“How much should I charge for this product?”

That is rarely an easy question to answer. Choose too low and your profit margins drop. Choose too high and you won’t make enough sales to generate good profits. And, guessing based on what other people are doing is no guarantee that your product will sell (they might not be doing very well.) Also, if your price is low, it can be hard to attract affiliates to sell your product. There just isn’t enough money in it for them.

A Perfect Case for AB Split Testing

I am working on a 9-1-1 product (like Tony Shepherd recommends in his Double Genius System - a really great little ebook that I highly recommend) and wanted to find out how much people are willing to pay to solve the problem I address. I’ve seen others in the market selling products for $7 and others as high as $12. I think that they are all priced too low and that I can do better sales at a higher price. So, I set out to test my price.

The first step of the process was to put together the sales letter for my product. Many people who teach product creation recommend that you write the sales letter first and then create the product to deliver on the promises of the sales letter. That’s what I did. In this case, I only have the product outlined, so the sales letter writing process really helped me to define the features of the product and I even came up with a couple of ideas that will set me apart from the competition. I also created 2 bonus reports that factored into my testing plan.

One major focus of the sales letter is building up the perceived value of the product. I wove in many examples of the amount of money that people spend trying to deal with the problem and asked the reader to think about how much they have already spent without success. My goal is that the sales letter should establish a perceived value for the results of the product at about 10 times the purchase price.

Setting Up The AB Split Test

Once the sales page was ready, I created 2 versions. One had a price of $17 and the other $37. These would be alternated by a simple AB Split Testing software package that I have so that visitors would see one or the other.

Since the product doesn’t exist yet, the order button leads to a page that informs the customer that we are still finishing the product and it’s not ready yet. It acknowledges that the customer has an urgent need and offers to give the 2 bonus reports mentioned in the sales letter to help the customer out until the main product is finished. To claim the reports they have to sign up for our email announcement list.

I’m sure that a few people will be angry when they click to buy and get the ‘work in progress’ page, but I plan to offer anyone who joins the list a huge discount when the product is done. This, in addition to the quality of the free reports, will hopefully rebuild some good will.

For people who request the free reports, there is a third page that reminds them to check their email for the confirmation request in order to verify that their email address is valid and opt them into the announcement list.

Results Of The Price Testing

As I write this, the test is still underway. I’ve had about 47 total visits to the sales pages. The $17 price is leading the results with 4 ’sales’ (an 18% sales rate.) The $37 price hasn’t gotten one purchase click. The confidence rating for the results is sitting at 75%. 2 people have requested the free reports and only 1 has confirmed the request and gotten the reports.

The current test will run until I get a clear winner, but it looks like the $17 price is a sure bet. After this current test is complete, I’ll test $17 against $27 and see how it goes. Overall, I’m not just looking for the most clicks but the total profits. I’d rather make the same money from fewer customers.

Once I determine the selling price, I’ll start testing the sales letter itself. The current 18% ratio is pretty good for starters, but I’ll keep working on it until I run out of ideas for improvement. I’ll start with the header graphic, move down to the headline, and then work through the body of the copy and the offer.

Of course, I’ve got to get the product finished as well!

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com.

Selling software is an extremely profitable business. The recent “Grand Theft Auto 4″ release sold over $500 Million in the first week and many more mundane software titles like word processors, spreadsheets, and screen capture tools sell hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of product year after year.

For information producers who are more familiar with creating courses and seminars, there is another alternative that will help you cash in on the software business using the content you are creating right now.

A Different Kind of Software

Back in college I studied fiction writing and came across a piece of writing software called “WritePro.” The software was (and still is) pitched as a virtual writing tutor designed to help users craft better characters and richer story lines for their writing. This software is not particularly sophisticated and has not been updated much, but continues to sell for $99 per copy over 10 years later.

The foundation of the software is a writing course created by author and writing coach Sol Stein. It consists of a series of exercises and questions designed to help you develop a fictional story with well-rounded characters. The software simply presents the questions and exercises to you in a specific sequence and records your responses.

As you work through the material, you revisit and add to the material you previously wrote and, finally, convert it into a wordprocessor file to further develop into a manuscript for a novel.

The technology to run this software is very simple - it’s the sequence of questions and exercises (the content) that creates the value. Speaking of value, let’s take a look at the value of Stein’s teaching in various formats.

The Value Of Content In Various Forms

Sol Stein has 3 significant books on writing that can be purchased today: “Stein on Writing”, “How to Grow a Novel”, and “Solutions for Writers.” All three books can be purchased at Amazon right now for $47.74 plus shipping - if you buy them used, $32.23.

There is an MP3 audio on CD version of “Stein on Writing” that sells for $24.95 new and $15.72 used (that’s about $5-$14 dollars more than the print version.)

The “WritePro” software is constructed from essentially the same teaching content, but it is presented in an interactive interface that prevents people from jumping ahead until they have done the writing work for each module. That software sells for $99 today and has been on the market for over 10 years.

