What happened in October through to November 2009 is unprecedented in terms of internet marketing’s short history. If its not then I don’t really care because personally, I have never seen anything like it.

What happened? Well Google decided to go out and ban thousands upon thousands of adwords accounts, leaving many marketers scratching their heads for a few minutes, followed by the declaration of war again the search engine giant. Reactions ranged from: “well, it was bound to happen”, through to “Why me? I did nothing wrong? Can’t I sell rebill offers people can’t get out of? You F*@#&#”.. and so on.

I am a firm believer in that for every step back, there will be an equal or greater step forward. The problem is that many people chose to just get angry and essentially ‘waited’ for something to happen that would improve their situation. ie… Google changes their mind.. guess what? They are still waiting.

Others saw this as a wake up call or an opportunity. When I saw all the accounts getting banned I realised that I simply can’t reply on Google because in any moment, they could be gone.. and along with it, my traffic. Google’s blanket ban should have opened up the eyes of all the Internet marketers out there and encouraged them to spread their risk and not reply on one body to put food on the table.

The funny thing is that those that were banned are probably better off right now. The ban essentially forced them to look elsewhere and expand their portfolio. Many of those left relying on Google are still worse off and because they were not ‘forced’ to look around, many haven’t. Unfortunately they may only learn their lesson only when Google slams its finger down once again.

Back to that saying about a step back leads to an equal or greater step forward. I wouldn’t take it too literally. That step back doesn’t have to happen to you, but learning from what happens to others can allow you to skip that step and take the steps forward anyway. Why wait?

Its been way too long between drinks essentially because I have been swept away with a whole heap of business stuff that I was forced to put this on wayside.. way way side.

So I will be doing my best to start writing in this thing.

What have I been up to?

In the past year I have focused predominantly on my internet businesses. Remember this? Well these have grown nicely and as of now, I receive a nice half a million hits a month for each site.. bringing in some nice admob advertising cheques (more like paypal payments) each month. Nothing to really rave about but it pays off a car, without having to do anything for it.. nice.

I have also been doing affiliate marketing which has been great fun and rewarding and now have taken up various consulting projects, making recommendations to various companies on how to optimise their web presence. I am still amazed that there are so many companies out there who simply havn’t moved past the initial stages of SEO and PPC. Adwords accounts still have 1 group and 1000 keywords and SEO is all about keyword stuffing and meta-tags.

I have been under the impression that much of this stuff is common knowledge but it just isn’t. I have heard from Internet Marketers that teaching these companies and organisations the new way of the internet is in fact ‘the next big thing’. Although I never doubted them, I never really thought about how it could impact me. I do my thing, stay under the radar, automate my businesses so I can support my lifestyle. Thats it. What I never really understood was the value I was generating simply trying to build and automate these profitable online businesses.

What I’m getting at here is that for many Internet Marketers out there with a decent knowledge of the ins and outs of online marketing, understand how valuable your skillset is. You can create an average full time income because you feel like it, in whatever geographic location your in and yet we take it for granted. This is special and strangely enough we are the only ones who don’t realise how special it is.

It’s been a while since I have posted and my apologies to you guys. I have been flat out working on a couple of projects and next week I will be launching Bootstrapedia Bootcamp so its been absolutely intense. I love it like that but I guess some things need to be put aside while I laser my focus on a few things.

But I read this article on the Warrior Forum and thought I must share it. Here it is:

Hi All,

If you want to be a success in Internet Marketing you would do well to take a lesson from an old Coot.

I call the Coot old because he/she has been around for a long long time.

You see the Coot is a bird that lives in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

At a certain time of year the Coots have a need for a nest so they can procreate Coot style.

Now you would think Mr. and Mrs. Coot would simply fly up into a tree and act like all the other birds and build their nest in a tree. Or maybe they could be like the ducks, chickens and Penguins and build their nest at any ol convenient place on or near the water/ground level.

Nope not the Coot. Just like successful Internet Marketers Mr. and Mrs. Coot just have to be different. They want to carve out a “special” place for their family and do so from the comfort of their “own space.”

One day eons ago The Coots decided they just had to have an island home. Well, darn it all, there were no Islands anywhere to be found. Mrs. Coot looked at Mr. Coot and said, “Well what the heck, let’s just build ourselves an Island.”

It sounded like a great Idea to Mr. Coot so he picked up a pebble and carried it out into the water and dropped it. But who could build their nest on one pebble?

So he picked up another pebble and took it out and dropped it in the same place in the water.

