No Nonsense Marketing From Doug Prentice

I like small and friendly. In fact I’ve always likes small and friendly whether it was companies I worked for,  places I’ve lived in or whatever. Even in the internet I’ve tried to follow the same approach. Not for me the big super duper multi million selling gurus. I like my gurus successful and preferably local (well I call the whole of the UK local). Any regular readers of my blog will know that I’m a big fan of both John Thornhill and Lee McIntyre. They both have managed to keep that small personal feel to their businesses as they’ve become more and more successful.

When I was setting up my first autoresponder a few months ago for the same reasons as above I thought that I’d give Wizard Responder Pro a shot. It’s run by Randy and Pete, both friendly and helpful guys, and the price was pitched at about 25% less than the big boys. And you know what I was really pleased with the product and the service. If something I tried didn’t work either Pete or Randy would very quickly sort it out for me.

Two weeks ago I tried to log in and for some reason I couldn’t get in. Oh well I thought a temporary server issue I’ll try again tomorrow, it’s nothing urgent. Tomorrow came and went and still no better. It turns out that Randy and Pete have been royally shafted by hackers and their whole business, lists, sites have all gone and probably changed hands over a dozen times by now.

Let me say right now that I bear no grudge about what happened and am certainly not going to winge about poor me etc. I really feel for these two guys whose business has been ruined overnight but it did make me stop and think. What did I think about? Well, it rammed home to me that their are certain parts of your business that have to be watertight in terms of security. My list is very small but say it had been 5,000 or 10,000 strong. Where would I be now? I’d be thoroughly shafted as well.

Much as it pains me I’ve  moved my autoresponder to Aweber. It’s big and shiny and more expensive but most importantly it’s safe!  While I’ve no doubt there are other really good little autoresponder sites out there why take the risk.

Next I must go through all my other service providers and ask some searching questions about security and what happens to me if provider x or provider  y goes down suddenly. It’s a real pain in the **** but I guess the maxim must be: a) Move all essential services to safe homes b) Try and leave non essential services with small and friendly companies.

I hate doing this as I believe that we should all help small companies grow as it encourages competition and innovation like nothing else can.

It goes against the grain but sometimes safety comes first.

Possibly like me, you received an email this week alerting you to John Thornhill’s Crazy eBay Auction. This is where  John was selling 8 of his products plus online training and a monthly mentorship scheme access plus bonus products (including resale rights)  for $97.  Now if you appreciate the quality of John’s products you’ll probably think that’s quite a bargain and well worth the $97 – which John obviously believed as he only put 50 of these packages up for sale.

What I have not mentioned so far is that there were 3 additional bonuses:

1) A direct phone line to John’s desk for 8 weeks from the date of purchase

2) A complete review of your business model by John

3) A one on one audio consultation with John

Now I don’t know about you but these 3 bonuses make the cost of $97 pale into insignificance for what you get in return. This set me off in a couple of directions.

My first thought was that I should carefully read through the offers that bang into my mailbox every day in case I miss some jewels like that. However I must temper this with the realisation that the value of any bonus is only as good as the reputation of the seller.

I guess we’re all in a similar boat in as much as we all receive lots of offers – you could spend all day doing nothing else but opening emails promoting this week’s hot products. As any of my regular readers will know I firmly believe that you find your mentor (or two) and stick with them. This way it will lessen the time I spend reviewing offers but hopefully will give me time to thoroughly inspect the offers that do come from my mentors.

The second thought that occurred to me was what can we offer as wow! bonuses when we’re still relatively new and as yet without reputations. Well, I guess we all have something that will be of value to our potential customers.

Say for instance your niche is organic food and this is an area where you have some expertise. You may want to offer a one an one consultation on how to source the best value organic foods, which stores you prefer, good local producers and so on.  The idea is to add original personalised bonuses that will really appeal to your customers as adding some unique value and separating you from the crowd.

If you make the bonuses good enough the actual product almost becomes irrelevant as people will buy for the bonus. I would bet that John had people making multiple purchases purely for the “extra” bonuses.

Next time I’m putting together a product offering it’s certainly one of the options that I’ll be considering.

