You can have a great product, an excellent sales letter and a good website structure, but if you do not get any traffic to your site, then you will not get sales. There are many ways to get traffic to your website, but I shall only focus on the methods Brett told us.
Ezyne Articles – is regarded as the best source for articles on the Internet. It is also a great place to write your own articles and place them there. You can then write a paragraph at the end of your article to encourage visitors to your website.
Articlemarketer – allows you to submit your article to loads of other article sites with a simple push of the button.
Digg – Digg is a very popular site that rates your article/site. It is worth Digging your articles/pages.
Blog – Use articles on your own blog/blogs to drive traffic to your money site.
Publicity – Brett has used publicity rather well lately. He appeared on “A Current Affair” and also used publicity when he had his e-book on auction. Bret suggested Brian James (who resides in Sydney) as a great contact for publicity possibilities.
Giveaways – Give something away for free and multiply the effect by using Viralfriendgenerator.com. This method was created by Mike Filsaime and it works very effectively. The video created by Mike Filsaime explains it very well.
Obviously there are many other methods of getting free traffic, but those listed above were what Brett McFall shared with us. Feel free to list other methods for generating traffic by making a comment.
That concludes my interpretation of the session Brett Mcfall gave us. I hope that you got something out of it.
There are several models used by internet marketers for websites, but the one that Brett McFall gave us as an example is a common method in a simple way.
Brett suggests that the home page should be a squeeze page. That means the objective of the home page is to get the name and email address of people who are interested in your niche and potentially could buy your product.
The squeeze page should write something like “If you want to know more about…” Then possibly have some dot points with a few features and benefits, followed by the opt-in box. The BURPIES home page is an example of a squeeze page, although there are not any dot points there.
The Squeeze page will siphon out who is interested and who is not interested. Those who chose to opt-in are then taken to the sales letter where they have a decision to buy the product or not buy the product. If they buy the product, then they will be taken to a Thank You page which gives them access to download the product.
If they choose not to buy, then they will be given a series of emails from an autoresponder. One of the auto responders that Brett suggested was Aweber, which is the autoresponder that I use. It is very important to choose a very good autoresponder, because it is difficult to export and import lists at a later time. Aweber is certainly highly regarded in the Internet Marketing world.
Brett suggests that you sell the product, via the autoresponder emails, once per day for 10 days. On the 11th day, give the subscriber a 50% off. Add value once a week and sell other related products once a week on commission (affiliate links).
Websites can be created in many ways. I prefer to use Wordpress or Dreamweaver. However, Brett McFall has his own website builder that may cater for those that are not technically minded. He promoted the Bigpixie website builder.
Ok, so you can now have a website up and running and a product to sell… but how do you get traffic to your site? That will be the next topic.
No matter how good your product is, it will not sell well unless you have got a good sales copy.
Although Brett McFall failed English in his final year, he has become one of the leading copywriters in the world. Brett realized that many people struggle to write good sales letters, so he created some software that makes it quick and easy for them.
Brett showed us how easy it was to create a sales letter by using the BURPIES software, just by answering some questions.
B = big promise (In effect what is the biggest benefit of your product… this is used in the headline)
U = Use Imagination (You need to get the visitor to use their imagination, as human buy on emotions, then use logic afterwards)
R = Rarity (Buyers love to buy rare items. What makes you product unique?)
P = Points (This is where you need to identify the features and benefits of your product. It is best to write a feature of the product and then explain how that could benefit the reader. For example, The BURPIES software can create sales letters in less than 30 minutes, so that means you can have more time to do things that you want to do.)
I = Irresistible Offer (You need to show the customer that it is a no brainer to buy your product. This may include bonuses where you quantify their value. Tell the reader how much time and money was spent to create the product and compare that to your selling price)
E = Evidence (Use testimonials. The best testimonials are “Once I was lost… Now I am found”. Make sure you add their full name and the suburb/state/country they live in if you can)
S = Signoff (You need a call to action. You need to tell the reader what to do and what happens after they do it)
People pay $3000-$5000 for good sales copy, and even a lot more in cases. So paying for the BURPIES software is a sound investment.
The next topic I will talk about “Building a Website that Converts”
After finding a hot niche, you need to create a product for it. Brett Mcfall was only interested in showing information type products, as they are the easiest and quickest ways to make money online. Also there is a great demand for information on the Internet..that is what most users of the Internet want.