He went back to shore and continued the process one pebble at a time until he had dropped 3,000 pounds of pebbles in the water.

BEHOLD, beautiful Coot Island!

This is a true story, The Horned Coot to this day builds it’s islands in this manner.

So Internet Marketer, overnight success might come to some and get rich quick might be true for others. If you can do it more power to you.

In the mean time, take a lesson from the Old Coot and start doing something each day. Build your Island, one pebble at a time.

I think this really sums up the life of the Internet Marketer and Entrepreneur in general. You always have ups and downs but from learning and peristance you can take your steps, one pebble at a time, until one day you have an island.

Again check out the original source at Warrior Forum.

Good Luck.

Will

Billy Mays the Unknown Genius. Unknown? What? It’s all relative I guess but the fact remains I had never heard of Billy Mays. This may astound you if your from North America but down here is Aus, tucked all the way in tomorrow, he was a relative unknown.

This changed for me after receiving an email from Rich Schefren. Initially I thought he was upset by the death of Michael Jackson but rather it was of Billy Mays. Billy, as he was a relative unknown here, got me intrigued to find out what type of influence this guy would have to one of the greatest business building minds in the world. When I went to the Rich’s blog post I was taken back by the length of it but when I started reading I simply could not stop.

Billy Mays was the genius I had never heard of. Internet Marketers could learn a priceless amount by simply watching him in action. He had an unbelievable way of interacting with his audience in a way where he would have you dialing the phone and reaching for your credit card after 33 seconds of video. I now have a firm desire to purchase The Awesome Auger, a gardening tool that easily and effortlessly drills through your soil so you can plant and seed like you’ve never done before! I don’t care that I don’t have a garden let alone soil to drill into, I still want the Awesome Auger. It got me thinking ‘imagine I did have soil… how easy would it be to plant a whole load of herbs I’ll never use, like Thyme.’

I think every Internet Marketer or Entrepreneur should read Rich’s post and learn from the genius of Billy Mays. Learn from the psychological and subliminal approach he uses, not just the conscious stuff you notice on face value. Also when you find yourself buying the Awesome Auger remember you are probably not the only person who will never use it.

I guess the last couple of weeks have seen the world lose two geniuses and both times they have only been truly appreciated once they are gone.

We know that Twitter has roughly 20 million plus users and growing. Actually by the time I write this post it could have doubled.. who knows? Anyway, you also know that these 2o million people are answering to their followers and the world, the question, ‘what are you doing now?’.

Imagine there was a way you could find out what people are wanting, what they are asking for, what questions they have that have remained unanswered, by simply asking the question: What’s everybody doing? How powerful would that be? If you knew that one of the most asked questions and problems people faced bringing home a brand new puppy was actually  ‘what should I name my dog?’, would you do things differently? How many profitable products could you release based on what topics are really hot right now?

You also know what whenever you search a question in Twitter you will receive a load links to information and affiliate products rather than genuine concerns and questions. Even if you find the good stuff, filtering through the clutter would take forever and a day. So doing the above is virtually impossible without endless days of work.

Well I’ll tell you that it is possible. I’m going to show you a way you can cut through the clutter, find the information you need so you can create relevant products and sell them for profit. Are you ready?

Ok here it is:

Visit Twitter Search. Now Type this in: (obviously replace keywords with whatever you like)

-http Insert Keywords Here since:2009-05-30 ?

What have I done?

1. By putting the ‘-http’ I have removed most links so you don’t get people trying the redirect you through to a page of information or their affiliate product.
2. The ’since:2009-05-30′ asks Twitter search to only find stuff relevant since that date. You can take it back as far as you like to get a larger response. (in the Year/MM/DD format).
3. The “?” at the end tells the Twitter search engine that we are only after questions. ie Anyone know how to stop a dog barking?. Also because we have removed the links we won’t get any questions like this -> Want to know how to stop a dog barking? Visit http://etc etc. So we have filtered out all the rhetoricals and commercial questions and replaced these with genuine concerns. You can remove the “?” and you will get more responses including both statements and questions so either way will work. I just used the ‘?’ in this example to show you another feature you may want to implement.

What do you do now?

Essentially the fiddly time consuming stuff that would usually takes days, even weeks to do, has already been done! Now go through the findings in Twitter, read the posts and jot down the concerns one by one. You will start to notice a pattern developing about what people are after and what’s in demand. This is your market research data. Take this, run with it and create an in demand and profitable product.

