enetwal – Page 12 – Micro Business Specialist

Creative Use of Clickbank as a Free Marketing Intelligence Tool

Clickbank is the largest affiliate network for information products. As such it is an ideal arena to research your competition and spy on existing products for virtually any specific niches that you want to pursue.

If there isn’t already at least one or more products in you niche, it may well mean that your niche is not economically viable.

If you are still searching for the right niche, you can browse through the category section to find some markets, which could potentially interest you.

With the Clickbank tool, you can identify the existing products in the market and see how many players are in the market. You can also check out their offers and see what price points they are hitting. You can evaluate their sales pages, and buy their products to determine whether or not there are any holes in the market they are missing.

Once you signed up for and logged into Clickbank you want to go the the Marketplace tab.

In the market place, you can do your research by going through the categories listing. There are a total of 9 broad categories. Next step is to then select the sub-categories and click Go.

Clickbank will then generate search results of the products under your selected category listing.

Other ways to use the Clickbank tool is to make use of the keywords search bar or sort your search by product type, popularity and languages as well.

For this demonstration, we ran through the search term, ‘Muscle gaining’.

You can see from this search, there are a high number of products that is under the niche, ‘Muscle gaining’. You may want to play around with a variety of keywords to get a full selection of products in your niche.

At the bottom of each result, there are some useful statistics, which provide a quick insight into what the merchant is offering. So in this case, for ‘No Nonsense Muscle Building’, the product vendor pays their affiliate an average of $62.30 per sale with a possible future payout of an additional $40.97 and offers a percentage sale payout of 57%. For the ‘grav’ column, this product is at 109.08.

This gravity simply indicates the number of affiliates that has made a sale over the past 8 weeks. The higher the gravity number, the more affiliates have successfully marketed this product, which also implies that this niche is profitable!

So from here, you can gather some great information to see what are the existing products that these merchants have. You may even click on ‘view pitch page’ to spy on the merchant’s sales page to see exactly what they’re doing! If they are profiting already, there is no need to re invent the wheel.

Learn from your competitors. This will save you a lot of time and research.

Affiliate Marketing PLR Package

I will return to my ongoing series on market research and niche marketing on Thursday, but I wanted to share a worthwhile opportunity I just grabbed for myself.

Since I am in the midst of creating an 8 module project right now, I will pass on how you can grab this cheap, rather than resell you the package now.But I expect I will be working them into a product of my own by the end of the month.

Doug Champigny has just finished uploading a new PLR bundle, and to help us start the new year he’s priced it really low for 1 day only:

http://askearlabout.com/PLRInterviews.php

This PLR bundle consists of three powerful interviews, one with Rosalind Gardner, one with Ken McArthur and one with Josh Peak.
Now you may not be familiar with these names, so let me tell you that they are each top notch affiliate marketers.

If you are doing affiliate marketing or plan on doing affiliate marketing, selling other people’s products, you will find these interviews extremely valuable.

If you have been setting goals to start the year, these interviews will give you a clear idea of where the finish line is. As any sea captain will tell you, it’s a good idea to have a clear notion of which port you are heading to, before you chart your course.These interviews will help you clarify your goals like nothing else I know of.

Now in the spirit of the new year Doug’s leaving it under ten bucks until Wednesday night, to help those who take quick action -then it goes to $27… which would still be a good price.

So, if you want to save over $17, head over now and grab your copy.

http://askearlabout.com/PLRInterviews.php

Remember, there are 3 separate products you’re getting in one bundle, Don’t miss out: And while just listening to them is well worth the price, you are getting more than that. You will be getting the transcripts for the calls, so you can read along. And most importantly you will be getting private label rights which means you will be able to resell these and recoup your money over
and over again.

Think of it, you will have three separate products you can offer to your growing list. Products you will be proud to share and which will be well received by your list members. In addition to selling these, you can modify the content, add to it, subtract and make it your own. You can pull sections and create articles for the article directories, or take sections and create a series of blog entries and a lot more.

This is a powerful package, that’s why I grabbed it. I highly recommend you do the same thing.

http://askearlabout.com/PLRInterviews.php

P.S. These interviews are worth more than Doug is charging just for the information they provide. Add in the ability to create 3 more products for your marketing funnel and this is a must have.

Customer Intelligence – Let the Forums Tell You All

Forums are a great place to find out what exactly your audience are thinking and talking about. This is the place where a community hangs out, discusses and share their problems and experiences.

So with forums, you can leverage on the community to find out what are their desires, lacking and needs. With these real market insights, you can brainstorm the kind of possible solutions you can provide for them.

How you use this tool is to start by going to the Google search engine and typing in the niche you have in mind and add in the keyword ‘forum’ after it.

In this demonstration, the example we’ll be using is, ‘Insomnia Forum’, where insomnia is our niche.

