Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Download the MP3 [ 63 Minutes - 15 MB]

I sat down with Mike about a month ago and recorded this interview. I wanted to focus more on Mike’s history and how he went from car salesman working 70 hours a week to an Internet marketer in charge of a 7 million dollar business. Mike has some great stories from his years working at car dealerships and we learn a lot about how he managed to transition from working as an employee to being in charge of an Internet business.

Mike also spends some time in the interview talking about one of his core skills - building buzz using viral marketing - and you will learn about what it takes to create a viral marketing event online.

I hope you enjoy the interview and as always, if you haven’t already done so, please check out my podcast archives for more interviews like this, all free.

Show Notes

1. Mike background growing up in Long Island NY
2. Mike’s time in the car sales business
3. How a SPAM email led Mike to the Internet Marketing world
4. How Mike was “caught” running an Internet business which led to him being forced to quit the car sales business
5. Mike discusses viral marketing with some examples
6. How to build buzz online
7. Tips for starting your own Internet business and a discussion of the three key ingredients for success
8. Wrap-up

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Viral Friend Generator Viral Marketing Software by Mike Filsaime

Name: Viral Friend Generator
Creator: Mike Filsaime
URL: www.viralfriendgenerator.com
Purpose: Plug this software into an opt-in process to encourage viral word of mouth marketing.

Shortly before I released the Blog Profits Blueprint, Mike Filsaime released his Viral Friend Generator software. Since I was about to release a viral report, I figured anything extra I could to do encourage viral word of mouth was worth trying, so I bought the software and had my programmer implement it as part of the sign-up process for the Blog Profits Blueprint.

Viral Friend Generator (VFG) is a simple program that plugs into your opt-in process to create a incentive based tell-a-friend form. When a person requests something from you by opting in (for example entering a name and email into a web based form for a free report), before they are taken to the download or confirmation page, they are redirected to a form that asks them to enter the name and email of friends to recommend the resource to.

VFG sends a personalized message from the person who fills out the tell-a-friend form, telling their friends about the resource and recommending they get it. If the person recommends the prerequisite number of friends, they are sent an email by VFG with a download link to the bonus offered in return for telling friends.

The process repeats as the referred friends come and request the resource, are shown the tell-a-friend form and then tell their friends. If things go well, simply using VFG is enough to create a viral marketing event, feeding the distribution of your resource far and wide.

If you want to see this process in action, go and request the Blog Profits Blueprint. After entering your details and clicking the submit button you will be taken to the VFG generated page and offered a bonus MP3 audio interview if you refer at least two friends. If you refer two friends an email is sent to you from the VFG software giving a link to the bonus. Next you are taken to the confirmation page for the Blog Profits Blueprint, which has instructions on how you can get the report. If you don’t want to tell any friends there is a skip button at the end of the tell-a-friend page.

How Effective Is VFG?

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Product Launch Formula Home-study Course by Jeff Walker

Name: Product Launch Formula
Creator: Jeff Walker
URL: www.productlaunchformula.com
Purpose: Learn the strategies and tactics to launch a product online

It’s no secret that my recent launch process for Blog Mastermind was heavily influenced by some of the big profile Internet marketing launches that have come out over the past year. John Reese’s Traffic Secrets launch, which was the first big Internet marketing product release that grossed a million dollars in 24 hours, paved the way for other big launches, such as Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing (start of 2006 - see my review of the book version here), StomperNet, Pipeline Profits, Rich Schefren’s Strategic Profits (I’m in this program too) and of course, the focus of this review, Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula.

Jeff Walker was involved in some way in nearly every major Internet marketing product launch since Traffic Secrets and it’s because of his wealth of experience consulting on some of the largest launches ever to hit the net, that he is able to position himself as the de-facto expert for conducting a launch online. Because of his involvement in so many big launches, Jeff’s accumulated a vast knowledge, based on real market-tested experience, of the ins and outs of successfully releasing a product (or service) online.

