Big Ticket Marketing

Big Ticket Report Writing: Part 2

2007-02-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

This is the second in a series of articles about Big Ticket Report Writing.

Please make sure you have reviewed the definition of a report from Part 1.

Also, one point I wanted to clarify about reports, is that they can be created in multiple ways.

For example, a report can be a PDF (Adobe portable document format), a web page or even a .exe (executable) file compiled using an e-book compiler.

Now... As we mentioned in Part 1, Big Ticket Reports commonly use audio and video to present key information.

In Part 2 of this series we are going to talk about why and how to use audio and video in your reports.

First why use audio or video at all?

The main reason to use audio and video is that it has been proven to increase sales and improve credibility.

Think about testimonials for a minute...

If you just read a testimonial in a report, sure it adds credibility to your topic, product or proposed solution.

But... if you can HEAR or SEE a testimonial from the actual person who is giving it... doesn't that make it much more compelling?

The main reason for that is not only because it is someone else besides you saying the information or solution is great but the reader gets to engage more of their senses in the process of getting the information. The testimonial is more real and helps overcome skepticism.

But the use of audio and video should not just be limited to testimonials. There are even more ways to use them in Big Ticket Reports.

Clear audio or video recordings will get your customers even more excited about your product or service than any written description just by itself.
By describing in your own voice or by demonstrating visually how to use your product properly you can really set your customers expectations about what the product or service can and cannot do.
Complaints and refund requests will be minimized because customers will have a much clearer concept of your product or service.
Many of the audio and video production products allow you to redirect the listener or viewer to your product or service web site for more information.

You could even consider having a professional provide the audio or video for an even more dramatic effect.

Ok, now how do you go about using audio or video to enhance your report.

Well most audio and video used today is called flash audio or video.

Flash is a technology originally created by Macromedia who were then acquired by Adobe.

The nice thing about flash is that it tends to work well regardless of whether you put your report up as a set of web pages, as part of a compiled e-book or whether you include it as part of a PDF file.

And there are many different products available that can generate flash audio and video.

Anyone can create stunning videos, from multimedia tutorials and step-by-step presentations.

In your reports, its like like having your customers listen to you as though you seated next to them or having them looking at your desktop, as you show them the things they need to see and hear.

As an example, lets look at Camtasia, a product that I own, and have used to successfully create flash videos. There are other tools you can use but I'll describe Camtasia to give you an idea about how flash video is created.

Here is a mini guide of the process to give you an idea about how easy this really is:

Note: These steps are using Camtasia Studio v2.0 on a Windows desktop.

Launch Camtasia Studio from the Start Menu. When it starts, Camtasia Studio will walk you through a wizard that asks you a few questions about what type of project you want to work with. Just pick the one that says Start a new project by recording the screen. It might also ask you about which area of the screen to record. If it does, choose the entire screen and make sure that audio recording is on. Follow whatever steps the wizard gives you until it launches Camtasia Recorder.
Camtasia Recorder will record your all of your desktop activity with a single click of the Record button. Minimize the Camtasia Recorder application and then proceed to demonstrate your product or service. Everything you do is currently being recorded. Once you have finished recording just click on the Stop button in Camtasia Recorder. Camtasia Studio will prompt you for a location and filename of the recording you just made. This is typically saved as an .AVI file.
Next, drag the recording you just made from the clip bin of Camtasia Studio to the editing area. Choose produce video as from the task list. A wizard will guide you through the steps to create the flash version of the video. You'll want to choose Macromedia Flash (SWF) movie file as the video file format. Usually, you can accept the defaults for most of the other settings until you get to the page which asks you to specify which folder to save the flash video in and the name of the flash video files. Pick a location and name and save the flash video.
Accepting the defaults in the previous steps, will cause Camtasia Studio to play your flash video after it has been created by launching a browser and showing your recording.
If your report is a web page you only have to upload the files that were just generated to your web host and then give people the report link for them to view. If your report is a compiled e-book or part of a PDF you'll have to use the e-book compiler or a PDF editor to add the flash video to the report.

Now, what if your product or service isn't something you can demonstrate from the desktop?

No problem. If you can film it using a digital camera and save the resulting footage (usually an .AVI file) to your computer then you can just import it into Camtasia Studio and then follow the rest of the steps.

