Broader Horizons

I have just been reading a thread on one of the forums I belong to which basically derided the concept of setting goals and anybody that promoted that idea.  Frankly I think that is an incredibly negative attitude and quite honestly surprised me that it was posted in a forum for internet marketers.

We all have goals of some sort, otherwise why bother with anything.  Even if you just go to work with the goal of paying your bills, that is still living a productive life.  If you don’t have goals you might as well roll over and die.  Goals are what drives us in everything it’s just that we all have different goals in life and some people worker harder than others to achieve these goals.

I say have goals, have dreams even and work to attain those goals/dreams.  Even if you don’t get there, at least you’ll have tried.

Cheers, Jeff

I have recently been reading about a new marketing tactic called reverse squeeze page and from what I see some marketers  are getting extremely good results from this.  Basically it works like this; instead of building a one page squeeze page with an opt in box asking subscribers to give their details before they can have any information, a reverse squeeze page will give some information first and then will ask the reader to subscribe if they like what they see. 

This could be done by building a multi page website for instance and then setting it up to allow a reader to click on a certain amount of pages, say two, and then when they click a third (it doesn’t matter which page) they are directed to an opt in page to enable them to get more information.

As I said, many marketers are getting good results from this and their traffic subscribers are far more targeted and therefore more likely to purchase at a later date.  It makes a lot of sense and definitely something I will be looking into more closely.

Cheers

Jeff   

Of all the ebooks and internet marketing “how to’s” I have bought or subscribed to, and believe me it is quite a few, John Thornhill is the only person that has actually enabled me to get a product www.teenweightmatters.com  out on the market and for sale.

As I said earlier, I have bought many, many ebooks  and how to’s on internet marketing from some of the best known marketers around, some I’ve even read, but I’ve never actually managed to get that all elusive product of my own on to the market.  I will put it down to a couple of things but mainly because I am quite lazy.  There you go, I said it.  I work like a dog for my employer in my day (and night job) but when I get home I just flop in front of the television with a beer occasionally looking at my computer at the other side of the room and thinking I should get off my rear and go and do something more constructive.

The beauty of having a new lesson arriving in your inbox every Monday, without fail, is that it is like having John looking over my shoulder and waiting for me to finish and I was embarrassed if I was running behind with the last week’s lesson when the new one arrived, a great motivation to get working.

Also the other great problem I have with other marketers instructions is that they never seem to give you the whole story.  They will tell you that you need to set up an autoresponder and they will give you their affiliate link to whatever company but they all seem to stop short of actually telling you how to set it up.  John Thornhill walked us through every single step of setting up an autoresponder  and every other lesson that he gave us, nothing was left out.

We were also coached on how to set up a word press blog www.jeff-davies.com to enable us to raise our profile and also to get used to writing for ourselves.

I cannot recommend John Thornhill’s coaching program enough.  Whether you are a newbie or experienced marketer there is something in this program for you.

Jeff Davies

www.teenweightmatters.com

www.jeff-davies.com

Right, I’ve had enough.  I am unsubscribing from the mailing lists that inundate my inbox every day.  To be honest, I wasn’t even reading half of them, I was either leaving them in my inbox for days at a time thinking I’d get back to them or I would delete them straight away as I knew that they would be just another sales letter.  Some of these marketers don’t even pretend to offer quality content any more, it’s just sales letter after sales letter.

I have not unsubscribed to all the lists I am on.  Some of the marketers I receive information from are extremely good and really hit a chord with me.  Yes they will send me a sales letter now and again, but hey that’s their job and it’s the job I am trying to emulate and the stuff they promote is usually worth taking a look at.

I find the worst culprits seem to be the big ‘gurus’ who constantly hammer you with sales letters and upsells, enough already.

So from now on I am clearing my inbox and my head of clutter so I can focus and get on with my life.

Cheers

What is the best way to drive traffic to your site?  You could use PPC or buy leads but these can be expensive and are definitely not guaranteed.

It seems that the best way and certainly the cheapest is article submission, blogs and niche forums.  Many of the established internet marketers are now teaching this as the best way of getting targeted traffic to your particular niche products.

These methods can be time consuming, however, when you are starting out they are definitely the most cost effective.  Popular thinking recommends that to gain any benefit from article submission you should be submitting at least one article per week, every week on your particular niche to as many article directories as possible.  As I said, this can be time consuming but as your business starts to grow you can start to reinvest your earnings into making this easier for you.  There are many article submission companies that will submit your articles to far more directories than you could possibly hope to for a small fee.  You could also start to outsource your article writing so that it is one less thing to divert you from your main goal of building/creating products for the market.

Starting a blog on your particular niche is also a highly recommended route to gaining traffic, either using one of the many free blog suppliers available such as blogger.com or using the wordpress format through your cpanel for your domain.  Also commenting on other blogs in your particular niche is a great way to gain backlinks.  Try and make constructive comments and don’t spam these blogs just for cheap and easy backlinks.

