Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

This post catches up both May and April’s content across the Yaro blog network, but first, a big thank you to those who provided sponsorship during the last month (if you are interested in increasing traffic to your website check out the advertising options).

Blish.com - The easiest place to buy and sell digital content, including eBooks and Legal Forms.

Great FX Business Cards - If you need Raised Print Business Cards or Business Card Holders try these guys.

GoBIGnetwork - If you are looking for startup capital search the largest network of Venture Capital, Angel and Private Equity Investors.

Content Recap

Things have been pretty busy over at Small Business Marketing and Branding where I finally had a chance to knuckle down and produce some nice “Yaro style” articles for my newest blog, including:

• How To Throw Away $500
  If you appreciate learning from other people’s mistakes then this article offers a good lesson on how not to spend your marketing dollars. I recount my story from the early days of BetterEdit.com when I wasted $500 on a not so good sponsorship promotion.
• How to Market Your Local Business on the Internet
  Will Swayne popped by offering this very practical article on using the web to market a local business. This was a very well received article judging by the comments left.
• Are You Taking Advantage Of All Your Opportunities?
  On a whim I recently tested a new method to make money from my blogs using the services of Text Link Ads to sell text links. It’s been quite successful and prompted me to ask whether you are taking advantage of all your opportunities. This article includes four dot-point suggestions which should get you hunting for opportunities in your business.
• How Would You Spend A $1000 Marketing Budget?
  I asked my readers this question and we got some good answers from both online and offline business owners.
• Can’t Think Of An Original Business Idea?
  If you are stuck to find a business idea you think will work perhaps this article will stir some creative juices in you.
• Listening To Word Of Mouth Marketing On The Street
  A few weeks ago I was out and about down in Melbourne where I did some word-of-mouth research. Anita Campbell was so impressed with the topic of this article that she featured it at the start of one of her Small Business Trends radio shows.
• What Is Your Position In The Marketplace?
  This article is all about positioning. I used my recent work positioning myself as the “Blog Traffic King” as an example and asked you how you position yourself and your business.
• How To Deal With People and Leverage Your Networks
  I recounted my first meeting with a CEO and offered some tips on leveraging your networks to help grow your business.

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Burty in the forums has made a generous offer to other forum members where you can get a copy of a good little e-book he wrote about the launch of a product AIS (Automatic Income Stream) site he created, which cost $40 to create and brought in almost $1000 in a short period of time.

If you like tidy case study stories like this check out burty’s offer and join the forums.

- Special Offer for Forum Members

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You’re in for a treat today. I just finished watching a very cool set of videos following the launch of a new information product. It was a fun ride if you like watching people have tremendous success online - to the tune of $250,000+ in one week in this case. Luckily I’m allowed to share these videos with you and they are completely free!

If you are at all interested in Internet marketing then you no doubt have plans one day to do your own product launch. I’m currently in the process of doing my first for Blog Traffic School hence I was very keen to watch this case study of a successful product launch to get some tips.

The AdSense Videos Launch

Michael Cheney is the man behind a new series of videos on making money with AdSense which are for sale at Adsense-Videos.com. His results were fantastic - over $250,000 in sales in one week, and that’s for a $97 product, which I consider even more impressive.

Michael recorded a series of 13 short videos during the launch of the product covering what he was getting up to behind the scenes. You can watch the videos here -

http://www.adsense-videos.com/250k/
These are FREE videos about the launch of his product, not the product videos about making money with AdSense.

If you are interested in making money with AdSense Michael’s product has been getting rave reviews. If you do decide to buy I’d appreciate it if you purchase through my link. My link is - http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/yaro-recommends/adsense-videos.html.

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You can find a list of other reviews and links to the products and resources I use to run my online business in the Resources Section of this website.

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UPDATE: Everything written below was accurate for the time I wrote the original review, however it now seems this product is not getting many updates. I now recommend Butterfly Marketing as the best all-in-one affiliate and membership site online marketing tool and use it myself. I have not since used Motivated Marketing System because it was too buggy and didn’t do what I wanted it to do.

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In a previous post - Motivated Marketing With Butterflies - I mentioned a new online marketing service called “Motivated Marketing System” which I recently purchased.

I’ve had some time now to experiment with the system so I’m in a good position to report back to you my initial impressions.

In A Nutshell: If you don’t have time to read the full review here’s my “snapshot” opinion. Motivated Marketing System (MMS) is a simple and efficient software package to build a website that can manage affiliates, members and to distribute information products. It also has a one-time-offer functionality that is only available elsewhere in the much higher priced ButterFly Marketing package, so if you need this functionality you either build it yourself or buy MMS.

As MMS currently stands it’s not perfect. As I write this the MMS programmers are working on bug fixes and new feature implementation. With each update of the software it gets better and better and closer to a good solution. As it currently operates it can function well enough to use but personally, being the control freak and perfectionist that I am, it’s not good enough for me. I will keep it though and not ask for a refund because I will use the software because it is very simple to implement a very quick system for setting up a product or membership site.

The full price of $247 is too much. I bought it when it was just released before they raised the prices. I think $97 is a fair price for the package as it currently stands so I wouldn’t recommend paying $247 for it unless you absolutely have to have it or you are at the stage in your business where you can justify expenses like this in order to stay up to date with the industry.