Until next time……

Last Sunday was a smashing day here in middle England. The sun was splitting the trees and suitably fortified by some strong coffee and a couple of slices of toast and marmalade, I put down the Sunday papers and decided it was a day for doing the “outdoor jobs”.

First on the long list of jobs to be done was shed and fence painting. I am the proud possessor of three garden sheds (please don’t ask we ended up with three – probably the same way we ended up with FIVE Yorkshire terriers at one time) and I thought I’ll start off with the smallest shed.  It seemed quite a straightforward task – medium brush to remove all cobwebs and c**p and a wire brush for the green gungy stuff at the bottom.

However when I got round to the far away side of the shed I discovered to my surprise that the roofing felt had been worn away – possibly by the adjacent holly tree.  So half my day ended up as a roofing project than a painting one.  However once I got back to painting with one of my favourite Grateful Dead bootlegs in the background (yes, old hippies never die – they tie-dye, sorry) I got to thinking how I had frequently been in and out of that shed for months but had never looked at the bit that was usually out of sight.

Then I started to ponder all the  other things that I looked at the front of but seldom checked the bits that weren’t obvious to view.  And so the list began:

Bank Accounts – I know I should check my bank statement but how often do we all look at the bottom line and say that looks OK. I know I really should be going through each entry and reconciling it with expenditure and payments made.

Credit Cards – Same thing again but I did find a small monthly recurring payment that I’ll now have to investigate.

eBay Listings – I we sell the same thing time after time on eBay as many of us do, how often do we check through the listing and compare it with other similar listings just to make sure that we’re still up to date and competitive.

Utilities Bills – How often do I check the readings on my utilities bills – not very often. Fortunately that will change as I’ve now moved on to self billing where I send in the quarterly readings.

Monthly Outgoings – This was one where I  was ahead of the game. Some months ago I came across a monthly expenditure log on Martin Lewis website. Since then we’ve keeping a record of all our household expenditure and it’s absolutely fascinating to see where all the money goes – and soooo much of it. We never realised just how much we parted with every month. It’s something I’d recommend anyone to do. Even if it doesn’t make you change your habits it will make you think.

I’m sure that when I get on to my next shed I’ll think of even more areas whose hidden sides need my attention. If there  are readers of the is blog perhaps you have ideas of areas that we all need to check.

Meanwhile, there’s a hot cup of coffee and a biscuit with my name on it nearby…..

The Internet must be one the remaining few places where you can start a business for nothing. yes that’s right nothing, zilch, frei, libre what ever language you want to use. All you need is any idea or a few ideas. Even if you don’t have ideas of your own you can pick up some free ebooks with full PLR rights that will allow you mix up 2 or 3 products and claim it as your own.

1) Once you’ve got your idea or free ebooks you’ll need something to create your product. Download the excellent Open Office . This is a free open source suite of programs giving you word processor, spreadsheets, graphics, presentations and databases. It’s available in a host of languages and is able to read documents from most other popular office software packages. One Item I particularly like about is the pdf button which will immediately turn your word document into a pdf file. Very handy when you’ve completed your project and want to turn it into a product fro sale or giveaway.

2) If you want to create an audio book or similar download Audacity. This is another opensource program which is great for sound recording and editing. It works for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux. The program allows you to record live sound, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, splice, cut, copy or mix sounds together and has many other features.

3) Video is another increasingly popular means of product creation. have a look at Cam Studio. This a great piece of screen capture software which will record all screen and audio activity on your computer. It has loads of accessories such a cursor highlighter. This lets you talk about and show on the screen what you’re doing.  this is another example of open source software and completely free.

4) So you want to build your website. When you look at the cost of some web building software it’s enough to bring tears to your eyes. What I believe to be the best free alternative is NVU which is a great WYSIWYG  (what you see is what you get) editor. This allows you to input as if you were using a word processor (no HTML expertise required). It’s a fairly straightforward piece of software. But if you have any problems there are user forums where you’ll be able to gat answers to all your questions.

5) When you’re building your site you’ll want to include the most effective keywords that will be search engine friendly and help your site climb up the search engine rankings. SEO Book is a fantastic resource that provides enormous help with improving the optimisation of your site plus an incredible useful keyword tool that you’ll find extremely helpful in getting the most effective keywords for you. Plus it’s free – all you have to do is register. In addition there’s a host of tutorial type material to assist you.

