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.

Will September 2009 signify the end of Affiliate Marketing? This is not some gimmick headline either. I’m completely serious. After reading an article on Copyblogger then addressing the source at the Washington Post I’m intrigued to what will happen to the industry.

Fittingly, I have only recently written an article about affiliate marketing and whether affiliates should hide behind their links using cloaking. I take the approach of being transparent especially when communicating directly to my community. My reasoning is that I prefer to promote the fact I’m using an affiliate link with the hope that my users will appreciate this. The rational is, “hey guys, I’m providing you with some awesome information so if you like it and want to buy, use my link so I can keep providing it”. Not particularly greedy or unfathomable and I believe it’s quite fair.

Back to the issue at hand, will this signal the end of affiliate marketing as we know it? Well if it is implemented and policed diligently then I believe it will cause some changes. Will these changes be bad? No I don’t think so.

First of all, reading the Washington Post article it definitely seems to focus on the blogging side of things. Reading between the lines however makes me think it may turn into a full blown affiliate marketing disclosure ruling. That means PPC marketing will get a hit along with the review based affiliate sites that go with it. I can imagine there are many affiliate marketers out there who will start kicking and screaming as their revenues dive or they begin receiving ‘cease and desist’ notices from the FTC or whoever. PPC programs and courses will become pretty much outdated as their approach to PPC marketing will become void and technically illegal.

Think about Twitter! How many affiliate links do you receive a day from optimistic Twitterpreneurs hoping you’ll be the one to make them their commission? Will they, or you, need to disclose the fact that an affiliate link is being used? Where will that fit in the 140 characters? The phrase (affiliate link) on its own including parenthesis is 16 characters which means over 10% less room and a reduced chance of a click through. Maybe it isn’t so bad, I think I’ve seen enough of the Maverick Money Makers sales page for a lifetime.

Even if it’s a full industry crack down I can’t see it as being the end. What it may do however is clean up a sometimes sneaky industry. Maybe it might promote the need to develop relationships with people before you can start earning an income. Maybe it may turn white hat completely legitimate marketers into black hat masterminds.

I’m interested to see how things develop. I think my approach will lend itself to the changes but how some of the other guys and my Acai Berry buddies deal with this is going to be interesting to watch. Stay tuned.

Today I decided to take advantage of Bing’s search engine marketing. Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine is picking up steam and growing every day. I thought here is a great opportunity to jump in early with some PPC advertising before the market gets completely saturated.

I signed up (of course wanted to get a nice $50 credit!) paid a small $30 deposit and was excited about getting a new ad running. But wow… what an interface! Absolutely horrendous. just unbelievably tedious, exhausting and frustrating. Bing has used Yahoo’s search marketing with the platform and interface being probably the most frustrating I have ever used (and seen). I have in the past used Yahoo search marketing and I remember it was very complex but I went into this open minded thinking maybe things have changed. Yet the colors are still dull, you don’t know what tab takes you where and to be honest, being on it for too long actually makes me kinda depressed.

I would have thought Microsoft and Bing would have really made something special out of it. Looking at the actual appearance of the Bing search engine itself, its obviously very consumer orientated bringing up warm emotional and fuzzy feelings with cute animals and picturesque landscapes. Then when it comes to the backend, they screw everything up by using antiquated UI outlines (again).

This is the very reason Apple is trumping them at the moment. As an Apple user you are always exposed to sleek, impressive and user friendly functionality no matter what level your at, business or consumer. However when your with Microsoft your left with programs like Frontpage and back-ends like Bing advertising which leave you feeling somewhat gloomy. At the moment Google is search engine’s ‘Apple’ and Microsoft is, well, Microsoft.

Link Cloaking – a bunch of Internet Entrepreneurs involved in marketing who cloak affiliate links do so to avoid commission sabotage and people stealing their commissions. I’m still undecided about doing this.

Just in case your not sure what I’m talking about, link cloaking involves hiding your affiliate link extension, making it look like a normal link so that people don’t know that your an affiliate. ie the normal link might look like www.bootstrapedia.com as opposed to an affiliate link looking like www.bootstrapedia.com/aff=id1450. So cloaking will remove the ‘aff=id1450′. The reason why people would cloak is to prevent people from sabotage or robing you of your commissions by just removing that little extension. I guess some people just don’t like to be the one helping other people profit. Call it greedy, mean, harsh or whatever but it happens.

