Success Saturday [164]

Here’s a little video celebrating some of your successes. This is just a small sample, but still pretty cool, right?

 

Build Your List with Affiliates

Quick, without thinking about it,
what’s your number one traffic generation strategy?

Nothing … say that out loud with me, “Nothing” … will grow your traffic better than an effective affiliate program.  Nothing.

You are only one person who can only do so much on your own. You only have 24 hours each day to get things done.

But, what if you could tap into the profit pulling power of hundreds, even thousands of other people? What if there was an entire sales army marching across the web, all promoting your product for you?

You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Ask ANY successful internet marketer on the planet what their #1 source of traffic is and, if they are honest, I’ll assure you that they’ll tell you it’s their affiliate program.

Seriously, find your favorite “guru” and ask them. Ask them if there is ANYTHING that comes close to their affiliate team.

Ask Jimmy D. Brown. Ask John Reese. Ask Mike Filsaime. Ask Frank Kern. Ask Ken Evoy. Ask Marlon Sanders. Ask Russell Brunson. Ask Derek Gehl. Ask Yanik Silver.

Ask ANYONE – don’t take my word for it.

None of these guys would be where they are today without their affiliate program. None of them.

Now, you can find out the secret to their success and duplicate it.

Would you like traffic that you couldn’t stop if you tried?

Click Here to Grow Your Affiliate Sales Force!

Peace,

Paul

Article Marketing List Building [162]

Thanks for the feedback about video list building. Today’s issue focused on using articles to build your list…specifically, creating a solid resource box.

carrie wilkerson list building

Click the Image to Vist the Site

Your “resource box,” which is also known as the “byline,” “author’s box,” and similar names, appears at the end of your article. As mentioned –

The entire goal of your article is to get people to read all the way down to your resource box… and then CLICK on it.

Many beginning marketers completely waste this valuable real estate. Instead of giving their readers a reason to click on their links, they instead talk about themselves.

I’m sure you’ve seen this many times before. How many times have you encountered a resource box that goes something like this:

“John Doe is a certified personal trainer with ten years of experience…”

I didn’t even bother creating the rest of that fictional resource box because hardly anyone would read it anyway.

And here’s why:

Your reader doesn’t care about you.

He doesn’t care if you’re certified in anything, if you have X number of years experience, if you graduated with this degree from that college, etc. And so insisting on talking about yourself and your accomplishments will result in a quick click of the “back button” by a bored-to-tears reader.

The only thing your reader cares about is himself.

That’s it!

He only cares about his problems and how you can solve them. If you list anything about yourself, you better directly tie it into a benefit for him. Otherwise, leave it off and make sure your ad is entirely about what benefits him (the reader).

Notice I used the word “ad” in the above sentence. That’s no accident. Your resource box isn’t an author biography, even if that’s how some people use it.

No, your resource box is an advertisement that gives readers a clear and compelling reason for them to click through to your site. And like every other ad we’ve talked about in this ebook, that usually means offering a benefit and perhaps arousing curiosity.

But here’s the good news:

You can be somewhat of a mind reader with regards to your prospects, thus increasing your conversion rate. That’s because you already know what has caught the attention of your prospect – if they read your article, then offering them more of the same (but even better!) is a sure way to get them to click through!

Indeed, you can even offer them more of the same by asking them to click through for “Part 2” of the article. Or, as mentioned previously, you can offer a free ebook that’s an extension of the article with some of your best tips inside.

Quick Tip: As always, take the time to segment your list. If someone is reading an article about “lifting weights to lose weight,” then don’t send them to the same landing page as the person who’s reading your article about, “diet pills that work almost like magic.”

While there might be some overlap between the markets reading those articles, chances are you’re talking about different niches. If you keep them on separate lists – or at least segment your list so you can separate out these niches – then you can target your lists better and send emails that speak directly to the different niches.

And as always, that means more sales and more money for you!

Summary and Action Steps

Now that you have a good idea how to create an engaging article and a compelling resource box, it’s time for you to crank a few articles out.

1. Block aside an entire day and see if you can create at least ten articles that range anywhere from 350 words to about 700 words.

Quick Tip: A good length tends to be in the range of 400 to 500 words – that’s long enough for you to share a few good tips, and yet short enough to hold the reader’s attention.

