My Favorite Web Stuff

The Promo Dashboard is finally out. Marlon Sanders has done it again! It looks GREAT (no surprise here — I love all his other dashboards too).

But here the thing that was a HUGE surprise:

When I looked at the sales page, I almost spilled my coffee:

I was on it. As a testimonial! Wow! I feel so honored!

Marlon is my all-time favorite internet marketer and you may remember that I was really excited to have had the chance to meet him and chat with him at UnSeminar 5 in San Antonio only about a couple of weeks or so ago.

So please go take a look:

Please Click Here: Promo Dashboard

I just bought it, and have had a VERY quick look, and it looks great. I’ll take a closer look once I’ve written emails to all my friends and family about my picture appearing on Marlon’s sales page, and then I’ll write a review.

So if you’d like to know more detail, please come back here a little later. Of course, you may want to get your very own (be among the very first) before Marlon runs out of the first print run

BTW, here’s a cool (REALLY COOL!) surprise opportunity. If you buy the dashboard, you’ll get a chance to get into Marlon’s inner circle with twice a month interactive phone calls for a ridiculously low price ($1 for two weeks, and after that it’s still as real steal!).

I practically left skidmarks as I lurched for my credit card to get in on this one. No idea if he limits this opportunity to only so many members, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Promo Dashboard

Anyway, I’m going to write more later. For now, I have to tell everybody about the news of the day, and then go play with my shiny new promo dashboard

Have an amazing day!

Elisabeth

Promo Dashboard

(Guest article by Terry Telford:)

Did you know that there are literally thousands of ways to make
money online?

One of the most solid business models to ensure a continual
monthly income is a subscription based membership website.

Members pay a monthly fee for access to a private memberís
area where they can access your information. You can provide
a variety of information in as many formats as you choose.
You can offer articles, reports, audios, videos,
teleseminars, downloads, software, almost anything you can
imagine.

Even if you offer a low cost membership, it only takes a
few members to make a comfortable income. A membership
website that charges $9.97 a month, only needs 300 members
to generate $3,000 every month.

And setting up a membership website has become remarkably
simple with advances in software that can be set up in a
couple hours, even by the average non-technical person.

But while it’s just that simple, once you’ve figured things out,
in the beginning, it takes some time
and energy to put the whole project together. But then it’s
simply a matter of updating, maintaining and marketing. So
let’s look at the steps to put together a successful
membership website.

Step 1
Choose a market. This is critical. You should look for a
market youíre going to enjoy working in as well as a market
people spend money in. People spend money where they are
passionate. Markets like sports, pets, business, and hobbies
all make hot markets to launch a membership website

Step 2
Test the market. Visit forums and chat rooms and ask people
if they know of any good websites that offer up-to-date
information.

Step 3
Use your research from Step 2 to develop a rough outline of
what your website will offer your members

Step 4
Write a sales letter and have the graphics professionally
designed. If you canít do this yourself, hire a freelancer
from elance.com or guru.com

Step 5
Set up the membership software to run the site.

Step 6
Populate the site with your content

Step 7
Market your site and let the cash flow begin.

7 simple steps and youíve got a membership website that
will generate a solid monthly cash flow for you. Each step
takes some effort and energy, but you can have your first
membership website completely set up and running in less
than a month. Then you can repeat the process as many times
as you like to increase your membership portfolio and your
monthly income.

URGENT UPDATE

Here’s great news: for 7 days, you can bypass the whole
membership website creation process.

Now you can get your complete membership website,
ready to upload to your server today. You can have a fully
functional membership website ready to take orders in the
next 2 hours. It’s only available for 7 days (or until they
sell out, so make sure you visit today.

Want a membership site? How about an instant membership site where almost everything is created FOR you? Except that you can customize it any way you want?

Sounds too good to be true? Depends on who’s offering it. This one is the creation of Terry Telford and Edwin Ryan. I know Terry Telford — met him at the Las Vegas Conference (Masters Seminar organized by Ross Goldberg), and Terry is not only a really nice guy, but he’s also brilliant!