Under this ‘Insomnia Forum’ search results, it will display several pages of forums.

Click on one or more of the search results and research deeper into one that is most active, that means there are a lot of recent posts and replies within the forum.

When exploring the forums, it’s probably best to spend some time getting an overview of the top half dozen or more forums and then focus on those that are most active.

Initially, you want to familiarize yourself with the types of conversations going on with special emphasis on the types of questions most frequently asked. Take note of these and start building a list of hot topics.

While you are doing this, pay attention to those people who are most active responding to other people’s questions. These are influence leaders. In the long run, you will want to get these people on your side. They may be possible joint venture partners and or advocates for your product.

As you gain a greater understanding of your niche, you will want to participate in the forum, and start answering other people’s questions yourself. Many forums frown on commercial activity, so do so carefully.

Establish yourself as a reliable source of useful information by actively commenting for a considerable period of time.

Remember that forums are like icebergs. Many people will lurk on forums and never post themselves or only infrequently. A consistent presence will establish you as an expert in short order, and will arm you with the critical insights to target your products to people’s most pressing needs.

Emerging Google Trends

Niches and keywords related to niches can vary significantly over time. Had Google been in existence 100 years ago, you would likely have found a lot more listing for Buggy whips than you would today. People change, markets change and thus its a good idea to pay attention to trends within the market place.

That turns out to be easy when you you use Google Trends.

You may have noticed a little magnifying glass next to keywords displayed on the Google Keyword tool we looked at in out last post. Had you clicked on that you would be taken to a page in Google Trends for that particular keyword. Also in the keyword tool is a chart showing the relative strength of searches by months for the prior 12 months.

This is valuable information that you should take note of.

If you want to really get into trend analysis though, the place to go is Google Trends itself. Again the easiest way to get there is to use Google Search and Search for “Google Trends.” Or you can remember the URL as http://www.google.com/trends

Once there you will see a Google Logo, a search box, some example searches, and two lists. One lists hot topics, and the second lists Hot Searches.

These hot topics and searches will change rapidly, but are a good indication of what is currently hot online. If you are blogging, this can be a great way of keeping up with where the most activity is online. One strategy is to develop a blog posting on multiple hot topics on a daily basis and bookmarking them. If you keep it up over time, you can drive a lot of current events type traffic to your blog. This you can in turn monetize with adwords or other promotions.

In general though, as part of our niche market research project we are more interested in longer term trends.

Say we are interested in the diet market. We could type the phrase “lose weight” into the Google Trends search box and get the following results.

There is quite a bit of information here. Perhaps the most important is that the overall trend appears to be increasing over the five years of data reported on the chart. While it may be difficult to see above, there also appears to be a dip just before the Christmas holidays, followed by a spike with the new year.

On the right are various news articles whose publication is noted on the chart with letters marking their date of publication. This can have a significant impact on some searches although it appears to be minimal in this particular case.

Finally on the bottom you can discover which regions of the world are most interested in the keyword phrase. In this case, the US followed by Australia, Singapore and Ireland. To the bottom right, these trends are even further broken down by cities. The results vary from time to time, but for some reason there appears to be heightened interest from a number of Texas cities at the moment. It appears not everyone is interested in being the biggest in everything in Texas.

Lets look at another search term. This time we will explore “Golf Slice.”

When we do, we see a distinct seasonal pattern. Searches for “golf slice” are significantly higher in the summer than in the winter. Not too hard to understand. Of note the peak number of searches appears to be decreasing, but the breadth of the base appears to be widening over time. This suggests that more people are looking for information on their golf slice throughout the year, than may have been the case before, but the niche is still strongly seasonal.

One more example to make a final point a bit more emphatically. This time we will search for the keyword phrase, “how to make money online.”

Here we see a very dramatically rising trend. This must certainly be a top candidate as a niche to explore. But lets look to the bottom of the chart again and look at the regions doing the search. Topping the list is Nigeria, followed by the Philippines, Malaysia, India, and South Africa.

Nothing wrong with that, but it could be a problem if you are primarily interested in selling a product to the North American market. Also note at the bottom right is a listing of the languages spoken by the searchers. The top language is Tagalog which is the Philippino national language followed by English.

Hopefully, you can see the value of understanding the trends in the marketplace, and the role that this free tool can play in helping you in both the niche selection process and also how you might plan for seasonal variations within your market.

Using Google’s Wonderful Word Tool

The Google Key Word Tool is perhaps the most valuable of the free tools we are going to be discussing. In the past and in many dated online eBooks you will find references to the Overture Keyword Tool which is defunct, one of Yahoo’s biggest mistakes in my opinion. Today the world uses Google Free Keyword tool to explore and select keywords for a wide variety of purposes.

To access the tool, open your existing Google Adwords account or if you don’t have one go to Google and search for “Google Keyword Tool.”