Brett mentioned how you can hire people through Elance to ghostwrite an e-book for you based on the questions asked in the hot niche section survey. Brett certainly did that with his scrapbooking e-book. I find though that you need to have a certain amount of luck and/or skill to find a ghostwriter that will do a good job.
Another product Brett suggested was an interview product. The idea was that you find experts in your niche and then interview them via audio or video to create a product. He felt that audio via the phone is the best option to start off with though, as people tend to get nervous when in front of a camera.
The interview should be informal and relaxed and last for about 1 hour. You should ask open questions so that your niche expert can talk more. It is important to ask your question and then be quiet. It is so easy to add ah ha’s and ok’s etc while the expert is talking.
Where can you find experts?
Brett suggested finding them through Yahoo Groups or any person with a product in your niche. You can write a letter to them offering them a chance to promote their product/website in exchange for the interview.
What type of questions do I ask?
As mentioned before, the questions should be open. Brett has got a list of questions that he uses to interview experts in his book “How To Make Money While You Sleep”.
How do I conduct the interview?
No Cost Conference is a good place to hold your interview. There you can hold an interview over the telephone and record the conversation. The number used is a USA number (If you come from Australia, then you can buy a $10 card at the newsagent then you can get 4-5 interviews with it). Once you have the audio file from them you can download the recording and export it as a mp3 by using Audacity. You can even add music to lead into the interview, if you want it to be more professional. Be careful though, you need to buy rights to the music 1st.
You can make the audio file into written content too, so that users have a choice of listening or reading. Different people have differing styles of learning.
Brett suggested getting interviews with 3 different experts in the field. You can sell the interview through the expert’s list, giving the expert half of the profits made. Another idea is to give the product to the expert’s list for free in exchange for their name and email address. You can then offer them the other 2 expert’s interviews for $15 rather than the 3 for $30.
Brett suggested that you can sell the product with resale rights for $60 and the product with master rights for $90. Brett believes that 2-3 times more people will buy your product if they have a chance to on-sell your product too.
Another method Brett came up with was a new idea to me.
He suggested going to EzineArticles, clicking on the niche keyword phrase and finding articles related to it. Write to the authors of the articles, asking them if they would mind having their article in an e-book that you are creating. If they say yes, then just add that article as 1 chapter. The authors get their website promotion and you get content for a book. “Chicken Soup For the Soul” was supposedly written in a similar manner.
The next topic will be “How to create a powerful and compelling sales message”
I promised, that I would write some of the content that Brett McFall gave us in Brisbane (note that what is written below is how I saw what was said and not the exact wordings), so here is the 1st topic he spoke about “Finding a Niche that is Hot”.
The first thing that one needs to do in order to become successful in Internet marketing is to find a Niche that is hot. Many people try to find a product 1st and then market that product, but the fact is that you need to find a hot niche market first, then create or find a product for that niche… but how do you find a niche market that is hot?
Brett suggested that the 1st place you should visit is the Google Keyword Tool. You then enter the particular niches that you are interested in and look for 30-70,000 visitors/month in the local search volume column. Preferably, the niche should have high demand with low competition.
Visit Yahoo Groups and place your niche keyword phrase into the search box. You will then find groups available where people will talk about your niche. You can get an idea whether the niche is a hot market by looking at how passionate the group writes. You can also get an idea about some of the frustrations people have with that niche which can be useful for product creation.
Visit Clickbank and type your niche keyword phrase into the marketplace. You can then get an idea about what products are being produced, along with how much competition there is. It is best to find a niche that compliments another existing product that is already performing well.
Search for existing ezines and blogs by typing “your keyword phrase ezine” and “your keyword phrase blog” into the google search engine. This will give you an idea of your potential competition and other potential related niche ideas.
Once you find a niche, create a survey using Surveymonkey where you promise the person that you will give them a copy of the book if they ask their biggest question they have with your particular niche. This will serve to determine whether there is a passion in the niche and also will help out with product creation.
It has been almost 1 year since I last met Brett McFall at WIS in Dallas. This time I saw him in Brisbane, which is much closer to where I live.
This image of Brett Mcfall and me was taken at the WIS in Dallas 2008
Brett McFall has just finished an 11 day “How To Make Money While You Sleep” tour of Australia which started in Adelaide on the 19th of May and finished here in Brisbane at the Hilton today. My dad attended the session in Adelaide and told me that Brett gave plenty of free content, some that may be useful to me. I decided to attend so that I could pick up a few points, meet some other like-minded people and to catch up with Brett again.
