Well despite a whole load of effort, this project has gone nowhere so far – now obviously the Guru’s typically tell you at this stage that its all your own fault for not making it happen! Well in fairness that has not happened on this occasion and Neil Stafford has been left scratching his head and sharing in my frustration!
These two marketers are amongst the nicesest guys I have met and are clearly VERY good at what they do – but ultimately the result is what counts and something has gone badly wrong here with me currently showing 2 ebook sales for a £6k investment after nearly 2 years.
Rather than start again, Neil has offered to support me with a different project – details to be revealed here shortly!
Well life has been very busy with a new job but the New Power Coaching project with Neil Stafford from Internet Marketing Review has never been far from my mind.
To be honest progress has been very slow, but since I last updated the Blog there have been 2 sales, albeit 3 months apart.
The main problem is that although traffic has been building very nicely (over 1000 uniques and 3000 page views per month) they are just not opting in for the free report.
At Neil’s suggestion I tried a Survey Monkey a few months back to try and identify who was visiting the site – in return for responding I offered them a free audio interview I did with Neil – unfortunately despite mailing the whole list (100 names) 3 times I only got 6 replies of which only ONE was my target audience.All my instincts are that the niche I have chosen is not commercial but Neil still seems to feel otherwise – and he is the Internet Marketing Guru and not me!
To try and improve sign ups I have asked for his assistance and once that is addressed we can work on improving the Auto-responder sequence.
If that doesn’t work then we have to rethink the whole approach!
Well it’s been a while since I updated this blog but that doesn’t mean things have been quiet my end!
Reluctantly my target of hitting an online income by the end of this year is not going to be hit but on a positive note though I have secured another job so at least the mortgage will still get paid!
Although it is over 12 months since we started Neil continues to be very supportive and the mentoring continues – I just know that we will get there – just perhaps in a longer time scale than we had hoped!
The good news is that the site is up and running and I have been busy putting lots of articles to my blog and also submitting them to article directories – that isn’t going to result in a quick win but should be quite powerful in the longer run.
I’m totally convinced that my niche is the right place to be – I just need to try and convert what is currently a most enjoyable hobby into a profitable business!
In the short term I have two key objectives – firstly I have to improve the number of people who are signing up to my list – plenty of PPC traffic is coming to the blog, but it’s not converting to sign ups.
Secondly. I have to get more people to my sales page and I know that will be down to me converting the list to customers via the sales page.
Now I can’t tell you how much I paid for it, but I got it at www.Fiverr.com
I’d not heard Fiverr before but it is quite addictive looking down all the tasks that people are prepared to do for a few dollars.
I thought the job this guy did was great – his concept plus one revision. And really quick and keen to help.
I’ve trialled another two content writers. Both are underway at the moment but the good ones do get a queue of work so you have to be a bit patient. However the lady I selected for a content arrticle was new and I was first in the queue and she turned it around straight away. The initial result? Well her written English was fantastic – those of you who have dabbled with other outsourcing sites will know that the quality can be a bit hit and miss – but she was good. Unfortunately in her enthusiasm she missed the brief a bit but when I gave her feedback, she instantly accepted by comments, apologised and agreed to re-write. I’ll let you know the result when it comes through.
The new e-book project rolls on and we are so nearly there – I’ve raised a couple of concerns and Neil Stafford as ever the brilliant mentor has challenged me to justify whether the amendments are sufficiently important. A really good challenge and in fairness I was probably trying to be too perfectionist in some cases which would of course cause unnecessary delays. On the other hand I’m keen to be proud of what I eventually publish so in some other areas I have requested a bit of a review which iis currently underway.
Meanwhile, in order to get other parts of the sales page set up, I had to go an sign up for a name capture / autoresponder service. That was great – I ‘ve been dying to have a go and had no hesitation in signing up with Aweber. The set up process was so easy and so was the process of setting up the opt-in page. The one on this blog was my first effort and I’ll be changing it soon – but on other sites the form looks really neat.
The thing is, it’s a lot easier to set the thing up than to get somebody to click on it – but as I say ‘one challenge at a time’!
Anyway, the thing is the nice people at Aweber have given me my very own affliate code and hence the enormous banner ad to the left! If by any chance you haven’t already signed up, then go ahead and click it – you’ll either get 30 days risk free trial or a shorter trial period for a few bucks – see what the offer is.
As mentioned in the last post I have been trying to change the Header – I have recently had some success with Banner Maker Pro – very straight-forward to use and only about $39 – the one currently on the site may not be very exciting but it is ‘clean’ and represents another leap forward for me!