Luckily for my fast-acting readers for the next three days I arranged a discount so you can also get it for $97 - but you have to act quick! (see below for details).

Okay, let’s get to the full review…

The Software

The Motivated Marketing System (MMS) comes with the MMS software, the MM guide e-book and a collection of other e-books on creating and launching an information product. While the information in these books is certainly valuable I bought this package for the software and that’s what I’m here to review.

The main MMS book by Eric does have some good marketing advice regarding setting up websites that use the MMS software but it’s not intended to be a technical manual - it’s only about marketing. The full documentation on using the software is not provided (yet) so if HTML is something that scares you this package is probably not for you, unless you have a partner/employee who does the technical stuff for you.

Core Features

The concept behind MMS is very much similar to Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing which I also bought but have not received in the mail (it’s more than a month now too!), so straight up one good point about MMS is you receive it instantly as a downloadable zip package. No waiting for this one.

I’m not entirely sure who invented it and certainly Mike Filsaime was the first person I came across who labelled it with a brand name including butterflies, but essentially what we are talking about is an automated website building tool with some core functions, which are very important to doing business online as an information marketer. There are also some relatively new innovations that I think we have to credit Mike Filsaime with creating - namely the One-Time-Offer (OTO) and membership sign-up thank you page, which is a new style of namesqueeze, which I’m quite impressed with (I can’t really explain it to you in this review - but it’s a very cool way to build a list quickly). MMS has many of these core functions including -

Affiliate management

MMS has a fairly rudimentary but well integrated affiliate system which empowers all your members with tools to sell your products. The idea behind a system like MMS is to encourage a pyramid like viral growth pattern with existing members bringing in new members (yes, it does sound like MLM). The affiliate section is crucial and one of the main reasons I bought the package.

In some ways I was disappointed with the affiliate options available in MMS. The system is basic with a single link for affiliates to use and the possibility of offering banners and emails for your members to use (you add these through the admin panel). Users can view statistics about their clicks and conversions and there is a two tier structure so affiliates can bring in sub-affiliates and earn a share of commissions.

Simplicity - An Advantage and Limitation

That’s about where the affiliate system ends. Yes it’s limiting and you certainly don’t get the power of a dedicated affiliate system yet it’s the simplicity that I find one of the best parts of MMS. You get complete control of the HTML templates so you can change the look and feel but you only need add your own custom header, footer and background to brand the system as your own. The core content area is very clean with nothing but basic text to deal with which goes straight up and down the page.

I’ve shopped around for an affiliate system that integrates with a membership system and so far MMS does it best, yet it doesn’t do it well enough. At this time I don’t think there is one perfect affiliate/membership system out there, but maybe I’m just picky. Other affiliate management systems offer many more features and controls but tend to overcomplify basic functions and certainly turned me away based purely on the end-user screen shots - I need a system that doesn’t confuse or intimidate beginner affiliates.

MMS is certainly good enough to use out of the box if you just want your affiliates to refer people to a sales page or thank you sign-up page. It’s perfect as a cheap and easy system to get selling online quickly.

One Time Offers

A one-time-offer is a cool method of displaying a sales page just after a person has signed up but before they get access to what they signed up for. The offer is only made available once to make it more compelling. I’ve yet to make use of a OTO but I’m very eager to. Some other marketers report back sale conversion rates of 8% or more using a OTO which is pretty good. It’s definitely a great feature and worth testing especially if you sell non-internet marketing products since your customers have probably never seen a OTO before so it will perform very well.

Admin Interface

The admin interface continues the trend of simplicity. A left panel navigation window lists all the functions and each section only has a handful of options to manipulate. I expect as the system is upgraded the admin panel may become more comprehensive but for the moment it’s certainly sufficient, as long as you don’t want to do anything beyond the basics.

Open Source

Every page of the system uses templates which you can modify. As long as you don’t mess up the code the system can be customized quite significantly with only a knowledge of HTML. MMS is open source and you can change the code to meet your needs if you have the PHP skills to do so.

The Verdict

If you need a simple and customizable solution to sell an ebook or similar info product Motivated Marketing System provides the basic tools. You can set up custom sales pages with sign-up forms to take memberships, integrate one-time-offers and have a basic two tiered affiliate management system all under the one roof. The developers of the product are committed to meeting client requests too so you can expect in the future the software will be even better.

If you are looking for a robust affiliate system look elsewhere. If you need a comprehensive membership system look elsewhere. If you plan to market online by selling information it’s worth having this tool in your marketing toolbox even if it won’t fit every project. If you can’t afford ButterFly Marketing this is pretty good alternative and 90% cheaper.

Reminder: If you want the discount on the package you have until the 17th May 2006 to buy from this link - http://www.motivatedmarketingsystem.com/yaro.html

Yaro Starak
Motivated Marketer

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In case you haven’t noticed yet, the forums have gone through a few changes. I have upgraded the system to the latest version and paid for a license.

With the upgrade comes an RSS feed option which you can now subscribe to for the latest 20 topics posted to the forums. The link is -

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/forums/index.php?act=rssout&id=1

I hope we can see a few new people taking part in the forums now that there is an easier way to stay up to date with the latest posts.

In case you have never been inside the forums before the topics we discuss are focused on Internet business and blogging. Please come visit now and participate.

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