<b>Some Tips on the Content Network</b> The content network used to just totally totally suck! The traffic from it USED TO BE TERRIBLE and as a result it still suffers from a pretty bad reputation. This can be good for you though as it results in pretty cheap ads from the content network. Search and Content are two totally different things. Some people do amazingly well in the search networks, I have not so much, but I have had a ton of success in the content networks and I do feel qualified to talk about how you turn a profit there (but not so much the search network coz I purty much suck monkey chunks and in fact I've run very few profitable search network ads in my whole life. Again that's not to say the search network can't be profitable, I know people who think I'm nuts to be in the content network because they make so friggin much in the search network..but for whatever reason, I just aint got search down so well) So with the content network how I think of it is like the candy that they sell at the grocery store. You go to the grocery store for some Campbells Chunky Chicken noodle soup, some eggs, some milk and some flower, and as your waiting in line behind the slow SOB in front of you a candy bar and soda also happen to catch your eye, so you pick them up too. Well that's pretty much how the content network is. In the content network you want to scream. You want to be, as TraderZones refers to me, the entire Brass Section of a band. Gimicky shit works! Calling people out works..HEY YOU! Now, one difference in search and content and its HUGE. In the search network people are often in the mood, or at least open to the idea, of buying something. As a result you can often sell them some high ticket items. This is not the case in the content network. No one reads an article about Jessica Simpson's new hairdo wanting to buy your ebook from www.buymyshit.com (honestly this ULR has worn itself out with me, but since I know sparky likes it so much I'm gonna keep using it). As a result the content network is good for low ticket items and two step sales process. The most successful products on content are going to be priced under $25. Now, that does not mean you can't sell them your $1000 product, but you aint doing it today. If your good once you get someone in your funnel, its just a game of math and a lot of em are going to buy, its just important to get em in there. If you can do a few e-books or video courses for $17, its just an impulse buy - but you know you have someone who is willing to pull their credit card out and spend money! Thats the most important thing. Once you got that, your golden really. That's really basically the key stuff, at least in my opinion, on content. My buddy that spends a half a zallion dollars a year is teaching me more and more about search, and I'm getting better at it, but like I said Im not a good resourse really on the search network PPC stuff. I do love the content network. I friggin love banner ads too, but thats another article.
Also in the content network, one of the most effective tactics is to call someone out..... hey you fat butt hey you yellow teeth also use symbols. ? & % @ etc...I dunno why but they draw they eye. ! will usually get kicked. People say to use "put things in quotes" but I've tested with and without them, and I almost always outpull with out them..dont have any idea why, but dats juz the way it iz baby. Also if you can put GROSS, NASTY, UGLY and especially NAKED in your headline...you got it, use it! Now, this only applies again to the content network. This kinda stuff will kill you dead in search. Actually I suspect that the reason I suck so bad (and I suck bad) in the search network is because content is a totally different animal, and I do pretty dog on well in it if I does say so myself. Im trying to remember exactly what the ad was that I ran. It pulled nearly 8% which is the highest BY FAR that I ever got. it was something like (and this isnt exact so don't f'n hang me) The Naked Truth of Wall St Wall Street Fat Cats Rip you off Learn Trading and Take your money back obviously that's not the exact ad coz its too many letters n all that....but it was basically like that...and i pretty much tried to run it in any ad that talked about bernie madoff. I ended up getting a few thousand leads and 190 $17 sales, which have so far been worth about $64 per customer bcuz of the back end.. ----- again it's not exact..that was a great ad though. btw...you can try to use these exact ads, but if your ad ends up being too close to mine google will jack your prices up like crazy,
