Join Internet Dream Team Resources from the Internet Marketing Gurus

"Can we do a deal?"

"Help me raise money for charity
and in return I’ll spend 2 days teaching
 you exactly how I sit at home and
make $750,000 a year while I sleep.

http://www.brettmcfall.com/seminar/special.html

NOTE:

You can meet Brett McFall and the rest of the Dream Team at the World Internet Summit !! April 2009 also!!

1. Express the same views as your target audience. Bring up common likes and dislikes in your ad. This will create instant rapport with your audience.

2. Add viral marketing into your promotional plans. Allow your visitors to give away your free stuff, just include your ad somewhere on all the freebies.

3. Design your web site to be less confusing. Don’t use a lot of graphics, links and anything that takes away from your sales message.

4. Give your visitors the option of viewing your web site by autoresponder or printing it out. They might not have the time right then to look it over.

5. Increase your opt-in e-mail list quickly by giving away a product at no cost. Just require people to subscribe to your e-zine in exchange.

6. Joint venture your web business with other offline businesses. Look for businesses that have the same target audience and create a win/win deal with them.

7. Expand your target audience by adding a new product line or packaging your main products with other ones. You could also add-on extra services.

8. Persuade your visitors to like you. People buy from people they like. You could tell them a joke, give them a compliment, give them a freebie, etc.

9. Submit the free stuff you offer to online freebie directories. They usually get tons of traffic because people like to get things for free.

10. Use headlines and sub headlines that are aimed directly at your audience. If you’re selling things to lawyers use a headline like "Attention All Lawyers!".

Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy has helped thousands of people in over 200 countries around the world start and run a successful home business.

Here’s an consise video that dissects the different elements of good ads. Or more appropriately, I should say, PROFITABLE ads!

Hi Edmund,

Scott Wilson here, hey today I wanted to share another video  with you. It’s the 4th in a series that I’ve created especially for you because I really want to help you make more money from your business.

I put this video together after I was asked a question by a builder who was just starting out in business. He wanted to know where he should start when it came to marketing his new business.

Check your video out now, just simply ckick the link below…

http://www.theentrepreneurscopywriter.com/ads_that_sell.html

After you’ve watch the video, send me an email because I’d love to hear from you.

Have Fun & Take Action

Scott Wilson
The Entrepreneurs Copy Writer

An ad copy is incomplete till you call for an action from the reader!

I’ve read many ads that are infected with A.I.D.S!

Yes! A.I.D.S.

The deadly disease! These are ads that have:

1. Captured my ATTENTION
2. Induced my INTEREST
3. Created, in me, a DESIRE
4. And it just STOP!

Always assume your readers to be an "idiot" .. who wants to led on.

Here are 10 useful ways to call for action at the end of your Ad.

You can end your ad:

1. by telling people what will happen if they buy your product. Use your most powerful benefit as the example.
2. by telling people what will happen if they don’t buy your product. Use a problem that they won’t be able to solve without it.
3. with a question they will always say yes too. They then will be used to saying yes when you ask them to order.
4. with a short review of your whole ad. Repeat all the major benefits and features they will receive.
5. with a deadline. Tell them it’s a limited time offer and they need to order by a specific date.
6. with a powerful guarantee. Give them a lifetime or triple your money back guarantee.
7. with a testimonial. Use one or two of your customers’ testimonials that is believable and includes specific results.
8. with a free bonus. When you give them a free bonus it increases the product’s perceived value.
9. with a discounted price. Just list your regular price and then offer a discounted price off the order right now.
10. with a free sample or trial of your product. If your ad didn’t attract them to buy, maybe a free sample or trial would.

Here’s a short and good guide (courtesy of  http://www.GoogleAmbush.com) to detect the failures in affiliate ads .. take a quick look and review to see if you may have any breakdowns in any of the areas:

You’ve probably heard stories about people making massive money with Google ads.

The stories get a little wild.

You hear about people without a website (without any real business at all) just slapping up an AdWords ad to promote an affiliate product, and then sitting back while the cash rolls in.

We’re not saying it doesn’t happen. It’s happened to us before.

See our story here:

>> http://www.GoogleAmbush.com

But if you dig beneath the surface, you find a black lie in there.

