JR's Marketing Insights

Before I get to what I want to talk about today, just a quick update. I have added a bunch of new giveaways to the Giveaway Events page, so check those out when you have a chance.

I have been rather quiet on my blog recently, and I apologize for that, but I’m working on a number of things both here and my “day job” that have kept me rather busy. I’m also flying up to NY tomorrow for my sister’s wedding (my daughter is also a flower girl!) so preparations for that have taken up a bit of my time as well. I’ll try to be more consistent with my posting schedule in the future.

Today I want to cover adswaps. For those of you who are not aware, an adswap is when you and another marketer agree to send an email to each of your lists advertising something for the other person. It’s a simple form of a Joint Venture partnership. In most cases, the ad is for something free or low cost, with the primary motivation being list building.

You are basically paying for another marketer to advertise for you with your own subscriber list, so it only works if you have a comparably sized list, or some other way to compensate for the difference in list size, such as money, multiple mailings, cross-promoting on Twitter, etc.

Where do you find people to swap with? The best way is to look to fellow marketers in your niche that you already have a relationship with. Another great resource is the website IMAdSwaps.com. It’s a forum where you can post your ad swap request or respond to others.

If you don’t have a list to start with, then you are not going to be able to convince anyone to swap with you. Sorry, but that’s just the way these things work. That’s not to say you need a huge list; this is a way to get to that point, after all. My suggestion would be to start with the Giveaway Events, which is why I mentioned them at the beginning of this post. That can be an efficient way to build from zero to several hundred subscribers fairly quickly. Once you reach about 200 subscribers, you can start looking for ad swap partners.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Let me know if you agree with me that ad swaps are the way to go, or if you have a better list building method when you are just starting out.

OK, it’s been over a month since I last wrote about my progress, and I think it’s a good time for an update.

I feel I’m continuing to make good progress, although perhaps a little slower than I was hoping for. There are a number of things I am happy about, but there are certainly things I can be doing better.

I have built my mailing list to 321 people

The majority of this growth has been from giveaway sites, which I have continued to participate in. I have also put all of my free products on a page in this blog, which has generated some sign-ups, and my Twitter messages have also sent a decent amount of traffic. I have participated in one Ad Swap so far, with my fellow Alex Jeffreys student David Walker. That appears to have been a great success, as I had at least double the number of sign-ups on the day of the ad swap over the usual daily numbers.

Incidentally, the email that I sent to my list for David was to promote his ebook, Stop Slogging Start Blogging. The unintended consequence of promoting his product to my list is that I read his ebook in order to write the email copy, and I learned a few things myself! This isn’t part of any ad swap, but I highly recommend everyone check out his ebook here: http://www.stopsloggingstartblogging.com/.

I have 5,943 Twitter Followers
This is in large part thanks to the Tweet Elite Pro software that I reviewed here. I have had a great time interacting with everyone on Twitter, and there is a noticeable surge of traffic every time I tweet about a page on my blog or one of my free products. I think I’m only just getting started on Twitter, and I hope to use it a great deal more in the coming months.

I have built this blog to an average of 20 visitors/day

Again, not a particularly impressive stat, but it’s double the number of visitors I had a month ago. If I can keep up that kind of growth, I think I can get to a respectable number of visitors fairly quickly.

I finished my first product

I’m particularly proud of this one. Productivity Power Plan has been released! I’m getting tons of great feedback about the book, and I have been encouraged to expand upon it into some additional great productivity materials. I’ll have more about this in a few weeks, but I hope I can continue to provide valuable productivity advice. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, there is a link on the right-hand side of the page at the top, or under the Free Products link.

I haven’t made any money yet
I have made $51.84 this month!

I have made two sales from the One Time Offer behind my free Twitter ebook, which is for a product I have Master Resale Rights to that I’m selling for $27. After PayPal fees that works out to $25.92 per sale. Again, I’m not quite ready to retire, but considering I’ve never made a cent from Internet Marketing prior to this, I think it’s a great start!