So when I saw this offer, it was irresistable. And it’ll be gone in a flash.

They say it’ll be available for only 7 days — BUT there’s a second part: or until sold out, and I would bet that it will sell out WAY before the 7 days are up.

I knew I had to have one and so I immediately jumped on it. So look for invitations to join MY membership site shortly

Where can you find this amazing offer?

Right where it says Instant Membership Site.

Do Check it out and let me know what you think…

Plus come back soon, coz I’m going to give a way a few FREE reports very soon!

Instant Membership Sites Here!

Oooh, and if you like, feel free to check out my Squidoo lens on the subject.

If you liked the Faster Webmaster I (you know the one that helped Erik’s Grandmother create a website from scratch, and his Mom too), then you’ll LOVE The Faster Webmaster II.

The new one is a total internet marketing blueprint and solution, and all of it in Erik’s special take-you-by-the-hand step-by-step method, which is friendly, unintimidating, and this time helps you actually build a whole business from scratch.

What questions did you have? Chances are, it’s covered.

Check it out right here: Erik’s New Course

And even though Erik Stafford has made quite a fortune over the last year (so he knows of what he’s speaking!), he’s still as nice as he was when he first came out with the Faster Webmaster Version I.

He actually answers his own emails, and gives helpful advice. How’s that for cool?

Anyway, go take a look at the new Faster Webmaster. and build that e-biz already. You’ll be glad you did.

Marlon’s new Promo Dashboard will come out really soon, and in the meantime, he has this really cool video where he gives you a nice down-to-earth rundown on how successful internet marketing works. When he puts it like this, it sounds easy — don’t know why it seemed so complicated…

And with the promo dashboard, I’m sure it will BE easy too — if it’s anything like his other dashboards, he’ll lay it out STEP by STEP and all you have to do is follow along.

About that $300? Yes, that’s right. One lucky person will win $300, and no, you don’t have to be an expert. All it takes is watch that 10 minute video, which all by itself could help increase your income if you follow some of his advice in it, and then post a comment on Marlon’s blog (there’ll be instructions at the end of the video). Marlon will pick the one he likes best, and voila! $300!

There’s a second price for someone who’ll post a video comment too! So fire up your flip video or whatever and have some fun.

Good luck with winning a prize!

Elisabeth, who’s going to compose her own reply for that promo dashboard blog.

Today, I have a guest post/article (reprinted with permission from Marlon Sanders’ blog). Marlon is probably my all-time favorite internet marketing guru. For starters, it’s mostly because of his amazing product creation dashboard (where he led me through the product creation process in baby steps and provided all the tools I needed to actually do them) that I now have an actual product and am working on more!

And guess what! I actually got to meet him and talk with him in person at UnSeminar5, where he wasn’t even scheduled to speak or anything. He just showed up to hang out! And he gave me some GREAT advice on how to fix a very frustrating problem I’ve been having.

Now I like him even more. Not only is Marlon brilliant and has fantastic products, and not only does he stand out because he’s so refreshingly unpretentious and down-to-earth in a field (internet marketing) that’s so filled with hype, but he’s also REALLY nice (and fun!).

So here’s now his article, which I think is excellent and very useful, and I’m publishing it here in hopes that you’ll find it as helpful as I did. Enjoy!

Marlon’s article:

7 Steps To Promos That Work!
How To Find Your Target Folks, Get ‘em On Your Email
List, Then Send Out Emails That Get ‘em To ACT! …

And What You Can Do Starting Today!

By Marlon Sanders

The formula for making sales online isn’t particularly complex.

1. You find out where your people hang out
2. You find ways to reach ‘em with your message
3. You offer ‘em somethin’ free to get ‘em on your list
4. Capture their name and email on your Squeeze page
5. You send emails
6. From emails you send ‘em to multiple conversion processes
7. Follow the 3 laws

Let’s break this down.