The lie is that it doesn’t take any skill, research or smarts to be successful when you advertise on Google.

That’s one hundred percent wrong, and it’s the reason so many people lose huge amounts of money with AdWords and other advertising platforms.

If you think you can slap up and ad and get rich, you’re thinking with what’s called the lottery mentality.

Sure, somebody has to win the lottery, but your individual odds are something like one hundred million to one for the big jackpot. You have a MUCH greater chance of drowning in your own bathtub (those lifetime odds are something like 350,000 to one).

Maybe you thought that way and lost a ton of money on advertising. Maybe that turned you off to the whole thing, because you didn’t want to get burned twice. We understand completely.

But using advertising as an affiliate marketer IS one of the fastest ways to replace the income from your day job. The success stories are all over the place. What gets lost in all of that talk, though, is why novices tend to do so poorly. Let’s fix that.

Affiliate ads crash and burn for four reasons:

1) The market isn’t good enough

2) The ads can’t compete

3) The affiliate landing page doesn’t convert

4) The product sales page doesn’t convert

It’s always one of those four things.

Think about it. If you try to sell snow to Canadians, are you likely to sell any? Probably not. It doesn’t matter how good your ads are.

And even if you’ve got a good market, if nobody sees your ads because other ads drown them out, you’ll save a ton on advertising costs, but you won’t get any visitors either!

But let’s say you actually have a good ad in a good market, and that you send visitors to a product review page to warm them up.

If your landing page doesn’t get them to click through to the affiliate product sales page, you’ll lose massive money. Your clicks won’t convert to sales.

Even if your landing page does the job and gets people through to the sales page, if it doesn’t close the deal, you’ll lose money there too. Conversion is what counts.

Do you see how it can break down at each point? It’s ALWAYS one of those points that causes the problem.

The real issue, though, is that it’s hard to get that stuff right, especially if you’re new to the game.

It takes a lot of effort even to set it all up, much less get it pouring cash into your coffers. Even if you have some experience, it’s easy to overlook something when setting things up can get so complicated.

We encountered the same problem. It cost us literally tens of thousands of dollars before we figured out how to fix it.
 

 Article by the guys at Google Hijack

Last Christmas was the busiest of all I EVER had .. and I intented it to stay that way! I was so caught up with my "official matters" that I’ve let many things slipped .. I’ve bought a present for anyone (even myself) .. I’ve not caught up with a large part of friends that I intended to meet .. it was tragic .. the most tragic of all .. I missed the Christmas Eve’s service in church and the Christmas Day’s service too!

The World had been invisible to me.

As I am clearing a mount of backlogs .. this email from Alan Forrest Smith struck me.. please read it and remember it .. for there will be many Christmases to come .. and many local holidays in your country .. please don’t miss the invisible man of the holidays .. Read on:

I have this photograph of me as a kid on Christmas morning.

It’s around 5am on December 25th. I am kneeling down opening gifts from my mum and dad by the side of our tree.

The photo is interesting. It’s the 1970′s, mum and dad’s house is all orange and brown swirly wallpaper with a white space age dining table.

You can only see me in the photo wearing orange underpants only even though I remember the house being freezing.

My face speaks for itself. EXCITING!

I am only about 10 years old. In those days I used to do lots of fishing. In one hand I have a new reel and with my other arm I am leaning against my new fishing basket.

Magic times!

Back to 2008 then.

Yesterday I went into Manchester with my wee darling daughter, Lily. She is gorgeous and dresses very edgy with a great, happy, positive interesting attitude to life.

As we walked from the car we passed a young guy sat on the cold wet uninviting stone floor of the street!

He was a mess, a real mess.

His clothes were totally filthy. Honestly … he looked disgusting. His fingers were the dirtiest I have probably ever seen. One shoe was open at the front, his toes were exposed. His hair was matted, his skin had aged hom 30 years!

His eyes, face and manner were down, low, disheartened and had given up on life.

Lily looked at him with the innocence of a child and asked me who he was.

I told Lily …

"he is one of the invisible people, no one can see him"

Lily said…

"what do you mean dad?"

I replied … "darling lets stop and watch for a second". We did. We stopped and watched and you know what we saw?