Google has recently changed to layout of their site. The Keyword Tool is not immediately evident. You need to click on the “Opportunities” tab. When you do, any existing campaigns you are running will appear at the top of the left column. You may need to scroll down to see the second box in the left column which is titled, “Tools.”

Once there, just click on the Keyword Tool and you will be taken to the tool we will discuss today.

The tool permits two related but completely different functions. You can search for keywords on a particular web site, or you can do research on keywords related to a specific keyword phrase. We are going to focus on the later, but will discuss the former first.

In our last post we discussed how to drill down in the Google Directory to find a niche. In the final stages of that process we came to the end of the line, where we ran into articles related to our niche. I advised that we examine those sites to learn about out new niche, and to see if there were advertisers or not to determine if it were commercially viable.

Once we identified the most interesting sites already in the niche, we can take their url’s and plug them into the keyword tool.

In our search we drilled down ultimately to Sleep Apnea, and the top page ranked entry under it was the following: http://www.sleepapnea.org/

When we put this URL into the Google Keyword Tool we can see the keywords that led people to this site. This is valuable information, and can provide us with insights into the niche. Specifically it will help us identify the keyword phrases we will want to consider focusing our niche marketing on.

When Google Returns the results, it ranks them in accordance to Google’s sense of the most relevant Keyword Phrases. In this case, sleep apnea, sleep apnea treatment, sleep apnea machine, sleep apnea masks, cpap mask, cpap masks. etc.

Now I don’t know much about sleep apnea, but I now know that something called CPAP is up there in relevance. Depending on whatever niche you are exploring you may find similar surprises, that you will want to explore.

And while sleep apnea appeared as if it might be a small niche, we are beginning to see the possibility of even smaller niche in the form of masks and machines and possibly other treatment methodologies. These may be options that could be monetized.

Now is we go back and put in the phrase “Sleep Apnea” in the word or phrase box, we get a similar but different list.

It’s headed by the phrase, sleep apnea treatment, sleep apnea diagnosis, obstructive sleep apnea, severe sleep apnea, sleep apnea symptoms, etc.

Once again these are initially ranked by what Google sees as the most relevant term we entered into the box. If we want, we can click on the headers above any of the columns and get the results ranked in ascending or descending order by that column.

Its lead by the term Insomnia, followed by apnea, sleep apnea, apnea sleep, snoring, narcolepsy, sleep aid and so on. These are the terms that are related to sleep apnea that get the most traffic. We found a new term, narcolepsy that merits some examination and as we scroll down the list there are a few more interesting terms that we may not have thought of when we first started to explore sleep apnea.

This access to related terms is valuable. By taking them and using them in the keyword tool as new phrases we may find even more terms that we might otherwise miss altogether.

We won’t do that now, but you should with your niche studies.

We will discuss two additional items though.

The first is the competition graph.

If the bar graph is completely full, it is both good and bad news. The good is that the niche is actively being pursued by advertisers, which indicates a good chance that money can be made in this niche. The bad is that it is already a contested market so it will not be easy to break into the top without a major effort.

You may decide that you want to make that effort. If you are looking to use the internet to sell your existing product line, you may have no choice. However if you are looking for a new market to enter, you do have a choice and should use the following technique to identify a market that is both lucrative and that you have a chance to dominate.

I learned this approach originally through the Niche Profit Classroom. You can see a small banner ad of there’s in the upper right of the blog page. I found their entire program to be well worth the modest membership fee and can comfortably recommend them to you.

They outlined something they call the money market matrix. Since I learned it from them, I have heard similar approaches advocated by others as well. I will give you my short hand approach now.

Rather than focusing on the high end of the search results we are going to go down the list and focus on keywords that have 300 or more hits a month up to those that get about 2000 to 2500. This range is somewhat arbitrary and you can certainly go beyond it in either direction.

Your goal is not to find the most popular search term, it’s to find a frequently used search term that is relevant to your niche and/or product for which their are relatively few competitors. By relatively few my shorthand answer is 50,000 or less.

The term “Sleep Apnea” returned 800 results so we have to scroll down to the bottom of the second page of 100 results to get in range.

The top item on the screen capture above is the term, “sleep apnea help.”

The Google Keyword Tool tells us that it is getting an average of 1600 hits a month. That’s slightly over 50 a day. So while not huge, it’s likely a steady source of traffic interested in the topic. Next we are going to a new tab on our browser. There we will do a search using the regular Google search tool for “Sleep Apnea Help” being sure to include the quote marks. That way we will get the total number of results that use that precise term. It turns out that in this case the result is 8220 which is well under my threshold of 50,000 competing sites.

While I am there, I notice that there are a lot of ads, which tells me this is a solid keyword phrase I could hope to build upon. Note there are three ads on top of the organic search results and a full side panel as well.

