I’m just going to paraphrase as to not give too much away.  One (of the many) ideas that the book presented was relating to contacting people that were seemingly impossible to contact. The idea is that the average person will just assume that they won’t respond. Woah, this makes a lot of sense. And, maybe they would respond if you took the time to try to create a genuine dialogue with them.

I’m going to go a step further and make a set of goals that I want to achieve for each of the “impossible to contact people” that I’m going to try to get in touch with. I’ll probably start with 10 billionaires that would have some insight into businesses that I’m in.

Goals:

1. Create a list of 10 “impossible to contact people”.
2. Find their contact information (phone or email).
3. Contact them without giving up until I get an answer or f-off from them.
4. Create a real dialogue with that person.
5. Get 3 important questions answered.
6. Use that advice to make more money.

I’m also considering a similar strategy for some fund raising that I’m doing for some movies. I’ve just barely brainstormed on this so far but one of the first “impossible to contact” people that came to my mind was James Cameron… you know, the guy that made Avatar. Wow, he would be super hard to contact, right?

Wrong. It would just cost some money to get involved in charities. There’s a charity that’s raising money to take a Zero-G Flight with James Cameron and you can win a seat with him at this eBay auction. Who better to talk to about fund raising than a man that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his movies?

For reference, I did something similar about 4 years ago and met Randy Couture and a who’s who of Mixed Martial Arts stars. I donated (a lot of money) to a charity and got to spend an entire day with Randy. I went to his gym Xtreme Couture before it was finished, had lunch with him his girlfriend, Big John McCarthy and his wife. It was a blast. My girlfriend got to go too. Add me on Facebook if you don’t believe me, I’ve got pictures

Randy personally drove me and my girlfriend to UFC 66 in his TUF hummer, not many people can say that Randy Couture drove them to UFC! The funny thing that happened was that a bunch of Mixed Martial Arts clothing companies and other brands started contacting me. I made my money back in no time doing consulting and other marketing for these new contacts.

When you do marketing, and yes, I’m going to give you the most boring cliché ever, but YOU HAVE TO “think outside of the box.” Be creative, do something others aren’t doing.

So I asked them, “Did you try any other paid traffic sources?” And the answer was: “Are there others?” This shows how little business owners know, even though they think they’re experts, because they read an article on PPC or Facebook marketing. Being an expert doesn’t mean you know the technical terms, it means that you’ve spent 10 000 hours doing something.

Long story short, they agreed to try some other traffic sources, although I can guarantee if they would let me try AdWords, I would make that campaign way more successful than what they did, but they won’t let me, because they “lost all confidence in AdWords at the moment.”

I signed an NDA, so I can’t show you guys their product or service, but I’ll keep you updated on how everything goes. Here are a couple of things they have agreed to try:

1. A press release and distribution – I always do this, and I use PRWeb (not an affiliate link). There are hundreds of similar sites, but I just like that one the best.
2. Improving their presence online, start blogging, social bookmarking and utilizing Facebook and LinkedIn, since that’s where their target demographic hangs out.
3. I’ve had some great success with niche products and buying traffic from StumbleUpon, and I’m going to give it a try for these guys. Some great content will be created for a free giveaway, and then the subscribers will be contacted by the sales people.
4. This is a product/service that just might work for a CPA network, so if we put it on one and it takes off, we’re golden.
5. Media Buying. Those big scary words. I’ve found some potential sites and I’m having some great banners designed, and I think this will be the most scalable solution if it works.

If you’ve run out of ideas, I suggest you take a look at the “Top 50 Ad Networks To Explore”, and find out where they advertise and how. There are a million other sources, but you gotta start somewhere. I’ll keep you updated, and I’ll try to post more “real life scenarios” from my clients. Perhaps even get permission to do an open case study, we’ll see.

Until next time!

15 Ways to increase your opt-in subscribers

The money is in the list.  With a list of newsletter subscribers you can drive traffic with the push of a button.

This post will cover some basics strategies for list building, but if you want to become a list building master make sure you sign up for List Playbook.

A strong online presence starts with a healthy list of subscribers.  The following tips are geared towards any blogger who is looking to significantly grow his (or her) email list.

1. Use a lightbox signup form

In his post: How to Drastically Increase Subscriber Numbers to Your Email Newsletter Problogger Darren Rowse advocates using a lightbox to drastically increase signups.

I use this a lightbox on all of my blogs and despite thousands of leads captured I have never received a harsh complaint.

AWeber has a great form building tool that makes building and installing lightboxes easy. I recommend selecting the option for your lightbox to show only the first time someone visits your page.

