I don´t know whether it´s just me (a grumpy old sod =O) but, email marketers just seem to to have a real lack of imagination when it comes to there broadcast email titles. I´m just looking through my trash folder, as that´s where most emails end up and I see swathes of emails titled “RE”: , re what for Gods sake. Or the latest sheep trend seems to be “Cancelled”

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that a large majority of marketers are just plain lazy when it comes to promoting other peoples products. They have access to a vault of pre-written email swipes and as a result they just don´t bother to take the time to re-write anything.

That´s all well and good but, from my point of view when I get the twentieth email of the day banging on about how good a product is and the marketer uses the exact same template that every other poor sap is using, they just become faceless, they do nothing different that stands themselves out from the crowd.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rule and one marketer who stands out for me is Michael Cheney. He always manages to pique my interest with his headlines and as such I always open his mail.

If writing punchy headlines give you a headache, you might want to take a look at the Cosmo Swipefile that was written by Eric Medemar. In the book Eric discusses the ways that Cosmo magazine script their headline for the maximum curiosity factor. Marketing big hitters such as Frank Kern, Eban Pagan and John Carlton To name but a few have given this book their seal of approval, answer me this how many times have you binned a Frank Kern email ??

I know copy writing is a real art but, for heavens sake at least try to rewrite an email template and you never know you may end up staying in my inbox rather than the trash can..

Until next time

My word doesn´t time fly? I cannot believe that it´s been so long since I last posted.

I am sure that after writing this post I may well get a lot of  flack but, in the words of Clark Gable “quite frankly my dear I don´t give a damn”.  Since the end of the Alex Jeffreys training course I have been beavering away at quite a few projects and I´m pleased to say that they are all coming along quite nicely. The thing is only one of these projects is remotely connected to the IM niche. 

The main thing Alex´s course brought out in me was the ability to focus and , as he describes in his own words, not jump on and off the chaos wagon, i.e. stick with one method.

My main reasons for working predominantly outside the IM niche are as follows:

1.  Whilst we all know that the IM niche is a burgeoning market, it is one of the hardest nuts to crack and the percentage of new marketers who are actually able to break through is tiny.  Obviously there are exceptions to the rule and a couple of the students on the course appear to be breaking eggs with big sticks, i.e. Dean Holland and Garry Parkes, and all good luck to them.

2.  My main gripe, and its a very big gripe about the IM niche, is the fact that it is almost solely information based.  Taking into consideration  the plethora of new products which are hitting the market virtually on a daily basis makes one wonder how many more spins you can give to setting up the basics, a hosting pack, your autoresponder, and driving traffic?

 Fair enough each one of these new packages may have a slight twist on a specific point, but if you were to run them all through Copyscape I doubt very much whether more than 10% of them would pass as original content.   A prime example of this was a product which had a huge fanfare launch yesterday, but after reading a few reviews from various forums, the concensus of opinion was that it was 99.99% the same as another well known product with just  an extra traffic module.  

This is what annoys me about the IM niche.  Thankfully I have a bit of experience now and am able to recognise, after myself purchasing a number of different products, what is new and what is re-hashed with a Sunday bonnet, but for the thousands of newbies entering into the bear pit who know no better, will only see a very enticing sales page with funky music and videos and will think it´s the best thing since sliced bread.

 I am not naive enough to think for one moment that these tactics don´t work as it is patently obvious that they do and they are able to produce some fantastic financial returns for the authors of these products.  It just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth seeing the number of people taken in by the promises of quick and easy money, i.e. the promise of $52,000 in 48 hours!!  As anybody who has been in internet marketing for a while and knows the score, will readily know that there is no feasible way that as a newbie this can be atained.  I for one am working on my own non-IM niche sites a huge number of hours each day and all of them bar one are selling visceral products, ranging from kitchen appliances to guitars.

