I wish I did this.

One guy (Stefan), with one camera and two action-figures of stormtroopers, managed to get a massive following.

Stefan called the project “Stormtroopers 365″, and set out to take one photo of the two toy stormtroopers, TK-455 and TK-479, each day, for 365 days. The last picture in the series was published on April 4, 2010. Each photo taken was creative and unique.

1) About Stormtroopers 365

This is taken from his website, http://stormtroopers365.com:

“Stormtroopers 365 is a photo project starring TK455 and TK479, Stormtroopers in the Galactic Empire Army.

The project spanned from April 2009 to April 2010. Each day during this year, a new picture was added to the series.

The pictures are posted to Flickr. This is where you need to go. You can also go to the Gallery page here but honestly that’s the same, you’ll eventually end up on Flickr. Face it, there’s no escape.”

You can view the Flickr steam here: 365 Days of Stormtroopers.

2) What he Accomplished

Throughout the year, as Stefan posted a new picture each day, his project gained in popularity.

He provided people with many ways to keep up with his project, such as with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, RSS, email, and more. A method for each type of preference.

Before he knew it, his list of followers grew larger and larger. Why did this happen?

1. People love consistency
2. People love to be entertained
3. People love things handed to them

All his subscribers had to do was sit back and relax, and everyday they would get a little notification telling them a new photo was up. It involved no work at all on the user’s end.

Moreover, it took no time. People love to be entertained (hence why certain videos on YouTube will always be popular), however people do not like to offer up too much of their time; especially if it’s needed daily.

If you had to watch a 5-minute funny video right now, I bet you would. Though if you had to watch a 5-minute funny video, everyday, for a year, I bet you would lose interest.

Pictures are wonderful things. A person can look at one for 3-seconds or 5-minutes, it’s up to them. They are not forced to wait 5-minutes for a video to play out to see what’s funny, it’s presented to them immediately.

Also, pictures are sent around. They are put on blogs (like this one), they are emailed around (think of all those dog and cat pictures your mom sends), and they are constantly linked to. Especially when they are funny and unique.

Here’s a quote from Stefan he made at the end of the series:

“Thank you to everyone who followed this series. When I started one year ago, I would never have imagined that it would get so much attention. I’m glad you enjoyed it, it was a lot of fun to do.” – Stefan

The series gained enough popularity and respect, that some of his work will be at the Arty Gallery, in L.A., in April and May.

For far he’s had 1,303,022 views.

How awesome is that?

3) How to Make Money from Something so Simple

Now with all these followers, Stefan offers people the chance to buy signed prints of any picture in the series. And if you think hard enough, I’m sure he could think of other things to sell as well (maybe auction off the toys used).

Also, if he hosted the pictures on his website, he could have raked in some Adsense revenue as well.

Now he has plans to start up another 365 day series. And he already has a massive following to start with.

4) How you can Implement this

All you need to do to start something similar, is get a camera and take one photo a day of something entertaining, and make it a series. It would be best to toss a website up around it as well (a blog would work perfectly for this).

A few good examples which I know will work are:

• 365 cute pictures of your cat
• 365 pictures of a garden gnome in random places in your city
• 365 pictures of a building being constructed

Imagine the possibilities?

Good luck out there,
~ Corrado

I’m guilty of this.

I made a YouTube video that had a great subject matter.

It was loaded with excellent content, great advice, plus it was entertaining and enjoyable to watch. At the end of the video I had a message mentioning to visit the website for more great tips and advice.

I put it on YouTube thinking that in no time flat, I’d be getting massive amounts of traffic: even though the video has received over 150,000 views to date, I was very wrong, and here’s why.

1) The Facts

I told people to go to the website to get more tips and tricks on that subject matter. Though when you think about it, why would they?

Fact 1: The viewer is familiar and comfortable with YouTube.
Fact 2: The viewer can surf YouTube and find everything they want.
Fact 3: The viewer knows nothing about the website you are telling them to visit.

2) the Big Question

If you boil down those above facts, you end up with one very important question. And the answer to this question should be the focal-point of your marketing of that video. Here it is:

Why would a viewer leave a website that they are 100% comfortable with, and know is loaded with other videos giving advice on the same subject matter as your video, to go to your website?