Join as many forums in your particular niche as possible and get noticed.  Again you must be careful not to spam these forums.  Many will allow you to add a signature link to your posts and once you have made a few posts some may allow you to make offers to other members but the rules of the forum must always be read and adhered to.

As you may have read in some of my other posts, I am an Independent Business Member for Tiscali.  Tiscali run this side of their business as an MLM business opportunity and the resellers work for themselves.

If you are outside of the UK and have not heard of Tiscali, they are one of the largest ISP’s in the UK and Europe and are a publicly listed multi billion pound company and are at the forefront of the technological advances in broadband in the UK, yet if you tell someone that they are also an MLM company many will sneer the word ‘pyramid’ and tell you that it is a get rich quick scheme.  How do they know they are get rich quick schemes?  Well they knew someone once who joined one of these companies, did nothing with it and then when they made no money they told everyone they knew to steer clear because they are just a ‘get rich quick scheme’.

There are many companies out there that skirt on the edges of legality with their schemes but do you honestly think that a company like Tiscali would get involved with anything even remotely unethical never mind illegal?  MLM, when there is a good product to sell and make a living from, regardless of whether you recruit anyone to your downline is one of the best and cheapest ways of starting a legitimate business.  When you consider the cost of a franchise in the UK can be anything from £20k to as much as £200k to start up, a free to join business that has the potential to let you earn as much as or even more than one of those franchised businesses, to me it’s a no brainer.  Of course, the work has to be put in but that’s just it.  It’s not a get rich quick scheme, it is a legitimate business that you have to make work for you, but the rewards can be tremendous.

If you want to find out more go to www.nolimitbroadband.co.uk and click on opportunity in the left hand column.

Are you an habitual buyer of Internet Marketing information products?  I am.  I must be on every ‘Guru’s ‘ list from here to Australia and back around again.  The trouble with this is that I never seem to get the time to read all the ebooks  or watch all the videos or listen to the mp3 recordings that I have overloading my documents.  I keep promising myself that I will read the next big thing that I bought two years ago and stumble on occasionally.  I will eventually, honest!

I think the best way is to step back a bit and find one person you feel you can trust and follow them.  Maybe buy a couple of cheap ebooks from them to get a feel for the way they work and if you like the way they do business, I recommend you follow them.  This is what I am trying to do now.  I still fall by the wayside now and again but I am getting better.  Of all the books I have read and the gurus I have followed, only one man ha sbeen able to show me exactly how to get a professional looking website offering a product for sale on clickbank, John Thornhill.

If you want to follow someone I could not recommend any one better.  If you want to find out more, here is his blog address  http://www.planetsmsblog.com/

Well I now have my first product on Clickbank, Teen Weight Matters.  It has been an exciting time and also a huge learning experience and I’ve loved every minute of it.

The product is ready for sale, I have a sales page which I am very proud of and also an affiliates page for anyone wishing to promote my product.  If you are interested I am giving 50% commission on sales through Clickbank.

The John Thornhill coaching program doesn’t finish there though.  He is now going to teach us how to market and get traffic to our sites and how to, hopefully, get the sales coming in.  Truly exciting times.

Cheers

I mentioned earlier on in the year that I set up this blog as part of an internet marketing coaching program which I had joined and also that is where I got the instruction and motivation to set up my new product Teen Weight Matters, which has just been approved for sale with Clickbank.

The course is being run by a guy called John Thornhill and is a very thorough and comprehensive course indeed.  It is taking every step as if for a complete novice so no one gets left behind and I am thrilled to be part of it.

I have been following John Thornhill for a while now and when I heard that he was offering a coaching program I made sure I was on it, and I’m so glad I did.

I am now in week 11 of 16, however I am a little behind due to the birth of my second son and my wife being rushed into hospital.  I will have caught up this week and then the exciting stuff of promoting and hopefully getting sales for my first ever product on clickbank.  How excited am I?

I will keep you posted on all developments as they happen.

Cheers  

Update on my new publication, Teen Weight Matters, due on sale in the next couple of weeks.  I originally had a temporary site on the domain www.teenweightmatters.com built with xsitepro, which is still my website building tool of choice, but I have now uploaded my finished sales page.

The template for this sales page was built by Planet Divinty and I am so pleased with it that I can’t recommend them enough.  I filled in an online form with details of what I wanted and I added a small piece about what the idea behind the product is and hey presto, three days later, I get an email with everything I wanted.

This is another example of what all the experienced marketers call outsourcing.  I wouldn’t have a clue where to start making a template like that so it makes sense to get someone else to do the work whilst I concentrate on what I can do.

If you want more information on what Planet Divinity can do for you I highly recommend you click on the banner on the right of this blog and see for yourself.

Cheers