The Google Keyword tool is an extremely valuable tool, with a number of additional features. I’ve tried to show you some of the basics as well as a strategy to put the information you can derive from the tool to work for you.

In my next post, we will explore Google Trends.

Free Internet Marketing Research Methods

There are a number of free internet marketing research tools and resources that will greatly enhance your ability to identify and exploit profitable niche markets.

These include:

Google Directory
Google Keyword tool
Google Trends
Forums
Clickbank
Quantcast

In the next several blog posts we will examine each of these in turn as we pursue our web marketing strategy of identifying profitable niche markets where we can become a dominant force.

The first market research strategy we will examine is the use of the Google Directory to begin the process of drilling down from a major category into some potential niches.

To start we will open our browser and go to http://Google.com/dirhp

When we do we will see a page that looks like this.

Arts, Business, Computers, Games, Health etc. are major categories that you can use to begin the sorting process. For this example, we will select Health and click on it.

When we get the next screen we start refining our search. Notice at this level the categories also have a number along side them, giving an indication of how many articles are in each category.

By selecting Conditions and Diseases we are brought down one more level, where again we find many additional sub categories.

Here we will pick Sleep Disorders for this example. And are taken to on final screen, where we can pick a particular niche to explore. In this case we will select Sleep Apnea and begin our process of determine whether or not this is a good niche to consider for our purposes.

Here we can explore existing sites that are related to sleep apnea. They are initially ranked by Google Page Rank. By searching these sites we can check to see if there are advertisers on these sites which will indicate whether or not this is a viable market for us to enter. We can also research the topic to identify any gaps we might be able to fill, and possibly identify even smaller niches we might wish to enter.

This is a very simple tool to use, and yet a powerful way to begin your niche marketing research. In our next post we will explore the Google Keyword Tool.

Selecting a Niche: Some Starting Points

Before we start searching for your new niche, lets review how the niche marketing process works.

•   Step 1 – You need to pick a viable niche.
•   Step 2 – You need to study and understand the niche.
•   Step 3 – You need to create and/or find a product to promote to this niche. (This is where you provide a solution to them)
•   Step 4 – You design your campaign, copywriting, and drive traffic to your niche website.
•   Step 5 – You generate nice niche profits.

In my next couple of posts we will discover a number of free tools you can use to assist in this process of selecting a niche. But before we go into depth on using these tools lets start deciding what niche we want to research and develop.

There are 3 main themes that are highly lucrative for niche marketing, that you should be aware of. They are: –

1.   Health
2.   Wealth
3.   Relationships

You can never really go wrong with these as starting points when selecting a niche. There are always people having problems and desperately looking solutions in all three.

However, these 3 categories mentioned here are very broad. So what you need to do is to use the tools, that will be demonstrated later, to dig deeper into these broad categories before selecting a niche to exploit.

That way you can become the “expert” to provide specific solutions to your new niche easier, faster and better.

In addition to these broad categories you may want to think in terms of broad motivations that people may have within a category.

For example, think of ‘people in transition’. If someone has just lost their job, they are more likely to be searching for solutions and willing to take action when an appropriate solution presents itself.

Another example would be a wife filing for a divorce. This is also a transitional period where the couple may be looking for a specific solution for the family or solutions on how to move forward with their relationship.

Sometimes one side of the couple may even be seeking out advice to get back together with the spouse or partner.

So people in transitions are normally ‘hungry’ because they are desperately in need to get out of their current chaos.

Another lucrative type of market is the ‘in the news trends’. While these may or may not be long lived niches, they can be highly profitable while they are prominent in the public’s mind.

In the news trends are often just a quick dash or sometimes a prolonged situation. Often it’s a wave that needs to be caught. An example of ‘In the news trend’ would be the recent retrenchment and unemployment news.

News stories about the current recession and high unemployment rates are all over the news. These people are currently in chaos. They’ve lost their jobs and need to find a solution as soon as possible to sustain their lifestyle and their monthly commitments.

While this may always be the case to some extent, when you are in a major trend it’s wise to use effective marketing to capitalize on the situation.

Another example might be ‘celebrity diets’.

News about the latest celebrity diets are evident in gossip magazines, TV channels, and on various trend indicators as we will discuss. When you see a trend capturing the media’s attention, it is ‘hot.’ People will very often craze about it during that period of time.

Again it takes some nimbleness, but niche marketers who are prepared to catch and ride on these waves can generate extraordinary niche profits.

So when thinking about effective marketing for a new niche consider not just what niche, but whether you can identify some “moving force” that might motivate people within your new niche to take action.

Niche Market Research Objectives

Market research is the foundation and key to all successful niche programs. It is important to identify and research an appropriate niche before you decide which product or products to sell.

The first step is finding your niche. You want a target audience that is hungry for a solution to a problem they have. And that are willing to pay for a proper solution.