1. Find out where people hang out.

This means you find the forums they hang out in, the blogs they read, the sites they go to.

That way, you can do your surveys, run banner ads, and find the folks who have the lists.

2. Find ways to reach ‘em with your message.

a. Find out where you can buy banner ads

How about the forums? The blogs? The web sites?

b. Look for text links too

If you can’t buy banner ads, look for Google Adsense on pages.

c. Who owns lists and sell products?

You’ll know these people because in their sig line on their forum posts they’re offering something FREE. In the article directories you’ll see their articles. And at the end in the resource box, they offer somethin’ free — JUST like you wanna do.

3. Offer ‘em something free to get ‘em on your list

Give people something so enticing they HAVE to join your list. That can be a free audio, ebook, PDF, video or newsletter. Or anything else that’ll get ‘em on your list.

Run banner ads or Adwords ads offering something free. Come up with a freebie the folks with lists can send out via an affiliate link, so a cookie gets set.

Write articles with your freebie in the resource box and submit those articles to the article directories.

4. Capture their name and email on your Squeeze page

My friend Jonathan Mizel coined the term Name Squeeze page. To PROVE he invented the term, he trademarked it. In case you’ve mistakenly read someone else invented it.

Anyway, you offer a freebie on a page where folks get the freebie if they join your email list. Not so complicated here.

5. Send emails

This means firing up your autoresponder and loading up emails.

It means learning to write subject lines, format your emails and write bullet points that arouse curiousity and get people to click.
You gotta become a master bullet-point writer.

It also helps if you can spin a good story, just like you do with your friends over the phone or at the coffee shop.

You mix in value with or between your pitches so your open rate remains high. A lot of people make the mistake of watching their unsubscribes alone.

You gotta monitor your OPEN rate. That is crucial. It tells you if you’re getting or losing attention. This is an attention economy.

6. From emails, send ‘em to multiple conversion processes.

In other words, you send an email offering a free video. The free video gives a pitch for something.

Or you send ‘em to a podcast.

Or you send ‘em to a free report or a sales letter.

Or you send ‘em to live streaming video.

Now, WHAT do you sell?

Initially, sell affiliate products. Make Camtasia or CamStudio videos that do your pitches.

Or write pre-sell pages that give a little pitch before you send people to an affiliate link. You know, warm ‘em up first!

WHICH part of this process is the HARDEST for you? Which part do you need the most help with?

Hit me back on my blog by clicking the COMMENTS at the end of this article.

Do you buy into this process? Or are you following some other system? If so, what?

Is this so “old hat” you don’t wanna hear about it anymore?

Or are you STUCK somewhere?

7. Make an irresistible offer.

So now the person has gone to your audio, video, blog, or sales letter.

Now you gotta sell ‘em something.

With first time prospects, give ‘em your best offer.
Probably something cheap or free. Although it depends on your market.

One of my friends offers a free book then sells a $4,000 software package. When 3% of the people buy it from the book, the numbers add up.

Others offer a $1 membership offer that goes into recurring billing after 14 days. That is, after 14 days they’re charged for the membership site unless they cancel.

And they get charged every month. When you have 2900 people getting charged $37 a month, it adds up.

7. Follow the 3 cardinal laws

a. Protect your business number one

Follow the law. Pay your taxes.

b. Maintain the goodwill of your list

Don’t milk your cow so much he/she dries up. Offer value to your list. Keep that relationship up.

c. Make sales

What you can do TODAY: You start with step one. Go find out where you target market hangs out at. What blogs do they read? What ezines do they subscribe to? What web sites do they go to? What forums do they frequent?

Then, when you find that out, look for banner ads you can buy, blogs you can run ads on, text links you can buy, pages with Google ads on ‘em.

And start looking for the folks who have the lists.

Marlon Sanders

P.S. Here’s what I want you to do: Go to my blog and tell me if there’s a step here that hangs you up or you have problems with. Be as specific as possible:

Just hit COMMENTS below this post.