<b>It's Time For Brandon to Put up or STFU </b> Over the last week or so I think that, and this is partly my fault, this thread has done what a lot of ET threads do, and its gone off the rails. This has been because there are a lot of self proclaimed "experts" in Internet Marketing out there telling you that what I'm teaching you just simply doesnt work. They speculate that I'm broke (I admit that I still owe the hospital a bunch of money due to not having had enough insurance, but my cash flow situation is pretty good), and that I'm just a washed up has been dying for your affection. It's hard to know who to trust these days. In the past when this kind of thing would come up regarding my trading the solution was pretty simple. One time, for nearly a week, I had a standing offer out there to pay $100 to any former customer of mine who would simply step forward and speak of a bad experience they had with me. Now, a lot of the usual "all guru's suck" crowd stepped forward of course and where all too happy to bash and trash, but even though I offered $100, not one single unhappy former customer came forward. I dunno know about you, but if someone screws me over I'm willing to tell about it for free, and if they offered me $100 to tell about it I would certainly take that opportunity. I'd also simply put real time trades up and discuuss them. They would either work or they would not. Because I know what I'm doing my winners where a lot bigger then my losers and people who took the trades made money. With Internet Marketing it's not so easy though because A) I don't have any customers, all I've ever done is just make money for myself and my partners and B) I can't just give a trade that will resolve itself within 40 minutes with a very obvious result. I can tell someone exactly what to do with Internet Marketing, and even if they do it 100% correctly it could be weeks, sometimes even months before the results are seen. Like I said I've been called a liar, a scamer and broke on this thread. I've actually taken more abuse on this thread then I ever did on a trading thread, which is to me pretty amazing since all the people on the trading threads used to be pissed off that I was so good at selling stuff. Now we have a bunch of people screaming from the rooftops that I don't know how to sell shit. So, I think that the only thing for me to do is put up, or shut up. And with that in mind here is the actual, real, income statements from ONE of my online business this last week. This is my biggest business, it accounts for about 2/3 of what I'm making online right now. Now, these numbers are my net. About 60% of the sales are made by affiliates, who are paid 55% for each sale. The remaining 40% of the sales basically come from the Google Content network, where I'm spending about $800 to $1200 per day. This funnel starts with a simple $17 ebook and some spruced up PLR's. Also to to clear, while a huge part of my sales here are because of affiliates, this is not affiliate marketing. This is a product I own and market myself. So anyway, this is what I woke up to this morning. If any of the self proclaimed experts who are bashing me can produce similar, or better, numbers I will shut up and go away, conceeding that you know more about selling shit on the Internet than I. Brandon
I had a person PM me and ask what niche this is in. First of all I really hate talking about niche's I'm active in. Nothing good ever really comes of it, because no matter what anyone tells you, except in giant area's like Internet Marketing, Finance, Health and Fitness and Porn the pool of available money is not that big. There are only so many people in the entire world in the Chex Systems database, and of those that are, I'd guess less than half are online. There are a lot of photographers, but only so many butterfly photog buff's. Each of these site's I mentioned only because I sold them. In the case of the butterfly site the lady was as stupid as the artic winter nights are long and she ran it into the groud (that's what happens when you spend 20 years as a bean counter at a Fortune500 company) and in the other case, with Chex, I sold it to a credit repair company who is totally changing the business model (Ie they are going to give the database away for free) In this case, with the one I provided the sales data for, the site is about salesmanship. It's targeted in on a specific type of offline sales professional and it aims to help them increase sales. As I said the funnel starts with a small $17 e-book. From there I have everything from a $77 per month offline once a month newsletter (or $147 per month if you want a case study and the CD Interview of the month, where I interview someone who is doing really well and ask them hard questions) to $497CD-Rom Courses and and webinars that cost between $47 and up to $297 and a mastermind group (There are currently 7 people in it) that meets once a week, everyone in it is a six figure per year sales professional (who have sent me their tax returns to prove it) and everyone compares tactics, war stories, whats working now etc. That costs $897 per month to be in. I've had as many as 9 people in it, and as few as 5. I suspect if it went under 5 people it would not work real well, but anything over 10/15 I don't think it would work real well either. Brandon PS. Oh btw, there is a very specific reason that ALL OF MY PRICES ON ALL OF MY PRODUCTS END IN A SEVEN. The reason why is beccause, unlike most people, I do my homework and I split test the shit out of stuff. I have found that prices that end in a seven inceases sales by 13% over a 5 and by 11% over a 9, this is an average across many tests.