Prior to the big Internet marketing launches of 2005 onwards, Jeff initially built up experience launching his own products, which I believe were focused in the stock trading market, although there were probably other industries as well, before he became the “product launch guy”.

In 2006 Jeff put together a home study version of his product launch process and it was only natural that he conduct a product launch for it’s release. Product Launch Formula is the name of the home-study course he produced and once again he was responsible for making a big splash online, this time for his own product, teaching his launch methods.

I didn’t buy Product Launch Formula when it was initially released, but in April 2007 when I was about to undertake my own launch, I thought it was about time to get myself a copy.

How Much Does It Cost?

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In an effort to increase the level of expert support for Blog Mastermind students, I invited Daniel Scocco from the very popular blog, Daily Blog Tips, to join the mentoring team.

Daniel’s blog has over 3000 daily readers and he dishes out great tips about how we can all improve our blogs. He’s also the guy behind the Daily Writing Tips blog, a new blog that has quickly shot up to over 1000 daily readers.

Daniel initially will be helping out in the private member forums, responding to questions and helping students with any questions they have about building blog traffic, blog design, monetization and more.

I’m very happy Daniel agreed to join Blog Mastermind and I know his contribution will be valuable. I look forward to working with him and expect he will be a big part of the program in the future.

Welcome Daniel!

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Rich Schefren’s latest free report, the Attention Age Doctrine, was released late last week and I just finished reading it.

Like Rich’s previous report trilogy, The Internet Business Manifesto, The Missing Chapter and The Final Chapter (get all three here), Rich is again attempting to re-define the way entrepreneurs go about business and the way we live our lives.

You can get your copy of Rich’s latest report from here -

http://www.strategicprofits.com/doctrine/

If you look hard enough you can find my name in it twice! How cool is that.

The Doctrine, at least what you can read in its current form, which isn’t completely done yet, thoroughly introduces a problem that is relatively new to our lives, yet it is pervasive and certainly all online entrepreneurs suffer from it from time to time, I know I do.

I’m talking about information overload.

If you ever wondered what info-overload is and why we suffer from it (and remember, knowing the cause is half the solution), then the Attention Age Doctrine will thoroughly clarify things for you.

Rich does a great job explaining why more information will actually make us dumber and explains how all the current interruptions in our lives cause friction, which ultimately leads to poor productivity.

The end result of too much information is a hindrance of our ability to enter a flow state, and it’s your flow states that lead to your best output.

I started nodding my head when Rich talked about how some of the most successful entrepreneurs deliberately “disconnect” in order to have time to think and enter a flow state, which is exactly why when I’m out with my laptop writing blog articles I prefer it when I don’t have wi-fi net access because the web distracts me. All I want is my laptop and a nice cafe so I can enter my blog writing flow state.

The Doctrine talks a lot about the current state of the economy shifting to a focus on attention, or lack of it, and if you have read my Blog Profits Blueprint, you know that I talk about attention as the key ingredient for successful blogging too. With so much information people develop behaviors that encourage ever shorter attention spans, hence if you want to be successful in business you need marketing techniques that generate not just exposure - you must have the attention of your audience too.

Rich is using his latest report as a lead-in to his new, pitch-free event, the Acceleration Seminar, happening later this month. The focus is on what to do in your business to get results in an attention-deficit society.

I’d so love to go to this one, but I have to be in Australia all of July, so no traveling for me at the moment.

If I have kept your attention up to this point, I recommend you continue reading and take 20 minutes to scan what is in the Attention Age Doctrine so you can keep up with what Rich Schefren is thinking - he’s certainly one of the most clued-in of Internet marketers I know and his free reports are worth taking the time to read.

Here’s the link again…

http://www.strategicprofits.com/doctrine/

Once you have done that, stop taking in information and go do something - taking action is still the best way to beat information overload that I know of.

Yaro Starak
Avoiding Information

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