This second point is important. There are hungry niches that are not willing to pay for a solution, particularly where the solution is information. Now there are many niches where people will be willing to pay for quality information but not all. You want to avoid a niche that doesn’t already have competitors selling to them because the odds are they aren’t buyers.

Once you have found a new niche, you want to understand their problems, trends and behaviors. This means you will need to spend some time learning about the niche, listening and discussing issues that affect them, and research the existing products and vendors that are active in the niche.

The result of your market research and analysis should be a thorough understanding of the niche, so that you are an actual expert in the niche. This doesn’t mean you need be the most informed person, but clearly the better you understand your new niche the better.

As part of this new market research you will examine the existing products and services offered and determine there strengths and weaknesses. As you gain familiarity with the niche you will want to do trend research to see where the niche is going. To the extent their is a trend you clearly want to get in front of it and become its leader.

Where there is no trend you will need to focus on what’s missing? What subset of the niche is still having a problem that’s not being met.
If such a subset exists, you have found a new niche.

Perhaps the dominant product is the best product for the time being. Will you be able to market it better than it is now, now that you have a clearer understanding of the niche.

Each journey into finding a niche and creating niche profits is different.
But each successful niche marketing research project seeks to:

Identify Specific Market Needs
Identify Price Range of Existing Products in the Market
Evaluate the Quality and Effectiveness of the Existing Products
Focus on Understanding the Demographic Base of the Niche

When you are done with your research, you should be able to identify your specific audience, and know exactly what they are looking for. You should be clear on how you can help them meet those needs and have a specific solution to their problems. And finally you should be able to establish a solid case for why they should listen to you, when you offer them your solution.

What Are The Advantages in Niche Marketing?

There are several advantages to our simple marketing plan of focusing on niches online.

The first is that by narrowing our topic to something very specific, we allow ourselves the opportunity to become an expert on that narrow niche. To be effective as a marketer, you want to be seen as an authority, someone you customers can trust. Because trust is a key element of the buyers decision making process.

It’s much easier to learn everything important there is to know about Ice Fishing lures and gear than it is to learn everything there is to know about fishing in general.

By selecting a niche and learning about it through research, you will be viewed as an expert who provides solutions for your audience.

Additionally, by focusing on a smaller niche market you will have more targeted customers and less competition. This means you will be in a position to be the dominant force within your niche market.

In other words, you will be the big fish in the little pond, as opposed to being a little fish in a big one.

In niche marketing, the concept is first to identify an audience or customer base. Then to study and understand them so that you have a good handle on what they are looking for, what they are hungry for. And then you feed it to them, by promoting a relevant product to meet that demand. That product may be someone else’s or your own, but the key is that before you go to the trouble of promoting it, you have already identified the people who want it, and understand how and why it will meet their needs. It then is a simple matter to sell it.

The primary advantage of niche marketing is that it reduces resistance to the sales process. You are no longer trying to get people to buy something they don’t want. Instead you are helping them solve their specific problem. As such you become their hero, which is a far more satisfying outcome.

Starting From Scratch: Deciding What Niche to Pursue

Whether you are just starting out for the first time, or adding to an existing internet marketing empire you need to start with a simple marketing plan to find a new niche online.

The advantage of the internet is the ability for people to find specific information on narrow topics of interest to them. With hundreds of millions of people searching for everything under the sun, it becomes possible to do target market marketing by narrowly focusing on a lucrative market where there is demand for products. The trick as a marketer is to identify what niche you can effectively exploit.

In the next several blog postings we will discuss the topic of finding niches that you can develop into your own little piggy banks. Once we have finished that we will move on to how to properly develop those niches.

So what is a niche?

A niche market is a subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. Ultimately that means that every product has its own niche, but to start by focusing on the product is generally a mistake.

For niche marketing internet style, it’s best to first identify the niche, and their needs before you get to the product or solution.

So this implies that a niche is a group of people with a common interest. As an example, millions of people will identify themselves as fishermen or women. But within the overall category of fishing, you will find people who when more specific will say they are into Deep Sea Fishing, or Trout Fishing, or Bass Fishing, or even Ice Fishing.

Within any of these narrower categories there may be additional categories or sub niches, such as Bass Fishing Boats, Bass Fishing Vacations, or Bass Fishing Tips, etc.

As a marketer, our simple niche marketing strategy calls for us to seek out a small segment of larger markets, and identify the needs of the people in that small niche and then provide specific solutions to those needs by selling them solutions to fulfill their demand.

Easy enough to say, but how do we identify profitable niches, where people are hungry for solutions? That will be the topic of our future posts.

Muscle Your Way to Profits

I was going to write the third of my planned three part series on free traffic tools I’ve been experimenting with today, but I will save that for after Thanksgiving.