<b>How to Double Your Online Business This Year </b> I'm so damn sick of people complaining about the recession and how terrible it's making everything. You know what, it's terrible for people who won't think, and who won't test. Most online business are totally NOT EFFECIENT and if they fixxed that, they would EASILY double their business this year. Now, when I say double your business that scares the shit out of people. So, I'm going to break it down into very small, doable steps for you. It was Albert Einstein who said that compounding is the most powerful force on earth. This is true for investors, for debters and for business as well. A bunch of small things can add up to a huge increase to your bottom line. For example, five things that increase your business by 10% end up increasing your business by over 60% because of the effect that compounding has. The first thing I almost always tell everyone to do is raise their prices by 6 to 8%. I know, I know, I know there is a recession. But let me tell ya something, if your trying to compete on price alone - your screwed. I'd much rather be known as the best and most expensive guy in town, he stands out. The cheapest guy can always be replaced. If you increase your prices by 8%, that means your $20 product is now a $21.60 product. Do you think your average customer is going to notice that? Some will, and a few might even bitch and complain. You know what, they are shitty customers and you don't want them anyway. Be glad they fired themselves before they ruined your life. You should also communicate with your leads EVERY SINGLE F'n DAY. Not contacting your leads every day is almost unforgiveable. Look, I don't know when it's gonna strike your fancy to take a ganger over to www.buymyshit.com and buy my shit. Since I have no idea what's going on, I'm going to remind you every single day. I'm going to give you something useful so that you don't get pissed off and demand to be taken off my list mind you..but every single day im gonna be in contact with you, at least monday through friday. Active your old customers. People leave for a lot of reasons. Peoples situations change. A lot of your old customers would love to do business with you if you simply remind them. Also, if you can get in touch with customers who left because they are unhappy - you have an amazing opportunity now to fix a potential problem in your business. You let that person vent, and often when they see that you have taken the suggestion they made to you seriously they become among your most loyal buyers. Get referals. Beg for them if you have too, because if my friend Jack told me to buy from you, Statistically speaking I'm about 6 times more likely to buy from you. I'll also buy more form you. On my email lists, for example, I send out about $100 in free bonus material to people who simply refer three friends to me, or make a positive mention of my goods and services on an active message board in a niche I'm involved in. Do some people try to game the system? Of course, but on the whole people are a lot more honest then most dishonest people suspect they are and most people will do right by you if you are doing right by them. Provide a 1 year money back PROMISE. Not a gaurantee, a PROMISE. People see gaurantee all the time, they see it so much, and have had some many gaurantee's broken, it doesnt mean anything to them anymore. A promise is another matter though. Also, when you offer a full 365 day money back promise you scream from the top of the hills that you are in fact confident in your product. I actually offer a better then money back promise. I tell all of my users that if they don't feel like they got 10 times more out of what they purchased from me then what they spent I will not only refund the entire purchase amount to them, I'll write a check to the charity of their choise for 10% above the purchase price. So, if you buy a $1000 course and you don't get at least $10,000 in value out of it by the end of the year, I really don't want your money, I want to give it back and I will. You will not only get your $1000 back, but a good cause will get a check, in your name, for $100 as well. Offering a 365 day money back promise, in my direct experience, increases sales by 15%, and here is the real kicker..it actually reduces refunds by about 35%. I suspect that what happens is that when people have a full year, as opposed to only 30 days, they actually take the time to put things into use. Most things can not be mastered in 30 days, but they can be in 365. I'm just guessing here, but I think thats why. Get better sales material on your site. I know it's expensive to hire a professional copy writer, and we all can't afford to spend $60,000 plus 8% on a guy like Garber or Angel etc. There are plenty of up and comers though that you can get for around $5000, and they are almost always going to write better sales copy then you do. This alone can double the front end sales of most online business (the back end is up to you, you can do the smart thing and pay the professional for more sales letters and good autoresponders though). But let's say you currently convert 10 out of 1000 visits to your site (1%, respectable). If you just go up to 13 you have the potential to increase your entire business by 30%. If you have inceased your prices by 8% and put in a 1 year money back promise, you've already increased your sales by 61%. That could easily double your profits since a lot of your fixxed costs are going to stay the same. But, I ain't done yet. If you place testimonials on the right hand side of your ORDER page, you will increase conversions by about 20%. Most people don't realize that your order page is a sales page. Well, it is! You know that with most online business about 25% of people go to the sales page, start to fill it out and then decide not too. Thats a god damn crime! You had the sale! and the only reason you lost it is because you did not continue to convince the prospect that they are doing the right thing. Remember that people almost always buy on emotion and then justify that purchase with logic later. This simple little tip can double your business if you put some thought into it. If you have a seal from a reputable place like the BBB use the hell out of it. That will tend to increase conversions by 10 to 15%. If you place a testimonial from a happy customer right below your optin page it will increase optins by 15 to 25%. Adding an audio testimonial at the top of your page and setting it up to autoplay will increase optins by 10 to 13%. POP UPS!! I know that people say they hate them, but they work. If your not using pop ups, you are, 100% likelyhood, leaving money on the table. I know they suck, I hate them as an internet user too. If you create a feedback forum on your site and actually send your customers there you will get a HUGE increase in the number of useable testimonials. INSTALLMENT PLANS. Offering the customer the chance to buy a product in three payments instead of all at once will increase conversions by over 30%, however the vast majority of those people will chose not to buy on installment. Installment plans are a great opportunity to increase a price though. For example I have a $897 course. You can buy it for $897 one payment today of $497 and two more payments of $279. (for some reason $279 and $379 are the only price points that I have found that a 9 outpulls a 7) That's a rather substantial 17% price hike for those who do not pay all at once. Offer multiple ordering opportunities on your page. It should start right after the first testimonial. This will increase conversions by as much as 30%. Finally if you can use an action oriented URL, like buymyshit.com, for example, you will increase your sales by at least 10% over a similar site using a "branded" site name. Honest to god on the web, a brand, in 90% of cases, only serves your ego...it doesnt do much for sales. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. I could go on and on all day, but I think ya'll get the point here. Brandon
I'm still very eagerly awaiting the resident Jenious', the one's who have read the free ezine's and know a lot about Internet Marketing as a result, or the self admitted theif, to come on and show their proof. If they can show better numbers, I promise to not only close this thread, but leave ET forever. Mind you I have made a lot of money in the past off ET, and if I ever start up a trading site again I would hope to advertise on ET...so that would seriously suck for me if they can show numbers like this. But, if they can, I will uphold my end of the bargin. I'm not too worried though really.