I’m getting more comments on my blog posts

I’m assuming this is due to increased traffic, but I’m seeing a few more comments on each of my blog posts. It’s still not quite where I’d like to be, but progress is a good thing.

The thing I feel I need to improve on is the frequency of my blog posts. For the first month, I was posting just about every day. Now I’ve dropped down to once or twice a week. I’m not looking to inundate you with a ridiculous amount of blog posts, and I’d rather have a few quality posts rather than a ton of junk. I do feel I can probably post closer to three times per week and still maintain the quality.

The other area I want to increase my efforts is in my videos. I have only created two so far, one a tutorial and the other a product review. I would like to do many more of each of these. I’m going to focus mostly on the tutorials because I have received more positive feedback on them, so I think they are what you want to see. Let me know in the comments if you feel differently.

Overall, I think things are going well. It’s slow going, which can be frustrating at times, but at least I’m moving in the right direction finally!

I created this video review of Tweet Elite Pro, because I think it’s an interesting tool that many people may find very useful. If you’d like to pick up a copy, please order it through my link: http://www.jrbiasi.com/recommends/TweetElitePro/

Again, you can order it here:

http://www.jrbiasi.com/recommends/TweetElitePro/

I’m not sure if these channels are available in other countries, but in the US, there are two big shopping channels, QVC and Home Shopping Network (or HSN). They are basically a series of advertisements or infomercials for the various companies they partner with to sell their products, fit into half hour time slots. While I am aware of them, I have never really watched them before. Until recently, that is.

My wife Jamie is, to put it mildly, very enthusiastic about the Christmas season. Truth be told, she is CRAZY about Christmas. So when she found out that QVC runs an annual “Christmas in July” weekend where they sell all kinds of products related to Christmas, of course the TV was tuned into QVC for 48 hours straight! On the plus side, where are almost done with our Christmas shopping for the year. On the down side, it was a rather costly television session!

While Jamie was watching QVC, I was doing my best to ignore it, thinking that there was nothing I would be interested in. While I was right about the products (although some of the ornaments were rather nice), I should have paid more attention for a different reason. I didn’t realize it until QVC did another Christmas special yesterday. Was it supposed to be “Christmas in August?” I’m not exactly sure. “Christmas in July” sounds more catchy to me. But I digress.

I should have paid closer attention, not because I wanted to buy something, but because I learned something from the way they sell their products. You might think there is not much to selling products on a channel that is explicitly devoted to selling stuff, but you’d be mistaken. While it’s true that most people who tune in are looking to buy something, there is no guarantee they will be convinced to buy what you are selling at that particular moment. So there has to be some method to the way they are talking about the products.

I found the following techniques that I believe can be useful in Internet Marketing:

Product Demonstrations
Every product was shown working, being set up, or being played with. Whether it was a set of Christmas lights, a remote control car, or a music box, everything was shown in use, rather than just sitting in a box. I think this is one of the advantages of TV, in that you can show something in motion rather than just a static image or text. I believe this is why video is becoming such a powerful tool in internet marketing.

Customer Testimonials
Interspersed throughout the program were calls from previous customers. These were not long conversations, but for about 30 seconds each, the sales person would ask callers which product they bought and why, what they liked about it, and who they were buying it for. Social proof goes a long way, so getting people who are so enthusiastic about the product that they are willing to help sell it sends a strong message. I also think some people will say anything to get their voices heard on TV, but that’s just me being cynical. Similarly, testimonials on squeeze pages and comments on blog posts provide a little bit of verification that there is value in whatever you are selling or saying.

Personalize the Message
Every sales person on the show had an example of a friend or relative that had found this product so useful, or had been so happy to receive it as a gift. Aside from the testimonials mentioned above, this was a way to get customers to see themselves using the product. I think this is one of the strongest strategies used by the sales people on QVC. If you can get the customer to identify with the scenario you are presenting, then they will of course want the same feeling of satisfaction you are telling them about.