That question might be difficult to answer at first. And if you can’t find a good answer, then realistically, you will have a very hard time convincing viewers to click on over to your website.

But, there is an easy way to solve this dilemma.

3) How to Find The Answer

One way to get viewers over to your website, is to offer them something they cannot get at YouTube.

For example, if your video is on cooking that perfect roast beef; in the video and description, tell them to go to your website to download/print the recipe (It’s very important that you provide them with a clickable link to do so).

>>> Check this video out as an example: How to BBQ Seafood

For example, if your video is on a quick way to lose weight; in the video and description, tell them to go to your website to download a PDF that they can use as guide to help them lose weight (Or, provide a direct link to the PDF in the video description). It’s important though to make sure you have links in that PDF back to your website.

For example, if your video is on 5 methods on getting more web-traffic; at the end of the 5 tips and in the description, tell them you have 5 additional traffic-getting tips for free on your website.

4) Summary

Make sure that after watching your video, the answer to the big question is obvious to you and your viewers.

Make sure they have a reason to leave their comfortable YouTube and click on over to your unknown website: the trick is to provide that little bit extra content that they cannot find on YouTube.

And to make it easy for them to do so by providing a clickable link.

Good luck out there,
~ Corrado

PS: You should never make a video on the top 10 hottest celebrities for example, show only 5 of them, and tell them the rest are on your website. This will just upset and frustrate your viewers. The key is to always over deliver.

This second part can make your productivity really soar.

I found an easy system that works really well for me when it comes to increasing productivity: it involves the combination of two simple parts.

If you haven’t yet, make sure you read (or at least skim) the first part; it shows how to make a great To Do list that works.

The Second (and last) Step – Setting a Quota

1) The Low Quota

Now that you know how to make a To Do list that will help increase your productivity (as opposed to taking away from it), the second easy step is to simply set yourself a quota.

Start off with a quota of 1.

What this means is that each day you need to cross off at least 1 item off of that ToDo list. That’s it, just 1.

So if you wrote “make a To Do list,” and then made one, you’ve just completed your daily quota. Congratulations!

If every day 1 item is crossed off that To Do list, every day you will be 1 step closer to your goal.

Now, I bet that you will not be able to keep a quota of 1 for very long; I bet that after the first day you’ll be doing at least 2.

2) Increase the Quota Slowly

Increase the quota every time you feel the need to. If you find that a quota of 1 is way too easy, and that you should be doing more, then up it; move it to 2 or 3.

I personally keep a quota of about 6. And since each task on my To Do list takes at most an hour, I can budget my time; I know my day will involve a maximum of 4-6 hours.

Normally, I’ll spend an hour late in the morning working, crossing off 1 or 2 items, take a long extended lunch break, then work a couple hours here and there throughout the afternoon…and I’m done.

You don’t need to fill your quota all at once; space it out over the day. Take breaks, relax, do what you want, work when you feel like it.

4) How to Fast-Forward

Sometimes, I’ll take a look at my To Do list and I see that it’ll take me about 2-3 weeks of work to get it all done.

And if I don’t want to up my daily quota (or can’t), I’ll hire someone for a temp or contract job.

I personally love to design and build websites, but I always don’t have time to actually code and build them.

I always think up great ideas for websites, and I know that I’d never be able to program and build all of them; it’s just not feasible. So I’d hire someone to build them for me.

Because I’d have to pay someone, it limits my ideas to ones that I’m confident would create a return in my investment. This also helps my productivity because I definitely don’t want to waste my time and money.

5) Summary

1. Make a proper To Do list where each job takes less than an hour.
2. Set a small quota of the amount of items to complete in a day.
3. Take your time and space out your work.
4. Increase that quota whenever you see it is necessary.
5. If you need to fast-forward the completion of your list, don’t be afraid to invest a bit of money in hiring a contract worker.

Good luck out there,
Corrado

PS: This blog post just filled up my daily quota.

Everybody would like to be successful.

Especially with as little effort as possible.

And the biggest problem with people (in general), is that they have a lack of productivity and motivation; this includes me.

I’ve accomplished a lot of things so far in my life, but only since I figured out an easy way to make me more productive.

I found an easy system that works really well for me: it involves the combination of two simple parts.

