Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Down-To-Earth Advice For Bloggers and Internet Marketers

I recently received this unsolicited email from Craig Shinney (slightly edited to protect identities) –

I just wanted to write to tell you that about one year ago, I started getting into Internet marketing and experimenting with all sorts of different methods of the various types of blogs and tools that all the different marketers recommend. It was an amazing journey.

The reason I’m writing is to say that you were the first “expert” to catch my attention. I read through your archives almost religiously before branching out to other marketers. After putting up a bunch of crappy websites (that did in fact make me some money), I have since completely abandoned reading anything by those other marketers and have remained a faithful reader of your blog.

I’ve since come to the conclusion that it’s all about creating quality content, as you instruct your readers to do, not “trick” your visitors into buying something you’re not at all an expert on, written by Filipinos who can’t even use proper English.

Obviously Craig is generalizing when he talks about Filipinos, as there are no doubt plenty who can use proper English and are subject matter experts. The point he’s making is that many marketers teach a business model that relies on using outsourcers, who often don’t have English as a first language, to create ebooks and other information products, which are then sold online using clever marketing.

The quality of these information products is sometime suspect, yet with the right marketing process, including some good copywriting, sales will come.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about this model. You find a need in the market, then use other people to create products to meet that need. Your job is to wear the marketer’s hat, do the research, find demand then put the pieces together to serve that demand, then rinse and repeat.

I call this a horizontal business model because instead of going deep in just one industry, the strategy is to move from market to market, creating websites and products to sell to unrelated industries until you have a small army of small income streams. If each website you set up can make $200 a month in profit, then you only need ten or twenty successful implementations of this system to reach “quit your job” money.

This model has proven very successful for many people and is taught in various forms as an entry strategy into the world of Internet marketing.

I’ve promoted many courses that teach a version of this system, with the most successful from my point of view being Niche Profit Classroom. If you want a much more detailed breakdown of this strategy, check out my interview with Adam Short, the creator of Niche Profit Classroom.

Why I Chose To Go Vertical

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If you plotted the growth of my business the chart would look like a steadily increasing line, punctuated by a handful of spikes a couple of times a year.

The first big spike in growth occurred in 2007, which was the first launch I ever did of the Blog Mastermind coaching program. Every aspect of my business grew during that two week period. My email list tripled in size and my income increased by almost the same margin.

Going forward, each new spike came thanks to some kind of launch. Whether it was a new product, closing access to a product or reopening of a closed product, each time I did some kind of launch campaign, the growth numbers shot through the roof.

This is obviously an endorsement of the launch process, and we all owe Jeff Walker a debt of thanks for bringing this style of marketing to our industry, however it’s worth taking a closer look at why the launch works.

The 80/20 Rule Of Product Launches

The launch process is a complex and subtle beast, which on the surface appears relatively simple. You release some great free stuff, have your affiliates promote it like crazy, open the doors to your offer with some kind of limitation, sell heaps, make a ton of money, and bamb!… done.

Once you do a few launches you start to see how intricate the variables are, and how important the psychology behind the process is. Everything needs to connect, to be coherent, to reinforce the same message, create excitement and flow together.

As daunting as that might sound, the process is actually quite forgiving, as long as you get a few variables right. You can “stuff up” many aspects of the launch process and still succeed. You can forget to do things, use lazy copy in your emails, and even leave parts out altogether, as long as you have the most important variables.

So, what are the 20% or less of components that go into a launch that count for the 80% or more of results? Here’s how I see it…

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What’s the single most important asset in your online business?

Your list.

You probably know that already. Your email list or subscriber list or customer list – your means of staying in contact with your prospects and customers – is the most important asset to your business.

The problem you face is how to rapidly build your email list.

I’ve talked plenty about list building on this blog and in courses and free reports I’ve published, however there is one area I failed to cover extensively because it’s not something I’ve experimented with.

What am I talking about?

Building your list using YouTube video marketing.

Luckily for me a very close friend Gideon Shalwick, who is my partner in the Become A Blogger project, spent the last seven months building a completely new online business using just YouTube to build his list.

His new business has nothing to do with Internet marketing – it’s about street magic.

I get the benefit of Gideon’s knowledge and experience all the time, so I know how good he is at YouTube marketing.

