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Archive for the ‘Life, The Universe & Everything’ Category

White-Hat Clickbank Product Celebrates Second Birthday

August 7th, 2011 4 comments

I know, I know.   I harp about this product a lot.  But it’s still the aboslute coolest and best that I know of in it’s niche, and still earns me the most every month.  (And I had so much fun making the video for them - especially the bloopers :D )

ClickBank Raises the Bar – Promotes “White Hat” Sales Techniques & Cracks Down on “Black Hat”

August 2nd, 2011 2 comments

I just finished reading the update to Clickbank’s terms of services for vendors, and WOW!

They’re taking real steps to help unsuspecting customers remain safe from unscrupulous vendors.

Here’s a short list of the changes:

  • No “fake” testimonials or “fake” sellers.

I love this one – I recently saw a product sold on clickbank where the sales page described a “normal” person – actually, a hobo – who climbed from living off the streets to riches within a year of using the traffic methods being advertised in the product.  It made me sick, though, when I found out shortly later that the entire “story” was a made up fairy tale – the person didn’t exist, it hadn’t necessarily transform anyone’s life – it was all a crock of s*%#

No more of that.

Also of personal interest to me is no more “video only” web pages that you can’t stop or pause.

  •  No fake scarcity

No more countdowns saying “only 13 minutes left to buy”.  No more “Only 60 37 12 remaining.  Buy Now!”  Unless it’s real.  If you write something like that, Clickbank will count how many sales are made, and when that “3″ hits “0″ they won’t let you sell your product any more for another week!  Note that “one time offers” which only really do display once, are still allowed – they’re not banning scarcity, justblatantly  made-up scarcity.

  • No more fake discounts

No more saying “This product normally sells for $997, but TODAY ONLY you can get it for just $97!” – again, not unless it’s true.  Clickbank will check the prices, and if you’ve sold the product for a while at $997, you can write it…  But you can’t just plug in a $997 price tag for the sake of offering the discount.

  • Limits on One-Time-Offers / Upsells

There’s nothing wrong with an honest upsell!  But no more days of buying a cheap product only to be slammed with tens of offers to confuse and frighten you.  There are now firm limits of how many upsells can be offered, as well as how many “wait one second!” exit offers are allowed

There are a few more, and you can view the full details at Clickbank’s website.

My favorite part of these new rules is that my products already comply with every single one of them!  (Go me!)  How’s that for honest marketing?

Do you know of products that do or don’t comply?  Let me know by commenting!

Of Pirates, Treasures, Birthdays and Lot’s of Loot!

July 12th, 2011 1 comment

Today’s a special day. It’s the birthday of a great friend, who has taught me a LOT, both directly and indirectly, about how to really make money online.

I’m talking, of course, about one of the original Clickbank Pirates, Cindy Battye.

Cindy’s been online for six years, and with her partner Soren have put together some of the bar-none coolest IM products.

Today, I’d like to walk you through one of their flagship products, Clickbank Pirate (http://www.cbpirate.net/) and entertain you at the same time (it’s really funny – make sure to watch through the end to not miss any of the good parts scattered in the video)

 

A Great In-Depth Split Test Study by One of the Masters

February 28th, 2011 1 comment

I really love Andy Jenkins.  I’ve been a big fan of his since StomperNet‘s “Click Fu” Video, from Going Natural 2 blew me out of the water (it’s below this post if you haven’t seen this).  Since then I’ve quietly followed StomperNet and then them and Andy, after he left.  I think I even tried to get him to come to my day-job company as a consultant once, but never heard back from the man.

Anyway, despite the promotional emails that I get from him on a semi-regular basis (hey, we’ve all got to make a living, so no complaints :) ), sometimes you get some gems.

In this case, the gem reminded me of days way gone when I had the time, desire and discipline to make my business work: namely, to constantly test, review and revise.

Just this morning I got a super email from him with a link to his blog, where a great article awaited with excellent analysis of a recent campaign that he did, and as a bonus, a reminder of iContact’s new split-test feature, which I keep meaning to use… and then don’t.  (Yeah, /me sucks…)  I highly advise you to take a look, but do yourself a favor, and READ it.  If you look at the numbers without reading the commentary, you’re going to have a very skewwed and likely incorrect idea of what happened.  Heck, even if you do, like my own tests that I publish, you have to take this with a grain of salt for 2 reasons:

1) Results may vary from person to person – statistics aren’t the end-all to everything

2) You don’t know what’s going on inside Andy’s head when he writes, much as he goes the extra mile to try to make that clear in his post, and therefore never assume you have a 100% solid principle. 

And Andy, if you read this, keep up the kick-ass work!

PS.  Pattern Interrupt.  Sound familiar?

Almost forgot the promised StomperNet Click Fu!

My 2011 New Year’s Resolution

December 31st, 2010 27 comments

Dear Diary (er, Blog),

It’s been a LONG time since I checked in.  I’ve been busy.  My day job.  The family.  Stuff.  You know how life is…

But I’m in a writing mood.  I just wrote two long letters to some of my SuccessQUIK prospects and downline members, and even if I don’t manage to inspire them, I’ve already inspired ME.

I wrote about how sad it is that people aren’t willing to invest $10 is signing up because they’re saving up to waste $100 when (IF) they do sign up later to “position themselves better”.  Come on…  Where’s the sense in that.  The whole point of the program is to be able to sign up for $10 and earn money through the program to “position yourself better”.

I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but every time I hear about how someone’s jumping through hoops to pull together $10 to join in 2 weeks, I hear bullshit.

