Posts belonging to Category Neil Stafford

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!

Regards

David

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.

Onwards and upwards!

David

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.

Catch up soon!

Davidl

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!

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 2010

E Book Project
Can’t believe I didn’t update the blog after the last one – that was the big day when I was going to record my telephone interview with Neil Stafford.
The call went really well and the preparation certainly paid off. The only think I found difficult was that sometimes my brain was trying to recall what I had prepared earlier at the same time that my mouth was engaged in speaking! Not great but I think I got away with it.
Anyway Neil seemed pleased with the results and has promised me a copy to review – trust me I won’t be listening to it but my daughter and wife have already pre-ordered their copies in advance!
The writing of the e-book has been delayed by the author so we’ll just have to sit tight on that!
Secret Project
In my last post I mentioned a secret project I was working on – well that started in early December and was something called the Rich Life System which is all about Sports Trading ( and is nothing to do with IMR). I’m not going to go into major details here but suffice to say it has been a bit of a distraction and has resulted in a refund being requested. If anyone is thinking about getting involved then please feel free to contact me.

Well I’ve almost been out of work for a month – crikey it doesn’t feel like it. I’ve tried to keep a routine going – try to get up at 6AM and put in some time before breakfast and then work until around 6ish. So many interesting things to look into.
The beginning of the month saw me spending a fair amount of time researching my niche and trying to get myself in a position to be able to record an audio product with Neil Stafford. We’re still waiting for the book to be written – it’s been presented to Neil who has reviewed and requested some revisions. I’ve not seen it yet but I’m very excited to.
For the audio product I had to come up with 15 questions for Neil to ask around my Niche – and provide him with outline answers. After a bit of research that wasn’t too difficult to do and feedback from Neil was positive.
Anyway – today is the BIG day and we’re due to make the recording later today. I regard myself as slightly under ready – but I feel it will be more spontaneous if the words I use come off the top of my head – as opposed to using a script. Fingers crossed!
The rest of the month has been around fighting off sciatica and getting such into a new (and secret) project which is not internet marketing but may just help contribute towards the bills.

Just thought it might be useful to mention my experience with outsourcing some writing.

Many times I have listened to people say that you can get other people to write content for you by using websites like e-lance and Guru and they make it all sound terribly easy. Well it all seemed like a bit of a drama to me and I avoided it for years.

Well I have a couple of ‘projects’ underway at the moment and one of them involved writing a report to give away as a download. I was busy writing it myself when I got to one area, and decided that I could do with some help on a particular technical area and that perhaps I should try one of the above websites.

I first had a look at e-lance but something about the sign up process put me off, but Guru was really straightforward. So just as an experiment I posted a project saying that I wanted 1500 words on this particular subject and that I would give more details to interested bidders.
Within minutes I had quotes ranging from $500 to $20 – all bidders have the chance to make a pitch to you and provide additional evidence of their skills. One US bidder made a really good pitch that stood out from the others, he had his own website and had previously worked for Google! He offered to do the work for $35 but couldn’t promise to keep it down to 1500 words! In the end he wrote nearly 2500 words and gave me loads of really useful links for additional background information. A very stress free experience.

With that Guru project successfully completed I then wanted some additional content for my www.horseracingtips-blog.com . I posted that job on Guru and received a bid of $30 to do 6 x 500 word articles on selected UK Horse Racing venues. Now the selected writer on this occasion was not a first language English speaker and I had to ask for a few amendments – but the output will serve my purposes just and when I have time I can always flesh them out a bit.

So my conclusion on outsourcing writers is that Guru is really easy to use and you can get good articles written for a very reasonable price. That said, for anything ‘serious’ I’d want a first language English speaker and I’d expect to pay a sensible price.

Hope that is useful.

Well there’s definitely a head of steam building on this project.

Having submitted my suggested headings, I had another telephone conversation with Neil Stafford of Internet Marketing Review fame to discuss next steps!

To be honest the couple of weeks since our last discussion gave me time to absorb the concept we had come up with and I’m delighted to say that it still feels like a really good idea. Luckily Neil felt the same way and very quickly we had agreed the content of the e-book and have enough information to brief the writer.

Whilst we await the first draft – with a lead time of something like 30 days, my next ‘homework’ is to think about writing my own introduction to the e-book so that it is personalised to me. We are also starting to think about the first upsell product (which is likely to be an audio product) and I need to think about 15 possible areas within my niche to investigate as research material.
I really pleased with the way this is progressing. I’m trying really hard to stay relaxed and simply do what I’m told. The funny thing is that with the coaching, I am relieved of the responsibility of worrying about ‘whether it is a good idea’ and can just get on with the implementation.
Hopefully the next update will be to say that my 15 areas have been submitted to Neil and that the e-book brief has been accepted by the writer and work is underway.

Cheers