Next week you have a chance to learn what Gideon knows. He is going to help a select group of people and share his tactics in a very special webinar, which you can join here -

This is a special link only for my readers and subscribers. Gideon is not promoting this webinar outside our subscribers, so you will only have the option to join the webinar live for the next few days.

How Good Is YouTube For List Building?

When I started my blog it took me a year to build up to 1,000 RSS subscribers. At the start of the second year I started an email list. At the end of two years I had 3,000 email subscribers and 3,000 RSS subscribers.

Gideon started a new business in April 2009 and began marketing with YouTube videos only. He had a blog, but all the traffic that went to the blog came after watching the videos on YouTube.

After only seven months of using YouTube, Gideon had grown his list to 13,000 subscribers – an incredibly rapid growth rate.

It took me almost three years to match that and he did it in just over half a year.

And remember, this is not in the “make money” niche like me, this is in teaching people how to perform magic tricks.

I’m very impressed by the potential YouTube presents as a list building tool, and let’s face it – we need as many marketing techniques as we can get when it comes to building your lists.

It’s tough to generate a quality email database, especially when you start from scratch with no existing contacts. You need something extra today, you need to know what is current and powerful, and that is what YouTube marketing is all about.

Gideon started this new business from absolutely nothing. There was no profile, no online contacts, just him, his business partner Jay Jay, a blog and a YouTube account.

Gideon is going to explain the exact steps he went through to build his list using YouTube, so if you want in on all his best tactics and strategies, make sure you sign up here –

If you can’t make the live call, Gideon will provide a recording and transcript you can listen to or read after.

Gideon is also including five special bonuses, if you join him before the live call takes place on December 8th at 8PM EST US Time. You have to watch the video on the sign-up page to see what the bonuses are.

Don’t Like Writing? Need New Marketing Ideas?

This is a great opportunity for you if you don’t like writing, and like the idea of using video content to grow your list. Or you might be looking for another marketing channel to expand your business and generate new leads.

Your next step is to go and watch the short video on this page from Gideon, and then join him on his very special training webinar next week –

www.killeryoutubestrategies.com

You have until Tuesday to qualify for the bonuses and make the live call.

I’ll be on the call too, so I look forward to seeing you there.

Yaro Starak

I love this technique because of how simple it is, yet how immensely powerful it can be when executed well.

If you’re looking to create the perception in your market that you are an expert at what you do, one of the key techniques you can apply is to create what I call a Language Identifier.

I’ll explain exactly what this is and how to create one in a moment, but first I want to clarify some key traits of your modern day expert, or maven, a term brought back into popularity thanks to the proliferation of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point book.

There Is No True Expert

I have to begin by clarifying that there really is no such thing as a true expert.

Every person on this planet is in a constant state of change and will spend their entire life learning new things. It’s impossible to ever repeat the exact same experience, hence everything is new in the moment that you experience it. In a sense we are all students, not experts, and always will be.

Certainly some people know more than others, but even a person who knows more than anyone else on the planet about a certain subject, only knows a teeny-tiny percentage of the total knowledge they could accumulate.

You could say it’s impossible to ever become a true expert unless you can accumulate infinite knowledge. Infinite knowledge is not something generally experienced in the physically realm, so as we tend to do in our world of relativity, we use a method of comparison and say someone is an expert, in relation to someone else.

Expertise Is A Perception

The key to establishing expertise is to create the perception in a large enough group of people that you know what they don’t, and in particular your knowledge resulted in you experiencing or having something that they recognize as relevant or important to them.

The point here is that truth really doesn’t matter. Of course you don’t want to falsely project you know something you don’t, and then find yourself in a situation where you have to demonstrate your knowledge. This could lead to you being labeled a fraud, and it’s a lot harder to rid yourself of a bad reputation than it is to establish a good one.

The “truth” that matters is how other people perceive you. Every person who comes into contact with you will look at you through their own set of glasses. You have the power to influence those glasses using the power of persuasion.

What Is A Language Identifier?

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During our most recent live group coaching call with members of the programs I teach, I was asked what type of content is best.

The question in particular pertained to membership sites, and I was asked whether video, audio or written content was the best for keeping members in a program.

This is an interesting question. After three years of running three online courses, each with different types of content, not to mention blogging for five years using text, video and audio, I’m in a good position to at least have a perspective on the issue based on my experience.

So what exactly is best? Text, audio or written content, or is that even the right question to ask?

The Origin Of Web Content

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