The trolls on this thread are pretty annoying, but maybe we can get back on topic. I really had no idea about internet marketing until you started the thread. However I did get the Power of Persuasion audiobook by Cialdini since he was one you suggested ($1.95 on itunes). It was actually pretty interesting as far as the psychological aspect of what causes people to buy things. There is a lot to learn here -- it will take me a while to remember all this stuff. So... on to my idea: I run a successful internet forum for a friend. It's about photoretouching/editing with programs like Photoshop. I only handle the technical end of things and she manages the actual forum. There are over 100000 posts on the forum. Reading your thread gave me a lot of ideas for how she could make some money off the forum. I was thinking, basically I get her to make some videos about how to do "X" in photoshop. I would make shorter clips of the videos to upload to youtube, which would direct people to the forum to buy the rest of the videos. She could sell some DVDs through the site. Perhaps I could use clickbank to drive some more traffic into it as well. I already have camtasia, so I could edit the videos for her -- the only computer program she understands are photoshop and a web browser. I'm wondering if anyone on this thread knows any screen capturing program for the Mac that is similar to camtasia but *simple*? (and hopefully free) I am on a Windows system and I will do the video editing on my machine, she will only do basic screen recording on the Mac. I just need a real simple program that she can click record and stop and then email me the results to edit.
I've been playing with the windows movie maker. Seems to do a fair job and it's free. It does seem a bit more labor intensive than camtasia, but would you consider it adequate? Would it effect potential sales that much? I'm just sayin', if a person is on a tight budget...
I've never really looked at Windows Movie Maker that much, so I couldnt really tell you. One thing you could also look at that is Camstudio.org or the Jing Project. If you type in video screen capture in Google you could probably find some stuff, or camtasia alternatives. The other option, and this is pretty much what I did. Just get the 30 day trial to Camtasia and then put the course together. It doesnt take too long to get something together that you can sell. On Wednesday I put a 50 minute Technical Analysis course together and Thursday had it for sale on Paydotcom, Commission Junction and Clickbank. It's going for $47 and I've sold 48 of them so far through affiliates, I've not sold any myself, it's all been affiliates. I get $19 per sale, so if you'd done that you would have paid for camtasia. Also if your going to get into video, and distributing your stuff that way look at Tube Mogul. It's free and will post your video to about 20 different video sites at the same time, which obvioulsy increases your traffic. Another option (which I use) is Traffic Geyser. It has a $97 per month Package, and a $247 per month package (which I use). Using Traffic Geyser I'm able to get my videos on Page 1 and 2 of Google, Yahoo and MSN all the time in very hard to place keywords. They only stay up there for a few days, but I've had a Forex Video, for example, that got over 2000 views in the three days it was on page one of Google and Yahoo and page 3 of MSN. Now you obviously have to convert video traffic into visits to your site, and then you've gotta turn the site visitor into a prospect, and the prospect into a buyer, but of the 2000 people who saw my video 400 came to the site, 270 went on the email list and we know that over time 15% of the people oin the email list will buy from us and the lifetime value of a buyer to us is $414. So in effect that one video, which never would have made the page one results with out what TG does, will over time (about the next year and 2 months) make me around $16,000. Tube Mogul does a lot of the same stuff, and I'd actually recommend that it be where you start, but once you get the hang of using video and driving traffic with it, you should by all means seriously look at TG. Yes, TG has an affiliate program. I'm not in the club though though, it's by invite only, and I ain't been invited. It's still a good program though. Brandon