Transforming Your Content Into Software

Think for a minute about all of the ebooks, audio recordings, videos, and websites you have created. Can that content be presented as a sequence of learning modules with assignments at the end of each one? Can the end result of the activities be combined to create a resource that will help your customer succeed at whatever subject you are teaching them about? If so, you could have the makings of an excellent software product on your hands.

If you have an ebook about how to write short ebooks, it probably breaks down the writing process into steps that build on each other. Imagine a software package that instructs users to pick a topic and write it down. Then, it asks them to write down four sub-topics. Then it presents each sub-topic and asks the user to write several paragraphs for each one. The software would walk the user step-by-step through the writing process, capturing the results of each exercise along the way. When the writing is done, the software could present the user with several templates to chose from and out the other side comes a well written professionally formatted ebook ready to sell. That’s just the bare bones of an idea. There are many other useful functions that could be added to increase the value to the user.

The first step in adapting your content is to create a teaching plan and define the final output and how it will benefit your customer. Next, plan the content for each module and make notes on how you would like to present it to the customer. How will the user be able to navigate through the exercises? Will there be supplemental teaching material available? Will the user need to review previous results during later assignments? Make your notes and show them to a trusted adviser to get an outside opinion of how well the material flows.

There are a number of different technologies which can be used to program your final software. You can use a program like Flash or Multimedia Maker to create your program and deliver it to your customer. Or, you can hire a programmer to start from the ground up and create everything in C++ or Java. Whatever your solution, before you search for a programmer on eLance or start working on it yourself, create a detailed outline from your notes of how you want the software to work and make samples of how you want it to look. This will help shorten the development process and minimize mistakes and miscommunication.

The greatest value will come if the software you create helps people create and store resources they can use again or pushes them to complete a process they wouldn’t otherwise finish if they just had a blank pad of paper and your content in ebook form. Some of the simplest software I’ve seen does little more than ask people to fill in a few blanks about a product and then inserts the results into a pre-formatted HTML template to create a sales page. The user uploads the resulting file to their server and they are ready to start driving traffic to it - a simple tool that helps people who have trouble putting together a decent sales page.

The bottom line is this, create something useful and you can profit with it for months and years to come. There is big money in software.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.

I have a very exciting Product Launch Formula case study to share with you. It shows the kind of success you can achieve just by taking advantage of the free content given away by leading marketers when they launch their own training courses. Even using a fraction of the ‘Product Launch Formula‘ or the ‘Mass Control‘ process can yield big gains.

This case study is written by Michael Gunn and covers his recent launch of a product called Aweber UNLEASHED. Michael is an Internet marketer I first met on the ‘5 Bucks a Day‘ forum that Dennis Becker started for customers of his ebook of the same name. We both later joined Dennis’ ‘Earn 1k a Day‘ membership site where we continued to build our marketing businesses.

Michael is a very astute student of Internet marketing and I’ve had the privilege of watching as his efforts really began to pay off. Now, with his permission, I’m publishing his recent product launch case study here.

Case Study: Aweber UNLEASHED Training Video Launch, by Michael Gunn

I came VERY close to buying ‘Product Launch Formula 2.0′ (PLF2) last month, but at the last minute I decided not to. I just couldn’t afford it. Instead I decided to do a test. You see I had read a lot of posts both here (the ‘Warrior Forum’) and on E1kaD (the ‘Earn 1k a Day‘ membership website) about the hype around PLF2 and the videos that Jeff Walker provided and that the process he was using was nothing but hype as well.

I saw it differently. To me the free videos that Jeff Walker provided were pure gold. I carefully watched them multiple times and also studied the process he used. In addition, I ran across several audio interviews from Liz Tomey and Jeff Dedrick that they were using to promote PLF2 as well. These audios were amazing and contained outstanding information.

I decided to challenge myself and use the methods/techniques I learned from Jeff’s videos and Tomey’s audios to do a product launch. I have made products in the past and have had some good success in the past. So I was curious to see how much of a difference it would make.

I recorded 14 short video tutorials on how to use the popular Aweber Autoresponder service and created a product called Aweber UNLEASHED. I determined this was a need because of the number of posts I saw on the Warrior Forum and other boards regarding this tool.

I then contacted three forum friends whom I knew had Internet Marketing (IM) mailing lists and invited them as Joint Venture (JV) affiliates. The total combined subscribers on these lists was about 16,000.

The plan was that I would release one video early in the week for people to preview and then another two days later. I set up a squeeze page in order to get access to the video. Those who confirmed were redirected to a blog that had the video posted. During the next two days of promoting the free video the squeeze page converted at 60.4% and 316 opted in and confirmed their email.