Because, today Doug Champigny just released another of his famous PLR 3 packs. The fitness niche is huge with a lot of people spending big bucks to bulk up and get fit. As such, it is a natural niche for you to spend a little money and some time on. And with this package from Doug, it couldn’t be easier.

Each of the three packages comes with the product, a ready made sales letter and 25 articles you can use as part of a follow up email campaign or rewrite and set up on the article directories to drive traffic and backlinks to your new site.

Fitness PLR Pack

The topics are…

Mixed Martial Arts
6 Pack Abs
Gaining Wright 101

To be most effective in using these products you want to…

1. Do some quick keyword research to find terms that have at least 500 searches in a month, but less than 50-100,000 results when you search for the keyword in parenthesis: “keyword” These are the keywords you will have the best chance at getting traffic from fast.

2. Pick a couple of the best of these, and search for a good domain name. Now sometimes I cheat and just add it to my www.askearlabout.com/keyword site, but you will get better results if you spend $10 and get a niche specific url.

3. Decide if you are going to sell the eBook or give it away. If you already have a list in the area, I would consider selling it. If you are just starting in the niche, offer it as a freebie to start building a fitness niche list you can sell to for years to come.

4. Review the eBook and make any edits you want and add links to it to other products you have, and/or to affiliate products. This is how you make money even when you give the books away.

5. Load the sales page to your site, and make any changes or edits you wish, although the sales page provided is great as it is.

6. Add a blog to support the project. You can use the 25 articles as content over time.

7. Alternatively, you can use some of included articles as a series of follow-up emails to keep in touch with your new list, and build loyalty and trust with them, or rewrite some of them articles and submit them to the article directories. I usually, put these in my blog first and then upload them to the directories. That allows them to do double duty, and gets my blog the initial credit in Google’s eyes.

8. Now that you’ve finished the first of the three packages, repeat of the rest. If you decided to give away the first eBook to build a list, consider selling the other two to the list you have built. The choice is yours. But with three eBooks on closely related topics, you have the makings for a nice niche that you can grow and develop over time. Or consider offer one or two of the ebooks as a bonus when people buy one.

So now it’s time to take action. This package will save you countless hours compared to creating your own similar products, and could easily be the core of a great new profit center for your online enterprise.

Go grab Fitness PLR Pack and put some muscle into your online profits.

By the way any one of the products in this package is well worth what Doug is charging for all 3.

Leads Leap – A Free Traffic Source

In my last blog posting I discussed one of the Free Traffic resources I have been testing. Today I want to mention another. It’s called Leads Leap.

Leads Leap is a type of Viral Blog, that allows you to place free ads on it.

If you look in the bottom of the far right sidebar, you will see a widget that I have installed on this blog which lists recent blog posts from Leads Leap.

These are well written high quality posts, that are well worth reading. Every time someone clicks on one of the posts there I earn an advertising credit. Since I have multiple blogs, I have put this widget on a couple of them, and earn ad credits on auto pilot as a result.

In addition to using the widget, you can post links to individual blog posts that your like to your list.

For example:

http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/how-to-come-out-with-innovative-ideas-that-sell/?r=earlnetwal

Again, every time someone clicks on that link, I will get a credit. So in addition to getting credits, I can share useful information with my blog readers.

Leads Leap also rewards you for recruiting others.

Once you have recruited 20 other Leads Leap members, you get 500 Free Ad credits per month, and this number builds as you recruit more.

You get credits for the actions of the people you recruit and the people they recruit up to 10 levels deep. This is ultimately very significant, but as with all such programs it takes a while to get established. But once you have built the specific gravity, it grows rapidly.

How to use your free ads? I tend to focus on free offers that have strong appeal and a back end that pays off. Just like a paid Google Ad, you need to start with an attractive offer that gets people to click, leading to a landing page that inspires people to opt in, and then a follow-up that makes it all worth your while.

Another thing to understand about Leads Leap, is that it’s not a flaky newbie to the scene. It has an Alexa ranking of 23,212 last time I checked which puts it pretty high in the Alexa Universe and should help to give you a sense of how big a deal this is, and could be for you.

I recommend you check out Leads Leap yourself.

Free Traffic Resources

When I first started to learn my way around internet marketing, I came across a variety of Free Traffic Resources. Since I had little money I was willing to risk online, I tried a couple of traffic exchange programs where I would spend 1/2 hour to a couple of hours looking at other people’s ads to build credits so they would look at my ads.

I did my level best not to buy anything from the ads I looked at and for the most part my fellow travelers largely did the same. Now since then I have come to learn that these exchanges actually can work, when an effective back end process is paired to an enticing free offer.

But personally, I didn’t have the patience to waste time scrolling through offers, even when I got things set up to do five different traffic exchanges at the same time. So I pretty much gave up on the entire genre some years back.

Now I know some people who swear by the traffic exchanges, but they generally have developed front and back end offers that work and they buy the clicks rather than earn the free credits. Once you have a handle on how many views it takes to convert into a purchase, it makes sense to do so – as long as the combo turns a profit.