A new plugin many bloggers, including myself, have started using is Popup Domination.  Popupdom was launched by Michael Dunlop of income diary, and has sold thousands of copies.  It comes with a variety of templates, and is more customizable than the Aweber lightbox.

2. Include a mini-form at the bottom of your blog posts

I noticed this tactic is being used by many top bloggers such as Daniel Scocco, Yaro Starak, and David Risley.

Using this strategy guarantees that all readers of your blog content will see your sign up form.

Another strategy is to include your subscribe form in the sidebar of your blog so that it is visible on every page in your website.

3. Use a Video to Tell People to Subscribe

This technique is being implemented with great success by internet marketer Yaro Starak on his blog Entrepreneur’s Journey.

Having a video is a great way to show people who you are and literally tell them to subscribe.

4. Integrate a signup form into your Facebook page

Using the facebook app static fbml you are able to include html into the sidebar of a facebook page, or into a tab.

As long as your form is HTML, you will be able to install it into your page using the static fbml app.

You can also add a sign up form to the sidebar of your personal Facebook profile using the app profile box.

5. Split Test

Even if you are a homeless man, it is important to always split test.

Create two web forms, and determine which one converts better.

Don’t trust your intuition and just go with what you think will convert best.  Instead, listen to the stats, and you will get the best results.

Google analytics is always a solid way to track traffic and conversions.

If you use AWeber, their forms have tracking built in.

Small changes in form design can drastically change conversion rates, so test and test again to get the form that works best!

6. Include a call to action in your email signature

Ask people to sign up to your newsletter at the bottom of every email you send.

Simply throw in a line like this:

For great tips and tricks sign up to my newsletter at: http://GarinKilpatrick.com

7. Offer a bonus incentive for subscribers

Incentives to get people to sign up to your list can take a vartiety of forms.  You can run a monthly prize for newsletter subscribers, give away an ebook, an audio book, an eCourse, videos, and the list goes on.

The higher the quality and the relevance of the content you offer for free, the more likely people will be to subscribe.

I have found that my 7 day Twitter eCourse ends up retaining and converting more leads, because I build a relationship with those subscribers during the first seven days when I send them the email course.

8. Offer a password to a “members only” page

If you have a WordPress blog it is very easy to password protect a page.

See the screenshot that shows you exactly how this is done within the “Publish” sidebar box within WordPress.

9. Make subscribers feel secure

According to the Blue Sky Factory post: The top 5 ways to generate and retain opt-in subscribers, “the best way to get a new subscriber and keep an old subscriber (according to 1,400 email subscribers) is to keep their information sacred.”

Write a reassuring line or two under your sign up form letting your subscribers know that you respect their privacy and that you will never sell their email, or send them spam.

10. Run a monthly contest for subscribers

Offer a monthly contest to all subscribers who sign up to your newsletter.

You can give away a gift card, or of you own your own information product you simply can give away one copy a month and it won’t cost you anything.

11. Use Scarcity

Last Friday I netted over 30 more subscribers than my daily average by telling my friends on Twitter that it was the last day that I was offering an eBook for free by signing up to my list.

12. Use a footer form

Although I do not currently have any footer ads installed I have used them in the past with success, and I will use them again in the future.

Footer ads are less invasive than lightbox forms, so they will lower your bounce rate.

You can get a basic Aweber footer slideup plugin for wordpress, for free, that will look similar to the image below.

If you want to get fancy with your footer slide up I recommend you go with the Ultimate Footer Ad:

13. Produce a great newsletter and include a subscribe link

You’ve probably heard it before, because the statement is true: content is king.

If your newsletter is great people will tell their friends.

Make sure to include a subscribe link within your newsletter so that forwarded emails can convert new subscribers.

14. Ask your social media networks to subscribe

Ask and you shall receive.

This marketing technique works not only for netting new subscribers, but also for cross promoting any other community.

Try sending out a tweet telling people to join your Facebook page, or a status update on Facebook telling people to follow you or tweet about your newsletter on Twitter.

If you manage a facebook group you have the power to message all group members at once. Send your group members a message about your opt in bonus and you should be able to get many of them to opt in to your email list.

15. Use Landing Pages

Build landing pages where the sole call to action is for the user to sign up to your newsletter.  Don’t risk sending visitors to your homepage if you want them to convert.

Make your call to action obvious, use arrows and multiple opt-in boxes, split test, and you will solid results.

About The Author: Garin Kilpatrick is an internet entrepreneur, blogger, and the author of The Twitter Tools Book.