I hear how someone “gets it”.  Really has interest (the nice thing about online marketing is that people don’t need to make excuses like that if they really are afraid to join because they think it won’t work; in online marketing, people like that just don’t respond, so EVERY RESPONSE YOU DO GET is a GENUINELY INTERESTED PROSPECT.  I wish offline marketing made it so easy to differentiate between the two…  But I’m getting off topic).

They really do want it.  But they’re afraid.  Afraid of failure.  Afraid of self-inflicted failure.  Afraid of self-inflicted failure because they know in their deepest hearts up front, that they have no intention of putting effort into it.  But they’re willing to save up 100 dollars so they can dump it in later and say “Well, look how hard I tried.  I invested a LOT of money!  Of course I put in effort, because who would throw away so much money!”

I’ve quoted him before, and I’ll quote him again and again:  Randy “It’s Self Sabotage, Baby!” Gage.  Self sabotage is how you waste your money, ruin your financial situation, and excuse your self from the blame.  It’s premeditated blame of a third party for a problem you make for yourself.  And the online marketing business is full of people who love to do it to themselves.

I know I’m getting off topic a bit, but let me rant a little bit more about the people who love to suffer in our little industry.

Traffic Exchanges.  Safelists.  Social Marketing.

90% of people who use 2 or more of the above, will swear up and down that they’re sincerely trying to make significant money.  I don’t mean 7-figure money.  I mean 3 or 4 figure money, would REALLY make these folks happy.

So what do they do.  They click, click, click. Click.  Click  Click Click.  Spend hours surfing.  Spend hours clicking on safelist credit pages.  Spend hours reading what every one else has to say on facebook and twitter.

Then their payday comes.  They’ve saved up 10,000 page impressions.  They’ve saved up 2,500 email blasts.  They’ve really, honestly earned their hard-worked free advertising resources, and they’ve done it the right way.  Really – no cynicism (yet).

And then what do they do?  They see 10 new programs.  They salivate over them.  They might join for free.  They might pay a little money.  They might pay a lot of money.  And then, they get to work.  They copy and paste some emails together, and slap them into the safelists without even glancing at what’s in the email.   They don’t want to waste their hard earned credits, so they’ll take 10 of these cookie cutter emails and send each out to 100 or 200 people.  Then, they’ll do the same and give 10 landing pages 100 credits each at the 10 different exchanges.  And it’s ok that they’re using these cookie cutter pages and emails and tweets and stuff…  Because they’re saving valuable time to really work on the important part of their business: the endless click, click, click.

And they swear to themselves that they’re honestly, by G-d surprised, that the programs just don’t work out for them.  The landing pages must suck.  The emails must suck (only in hindsight, of course – NOW maybe they’ll read what they sent).  The program must not convert.  I mean, it’s not their fault.  They put in the effort, right?  And surely, they didn’t – couldn’t possibly have – premeditated this failure!

Yep, we sure do pity those people.

But guess what?  They’re the minority.

The more clever marketers are much better at the game.  They know that you need to do your own thing.  So these enlightened folks make their own little landing page.  They write their own email.  They mix THAT in with the cookie-cutter stuff (because deep down inside, we all know that program owners put SO much effort into writing emails and pages that will work for YOUR audience, right?  Those pages got so much effort, and look so nice, it would be a shame to not use them at all).  And they surf LOTS of exchanges.  LOTS of safelists.  So they’ll send to 300 people across 40 safelists, and they’ll even do that 4 times based on the assumption (sorry, but it’s wrong) that they’ve hit critical mass of 12,000 recipients (even the gurus send the same email to massive lists of tens of thousands lots of times, because it takes a LOT to do the numbers game), and they’ll promote it for a whole WEEK on their 4 favorite traffic exchanges.

And then…  then… then…

“I put in the effort.  It’s not my fault!  Really!”

Self Sabotauge.

I’ll say it again: SELF SABOTAUGE.

Honestly, you can have the suckiest page in the world (look at mine) and it will convert if you keep pushing, month in and month out, week in and week out.  You don’t have to change it every day, but you DO have to keep going at it.  Keep adding MORE pages.  Keep writing new copy.  Keep sending new emails.  But keep going at it.  Don’t assume that because it didn’t work in the one or two week period that you’re hyped about it, it’s not going to work.

Because, while an initial blast is a critical and proven way of making money in marketing, the majority of success comes from the continual ACTION you take over time.  And when I say time, I mean over a YEAR.

Take a program.  ANY program.  Use the most generic and crappiest cookie cutter materials that you can find for it.  And promote that, and ONLY that for 12 months.  I promise you’ll have a downline (or whatever) at the end of it.

Are you one of those people?  Honestly?

Then you have the elite cream (and I include myself in this bunch).  We know how to play the numbers game.  We might have more money to spend.  We understand the branding value of keeping the same opportunity focused over a long period of time.  We do everything right.  And in 20 years, we might hit 5 figures at the rate we’re going (IF we keep putting the same effort over that 20 year period and the program doesn’t dissappear by then).  But deep down, we also know that the same things grow boring eventually.  How often do we really put in the time to write a NEW email.  Make a NEW splash page.  Make a RENEWED marketing surge for ourselves?  I know I personally do it few enough times a year that I can count it on both hands – on a good year maybe I can add my toes in to the count, but surely no more than that.

Because it’s hard.  And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m personally lazy.  Very, very lazy.

So My 2011 resolution starts now, in 2010.  TAKE ACTION!  And STOP the self sabotage.

I’m going to hit the next level in 2011.  Will you join me?

Happy 2011,

Issac