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- Sep 4th, 2007
- 28 Comments
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In the series of How To set up a business and Products I have purchased:
One of the MOST essential services required for almost any online venture is an Autoresponder series. In a nutshell this service allows you to collect email addresses and send out prewritten materials on a time schedule you determine. Aweber comes most highly recommended. I am not deluded enough to believe that anyone searching for Aweber will make it to my site, since Aweber has been recommended so many times by top marketers. Yet when doing a product review for items /services purchased, it seems worthy to be the first mentioned, so here goes.
Some neat features:
1) As mentioned. Regardless of when someone signs up, you can have prewritten responses scheduled to go out to them. This is like a relationship in a box business, since once you have completed the initial task of writing up these emails, you go about your daily life, work, etc.. while your autoresponders are building up a relationship with your new subscribers
2) They make it very easy to create a sign up form and provide you with an a little snippet of code to place on your site. You can also choose a page to send the subscriber to following the sign up page, thus furthering your income opportunities while you sleep.
3) Their reports are great. You can tell how many unique visitors viewed your sign up page, opened up emails sent, clicked on which links, etc.. You can also split test. All these tools force you to become a better copywriter, or realize you need to hire one!
4) They are most popularly lauded and used for their deliverability of emails. So many other programs end up in my spam folder, but all aweber accounts go into the inbox. Even Rich Schefren’s emails land in the spam folder.
Some annoying features:
1) If you select double opt-in (a subscriber has to confirm via email their desire to join your list), then automatically ALL of your accounts are required to be double opt-in. Therefore, if you wanted to have a ‘serious’ list of double optins and also run a bunch of niche market campaigns and make it easier on the subscriber, you CANNOT do both! Unless you are willing to purchase a 2nd account.
2) I set up an account for a relative throwing out all sorts of “its awesomes” and “you must haves”. He was going through a site change, but had a really slick backend mailing admin, that allowed him to click on members by state, and other sorts of filters, and then send.. done. He discovered too late that my excitement was not for the ‘easy to use’ features, rather it’s statistics – what %age opened and what %age clicked on the included links. These are really factors that – unusually so – are not very relevant to him. Bottom line – Aweber not a necessity to celebrities, but pretty much everyone else.
3) I havent tried importing from one list to the next or whatever.. I am putting it here since, with a place this careful and anti spam yada yada.. I would assume it would not be a picnic.
Go check out Aweber.
Now.. if you are impressed with what I have said now, but you have NO IDEA how to put this together into a business…. wow are you in for a treat and if that link was lost on you.. I have a product launching soon to help!
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- Aug 29th, 2007
- 53 Comments
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Two days ago I was composing an email attempting to negotiate an ‘I am worth more than you want to pay me’ deal.
I was pretty pleased with the results. Therefore, when my brother Jaron, king of the one liners, negotiator par excellance, hollywood mega bachelor, signed on IM, (ok usually that means Internet Marketing, but now it means instant messenger), I was ready to show it off.
A word about my brother. There are very few people who you will meet in this life who possess his unique combination of talents. When he walks into a room, you NEED more oxygen, since his presence takes up so much of the space. No, he is NOT fat, he just commands attention. Yet he is also a best friend, generous, and very self aware. He can walk into well established companies , and without understanding their product, identify their weeknesees and how to improve. He is NOT a sounding board, rather a problem solver. Period.
I saved our IM conversation. You can see my minimal input in (paranthesis)
To start it off I told him I wrote an email I want him to take a look at….that I was trying to negotiate a better deal for myself..
He knows no details, situation, etc.. but takes off…
“rule one about negotiating”
“and theres only one”
“cant negotiate unless you can walk away”
“if you can and i think you can, do it”
(read this beauty of an email I wrote (not included here)).
“you want my opinion?”