I uploaded the next video. I then sent an email to all the lists about the availability of the second video. Using Frank Kern’s suggestion, the second video I shared was ,IMHO, the best of the 14 and 64 more optins followed that day. The videos received a total of 543 page views during the three day pre-launch.

It was then announced that the Sales page for the full 14 videos would be available on Thursday at noon for a price of only $7. On Thursday emails were sent to all lists about the availability of the videos. Of course PayPal selected that day to have some major technical issues and the first 20+ orders got messed up.

For those that had issues I sent them an alternative download link as well as an additional eBook that I currently sell for $17 as a bonus for their troubles. After the initial issues with PayPal, all went well. The sales page was converting at a robust 23%. As of this writing there have been 188 sales for $1,576 in a little more than 48 hours.

I am receiving numerous requests for people wanting to be affiliates, which I have granted. This affiliate traffic has not gone through the “Pre-launch” routine and so the sales page is converting at a much lower rate but still overall it sits at 19.4%.

Some things I learned/Notes:

• While the process was very effective, I wouldn’t do it again for a $7 dollar product. It was a lot of work.
• I wish I had come up with a way to track the sales conversion of those that had opted in and saw the preview videos vs. those that didn’t. That would have been interesting.
• I need to get a help desk set up. As much of a pain as they are, it’s not worth losing a customer because you never got the email that they were having issues.
• I neglected to put a support email address on the pages and that caused a couple of problems, but not many.
• I was very pleased to see that my three affiliates made money. That made me as excited as if I had been the one making it!
• There are lots of other things I could have done or prepared better for. But money loves speed and I didn’t want to wait any longer to gt the product out.

Overall it was a great launch and a great experience. All this from using information found in the free videos and audios that were released before PLF2.

Hype? Maybe. But the proof is in the bank account and with the satisfied customers.

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Michael Gunn is an Internet Marketer and product creator. His products include the free report, Are You Taking Action?, Discussion Forum Fortunes, and IM Audio Club in addition to the Aweber UNLEASHED video training series mentioned in this case study.

To learn more about Michael and his work, visit his blog at: www.marketingtoolstoday.com

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If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights.

I wanted to share a brilliant use of the psychological trigger of ‘commitment and consistency’ in action. I recently saw this influential technique employed in a very novel way by a non-profit group looking to build a new base of donors for their cause.

The core concept behind the ‘commitment and consistency’ trigger is that people are pre-disposed to continue doing something once they made a commitment to start. Years ago, companies like Columbia House would give you 10 CD’s or cassettes (this is pre-iPod) for a penny - if you agreed to join their music club for 6 months or a year. They knew that a significant percentage of the people who got the initial deal would continue on as customers and earn them back all of the costs of the initial offer plus a profit.

The non-profit group’s plan to engage new donors involved taking funds provided by existing large donors and using them to underwrite the issuing of credits that could be given out to non-donors who had some interest in the organization’s work. The recipients of these donation credits would then be able to use those credits to make a donation to any of the specific projects currently underway through the company. In essence, the major donor supplies the cash and the new potential donor gets to choose where to spend it.

The beauty of this approach is that, even though they don’t have to give their own cash, the new potential donors are actually making a commitment to become donors when they decide to participate in this arrangement. They are becoming invested in the support of a specific non-profit project and they are more likely to continue to support it in the future with their own resources. The donation credit lowers the barrier of resistance to becoming involved and makes it easier to persuade them to take the first steps as a new donor. It is the closest thing to giving out a ‘free sample’ that can be done in a non-profit environment.

If implemented well, I can’t see how this would fail to bring in a significant base of new donors. They will, in turn, provide the social proof required to convince others to join in as well. As the new donors study the various opportunities for giving they will learn more about the work of the non-profit and as they get feedback on the results of the project they chose to support, they will grow to like and trust the group even more. This will continue to reinforce the relationship and create a new base of financial support.

This is a great example of how implementing the basic tools of influence can amplify the results of a promotional project. It takes the initial focus of the new donor relationship off of the money and redirects it to the various projects underway. This same thing happens in the for profit world when a business gives away a gift certificate. The recipient immediately shifts from a mindset of ‘do I want to buy anything from this company’ to a mindset of ‘what should I buy with my gift certificate?’ Once the commitment to buy something is made, it is much easier to add extras to the sale and start moving the new customer into being a repeat customer.

Do you know of any examples that show the psychology of influence at work in a well integrated fashion? Leave a comment below and let us know more.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we encourage you to visit the website at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.

The recent Product Launch Formula 2.0 promotion, which followed on the heals of Frank Kern’s big Mass Control launch (I purchased that one) has got me taking a lot of notes about event style product launches. I have a couple products in the works and would like to take advantage of these strategies and tactics to make the most impact with my products and begin building a business around them.

I’ll be posting on the topic of product launches as I get further into studying and planning my own. To start off, I wrote this product launch ‘big picture’ article to define the essential elements of a product launch and the related objectives that a marketer should achieve during a successful launch.