Now what the heck do I mean? Well, every time I go to an actual physical meeting (which you should do more of, because that’s how REAL relationships are built), I find out a bit about the person I’m meeting with, and I also find out information about the place we’re meeting at. Why? If I’m meeting a business guy who’s always wearing a suit, and who wants to meet at a fancy restaurant or lounge, I’d have to put my suit on to match. That’s the mistake my friend did.

My friend came in typical California clothes, meaning shorts, t-shirt, sandals, and on top of that, he hadn’t shaved. The first guy we met was from Europe, and I know for a fact that it’s way stricter with business clothing over there. I could see his eyes scanning my friend from top to toe, and he wasn’t liking what he saw. Because of this, he kept addressing me and barely looked at my friend, who was the one the meeting was for.

Now, this isn’t a fashion blog or a men’s style blog, but if you want respect, and if you want to do big business, you gotta look like big business. It’s ALWAYS better to overdress than to underdress in business. If your peers are programmers that don’t shower, shave or wear clean clothes, you might not have to put on your best Armani suit, but at least look like you mean business.

Don’t have a suit? Go get one, and no, it doesn’t have to be the most expensive one to start with. But get one, dark gray usually works for everything here in the US, and make sure it fits nice. Tie is optional in California, but if you’re on the East Coast, I suggest you get one.  And get some shoes too. You’ll notice that people look at you in a completely different way when you look serious.

And that’s it for today’s askmen….I mean Daily Conversion fashion advice.

Peace Out!

Procrastination and inaction.

You could…have the best idea in the world.

You could…have the best keywords known to man at the cheapest bid prices possible.

You could…have a carefully planned out strategy that could make you millions.

You could…have permission to put your link on Google.com.

But, you won’t make a dollar if you don’t execute your great plan.

It all sounds obvious when I put it like this. But, I hear it time and time again that so and so had this idea 2 years ago but never acted on it. Or that someone just ran the exact ads on facebook that someone else was planning.

So you have 10 great ideas, what do you start with?

You start with the one that has the best chance of making you money today.

Don’t start that project that requires 3 months of programming, design and SEO! Start with the one that can make you money before lunch.

That’s all.

I do all sorts of awesome movies, yet I don’t have a single marketing video with my face on it. Shame on me.

That’s all going to change soon.

Here’s what happened.

I met up with a friend of mine today from Boston, Jeff Pezzella. He’s a really bad-ass Product Launch Manager… He’s been involved in some major major launches.

So, we met up today to just jam some ideas back and forth and get another perspective on the projects we’re working on separately. (This works really well, and can give you some fresh ideas.)

Next thing you know, we’re talking about films I’ve done and some of my sites that I have relating to marketing. Jeff asks me why I’m not doing any video. I pause for a good 30 seconds and then say “I have no idea…!”

It sounds obvious, but often times it’s easy to overlook something like that. I mean, I recommend that everyone does videos and I’m not doing any videos. Slap please. Thanks.

So, here’s the first video (recorded with my iPhone) I’ll get a nice camera soon to use for marketing videos.

Meet up with your buddies and talk about your projects, get a new perspective on what you’re doing OR NOT DOING!

I see it all the time. A big product launch is underway and the person running the launch gives out a hefty commission which then elicits people to put BONUSES (aka bribes) out to their readers, lists, affiliates, etc.

They do this to ensure that you buy the product from THEM over another affiliate.

Why not? They want the commission.

So, here’s the formula for BONUS Marketing:

1. First of all, make sure you are allowed to do bonuses with the product you want to promote.
2. Figure out how much commission you stand to make by promoting as an affiliate.
3. Take a look at what your competitors are giving out as bonuses and make sure yours is better. This may entail taking less commission since you’re giving something away that may cost you money. BUT, since you’re getting commission before you give out your bonus it’s not really an upfront cost.
4. Finally, put together your bonus offer. Make sure it sounds great and IS great. People aren’t going to trust you if you promise them a guide worth $2,000 and give them something worth $3.95.
5. Blast out your offer with your bonus to your people.

Bonuses (aka Incentives) can be used for your own products as well.

If you are launching a product then why not give a free trial, big discount or a special report/guide as part of signing up? It’s your own product, you don’t have to follow any strick rules about incentivizing… so why not!

You could make the argument that there are a lot of free loaders out there and that people will just want to take advantage of your bonus with no real intention of staying on your site (or will intend to return your product right away). And, that is true. But you could also get some people that started off with the intention of not sticking around and ended up sticking around because you blew them away with your bonus, product or whatever. So, it tends to even out.

This is generally done for high dollar $1200-$2500+ products that have plenty of leeway to pay out a hefty commission. These are usually high quality products that don’t get a lot of returns. If the commission is high, a lot of people are willing to put in something of their own as a bonus to ensure they get that commission.