Is this all old hat to you? Too common sense? Do you want something newer or sexier? Or what’s STOPPING you from following this formula today?

Here’s the thing: My new Promo Dashboard will walk you through most of these steps and much more.

But I NEED to hear from YOU because I need to know WHAT to put in it to help YOU the most. I need to hear your feedback on my blog.

———————————————————–
Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Info Product Dashboard.”
If you want to create your own info products, go to:
http://www.productdashboard.com

Note by me: Do check out his Info Dashboard. The motivational video alone is worth clicking on that link — it changed my life!

The second day of Pat O’Bryan’s UnSeminar5 is almost over, but not just yet. At the moment, there’s the blues show featuring Pat O’Bryan and Joe Vitale and others. They rock, and I’ll be back there in just a minute.

But I just wanted to tell you about a little embarrassing snafu. Turns out, some of the opt-in forms here seemed to miss the “submit” button, and I hadn’t noticed (just wondered why so few people signed up!).

I fixed it now, though, and unless this blog messes with my forms, it’ll stay fixed too!

So if you want to get on my Internet Marketing Step-By-Step Newsletter, here’s where you can sign up:

And yes, I will respect your privacy completely. Your name and email address will be neither sold nor otherwise shared. And of course, you can unsubscribe at any time with the handy-dandy unsubscribe button at the bottom of every single email.

Now back to the show!

Elisabeth

I’m here at UnSeminar5 where I learn to build and expand my portable empire

You know about Pat O’Bryan’s “Portable Empire,” don’t you? One of my favorite books (sitting right next to Tim Ferriss’ “4-Hour Work Week” and, like that book, inspired me to take my economic fortune into my own hands.

Arrived late last night (lots of delays due to assorted “weather” across the country). In fact, I almost didn’t come because I was so worried about the hurricane (I’m a chicken!), but there wasn’t any hurricane there when I got here!

Just had breakfast in the very nice Drury Hotel in San Antonio and getting ready for the first session. Can hardly wait for it to start. Will report back!

P.S.: Why the long delay between the last post and this one? Relapse of the flu! Details on my self-help blog.

What happens if an English professor discovers internet marketing? Or at least THIS English professor, technically a linguistics professor teaching in an English department at the time?

Well… I was fascinated! For two reasons:

First, I’ve been studying persuasion and how people get other people to do things with words (or at least try to), and so when I found myself reading marketing emails and salesletters and couldn’t get my credit card out of my wallet fast enough, I started wondering….

How in the world do they do that? I have great respect for masters of persuasive writing, and so I started studying the techniques they used to make me feel like I simply HAD to have whatever they were offering, and have it NOW. And not only that. Many of the dozens of people who fill my inbox on a daily basis are starting to feel like they’re my friends. This is copywriting artistry!

After a while, my scholarly interest turned quite practical. Hey, I wanna do that too! And once I started earning my first affiliate commissions, I was hooked.

And as I started learning about internet marketing and saw what worked, cleaned up my mistakes, and gleefully put up blogs and websites (this from someone who used to hate computers not so long ago), I had yet another idea…

See, I spent years teaching grammar, and had made it my mission to explain it in a way that makes sense. I liked to empower people to discover how grammar works from the inside out. So what does that have to do with the internet?

Plenty! Learning about the internet can be daunting, and it involves quite a bit of complicated technical stuff. Like grammar And I’m good taking complex technical information and breaking it down into small, digestible parts. Sooooooo…

Why not teach what I’ve learned (and keep learning)? And thus was born my new email course on internet marketing step-by-step. At the moment, it’s in its beta version and you can actually get in for FREE. Eventually, I’ll turn it into a paid fixed term membership, where people will have to pay to get their once or twice weekly lessons.

