Bryan Stephens

Just over 1 week ago, I left the flood affected Brisbane to go to Tasmania for a 1 week vacation. I enjoyed my time there and will write a few blog posts about it.

I must say that I was looking forward to escaping the hot and humid weather that followed the Brisbane floods to go to the relatively cooler Tasmanian Climate. I did not have any real plans at first, except for staying at my uncle’s (Frank’s) place. The last time I saw Frank and his son Matt in Tasmania was when I worked on Matt’s cray fishing boat in 1985/1986.  That was a great experience, so I had  hoped that my vacation would be half the fun and experience that I had back then.

I arrived at Frank’s place on Saturday afternoon. Frank was not home – he was at the golf club having lunch after finishing his round.  This is the note that he left for me… “Bryan, I should be home about 4.30. There’s beer in the fridge, coffee or tea in the kitchen and TV in the lounge. Make yourself at home. Frank.” So you can read that I was made to feel welcome.

Frank lives in the Orford/Triabunna region of Tasmania, which is on the east coast and just over an hour’s drive from Hobart.  I took some photos of his house and surrounds. There are some good views and you can see them below.

The front of frank's house. The Unit is on the right hand side of the house and that is where I stayed.

This photo was taken from the back of Frank's house and shows the Jetty where he keeps his boat and the other side of Triabunna.

A photo of Maria Island from the backyard of Frank's place.

This photo shows what it looks like looking to the west from Frank's backyard.

This is the kitchen and dining room of Frank's place. You can see some powerful binoculars near the window to make use of the great views.

This photo shows a painting and benchtop in Frank's lounge.

This shows a photo of Frank in his living room looking proud with his Golf Tasmania hall of fame trophy. Frank is a passionate golfer and has life membership at the Orford Golf club.

Every evening some rabbits come out to play outside Frank's place. I managed to take a shot at these two rabbits. I did see up to 6 rabbits at one time in his backyard from the lounge room.

I was lucky enough to catch up with my cousin Matt, his wife Jo and her son Ethan the next day. Matt is a cray fisherman and this is the time of year to catch crayfish. He often goes out for 1 to 2 weeks, so I was lucky to see him on the Sunday. Jo and Matt came over to Frank’s place for a coffee and then we drove to a farm to help drive some alpacas into a truck. When we got there we found that they were already collected and ready to get sheared.

So we went back to our respective homes and Matt prepared for his next fishing trip. Later Frank and I went over to Matt’s place for a lovely chicken roast lunch. The shorn alpacas were in one of his paddocks. They were interesting creatures, particularly when they rubbed their backsides on the grass like a ritual. We did not know whether they were doing it to mark their territory or if they were just itchy after being shorn and at a new location. Anyway, I managed to take a photo of the alpacas and also a reluctant one from Matt and Jo.

4 shorn alpacas in a paddock of Matt and Jo's place.

A photo of Matt and Jo Pedler

On the same day, Frank suggested that we go on a quick tour of Tasmania. One thing that we wanted to do was to go on the Abt train trip between Queenstown and Straun. So we decided to study a possible trip for the next few days, starting Tuesday morning. The trip did eventuate and I shall tell more in the next post.

I first met Nikhil Parekh through Stephen Pierce whilst being an alpha leader at UYMG 2008. Nikhil gave a presentation at the event showing some of the methods he used to turn $1 into $15 by using PPC techniques. His presentation was well received and many at the event, including me,  decided to learn more from him afterwards.  The good news is that you can learn more about his successful strategies by downloading his free super affiliate report here.

So why should I care about what Nikhil says?

• Nikhil has solid network friends with some famous Internet Marketers including Stephen Pierce, Mike Filsaime, Eban Pagan and Anik Singal.
• Nikhil makes 7 figures a year – he’s made $20,000 in commission in 4 days and also $87,000 in about 4 days as well – the first $20,000
  was without a list! The $87,000 was earnt using Pay Per Click and a very small list that he had!
• Nikhil uses a business model rather than short term profit systems that could fall apart in seconds due to changes beyond your control.
• Nikhil has been online since 1996, but really got serious in 2005 when he spent a lot of time in the PPC area
• Nikhil has obviously been successful, but loves to help other people become successful too.

If you want to learn some advanced training that no-one else is talking about, then Nikhil’s free report will make it absolutely clear for you. The report is really a quick read and you’ll immediately get a bunch of ideas you can implement straight away.

Also, find out how he continuously positions himself  differently from his competitors – this is what will put you in the top 1% of affiliate marketers.

So take some action.  Watch a short video presentation by Nikhil Parekh and download his free report by clicking here.

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.

So what does BURPIES stand for?

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”