A lot of affiliate marketers don’t do this because they are so used to the CPA industry that generally does not allow it. In the JV marketing world, it’s done all the time. When one of our bigger products launches in the next few months, you will all have the opportunity to tag on as many bonuses as you want if you JV with us.

Jim was recently the keynote speaker at Affiliate Summit in NYC. He handed out his book at the event:

The first page of the book poses a challenge to get Jim’s attention, so I decided to take him up on it. Of course, in typical Daily Conversions fashion, we’re going to take that to extremes.

Chapter 64 of his book “Attention This Book Will Make You Money” is titled “Does Making S#*! Up To Get Attention Work?”. I won’t spoil the book for you, but he goes on to endorse doing interesting stuff to get attention.

Negative attention getting headlines are a very real and important part of marketing. No, I’m not going to go around claiming everyone is dead for my next marketing campaign but I’m hoping this has at least opened your eyes up to negative possibilities.

Infinite FB – http://infinitefb.com

No affiliate link, no nothing. I don’t stand to make any money by promoting this. I just think that his Facebook site is GREAT. And, on top of the content being good, you have access to his forum to ask him all the questions you want. Good deal right?

Also, don’t forget, today is the last day to grab a free week on List Playbook.

So, grab your free week on List Playbook, download my 30 page guide then sign up on Ian’s Infinite FB and you will have access to two of the top guys and some of the best content around in the next 20 minutes.

Today will be a productive day for you

A highly successful Chinese-Canadian Actor, Producer, Director friend of mine, Albert M. Chan, approached me about a film that he was creating called Descendants of the Past, Ancestors of the Future about 2 months ago.

As he’s explaining the project to me at his Boston home, a few things are going through my head.

A) He was humble and aware of the fact that he needed help in certain areas, that were outside of his expertise. A great start. A lot of Producers (and businessmen) try to go way outside of their comfort zone and expertise and that can leed to their failure.

B) He had already begun creating a really solid team.

• Emmy®-Nominated Cinematographer Cira Felina Bolla
• Albert himself.
• And now he was talking to me about marketing/fund raising ideas and bringing me on as a Producer.

That’s not even the half of it.

Chances are you’re not in the film industry, so I’m going to tell you how huge of a deal the above bullets are.

First of all, Albert’s first movie that he ever produced Fate Scores he also directed and starred in. That alone is not an easy task to take on all 3 of those responsibilities. The even more impressive part is the massive amount of mainstream success he’s had with the film.

Fate Scores is literally the most successful short film that I know of that has come out of Boston. It WON awards in Toronto and Canadian film festivals (Albert is from Canada originally.) Fate Scores has been featured in MAJOR U.S. film festivals such as Sedona International Film Festival and Boston International Film Festival amongst numerous other Film Festivals in New York and across the country. Major players in the business are and have been seeing this film. (Btw, I was an actor in the film!)

Albert’s acting career skyrocketed. He’s landed major representation and numerous roles in feature films and TV. He had great roles in films such as Ghost of Girlfriend’s Past (was in theaters nation wide), Every Day (featured at the TRIBECA Film Festival) and Life of Lemon amongst numerous other movies. He had great roles on TV shows such as Brotherhood, Law & Order SVU and now Body of Proof. The list goes on.

Cire Felina Bolla is a highly successful cinematographer. She was nominated for an EMMY. Her resume is insane, and she’s worked on films such as Life of Lemon and had involvement with shows such as House. Did I mention she was nominated for an Emmy? Enough said.

My involvement? Marketing, fund raising & production help. Albert’s had tremendous success in the past with marketing and getting Fate Scores in major film festivals (and now a likely distribution deal.) He has come to me for additional marketing and fund raising strategies for Descendants of the Past, Ancestors of the Future.

So, What do I think makes up a great team (in any business or market) ?

• A creative person(s) that comes up with the original idea.
• Someone that drives the project. This is usually the same person that came up with the idea in the first place, as they tend to be the most motivated.
• Solid crew and talent to do things like Film and Act in the movie (using the above example.)
• And a really solid marketing team. These people need to be both creative as well as people who can execute and make things happen.

Or you can try to do it all yourself, and have one heck of an uphill battle. Not recommended

I suggest teamwork. Build your team using some of the above ideas. Make sure you find people that are relatively self motivated or find a way to motivate them to work efficiently!

Want to be part of Descendants of the Past, Ancestors of the Future?

1. Watch the video, explaining the film.
2. Donate some cash and I’ll give you a free 30 minute Skype consult on any marketing or business topic you want. Email me after you donate and we’ll set it up. Check out the different donation levels, you can get some really cool stuff and credits in the film.