Sense of Urgency
For every product, there were only “limited quantities” available. In some cases this was a few hundred items, in others it was a few thousand. Throughout the broadcast, these numbers were continually updated, to give the viewer the sense that if they didn’t order RIGHT NOW, there would be none left. Occasionally, the products would become sold out, and viewers would be told that they could still order to be placed on a wait list, and “hopefully” they would be able to purchase their item once more came in stock. I’m not sure that the quantities were truly as limited as they claimed, because fairly often a few more would become available an hour or two later. Either way, the fear of missing out on your only chance to get that great deal can be a powerful motivator.

Discounts and Bundles
Almost every product had a retail price with a discounted price below it. Also, in many cases products were combined into a bundle with complimentary products or accessories. The idea of receiving more value for your money makes it easier to rationalize the purchase. I think this is why so many squeeze pages have a suggested value for a product, even if it is being given away for free. Also, the use of bonuses to help sell affiliate products is a common practice that seems to work well.

Believe me, I was as surprised as you probably are to get so much out of a shopping channel. I think I can find a few more tidbits by watching a bit more closely, but for now, I think these concepts will be a benefit to anyone trying their hand at Internet Marketing.

OK folks, I’m new at this, so please take it easy on me.  Here is my first attempt at creating a video:

Let me know how I did.  I think I need to work on the pauses and the “umms,” but other than that, I think it’s a good start!  As a side note, I used the 30-day trial of Camtasia Studio, and I was impressed with how easy it was to use!  More on that later.

Choosing a theme for your blog seems like a big decision.  You’re basically branding yourself, so how professional your blog looks is directly dependent on the theme you choose.  No pressure, right?  Luckily, it’s not that hard to find great themes, and if you don’t like the results, you can always change to another theme later.

Let’s start with an explanation of what a theme is.  In WordPress (the only blogging platform I actively use, but this should apply for Blogger and Typepad as well), a theme is a collection of settings, layouts, and graphics that make up the look and feel of your site.  Things like the font size, type, and color, the header graphics, and the number of columns are all dependent on the theme.  A theme makes it easier to customize the look of your site without having to write the code yourself (usually anyway), or hiring a website designer to do it for you.

Even with the theme taking care of most of the details for you, it still used to be a daunting process to actually install the theme on your blog.  You used to have to download the theme, extract it to your hard drive, and upload the files via FTP to your blog’s themes directory.  The good news is that with recent versions of WordPress, there is now the option to directly install your theme from within the WordPress admin panel.  This only works for themes that are listed in the WordPress theme directory.  For themes not listed there, the files still must be uploaded as mentioned earlier.

So let’s start with the theme directory.  How do you find a good theme?  In your admin panel, go to Appearance > Add New Themes.  From there you are brought to a very helpful search page.  If you know what the theme is called, you can type it into the search box.  Otherwise, you can search for specific features you are looking for, including color, number of columns, width, and other features.

As you can see, it is very easy to narrow down the options to find exactly what you are looking for.  Once you have a theme that you like, you can preview it on a demo site to see what the end result will look like, and you can install it on your site.  With a few clicks, you now have a professional looking WordPress Blog!  Not so hard, was it?

There are additional levels of customization you may want to do with your blog.  Say you want a custom header, or graphic with a link to another site.  There are a number of ways to do so, including adding a widget, or placing the code directly into the template files.  But these are topics for another post.  For now, know that you can “tweak” your template to make it look exactly the way you like.

Another note; there are also paid themes available.  I have not used these so far, so I don’t know too much about them.  The only ones I have seen in action are Thesis and Semiologic.   Since I haven’t really played around with these enough to give an informed recommendation, I’m linking to them for informational purposes only; they are not affiliate links.  The advantage to these paid themes is that they give you more control over tweaking the themes from within the admin panel, without having to resort to manual coding.  As I said, I haven’t tried them yet, but if I do, I will certainly post a more detail review.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on my own little secret project.  I’m writing my first original ebook, Productivity Power Plan!  I know I’m probably jumping ahead of where I’m supposed to be in Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program, but it’s an idea I’ve had in my head for a while and I don’t think I could wait any longer to get it written down.  There are many products out there on how to become more productive, but I’m writing this specifically from my perspective.  It should sound familiar to many of you out there: a person who does the majority of his work from home or would like to in the future.

