Core Influence: Frank Kern On How To Connect With Your Audience
When I got home from my travels I finally had some time to go through some of the DVDs and CDs that came in the mail from various purchases I had made.
I bought Traffic Secrets 2.0 from John Reese when he released it mid last year and Frank Kern was nice (smart) enough to throw in a couple of bonus DVDs to the first group of buyers, and I was one of them.
I’m a fan of Frank Kern simply because he’s a good entertainer in his videos and obviously he’s great at selling through email when it comes to Internet marketing products, but to be honest I’ve never been blown away by his marketing advice. That being said, I’ve never seen much of his work outside of his free videos, so I really need to spend more time with the surfer dude slash internet marketer.
With Traffic Secrets Frank threw in two DVD presentations. One of his very early Mass Control presentations and another on Core Influence, which I thought was the better of the two and the one I want to talk about now.
What Is Core Influence?
Revisiting The 80/20 Rule and Why It Is Even More Critical To Your Business In 2009
The year 2008 for me was dominated by a long trip overseas, which meant I was away from home and in a constantly changing environment.
Although I boast I was able to run my business while traveling a circle around the globe, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience more pressure on the time available for work.
The way I chose to travel resulted in planning the details for my next stop a week before I arrived – sometimes just 24 hours before arriving or even after arriving! This included booking accommodation, flights and figuring out things like how to get from the airport to the apartment or hotel I was staying at.
Once landing in a city and settling in, the next “pressure” was determining what was worth seeing and doing, and ensuring the time available for fun was used on the best sites and attractions. This involves research and planning, reading reviews online at sites like TripAdvisor.com, buying tickets for tours and figuring out how to get to places using public transport.
When at home in Brisbane my time is quite fluid and I have few commitments or deadlines. With just my mother now living in Brisbane, I rarely have family events on and I’m not married with children, so I’m pretty much looking after myself.
Traveling dramatically changed how I live. What is normally stable in my life – where I live, what I do during the day and what I eat – became dynamic, with the variables changing every week. Suddenly my free time was gone and I was forced to live in perpetual inconsistency.
As a result of the constant changes in my life, I had to become very focused with how I used my working time. I didn’t want my blog to die, I had customers to support and I wanted to work on new projects so my business continued in a positive direction. This was no easy task, but I’m proud to say that I was able to achieve all my business goals in 2008 despite the changes to how and where I lived my life.
Revisiting the 80/20 Rule
If you’ve never read my article on the 80/20 rule, go do so now. It’s one of the most powerful concepts available today that can truly make a difference to your life and your business. My article introducing you to the rule has been one of the top 10 posts on this blog for years. You can find it here -
If I look at the metrics, this was a great year for my business. I more than doubled my revenues, my blog readership and email lists grew significantly, I had successful product launches and released some fantastic free resources like the Conversion Blogging video, not to mention publishing many articles on this blog that I know will continue to bring in traffic for years to come (the true essence of a pillar article).
None of this would have happened if it weren’t for the 80/20 rule.
Information overload has always been a problem. In 2008 it became even more of a problem. Although a great enabler and empowering tool for education, the world wide web has created a situation where it’s as important to be aware of what you need to know and do as much as knowing how to do it. If you don’t learn how to ignore 99% of what’s out there, you never get the clarity to learn the 1% that you should focus on.
I Want Your Attention
Become A Blogger Membership Discount Ends Thursday At 6PM
Update: Looks like Gideon did the old switcheroo on me without telling me (to be fair I was on a plane from Dubai to Singapore at the time), so the deadline is actually 6PM now, not 4PM. You’ve got two extra hours.
I’ll make this brief since you have probably made your decision already, but I want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline if you still haven’t decided…
Become A Blogger Premium, the video training course presented by Gideon Shalwick and myself, is open for new members at the special introductory rate of $27 a month until 6PM EST US time, Thursday 11th of December 2008, one week since we opened the program. After that the price increases to $47 a month.
You can find out all the details about the course and sign-up here -
www.becomeablogger.com/signup/
Welcome To New Members
I’d like to welcome on board the 600+ members we already have and all the new people who join in the next few days.
For the past few months and in particular during the last two weeks Gideon and I have been focusing our energy preparing this program. As is the case with many information products released online, we spend a lot of time on marketing initially, however now that our opening period is almost over, we’re turning our focus on to the members.
The first group of members are special because they help frame how the program evolves. We have a basic roadmap ready to go (no pun intended), however with feedback from the active membership we will be modifying the program as it progresses. We are also inviting members to request videos on any topic they want covered.
The first run through of the program is definitely the best time to do it because you save money and you get to partially dictate what is taught.
Plus don’t forget, you have 60 days to decide whether this program is right for you thanks to the mandatory Clickbank refund period (our payment processor). Try it for two months and if you don’t get your $27 bucks work, cancel. There’s no risk here.