DISCLAIMER: I am not the ultimate Product Launch Guru. That title (in my opinion) belongs to Jeff Walker, author of the Product Launch Formula training course and guys like Frank Kern, John Reese, and Mike Filsaime. My biggest launch to date had 1 JV partner and sold about $3500 in total (it was a limited release product, but I had no list of my own and no track record outside of a small forum community.) This is a work in progress by a student of the process.

With the background and disclaimers out of the way, let’s take a look at the big picture and learn about the phases of a product launch, some of the strategies and tactics at play during these phases, and the overall objectives of the product launch process. I fully expect that I am missing some things, have poorly defined others, and might even be embarrassingly mistaken about a few. So, if you can correct, clarify, or enlighten me on this topic, please leave a comment below. (Hey, you can leave a comment if you just want to say hello!)

So, here’s the good stuff:

3 Phases for Launching a Product

Pre-Launch - This is the time where you are planning your launch schedule, starting to create promotional materials and also when you actively recruit JV partners and affiliates. This phase will very likely involve a mini launch of its own that is directed exclusively at potential affiliates and JV partners. When you come out of the pre-launch phase you will have a list of JV partners and affiliates ready to promote your launch and the core planning for the launch sequence and some or all of the promotional content that will be used in the launch. You should also have a JV blog and a launch blog up and ready to go.

Active Launch - The active launch begins with the first communication you make to your potential customers. Very often it is a free video or report that offers some really amazing content related to your product and designed to build buzz (very often the product to be launched isn’t even mentioned at this point. There might be a passing reference to the fact that the information shared was discovered ‘while I was working on a cool new project.’)

The JV’s and affiliates start driving people to the new content which is designed to get people to opt-in to a launch mailing list. As the launch progresses, these people will be asked to join at least one ‘early notice’ sub-list and might possibly be offered a free tele-seminar the day before the product is available. That tele-seminar will be focused on describing exactly what is included in the course, how customers will benefit, what the special early purchase bonuses will be and other topics designed to prime them for purchasing.
The active launch phase includes two separate lines of communication - one aimed at the potential customers and one aimed at the JV’s and affiliates. The customers will get a sequence of emails and content that, at various stages, is designed to catch their interest, create a personal bond between you and the them, describe the product, offer social proof and establish the value of the product, and finally coach them on exactly what they should do on launch day to make their purchase. Throughout the launch sequence, every one of the 6 psychological triggers that influence people’s decision making process will be touched on - repeatedly.

The whole active launch phase concludes when the product ‘goes live.’

Post Launch - The product is usually promoted actively for no more than 7 days. It is hard to keep people interested once the ‘new’ has worn off and affiliates and JV’s usually move on to fresher projects to promote. Immediately after the go live date, you start a post launch process to keep momentum up among the JV’s and affiliates. There will be a series of follow-up communications with the potential customers to announce ‘news’ about the launch and push those on the verge of purchasing to order.

The post launch period is also a time to re-enforce the purchasing decision that new customers have made and start encouraging them to use the product and establish new habits based on it. There will also be more bonding with affiliates, customers, and the non-buyers on your new list.

Most marketers will also start doing some targeted affiliate promotion and/or cross-selling to their new list to generate a few extra dollars. They might also run some special sales and, if they are smart, they will also start planting the seeds for their next launch.

These three phases will be clearly marked out on your product launch calendar and serve as the foundation for planning the timing of all of the specific tasks and tactics to be used during the launch.

5 Critical Launch Goals

Generate Traffic - You need to get people coming to your product website. But, in a product launch you don’t go after the traffic yourself. You go after partners with established mailing lists and let them drive the potential customers to you. In exchange you will give them a 50% cut of every sale. This commission buys you a small army of promoters who will blanket the marketplace for you while you focus on the other elements of the launch.

Establish Authority - If the people coming to your site don’t already believe you are an authority, selling a product or service to them will become significantly more difficult. But, if they have already experienced and benefited from your expertise through the great free content you give away and you have the endorsement of other people they respect (your JV Partners and afilliates), you won’t have to sell them as much as show them where to pay.

Build Buzz - Critical to success on opening day is getting people in your target market talking about and anticipating the release of your product. Your JV partners and affiliates will not only build excitement through their lists, they will also be participating in forum discussions and writing blog posts, creating videos, writing special reports, and using social media tools that talk about the benefits of your upcoming product.

Build a List - A list of interested potential customers is golden. It is only bested by a list of actual customers (who you will sell other products, services, and upgrades to later.) Launches help you build a business and each successive launch adds to the results of the ones that came before.

Recruit Affiliates - When your product is finally launched, your affiliates are going to be out there multiplying the effect off all of your promotional efforts. Finding affiliates with large mailing lists and good relationships with their lists will have an exponential effect on your sales (and many of their members will ultimately end up on your lists as well.)