2. Then set aside time every week to write articles. Or if you don’t want to do it yourself, then hire a ghostwriter to create these articles for you.

You’re probably wondering how many you should write per week.

That depends (in part) on how much this content strategy plays into your overall marketing plan. Since it’s likely that you’ll need a lot of content since you’ll be using article marketing plus blogging and writing articles for your newsletter, you should plan on writing at least ten per week.

Of course this is one of those cases where the more you can do, the better.

If you can create 25 articles per week – 100 per month – then go for it. They’ll pay out quickly in terms of traffic, list building and sales… and you’re also likely to see a long-term pay out as well.

On the other hand, don’t scrap article marketing if you don’t have the time or money to create a large number of articles.

Consider this: If you can only create just one article per week, that’s 52 articles per year. And that will bring you in money and traffic. So is it worth it? You bet!

Success is NOT an Accident,

Paul

Nicheology

 

Here’s a recent article released by Diana Barnum…

One favorite PITR (Product in the Rough) from Paul Evans’
Nicheology.com that is used a lot by my company is actually one of the
Miscellaneous Bonuses for members, entitled, “The Free Publicity
Manual.” Here are several ways we use this document for lead
generation and money-making avenues.

1) Initially, we actually grabbed this document and pretty much used
it “as is” for fast action lead-generation. We slapped the company
name, URL and email on the first and last page, and made a PDF of it.
That’s it.

A popular way we use this is with our Publicity Manual Postcard
promotion, online and off. To review the print version, check out our
download package that contains a Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF of a
print postcard promo that we revise and use from time to time, as well
as the PDF of the manual.

Download this by clicking: Publicity Manual Postcard Promo (no sign
up, no money…nada needed.)

Hint: Revise the template and use it for your own promos!

Leads and sales of our own services and products are generated when
people follow up to ask for the manual generally by email and phone
calls. Plus funds are also generated as people visit the Google
Adsense listings, the affiliate products being advertised and our own
company products and services associated with the online promos.

2) For online promotions with this, we cut/paste the postcard’s text
that’s on the mailing label side, and simply enter the info into an
email for an autoresponder broadcast message to our appropriate lists.
The info is also great for adding to Ezine issues as a special bonus
with purchases or just to offer as a Freebie.

3) We also have revised the original info somewhat, added to it and
re-branded it over and over for multiple purposes, using short tips
from it as main topic starters in articles, press releases, blogging
and in Hubpages and Squidoo. Leads and funds are generated as people
visit the Google Adsense listings, the affiliate products being
advertised and our own company products and services associated with
the online promos.

4) The Manual and promo package is also included in our membership
site at http://esupport-club.com to help other people start and grow
their businesses.

Are there still more ways to use this? You betcha! Here are 10 more
ways. You could:

a) Set up a squeeze page for this for leads generation.
b) Add a video to any of the promotions and upload it to YouTube and
other video sites. Make a video series from the content while you’re
at it.
c) Make audio out of the material – -a short series of podcasts would be great!
d) Insert your own publicity tips and templates that work, just like above.
e) Break up the content, revise it and / or add to it (hint: with
graphics or digital photos) for all types of other promotions: to use
in Tweets, on Facebook, in interviews and more.
f) Use this in your own membership sites.
g) Package this as a freebie or upsell to use with your other
promotions, targeted with info for your niche.
h) Learn from this, using it for your own training and education.
i) Make this into an affiliate program, like through Clickbank.
j) Make a membership site out of this targeting the site around your
own niche. For example, what work from home business site doesn’t need
to help others with publicity? Realtors, doctors, attorneys, writers,
Internet marketers, web designers…who couldn’t benefit from good
old-fashioned publicity to help boost leads and sales?

There are still countless ways to put this one PITR to use. And that’s
not all there is in Nicheology. So stay tuned for the next Nicheology
Mini-Case Study and get ideas you can use for your own business.

Sincerely,

Diana Barnum, CEO
Moving Ahead with eSupport Club

Special Nicheology Service Package

 

Video List Building [161]

You’ve probably noticed video is “hot” right now.

Just look at the popularity and success of video sites like YouTube. And if you spend any time on these video uploading sites, you’ll notice they’re not all videos of cats and dogs doing funny things.

