◦ Sometimes things take longer than you would like. You need to be “in it for
the long haul and don't quit.”
Answer - Martin Avis:
• “The biggest challenge is the next one that comes along!”
• Keeping up to date with an ever-changing industry.
• Getting the support of family and friends who tend to ask “why can't you get a
proper job like everyone else?”
◦ Martin's wife didn't actually read an issue of his famous newsletter until
around issue #900!
Answer – Donna Fox:
• Being able to admit you have a problem or a challenge, and accepting help.
Answer – Robert Puddy:
• Admitting you can't do it all on your own.
• Getting over the mindset of “I'm just an ordinary person – I don't deserve
massive success.”
• Outsourcing support functions etc and learning to “let go” of some aspects of
the business.
Answer – Soren Jordansen:
• “Getting some stuff done!”
• Not being a control freak – being willing to “let stuff go.”
Question: Would you split membership sites by country?
Answer – Robert Puddy:
You can where it makes sense, and the LFM script allows this.
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 43 of 45
Question: Do you make country-specific offers?
Answer - Robert Puddy:
Sometimes, especially for offline products like events. Its a good idea to split lists but
not necessarily by geography.
Answer – Soren Jordansen:
I split
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my lists by many criteria to make the most relevant offers:
Buyers / non-buyers.
What did they buy?
How much have they paid?
..but not really by country.
Question – How do you find support staff?
Answer – Robert Puddy:
Find people who are helpful and already contribute on your forums / etc. Give them a
title and an admin login to your helpdesk and you may find they help you for free.
Question – What specific techniques do you use to maintain focus?
Answer – Donna Fox:
Timer software that tells me when I'm meant to be staying on task. When I'm in
“productive time” I don't break for anything.
Editor's note: You might want to take a look at http://www.theactionmachine.com software specifically designed to maximise your productivity.
Answer – Soren Jordansen:
I stick to my daily prioritised to-do list, derived from a weekly prioritised to-do list,
derived from my ongoing business plan.
Answer – Tahir Shar:
Decide what motivates you, (usually people are either running away from pain or
running towards pleasure.)
Most people are motivated by necessity – that's why we so often leave things to the
last minute.
Focus on your primary motivation and realise “this is not a stage rehearsal, this is
real life. One day near the end of it you'll wake up and wonder what happened!”
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 44 of 45
Answer – Justin Brooke:
“Block scheduling” - concentrating on a task exclusively for a pre-arranged length of
time.
Answer – Martin Avis:
“I'm not sure, it took me 2 years to write a book on time management! However it
seems important to give yourself permission to enjoy the fruits of your labour.”
Question: What should you be doing that you're not (and will you commit to
be doing it within 12 months?)
Answer – Robert Puddy:
I'll commit to developing a better work-life balance.
Answer – Soren Jordansen:
More Pay-Per-Click (which I'll outsource!)
Answer – Tahir Shah:
More PPC, and more membership sites.
Answer – Justin Brooke:
More detailed testing and tracking, and becoming more organised in general.
Answer – Martin Avis:
I create lots of content but don't do enough with it – there are great opportunities for
me to build membership sites.
Answer – Donna Fox:
I'm flying ahead at such a rate that I don't always take time to “clean up the mess” I
leave behind me – I commit to cleaning up some mess before next year!
Alex Poole's Internet Marketing Success Notes, http://www.IMSuccessNotes.com - Page 45 of 45
Conclusion – Alex Poole – http://www.alex-poole.com
As you can now see, there was a massive amount of information to take in over the
weekend related to all areas of Internet Marketing.
If I can return to the introduction, its worth re-iterating that there are only two
strategies worth spending time on to build your Internet business:
1. Generating traffic to your website.
2. Converting that traffic into buyers.
If you're spending time on other things, its probably not time well spent.
Every piece of advice the experts shared over the three days of the workshop can be
boiled down to one of those two imperatives.
If you are stuck creating your own product, I have one piece of advice for you:
Attend A Seminar or Workshop!
Take copious notes and turn them into a PDF report like the one you've just read.
(Make sure you ask permission from the conference organiser first to avoid running
into any legal trouble or, equally importantly, annoying powerful people in your
industry.)
Far from having to think up your own ideas, you'll be able to “stand on the shoulders
of giants,” and use their best content, with their blessing!
I really can't recommend highly enough the experience of attending a conference.
Remember: this report only scratches the surface of the information that was
exchanged over the weekend. Most of it happened in the bar during networking
sessions that regularly went on until 3am or even later. The sheer amount of
information exchanged was mind-boggling!
I hope to have the opportunity to meet you at a conference soon.
To Your Success,
Alex Poole – http://www.alex-poole.com
Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK. May 2009