Dad certainly was right. Brett Mcfall did give plenty of free content. Some people would have paid a fair bit of money for information he gave in the past (the Underachiever’s Course comes to mind, as part of what he gave was very much related to that.)
Brett tried to keep the event as simple as he could. He did not include many advanced or technical details (he called it “geek territory”), so as not to confuse people (they would less likely take action if he did so).
Brett gave us insight into 5 areas. They were…
Finding a Niche that is hot
Create a product that your market wants
How to create a powerful and compelling sales message
Building a Website that converts
Driving Traffic to your website
Over the next week, I shall write semi-detailed posts about those topics, so that those that were not fortunate enough to attend can learn a bit about what was given to us during the day.
Many people I know of have problems with their eyesight and have to wear glasses or contact lenses. I have seen the effort required by some of my friends to maintain their contact lenses and I cannot believe how they put up with it.
With bucket loads of people glued to video games and computer screens, no wonder there are so many with eye problems. However, there are some methods that can be used to throw away your glasses and contact lenses for good.
You may be thinking that laser surgery is the answer, but in reality laser surgery is expensive and may not work.
Last year I met Evgania Mehler and her husband Veit in Sydney while attending a conference. I then met them both again in Texas last May. During my stay in Texas, they showed me the project that they were working on for improving your vision. They also showed me a video. I have included half of the video at the bottom of this post. I highly recommend that you click here to watch the second part of this video. Both videos are very educational and amusing.
Evgania is from Israel and was born in Russia. She lost her mother at age 8, having to move to Israel at age 13. Evgania naturally got depressed by age 16 and ended up wearing glasses. She did a great deal of research and found a process whereby she could throw her glasses away for good. Evgania has a course where she has taught thousands of people to restore their eyesight to 20/20. No more eyeglasses are needed for them now.
I personally know Evgania and Veit and keep in contact with them fairly regularly. They both love helping people and are very talented in a wide spectrum of areas. I felt that Veit has done a great job with the videos, including this one below, and Evgania is a sweet, bubbly and caring person. So if you wear glasses or contact lenses enjoy the videos and join their course. If you don’t wear glasses or contacts, then just enjoy the videos like I did.
So watch the video below and then click here for access to the second video.
I have been in Adelaide since last Saturday. The main purpose was to catch up with dad to discuss business matters and to meet a couple of people that might mutually benefit from us visiting them. However, it was a good opportunity to catch up with other relatives who live in Adelaide too.
I spent some time last weekend at my brother’s place and my sister’s place. My sister showed me one of her son’s “Blake” stories that he had written. Blake is only 7 years of age and he typed this on 4 sides of a card. Whilst the English and grammar was not 100% accurate, Blake did a great job for a 7 year old and we were all very proud of him. I have probably done some mistakes here. lol
Below is what Blake wrote. It not only shows great English skills for his age, but reminds us of the fantastic imaginations that children possess.
Flat Blake
Once upon a time at midnight in Chine Blake went for a walk.
He got to the park and then the playground fell on him. In th morning he woke up. Then some people came and picked the playground off of Blake. He thanked them and realised that he was Flat Blake. Then he went home.
His family kept on staring at him. His son, Ben lost his toy behind the fridge. Flat Blake went under it and got the toy back. His son was happy. After tea Flat Blake went to bed. In the happy morning Flat Blake had breakfast. Then he went to the Doctor’s. He was called Declan. The Doctor said “Sometimes it is good to be flat.” “Why” “Because you can do lots of things that other people can’t do.” “So what’s good about that?” “Don’t worry Blake.” “Bye.” Then Flat Blake went home and sat down, he watched some T.V where he heard that a cat had got stuck in the tallest tree in the neighborhood. Do the he turned himself into a kite and saved the cat. He went home.
A month later people kept laughing at him. So he went home and had a good idea. “I will drink lots and lots of water.” So he did. But it didn’t do anything. He felt sad. So he went to bed. In the morning he was going to work. When he came to a voodoo shop and bought a potion. Then he drank it and ‘Pop!” He was 3D again.
Ben Teo was one of the speakers at UYMG Sydney 2008 and he was warmly applauded for providing a ton of information to the participants.
Ben spoke mostly about search engine optimization, SEO, and he provided heaps of useful tips for everyone. I liked Ben’s personality, as I am certain many others did.