The First Step – Making a ToDo List that Works

1) The Bad ToDo List

I think it’s safe to say that almost everyone has made a “To Do” list before. I think it’s also safe to say that the vast majority of To Do lists fail.

The secret to making a successful To Do list is to keep the list detailed. Here is an example of a very short and very bad To Do list.

• Make a new website
• Write a salesletter

Even though this To Do list only has 2 points, this list will never get done. The tasks are too big, too daunting. Each task can take a week in itself.

I used to make To Do lists like that, and I would sit down ready for work, pop open the list, and read through the items: nope, nope, don’t feel like that one, ugh, that one will take all day, etcetera, etcetera.

And after reading that list, I would feel extremely demotivated and just check my email instead.

2) The Good To Do List

Here’s an example on how to make a much better To Do list.

Make a new website

• Sketch a design on paper
• Finalize the sketch
• Type a rough draft of the copy for the “main” page
• Type a rough draft of the copy for the “about” page
• …
• Finalize the copy
• Start creating the layout in Adobe Photoshop
• …

Write a Salesletter

• Gather testimonials
• Make a point-form list of all topics to cover
• Brainstorm possible headlines
• …

Even though this To Do list is huge, this will get done; each task can be done in less than an hour.

Once I started making lists like this, I would sit down ready for work, pop open the list, and read through them: yeah, I can do that, this one will only take 20 minutes, etcetera, etcetera.

Next thing I know I’ve already crossed a few things off the list and it’s only been an hour.

3) Summary

The way to making a successful To Do list, and therefore completing half of this easy system, is to:

1. Make each item a job that will take you less than an hour — or less than 30 minutes if that works better for you.
2. Make sure each item takes you closer to your final goal, even if it’s only a small step closer.
3. Make the To Do list a plain text document (just use Notepad), and place a link to it on your Start menu or Quick Launch bar.

And sure, you can even add “make a To Do list” as the first part of the To Do. It’s still a step that takes less than an hour, and it’s a step that brings you closer to your final goal.

The second step of this easy system is the part that can make your productivity really soar.

Good luck out there,
Corrado

PS: I just crossed “write a blog post” off of my To Do list.

It’s probably the most important thing.

People talking about your product, posting about it, emailing about it, arguing over it, Twittering about it; the more talk, the more hype, the better.

Of course, there are hundreds of ways to get it. But there is one method I’ll definitely be implementing on my product launches that I want to share with you.

I’ll even let you in on a fun secret; it’s really easy, and I took this idea from a video game.

Yes – a video game: Team Fortress 2 to be exact.

Every so often they release a major update to the game and the hype created around it is fanatic and amazing to watch and be a part of.

The 3 Easy Steps

1) Think up a release schedule for your bonuses

If you know your awesome product is going to be launched on July 1st, 2009, and you know you have five bonuses, you can make a release schedule that works like this:

• Wednesday (June 24th) <= release bonus one
• Friday (June 25th) <= release bonus two
• Sunday (June 28th) <= release bonus three
• Monday (June 29th) <= release bonus four and surprise
• Tuesday (June 30th) <= release bonus five and surprise
• Wednesday (July 1st) <= launch and release fast-action bonuses

This is just an example schedule, of course, though it’s very flexible.

The releases start off every other day, then become every day, then introduce additional surprise bonuses, then end with the launch and your fast-action bonuses. The most important thing this achieves is that your launch sequence becomes more and more exciting daily.

If possible, make the bonuses get bigger and better to add even more excitement to your launch sequence.

The best part about this is that hype can grow by leaps and bounds as almost everyday people have something new to look forward to, talk about, post about, email about, Twitter about, etc. This even gives fresh material your affiliates can talk about.

If you were to just make a salespage and have all the bonuses already on it, people only have one release to talk about. However, by breaking it up into a sequence, they have many new and exciting releases to discuss.

2) Make an image for your release schedule

The pictures above are some screenshots of the game’s release sequence: their initial sequence, their first update, and the completed sequence, in that order.

As seen above, with each new release a link would replace the date. That link would then take you to a new page talking all about that bonus.

Alternatively, you could just have the link jump down to the part of your salespage where the bonus has been added, if you don’t want multiple pages.

The important part is to provide some kind of link.

3) Lastly, add the links as they are released

So all that’s left to do with each release is to replace the date with a link to the bonus. You can then send an email out letting people know there’s been a new bonus released.