I asked Lily "how many people looked at him?"

Lily replied … "none!"

Yet we saw dozens of people on their way to spend masses of cash on Christmas walk past this young man, down on his life and not one person saw him.

He was to all intents and purposes … Invisible!

Yet with a tear in my eye I couldn’t help walk away holding my wee darlings hand tight, lean down kiss her on the cheek and think this young man was once a 10 year old child opening his gifts at 5am Christmas morning from his mum and dad also.

What went wrong to this young man?

What went so tragically wrong in his life?

I could judge him and call him a filthy, lazy tramp. But how can I judge another life when I have my own to look over and try to control.

Things never go the way we expect them to do they?

Life never takes the road we really want it to does it?

Occurrence sometimes jump right out in front of us and hit us in the face when we least expect it, true?

And maybe because this young guy has had a long series of out of his control things take place in his life not only is he down and out … he is invisible to help and assistance from others.

Wow … I feel tearful writing this one. It’s a small but true story and the only thing I want to say to you is this.

If you see an invisible person over the holiday may I ask you please to ‘see’ them and do one single act of kindness for them. I promise it’ll make your holiday break more special than anything.

With the unstoppable rage of Social Networking, Twitter is definitely one the big winner in the past year .. here’s a good review that compares Twitter to Friendster (??? I thought Friendster is so passe?) by Allyson Kapin

Remember when Friendster was the bee’s knees? Then it was beaten out of the market by MySpace. Facebook and YouTube fever came next. Now it’s Twitter – the micro-blogging platform has revolutionized the way over 3 million monthly users and businesses communicate online and build relationships with their customers, friends, and colleagues.

Twitter is teaching corporate America how to build social capital and empowering their consumers to help build their brand. It’s giving everyday people who are quite knowledgeable on topics ranging from the latest tech gadgets to parenting a platform to share their expertise with the Twitter world and gain some fame. And it’s not just the Guy Kawasaki’s of the world who have thousands of followers. While Twitter has had a great run, 2009 will be the year that Twitter gets it together or falls. Let’s face it, Twitter has weaknesses and it goes beyond the fail whale that pops up daily.

Customer support needs to be overhauled. Granted, when there is a major tech catastrophe that poses a security risk (such as the recent phishing scams and celebrity Twitter accounts hackings) to the Twitter community, the Twitter team is quick to respond and fix it. However, if you have an issue with your Twitter account, good luck getting it fixed in a timely manner or having someone respond to your inquiry.

The competition is creeping up. Now that the online world has seen how successful Twitter is there are other tech savvy, businesses who are preparing to give Twitter a run for their money. They recognize Twitter’s weaknesses and are working on providing an even stronger platform that allows users to group and categorize their followers, easily integrate microblogging onto users own sites, etc. For example, Laconica is a open-source microblogging software that allows anyone with a webserver or hosting account to set up their own microblogging system using a stable platform. Since it’s open-source, you’ll probably see a host of add-ons incorporated directly into it rather than having to rely on third-party sites using Twitter’s API.

Twitter as a company is not accessible. Since they don’t really have a communications department it can be a challenge to reach anyone at Twitter since there is no contact info listed on their site other then their street address. Their “Press Inquires” email link has not worked in a while and brings you to an “About Us” page. E-newsletter updates are infrequent. Twitter’s blog is the only tool staff uses on a consistent basis to provide updates to the Twitter community. However, the blog does not allow user comments.

How is Twitter building community as a company? For a company whose mission is to build a platform to create community why aren’t employees engaging the Twitter community? For example, founder Biz Stone is the public face of Twitter. He authors the enewsletter and main blog, is profiled by the press, and has close to 30,000 people following him on Twitter yet he is only following 168 people back. With all of the Twitter tools on the market such as Tweetdeck that allow you to sort your followers and group them, you would think Stone would carve out a little time to get to know the community he built Twitter for. And yes he’s busy and in demand but as a business leader it’s important to engage your community. Zappos is a perfect example. Now this is a company that gets online community building and it trickles down to the employees. Perhaps, Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh can mentor Twitter. He’s started a consulting firm called Zappos Insights to help businesses gain insights on how to successfully manage a company in a Web 2.0 world.