Oh my goodness – welcome to April – 2010 is just going so very fast!
I’m still working with Neil Stafford of Internet Marketing Review on the e-book project and whilst the end of March has come and gone, it should be ready to go live this month. I’ve been asked to set up my autoresponder account and get Clickbank accounts opened to I guess we should be approaching the finish – or should I say the start line very soon.
Given the original target of building a $100k pa business within 12 months from October 2009, I’m beginning to feel a little bit anxious, but we are where we are and I’m going to press on. Obviously to build such an income is going to take more than one e-book but I’m still working on the basis that it will be the catalyst – I have a lot of faith in Neil Stafford and the New Power Profits Coaching Programme which promised a significant contribution towards my financial targets.
Any regualr visitor to this blog will have seen a number of different theme templates – I’m sorry for any confusion, but this blog is also whereI try out some different ideas. The current Theme is by Eximius and is pretty much what I’ve been looking for. Over the next couple of days I’ll try and customise the header – one small step for mankind – one giant leap for David Lee!
Here’s a really simple idea for getting a product up and running and is taken from a recent post from my friend Martyn Brown of Internet Marketing Bugle which I thought was really interesting and gave an easy to follow idea to get a product up and running very quickly.
Here’s Martyn’s post:
Enter a niche that you are interested in and that you have checked that other people are interested in.
Do this by going to Clickbank, entering your niche keywords and seeing if any books are selling on this subject.
Take note of the ones that are selling well.
Go to www.master-resale-rights.com this site sells PLR books for you to do what you want with.
Buy a book on that very niche (will cost a few dollars).
Tidy the book up, maybe add some images, add text or remove anything you don’t like.
Once done, read the book into Audacity (free audio program: http://audacity.sourceforge.net ) as best you can or get someone with a good reading voice to read it for you.
Save the audio file as an MP3.
Finally, make a slideshow of the audio. Simply list the main points of the audio (bullet points) on an appropriate backdrop and let it run. The end result is a number of slides with bullet points timed to run synchronised with the audio. You will need to run the audio and note the time the slide should change to the next one. Set the time each slide remains on screen and you’re away.
Add images if you want to in order to give better perceived value to your show.
Make up a sales page to upload to your website informing readers that you have a book, an audio of the book AND a video of the book on sale, all for just $27.00.
Optimise the site in order to get visitors or use AdWords and watch your new product sell.
Just one sale will get you all your initial outgoings back.
Just be sure that the niche is SELLING WELL before you make a start on your product, and not on some obscure subject like ‘French Snail Racing’ or whatever.
Martyn Brown
Well I decided I just had to have a go and followed his instructions to the letter.
I bought the resale rights to an SEO related e-book and used Martyn’s method to put it into action.
Now obviously it’s going to take a bit of effort to drive traffic to the sales page but it’s a great way to get started.
The resulting Youtube ‘presentation’ is below and you can see the sales page is at www.MoreWebCustomers.Com . Please let me know what you think!
Well we’re really starting to motor now, and the site is expected to be up and ready to take orders by the end of this month – no pressure then Neil!
So far this month we’ve reviewed the draft book and sent back for final amends. We agreed the domain name and the title for the book and also agreed the art work for the sales page.
I’ve also received an advance copy of the audio product which is Neil talking to me about the subject of the book – sorry guys but the subject is still TOP SECRET at this stage. I couldn’t listen to it myself ( something about ones own voice) but my family have listened to it and they all assure me it went really well. Copy for the sales page is currently in progress – we’re definitely getting there!
In early February the first draft of the e-book was finally received. It certainly seems a long time since the subject was agreed upon and the brief written. In some ways preparing for the telephone interview should have happened before the brief for the book was agreed as nothing focuses the mind more than an impending telephone interview!
That preparation was really good as it defined for me the precise angle that I was trying to come from. The problem of course was that the book was written to a brief that predated that direction! Therefore there was a bit of rescoping required, although nothing too extreme!
Personally I found it really hard not to get stuck in and start re-writing the book as no matter how good the ghost writer is, they are never going to use the same ‘language/semantics’ as you are. Anyway at that point in stepped Neil Stafford with his excellent coaching skills to challenge me as to whether the amendments were really necessary. In the event, I tried to be as amendment ‘lite’ as I could be and I await the final draft with some trepedation
Whilst this has been going on we have agreed domain names and book titles and Neil has engaged copywriters to start work on the sales material.
January 11, 2012
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Posted by David
Categories: Uncategorized
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Tags: Internet Marketing Review, Neil Stafford, New Power Profits