His girlfriend, Phoebe Chin, now works for Stephen Pierce International as a sales director. I sat next to Phoebe while Ben was talking and took a photo of the 2 of us, which can be seen below.
I thought that Phoebe was a cute and bubbly person, so I could understand why Stephen and Alica were happy to sign her up for the sales director job. She took a photo of Benjamin while he was performing on stage, which can be seen below.
Ben showed us his catch phrase that he uses “Shh..hit That’s a Lot of Traffic”. You can find more information about Ben’s SEO techniques at Thats A Lot Of Traffic
As some of you would have realized, from the previous WIS Dallas post, I went to Texas to attend the World Internet Summit. However, some may not realize that after I arrived in Dallas, I spent some time in Whitney with some alpha leaders, Stephen Pierce and his lovely wife Alicia Pierce. I will describe some of the details of my trip below.
I left Brisbane airport on Sunday the 18th May and detoured via Sydney so that I could share a flight with Alpha Leader Jennifer. We arrived in Dallas at night, via Los Angeles, and went to La Quinta Inn via a free shuttle bus.
La Quinta Inn was a great place to stay and I must thank Gary for organizing it for us. La Quinta provided a wonderful buffet breakfast included in the price and the staff was very friendly.
During the morning we were packing our belongings to go to a log cabin that Alicia had booked for us, when I noticed a tornado chaser van. Being a meteorologist, I was keen to talk to the guy about his tornado ventures. He did not have too much time to talk, but he mentioned that due to the sophisticated equipment in the van that they usually find at least one tornado in a 2-3 week trip. He also mentioned that many Australians go on tour with them. Go to Tradd Storm Chasing Tours for more information about these tours.
Gary drove a hire car to Whitney. Thanks again Gary for organizing that and also for driving. Gary is great for organizing things. He had the assistance of a global navigation system with Sean Connery’s voice (very entertaining listening to instructions from a Scottish voice, “turn right, keep left”). Veit also helped navigate and did a great job, as Sean was not always right. While travelling on the highways I was glad that Gary was driving rather than me. It was so confusing compared to what I am used to back in Australia.
We also noticed the amount of large cars on the road. I guess that people may buy smaller cars in the USA eventually due to rising fuel costs? We had a break on the way to Whitney and I took the photo below of Veit, Evgania, Jennifer and Gary in front of the hire car.
To get to the cabins we had to stop at a security gate in order to get permission to enter the reserve. Alicia told us later that Stephen and her stayed at one of these cabins before they bought the property that they now live in. The cabin had a queen size bed and 3 single beds upstairs, so it was cozy for us all. There was a golf course nearby too. I found it amusing that on the front door it had a sign saying “in case of tornado”. Apparently tornadoes are quite common, but luckily for us none got too close to us during our stay.
During the late morning we drove to Stephen and Alicia’s place. Alicia showed us around the house while Stephen was cooking a BBQ for us. The house was large, well presented and very clean and tidy. I noticed that the cielings were very high too. Stephen did a great job with the BBQ, and seeing that there were 3 vegetarians out of the 6 Alpha Leaders (Sern Yi stayed at the house), there was plenty for me to eat. It was very nice too.
During our stay, 3 days, both Stephen and Alicia offered us tips for progressing with our Internet marketing projects. I certainly gained some great insight from them both and I really appreciate their hospitality and assistance. We also got to use the facilities that Stephen uses for DTAlpha Talkback for recording some audio products. Jennifer, in particular, made great use of this.
On the second day, we all went for a boat cruise on Lake Whitney. Stephen seemed to be very content driving the boat. Some of us went for a swim in the lake. The water was fine.
We also watched a movie in their cinema. The cinema had comfortable reclining chairs that had popcorn and drink holders and they vibrated with some of the actions in the movie. There was also a massage chair available for us to use at any time. The Alpha Leaders spent most of their time in the training room.
I was fortunate to meet Alicia’s mother, Ilona. Ilona helps out Alicia and Stephen with their business and she also did much of the cooking for us during our stay. Not only was Ilona a good cook, but I loved her company. Ilona told me that she was born in Guyana and moved to Canada when she was 15. She loves the cricket and I am hoping that she visits me, as promised, in Australia some time so that we can both attend the cricket together.
It was sad to leave, but we had to go to the Sheraton Hotel for our next adventure. That being WIS Dallas. Below is a photo taken by Gary of Sern Yi, Evgania, Veit, Jennifer and me in front of Stephen and Alicia’s place before departing to Dallas.