“keep it in your journal and write something more appropriate”
“he’s not your friend”
“he sounds like a lover”
“too much info in here”
(but… we are friends)
“but this email is not about friends”
“its about biz”
“you need to separate the two”
“it has both sides in there”
“and i know you are friendly”
“but that doesnt make it sound professional”
“you need to trim the fat, take out the emotion, take out advising him on what to do, and make it streamlined…”
“here’s the deal etc”
“what I want”
“so just write one paragraph to him”
“he knows the deal”
(but he MAY not know..)
“doesnt matter”
“he doesn’t need to know”
“you don’t need to tell him anything”
“it sounds juvenile”
“i dont understand the pay structure”
(I write it one sentence)
“for starters that needs to change”
“listen”
“you need to be compensated on results + time”
“you need to be compensated on a sliding scale”
“depending on whether it’s your idea or you are doing his”
“if you come up with something your percentages are higher and your still paid your hourly wage to execute”
“and if its his, you execute at a less percentage and the same hourly wage”
“either way, you need to tell him what you want to make”
“that number should be about 25% higher than what you’ll accept”
(I say he is funny)
“its true”
“but lay it out in a few sentences”
“people who are curt are taken more seriously”
“tell him you’re out of there if these requests are not met”
“tell him you have money coming in from other places now and it doesnt pay to keep doing his work when you’re making more from other sources”
(I say lies. all lies (well mostly
))
“welcome to biz 101″
“the art of negotiating”
“thats why im great at it”
“be strong and short”
(arent you nervous to piss people off?)
“never. liars speak too much”
“i can always walk”
“i say it in 3 sentences or less”
“and tell them if this doesnt work out hopefully we can do business sometime when it does”
“no hard feelings”
“keep it simple”
“if you talk too much they know you need them”
“and its emotional”
“keep emotion out of it”
“otherwise your transparent”
“it shows youre hurt”
(you speak this way to women too?)
“honestly? im the most honest person”
“i truly never lie”
“i dont need to”
“and i tell them that”
“i tell girls and people in biz, im too fantastic to lie to you”
“you’re not worth me lying”
“think about how strong that statement is”
“i dont need to lie”
“i dont care enough”
“its such a strong position”
“i just dont wont to be in business/relationship with someone who doesnt get me/it”
(Yes.. the “I couldnt be bothered”.. my motto for over 2 decades)
“but its not apathy”
“its genuine”
“theres a fine line”
“its kindness”
“not rude”
“its strength”
(I interrupt to mention something benign like an analogy of how it’s nicer for a girl to reject a guy than string him along or some personal issue but here is FOCUS for you)
“lets not talk about that right now”
“tell me what you want”
“per hour and percentage”
“what you want to make for the year”
“and come in aggressive”
“get his attention or you’ll be ignored”
“then you want to own a piece of your ideas”
“compensated with a greater percentage when the idea comes from you”
(me: anyways I get what I get per hour if I am shining his shoes or giving him million $ ideas)
“exactly”
(approval! Score!)
“dont explain that to him, he knows it already”
“just tell him what you want”
“and when he plays dumb and asks then you can tell him”
“dont talk too much”
“keep it short”
“just stick to the facts and write it”
Well what do you think I did in the end?
… I sent my original email minus one line (it was 3:00 AM & I was not going to compose a new one)… … HOWEVER .. the lesson he offered has been heard loud and clear and as most lessons.. as you are educated and mature, you incorporate more of these tools for when you need them next and are better prepared.
What do you think of this negotiating style? How do you negotiate?
Here is a great quote from Liz Strauss from a comment on getting your worth
“If there was a problem on their end, we negotiated how we might make it work by adjusting the job, not the price.”
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- Aug 14th, 2007
- 1,260 Comments
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What is an affiliate thief? Well it could be you and me.
2 categories:
1) Clickbank Thief. Deserves its own category. Most affiliate programs DO NOT allow you to purchase and earn for yourself a commission, or rather, spare yourself at least 50% of the expense. Clickbank does. If you notice affiliate marketers pining for your purchase with their amazing bonus offers, it is in large part due to this.