Tons of marketers are taking advantage of this medium to sell their products and grow their lists.

Can you get in on a piece of this action? You bet.

Note: Again, these tactics falls under the broader category of “article marketing.” While you can use create and distribute article videos to grow your list, you can also create videos without the use of articles. If you choose that route, follow the tips below while disregarding references to articles.

First off, however, you need to consider your market. Are they on high speed connections that can easily handle video?

Example: If you’re catering to a rural market, they simply may not be capable of a true broadband connection. Yes this happens even in today’s “modern” times.

There are a few different ways to use videos with respects to growing your list.

One way is to offer a free video or two as your freebie for anyone who signs up for your list.

Another way is to use your videos as “bait” to attract prospects to your site. This works much the same way as article marketing – you create impressive content with a call to action at the end that asks people to visit your site. People click through to your site and land on your compelling squeeze page.

Quick Tip: If people want to join your list after watching one of your videos, then offering “more of the same” is a good tactic to increase your subscriber opt-in rate. In other words, you can offer a video as your bonus freebie for joining your newsletter list.

Let’s talk about creating videos that get buzz… and new subscribers.

Here are the three steps to creating and launching a buzz-worthy video…

BUY good video and audio equipment.

Some people say – and it might be true – that prospects who are hungry for a particular piece of information wouldn’t care if you wrote it down on a piece of toilet paper.

Quick Tip: Let’s suppose I gave you the winning lottery numbers for tomorrow’s lottery. Would you care whether I scratched it on the back of a napkin or engraved it on a bar of gold? Probably not.

But of course we’re not all creating products that are the equivalent to a set of winning lottery numbers. So for the rest of us, presentation counts. That means you should buy the best video, audio and lighting equipment you can afford in order to create the most professional, polished videos you can muster.

I really like the Kodak Zi8 because it has an external mic connection.

BE creative… and controversial!

Prospects may appreciate plain, straightforward information – but they’ll rarely pass those sorts of videos along to their friends, post links to your video in forums, or blog about them.

If you want to create videos that get talked about, then they need to be centered around content that pushes the envelope. Be creative. Be controversial. Maybe even be a little offensive. After all, polarizing people and creating controversy results in plenty of niche buzz!

Quick Tip: Remember, your video has purpose. Namely, you’re using it to bring people to your site to join your newsletter. Always keep that over-riding purpose in mind as you produce your video.

Also, be sure to include your link multiple times throughout the video in both text and verbal form… especially at the end of the video. And as always, be sure to give those who view your video a compelling reason to go to your site!

BEGIN your video launch with a BANG!

Once you’ve completed your video, it’s time to get it in front of as many people as possible. If you can launch it with a “bang” – and if it truly is a viral video – then you can expect it to soon take on a life of it’s own.

For starters, post your video on the following sites and places:

  • Post links to your video on your blog, website, and forum.
  • Post links to your video on other niche forums. (If nothing else, post it in your sig line.)
  • Announce your video to your list, and encourage them to pass it along to their friends.
  • Ask your friends and colleagues to blog about your video as well as adding it to their Squidoo lenses, HubPages, forums, newsletter and similar.
  • Submit articles to article directories and include a link to your video at the end of the article.
  • And finally: If your video is considered controversial or even offensive, then be sure to get it into the hands of the people who will be the most offended by the content. These people WILL talk about it, post links on forums, and blog about it too!

Peace,

P

Tagged with:
 

List Building Basics

For the 100% uninitiated…

Click Here to watch List Building Basics at YouTube.

Peace,

P

 

List Building a Missing Link

Researched 23 niches today and noticed a bonehead pattern with opt-in gear…

Click Here > Email List Building Mistake

Lucky for you, almost everyone in your market is making this move. However, you can easily ramp it up and anchor yourself as THE person to listen to.