 I know that there are only a few IM products at the moment that I will ever feel comfortable promoting, one of them being Alex´s course because as I said, he really has set the wheels in motion for me, the other couple are Sarah Brown and Tony Shepherd´s  Kickstart course, because this, in my opinion, is probably one of the best internet marketing starter programmes.  No fluff, no flashy sales pages, no wild promises of overnight wealth, just pure content.  The other main starter product is Chris Farrell´s membership site, again, no bloated promises just a very genuine sincere guy who has made the membership site for newbies to learn the basics. There are a couple more, one being Andrew Hanson´s Firepow system, again a  superb programme for niche blogging.  I realise that by writing this post I am probably committing commercial suicide because you would have every right to question me if I ever come up with another product to promote, but I would hope after reading this, you would appreciate that whatever I do promote I believe in wholeheartedly. 

Don´t get the impression that I am sitting here seething because I am not.  As Alex pointed out in the course if you can use the IM niche as a proving ground to hone your skills you can pretty much guarantee success in any other niche.  To prove this point less than a week ago I set up a blog based around a very well searched keyword phrase for a well known brand of kitchen appliances and my blog is on  page 1, out of 1,300,000 pages.  Now this last comment isn´t to brag, its just to prove that if you are able to get the basics in place this kind of ranking is possible.  As a lot of you know my main passion is video marketing and I run in conjunction with the building of the marketing sites, a video campaign, but funnily enough with this example, I didn´t, maybe a lucky strike, I don´t know but I am not complaining.  The point I am making is that after learning the basics, if you put them into practice properly, and when I say put them into practice, I mean take proper action.  You don´t actually need to purchase every conceivable product that hits the market, because as my Mum says, if it aint broke – don´t fix it.

Hi all,

 I just want to talk about giveaways –do they work ?

 I have been doing some split testing as to what piques peoples interest and have offered two different free giveaway packages.

 I took on board what Alex and Linda Carol said about what to offer and what not to offer.

 I have offered on the one hand, a very good package of 30 different quality PLR and MRR products, and on the other hand, a single product of my own.

 The 30 product pack certainly attracted interest, but unfortunately there was a downside.  A significant number of people de-subscribed almost immediately after downloading this attractive and good value package.

 I was able to ascertain from their email addresses that they were more than likely taking the 30 product pack to split up and use themselves.

Quite a number of people seemed to take no notice of the double optin request, even though they must have realized that they would not be able to get the free offer without doing so.

After editing the optin form and making it clear, in huge red text, the necessity for the double optin, there was a slight increase in people doing so, but there was still a large number who didn’t.  Why?  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme nor reason, why complete only part of the process if you want the free offer?  Surely you do what you have to do, to get it?

 Then I submitted a single product, and whilst the take up rate was significantly lower, the upside was that the retention and open rate was much higher.  This surely goes to prove that it is not such a good idea to offer such a large number of products at any one time.  You will only attract freebie seekers!

 This proves the point that Alex made that it is far better to offer one quality product of your own than somebody else’s batch of 30 products, albeit quality ones.

I think everybody within the student body will agree with me that these post-course weeks have been extremely hard work, but at the same time extremely exciting times.  Since the end of the course I have been looking at various methods of communicating with members of my list on a different level than the bog standard text e-mail.  I signed up to a fantastic service run by Jive Systems.  Basically Jive Systems have come up with a video e-mailing system that as far as I am concerned is the bees knees.  I have done a lot of research in this particular medium because as a lot of you know I am very interested in  video communication.  In my research I have found that there are lots of companies offering video e-mailing but I discovered the price of these programmes to be quite prohibitive inasmuch as they would set you a figure based on how many e-mails you would send out per month and beyond this you would be charged a tariff based on each extra e-mail sent.  The beauty of Jive Systems  is that there are no extra charges, you have one fixed monthly payment and it doesn´t matter how large your list becomes.  As you can probably tell I am really excited about this product as I am becoming more and more comfortable talking to the camera and I do feel that it is a far nicer way to communicate with the people on my list and one of the other fabulous points about this system is the fact that within each of the 40 templates they have to offer you are able to include live links to wherever you point your customers.  Be that a link to your blog, a video, a pdf or in fact anything.