As the Founding Partner of Rad Campaign, Allyson serves as the Online Strategy Director. For over a decade Allyson has helped non-profit organizations and socially responcible businesses create dynamic and award-winning websites as well as online marketing and recruitment campaigns.

Professional History:

• President, Rad Campaign

• President, Women Who Tech

• Manager, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids

Here’s one from the WOrld Internet Summit (WIS). An exclusive interview by Brett Mcfall with Ed Dale, Frank Kern, Melinda Barton, Amy Roberts and special guest, Ted Ciuba

Ed Dale, Frank Kern, Melinda Barton,
Amy Roberts and special guest, Ted Ciuba

• What to sell on the internet to make money while you sleep
• How to create a "killer" product without doing an ounce of work or even knowing anything about the subject
• Is your business dead the moment your competitors move in? Here’s the REAL truth about "too much competition"
• Hear for the first time EXACTLY how much money you can you earn while you do nothing 
• How to protect yourself from "scumbags" who may buy your product only to copy it and resell it
• PLUS MORE inside tips on how to make big money for little effort using the internet

The recording of the interview is available for you now… Right Click Here to Download the audio file

You can meet the Dream Team at the World Internet Summit !!

Here’s 1 good (despite a little old) article from Entrepreneur.COM. Enjoy the read :)

A seasoned entrepreneur reveals the 14 most common mistakes startups make and how to avoid them — plus, the 5 things you must do to ensure success.

John Osher has developed hundreds of consumer products, including an electric toothbrush that became America’s best-selling toothbrush in just 15 months. He also started several successful companies, including Cap Toys. He built sales to $125 million per year and then sold the company to Hasbro Inc. in 1997. But his most lasting contribution to the business world just may be a list of screw-ups he jotted on the back of a piece of paper.

"After I sold my business to Hasbro, I decided I’d make a list of everything I’d done wrong and [had] seen other entrepreneurs do wrong," explains the 57-year-old Jupiter, Florida, serial entrepreneur. "I wanted to make a company that didn’t make any of these mistakes. I wanted to see if I could come up with the perfect company."

He came up with an informal list of "16 Mistakes Start-Ups Make"-since expanded to 17-that has been used in a Harvard Business School case study, has been cited in many publications, and has become a part of what he teaches budding entrepreneurs in his frequent university lectures. He also used the list in 1999 when he started Dr. John’s SpinBrush to sell a $5 electric toothbrush that quickly became America’s best-selling toothbrush. In 2001, Procter & Gamble purchased the company from him for $475 million.

"I didn’t expect it to actually work like that, but it did," Osher says. "It’ll probably never happen again. But we made a perfect business, from the beginning to selling it to another company." Since then, however, Osher has created another product, an electric dish scrubber that he also sold to Procter & Gamble. And he has yet another health-and-beauty product-development effort underway-although he’s keeping the details close to the vest-in which he’ll try again to create the perfect business.

To home in on what lies behind the 14 mistakes, Osher told Entrepreneur what they are and how you can learn from them to achieve your own level of perfection.

• Mistake 1: Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable. "This is really the most important mistake of all. They say 9 [out] of 10 entrepreneurs fail because they’re undercapitalized or have the wrong people. I say 9 [out] of 10 people fail because their original concept is not viable. They want to be in business so much that they often don’t do the work they need to do ahead of time, so everything they do is doomed. They can be very talented, do everything else right, and fail because they have ideas that are flawed."

• Mistake 2: Miscalculating market size, timing, ease of entry and potential market share. "Most new entrepreneurs get very excited over an idea and don’t look for the truth about how many people will want to buy it. They put together financial projections as part of a presentation to pump up their investors. They say, ‘The market size is 50 million people that could use this product, and if I could only sell to 2 percent of them, I’d be selling a million pieces.’ But 2 percent of a market is a lot. Most products sell way less than 1 percent."

• Mistake 3: Underestimating financial requirements and timing. "They set their financial requirements based on Mistake 1, and they go ahead and make a commitment to this much office space and this many computers, and hire a vice president of sales, and so on. Before they know it, based on sales projections that were wrong to start with, they have created costs that require those projections to be met. So they run out of money."