However, you don’t even have to send that email as they will already be checking your salespage multiple times during the day, just waiting for you to post the release.

Now that’s excitement.

Conclusion

Let’s recap all you need to do to implement this hype-building structure:

1) Make a launch sequence from your bonuses
2) Make an image to show the dates
3) Replace the dates with a link to the bonus

That’s it; that’s all there is to it.

Pretty easy, eh?

Be careful though, you might start to hear things like “Did you see what he released today? It’s awesome! I can’t wait to see what happens on tomorrow’s release!”

Cheers, and good luck.
~ Corrado

The other night my cousin stopped by on his way home from work; he is a suit salesman, has been for years. So he shows up still dressed from work, measuring tape around his neck and down his shoulders. And he knows a dangerous secret.

I was in the middle of working on the sales copy for my product Easy PDF Creator: it allows people to create, reband, and track PDFs – showing them exactly which PDF is providing their site with traffic, and which subjects they can target to sky rocket sales and traffic.

Pleasantries were exchanged and he asked if I was interested in buying a brown leather jacket. His store was having a sale and I could get a top-of-the-line leather jacket for $129: although I would have to come in next week because he just sold the last one.

My cousin, like the other suit salesmen there, is paid on commission. He would never try to force a sale upon a customer; he understands how important his relationship with the customer is. However, he wants to sell as much stuff as he can.

And he knows a dangerous secret.

A secret anyone can use, at any time.

A secret you could use, right now, to increase your sales.

A secret so powerful, it can make the cheapest customer buy.

In fact, this trick is most effective against the cheapest customers.

My cousin told me this secret of how he sells more suits then anyone else, and I instantly thought of many great uses for it in the world of online marketing.

The Secret – Revealed

I’ve decided to name this secret, “The Regular Price Mark Down”. This is what he does:

1. Remove the printed sale tag
2. Add his own sale tag with the same price, except handwritten
3. Watch the customer buy the suit, and feel great about the deal they just had

You could also reduce the price for added effectiveness; even it’s it only by a tiny bit.

Why This Works

Customers are always looking for sales and a way to save a couple bucks. I know people that drive to the other end of town just to save 1 cent a litre on gas, and people that will only exclusively buy things that are on sale. These people can be your hardest customers; as they are the hardest to get them to open their wallet.

Why is this most-effective against the customers who are cheap? Easy. They want a deal, and you’ve just shown them one.

There are a few things we can look at which tells us why this trick works.

1. People feel good about saving money
2. People feel good about themselves when they find a great deal

When a customer goes to the store and sees a computer printed tag, they know that this is just the regular price that everyone else gets.

However, if a customer were to see a handwritten price tag, they automatically assume a few dangerous things:

1. This price is unique
2. This price has been reduced
3. If I don’t buy this now, someone else will and I’ll have to pay the regular price

Where Can I Use This?

1. On your sales copy. It can look something like this:
   
2. As an offer for an additional bonus for signing up to your mailing list. It can look something like this:
   
3. To draw attention to an “act now” or a “sale” in your eCommerce store. It can look something like this:
   

Let me know if you use this on one of your sites: I’d love to hear about it.

Cheers,
Corrado

But don’t worry Harvey’s restaurant, I noticed how well laid out your takeout receipt is.

If you have a receipt from anywhere laying around, go grab it so you can have something to compare it to.

Prioritizing the Information

Take a look at the receipt you see on the left here. This is an actual scan of my receipt from the other week, December 7th. As you can see from the top portion of the receipt, the girlfriend and I had the following very-healthy food choices:

• 2 Poutines
• 1 Double Original Bacon-Cheddar Burger
• 1 Double Original Burger
• And that payment for this healthy meal was though Visa, and it cost me $18.82

After that information, there’s some white space, then we see that:

• The subtotal was $16.66
• I paid the Canadian government (GST) $0.83
• I paid the Ontario government (PST) $1.33
• Then again that my total was $18.82

Why did they break it up that? They prioritized their information based on what the person who has the receipt needs/want to know.

The average person looks at a receipt and needs to know basically 3 things:

1. What did I order/buy?
2. How much did it cost me?
3. And how did I pay?

And Harvey’s showed me exactly that, right away at the top of the receipt. I found this very helpful because I personally never care what my subtotal is, since it’s not what I’m actually paying; I only care about the bottom-line, what it actually cost me.