So this is what’s in it for you: If want to make money online and you’re new to internet marketing, or if you’ve tried your hand at it for a while but haven’t gotten results, or you’re just really confused and/or frustrated, this is your chance to learn for FREE from someone who has plenty of experience explaining complicated stuff in a nice and friendly step-by-step format.

How can you get in on this? Simple! Just fill in your first name and email address in the box below and make sure you look in your inbox for the confirmation email. Open that and click on the confirmation link. And that’s it!

And of course, your email address will NEVER be traded, sold, or otherwise given away. I hate spam as much as you do, and I’ll safeguard your privacy. And if you ever want to unsubscribe… every single email will come with a handy-dandy unsubscribe button. Naturally, I hope you’ll never want to use it

There’s even a free ebook for you once you’ve confirmed your subscription.

See you on the other side…

Elisabeth

Yup. That “secret” technique is not something you hear a lot about in all those “how to build a list” books and workshops. Why? Maybe they want to keep it all to themselves?

When I first found out about it, I was a bit concerned. Was this legit? Would it work? It sounded almost too good to be true. I mean, the last thing you want is a spam complaint, so it’s generally a good idea to be very careful about services that promise tons of subscribers overnight, especially if those subscribers come in the millions for just a few bucks. That’s a spam disaster waiting to happen.

But in this particular case, the answer to both of the above questions turned out to be a resounding YES! It is possible to accelerate your list building process and there are legitimate ways to do so. And yes, those legitimate ways are considerably more expensive, but, well, you won’t have to worry. And I found a service that meets both criteria and works really well.

I tried it, and now I’m a convert and my lists (note the plural!) are growing at the sort of brisk clip I had been hoping for all along.

Is it free? No. Is it expensive? Not very, especially not when you think of building your list as an investment and consider what it will help you earn over time…

Okay what the heck am I talking about? I’m talking about an organization, owned and run by a major authority in list building, where you can advertise your newsletter and people will sign up for it. Yes, really. They will. It’s a process called co-registration. And it’s totally legit.

Every day you’ve had sign-ups, they’ll send you a file with your new subscribers and you then add them to your autoresponder service.

And there’s the rub… Aweber, the most-used autoresponder service won’t allow what they call “purchased leads.” Technically, these leads are indeed purchased insofar as that you pay for them, but what you really purchase is the advertising and the logistic arrangement of having them gather up the leads, making them confirm their subscription and then passing them on to you. That’s very different from those other offers floating about on the internet (you know, the millions of email addresses for ten bucks kinds of offers).

So where CAN you import those links? Fortunately, my favorite shoppingcart system does allow you to import them. And yes, they’ll make them confirm AGAIN and only about a third or so of them will do so, so you’ll lose a few.

But hey, those people probably would have unsubscribed sooner or later anyway and probably wouldn’t have ever bought anything. So it’s not THAT big a loss. And on the bright side, that extra layer of protection will protect YOU — from spam complaints — so I’m not complaining.

How much does this cost then? Thirty-seven cents a lead, counting those they send you by email. Eventually, every lead I’m getting out of that co-registration system (i.e., every lead that actually confirms again and makes it onto my personal list) costs me about a dollar, maybe a little more.

And with expert opinion being that every subscriber on your list eventually averages you a buck a month in income (and potentially considerably more if you treat your subscribers well, which includes providing them with quality information and building a relationship with them), investing in leads through a co-reg service is such a no-brainer I can’t believe it took me so long to finally figure this out.

So that’s the secret. Obviously, I’m using the other list-building strategies too — I publish articles, and post on forums, and yes, I’m getting subscribers that way too, but co-reg just works like a charm and so much more quickly.

And that is important because I’m going to start launching my first teleseminar very soon (stay tuned), and I do want some people to show up!

So if you too want to turbo-charge your list, check out http://www.turbo-list.com, and if you need a shoppingcart system to go with it, get a FREE 1-month trial at the best integrated shoppingcart system around, which also happens to be the one that allows you to import your shiny new subscribers.

Happy list building!