6) The next issue you’ll come across is hosting for your website. This is usually an annual or monthly fee for a company to put your website on the the Internet. I know it may be hard to believe but there are people who will do this for you for nothing. Spend some time on Free Web Hosting where you will find lists of providers for this with ratings etc. I’d advise caution in choosing your provider as this is perhaps the most important part of your business i.e. if your host goes down so does your business. But have a look at what’s available and read the reviews. See how long the service has been in operation etc. A tip is to also try and get a web host with Fantastico feature.

7) How do you get your files and folders up on to the internet. Now that you have you your hosting sorted out you need an FTP client service. A great open source amenity is Filezilla which lets you upload you files. It’s pretty easy to use but again if you have any issues it has a great user forum.

A common method of list building and attracting traffic to your site is by adding a blog to your site where you can impart information, tell people about yourself and promote products etc. WordPress is one the world’s most popular blooging platforms and is completely free!  It also offers a wide range of themes and plug ins. In the web hosting paragraph I mentioned that you should try and choose a hosting company with Fantastico as this provides a really easy way to add a WordPress blog to your web site.

9) Once your site is up and running you’ll need a method of measuring the visitors to your site and other useful statistics such as how many pages the average visitor looks at and so on.  Google Analytics will allow you to do this and so much more. It’s free and all you have to do is sign up for it. Do this right away and it will prove to be an invaluable tool allowing you to measure the effect of your traffic driving strategies.

10) If you’re trying to build your list or awareness of your brand by blogging you might like to try Comment Sniper. This another free download that will alert you whenever a new posting is published on your favourite blogs. Simply register and then add the blogs that you want it to keep an eye on for you. You’ll be alerted by either an on screen desktop notification or an SMS alert via your cell phone.

There are many other free products and pieces of software available and if you enquire on the relevant forums people will be happy to share.

Compared with the branded chargeable products on the market the above list would save you a conservative $1000. Now that’s either $1000 you just don’t have or $1000 you can spend on something else. Maybe on a good Mentor?

One of the most frequently quoted ways of exploding your sales on the Internet is by using  Joint Ventures.

So, you’re just starting out and you ask “What is a joint venture”. It’s pretty much what it says in the tin. It’s a sales venture involving two or more people. They normally fall into one of two categories: you either own a product or you have a list to promote to.

The next problem that faces you is finding a partner to do a joint venture with.

If you are a newbie starting out you most probably won’t have a list but may have a product and that’s what I’ll deal with in this posting.

Let’s set a scenario where you’ve laboured over your new product and you want to expose it to as many people as possible but don’t have a list of subscribers to contact. The joint venture you have in mind is therefore to find someone who has a list to whom he/she will promote your product.

As you’re new you may have to adopt a “round the houses approach”.

Method 1 – The Clickbank Way

Go to Clickbank and then click on marketplace. It costs nothing to sign up as a clickbank affiliate and this will give you access to the useful information on products listed such as commission payable and gravity (the number of sales made via affiliates). Find 5 products that are related to your niche and could sit well alongside your product.

Contact the webmaster of each site and explain that you are considering promoting their product. Introduce yourself, tell them about your product, show them you blog and ask for a review copy of their product. You will normally get either everything you ask for or nothing at all.

Review all the products you get but if you think a product is poor quality or value don’t proceed any further with it. For the good products, post a review on you blog and add an email on to your autoresponder series leading to your blog.

Once this all done contact the webmaster again with a copy of your review and say that you are promoting his/her product to your list. It doesn’t matter how small your list is. You can then ask if he/she will return the favour and promote your product to his/her list.

Keep plugging away with this method and you will get some joint venture promotions. Don’t give up because you don’t get instant success.

