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

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Perry Marshall is the first true Internet marketing expert I ever came across. I can’t remember how I found Perry, but he was one of the very early influences on my work online, in particular his email newsletter style.

In this interview you will hear Perry explain how he became an Internet marketing expert, his thoughts on affiliate marketing, why content is so important to success online, why Perry says no to most joint venture requests and lots more wisdom about direct marketing online.

Perry Was The First Marketer I Gave My Money To

Perry’s Renaissance Club membership was the first internet marketing information product I ever purchased. Many of the lessons I learned from that package stimulated some of the very early and most successful pillar articles I have ever written, including my two part series on search engine optimization, which was partially inspired by lessons learned from Brad Fallon on the CDs I got from Perry.

I then went on and promoted Perry’s Definitive Guide To Google AdWords as the very first affiliate product I marketed on this blog, way back in 2005.

Although that first affiliate promotion didn’t do so well, a few months later I promoted an event Perry was running which was offering a 50% commission on a $1500 sale, and I managed to make two sales netting my first ever four figure affiliate income payday. That was a momentous achievement for me and enough encouragement to continue down the affiliate marketing path, leading to where I am today.

What I like about Perry is that he rarely does any affiliate promotions and most of his emails are 99% content with a link to one of his products, if any promotion at all. This style of very soft selling, content-driven email marketing was a heavy influence on my own style of email marketing and I recommend you join Perry’s email course just to see how he promotes his products and delivers value through email.

Show Notes

• Perry explains how he entered the Internet marketing industry
• How Perry landed his first speaking gig at an Internet marketing seminar
• Why Perry was able to convince so many affiliates to promote his products
• Perry’s two key elements of an effective online sales process
• Why Perry doesn’t participate in big product launches
• What Perry considers the two most important variables to track in your online business
• Why email list segmentation is so important to maintain list integrity
• How learning in slow chunks is the key to success
• Why content is critical if you want to become an online expert

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 57 Minutes - 26 MB]

You know how sometimes you get that uncomfortable feel when reading marketing materials, especially long sales letters and hypey emails, and how that feeling can transfer to the marketer so you have this icky feeling about them and what they sell?

I think you know what I am talking about.

There’s one Internet marketer who I have never ever felt that way about and he’s actually the guy I first came into contact with (well his materials anyway) when I began studying Internet marketing many years ago now.

His name is Perry Marshall, and chances are you know him already, probably as the guru of Google AdWords.

I’ve been on Perry’s email list for a long time. I bought his Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - I think it was the first e-book I ever bought online. I also joined his Renaissance Club marketing print newsletter, which is the first product I ever promoted as an affiliate on this blog and still continues to pay me ongoing commissions.

Perry has a certain style and I like it. His information is honest, valuable - he tells a great story - and at least for me, I never have that “hype” taste in my month after reading his materials. In fact it is Perry’s style that I model my own email newsletters and promotions after. You can learn a lot from just mimicking how this guy plies his craft.

Simply put, Perry has my respect.

Work With The Best

If you currently have a Google AdWords campaign and/or a successful business that has cashflow, then you are in the right situation to consider Perry’s Google AdWords Intensive Coaching that Starts September 25.

This is NOT a cheap program and it’s by application only, most people reading my blog probably wouldn’t qualify. However if you are in charge of a somewhat successful online business and you want to take it to the next level and work with Perry personally, this will interest you.

Here are the details direct from Perry -

Is Google AdWords an important part of your business? Do you want to pay less for every single click and earn more from every visitor?

If so, you’re entitled to a rather bold guarantee: If you’re accepted as a team member in Perry Marshall’s 12 week “Bobsled Run” and if you complete the homework assignments, you’ll recoup your tuition by December 2007 (through AdWords cost savings and increased sales), and you will make at least $25K more next year than you would have without the course, or your money back.

