Earners Guild Blog

It still amazes me that people contact with the problem, “I can’t figure
out what information product to create”.

Shesh!

As a reader of this Blog I have already shared with you some innovative
ways of finding new products without ripping off (aka. Borrowing) from other
Internet Marketers.

Before I show you a new method you should know that some of the brightest
Internet Marketing minds have been doing this for YEARS.

In fact, if you read Marlon Sanders “The Red Factor” or “Secrets
of a Ninja Marketer” you would not only have seen him doing exactly what
I am about to share, but he tells you exactly what he did.

Yes, he tells you.

OK, here’s the technique.

Short version, “DUMB IT DOWN”.

Longer version, find an ivory tower nerd’s book, thesis, whitepaper on a niche
topic and make it easy for dumbo’s like me to understand.

Marlon did it with the work of Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen. No,
I am not going to steal his thunder by revealing his ideas. You can go read
his excellent products to see how he did it.

Now before I get another email complaining, “But Michael I can’t find these
book, thesis, whitepapers”… let me give you some URLs to work with (a starting
point).

http://dissertation.com
http://www.universal-publishers.com
http://www.brownwalker.com
http://cambriapress.com/

Now go create some awesome products and let me know about them.

Later, Michael.

p.s. leave me a comment underneath if you want to meet at Frank Kern’s “Mass
Control” event this weekend.

Adam and I sign-up for almost every marketing email list we can find.

Why?

Well besides keeping an eye on the competition, it also allows us to improve our business by learning.

Yes, we read and buy a lot of Internet Products.

Today we spent about an hour discussing one particular big launch.

Like any “mastermind group”, our conversations are part philosophical, part scientific, part motivational, part rant… OK, so you get the idea.

In particular one of the launch emails caught our eye.

Not because it was good but it was BAD.

Instead of dismissing it, we analyzed what we disliked about it.

Here is a summary of our findings.

- The email subject line was factual (no benefit).

- The email copy was hype.

- There was no engaging story to read.

- The case study was tedious.

An example of, “Toxic Marketing Syndrome”.

Basically, if your marketing is a “snoozefest” you won’t get people to read about your product and hence fewer if any sales.

The solution is;

- Tell a great story

- Weave in benefits with real-life examples

- Keep the reader and potential buyer guessing

- Use video, lots of photos (before and after examples)

- Be different!

Now, maybe next time I should record our conversation – it can be an education all by itself!

Later, Michael.

Need an idea for a new product?

As an alternative to hanging out at ClickBank
Marketplace (link) why not spend some time where “nerds” hang out?

Most of these guys and gals have ZERO marketing knowledge and frankly when
they have a good marketing idea they tell EVERYONE.

A few good places to troll for software, ebook and training ideas include,

http://www.phpclasses.org

http://www.hotscripts.com/

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

http://sourceforge.net/
– look under ” Browse Software” for ideas.

Another great place for finding ideas are online forums with a “twist”.

Here is my twist.

1. Register as a member (free).

2. Search for terms like, “How”, “Where”

The results will spawn many great ideas.

Often the replies give an indication of broad interest.

Last idea.

Sifting through “Press Releases”.

http://www.prnewswire.com/

They have a convinient search box on the home page and you can quickly find
out the “buzz” in any industry.

- Michael.

Making fancy videos like the one at nichequake.com (link) requires a few bits of equipment.

Recently I needed something to add to my collection of ‘gizmos’ and took along a friend on my gizmo shopping spree.

“Watch this!”, I said.

I picked out the item I wanted.

Snagging the attention an elusive sales clerk was probably the hardest part.

As we approached the register (friend in tow) I asked casually,

“Do you offer a discount?”

There was a slight pause in his step. I winked at my friend.

“Actually, yes we do. Let me see what I can do” , he replied.

A few minutes later, ‘gizmo’ in hand, my friend who was initially horrified at my behavior laughed.

“I haven’t seen that done before”, she said.

Memorize those 5 words. Try them. The worst thing they can say is, “No”.