There are similar products and steps to add flash audio to your reports.

And that's it!

In Part 3 we'll look at Big Ticket Report Writing for Affiliate Marketers.

Chuck is a former Microsoft software designer and program manager who spent more than a decade happily working on Email and CRM. Admittedly a seminar, workshop and information addict, Chuck left Microsoft to pursue his interests in personal development, internet, direct and information marketing and to promote and work for charitable causes.

Chuck Daniel
chuck 'at' likemagicmarketing 'dot' com
Would You Like to Make BIG Bucks
With BIG Ticket Items Online?
http://www.bigticketexperts.com
http://www.bigticketblog.com

This article may be reprinted in its entirety in your E-zine or on your Site as long as the content is not modified, all links are left in place and you include the resource box as listed above.

Another Big Ticket Strategy -- Report Writing - Part 1

2007-01-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a series of articles about Big Ticket Report Writing.

First, what do we mean by report?

In its simplest form a report is just information which informs the reader on a specific topic.

The best reports define or highlight a problem and then recommend and show how that problem can be solved.

A report may also be a review and recommendation of a product or service or a sales letter packaged as a report.

In all cases, the report must contain valuable, relevant and targeted information.

A report is just like an e-book except it is usually (but not always) shorter. A typical report might range from 3 - 25 pages.

Why even write a report? Why not just send email instead?

There are lots of reasons:

Email messages can get lost or blocked by SPAM filters based on the content of the message. Attaching a report to the message or even keeping the message brief with a compelling reason why someone should go and download your report will ensure that your message has an easier time reaching your prospects or existing customers.
Reports, if done well, have a clear, clean, professional look to them giving an extra special emphasis to the information, product or service you are providing or recommending. The professional appearance of the report also helps enhance your credibility which is key when you are selling Big Ticket Items.
It is common to include a brief background of the report author (that would be you) at the start of the content. This helps brand you and your business and also further establishes you as an expert in this area. For Big Ticket purchases, this is a must.
Although HTML email can be formatted similarly to a report it still has the problem of being trapped by SPAM filters. The format of the report lends itself to much easier reading and printing than email. Many people like to print out information to take with them when they are away from their computers. Also if someone wants to have a discussion with others about your product or service, its nicer to have a report to copy rather than copying an email message.

Ok, so what's the difference between a Big Ticket report and any other report?

Big Ticket reports usually have the following features:

they focus on a product or service with a high price point. For example, items which are priced at $500 or above. In some businesses these type of reports are called white papers.
they target a single, specific problem and a single solution. You don't want people going and checking out various other related products unless its critical for convincing them why your solution is the best.
contain much more in-depth review and analysis of the problem and solution
have far more information to convince readers of the effectiveness and benefits of the product or solution. This may be in terms of revenue generated or actual detailed customer testimonials. Often, these reports contain detailed case studies as well.
include full color images to enhance the presentation, style and information presented.
use audio or video or links to audio or video for the testimonials, case studies or demonstrations of the product or service. After all most people would rather be shown or hear about how something works than just read about it. Video is especially useful for demonstrating the quality and content of information products and software tools.
give specific additional incentives for purchasing the recommended product or service.

As you can imagine, creating a Big Ticket report takes far more work than either an email or a simple report.

But that work is warranted because the higher cost of the Big Ticket item requires more effort for people to be convinced of its benefits and also because the payoff is better if the reader buys the product or service.

In Part 2 we'll look at using Audio and Video in Big Ticket Report Writing.

Chuck Daniel
Email: chuck 'at' likemagicmarketing 'dot' com
Would You Like to Make BIG Bucks
With BIG Ticket Items Online?
http://www.bigticketexperts.com
http://www.bigticketblog.com

This article may be reprinted in its entirety in your E-zine or on your Site as long as the content is not modified, all links are left in place and you include the resource box as listed above.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Just a quick note from my family to yours as we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the United States.

I hope you have a great Thanksgiving holiday.

Or if you're not celebrating Thanksgiving I hope you just have a bit of time to rest and reflect.

Thanks for reading, your comments, your thoughts, your feedback and everything else you do.

I appreciate it!

-Chuck

Are You Sick And Tired Of Product Launches?