Method 2 – The eBay Way

eBay can be a powerful tool for you to use in getting your product in front of a mass market. It can also be an equally powerful tool to find JV partners. Go to eBay and look under the category Every Thing Else and then into Information Products. Once there start to look for products that are similar to yours. Products ideally that would be complimentary to yours. Once you have assembled a list begin to thin it down by looking sellers who are PowerSellers. People who are PowerSellers will generally tend to have significant lists. Check their feedback next as it will give you a good idea of how they treat their customers and whether they would be suitable to do a JV with.  If this is your first venture into JVs it will be best to find an eBay seller who is familiar with doing JVs as this will make it much easier for you.  Contact them with a simple email saying you’ve seen their products  and asking if they would be interested in joining you in a joint venture which would take a couple of hours work and split the profits 50/50.

Keep trying until you find someone who is interested and off you go.

Follow either of these courses of action with a bit of persistence and you should end up getting your first JV up and running. Then build on that success and do a few more.

If you’d like a full step by step guide of how to set up eBay Joint Ventures please try “John Thornhill’s JV Auction Profits”

After several months of other activities, a few problems and general stuff getting in the way I’ve really got down to following the  John Thornhill Coaching Program I bought about 18 months ago.

Once I’d written the ebook and ordered the graphics I got on to building the sales page. Freshly armed with the great graphics supplied by Dave Nicholson (I know these are shameless affiliate links but do these guys give great value for money) I downloaded my trial (free) version of Microsoft Expression Web 4.

Fired up the program and guess what – everything ground to a halt. Not the fault of  Microsoft, it’s just that these big programs use up so much RAM that my poor old PC couldn’t cope. It was so bad it reminded me of the old computer days when I’d input a pile of info and make a cup of coffee while it churned through. Memories come flooding back of green print on black screens and where even a small company with 20 screens needed a separate big air conditioned computer room…….

Anyway this was a not an acceptable state of affairs. So I Googled “make my computer go faster” and immediately got the usual pile of c**p software offers that would transform my 5 door hatchback into a Ferrari for $30. Pressing on, I came across www.crucial.com who explained to me that the problem might lie in not having sufficient RAM in my computer.

Their simple procedure allows you to input your computer details and tells you the maximum RAM that you can have in you computer. By clicking on my computer/properties I quickly discovered that the RAM installed my computer was 1024Mb and I could install up t0 2048Mb.

The Crucial site also advises you of the different upgrades that are compatible with your machine and of course the price. Thus emboldened and putting aside my gut gripping fear of opening the box that is my PC, I placed my order. The bits arrived within a couple of days and that was when the terror really set in. Was I, the techy dunce, really going to tackle this seemingly impossible task?

Back to the Crucial site where I found a great little video that took me step by step through the process. The only bit I had to figure out for myself was how to open the box (told you I was the techy dunce).

Tip: You’ll first have to disconnect your computer and then disconnect all the leads etc. Make a note or take a pic of where everything plugs in so that you can join it all back up again the same way.

Once this was done it was dead easy to follow the steps and replace the old modules with the new ones.

Tip: there’s an off centre slot in each module that stops you putting it in the wrong wrong way round.

I then put the box back together again, joined up all the cables and and then hovered fearfully for a couple of minutes building up courage to press the button. There was nothing to worry about as when I pushed the button it booted up OK. The next test was to see if it was any faster. Boy! You bet it is. I wish I done it months ago.

So if you’re suffering the same problem as I was don’t be afraid to have a go. It probably saved me at least £50+ from calling in my local PC repair man.

Not only did I learn something of value and save myself some money but I felt damn good about it!

Is it just me or is everyone else’s inbox full of promos lately? I must confess that I am subscribed to quite a few lists but it seems that when I open up every morning there is another host of items that promise to change my life forever. Not only that but on occasion day after day from the same list owner.

Most of these “opportunities” are usually somebody else’s product as part of a JV (joint venture) promotion. Now I’ve no problem with JVs – in many cases it’s the only way to get a new product out to the market in a fairly short period. However I do begin to wonder about the quality of some of the products being promoted. Are there really that many life changing products out there?

The mass marketing of so many products really make me stop and raises a couple of problems for me and probably many like me:

1) Does this list owner really care about me and my success or am I just another number in his machine? When you join many of the mailing lists you’ll be assured by the list owner that all that he/she is really interested in is your success ans welfare. To be fair I know of a few examples where this is the case. These marketers tend to give you much more for free than you end up buying from them – see Lee McIntyre or John Thornhill both of whom have given for free at least 10x any purchases I’ve made.