Step by step, you will master:

-Google AdWords: Discover the nuances of the most powerful advertising medium since television, and walk away with complete mastery

-Google Analytics: Find out exactly what’s positively persuasive on your site, and what’s not, and plug all the holes (this is where much of the profit-making wizardry is!)

-Google Site Optimizer: Try different headlines, colors, graphics with ease - get double-digit improvements to your opt-ins and sales nearly overnight

-Email, Autoresponders and Copywriting - find out how to develop powerful bonds with customers over time, further distancing yourself from me-too competition

-Sales and Pricing Strategies for maximum profitability - in most cases it’s possible to increase your sales 30-40% and profitability by 60%, with my plan for extracting maximum profitability from every click

-Live workshop in Chicago, October 6-7: Accelerates your learning and implementation with hands-on, in-person expertise.

The course starts September 25. Find out all about it at:

perrymarshall.com/adwords/personalcoaching.htm

Yes this is an affiliate promotion but like I said, Perry is a guy I have no problem recommending to you and if I was a heavy user of AdWords right now I’d be signing up for this myself just for the chance to have Perry as a guy I can call a contact, even a friend, and get to know personally.

Anyway, that’s enough Perry’ lovin. You will know if this program is right for you and if so, please go check out the details and consider applying for a position in his program.

I’m seeing this point made over and over, both in the wise words from the experts (like below from Perry Marshall), from my own experience running Internet businesses and in case study examples of business models that provide the contrary result, which proves the point.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about building an Internet business based on a sustainable, long term model.

99% of the business opportunities that I come across are focused on short term thinking and unsustainable methods of making money. It could be that they rely on using content of little value, or chasing search engine traffic using very inconsistent methods, or relying on tapping markets that are only lucrative short term.

Some of these models may make money, but as the made-for-adsense years prove, something that has little resistance to replicate and provides no real value to people, will not be making money long term.

My income curve has increased significantly in the 8 or so years that I have made money online, yet each time I move up a bracket I again realize that the entire process is about building on past work. In all cases shortly after receiving a nice boost in cash flow, I’m taking big chunks of it and reinvesting in growth and preparing for the future.

The trick is to reinvest current cashflow into sustainable business models, so you compound on your previous work and create greater overall value, even if you reduce your current profit margin - this really is a swimming strategy. This is analogous with taking equity from your current assets to purchase more assets.

Wise Words From Perry Marshall

Here’s what Perry Marshall had to say about this topic in a recent email he sent out to his Renaissance Club members (still the best marketing newsletter I know of!).

A couple of years ago, the rage on the web was clever little programs that generate thousands of garbage pages that get picked up by the search engines. You’d stick AdSense ads on them and make some money - because when people come to a junky page they either hit the back button or click on something that looks good.

It’s getting harder and harder to even find such pages as the search engines get wise to this.

As ephemeral as the web may appear, it really is more like real estate.

Long term value is built over time, and things of value are usually still there years later. There are almost a million sites that link to Amazon, and regardless of what Amazon does or doesn’t do today, those links will still be there tomorrow. Yes, there is the surface turbulence and flavor of the month on the web, but in the long run, real content and valuable links are an investment.

I cannot overstate the foolishness of fake content.

Every now and then we get emails from people that go something like this: “hey dude, i really need to make 5000 dollars in the next 3 days, can your ebook help me do that if it works ill buy your book thanks matt”

Sorry, lower-case matt, can’t help you. If you want to spend your life wandering the ghettos of the Internet, be my guest. But don’t blame me if you get stabbed by a heroin addict.

The Internet is just like real estate. So why would anyone want to build a building this month, knowing the wrecking ball is coming through the East wall next month? When you build on a solid foundation, you don’t have to start all over again next week after the search engines get wise to your game.

Oh yeah, and there’s another thing too: When you build your business on a solid foundation, when you cultivate your customer base, when you nurture your customers like watering a garden, guess what? If you need $5,000 in the next 3 days you can get it. Gotta plant the seeds first though.