Oh, I Almost Forgot. Make A Bunch Of Money Fast! -

What’s Next?

There are many specific tactics and techniques that fit into this basic framework. They all get organized into precise sequences designed to move people through the buying decision before the product is available and then build up pressure to buy quickly once the product goes live. Jeff Walker refers to a launch as a ’sideways salespage.’ Instead of a visitor getting one big sales page and reading through each part, the content is fed to the people on the launch list one section at a time. So, all of the same sales copy concepts remain in effect.

In future articles I will be looking at the 6 psychological triggers that get utilized during a product launch along with some examples of how they can be implemented in your product launches.

I will also start to map out some of the strategies and sequences I develop as I launch my own products.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we encourage you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights and to leave a comment and make your voice heard.

How do you protect the download pages for your digital products? A surprising number of digital publishers seem to be relying on some very weak solutions.

A common approach to download page security that many beginning marketers use involves choosing names for download directories and pages that include a random string of numbers. Something like, “/download17826/”. The idea being that digital thieves trying to guess the url to the download page would not be able to do it easily. An extra measure of security that is often used is to employ ‘no-index’ tags in the robots.txt file and the individual HTML pages on the site to ensure that the search engines didn’t include the pages in their index.

The logic behind this simple solution is, “If you can’t find the page in the search engines and it is nearly impossible to guess, the download page is safe from casual thieves and all but the most determined hackers.” But, will the search engines really obey your ‘no-index’ tags?

If this is how you have your download pages protected, I have some very bad news for you. One of the major search engines is ignoring your ‘no-index’ tags and including your download pages in their search results for anyone to find.

I first became aware of this after reading the promotional copy for a recent product offer. I couldn’t believe it would be as easy as conducting a quick search to sneak directly onto a download page without paying - but, it is! A little more research revealed that this information on how to steal digital products is pretty widespread online. You don’t have to be a hardcore black-hat hacker to figure it out.

I’m not going to give details of the exact search engine and search methods that will expose these vulnerable download pages because I don’t want to encourage digital theft. But, when I learned about how easy it was to locate and access ‘protected’ download pages, I decided to test some of the hottest information products on the market and searched for their download pages. The results were astonishing.

In my tests, I was able to successfully locate and access over a dozen download pages for some very well known products. The search engine made it easy to locate the download pages and the sites offered no resistance to my visits. Ironically, one of the products whose download page I was able to access was for a software product promising to protect your download pages (either the software isn’t very good, or they don’t use it on their site.)

The lesson here is this, if you aren’t using a software solution to protect your download pages, you could be getting robbed blind by digital thieves. Hackers know how to exploit this vulnerability and they talk about it openly on their forums. Some malicious individuals even locate download pages and publish the links on forums and newsgroups to encourage theft. If your product isn’t well known yet, you might be safe. But, if you start seeing success, you will be targeted - count on it.

There are several products available to secure your download pages: DL Guard, Digital Product Guard, and Download Defender XT are three popular options that work. DL Guard is one of the best solutions available.

In my testing I uncovered several download pages that were secured with DL Guard (a unique bit of text shows up in the URL for the download page) and every one of them successfully blocked access to the download page. I personally know several marketers who use (and swear by) the DL Guard solution.

The download protection approach that I use involves employing a 3rd party system to process orders and deliver the digital goods. The service I use is E-junkie. I upload my files to the E-junkie servers and they process my orders and deliver the products automatically. The files are protected through their site and I don’t have to worry. They never offer a direct link to the files and product links can be set to expire after a specific time or number of downloads. E-junkie also manages my affiliate program and has a number of other valuable features built in. The costs are very low and the benefits are very high.

Whatever solution you choose, just make sure and implement it ASAP. Don’t leave the core of your business unprotected. Stop the digital thieves in their tracks using software like DL Guard or services like E-junkie.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we encourage you to visit www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com and explore our other online marketing articles.

You hear a lot of talk in the marketing world about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is an entire industry online. But there is an even more powerful strategy you can use to get traffic to your websites. I call it Search Result Domination (SRD) and don’t hear nearly as many people talking about this idea.

When you apply SEO techniques to your website you find yourself getting one or two pages from your website showing up in the top 10 results. Even if you have lots of secondary pages on your domain that are relevant, Google will filter them out of the results. Search Result Domination techniques work to place web pages whose content you control into many or all of the top 10 search results. Imagine the increased traffic and sales you would get if 5 of the top 10 results on a search pointed to pages you controlled. The pages would all be on different domains, so Google wouldn’t filter them out. Each page would point back to your primary site and pre-sell people on the content being offered.