2006-11-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

Are You Sick And Tired Of Product Launches?

If you are, you are definitely not alone.

And even though I am in the marketing business, I have to admit that it gets to be a bit much at times.

Recently, highly respected internet marketer Mike Filsaime released a FREE report called "The Death of Internet Marketing"

Please DON'T stop reading just yet :-)

I know you have probably received several emails about this report.

I know I got 4 - 5 messages about it.

I was also at a workshop at the time the report came out and hadn't had a chance to read it yet.

And I'm pretty picky about what I recommend or pass on to my readers.

===================================

Just a quick side note. My guidelines for referring a product or service are:

I must have had a chance to review the product. Ideally, I'll have tried or used the product in my own business or life and been very happy with it.

I must have reviewed, tried or used previous products from the person I refer and those have been of high quality and I have a good relationship with that person

This means that I actually recommend far fewer products or services than I could.

But it's more important to me (and I think, to you) to only recommend products or services that I've reviewed or tried and liked and are by people I know have high quality products.

Wouldn't you agree?

===================================

Anyway... I finally got around to reading the report and found it had some great points to make.

I can't cover everything here (the report is 59 pages!) but I did want to take a few minutes and tell you about what Mike covered and why you should read this report:

The report is called "The Death of Internet Marketing" because many things that used to work in internet marketing work no longer.

The primary reason for that is that once something new comes out that appears to work, everyone and their dog tries to copy it.

Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not...

....but overuse of the tactic kills it in the end.

The reason I titled this note "Are You Sick And Tired Of Product Launches?" is that ever since Jeff Walker came out with Product Launch Formula, it seems like everyone is attempting their own version of a product launch (myself included).

Now, Jeff's course is great (I own it) but the concept of product launch is now being overused.

In Mike's report he talks about 17 popular internet marketers launching products in October alone!

And if you believe the trend will continue, how can this be sustained? Mike says people will just get sick of all the launches and in the end will just start unsubscribing from those lists where they are flooded by products being launched.

What has this got to do with Big Ticket?

Well, Mike also had a great example of a friend of his, who had a killer $1497 big ticket product.

Really, this product was so good (at least in Mike's opinion) that it could have rivaled some of the folks who were able to do $1M in a day.

Guess what?

Not even close. Apparently the product did well but it got lost in the noise of all the other product launches that were happening at the same time!

The report also looks at the practical side of even being able to support this increasing number of launches.

Mike talks about affiliates and other big name marketers basically being guilted into mailing their list about the product launch of a friend simply to return the favor that friend may have done for you to help support a product you were promoting.

Mike points out that its time to start saying NO to some of these requests instead of just promoting to return a favor. (Of course if you promised to do it you should keep your word!)

And Mike has a great suggestion for how to to do that and increase the overall quality of these campaigns.

In fact, you should read this report if for no other reason than to learn about "Skulls Alliances".

I expect this to start happening soon and you need to make sure you understand what this is and how it effects you so that you can plan to be part of or create your own "Skulls Alliance".

Anyway, Mike covers that and a lot more in his report. There is nothing to buy and the report has got me thinking about changes in the way that my business will operate in 2007.

Give it a read:

http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/RestInPeaceIM

-Chuck

Mini-Review Of Michael Masterson's "Seven Years To Seven Figures"

2006-11-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

Most books that outline plans for financial independence almost always rely on extreme saving and “penny-pinching”.

You can get rich this way but most people just don’t have the discipline to do it because it will take 30–40 years to reach the goal.

In a nutshell Masterson’s approach is:

#1
The key to massively increasing your wealth is to dramatically increase your income.

Masterson says there are 3 ways to do this.

Do what you currently do but do it better.
Develop a financially valuable skill, one that contributes directly to the bottom line of your own company or the company you work for. This is usually in the sales or marketing areas.
Create multiple streams of income

#2
Investing passively (without working at it) will not generate significant enough gains to achieve the goal of 7 figures in 7 years.

You can make good money in investments but to make great money you MUST work at it.

You must get better than average returns in the investments you make with your increased income. He suggests investing in your existing company for profit sharing, starting your own business on the side of the one you currently work at and investing in real estate

This is a very simplified, overview of what Masterson covers in his book. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is Part II.