The process of writing an original ebook has been both easier and more difficult than I imagined.  For example, I thought I would have trouble thinking of things to say, but it was quite the opposite!  I will go into much more detail in a future blog post, once the ebook is finished.  Right now, I have to concentrate on completing it, and don’t want to complicate the process!

I’ve had very positive responses on my previous blog posts on productivity, so I think I can count on my readers to give me a little help putting the finishing touches on the Productivity Power Plan.  Please let me know, what little tips and tricks do you use to stay productive?  What are your biggest downfalls or time wasters?  Do you have any questions about productivity that you would like an answer to?  If you have anything to add, please go to the link below and fill out the form with your comments:

Productivity Power Plan

Anyone who sends me their comments will be among the first to receive a free copy of the ebook when it is released!  You’ll get it before anyone else!  So please leave your comments at the site.

If you have any other comments, feel free to comment on this post.  Let me know if you think you could use a guide that shows you simple ways to maximize your productivity.

Bear with me here.  I know this is a stretch, but I’m going somewhere with this.

I was recently sent a free trial to World of Warcraft by my brother-in-law.  My wife was sent a similar trial.  Apparently he and my wife’s sisters have been consumed by this game, and are trying to recruit us to join in their addiction.  I was frightened by the prospect, because quite honestly I have better things I should be doing with my time, such as growing my business.

But I did give it a test run, playing about 5 hours over the course of the 10-day trial.  That doesn’t in any way qualify me as a World of Warcraft “expert,” but I saw some interesting parallels between the path to success in WoW to internet marketing.

World of Warcraft is about gaining experience, or “leveling,” and being able to handle increasing complex and lucrative tasks, or “quests.”  In the beginning, you have weak weapons, very little skill, and you are easy to kill.  As you progress through the game, you can purchase or otherwise obtain better weapons, your skills increase, and you become more powerful and harder to kill.  Sound familiar?

Effort

Ever hear the saying “Anything worth doing is worth doing well?”  In World of Warcraft and internet marketing, you get what you put into it.  If you apply yourself and work consistently and intelligently, it is possible to find success, whether it is in achieving a top-level character or earning an income online.

At times, the work required might seem tedious or boring, but ultimately, the results will depend on whether you put forth a serious effort.  This includes putting in the time, avoiding distractions, and doing productive work, not busy work.

Tools

Having the right tool for the job is critical.  If you are trying to fight some powerful creature, you need a powerful weapon to defeat it.  If you want to develop a relationship with your prospects, you need tools like squeeze pages, autoresponders, and hosting accounts.  Without all these things you are just spinning your wheels.

Also in both cases there are a lot of tools out there that look good, but don’t really get the job done.  You want to make sure you carefully consider all your options before making a decision.

Friends

In WoW as in life, you’ve got to have friends.  When you first start out, you can’t venture very far without getting yourself into trouble.  Similarly in internet marketing you start out as a relative unknown, with no one willing to partner with you.  Things are slow going until you make a name for yourself.

On the other hand, if you go in knowing some people who are more advanced, you can quickly progress up the ranks by partnering with them.  Alternatively, if you join people who are similarly ranked, you can augment each others strengths and compensate for each others weaknesses.

…

I hope I didn’t lose too many of you with this post, but I personally found the comparison interesting.  I also thought I was being pretty creative, if I don’t say so myself.  That is, until I finished writing the above paragraphs, and decided to Google the subject of this post.  There are nearly 600,000 results!  Not quite as original of an idea as I thought, apparently.  In the spirit of togetherness with my fellow bloggers, here is a post by Ian Lurie that I found to be well articulated on the topic:

10 Ways Internet Marketing is Like World of Warcraft

This blog has been in existence for just under 3 weeks at this point, and this seems to be a good time to write a post about my progress.  The intention of this blog is to detail what I am learning during Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program, and to chronicle my successes and failures along the way.