Dominating the Search Results isn’t that hard in most markets. You write some content on the topic (or hire a writer) and use that to create lenses at Squidoo, marketing articles on eZineArticles, blog entries at www.Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, MySpace, Facebook, ScribD, Hubpages, Wikidot, and a host of other sites. Create a video on the topic and blast it across the Internet using services like Traffic Geyser (these can be simple slide shows with narration if that’s all you can do.) Create a podcast from your blog posts using a service like Odiogo (or by recording the audios yourself) and then list your podcast in every podcast directory you can find. Turn the articles into a free report and list it at every ebook directory site you can find.

The end result of working this way is that a searcher will go looking for your keywords and the results page will come back with mostly your pages. Those pages will steer people to your main site where you can capture leads and make sales. They will act like a giant net that you throw into the Internet to scoop up prospects and pull them into your site where they find the answers they were looking for and the products they need.

I’ve used these tactics to quickly get sites I’m working with ranking for my primary keywords. First the offsite pages get listed (I got a Squidoo page to number one in Google in 3 days this way) and then later the target page slowly overtakes the pages on 3rd party sites. Over the long term, I have several related pages on various domains which are all promoting my main page. Coupled with videos, this can happen in hours rather than days.

Give this tactic a try and let us know your results (or, if you already practice SRD, share a few tips from your experience.)

Don’t neglect your SEO work. But, once you have your page titles, headlines, page link structures, and header tags properly set up, move on and start dominating the results pages.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com. Leave a comment and let us know what you think about this topic.

Jeff Walker is launching the 2.0 version of his “Product Launch Formula” and you can be sure that he is employing the principles of “Mass Control“.

One of the things that has become appearant to me as a student of Frank Kern’s “Mass Control” course is that he is very closely connected with the biggest names in the Internet Marketing world and people like John Reese (Traffic Secrets) and Jeff Walker (Product Launch Formula) come up frequently in the conversations. These guys all seem to work with each other on their launches and their personal marketing processes are interconnected. As a matter of fact, one of the bonus videos I got as a student of “Mass Control” is of Frank Kern presenting the core concepts of “Mass Control” at one of Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula” seminars.

So, you can be sure that Jeff Walker will be using “Mass Control” techniques during his launch (he’d be crazy not too!)

You can learn a lot from watching the launch sequence he uses and then reverse engineering the process. I recommend you sign up for his lists and save any emails he sends you in a swipe file (one of the training resources that Frank Kern uses in the “Mass Control” course are the email sequences he used for some of his big launches - very enlightening.)

Like a lot of launches you have seen recently, the first public communication in the process is a free video designed to stimulate your desire for the results promised by the “Product Launch Formula” course. His core affiliate/JV network (I’m an affiliate myself) quickly blasted emails out to the Internet Marketing community driving visitors to the video and encouraging them to sign up for the mailing list to get more case studies and free info about the “Product Launch Formula.”

In all honesty, I was disappointed with this first video. The Stomper launches and Frank Kern’s “Mass Control” launch all gave very practical and actionable content in their desire building videos. Jeff Walker mostly focussed on case studies and talking about results. I was waiting for him to drop a big insider tip and it never came.

Watch the first video in Jeff Walker’s launch promotion and sign up for the mailing list. Then, study the emails and videos that follow. There is a very specific and well thought out sequence happening. Every email and video has a specific purpose. As you watch and read the launch information, ask yourself what Jeff is trying to do with this email. Is he stimulating your desire for the product, is he revealing his personal side so you feel like you know him (and get to like him), is he reminding you how many people are waiting to get the few copies available, is he giving proof that his system works? Each communication is designed to stimulate a psychological sales trigger and move you through a decision making process that leaves you making up your own mind that you ‘must have’ the “Product launch Formula” course.

This is precisely what Frank Kern did during the “Mass Control” launch and it was the reason why I felt I ‘must buy’ the course when it went live. This stuff works.

If you are a fellow “Mass Control” student, Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula” launch will give you a chance to see the process in action. If you are not a student, I recommend you purchase a copy of the “Mass Control Revealed” interview that I have for sale on this site. Listen to Frank Kern explain the core concepts behind “Mass Control” and then study the “Product Launch Formula” launch sequence and look for the techniques that Frank Kern talks about at work. Chart out the sequence and what each email and video is doing. Then, when the launch is over, you’ll have a good outline to use to build your own launch sequence.

Be sure that there is much more to the “Mass Control” training and Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula” than what you will learn through this reverse engineering exercise - but you will experience a massive shift in your marketing knowledge just the same.

So, go watch the “Product Launch Formula” free video and sign up for the mailing list so you start getting the emails. Then, study what you get. Remember, no matter what the emails say, nothing ‘just happened’ and nobody ‘just thought of something’ to tell you. Every communication you get is part of the plan.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit our website at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more valuable Internet marketing insights.

Product Launch Formulas

My personal Internet marketing story can be traced back to a blog entry I read back in December of 2005. Professional blogger Yaro Starak had written about how you could make money creating niche content websites with Adsense ads on them.