It includes eight case studies of people who have achieved “7 Figures In 7 Years”.

The case studies look at Big Ticket Businesses in Consulting, Retail, Real Estate and Information Marketing.

And… it covers exactly what they did to do it.

I really enjoyed this book because of its completely different approach.

You can find the book on amazon.com or bn.com

-Chuck

How To Overcome Price Resistance When Selling High-Priced Information Products

2006-11-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

When selling specialized information products -- newsletters, conferences, online services -- we are often asking prices that are many multiples of what trade publishers charge for books and magazines. The higher the price, the more the prospect is likely to experience “sticker shock” -- a resistance to paying that much money for information, no matter how much he wants it.

Fortunately, there are a number of promotional techniques that can help us overcome sticker shock and get people to pay the hefty prices we are asking for our print, fax, or Internet information services:

1) Make the reader relieved to hear how little you are charging. Do this by stating higher prices for other services or products first, then giving your price, which is less. For instance, if you are selling reading specs, mention that laser eye surgery is $1,000, new eyeglasses can run $300 at an optician’s, but your buy-by-mail reading specs are just $19.95. If you are selling an options trading course on video, first mention your $1 million minimum private managed accounts ... your $5,000 seminars ... by the time you get to the videos, the prospect will actually be relieved that they are only $299.

2) Make an apples-to-oranges comparison. Don’t compare your newsletter to another newsletter; compare it to another information resource, such as private consultation or expensive training. Promotions for Georgetown’s American Speaker compare the $297 price to the $5,000 a top speechwriter would charge to write just one speech. Leeb’s Index Options Alert notes that the $2,950 it charges for its options trading fax service is like paying a 2.95% fee on a $100,000 managed options account -- and that it’s actually lower than the total fee such a managed account would charge.

3) Spread out the payments. Rodale and Franklin Mint are well aware of the sales-closing benefits of offering several smaller payments vs. one large lump sum. One publisher of financial fax advisory services costing thousands of dollars found offering subscriptions on a quarterly basis reduced sticker shock and increased sales. If yours is an Internet service, consider offering it for so much a month with credit card payment on a till forbid basis. After all, which sounds better -- “$19.95 a month” or “$240 for one year of service”?

4) State the price in terms that make it seem smallest. Even if you want full payment up front, state the price in your promotion in terms that make it seem smaller. A $197 annual subscription, for instance, gives the buyer access to vital information for just 54 cents a day. Warning: Divide the price by length of service or subscription, but avoid a price per book or price per page comparison. Reason: Specialized information products always have a higher price per page than the trade books or periodicals with which the buyer will invariably make a comparison.

5) Value the component parts. If you are selling an options trading course for $200, list the individual elements and show that the retail prices of each (videos, workbook, telephone hotline, Web site access) add up to much more than $200 -- therefore the course buyer is getting a great deal. Even better: Position one or two of the product elements as premiums the buyer can keep even if he returns the product or cancels the subscription. Offering “keeper” premiums usually increases response. Example: Instead of selling your 8-cassette audio album for $69, say it is a 6-cassette album for $69, then position the other two cassettes as premiums.

6) Add an element that cannot easily be priced by the buyer. Loose-leaf services, for instance, face a built-in resistance from the buyer: “Why is it X dollars if it’s just a book?” Supplements help differentiate from regular books, but publishers have found it even more effective to include a CD-ROM with the notebook. The CD-ROM is perceived as a high-value item with indeterminate retail price (software on CD-ROM can cost anywhere from $19 to $499), so it destroys the “book to book” comparison between loose-leafs and ordinary books.

7) Show the value or return in comparison to the price. Demonstrate that the fee you charge is a drop in the bucket compared to the value your product adds or the returns it generates. If your service helps buyers pass regulatory audits, talk about the cost of failing such an audit -- fines, penalties, even facilities shutdowns. If your manual on energy efficiency in buildings cuts heating and cooling costs 10 to 20% a year, the reader with a $10,000 fuel bill for his commercial facility will save $1,000 to $2,000 this year and every year -- more than justifying the $99 you are asking for the book.

