Marketer's Eye

Gems from the classics 3 - More Napoleon Hill

Eye — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:15:55 +0000

I’m continuing to read and to be inspired by Napoleon Hill’s excellent “Grow Rich!: With Peace of Mind”. My gem quote this time is about what happens when you start being successful. Interestingly, I also think it is a caution to watch out for basing your business on affiliate marketing.

Let nobody bribe you away from being yourself. You are going to make money, and as soon as you do, others are going to see you have what it takes. Fine! — but this is the point at which many a man loses himself. Having build himself from within himself, and having thus attracted attention, he yields to a “big opportunity” to stop building his own wealth and peace of mine, and ties himself to another’s business.

Technorati Tags: napoleon hill

Marketing Gem 10 - Web Copy That Sells

Eye — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 04:25:02 +0000

As part of my preparation for launching eBookTribe, I’ve been reading the excellent book “Web Copy That Sells” by Maria Veloso.

I unreservedly recommend this book, which breaks things down so much more cleanly and in a much more organized manner than my other favorite copywriting book, “Call to Action”.

As an example of how straightforward she makes the topic, here are her:

Three Fundamental Rules for Writing Web Copy That Sells

Rule 1. Don’t Make Your Website Look Like an Ad

“Your website should provide the solid information that your prospect is looking for, and it should have an editorial feel to it.”
Rule 2. Stop Readers Dead in their Tracks

“Fact: If your website is little more than an online brochure for your business, then your website is a very weak selling tool.”
Rule 3. Capture Email Addresses.

“The odds are low that people will buy from you the first time they visit your website. After all, they don’t even know you.”

Technorati Tags: marketing, Maria Veloso

Marketing Gem 9 - 10 Tips to help you become an expert.

Eye — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:11:00 +0000

Todays gem is from
“Never Eat Alone : And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time” by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz.

This is the best self-marketing and networking book I’ve ever read. Actually I bought it twice. The first time was an Audible book, which I listened to with full attention for the whole unabridged 12 hours (in the car, of course). The audiobook was so good that I had to by the hardback, so that I could take notes and properly quote it for this blog.

In this gem, Ferrazzi shares his 10 tips to become a sought-after expert. I’m going to give his titles verbatim, and paraphrase the details.

Get out in front and analyze the trends and opportunities on the cutting edge - Identify the movers and shakers, meet them of possible and take them to lunch, read their newsletters, learn from them.
Ask seemingly stupid questions - Question the unspoken bases that people are using for their understandings. This is how breakthroughs are made.
Know yourself and your talents - Work on your talents and let others fill in your weaknesses.
Always learn - Read books and magazines, take classes, talk to experts. I’d add to this list, “write a blog on the topic”.
Stay healthy - don’t burn out, take vacations, do things to nourish your spirit.
Expose yourself to unusual experiences - Learn things out of the mainstream, to spark creativity.
Don’t get discouraged - Passion keeps you going through inevitable hard times.
Know the new technology - If you can’t then adopt a geek who’ll help you.
Develop a niche - start small and expand, don’t take on the world at once.
Follow the money - you can’t make money if there is none to be had in your chosen area.

Technorati Tags: Ferrazzi, never eat alone

Marketing Gem 8 - Book Yourself Solid

Eye — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:57:24 +0000

Todays gem is from
“Book Yourself Solid : The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling” by Michael Port. This book is primarily for service professionals, looking to get more business than they can handle. With a little mental wrangling, most of the book is extremely relevant to any sort of marketing.

This quote is from one of the earlier chapters in the book, and I wanted to share it because I think it says very plainly a rule of thumb that so many companies ignore to their own detriment. For example, my last employer, Via Training. They never turned down a job. They tried to be everything to anyone, never focusing, and certainly never even think of dumping a paying client. They should have. If they had, I’m absolutely certain they wouldn’t have had to trim the company by the 30% they did last month.

Why have clients, or anyone else for that matter, in your life who zap your energy and leave you feeling empty? In the first year of being in business on my own, I cut 10 clients in one week. It wasn’t easy. It required a major leap of faith, but the emotional and financial rewards were astonishing. Within three months I had replaced all 10 and added 6 more. Not only did I increase my revenue, I felt more peaceful and calm that I ever had before, and I enjoyed my clients and my work more.
[…]
If you’re struggling with the idea of pruning your client list, keep in mind that it’s for your client’s benefit as much as it is yours. If you’re feeling empty and drained, or frustrated and dreading the interaction with the client, you’re giving that client far less than your best, and it’s both of you who are suffering for it. You owe it to these clients to refer them to someone who can, and will, do their best work with them. If you are working with people with whom you do not do your best work, you are out of integrity.
pp. 5-6

Technorati Tags: Michael Port, marketing

Marketing Gem 7 - Attractor Factor

Eye — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:55:38 +0000

This Marketing Gem comes from Joe Vitale’s great book,
“The Attractor Factor : 5 Easy Steps for Creating Wealth (or Anything Else) from the Inside Out”. The book is about how to attract wealth into your life. It is an expansion of an older book titled "Spiritual Marketing".