Due to great prioritizing of information, I didn’t have to search around to find the information I was looking for. Does the receipt you grabbed prioritized the information for you?

You did grab one, right? If not, I’ll forgive you, just remember to take a look at the next one you get.

Preventing Errors (Preventing Complaining Customers)

There is something else that prioritizing the information prevents: complaining/angry/upset customers.

I remember back when I used to work for the food service industry (I was a butcher/service clerk for 8 long years), that customers used to complain because many thought they were being overcharged and ripped off.

Why was this? This is because their receipt was presented like this:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• …
• GST
• PST
• Subtotal
• <white space>
• Total

The very-easy-to-make mistake that customers were making, was that they quickly looked at their receipt after checking-out, and mistook the subtotal line for their actual total. And since most people always assume the worst has happened, the customers assumed that they were overcharged and became angry.

Angry/upset customers are not good.

People Read from the Top-Down, Not the Bottom-Up

This happened because people read from the top down; not the bottom up. The average customer would scan the receipt from the top, working their way down trying to find their total, when the first thing they see is the subtotal.

This is a common mistake in receipts; the total is often the last thing on it (except for advertising).

It’s easy to assume that since the total is at the very bottom, bolded, centered, starred, and underlined, that the user must be able to see it. But this is not always true.

It may be a great idea to place the total at the very top of the receipt, before the items are listed, as well as after: especially if the receipts tend to be long (much like the ones from grocery stores).

Where Can I Use This?

Now that we know how important prioritizing presented information is, and how it helps the user, and prevents misunderstandings; how can we use this?

1. On your eCommerce store’s checkout pages.
2. In your newsletter emails (try putting the links at the very top of the email as well, right after “hello”, and see if you get more clicks).
3. To re-organize your navigation bar on your websites or blogs (put the most-common/popular sections first).

Can you see another way to use this concept of prioritizing your presented information?

Cheers, and see you next post,
Corrado

PS: Don’t forget to rate this article, you should be able to one-click rate it below. It’ll only take you 0.59 seconds.

Take a look at the picture here on the left; it’s a screen shot taken from www.davidairey.com, a top notch graphics designer. Can you see the little thing I’m talking about?

It’s such a small, tiny, little, super-quick change that anyone can make in about 5 minutes; well, maybe 10.

Figured it out yet? If not, don’t worry! I don’t except people to easily spot it.

It’s right beside the publish date, in orange text. It’s this:

Getting Across Some Very Important Messages

“47 top notch comments”.

The keywords in that sentence are the two words “top notch“. Why top notch comments? Why not just “47 comments”?

David Airey is telling/showing everyone who visits his blog a few very important things.

1. That he loves and welcomes getting comments.
2. That he respects everyone who commented by telling them their comment was a top notch one.
3. That he thinks everyone’s comment is, in fact, a great one.
4. That all you (as a visitor) have to do to be great, is make a comment.

How simple! That’s like me saying, “Don’t worry, just write your paper on anything you’d like. You’ll get 100% on it no matter what you say.”

Re-Enforcing the Message

He’s also done something else at the bottom of his posts; right above where the comments begin. This re-enforces the same messages as above. Take a look.

He says “47 spot-on reader comments”. Again, he’s confirming to his visitors how much he appreciates the comments and the people making them.

I want to post on his blog just because it’ll instantly make me a “top notch, spot-on reader”.

You can use different words of course. You can say “awesome”, “great”, “amazing”, etcetera, etcetera… Anything to get those messages of respect and appreciation across.

Where could you use this idea?

• Your blog of course! Most blogging software has an area where you can edit things like this directly.
• eCommerce stores. For comments at the end of your products (much like Amazon.com).
• In your emails. Tell your users you’ve been getting some great “top notch” comments, and how awesome they are for participating in your site.

Thanks to davidairey.com

PS: I think all my readers are top-notch, even if they don’t comment. (But don’t tell them that… I still want comments too!)

We can thank Aweber.com for this hilarious little error.

This error happened to me when I was updating from/reply and notification addresses for one of my clients’ mailing lists (they gave me permission to post this – they are good sports about this thing).