Recently, I have been experimenting with three different systems and my opinions of free traffic generation is going through a reappraisal.

Most recently, I took part in the launch of the newest system out there called the Perfect Traffic Storm. Now I haven’t made a lot of money yet, as it is only a few days old, but I have made my first sales, so I can say I am in the chips.

Perfect Traffic Storm is free to join, and is actually pretty exciting. Here is an example of how it works.

I am actively promoting the 100% Giveaway that opened today. I created a new link in Perfect Traffic Storm by inserting my affiliate link for the Giveaway into the form on the perfect traffic storm page.

Then I used the new url they generated to serve as my hyperlink for the Giveaway. When someone clicks on the hyper link, they are taken to the Giveaway, but at the bottom of the page viewers will see another ad from one of the other advertisers who has an ad in the Giveaway category. This last about 10 seconds at the bottom of the page and is clearly visible but not too obstructive, and then just fades away.

Every time someone clicks on one of my links, I get credits to show my ads on other people’s pages. Like I said, I had my first payoffs already even though I have been using the site for only a couple of days.

To see what the ads look like, click on my link for the 100% Giveaway. Then come back and click on my link for the Perfect Traffic Storm and join it.

I was able to send a twitter broadcast today using the Perfect Traffic Storm link to the Giveaway and got 56 hits that went to the Giveaway which was a good way to promote the Giveaway and Got 168 credits for ads on the Perfect Storm site.

I am pretty sure I will be using these links on a regular basis for my twitter posts, and possible much wider as well. I think you should consider doing so as well.

A Visitor is Coming!

Mike Paetzold is conducting a Blog Tour where he will be sitting in as a contributor on a number of blogs including the MicroBusinessSpecialist.

Mike got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

Over the past year, I have learned a lot from Mike. A good portion of which has been wordpress specific. His Word Press Made Easy blog is one of a handful that I monitor regularly.

But while Word Press and Blogging are his major focus, I am constantly amazed at how much work he produces on a regular basis. I have been pleased to offer a number of his eBooks and reports over the past year.

In addition to his word press blogs, he has one on PLR and many other niche topics. One is even based on his Turtle tank, where he spins little parables about internet marketing based on the antics of his family’s pet turtles.

He refers to himself as the Old Bald Guy, and it’s true that he appears to be folically challenged, but he is a no slouch. He believes in taking massive action and isn’t afraid to do some work to get things done.

We haven’t set the exact date and framework for his Blog visit, but I expect it to be in two or three weeks.

If you have any questions regarding Word Press, plug ins, themes, etc. in particular feel free to forward them to me, or save them up for when he visits.

He is also an expert in niche marketing and traffic exchanges.

The idea of a Blog Tour is pretty new (to me at least). I am hoping that you will join me in welcoming him when he comes by participating and commenting on his posts.

Session 2 of Extraordinary Minds Was Great!

Have you been listening in?

Last night was the second session of the League of Extraordinary Minds, and what a great two hours it was.

I think of myself as a pretty rational fellow, but after last night I can clearly see why some of my marketing materials built around that rational approach are not doing as well as I would like.

Because as we all know people are not rational, they are primarily emotional. And more importantly they buy emotionally.

I learned a lot and took a lot of notes. Too many to duplicate here, and frankly I don’t think I could do justice to all the material.

If you haven’t been on the calls, let me tell you gently – you’re loosing out. These conversations are being turned into paid products, and they will be avidly sought after, because of the caliber of the insights delivered.

Now last night I picked up on a couple of threads that really will make a difference to me, once I wrestle them into action in my efforts. You may have walked away with completely different insights, appropriate to your situation.

That’s what so wonderful about this exercise. So much is communicated, from so many different sources everyone listening is likely to find different aspects specific to their individual situation.

Last night I got a great tip on bullet points in a sales letter. I now understand that the most important point goes in the first bullet, and the most provocative or curiosity inducing point goes in the last bullet.

Nice tidbit I will apply to my next sales letter. But if you don’t write sales letters you may have been more impressed with the idea that loss is more powerful than gain. And that you will get more action if failing to act will cost a prospect $20 vs another offer where the prospect stands to gain the very same $20.

Or that it is better to focus on three main points in greater detail in a presentation, than on four or more points in less detail.

But while all of these are useful to me, I am sure other people took away many other ideas relevant to their situation.

There are 7 more sessions left in the series, with the next this coming Thursday at 8PM your time no matter where you are in the world. If you sign up at League of Extraordinary Minds, you can get the link for each of the coming sessions.

Now once they are done, these sessions will be sold, so there are no replays allowed. If you want to get it on the cheap you really need to register, and then show up on the calls. I promise you, it’s been well worth the time and effort.