Don’t believe me, then check this article out from the New York Times. (link)

- Michael.

p.s. For the record the item was a “popper blocker” (link) — I got it at 25% off retail!

If you haven’t seen Adam looking “goofy” while trolling the streets for niche markets — check it out,

nichequake.com (link)

I wanted to share with you something you can instantly use to help increase the effectiveness of your website.

Here it is…

Facts don’t make sales.

Emotion do!

Facts make me sleepy.

Emotions grab my interest.

Basic human behavior.

And the best copywriting method to “shift” a prospect from mild boredom to excitement is to use “curiosity”.

See what “The Last Protege Student Of Gary Halbert” said about this on the thegaryhalbertletter.com blog.

In particular, “Marketing Secret #4″ aka. “The Marketers Jedi Mind Trick!”

The Last Protege (link)

- Michael

Yesterday I went shopping online for a high-priced item.

The item or ‘thing’ isn’t important.

What was interesting was how hard some people make it to buy from them.

Some examples.

1. “Call this phone number to order” — I did and got stuck in voicemail HELL!

2. “To order FILL OUT THIS FORM” — 25 fields before I order. You’re kidding, right?

3. “To order call 555-5555″ — I did and no-one called back.

And so the saga went.

My suggestion, “find someone non-computer savvy and give them the task of ordering from your site”.

Ask them to explain what your site offers.

Ask them to go through the order process.

Listen to their questions.

This simple exercise could be worth a small fortune to you.

I am looking for someone to help test out some new marketing methods I have pioneered at my expense.

I’ll pay to promote your business, you keep the revenue but I get to see how well my methods work and I can use these results as ‘proof’ my methods work.

There is a slight catch!

I want to try these methods on marketing SOFTWARE not ebooks, CD or DVD’s.

The software must be your own unique product. It can be a hosted script or a PC product.

If you are interested then reply in the comment box below.

The comments are moderated and won’t be published.

I will contact you privately.

I run several niche web sites outside of the Online Marketing community.

Using SEO methods which I teach, I happily drive free traffic to these sites.

One particular site generates several million unique visitors a year.

For a long time I built ONE big email list from the site.

BIG MISTAKE!

I found that buyers from the site bought diverse ClickBank.com products I had listed on the site.

The point?

SEGMENT or build multiple lists.

Realize that just because you thought your site visitors were their for YOUR reason they are really there for their OWN reason.

Now, had I known that several years ago my auto responder sequences (yes, plural) would have been more highly targeted… and THAT dear reader cost me a @##$@ fortune.

Don’t copy my mistake unless of course you have YOUR reason for doing it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Today I am launching http://www.nichequake.com/

Check out the sales page — see how I ’stack’ the benefits?

The next few blog posts will be on turning site visitors into buyers. That should interest you.

I use video extensively in my product creation.

Of course, for screencapture you can’t go past Camtasia but often I need something more powerful and flexible to edit ‘live action’.

After buying almost EVERY P.C. video tool on the market I found ‘Sony Vegas’. In the U.S. you can pick up the product for under $100 and this software works flawlessly.

I have bought ALL the other tools, Magix, Pinnacle and a bunch that are no longer sold and Vegas is by far my favorite.

Once I edit my footage I either burn it onto CD/DVD or load it onto Youtube.com

And for those of you that have started using Youtube.com as an excellent lead generation source… here is how you get your video rendered into the site.

If you’ve seen some of our sales pages you’ve seen our use of screenshots.

For example,

http://smartseovideos.com/ILB/

There is a fantastic tool we use to create these screenshots and today I am going to share it with you!

In fact, this tool ‘rocks’.

It is called, “FastStone Capture” and you can find it here,

http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm

The best part is that it is, “Freeware” or FREE!

I have even used this tool to create whole products but I’ll leave that for another post.

Sometimes I am on the phone and instead of describing what I see on the screen I just email or send over the image using this tool.

Talk soon, Adam.

p.s. Do you have a favorite tool? Post it in the comments field for others to see.