To see this in action check out my video at the Bootstrapedia Blog

I just need to let off a little steam here. I am an opportunistic person. I seek out opportunities, take advantage of them and then charge like a bull. I love Internet Marketing because it allows you to really take advantage of so many opportunities, its almost impossible to not be allured by it.

But then things happen and it just frustrates me to no end. The last week or so has been a time where the world has stopped and reflected on the passing of possibly one of the greatest performers ever to live and quite possibly, who will ever live. I’m of course talking about Michael Jackson, the undisputed King of Pop (you can tell I’m a bit of a fan, I’ll admit that).

I understand its human nature. I understand people will seek out opportunities. I understand there is a level of greed in what we do as entrepreneurs as well as Internet Marketers. However death is where I draw the line. I have been on countless forums over the past week with people celebrating their purchase of a cool domain name with talk of how much money they are going to make by ‘flipping it’. Yeh well I got news for you… be prepared to be disappointed.

www.michaeljacksonhasdied.com is not going to make you money. All it does is show you how far you will go to make a buck. To be honest, you are the people who fail. You are the people who give up. You are a weasel. What does this tell me? It tells me you put money on some kind of crazy pedestal and are so obsessed with it that you have no focus or drive. You are looking for the quick fix and the magic touch which will give you your break through. I’ll tell you now, its not coming.

I guarantee you none of the top marketers and entrepreneurs have gone out and purchased a ride on the back of the MJ bandwagon. They have better things to do, like grow their businesses and create fantastic value. In return for this they will be reimbused handsomely. All the while you try and claw back the $8 spent on your golden domain.

Rant over.

Since the introduction of the Internet, people looking for information have always expected stuff for free. It used to be that people look for whats the cheapest, but now cheapest just doesn’t cut it. We want FREE!!!

Internet marketers have for ever been trying to work their way around this embedded net culture by producing more influential sales copy and creative deliveries. They focus on the value and utility a product provides and work with the emotional side of the consumer to make them think “this is really worth it… if I was to buy 1 coffee a day for”.. and so on.

However I have noticed a recent change in marketers, notably Internet marketers, and the way they go about selling their products. It looks like we are heading into a world where everyone is starting to understand the power of the word FREE. 6 months ago you would never have seen it but today the net is full of FREE digital products with many of these products worth several thousand dollars. If they are not free then they are free + shipping. You buy the product for free, they send it out and all you pay for is shipping and handling. Easy.

So how are they making their money?

The answer is in the back-end. Every good marketer (even every bad marketer!) knows that once someone has committed to buying from you, then they are more likely to buy from you again no matter the size of the initial investment. This is because you already have them saying ‘yes’. Even if you give something away totally free you have already started the ‘yes’ process and developed an emotional need for the consumer to reciprocate. What do I mean by reciprocate? Well if you give something away for free you trigger something inside your consumer saying “man I should give something back, I got this for free.. may I should..” This is purely subconscious but its a fact and it’s extremely powerful.

What is in the back-end and what do they do?

Once you have said the first “yes” they simply hit you up with a few upsells and upgrades to the original product. Or put you into some type of continuity program where you get the first month free and then are charged a monthly fee for there newsletter or whatever it may be. Some people may think this is sneaky but most good marketers will make it very easy for you to opt out. The easier it is for you to opt out, the more likely you will hold onto it on your own accord because you have been given the option and therefore built an element of trust.

Do the numbers add up?

You bet. Imagine you were selling a $97 product and were able to sell 100 of these with a recurring of $30 a month. You would make $9700 + $3700 per month. Ok now imagine you were to offer that $97 product for Free! Think about the numbers you would receive. Say the amount you sell has increased to 300 which means you will make $0 + 9000 per month. This means you forgo the original hit but make 3x per month, every month, comfortably making more revenue over the next 2 months. Not only do you make more money, its a hell of a lot easier to sell something for free than to try and charge $100 for it! On top of this you can always offer back-end upsells and the more people you have exposed to these back-end offers, the more money you will make. If you offered these upsells to the original 100 buyers then you would simply have less numbers going through your sales funnel meaning less additional revenue.  Also remember that the more people you have on your buyers list, the more you can sell them in the future!

So its a no brainer really. For your next launch, try offering something for Free. Promote it like mad and then hit them up on some great back-end offers and a continuity program. You’ll be surprised how easy it is as well as the long term benefits it provides.

Don’t think about your big up front as this can blind you. This about your list, your backend and your reccuring. This is where the money lies.