If you can afford $1 a day and you are ready to build a successful blog by following along with Gideon’s clean and easy to action videos, here’s the link to join -
Don’t Forget About The Free Stuff
Although it’s pretty obvious I’ve been promoting a video course on this blog and my newsletter for the past two weeks, you shouldn’t take that as an excuse to stop paying attention even if you never intended to join.
The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, which is nearing 10,000 downloads, is free and will remain free. It’s full of great content and regardless of whether you join our membership site, there’s a lot to take away and action from the Roadmap – so don’t ignore that resource (in both text and audio downloads).
Gideon has also been releasing a few X-Factor videos, which contain real tips that you can use. Yes they promote our program, but they do so by giving you ideas you can use. This is intended as a content launch that helps everyone – you don’t have to give us money to benefit.
And let’s not forget, watching a launch unfold is interesting in itself from an Internet marketing perspective. I hope you have been monitoring what Gideon and I get up to with your marketing hats on too, if you are nearing the stage where you are ready to release your own product online.
Thanks To Gideon
I’d like to thank Gideon especially as he has been working his butt off for the past month getting everything ready. This is his first major launch and as is often the case, he’s really had to put in the hours to keep things going.
Without Gideon you wouldn’t have all this amazing free content and for those special people who joined the Premium site, you have lots more from Gideon to look forward, and of course from me too!
Both Gideon and I look forward to meeting all the new members in the forums and the live teleconferences, which will begin in earnest starting next week once all the new members settle in.
Don’t Forget The Thursday Deadline
Make sure you mark Thursday at 6PM if you are going to join and want the $27 a month price. The course goes for six months long, and after that you enjoy lifetime access to all the resources and any future upgrades we release at no extra cost (you pay for six months only).
That’s a concrete deadline that we can’t change because it wouldn’t be fair to the members who acted quickly and signed up early. Join now or be prepared to pay more for the videos from Thursday night onwards.
Yaro Starak
Still Blogging 4 Years Later
Become A Blogger Premium Open
We’ve just flicked the switch to open the doors to Become A Blogger Premium video coaching program and I’d like to invite you to sign up as a member at this link -
How Much Is The Course?
Gideon and I are focusing this program at beginners and we don’t want to restrict anyone because they can’t afford hundreds of dollars a month, especially given the current economic situation. I realize many people wanted to join my other coaching program, Blog Mastermind, but they simply can’t afford it.
If that sounds like you, then you should be pleased as we have a special price for Become A Blogger Premium –
It’s just $47 a month and the course goes for six months.
We are using Clickbank as the payment processor, which means you have a guaranteed 60 day refund period offered by Clickbank. You can try the program for a full two months and at any time during that period you decide it’s not for you, go to Clickbank and ask them for a refund.
Of course I know you will love the program and as with all the products I release, I’m not going to just abandoned this after I’ve made some sales. Gideon and I are committed to making Become A Blogger Premium a leading video course and will be refining and enhancing it for a long time to come as we get feedback from the first group of students who join this week.
Here’s the link to sign-up -
What Do You Get If You Join?
How Email Segmentation Made My List Stronger AND $31,940 More Profitable
This is a somewhat advanced email marketing tactic, although most serious email marketers having been doing it for years. For me though, this is something I’ve only recently been able to test because I haven’t had the technological resources to do so.
I recently upgraded my AWeber account to the “new” version. In case you missed the news about the new AWeber upgrades, the CEO Tom Kulzer and his team recently rolled out some nice advanced email marketing features.
The features let you create segmentations in your lists based on various elements, such as who opened your email and who clicked your links within the emails. There are other options as well, but for the purpose of this article let’s just focus on these two basic segmentations.
Before upgrading my account I was on the legacy version of AWeber, which is basically the same service, except I didn’t have as much power to segment my lists and consequently, beyond deciding which list I would broadcast too, I didn’t do much else. As a result, I generally hit all my newsletter with each message – a shotgun approach to email marketing.
Unfortunately (or really, fortunately) for me, my list is probably a bit larger than the average at AWeber, and with their new services came a new pricing structure, which meant I would pay more than five times per month than what I was previously, if I decided to upgrade. I eventually decided to bite the bullet because I know how good a service it is, how important my newsletter is to my business, and of course the primary reason – so I could test the new features.
Luckily for most of you reading this, if you are just starting out your email newsletter, the AWeber fee hasn’t really changed even for the new features. You’re still going to pay the very justified price of around the sub-$20 a month mark for a business-critical service. In my case, with some 40,000+ members of my newsletter, the fee is a little bit more.
In case you haven’t started your newsletter, here’s my review to help you decide whether AWeber is right for you – AWeber Email Autoresponder Review.
Now let me explain how I made use of the new features and how you can implement these advanced email marketing techniques…