Peace,

P

Tagged with:
 

Clickbank Guide

Register at ClickBank

ClickBank is one of the largest providers of digital content on the Internet today. It permits merchants to sell digital products in various forms, as e-books, software, newsletters, subscriptions and memberships. Merchants registered with ClickBank can sell to customers from all over the world and they can use the ever growing network of affiliate marketers associated with ClickBank to promote their products on a global scale. In fact, the biggest attraction of ClickBank today is its network of experienced and trusted affiliates. Further, ClickBank has simplified the entire process and handles the signing up affiliates, tracking the leads or sales generated and payment of commissions to affiliates, allowing vendors to concentrate on what they do best, which is creating and working on their product. It is not surprising then, that not only is ClickBank recognized as a great place to sell digital products, it is also one of the most powerful affiliate management systems you can find on the Internet.

Sign Up for Clickbank Now – Its Free

Before we begin telling you about how you can open an account with ClickBank and start signing up affiliates to promote your product, you should know a little about the benefits of selling digital products, why ClickBank is the ideal place to sell digital products and why affiliate marketing is now an essential part of any online marketing campaign.

Benefits of Selling Digital Products

There is no doubt that in the last few years, the power and popularity of the Internet has completely transformed the nature of business and the way business is done. One of the most important changes that the Internet has brought about has been the way it has made geographical boundaries non-existent and businesses can be literally open 24 hours a day for 7 days a week. And one of the easiest ways of using the tremendous resources and power of the Internet is by starting your own online business of selling digital products.

Before we look at how you can use ClickBank to run and manage your affiliate program, we will look at the benefits of operating an online business selling digital products.

•      Ease of use – While you may have been very concerned about setting up and operating an online business, starting with digital products will make the entire process fairly simple. You do not have to engage customers for a long time, convincing them to buy your product. Instead, you can invest your efforts in having a website that will do your marketing work for you and in building an affiliate network that will be working for you. In fact, you could be on a vacation while your website and your affiliates will be promoting your product.

•      No additional costs – If you were selling a physical item, then having to sell additional items would mean having to invest more in producing more of the items. However, when it comes to a digital product, all you have to do is creating the product once and sell it as many times as you like without having to spend anything extra on it. For example, you may sell software, music, video, journals, ebooks, even subscriptions to paid websites. An additional copy of an ebook or software is not going to cost you one cent more whereas it will certainly bring you the same amount of profit.

•      Instant payment – When you sell digital products, a customer typically pays for it through online banking methods, PayPal or through credit/debit cards. This ensures that you receive your payment almost as soon as your customer makes a purchase. You do not have to wait for the shipped good to reach your customer who will decide if they are satisfied with the product and only then make the payment.

•      Grow your business – Selling digital products also makes it easy to grow your online business. Once you understand the very basic techniques involved in marketing your product, you can quickly employ these techniques to social networking, article submissions as well as affiliate networking to gain more sales.

•      No inventory costs – Most online stores have to worry about how long they can store their products, where to store their products and how much loss they will incur if they run short of the products at a time of high demand. Digital products do not have any of these disadvantages. Once you create a digital product, you have to store it in one place from where it can be downloaded as many times needed. Creating more copies does not cost you any more than what creating the single product did and you can store it for as long as you want without incurring any further costs.

•      Get a head start – Even if you would like to expand later to selling various other products, selling digital products can quickly let you build a good reputation for your business online. By concentrating on selling a quality digital product, you can generate more sales, fewer returns or refunds, more positive feedback and in general, let your business gain in popularity. When you provide a product that can actually help people with their problems or provides solid advice, you can be sure that it will be well-received and people will talk about it on the Internet. They will mention it on message boards, on social networking sites and even recommend it to their friends.

•      Automated delivery – Many online businesses also have to worry about the delivery of their goods and if they eventually make it safely to their destination. On the other hand, customers can receive the product they have purchased by simply downloading it from your website. Your customers do not have to worry about additional shipping charges or the safety of their product and you do not have to worry about delivering your product to different parts of the world.

•      No geographical limits – The most obvious benefit that an online business has over traditional brick and mortar stores are that your customer base does not have to be limited to a particular geographical location. You can sell your digital products to customers all over the world – you are thus going to see a dramatic increase not just in the number of customers but in your earnings as well. And if you have a digital product that is available in multiple languages such as French, German, and Chinese and so on, you can multiply your earnings that much more.

•      Automated sales and payment – You can use a good online sales management system that will allow you to handle the sales, payment, marketing and affiliate network for your digital products automatically. For example, ClickBank, one of the world’s largest retail sellers of digital products makes it very easy for you to set up an online business selling digital products by managing the most challenging aspects of sales, viz., handling order forms, payments and online marketing.