I have joined virtually every giveaway event that has been advertised at the moment.  I am really pleased to say that they are actually working for me.  My list is growing daily.  It is quite incredible how much work you can actually fit into a 16 hour day! (not every day but nearly. Ha.Ha.)  Inbetween outside commitments and the need to give this business the input that it needs to grow, I find my once burgeoning social calendar has taken a nose dive, but it´s all good.  Apart from producing videos for Clickbank products, I have been beavering away at my own first product launch for the IM niche.  (My Journey So Far – Version 12!!).

I feel really bad for not getting round to see any of my fellow students blogs but even as well as I manage my time, I am just finding at the moment that extra hour to do this is just beyond me at the moment, so my apologies to all but I promise I will be visiting again as soon as everything starts to calm down.

Hi all, 

 I can’t help but notice that people seem to have stopped visiting each other’s blogs and leaving comments. This student area has nearly become a ghost town. I would hazard a guess that this is a knee jerk reaction to the ‘end’ of the course. I confess I am as guilty as the next, time being at such a premium.

Even though we have known that this day would come I think it has crept up on us.  We have been concentrating on doing our homework, trying to build a list, etc. and time has just got away from us.

 Now everyone seems to be head down and beavering away for their dear life to make sure they have everything under their control before they have to fly the next, so to speak.

 I do hope that the students still see value in having a supportive group around them.  I for one do not want to lose touch with the many people who have helped me along the way.

 With there being such a diverse level of expertise among the students, I know that should anybody have a problem, somebody else has had to face that selfsame problem and overcome it.The way they overcame the problem is surely of great interest to others.

Now more than ever we need each other, so don’t lose touch.

Well tonight was the last of the main webcasts that I and my fellow students had from Alex Jeffrey´s, and what a superb send off he gave us. Tonights call was basically a recap of what we have been taught over the past few months, with a few more gems added for good measure. One of the things that has struck a major chord with me over the period of this course is the amount of effort that Alex has put in, and even though this was the last official webcast he told us that there are going to be a number of special brain storming sessions along with other special guest speakers.

I think any of us as a group of students would be hard pushed to have found such a giving man anywhere else..

Alex pointed out there are going to be students who run with the information that he has given us and there will be others who come along at their own pace, at the moment I feel as though I´m in a backward three legged race blindfolded.

The reason I am feeling that way is because I don´t think my future will be solely based within the IM niche.  My interests take me more towards the video marketing of other niche products, as well as video commercial production.  I have in the pipeline my first product which is a video tutorial series for boat owners wanting to maintain their own boats, as you will realise this is an indication of my meaning when I mentioned not staying solely within the IM marketing niche, although I do have an up and coming product for the IM niche, so watch this space =O).

 I am so very grateful to have been fortunate enough to have been part of this programme as I am sure the rest of the students will agree, Alex has gone completly over and above what would normally be expected of a mentor.  He has armed us with a wealth of information which, if used correctly, will enable us to achieve success.

Another point Alex raised on Tuesday´s call, was the fact that the IM niche is a fantastic proving ground for honing your marketing skills.  If you can make it here you can make it anywhere.  

Looking back over the last three months I am staggered at the all the new information my brain has absorbed, it´s only when you stand back and take stock of your situation that you come to appreciate the fact that we have all come on so far in such a short space of time.  

I want to wish all the other students for very very best of luck in their future endeavours wherever that my be.

For too long I had wandered from one idea to next, never realizing at the time that I was breaking the cardinal rule of starting an online business, or come to that any form of business, and that was to remain focused.  The rest of this post is basically an overview of what I think are the most important factors of maintaining a strong presence on the web.

YOUR EXPECTATIONS

We are all prone to believe everything we read about huge successes and all the talk of huge amounts of money being made online.  It’s only natural that we should want to do the same.

Unfortunately, we are not all going to have the same level of success in our online businesses.  Some are going to make it big, others are not.

I believe though, that a substantial amount of people will be able to earn themselves a very good income from an online business – but not overnight!

What you need to make it in this area of business is patience and perseverance.  You have to realize that like all businesses it will take time to be established and to show some monetary return.

If you go into it believing all the ‘pie in the sky’ hype then you are due to be very disappointed with your results.

You will have your ups and your downs, but what you have to remember is that you must not let your first, or even your second hurdles put you off.   You must get up and try again.