8) Find a solution with your pocket calculator. With intelligent manipulation, you can almost always make the numbers come out in support of your selling proposition. Example: A high-priced trading advisory specializes in aggressive trades with profits of around 20 to 30% with average holding periods of less than a month. The challenge: Overcome resistance to paying a big price for modest-sounding returns. Solution: Dramatize the profits the subscriber can make with numerous quick trades. Copy reminds readers: “If you could earn 5% each month for the next 10 years, a mere $10,000 investment would compound to a whopping $3.4 million. At 10%, it would be an almost unimaginable $912 million!”

9) Pre-empt the price objection. Most mailings for expensive products build desire and perceived value, then reveal price once the customer is sold. An opposite approach is to state price up front and use the exclusivity of a big number to weed out non-prospects. Example: “This service is for serious investors only. It costs $2,500 a year. If that price scares you, this is not for you.” An element of exclusivity and snob appeal is at work here. Also, the more you tell someone they do not qualify, the more they will insist they do and want your offer. The classic example is Hank Burnett’s famous letter for the Admiral Bird Society’s fund-raising expedition. The second paragraph states: “It will cost you $10,000 and about 26 days of your time. Frankly, you will endure some discomfort, and may even face some danger.”

10) Do a false close. Bring the prospect to the point of asking for the order, then instead of doing so, say “But wait, there’s more...” and then present another irresistible benefit. THEN ask for the order.

11) Add a sweetener. Add an extra incentive -- a special premium, extended warranty or guarantee, free service or support, two for the price of one, or other special offer to close the deal.

12) Establish yourself as the leading expert in your field. Price resistance diminishes in direct proportion to the prospect’s belief that you are the unchallenged expert in your field or niche. Reason: They perceive you offer solutions unavailable from other sources, and that your solutions work as promised. Note: My forthcoming book, Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field -- in 60 Days or Less (Alpha Books), is packed with strategies on how to establish yourself as a guru.

by Robert W. Bly

Bob Bly is an independent copywriter and consultant with more than 20 years of experience in business-to-business, high-tech, industrial, and direct marketing. He has written copy for clients such as IBM, AT&T, and Agora Publishing. Learn more about Bob at http://www.bly.com

Viral Marketing

2006-09-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

Today’s post is about Viral Marketing.

I adapted this post from a presentation I did at Joel Christopher’s List Building FunShop in San Antonio, TX on August 24 – August 26, 2006.

You might be asking: “What has Viral Marketing got to do with Big Ticket Marketing?”

Well, Viral Marketing is important for all types of marketing campaigns, both big and small.

Specifically, Viral Marketing allows you to:

Brand yourself, your product, your company
Give your future and existing customers useful information
Establish yourself as an expert in a particular area
Sell your own products and services
Sell affiliate products and services
Create curiosity and a desire to know more about you and your products
Create traffic to your websites
Get people to sign up for your list

And it does all this with no ongoing work by you.

Yes, you will have to do some work up front, but after its been completed you may never have to spend any further time on it.

In the case of Big Ticket Marketing, Viral Marketing can help start an ongoing relationship with customers that will eventually lead to them buying bigger and bigger ticket items as they progress through your marketing funnel.

What is Viral Marketing?

Well, Viral comes from “Virus” – Or How The Virus Spreads

What is a Virus?

A Virus Is A Disease Or Infection That Can Transfer From One Place To Another Easily AND Multiply Quickly

So Viral Marketing Is Marketing That Travels Easily And Multiplies Quickly

This is GREAT for YOUR marketing or sales message!

Is Viral Marketing New Or Old?

This Is A Trick Question :-)

Answer: Viral Marketing Is BOTH NEW & OLD!

The Concept Of Viral Marketing As We Think Of It Today Has Only Been Around For A Few Years

Before The Term “Viral Marketing” Was Coined, It Was Known As “Word Of Mouth Marketing”

So Who Coined The Term “Viral Marketing”?

Answer: HOTMAIL

What Did Hotmail Do That Was Viral?

Hotmail added a trailer to every message sent by ANYONE using Hotmail that said:
“Get your free email at Hotmail. Click here.”

Hotmail grew to over 100 Million members in an incredibly short time after they started.
Cost: NOTHING. Free advertising for Hotmail on every sent message.