2 caveats:
a) In order to receive the money from clickbank which you accrue while buying items with your own affiliate link, you need to have made sales through several money mediums, 2 types of credit card, + paypal, so unless you are actually also selling to the public at large, you will have a hard time getting hold of your money… ( I speak from experience People!)
b) When it comes to Internet Marketing, once you are clued in enough to realize you can legally do this, it is usually since you have purchased so many IM products and still not found success or that which you find worthy of devoting enough time. Honestly, there should be some allowances for those people who are really interested in testing out a new product, but keep saying NO MORE BUYING, but cant help it every time a product launch is froth with irresistable copy, and underneath is really a sub par product, that you somehow already own something similar in your OWN NAME in a jumbled up collection of products you bought resell rights for!
2) Human Nature.
People do NOT like to see others succeed. I dont know why. If you knew that an item would cost the EXACT same if you were to click on their link and help them earn a few bucks, or if you were to clear your cookies, or open up another browser and NOT buy it through their link.. then WHY oh WHY would you NOT help the individual who sent you there? I find myself guilty of this if it’s a fellow IM’er who I know and I dont want them to know that I am yet again purchasing more products.
Human Nature is a funny thing. When I was auditioning for the NEXT Internet Millionaire Reality Show, I asked people in the Stomper forum (during my trial membership) to vote for me. One woman wrote.. I gave you a 9, since I wanted to reserve the right to give someone else a 10. Lady you can give us all 10′s, I mean GEE WHIZ… some people… none of those videos deserved even a 9
!!
Sorry for that little tangent…
I recently read a report that recommended using http://www.pinurl.com to mask your affiliate links and allow your link to be cookied and avoid people working HARD (yes, some people spend time on stealing your commissions, with NO benefit to them whatsoever).. You just paste the affiliate link and they supply you with a nice truncated code that is indiscernable.
For example. Lets say I wanted you to sign up to Clickbank, so you could sell the items from their marketplace and make tons and tons of money , but instead of mentioning the word Clickbank, I would refer to it as ‘a treasure trove of available affiliate products with skyrocketed commissions that will result in easy no brainer residual income for you’ (good copy on the fly eh? ). YOu may be intrigued to click. So which link would get you more:
http://pinurl.com/27i (What pinurl provided for me)
or
http://theresults.aff20.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=BLOG (the actual affiliate link)
or
http://getstartedtodayonline.dreamhosters.com/recommends/clickbank.html (this is a very popular way to indirectly bring visitors to a site via an affiliate link)
or lets be honest… after seeing one of the last two choices, would you just click http://www.clickbank.com and cut out (at not cost to you) the affiliate marketer?
Are you an affiliate thief?
~~ andrea
P.S. I have been testing out different solutions to combat affiliate thief’s. The first Affiliate Cloner is really easy to use and creates really short and sweet links.
The second, Affiliate Link Cloaker is like the Ferrari Enzo of tools to fight the affiliate theif’s. I have been using it for nearly 1 year. It’s really good at creating professional links that don’t look like affiliate links. Go beat up the affiliate thief today and make them cry rivers and earn more cash!
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- Aug 9th, 2007
- 42 Comments
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As a professional blog imitator, I cant help but notice all the stuff happening on the side columns on many blogs. In my spare seconds, I check out these sidebar features to decide what I NEED to add to my site.
My coolest find? Ironically the one I rejected for a long time. I just didnt see the need to have a few faces of my recent visitors. Well dont judge a book by it’s cover!!
Check out the far right column of this blog – MyBlogLog. It may just appear to you as a list of people who have come round this blog, (all those links go to people whose faces I have seen visiting my site.. this is my thanks back!) but it turns out… it is SO much more. This baby is so neat, I feel like a voyeur on my own site! Once you add the code to your site, they offer crazy stats on your site. I realize Google Analytics probably offers what they offer + more, but it cannot be as simple and easy to understand. Even from Google.