That’s when I first learned about the concept of levels. That is, people tend to stay on the same level of business or social status. When they meet friends, it’s usually in their circle of activity, whether church, work, school, or some club. As a result, they rarely get out of the level they are on.

That’s not bad. You can stay on the same level you are at and do well. But if you want more, or if you find yourself starving on the level you’re on, you’ll need to go up a level or two.

Using AWeber on the Joomla CMS

Eye — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:37:37 +0000

I’ve written an AWeber plugin for the Joomla CMS. If you want it, go to my programming blog and download it.

Joomla is a wonderful CMS, by the way. Now I just need to figure out how to make it more search engine friendly.

Technorati Tags: joomla, aweber

Profitable eBook surge coming soon

Eye — Wed, 17 May 2006 05:34:24 +0000

Google Books is preparing to sell access to books. Wow! Better get ready, info product authors.

How this will work is that Google will enable people who find your book via search to instantly purchase access to it. So, begin preparing your ebooks on how to drive organic searches of your ebooks right away. It is an obvious, enormous wave of potential surging toward all of us.

Google will be acting as the broker, enforcing DRM, and extending the reach of ebooks. As usual for the Google crew, this will completely change the game. I think this is being completely overlooked by most infoproduct developers. Yes, Google appears to be targeting print-book publishers, but there is no reason at all that this won’t work for us too.

Gentlemen, start your planning!

Technorati Tags: google, ebooks, google book search

TopGamblingBlogs is up!

Eye — Tue, 16 May 2006 14:18:24 +0000

After more hours of work than I care to share, I’ve posted Top Gambling Blogs. This is my first pure content-for-adsense play. I have another 3 similar blog sites queued up to receive a similar treatment.

The idea is that every month, I will list and track the changes in ranking for the top 25 gambling and poker blogs. I get this information through a multi-step method, which I have (mostly) scripted nicely in Python.:

Get the URLs for blogs listed in the first ten pages of results for "gambling blog" and &quot:poker blog" on Google, Yahoo, and Alexa.
Strip all obvious garbage results
Pull Alexa ranks for all of them
Pull Technorati inbound links and inbound blogs for all of them.
Sort them properly.
Test each link, throwing out spam blogs and non-blogs, until I’ve pruned the list to the top 25.
Write short descriptions for each blog.
(next month) Track ranking changes from last week.

It took a while, but I really like how it turned out. I think it is valuable, not spam, and might actually get linked well.

Technorati Tags: adsense, poker blog, gambling blog, casino, ranking

CBProsense - Adsense competitor?

Eye — Tue, 16 May 2006 04:46:41 +0000

CBprosense is a fascinating idea. Instead of using Google to display ads based on the keywords on your site, you use their system to display links to ClickBank products.

Since CB products generally earn $15-30 per purchase, this could very well be hugely more profitable than AdSense for me. I’m going to give it a try on my most heavily-hit site, Invisible Castle. That site gets 300-500 uniques a day, yet makes very little from Google.

I’ll be sure to report back here how well it converts for me, assuming their TOS let me.

The system has several modes once you have signed up a site. The one I’ll try uses direct keywords. It can also spider your site looking for keywords. They say that it is compatible with Googles’ Terms of Service, but for now, I’m going to run it alone.

Technorati Tags: ClickBank, ebooks, adsense, adsense competition

Email Aces is a very nice autoresponder

Eye — Fri, 05 May 2006 06:11:08 +0000

Reading internet marketing books and forums, I am constantly told to build a list. “Build a list! Now!”

I am pleased to report that I’ve set up my very first autoresponder. I’m finally convinced that I need to learn how they work and to start building a list of my customers.

Email Aces

I’m using Email Aces to run my campaigns. They have a stellar rep at the equally-great Warrior Forum, and from what I’ve seen so far, they earn that reputation.

I was fairly nervous for some reason, before I created my first autoresponse campaign, but they made it quite straightforward for me. I went from never having created anything like an email campaign, to having my first multi-email sequence all set up with trackers, double-opt-in, and email content in about an hour. That’s impressive.

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, emailaces, email aces, email marketing