Yahoo email does the same thing today. In fact they may even vary the messages that are sent at the bottom of each message. Here’s an example of one message I saw when I sent mail with my Yahoo email account:
“How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.”

And guess what? You can do the same thing using your own email signature!
Every time you send a message you should tack on a signature at the end of each message. For example, every time I send an e-mail, I’ve setup Outlook so that it always adds the following signature:

Chuck Daniel
Would You Like to Make BIG Bucks
With BIG Ticket Items Online?
http://www.bigticketexperts.com
http://www.bigticketblog.com

What Makes Marketing Viral?

Three Keys:

1) Must Be Buzzworthy

This is the “story” around the topic. It’s what gets people talking. Think about Apple Computers launch of the original Mac with the George Orwell 1984 theme and their launch of the iPod. Think about Pet rocks, and Chia pets (Ok, these are OLD examples :-). How about popular TV shows like 24, Desperate Housewives and the Sopranos? How about what Madonna or Brittany Spears are doing that is a bit scandalous?

2) Must be of useful value to the person who is checking it out and to the person who is passing it on

This just means that in order to be viral, the people who are receiving the information will find it useful. Another way of thinking about this is that it is targeted somehow. There must also be a reason that people will tell other people about it or forwarding it on. For example: they found it funny, or spiritual or it touched their hearts in some way.

3) Must be easy to pass on

Being easy to pass on is the most important key for viral marketing. BUT will still fail if you don’t have the first two keys.
What does easy to pass on mean? It means that there is a simple way to tell others or to forward the information on to others

Like Hotmail using their own email messages as the way to advertise
Or A Tell A Friend Script on the Web Page Or Free resale rights to a report, e-book, or product (the recipient can sell, give away, or use it anyway they want)

Viral Marketing Examples:

#1) Remember that old Pert Plus Shampoo commercial where they tried the shampoo and then told their friends. The example below illustrates what would happen if you told 5 of your friends and then they told 5 of their friends, and so on, and so on…

1 (you)5 (friends)251253,12515,62578,125390,6251,953,1259,765,62548,828,125

It only takes a little over 10 times of passing this on for it to have reached just under 50 million people!

#2) PDF Report with Master Resale Rights http://www.viralpdf.com (Viral PDF)

You provide valuable content in a niche report. You brand yourself, inform the recipient AND all links are to either your own products or your affiliate links for other products you recommend.

A recent example of this was Rich Scheffren’s Internet Business Manifesto and his Missing Chapter. Mike Filsaime did a leaked chapter for his Butterfly Marketing Product launch, as well.

These pdf documents were distributed by Rich and Mike’s JV and Affiliate partners to anyone they felt would benefit and inform them about the two products they were promoting. And of course people were encourage to pass them on as well.

#3) Morgan Westerman’s http://www.TheInterviewWithGod.com (Viral Video)

When Morgan spoke at an event I attended several years ago he already had more than 500,000 subscribers on his list for this site. I’m sure its much, much more now!

Go ahead and watch this video, now.

Isn’t this something you would consider forwarding on to others?

Other examples of viral video can be found on YouTube.com and video.google.com.

#4) Burger King’s Subservient Chicken http://www.subservientchicken.com (Viral Video)

According to AdWeek this site got 1 million hits in under a day and had 20 million hits in a week. (Source: http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000828049)

BUT: They didn’t capture the names or email addresses of anyone who visited the site. BAD!

They could have sent these folks coupons or discounts on future purchases and driven people into their stores.

#5) Gary Ambrose’s Impact Popup http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/ImpactPopup (Viral List Building Software)

I’ve talked about this product before in a previous post based on another presentation Gary gave.
You can read the complete post here: What You Should Know From Joel Christopher's Fun Shop.

Basically, this product is a high quality, Post It Note for Marketers product that builds Gary’s list by asking for people to register for updates.

Gary has sold it for a reasonable price and has sold the resale rights to the product allowing other people to sell it or to give it away as well.

But in every case, every person who gets the product is asked for their contact info in case there are updates. So the more people that receive the product the more Gary’s list grows and grows.

#6) Butterfly Marketing Sites (Viral Membership Sites)
http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/FireSaleSecrets
http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/PrelaunchSecrets
http://www.bigticketexperts.com

You can check these out as really great examples of high quality information sites based on the Butterfly Marketing ideas and scripts.