Source: Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Club

Perry Perry Perry! - How often can I say this guy’s name! I’ll cut to the chase, yet again Perry Marshall has some tips for us on making sure Google gives you the cheapest click prices in AdWords.

The Quality Score

The metric that determines whether Google will “slap” your ad campaigns with a high cost per click, is called the Quality Score. As usual with Google we don’t know exactly how they calculate it, but we have a good idea thanks to guys like Perry, who have a lot of clients with huge AdWords campaigns - he has some great data from which to draw conclusions from.

According to Perry’s latest update on defeating the Google slap, the main culprits for a low Quality Score are:

• Ads, keywords and landing pages don’t match very well in terms of Search Engine Optimization. For more on this, see my last article on tips for beating the Google slap.
• Too many different kinds of keywords in one ad group and too many different kinds of ad groups pointing to the same landing page are both symptoms of the problem.
• Your site doesn’t have much content, or Google’s bot can’t easily find it. Again, SEO will help this problem as well.
• You’re bidding on keywords that most advertisers have difficulty achieving relevance on.

I realize for some of you, this might seem a bit confusing, but that’s because you haven’t played with AdWords enough yet to get a firm grasp of how the system works. Once you start bidding and buying traffic you start to get a feel of how the software operates and the tips above by Perry just make common sense.

Google needs to keep the relevancy of advertisements high so you need to take extra steps to provide more value to readers when you send traffic to your sites via AdWords.

As Perry explains, here is Google’s point of view:

Imagine that you’re in the search engine business, trying to serve up good results to people who search.

Eventually you figure out that 1% of being a successful search engine is showing good results at the top of the list. The other 99% of your job is eliminating the bad results and the spammers. When Jack Welch was president of GE, his policy was to fire the worst-performing 10% of employees every year. Likewise, Google slaps the least relevant 10% of their advertisers every six months.

How To Determine Your Quality Score

Read the rest of this entry >>

I spent some time yesterday in my jet-lagged state going through mail built up in Brisbane while I was away in Canada - that’s real normal mail, not that fancy electronic stuff we use nowadays.

I have a pile of newsletters and audio CDs from Perry Marshall’s Renaissance club that accumulated over the last six months.

I don’t know what it is about Perry but I like his style a lot more than most Internet marketers, probably because it’s more down to earth and he writes like I write. He rarely puts on a hard sell for anything he does. Although he doesn’t push himself as a copywriter (he’s generally considered the Google AdWords guru), his copy is clean and again, down to earth, and I tend to follow his copywriting style as a template for my own.

Most of the Renaissance club newsletters are about using the web for direct marketing and general Internet business stuff. Perry has the whole formula for marketing a business online down to a tea - run adwords for traffic, use a namesqueeze, demonstrate expertise to make sales and zero in on the ideal customers so they come to you rather than you going to them.

If you would like to join Perry’s newsletter (it’s paper and comes in the mail once a month, usually with an audio CD too) you can check out all the details here -

Perry Marshall’s Marketing Letter & Renaissance Club Newsletter

It’s still the cheapest way to get a copy of his Definitive Guide To Google AdWords ($29.95 as part of the welcome package for joining the Renaissance Club) and if you ever plan to do anything with Google AdWords you have to have this book - it’s the Pay Per Click bible.

Advice On Defeating The Google Slap

There was a section in one of the newsletters on the Google Slap that I want to share with you. If you don’t know already, the “Google Slap”, as it has been labelled, was an adjustment made to Google AdWords that penalized people who used a landing page with little content. It really hurt a lot of people using namesqueeze pages because they suddenly had to pay stupid amounts per click when previously it was pennies per click.

Since then Google has continued to slap advertisers whenever their system determines the site you are sending traffic to has little content.

Perry included an excerpt from an email communication with Glenn Livingston, who had some great tips for beating the Google Slap.

I summarize the tips here for you:

Read the rest of this entry >>