Well of course I don’t want people to sabotage my links robbing me of a well deserved commission. At the same time I would hope that my community trusts me enough that I’m not just going to promote rubbish just to make a quick buck. So I havn’t been cloaking my links to my list at all and what you see in the url is what you get.

Once thing I really don’t want are my users thinking I am trying to ‘trick’ them. I believe complete transparency is valuable in developing trust among your users. For example if I was to sell a product to my list and they find out that I made a commission from it, I don’t think they will think less of me, but maybe if I had been completely open about it they would actually gain further respect. I know what I’d prefer and am happy to risk a couple of sabotages in return for gaining more respect from my users.

My approach is just to tell my users: “here is my affiliate link, if your interested in the product then I’d recommend to give it a go”. I don’t know but I don’t think that its a bad way to go about it. Its open, up front, honest and trust building. Again, whether it’s as profitable as the cloaking method I don’t know but I definitely feel better about it.

I’m not dismissing the concept of cloaking as ‘bad’ because using it on the front end of your blog is probably a great idea as your blog may attract plenty of viewers who are commission sabotage happy. On the other hand cloaking to your list, your loyal community and your fans is a whole different ballgame.

Everyone goes on and on about how to make money online so I’m changing it up and will be going over the 5 top ways to lose money online!

1) Pay Per Click Advertising and Google Adwords – If you don’t know what your doing, this thing will bring you and your house down. You can effectively blow $50 in 5 minutes with absolutely no result. Most newbies don’t enable their tracking, group their keywords or optimize their site or ads and climb a blind and uphill battle the whole time. When a sale comes in they get excited but have no idea what actually resulted in conversions so they just pump more money into it until they run out.

2) Niche sites – Many marketers like to try a whole bunch of niche sites to test which ones work. Factor in the cost of domains, hosting, programming and design and you got yourself a nice little intravenous drip hanging from your wallet. Drip. Drip. Nice.

3) Not understanding your business systems – Most relevant to entrepreneurs selling physical products. You’ll see this when you sell at a small(ish) mark-up yet forget to factor in taxes, various fees (Paypal) and advertising. I got stung with this when I didn’t correctly factor in GST while I was selling a range of products. For example if I bought a $100 product and sold for $130, I still had to pay my Paypal fees as well as tax (10% for Australian sales) which meant I made about $6 for selling a $130 item! A simple mistake anyone can do when you start smelling profit, no matter how small it is. Next time, make sure its really profit!

4) Information overload – Many a new marketer signs up to multiple training courses in different micro-niches (PPC, Affiliate, Launch, Membership Sites, Copy Writing etc) and ends up being confused out of recognition. Too much information is never a good thing. Stick to a couple of basic systems, test, measure, rinse and repeat the good. Don’t do everything at once. Alternatively get a completely comprehensive course which you can follow step by step covering all the factors. The best complete course going around is the Bootstrapedia course… you like that? A little self serving I know! But get your Free report, you may find it useful.

5) Giving up – If you fall you get up. Don’t crawl a little further then play dead, you’ll get no where. Expect to fail. Know you will. Once you embrace this and understand that there is a real possibility of failure, you won’t fear it and you’ll be more equipped to get up and get back into it. Everyone fails at some point, your no different so just take it in your stride and try again. Why is this expensive? Well you’ve wasted money and time putting things into action but decided to drop it when the going got tough. Little do you know that this effort could possibly turn into a success just around the corner, but you gave up didn’t you?

These are my top 5 tips for losing money online. If you want to try them out feel free, they really work! Guaranteed!

When I started this blog it was purely a personal thing, a place I could put my thoughts and rants in writing however its grown a little from then. I enjoy writing in it and from writing alone I am able to learn a whole heap which is great. I’ve also steadily moved towards an Internet Marketing / Internet Entrepreneur theme as opposed to the much broader approach I have previously. This wasn’t something I intended but rather a natural progression.

There is a problem however. My SEO sucks. Seriously, your probably here because you searched “how to suck an egg” or something random like that and are wondering what the hell have you stumbled upon. If so, my apologies, feel free to move on.. here is a site .

So over the next few weeks I’ll be working on fixing my SEO a bit. I had never bothered about it before because I wasn’t particularly concerned about whether the search engines picked up my blog as it was something I did purely out of interest and even to this day I don’t run any advertisements so my intention to profit from it is still minimal.