Butterfly Marketing sites are viral membership sites. They are based on a script that makes it easy to create a membership site.

You join and become a member. These sites typically have a bunch of valuable content and perhaps even a forum area for members to communicate with each other.

What Makes Butterfly Marketing Sites Viral?

The sites can be made to look like the Thank You Page or Download Page of A Site (In other words, it looks like you are bypassing the sales page and getting the goodies for FREE)
The sites have useful, valuable content (Key #2 in what makes marketing viral)
The sites have a built In Affiliate Program and JV Partner Program
When you join a butterfly marketing site, you INSTANTLY become an affiliate with your own affiliate URL (Key #3 in what makes marketing viral). This means that you can refer people to the site as soon as they join. If someone you refer purchases the One Time Offer you get paid a commission.
The butterfly marketing script makes it easy and possible to pay your affiliates, instantly, via split pay if you choose
The sites typically have membership areas that describe how to make money with the site and step by step affiliate tools to promote the site
The sites have a built in email broadcast system making it easy for the site owner to follow up with all members and market to them, again and again and again

These sites can be either a FREE or PAID site.

If you are interested in the Butterfly Marketing package you can discover more about it here:
http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/ButterflyMarketing

That’s it for this post on Viral Marketing. Please leave a comment on my blog telling me what you thought. I love hearing from you.

-Chuck

Some Great Info From The Focus4TheFuture Seminar in Redmond, WA

2006-07-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

I recently had a fantastic time attending the Focus4TheFuture (http://www.focus4seminars.com) event held in Redmond, WA.

I hadn’t heard of the seminar promoters before: Robert Puddy and Richard Taylor but they put on a great event.

Now typically these types of seminars can be hit and miss. By that I mean, some of them are merely pitch-a-thons for the presenters products with very little content. Others only have a few good presenters.

But I’m happy to report that this event was a great one! First of all, there were no bad presenters (although I had to leave before the final presentation).

Look at this lineup:

Keith Wellman
Dr. Mike Woo Ming
Gary Ambrose
Special Session with Keith Wellman, Mike Filsaime and Gary Ambrose
Michael Cheney and Sterling Valentine
Willie Crawford
Stu Mclaren
Mike Filsaime
Tim Knox

Plus they were a series of “hot-seats” throughout the event. If you’re not familiar with the hot-seat concept, its where an attendee volunteers to have their website and marketing reviewed by an expert panel made up of the presenters. It’s awesome and many times I have learned more from what I heard in a hotseat than in just listening to the presenters speak.

Anyway, since this event was in my own “backyard”, I couldn’t really pass it up. I live in Bellevue and my drive to the event was 10 minutes from my house to Redmond, which is the city right next to Bellevue.

I hope more seminar promoters consider Bellevue/Redmond/Seattle for future events. This was the first one on internet marketing I had heard about in my area.

Now, the presenters did give pitches for their products and services BUT only after they had given a huge amount of valuable information out for FREE.

I’d have to say the best presenter for this event was Stu McLaren. I hadn’t heard Stu speak before but he was awesome. Mike Filsaime (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/ButterflyMarketing) and I were sitting at the back of the room chatting quietly while Stu was presenting and we both agreed that Stu had really over-delivered on the content of his presentation and also had everyone in the audience really engaged as well.

I’ve got 16 full pages of notes and ideas from the event, way too much to share here, but I’m going to give you some of the highlights that I think you should know and could immediately help you in your business.

As I just mentioned, I thought Stu McLaren (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/AffiliateInferno ) was the best presenter at this event. Stu manages the affiliate programs for Armand Morin, Alex Mandossian, Mark Victor Hanson, Ryan Deiss, Tellman Knudson, and just recently signed on to manage Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazers program. So you might say he has a bit of experience in this area :-)

One of the demonstrations that Stu did really blew me away in terms of how I think about affiliate programs. Of course I know everyone should have an affiliate program because it’s like having an army of people selling your products for free and you don’t have to pay them anything until they actually sell a product. The more people that sell your products the more leverage and money you can make. But I didn’t realize just how valuable this was until Stu showed us the Affiliate Marketing Success Formula:

TAS = PP * AA * AMS

Total Affiliate Sales = Product Price * Active Affiliates * Average Monthly Sales

Let’s say you have a product that sells for $97, with 25 active affiliates and they sell 10 per month.