KEEPING ON TOP OF YOUR SITE

If you have been led to believe that all you need to do is to get your site up and running then you just sit back and watch the money roll in – think again!!

Your commonsense must click in at some point and make you realize that this just isn’t feasible.

You must choose your topic carefully.  I know that mini niches do work, but don’t aim at such a small niche that you won’t get anybody coming looking for what you are offering.  If it is too obscure then you would be just wasting your time.

You can find out just what people are looking for.  Google and the other search engines give you that capability of finding out just what people want to know.

There are some categories which are huge, and you really would struggle to survive if you picked them, but if you pick a topic which doesn’t have too many other people writing about , but you know people are definitely looking for, then you would be going in the right direction.

Change and new interest is where you have to be looking.  If people visit your site and like what they see, enough to make them come back, imagine what they are going to think if there is still the same stuff there.

Nothing new!  What would you do?  You wouldn’t bother coming back, would you?  Neither would I.

Remember, people just adore information, I would hazard a guess that what most people seek from the internet, is information of some sort or another.

If you don’t provide it then someone else will.  You are one of millions of sites, you have to work to make yours constantly change and be able to keep your visitor’s interest.

I wouldn’t go so far as to think that you will come up with something which would make yours No.1 out of all those millions, but that is not strictly necessary to gain visitors, however, it must be fresh and informative.

GIVING GOOD VALUE

What is good value you might ask?  Well, you have to be seen to be considering your customers wants and needs.

If you have a specific topic for your site, be it website or blog, then you have to constantly update it.  This takes work, you need to be constantly researching, doing what I call ‘your homework’.

With so many people using the internet these days they have become so much more discerning.  I know I talked in the beginning about believing all the hype about being able to become dot.com millionaires, but this is different.

Your visitors have been exposed to so much information every time they come onto the net that they have, in a way, become blasé.  They have great expectations about what they are due in the way of information.

So, you must make sure that you don’t give them anything which is untrue or questionable.  They will see right through you and you will lose them.

When you are searching for information yourself in order to post it on your site, try to find reputable sites to garner this information so that you can be sure it’s not pure supposition, but the truth.

Under the banner of value, also comes what you are offering in the nature of giveaways.

Apart from information, the one thing you can be sure will attract your visit is ‘something for nothing’.  Nobody is immune to a freebie, as long as it comes within their area of interest and is complementary to your site topic.

You wouldn’t offer an e-book on wine making if your topic of interest was politics for instance.   Do you see where I am going with this?

ORIGINALITY

There will be many who won’t bother to look beyond what is the hot topic of the moment.  They will simply jump on that particular bandwagon and hope for the best.

This will attract visitors, I have no doubt, but whether they come back again is another story.   Remember that there will be a huge number of other people doing just what you are doing – cashing in on the No.1 topic of the day.  You may just disappear into the crowd, so to speak.

Also, fads are just that – fads.  They come and go almost with the speed of light.  You can never tell just how long people will remain interested in them.  If your site is based around one of these fads then you could have a very short shelf life.

GOOD SOLID INFORMATION

One of the major points you need to take on board is never to try to write about something you do not understand.  This would be fatal because anyone who knows the topic would immediately realize that you didn’t know fully what you were talking about.

Nobody wants to be made to look like a fool, so to avoid this, choose a topic you know something about.  You need to appear knowledgeable.

If you are not as knowledgeable as you would like about your chosen topic then again – ‘do your homework’.  There is all the information you could ever want somewhere on the net.

Basically by running your site devoted to a certain topic, you are saving the reader’s time by doing the research for him.  He could just as easily trawl the net and find the information himself, which you will be serving up, but if he can be saved the trouble and time by finding it all in one place, why would he bother?

So you can see, you must make your information reputable so that you can be sure these visitors will come back to you over and over.  You must have them come back.

You absolutely must work at getting that trust in your information and get people to know you for someone who cares about his topic.

If you just serve up rubbish then you may as well shut up shop, people have too many other sites to choose from than to waste their time visiting yours only to be served up rehashed garbage.

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

Make sure that your hosting service does not carry more than 10 other sites because this can make your service slow, especially at busy times.