• Mistake 4: Overprojecting sales volume and timing. "They have already miscalculated the size of the market. Now they overproject their portion of it. They often say ‘There are 200 million homes, and I need to sell [to] x number of them.’ When you break it down, though, a much smaller number of those are really sales prospects. That makes it impossible to make their sales projections."

• Mistake 5: Making cost projections that are too low. "Their cost projections are always too low. Part of the reason is that they project much higher sales. There are also unknown reasons that always come out that usually make costs higher than planned. So on top of everything, their margins are now lower."

• Mistake 6: Hiring too many people and spending too much on offices and facilities. "Now you have lower sales, higher costs and too much overhead. These are the things that you see every day in companies that fail. And they all grow out of that first mistake: failing to research the size and viability of the opportunity."

• Mistake 7: Lacking a contingency plan for a shortfall in expectations. "Even if you’re realistic in your estimates to start, there are things that happen when you start a new business. Your sales ideas may be no good; bank rates may go up; there may be a shipping strike. These aren’t the result of poor planning, but they happen. More often than not, entrepreneurs just feel that something will come along when they need it. They don’t have contingency plans for it not working out at the size and time they want."

• Mistake 8: Bringing in unnecessary partners. "There are certain partners you need. For instance, you often need money, so you’re going to need money partners. But too many times, the guy with the idea takes on all his friends as partners. Many people don’t provide strategic advantages and don’t warrant ownership. But they’re all going to get 25 percent of the company. It’s totally unnecessary, and it’s a mistake. Before people are made partners, they have to earn it."

• Mistake 9: Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements. "In my first business or two, I hired relatives. It was easy to do, but in many cases, they were the wrong people [for the job]. And it’s hard to fire people, especially if they’re relatives or friends. More time needs to be spent handpicking people based on skill requirements. You really need super-skilled people who can wear more than one hat. It just bogs you down when you hire people who can’t do the job."

• Mistake 10: Neglecting to manage the entire company as a whole. "You see this happen all the time. They’ll spend half their time doing something that represents 5 percent of their business. You have to have a view of your whole company. But too often, the person running it loses that view. They get involved in a part, and they don’t manage the whole. Whether I do this product or that product, whether I hire somebody, [I consider] how they [will] fit long term and short term in the big picture. Constantly try to see your big picture."

• Mistake 11: Accepting that it’s "not possible" too easily rather than finding a way. "I had an engineer who was a very good engineer, but with every toy we developed, he would say, ‘You can’t do it that way.’ I had to be careful not to accept this too easily. I had to look further. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to break new ground. A lot of people are going to say it’s not possible. You can’t accept that too easily. A good entrepreneur is going to find a way."

• Mistake 12: Focusing too much on sales volume and company size rather than profit. "Too much of your management is often based on volume and size. So many entrepreneurs want to say ‘I have a company that’s this big, with this many people, this many square feet of space, and this much sales.’ It’s too much [emphasis] on how fast and big you can build a business rather than how much profit it can make. Bankers and investors don’t like this. Entrepreneurs are so into creating and building, but they also have to learn to become good [businesspeople]."

• Mistake 13: Seeking confirmation of your actions rather than seeking the truth. "This often happens: You want to do something, so you talk about it with people who work for you. You talk to [your] family and friends. But you’re only looking for confirmation; you’re not looking for the truth. You’re looking for somebody to tell you you’re right. But the truth always comes out. So we [test] our products, and we listen to what [the testers] say. We give much more value to the truth than to people saying what we’re doing is great."

• Mistake 14: Lacking simplicity in your vision. "Many entrepreneurs go in too many directions at once and do not execute anything well. Rather than focusing on doing everything right to sell to their biggest markets, they divide the attention of their people and their time, trying to do too many things at [one time]. Then their main product isn’t done properly because they’re doing so many different things. They have an idea and say they’re going to sell it to Wal-Mart. Then they say they’re going to sell to [the] Home Shopping Network. And then the gift market looks good. And so on."

Simultaneously, I will keep the option open to sell it in case I can’t get something more proprietary. That means I won’t sign international agreements that would kill any opportunity to sell it to a multinational. I will make sure that the patent work is done properly. And I’ll try to make sure manufacturing is up to the standards of any multinational company that I might try to sell it to.