I can honestly say that the majority of the time this is not a design flaw, and was not done on purpose (unless the designer has an awesome sense of humor); but is just a technical bug. Either way, it’s a great way to confuse your users.

What Would Your Users/Visitors Do?

When the average user is given a failure message and a success message at the same time, they will almost always assume that their last action failed. People have a tendency to always think the worst-case scenario has occurred.

Imagine if this happened to you just after you sent out an email to 10,000 users: “Error: your email was successfully sent!”. I’d bet they would all be getting a second email, and you would be rather displeased.

If you were shown this, what would you do? Have you seen this error message before? If so, what did you do? What did you think? Did you find it funny or annoying? I am asking too many questions? Why am I still asking questions? When will the questions stop?

More importantly, what do you think your users/visitors would do?

Cheers, and see you next post,
Corrado

PS: Well? What do you think your users/visitors would do given that error message? Let me know!

Those are great questions, and I would not expect you (or anyone really) to stick around and listen to what I have to say if it didn’t help you out in one way or another. That is of course, unless you often find yourself bored and feel like reading the interesting things on this blog for the sake of it.

What will you find here?

Here you will find the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Well… maybe not. To find that you’ll have to read Douglas Adam’s, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, or ask google and see what they say.

However, I’ll show you how to take the traffic you have and convert it into goals; the goals you want to achieve. Whether those goals are sales, opt-ins, less help emails, more comments on your blog, more page views, more Adsense revenue, even more traffic (yes, you can turn existing traffic into even more traffic), etcetera etcetera.

You know… some people would even consider that the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Increasing conversions is equivalent to perfecting what you have; no matter what size. I can give you two examples.

How to Perfect What You Have

I know some people who are big internet people, claim they can make $55k a month. They say they have all the answers. I watch them every step of the way; from when they first told me about their great idea, to the months after the dust has settled. Here’s the basic run down on what they do.

1. They do some research and find an idea that’s sure to bring in the big bucks.
2. Then they throw together a website really quick, without any concern for appeal, layout, etcetera. They put the main focus (generating leads for leadpile.com, for example) front and center. And cover the rest of the site with SEO keywords.
3. Over the next month they flood the article directories with links back to their site, and otherwise try to brute force their way up the search engines.
4. They get some traffic and make some money, and feel that since they are making about $30 a day with 2000 visits, that the answer to more money, is more traffic.
5. They spend more money and more time on getting more and more articles out to the article directories (lots of “mores” taking up time and money here). Next thing they know, it’s been 6 months, 8 months even, and they’ve made less money then they would have working 20 hours a week at a part time job, and spent more then 40 hours a week worth of time.

Why didn’t this work? There are hundreds of reasons why that approach didn’t work. That’s part of what I’ll show you here. I’ll show you how you can turn what traffic you have (even if it’s only a little) into what you want it to be.

How to Convert More of your Traffic – Even Small Traffic can give you Big Results

As another example. I know someone else who gets over 30,000 visits to his site a month, yet only makes $50 a month. However, one of my clients who gets 2,000 visits a month (that’s only 60-70 people a day) makes $35 – $40 a month. The real kicker is that both sites have the same audience.

The main focus should not be on how much money is being made each month; but on how much money each visitor is giving the site.

Take a look at this. For the site that gets 30,000 people a month, you can say that each person who went there gave the site about $0.001 (that’s 1/10 of a penny). Which looks like this;  $50/30,000 people = $0.0016666667. Each person is worth roughly $0.001 to this site.

Where my client’s site, the site with 2,000 people a month, has each person worth about $0.02 (that’s two cents a person). The math works out like this; $40/2,000 people = $0.02.

Things to Make You Think

One other thing I really want to accomplish here, is making you think. You’ll be seeing examples of many different things, and what makes them work, fail, or just something interesting about it.

All this just to make you think about your sites, your products, etcetera: show you areas where you can increase sales, opt-in rates, and more.

Summary

Would you rather have each person who visits your site leave you only 1/10 of a penny, or 2 cents, or more? What do you think will happen when my client’s site gets more then 2,000 people a month? How much money a month do you think he would make if his site were to get 20,000 people a month?

I’ll show you how to get more out of your traffic; even if you only have a little.

Ready? Let’s go.

Corrado