With the stats, I can tell which links were clicked on, and how many times. I can tell which pages were viewed. I can also tell on which sites people clicked to find me, and what time of the day. EVERYDAY.
Here is just a handful of searches on Google that resulted in a click to my site. This means I either showed up in the top 10 (or very near it!) for that keyword:
Google Search: how to email course
Google Search: sales page copywriter
Google Search: rich schefren negative
Google Search: adwords still good ?
Google Search: some easy online steps to make gold in wow (World of Warcraft?? How did that happen!)
Google Search: andrea yager
Google Search: the attention age doctrine part ii
Google Search: next internet millionaire trailer
Google Search: mailing marketing glossary 1
Google Search: adwords salary
Google Search: next internet millionaire reality show videosThis information may not excite you, but with the correct blog and a nice amount of traffic. it could be very powerful.
Since I started writing this post, I realized that feedburner also started offering these stats for free. I just turned them on, so I cant speak for them yet.
What cool sidebar features have you discovered, benefited from, recommend highly, or advise to avoid?
~~andrea
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- Jul 17th, 2007
- 77 Comments
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First of all… Arent their names just the coolest??
I am relatively new to this blogging thing.. only started posting in earnest since February 07 and probably found my ‘voice’ and established my online personality the last 2 months (& still evolving)..
I understand a main feature to blogging success comes from relationships with other bloggers, and to this I owe a big thanks to George, for mentioning me on his blog numerous times, and exhibiting to me firsthand how to become blogging ‘friends’. He has been a huge catalyst, possibly unbeknownst to him, to my shift in ‘blogging’ gears, and providing me with the self esteem needed to realize that I can someday hope to be part of this elite group of bloggers, where he himself resides..
Why Dawud and Ponn??
After spending a little of my very very limited time surfing around other blogs, mostly within my niche, it does not take long before you land on either of these blogs. In fact, I sometimes feel like a ping pong reading one blog post talking about another blogger, checking out that blogger who sends me to another blogger. I am certain I could repeat this post with numerous names in the title.. but I wasnt on a hunt for the lowest alexa ranking and most readers..
Dawud and Ponn are both representing my online goals..
I want to be recognized as a WAHM blogger who is managing her busy hectic life schedule and able to effectively, and affordably consult small businesses on how to succeed online. Basically a Ponn and Dawud sandwhich..
This is small sampling of what I want to learn from Ponn (who I have noticed appears to be under the weather – here is a shout out to your good HEALTH!! – everybody say AMEN):
How do you:
Nourish your children 3x a day
Nourish your childrens minds
Take care of their other needs
and
how do you MAKE money?? Is it just from your Blog or what?? How did you get started?
Did your blog take you places you didn’t know it would, or did YOU take your blog to those places??
———————————————————————————————–
Here is just a taste of what I want to know from Dawud:
How do you:
Create blog posts with so many outgoing links? Do you have a tool that helps with that, or you have to find each site and copy and paste??
Do as you advise and turn your action steps into a realized finished product/experience?
Find your clients?
Have time for your clients, your family, your sanity, your blog, and to still read all those other blogs??
oh and Make money???
I realize I am just a small time fish in an ocean of big time bloggers, but it cant hurt to ask those who you admire how they got to be where they are.. and maybe skip a few stones in the meantime and perhaps.. avoid some glaciers.. I have certainly seen enough of my ventures sink…. so lets get off this deserted island and find the buried treasure.. hahaha ok, taking this analogy way too far
In case you are wondering: I WOULD win the busy contest – I have 4 children, youngest is 7 mos old who nurses all the time and loves to be held ONLY by his Momma! I own a small business, work for someone else, blog, try to make money online yada yada. I dont own a TV, so I am not asking these questions and spending my night watching reality shows (I just try out for them ).
In fact this Post, like my others, took me so long to write due to my many distractions, that according to Rich Schefrens’ new report, .. it cant be as good as it COULD be.
oh well.
Who do you admire out in the blogosphere?
~~ andrea
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