So far I think I have made fairly good progress, although I think I need to ramp up my efforts in certain areas.  First, the good:

I have built my mailing list from 0 to 83 people

Using mainly giveaway sites, I have offered free products to people in exchange for their contact information.  I have participated in four giveaways so far, and they work extremely well.  I have noticed that the first day a giveaway opens is usually the strongest; some have provided me with 20 signups on a single day.  I will try to increase this by learning to write better add copy for my free product listings.

I have built this blog to an average of 10 visitors/day

Not a particularly impressive stat, perhaps, but considering I had no blog and no traffic a few weeks ago, it’s still a good start.  This was accomplished mainly through posting on forums and commenting on blog posts.  I really need to increase my efforts in this area.

I’m finishing my first product

I should be releasing my first information product within the next few days.  I have been motivated by the creations of my fellow coaching students to put some serious effort into this area!  I have ideas for about four other products, but I will have to pick one or two to start with in order to stay focused and productive.

Now to the not so good:

I haven’t made any money yet

This is perhaps a little disappointing, but I’m only just getting started.  I’m laying the groundwork for success in everything I do, so it’s only a matter of time.  I may have to revise some of my strategies to improve my results.  For example, to date I haven’t used affiliate links on my blog at all, even where it would make sense to do so, for example when discussing tools that I use.  I agree with Matt Wolfe’s post here (also the inspiration for this post, by the way) that the proper way to go is to only link to products I can personally vouch for.  I may make this change going forward.

I’m not getting many comments on my blog posts

I can attribute this to two main problems, my style of posting and the amount of traffic reaching my blog.  Most of my posts have been sort of bland, “this is how I do what I do” sort of writing, that may not be terribly engaging for the reader.  My mentor suggests that blog posts need to be more personal, and perhaps less formal.  I’m working on this (wait for my next post).  As for traffic, with only 10 visitors per day I’m not having many people show up to comment in the first place.  As I improve my traffic, this should improve as well.

I hope this post doesn’t sound overly negative, because I really am encouraged by my results so far.  I think with a little more focused effort I could really improve the areas I have identified and ultimately achieve the results I am looking for.  The ball is in my hands, and all I have to do is run with it!

I’m writing this post to explain how much I love Google Analytics.  I set it up on some of my sites a while ago, but never really had much use for it.  Now that Alex Jeffreys has explained a little more about what the different metrics mean, and how they can be useful, I’m addicted to it!  Every morning I check my stats to see how many visitors I had, what countries they are coming from, and what sites sent them to me.  There really is a wealth of information here that can be very illuminating.  Here is a screenshot of my traffic from the current month (click to see it full size):

Where to begin?  The Visitors Overview is great, because I can see whether I’m moving in the right direction with growing my blog.  I like the Map Overlay, because it’s useful to see where people who read my blog are coming from.  But the most useful sections of Google Analytics are the Traffic Sources and the Content Overview.

In Traffic Sources, I can see what sites are sending the most traffic to my blog.  I can also see whether anyone is getting to my blog by typing the URL directly into their browser’s address bar.  It also shows whether I am getting traffic from Google through normal search engine queries.  As you can see, currently just under 5% of my traffic is coming in through that method, but I’m only just getting started.  If you do have search engine traffic reaching your site, you can also see what keywords had your site showing up in the search results.

The Content Overview is useful because you can see what pages on your site were viewed the greatest percentage of the time.  In my case, the main page of my blog (depicted as “/”) is what most people see.  Not surprising since I show the full text of each blog post on the main page, so no one really has to drill down to see the full post.  Knowing which pages are popular can be useful because if you notice a trend in the types of posts people like, you might want to tailor your writing to meet those requirements.

The other thing I want to mention is the bounce rate.  The bounce rate is basically the percentage of visitors who look at one page on your site and then leave.  The lower the percentage, the better.  My bounce rate is not particularly good, above 50%.  This is probably also due to the fact that most of my content is available from my homepage.  The only people who click through to other pages are probably people who leave comments, or people who start from one of my other pages and then click back to the homepage.  I don’t think it’s a problem, but it is something to keep an eye on.