I had been toying with the idea of creating some sort of Internet based business for several years, but hadn’t figured out how to get started. Yaro’s article laid out a logical and accessible approach that seemed attainable. So, with no market analysis or research I bought a couple domain names and started experimenting.

At the same time I setup a blog and wrote about my experiments.

After one year of researching and experimenting with my niche sites, I had earned less than $30 from my efforts and spent at least that much money trying to earn $30. I was not a raging success in the world of marketing.

As depressing as my initial results were, those experiments were not wasted. I learned a huge number of valuable Internet skills which became foundational to my later success. I learned about web design, SEO, ad optimization, how to setup a Wordpress site and more. I also discovered that the blog I created to document my experiments (and also to write about other projects I was doing and advice I was giving) was far more popular than any of the niche sites I had created.

Along the way I had also found a number of excellent e-books on various aspects of Internet marketing. I had to wade through a lot of junk to find the gems, but I found them. The pivotal book for me was “5 Bucks a Day“, by Dennis Becker. I discovered it during a special offer sale he was running at the Warrior Forum (the 800 pound gorilla of Internet Marketing Forums.)

I had been learning dozens of business plans that seemed like legitimate methods for earning money online, but I hadn’t focused on any one thing long enough to get real traction in my business. Dennis’ book is all about focus and breaking down your efforts into small manageable projects designed to earn a little profit consistently. Over time, you build a portfolio of profitable projects that adds up to significant income.

My newfound focus wasn’t the only benefit I got from Dennis’ e-book. He also started a membership forum for all of the people who bought “5 Bucks a Day.” And, it was there that I experienced the first of many $100 paychecks.

As a member of the forum I got very active helping other members and sharing my personal experiences in the world of marketing. All of the knowledge and skills I had aquired became the foundation for helping others. I answered questions about adding video to websites and how to record better audio. I jumped in with tips for people building Wordpress sites. And, I offered detailed reviews of new e-books and software I purchased.

All the energy I put into giving valuable information to fellow forum members paid off in the excellent reputation I was earning. I became a respected member of the community and struck up a few friendships as well.

I continued seeking out new information about Internet marketing. One e-book I came across was “Niche Marketing on Crack,” written by Andrew Hansen. One night I bought the book, devoured it, and jumped on the forum to offer up my opinion of the content.

Dennis is very generous toward the members of his forums. If you provide valuable information in a review and include a non-affiliate link to the sales page, he doesn’t have any problems with members including an affiliate link as well. I included an affiliate link in my review of “Niche Marketing on Crack.”

Over the next several days I answered many questions about the e-book. Some people I encouraged to buy it and others I recommended look elsewhere for the help they needed. As with any product, it was not right for everyone. As a result of the helpful information I provided and the good reputation I had built up, the majority of the forum members who decided to buy the e-book used my affiliate link.

That review earned me $206.80 US in commissions over the first 48 hours after I wrote it in February of 2007. Over the next 4 months I earned an additional $129.25 US. That was my first real taste of marketing success.

For a guy who hadn’t earned a fraction of that amount for all of the work he had done over the previous year, the experience was an adrenaline rush - I was really hooked.

A short while later, Dennis opened another membership forum called “Earn 1K a Day.” I joined in a heartbeat and put the same kind of energy I had spent at the “5 Bucks a Day” forum into this new venture. It was the foundation for my biggest success to date, my “Rapid Website Development” video training series which has generated more than 10 times that first success before it has even had a public launch.

Due to the increased focus on specific aspects of my business, even some of those initial bumbling efforts at marketing have begun to generate small but steady profits and have opened up new opportunities. This blog is an offshoot of the work I did on my first blog. And, of course, I continue to invest in my education to help push me to the point where my publishing business generates enough revenue to support my family. I invested in a copy of John Reese’s “Traffic Secrets” course, Mike Filsaime’s “7 Figure Code“, and (most recently) Frank Kern’s “Mass Control” course.

The most satisfying aspect of all of this is the fact that I’m funding the growth of my business and my ongoing education with revenue from my business and not credit cards and income from my ‘day job!’ (Okay, technically I did charge Frank’s “Mass Control” course on a credit card before I had the money, but I’m hard at work finishing up 2 projects which should earn me all of the money I need to pay that one off - and what I’ve learned is definitely worth the effort.)

So, that’s the story of my first $100. How did you earn yours? Leave comment below and share your story.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we encourage you to visit us at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com. Make sure to share the story of how you made your first $100 doing Internet marketing.

Since I first made the decision to start building an information publishing business, I have constantly looked for techniques and technology that would take my normal everyday methods of working and capture the information that I share. This information needs to be in a format that can be easily adapted to create new products. One early change I made was to buy a voice recorder and record conversations whenever I explain things to friends and co-workers. Now, instead of tutoring one person, I can have the audio transcribed into a tutorial to publish online. I didn’t have a similar solution for capturing my handwritten notes

This past Christmas I got my hands on one of the coolest new tools for my information publishing business - the DigiMemo L2 by ACECAD.