Another exit strategy can be to hand the company to [your] kids someday. The most important thing to do is to build a company with value and profits so you have all the options: Keep the company, sell the company, go public, raise private money [and so on]. A business can be a product, too."

Is there any difference between doing nothing wrong and doing everything right? Peter Russo, director of Boston University’s Entrepreneurial Management Institute, says that while you’re avoiding John Osher’s 17 mistakes, you should also try to do five key things right. "If you do those five things, you’re probably not going to make those other mistakes," he says. Here are Russo’s five things start-ups should do:

1. Know your goals for the venture. "A lot of people see an opportunity without ever asking themselves what they’re doing it for," says Russo. "Are they trying to make a quick buck? Create a legacy? Have a lifestyle? There are a lot of reasons. It’s critical that you know from the beginning what your goals are, because everything else is going to revolve around that."

 

2. Recruit and hire the best people. "It sounds almost cliché now to say I’d rather have an A team with a B idea than a B team with an A idea. The right team can fix a lot of problems. If you don’t have the right team, you don’t have much of a chance," Russo says. "Get the best people available at the time."

3. Develop a forgiving strategy. "Things are going to go wrong," he says. "They’re going to be harder, take longer and cost more money than you think. You have to have a strategy to survive. A lot of people put together a plan that will work only if everything goes right. It’s not going to."

4. Be honest with yourself. "Recognize shortcomings, weaknesses and problems immediately. Do not ignore them or try to talk yourself out of them," Russo says. "Address them head-on."

5. Commit to the business. "You can’t really do anything significant without fully committing yourself to it. A lot of people try to dabble," he explains. "They think they’ll do it part time [and] see how it works out. If you plan to be successful, you have to commit."

If you’ve never used an autoresponder in the past, you can be rest assured that you’ll be absolutely fascinated with them when you do decide to use one. Having said this, while a large percentage of people nowadays are familiar with autoresponders, the greater majority of those people still don’t fully comprehend just how significantly an autoresponder can benefit their business.

In essence, an autoresponder will be able to carry out various tasks on your behalf, such as sending out broadcast emails alerting clients to your latest products or services. Furthermore, having the ability to keep track of conversations and in turn send out relevant personal messages automatically is without a doubt, a huge advantage of autoresponders. The bottom line really is that autoresponders, when used correctly, can most definitely result in a continuously growing list of clients.

Addressing your customer by their name is a quality that most everyone notices and yes, sure you can manually type in the name of each customer you’re wanting to email but if you have hundreds or even thousands of customers, doing so would require an immense amount of your time.

Fortunately autoresponders are capable of doing this all for you. They can be set up to send out personalized messages addressing the customer by name, a tactic which has been proven to benefit businesses.

As far as sending personalized emails to a list of customers is concerned, it could simply not be any easier than it is when using an autoresponder. Having added your entire customer list to your autoresponder and having set up a suitable email template, there is only one thing required of you, and that is, you’ll need to click the send button.

Perhaps most important of all, is the fact that once you’ve set it up, you won’t need to so again when next you wish to send all your customers an email.

Market research has determined that the vast majority of people, who buy a product listed in an email, only do so after an average of seven emails. Of course there are those who are happy to buy a product sooner but they’re only a
small minority. When we take this into consideration, it becomes plain to see just how beneficial autoresponders can be under these circumstances.

Once you’ve set up the email addresses, simply type in your new message and click the send button.

While an autoresponder has the potential to help any business grow, those running an internet marketing business cannot even consider being without one. Any business owners can find better ways of utilizing their time rather than spending hours upon hours sending out emails.

If you run an online business then you’re more than likely already aware of just how many emails you can receive daily so having an autoresponder can only be to your benefit. If you’re one of the few who have never used one, do yourself a favour and get one because you can be rest assured, you won’t want to be without one once you’ve experienced the benefits.

Featured Article by Gary Parker

Gary Packer has been using the internet almost since the beginning. He has worked in Design Studios in London and has worked extensively on advertising projects for TV. During the last 4 years he has turned his attention to creating an income from the internet. For F.REE internet-marketing related information and e-courses, please visit http://www.garypacker.name .