2) How much time do I have every day to read these emails and watch the “dreaded” video. Why do I say “dreaded” video? Well, once upon a time (yes, I do admit to remembering ticker tape) what you got was a quick email followed by a link that took you to a sales page. Once at the sales page you could quickly scan and see if the product was of interest. Now we get the explanatory email plus a link that almost inevitably takes you to a video. These videos can last anything up to 20 -30 minutes to get to the point. Some you can zoom forward but with others you have to sit through the full presentation to get to the meat of the offer. Personally I just don’t have the time to review up to 10 of these per day.

So, what’s the net result of this? Frequently in my case I just delete the lot and read none! Am I missing out? Probably, but I also have a life to lead and work to do.

And as a side issue why does the product always have to been created by “my good friend …….”. How many good friends do some of these people have? Why not just tell us that you don’t really know this guy but he has good reputation and delivers good product. My supermarket doesn’t try to con into believing that they got these beans for me from their good friend Mr Heinz! No – it’s good reputation and good product.

You may be asking why I just don’t unsubscribe from some lists. Because I’m a keen student of internet marketing I do like to see the different approaches used by different marketers.

However in the final analysis I end up opening the mails from the marketers who have gained my trust and respect and just give a cursory glance to the others. The quickest route for a marketer to lose my allegiance is to bombard me with product offers day after day. Sure, send me stuff if it’s interesting and informative with the occasional sales pitch but please remember that time (my/yours) is valuable. Please don’t squander it!

“The money is in the list!” How many times have you heard that? Almost every guru or Internet Marketing training course that I’ve come across always utters these words somewhere in the package.

Is it true? Yes and n0. Without a list it’s very difficult to get your ideas or your products in front of a large market. However if you have a list of 50,000 desert dwellers ans you’re trying to sell sand, you may end up with a very limited take up.

So it’s not entirely about the list. The money is in the relationship you have with your subscribers. So you could say that it’s not the size of the lsit, it’s much more to do with the responsiveness of the list. To have a responsive list you have to have subscribers who have confidence in you.

If the purpose of your blog is to attract responsive subscribers then you have to build a relationship with them. You want them to come to trust your judgement and opinions on anything from the latest changes in your chosen marketplace to products that you recommend.

What better way to achieve this than via your blog? This is a wonderful platform where you can let your subscribers into your life and show them just the type of person you are.

There are three main categories through which you can build trust and respect with your list:

1) Tell them about yourself. Consider current events in your marketplace or niche and give your honest opinions on them. Always be honest. That way you’ll never trip yourself up with something you forgot that you said in a previous post. People will generally respect you for your honesty and the more your personality comes through in your postings the more your subscribers will warm to you.

2) Supply your subscribers with good content. Explain tips and handy hints that you have discovered. If you find a new free tool that helps with keywords tell them about it. Tell people how you’ve achieved your successes and also tell them about the mistakes you’ve made so that they can avoid the same pitfalls. Give away as much free information as you can. The more you give away the more you will get back in the long run.

3) Review and recommend products to your list. This is where your honesty is of paramount importance. Review any product thoroughly and test drive it yourself. If after that you’re happy that it will be of benefit to your subscribers tell them about it. Tell them the good points and the bad points.  Be honest about your affiliate links and let your subscribers know that you will be making a commission on every sale. If you’ve done enough of points 1 and 2 above your list will not resent you making a commission on a useful product.

Whatever you do don’t flood you list with blogs of type 3 above. Remember that you have to fill the well of goodwill to able to drink from it. Fill it with good content and insightful information and then occasionally when you have a product that you believe is of top quality and suitable to your niche, promote it to your list.

When you mail out to your list your first and most important objective is to get your subscribers to open your email. Promote too much and your emails will go straight in the deleted file without even being read.

Use your blog wisely and it will bring you great benefits and a very responsive subscriber list.

What’s the biggest problem that we face as individuals working on our own? Motivation, procrastination, boredom, lack of focus? Yes, these are problems that we all face at times but I believe that the biggest problem that we suffer is lack of stimulation form our working environment.