But after a fair bit of interest and the soon to be launch of my new product, I figured I better sort out my SEO and start generating some really targeted traffic.

Three things I will be focusing on include my Title Tags, my H1 headings, bolded text (been doing this randomly but without much substance) and keyword density. I can’t really do much with my url’s as I have a fair few incoming links and don’t want them to be broken so I guess that’s something I will pay attention to from now on. Also my in-coming links will be phrased rather than under my url, www.williambakhos.com.

Now don’t think this is something your really going to notice as I still write for the people who are interested in reading this blog, but my aim is to drive more like minded people to join this community and benefit from the information provided.

Ok I’m guessing you didn’t expect that one! Well I thought it would be nice for some relief and change it up a little bit (or a lot).

So what does Go-Karting and Internet marketing have in common? Well, not much except the fact that its fun, its competitive, efficiency is key and it can get expensive if your not careful. Actually you could say that you may learn a lot about Internet marketing and making money online in this post, or maybe not, I’m just having a bit of fun.

To give you a bit of background I have been racing competition go karts since 2002, competing in State and National championships regularly. Since 2006 I have been driving for PCR Karts Australia, competing in the elite 125cc class. Top speeds of around 150kph, 3g pulled through turns, brakes that make your eyes water and power to weight faster than pretty much any car on the road.

So want to know some tips and techniques that you can use to destroy your friends at the local kart track? Ok here they are my 3 top tips:

1) Progressive braking – a myth. Progressing braking is the worst thing you can do. You might think that pushing the brake harder and harder (progressively, like you would in a car) is the right thing to do but your wrong. Top drivers don’t push the brakes, they stand on them. Few things you need to understand, a go-kart has one brake at the back and if you push it too hard then its kinda like pulling up the handbrake suddenly. Also when you brake all the weight transfers to the front so if you brake progressively you are making your braking power proportional to the shifting of weight to the front. This is why there are so many spins under braking at your local track! Progressive braking may feel right but its completely wrong.

What you should do is actually brake the hardest when you start the braking process. The key is to slam the brake like your trying to rip the pedal off, no joke. Be prepared your wheels will ‘lock’ but its your job to ease off the brake until the lock stops. The point where your wheels stop locking is the point of optimal braking power, usually supported by a sweet ‘chirpy’ sound. I don’t recommend you do this off the bat, but practice the ’slamming’ of the brake when your on your own just to see the reaction of the car. The reason why this is effective is that you don’t suffer as much from weight shift and you are training yourself to be at the maximum braking power for the longest period of time. Master this and you’ll find 1.5-2 seconds per lap over your friends, no joke.

2) Turning – again with the progression myth. People think you need to turn gradually into the a corner. Again they are wrong. The rule of thumb is that the longer you can keep the steering wheel straight, the faster you will go. It’s all about efficiency and reducing the amount of time your tires are generating friction. Whenever friction is present your going slower and one of the ways friction occurs is though turning.

After you have finished braking (not during!… you’ll spin if you don’t know what your doing) turn the wheel quickly in the direction you want to go and once you feel you’ll make the corner apex (sharpest part of the corner) , straighten the wheel immediately and use the accelerator to tighten your line and help you exit the corner, don’t just keep turning. If you gradually turn the wheel your front tires won’t ‘bite’ and cause you to slide around without much pace. Also gradually turning will mean more time your wheels are spent ‘turning’ and this is inefficient (ie causes friction).

3) Weight – Your weight. People see race drivers on TV leaning their heads into the corner and naturally think this is the best way to turn a corner so they ‘lean in’ to the turn. Wrong! Race drivers are leaning their head to counter g-forces so their heads don’t lean to the side, not an attempt to shift body weight. When you turn a corner in a go-kart, or any car, the tires that are doing the most work are the outside tires. For example if you are turning left, your right tires take all the load. If you try to lean into the corner, you will try to load and put weight on the relatively ‘unused’ tires leading to an unnatural distribution of grip which would in most cases cause the car to understeer (won’t turn in). If you move your body weight to the outside of the kart then you will corner better than if you were to lean in. It’s a strange concept to get a grasp on but it works.

These are three points and if you do them correctly you’ll run rings around your friends. Put them all together correctly and your looking at about 3 – 3.5 seconds per lap if not more.

And again, what has this got to do with Internet Marketing and Entrepreneurship. Very little but you’ll thank me when the chance comes to put these into action.