The tools, tactics and concepts presented apply to all types of businesses, not just online. So make a point of taking advantage of this valuable freebie. You won’t regret it.

By the way, the first session was ranked number 8 on Alexa during the first broadcast last week. I haven’t heard about last nights but it was probably equally high. What that means to you, is that not only are a lot of people listening in world wide, it’s quite possible that you main competitors were as well.

Be sure you don’t miss out on the rest of the series. Register now at League of Extraordinary Minds.

“Is That All There Is?”

How many times have we asked that question?

You know what I’m talking about. You buy into the latest and greatest marketing or business building course, even though it’s stretching your budget to the limit.

But that’s okay, because this one promises to be the ONE…the single element you’ve been missing that can take you over the top and make you the smashing success in your niche.

So you dive into the content, devouring all the CDs and DVDs and workbooks and cheat sheets and whatever else they threw in there…

And when you’re finally finished, you look up from this pile of promise and think to yourself:

“Is that all there is”?

Truth be told, most of these business-in-a-box type of programs do leave a lot to be desired.

Yes, they’ll help you build a business and market your products. But there’s always some pieces missing from the puzzle…pieces that are crucial to your business success.

Sound familiar?

I know it does for me. I’ve got thousands of dollars worth of marketing and business building products collecting dust in my closet.

And while they were all helpful, I was never able to put it all together and make it work for my business. There was always something missing.

Well, now there’s good news. Marketing and business masterminds Jay Abraham and Rich Schefren have felt our pain. And they’re doing something about it.

They’ve put together something called the League of Extraordinary Minds. And it’s going to forever change the way we get business and marketing advice.

Inside the League of Extraordinary Minds are 54 of the world’s leading authorities on a variety of business aspects, from marketing to product development to business growth–and everything in between.

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill biz consultants here. These are the people who have pioneered the most successful business and marketing concepts in the world today….the experts that TEACH those who teach us.

We’re talking household names like Tony Robbins, Jay Conrad Levinson, Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey, Michael Gerber, Robert Cialdini, and dozens of others–all in one place and all waiting patiently to help your business.

There’s no big box of business theory to plod through. No hoping that this is the “one”. And no more of that sense of unfulfilled expectations.

With the League of Extraordinary Minds, you’re hearing direct from the very finest experts in their field…the same people that Fortune 100 companies pay $250,000 PER DAY just to get their attention.

(Yeah, that’s how potent these consultants’ techniques, tactics, and strategies are when it comes to changing the fortunes of a company–be it startup or multi billion-dollar producer)

But here’s the best part…

You can get inside the League of Extraordinary Minds and suck up the wisdom and knowledge of these world-renowned experts for an entire 6 weeks…

And it won’t cost a cent.

I don’t know how Jay and Rich did it. They must have called in some MAJOR favors. But they got all 54 of these powerhouse game-changers to waive their monster fees and help your business for gratis.

So as you can see, it’s really a no-brainer to get inside the League. It’s simply the best (not to mention affordable) decision you’ll ever make for your business.

And I guarantee that you’ll NEVER come away with that “not quite full” feeling. ;)

Go here to get signed up NOW. The first call kicks off on Thursday, you don’t want to miss it.

https://schefren.infusionsoft.com/go/loemo/EarlNetw/

Mental Manure for the Growing Business Person

Ideas are the mental manure for growing businesses. And to be worthwhile they need to be your ideas, because only then will you work them the way they should be worked, hard and fast.

How do you get actionable ideas worth pursuing? By exposing yourself to highly intelligent conversation on the issues affecting your business by the best minds in the world.

Perhaps you already have a lot of ideas, how do you most effectively put them into action? Ponder that issue as you listen to the insights of 54 of the world’s leading business minds – participating as members of

The League of Extraordinary Minds

And if you sign up now, you can be sure to get access to their insights for

FREE

–More world-class business experts, mega-bestselling authors and famous icons than anyone, anywhere has ever assembled.

–36 hours of 100% content-rich, non-selling expert panel interview series

–No one else anywhere has ever had access to this caliber, quality, desirable collection of famous, prominent, brilliant real-life experts that we’ve assembled. No one else has even come remotely close.

This tremedous event has been put together by Rich Schefren and Jay Abraham. If you do not know who they are, suffice it to say you should. For there are few people who could have drawn all these people together in an event that turns out to be free to you.

My hope is that this business oriented mind meld will stimulate tens of thousands of new business initiatives to lead the new economic recovery.

More importantly, I hope you take advantage of this perhaps once in a lifetime event. The value of the ideas you will develop from this may well be worth more than a semesters worth of MBA training.

This free six week event will get sold out. So be sure to register for it today. I am proud to be associated with Jay Abraham and Rich Schefren on this project. I am confident you will benefit mightily from it as well. Register Now!

The League of Extraordinary Minds