•      Easy to start the business – If you have a digital product ready, it is going to take you no time at all to start an online business. You can very quickly register a suitable domain name and choose a reliable web hosting company. Before you know it, you will have a few pages ready describing your business and the product you are selling. Now, all you need to do to start taking orders is to register with ClickBank and start selling your product.

As you can see, selling digital products is a great way for your online business to earn money and also build awareness about the brand.

 

List Building [160]

Before you start building your list, it’s important to understand why you need one. Sure, you hear everyone saying that building a list is the “thing” to do, but if you don’t understand the reasons, you won’t be as motivated to do so.

Tip #1 — Build Your Own Business

While there is a lot to be said for getting to the top of the search engines and advertising to promote your business, there’s nothing like having your own list. A list is something that you control at all times. You control its size, your relationship with members, and even how much money you make.

By having a list, you are building your business on solid ground.

That’s not to say that search engine traffic isn’t wonderful and you should quit advertising. However, developing a list of leads or customers can be worth much more to you in the long run when combined with both of those methods of traffic.

Tip #2 — Understand That People Are More Likely To Buy From Those They Trust

You’ve probably noticed that it can be difficult to get new customers to buy from you. Some people simply will not buy from those they’ve never heard of and don’t have a relationship with.  You will usually have to “presell” to them before they will make a purchase. This is especially true since identity theft and fraud have become more prevalent.

The good news is that people will join your list because they view it as a lower risk than making a purchase. All they need to do is hand over their e-mail address and they are “in.” This gives you the opportunity to gain their trust and build a relationship that can lead to repeat sales down the road.

Tip #3 — Make A One-Time Customer Into A Lifetime Customer

The difference between the customers who buy from you one time and those who buy from you multiple times is oftentimes the amount of communication they receive after their initial transaction.

Even if your customer had a great experience with you, you are likely to fall to the back of their mind if they don’t hear from you for a while. If they receive follow-up emails from you, it’s an entirely different matter. You’ll be on their mind and you will likely create a lifetime customer after you consistently deliver.

I highly recommend that you implement a system of ongoing follow-up notices to your customers. If you don’t, you’ll be out of sight and out of mind. There are many other businesses out there that are vying for your customer’s attention and they’ll get the customer that you once had.

Tip #4 — Know That It’s Easier To Sell To A Previous Customer

This tip goes hand-in-hand with the previous tip.

People are more likely to buy from someone they have bought from in the past, especially if it was a good experience. If you spend all your time chasing new customers, your profits are going to be far less than if you focus on keeping old customers happy and selling to them over and over again.

If you don’t have additional products to sell to your customers – send affiliate promotions for complementary products.

Tip #5 — Use List Building To Grow Your Income

There are so many different ways that having a list can add to your bottom line. We’ve already discussed that previous customers are more likely to buy from you, but that’s not where it stops.

When you have a list, you can get people to look at your special offers and new products whenever you’d like. All it takes is a simple e-mail and you can literally pull in cash on demand.

Success is NOT an Accident,

Paul

P.S. Yesterday, I sent a notice about Simple CB Got in some questions…

Q: Is this another one of those hyped up “How to make your dreams come true” with CB?

A: Nope. This is straight training. Most folks can’t make those “dream systems” work because they do not know how to use CB properly.

Q: Can I sell Nicheology PLR on CB.

A: YES. In fact, I use a Nicheology PLR for the live example. In the tutorials you see me change the actual PLR sales page to conform to the CB rules.

You see the payment link created and set.

You see the download page created to conform to the guidelines.

You see the test checkout take place as smooth as silk.

Then you see the CB approval process and actually see the email from CB saying everything is a go. And the product is listed in the CB Marketplace right now.

So there’s no doubt about using Nicheology + CB.

Q: Is CB the best way to get started taking payments online?

A: Personally, I think so because your payment and affiliate system are tied together. And the affiliate base is already there.

You do not need your own merchant account. You do not have to get a separate affiliate tracking account.

I think there’s some infatuation with the idea of having a big fancy system, but most people never get them going because of how complicated they are.