These problems are quite common but nonetheless annoying for your readers if they have to wait too long for pages to be loaded.

They may be tempted to leave and go elsewhere – not what you want at all.

Be sure your site is ‘user friendly’, don’t make things too complicated.  It has to be easy to navigate and get around, there are tools to enable you to make sure that this is how it is set up.

Also, you may think that any number of adverts and banners make it look attractive, but it just may end up as confusing to the visitor.  This would be a definite negative effect, one which you would do well to avoid.

Make sure your internet connection does not suffer problems either. You could just be in the middle of making a sale and be interrupted, this would not be good for you or your potential customer.

WEEK END TRAFFIC

The success of your site is totally dependant on the number of people who come to visit and look.  Weekdays are usually not a problem, but when it comes to the week-end, a lot of folk are visiting different sites from during the week, or they are out with the family, taking a day away, going to park etc. etc.  You just don’t get the volume of traffic at the week-ends.

However, there is a hard core of internet nuts who will spend time there whatever the day and if you are able to determine which sites are visited day after day 24/7 you could get those site owners to put one of your articles on their sites with a backlink and this would probably help you to tempt people to visit your site and to get over the week-end slump.

You can view it another way, you could think of something which would entice visitors to come to your site, week-end or not.  If you give them something to look forward to.   Something which you are going to be showing only at the week-end, a product, a freebie, whatever.

I realize it sounds like there are nothing but problems to face when starting an online business.  Naturally there are problems, but there are solutions also.

You can do it, others have so why not you?  As I said before, patience and perseverance are what is needed. If you have a problem, face it, solve it and get back up.

You don’t even have to use your own videos, there are literally thousands for you to pick from, to use for yourself.  It is quite permissible to do this, you are not stealing nor is it considered plagiarizing in any way, you simply embed the url into your own site.

There is such an upsurge in the use of social media sites that it is imperative for anyone wanting to make contacts to use these sites.  You can even put in a link for a video on say Twitter, Facebook etc.

Video is definitely the way to go, people just love videos, for fun, for business, whatever, they flock to sites showing videos.  Obviously this means that you have massive exposure if you have videos showing on any of these sites.  It would be sheer lunacy not to take advantage of this as part of your marketing strategy.

Of course, the secret to creating a ‘viewer friendly’ video is to vary the content.  Don’t just sit or stand and talk for the whole length of the video.  People soon get bored with that.  Vary your backgrounds if you can and perhaps put other material in, graphs, instructional sections where you are showing a screen on your computer etc.  Anything which will make a natural break is good.

The theme of the video naturally must be reflected to some extent in the background you choose, what slides you show, graphics etc, must be slanted towards the subject.  If this is not possible then you can set the mood differently with the use of appropriate music, upbeat, soothing etc.  There is no end of effects you can achieve with video.

There are a huge amount of free music, graphics, backgrounds etc.available.  The sky is the limit for you to experiment with, by trying to find the style which would suit your purpose the best.  You may only want to place videos on sites for fun which is alright, but if you want them as part of your marketing strategy you would have to find which styles worked the best for your promotion.

If you are an internet marketer you really should be using video,  that is if you are not already.  It is the way forward and is proving one of the easiest ways to reach your public.  As an internet marketer your main object is to build trust between yourself and your prospective customers.  What could be a better way than for you to be seen and heard?  People will identify more readily to your image than to your written word.

This method of marketing is taking over, so don’t be left behind, get on the video marketing bandwagon now.

The really stupid thing is that another phrase ¨Alex Jeffreys scams¨ sends Gary most of the traffic as, go figure that one !?!

Anyway to cut a long story short, all you Alex lovers go to Gary´s site and show a bit of love to our Alex. Gary has even given us an incentive to cast our votes by turning                       ¨no follow¨ off for all comments made. All you have to do is link to the post with the words ¨Alex Jeffreys¨.

If you have seen Gary´s blog morphing over the last few days then you better believe it´s a good idea to get a little link love from Gary, because his site will soon be taking off like a rocket, I for one am going to go  for the ride, holding on real tight !

I hope you enjoy what you see.

Please feel free to leave comment on whether or not you like my attempts, all comment equally received good or bad  =O)