Take me for instance. Every morning sometime between 8.30am and 10.00am, depending on other chores that have to be done first, I sit down in the same office (a very nice office) in front of the same computer trying to solve the same problems or improve the same products I was working on yesterday. And what do I get – yes, you guessed it – the same answers and I had yesterday.

Last week I agreed to look after my friend’s framing shop/picture gallery for a few days while he was enjoying a well earned break. It’s not particularly busy – customers tend to be few but do spend a bit when they come in. Knowing this I came armed with lots of Internet Marketing stuff to keep my self occupied – products I’d bought and never really spent time on, free reports etc.

What I also brought with me to my surprise was an open mind. Just sitting in a different environment with peace and quiet gave me degree of focus that I had not had for quite some time. Recently I completed my first product Free Traffic Torrents and knew that I had to start driving traffic to the site. Despite having all the tools to do this I’d messed about and hadn’t really got beyond stage one.

By the end of day one in my new environment I’d mapped out a strategy and listed all the actions I need to carry out to get things moving. Did this occur because of a moment of blinding inspiration? No, it did not. It happened largely because I’d taken myself out of my normal environment and was surrounded by fresh stimuli.

This reminded of my days in corporate where we used to have “away days”. Now don’t get me wrong, these were not the jollies you read about in the tabloids with paintball competitions, outdoor events or visits to theme parks. These were hire a hotel room and sit down with the team days. Everyone brought their projects and their problems and all the same old problems were addressed in different surroundings. The results? Well, issues were resolved, new directions were found and we all left with a feeling of purpose and direction.

How can you apply this to your situation? How many times do you sit in front of your computer and end up the day feeling that you’ve meandered through the day? Why not give yourself an away day. You don’t have to go to the extremes of hiring a hotel room. I remember Lee McIntyre telling me that he used to often head down to Weatherspoons with his laptop just for the stimulation of a fresh environment.

So go to the park, hotel lobbies are also good and free, your local library – anywhere that gets you out of the mental rut you may have settled into in your home office.

Go on – give it a try. The results will surprise you.

Successful article marketing demands keyword rich articles. While your article must be stimulating, informative and provide a solution to a problem it should always be keyword dense if one of your aims is to get free web traffic.

So how do you go about this? The first thing I do is try and get inside the mind of someone using the internet to find information. How do people interact with the internet. In most cases they just type in the words that relate to what they’re looking for such as “get free web traffic”. So when you’re thinking of keywords try to imagine what you’d use if you were searching.
What you want to try and achieve is to get your article listed on either page 1 or 2 of Google. Now that’s easily said and a bit more difficult to do. This is where you need to think smart and find key words that have high search demand but low competition.

One method of doing this is using seobook.com. It’s free to use and provides you with a powerful keyword tool that you can use in your campaign to get free web traffic.

1) Register on seobook.com, then click on the keyword tool.
2) Enter your chosen keyword(s) into the box and submit. You’ll be then presented with a list of variations of your keywords with piles of other information. The stuff you want to look for is the number of times that the words or phrases are searched for on a daily basis on Yahoo, MSN and most importantly Google.
3) Choosing the phrases with the highest search (demand) will result, in almost every case, in having high competition. As what we’re looking for is high demand and low competition, choose keywords with a monthly Google demand of about 100 or slightly higher.
4) Make a note of the keywords that fall into this category.
5) Repeat this exercise for a variety of keyword phrases.
6) Now go to Google and submit each phrase with quotation marks at the beginning and end. Google will show you how many results there are. Ideally you’d want 20,000 or less results for your chosen keywords. Once you’ve completed this exercise for the list you created you should have a list of keywords around which you can write articles.

The above should result in a Google page one or two listing on the basis of one article submitted to, say, Ezine.com. and should help you get free web traffic to your site.
The parameters will vary depending on how many articles you plan to write. If you plan to write say 20 – 30 articles on the same keywords you can go for bigger demand / competition numbers.

When writing you article be sure to include the keywords in your title and at least three to four times throughout the article, bolding where appropriate.

So it’s up to you now. This stuff really works!