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

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?

Read the rest of this entry >>

I’ve promoted many, many products over the past five years of blogging and if you were to ask me what sold best, I’d very quickly say – Product Launch Formula.

I don’t know the exact amount, but I’m confident I’ve generated over $100,000 in sales (probably closer to $150K) of just this one product through each incarnation its creator, Jeff Walker, has released.

This is a real testament to the quality, relevance and power of the strategies and tactics Jeff has taught us over the years. I personally have benefited directly and indirectly more from this one system than anything else I’ve ever studied in Internet marketing. I’ve applied the launch formula to every release of every product of my own, and learned a tremendous amount from other marketers using the techniques. It’s truly life changing stuff, when you apply it.

Simply put – if you’re selling something online you are CRAZY if you don’t know and apply what Product Launch Formula teaches. It’s fundamental training in online selling psychology, which I suspect is a very good reason why it’s sold so well for me as an affiliate product.

The End Of Case Studies

One thing I can unequivocally state is that my blog readers LOVE case studies.

Some of the most popular blog posts I publish are the podcast interviews I do with people who started with nothing, went to work to build an online business, and ended up making big money. These stories are inspiring, educational, and of course great marketing materials too when you use them as part of a lead-in to releasing a product.

This is a tactic taught inside Product Launch Formula, which makes sense, since Jeff uses lots of case studies to promote his own product.

Unfortunately due to the new rulings by the Federal Trade Commission in the USA regarding case study testimonials, Jeff’s decided to be extra cautious and remove the case studies from the web.

Before he does this there’s one particular case study you HAVE to listen to if you haven’t already before Jeff takes it down.

It’s called the Food Stamps to Six Figures case study, or sometimes the Horizontal Helix case study, but I prefer to call it –

The $9000 A Month From A Board Game Case Study

Just enter your email on that page and you will have access to stream or download the case study immediately.

I also did a write up after listening to the case study myself, which you can read here – $9000 A Month From A Board Game?

Product Launch Formula 2.3+ Opens One Last Time Next Sunday

On Sunday and Monday, the final days before December 1st when the new FTC rulings come in that are forcing Jeff to take down his case studies, Jeff is opening up the doors to his Product Launch Formula 2.3+ version of his course (that just means it’s the newest version, lol).

I’m not going to push this too hard as many have already purchased this course. If you have the money for it, it’s a must-have training program, if you don’t, at least listen to the case studies Jeff is giving away before he pulls them down next month – they are free.

I’ll have some bonuses for those of you who order the course through my affiliate link, which I’ll tell you about via email before it opens on Sunday.

In the meantime, go listen to the $9,000 Herb Board Game Case Study before it’s taken offline –

http://www.productlaunchformula.com/

Squeeze Theme is the latest blog theme from the guys at Unique Blog Designs, who are the designers of some of the top blogs in the world, including the one you are reading right now.

Squeeze Theme is a premium theme for the WordPress blogging platform. Its purpose is to add significant additional functionality and scope beyond what the basic WordPress install includes. Here’s a video that explains the key features –

In Squeeze Theme’s case, its purpose is to augment WordPress so you can use it as a tool to create “squeeze pages” (or namesqueeze pages), which are pages that focus on capturing an email address of the visitor so you can build your email list. You can also use Squeeze Theme to create sales pages, and standard blog and blog magazine layouts.

Bear in mind Squeeze Theme is not a custom theme in the sense that you buy a certain blog layout style which you can then change or use as is. In this case you’re getting a tool to create lots of different types of websites more easily using the tools that Squeeze Theme provides.

The idea is if you are not a coder or designer you can buy a premium theme like Squeeze Theme and it makes it easier for you to create all the different pages your online business needs. Instead of having to play with the code, you get an easier to use back-end interface to control all the different elements like style, color, layout and design.

How Much Easier To Use Is It?

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During the last coaching call I did with my members the question of when is the right time to launch your product online came up repeatedly from different people.

The question isn’t about timing in terms of day or night, or what day of the week, or time of the year you should launch, rather what conditions need to be in place to expect a successful opening campaign. Here’s what we’re talking about…

• How many subscribers do you need on your email list?
• How many RSS subscribers on your blog should you have?
• How many unique visitors to your websites do you need?
• How many affiliates do you need?
• How many sales should you expect given certain numbers?

All these questions and many more make up part of the answer to the overall question of when you can consider yourself ready to launch.

It is difficult for me to answer this question with anything concrete because every market is different. However I understand the need for ballpark figures and some sort of reassurance from someone who has launched before, especially if they are your coach and mentor.

What Are The Benchmarks?

Inside Membership Site Mastermind I alluded to the number of around 5,000 subscribers as a good target to aim for before launching, which ideally should be email subscribers if possible.

You can include RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends and fans too, but generally these contact points are less responsive and less targeted than email. Email subscribers, especially when they come through from a targeted incentive like a free report or email course, are more qualified, hence more likely to buy.

Another metric you can look at that is relevant is the open and click through rates of the emails you send. While it’s nice to have 10,000 email subscribers, in most cases you are lucky if 25% of them even open the emails you send. If you’re getting 10% or more of them clicking your links, you’re doing very well.

Given that opening an email is easier than clicking a link, which is easier than making a sale, you can see why it’s important you understand the reality behind the numbers you currently get.

If you don’t track the open and click through rates on your emails, you should start. Outside of this data you can look at unique visitors to your blog or website as another estimate of how much traffic you can expose to your offer, but understand knowing how many people read your blog content is difficult to correlate to how many people will buy from you.

What Metrics Should You Analyze?

Read the rest of this entry >>