In spite of the fact that I have a Palm Pilot, a laptop, a voice recorder, several desktop computers, and lots of other little technological gizmos, I still tend to do a lot of my work with good old-fashioned pen and paper. Some of my best ideas come this way and I can often rough out an idea faster than with any other method. The struggle I have is that I rarely type up my notes on the computer and, instead, I end up with notepads full of ideas and product outlines that get lost in the shuffle and forgotten. So, I’ve been on the lookout for some technology that gives me the experience and convenience of writing on paper with a pen, but digitizes the results quickly and easily so that my notes can be converted into the raw material for new information products, blog articles, and anything else I can think of.

One early attempt to solve this dilemma involved scanning my notes into the computer and using OCR software (Optical Character Recognition) to convert the images into text that could be edited in a word processor. The process was cumbersome (which significantly reduces the chances that I’ll actually do it), the OCR software was expensive, and the resulting texts required so much editing to clean up the conversion mistakes (my handwriting is not very neat and OCR software seems to struggle deciphering it) that it just wasn’t worth the effort. I had no intention of trying to change the way I write to please the OCR software and it was faster and easier to just type the notes directly rather than edit the converted files. Not a good solution!

On a business trip last year I was reading the Skymall catalog that the airlines put in the seat-backs of the planes when I came across an ad for the DigiMemo L2. The ad promised that I would be able to write on normal paper using an ink pen and then this device would capture everything I wrote as a graphic. Once captured, the pages could then be quickly downloaded to my computer using an ordinary USB cable and converted to text using their OCR software. Essentially, the DigiMemo L2 digitizes as you write - no scanning required.

From that moment on, I wanted to get my hands on the DigiMemo to see if it would live up to the hype. I tore the ad from the catalog and stuck it to the refrigerator door as a Christmas gift ‘hint’ for my wife. We tend to spend our Christmas money traveling to visit family and keep our gifts to each other more modest, so this one was a combo Christmas/birthday gift - but, I got it! (The combo gift is one of the few benefits to having a birthday right after Christmas!)

So, after months of anticipation, did the DigiMemo L2 live up to the hype? In a word: Yes!

The DigiMemo device is basically a Wacom Tablet with a pad of paper between the pen and the tablet. The pen itself has a ball point cartridge which triggers a pressure sensing mechanism inside when you push down to write. The tablet records the strokes of the pen as you write and builds an image of the page in an internal memory bank. When you flip to a new sheet of paper, there is a button on the side of the tablet to flip to a ‘new digital page’ which starts a new recording.

One great feature of the device is that it does not need to be connected to a computer for you to use it. There is enough memory to store dozens of pages (and you can use an SD memory card to increase the storage space.) So, you can take the pad with you anywhere you would normally use a pen and paper. Then, you can quickly download the pages into your computer using the included software.

Having digital copies of my notes is great, but the real benefit to me is the ability to convert the pages into text. This was the real test of the value of this solution.

I purchased the optional OCR software (a trial version of the software is included, but it’s a ‘must have’ option for me, so I bought it with the DigiMemo.) Once you download the pages to your computer, you can send them to the OCR software for conversion. The conversion software can work with text only and also text with images (which will clean up your drawings.) Straight out of the box, the OCR software converted my chicken-scratch handwriting with about 90% accuracy. This is better than any other OCR software I have used. But, there were still corrections to be made and this was where I was most impressed with the whole system. The OCR software displays the image of your hand written page along side of the OCR results. This enables me to quickly read through the OCR texts and, when I come across something that doesn’t look right, glance over to the original to see the hand written text. A few quick strokes on the keyboard and I have a corrected page ready to save.

The DigiMemo L2 fits right in with my normal work flow and makes it easy to convert my writing into editable texts. Using the device requires very little change to my normal work methods which means that I will actually use this device. The only thing I can imagine being more convenient would be to have a personal scribe who follows me around taking notes and typing up everything I think and say (a man can have a dream, can’t he?)

One add-on that I did not get (but plan to add soon) is a portfolio case to hold the pad and pen. The pen is designed to clip onto the tablet when not in use, but is very easy to knock loose. Without the pen, the tablet is useless except as a very expensive clipboard. I also want a little extra protection for the whole thing. So, another $40 will get you a fancy portfolio style holder that zips shut and will keep everything in place and protected.

There are a few other cool little features on the DigiMemo L2. The most significant one is that it will serve as a drawing tablet for your computer when it is plugged in with the USB cable. If you don’t already have a graphics tablet, this is a nice little bonus feature.

The DigiMemo L2 has already proved its worth to me. I’ve been using it to capture notes for new reports, e-books, and web content. I take it with me everywhere I go and know that everything I write is captured and ready to use to build my information publishing empire (cue the evil laughter.)

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article we invite you to visit us at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet Marketing Insights.