Active affiliates means those people who are actually DOING something to promote your products

In this case:

TAS = $97 per product * 25 active affiliates * 10 monthly sales

TAS = $24,250

Total affiliate sales for a year would be $24,250 * 12 months (TAS * 12) = $291,000.

Now let’s say you do something to increase the number of active affiliates by 5 (that’s a pretty small #):

TAS = $97 per product * 30 (25 +5) active affiliates * 10 monthly sales

TAS = $29,100

Now let’s say that you also give them some great tools and a promotion plan that increases the average monthly sales from 10 to 15.

TAS = $97 per product * 30 active affiliates * 15 monthly sales

TAS = $43,650

So now, total affiliate sales for a year would be $43,650 * 12 months (TAS * 12) = $523,800.

That’s an INCREASE of $523,800 – $291,000 = $232,800.

And that’s still with just 5 additional affiliate partners and giving them the tools and promotion plans they need to increase their average monthly sales by 5.

And just in case that doesn’t make you sit up and take notice, let’s look at another example with a Bigger Ticket item:

Let’s say you have a product that sells for $397, with 25 active affiliates and they sell 10 per month.

TAS = $397 per product * 25 active affiliates * 10 monthly sales

TAS = $99,250

Total affiliate sales for a year would be $99,250 * 12 months (TAS * 12) = $1,191,000.

Again, let’s say you do something to increase the number of active affiliates by 5.

And you also give them some great tools and a promotion plan that increases the average monthly sales from 10 to 15.

TAS = $397 per product * 30 active affiliates * 15 monthly sales

TAS = $178,650

So now, total affiliate sales for a year would be $178,650 * 12 months (TAS * 12) = $2,143,800.

That’s an INCREASE of $2,143,800 – $1,191,000 = $952,800. Almost 1M!!!

And that’s still with just 5 additional affiliate partners and giving them the tools and promotion plans they need to increase their average monthly sales by 5.

I don’t know about you but I get REAL excited by those numbers :-) What can you do to make sure you are maximizing the profits in your own affiliate program. If you don’t have an affiliate program yet, what are you waiting for?

Ok, next topic…

One of the common themes in the presentations done by Keith Wellman, Gary Ambrose and Sterling Valentine was that you need to create your own products that you can brand to your name. And this doesn’t mean buying private label rights products and branding them as your own. There is nothing wrong with that but they really stressed creating your own products instead.

All three of the above people said the absolutely easiest way to create a product is by interviewing experts and recording the interviews.

Keith’s first product (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/ViralFX) was a series of interviews with other marketers about Viral Marketing. Gary Ambrose does a lot of teleseminars with other marketers and records them and uses them for marketing affiliate products or lets other people include them in their packages. Sterling Valentine traveled across the US, interviewing top marketers on the power of joint ventures to create JV Formula (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/JVFormula).

And you don’t need much to do this. First, you must be willing to ask other people to be interviewed. This may seem intimidating, but if you have a good topic and a good idea, many people will say yes if you ask them.

Remember, interviews give the experts more exposure and more branding so they are usually happy to participate.

One suggestion, though. Try to get to know the person you want to interview first. Learn about them and their products. And if possible meet them (seminars are a great place to do that!). It’s much easier to approach people about working with you if you get a chance to know them first and let them know you.

Plus, I have to say that most of the people I’ve met in this industry are really generous when it comes to helping others, especially new people joining the field.

But you do need to be respectful of their time as they are usually quite busy. This means that you might have to jump through hoops to schedule the interview. But don’t give up, persist and make it happen.

Also, you can buy a Phone Recording Controller from Radio Shack for around $25.00. This device plugs into the handset of your phone and also into the line in port of your computer. If you have software that can record off of the line in you can easily make a recording of any call you do.

The model I have is the Wireless Model (for handsets without a cord). Its Radio Shack Catalog #17–855. I usually use Sony Sound Forge to do the recording but there are lots of choices out there if you search.

Another option is to use a bridge line through a teleconference service company. If you do a lot of calls you can pay monthly or just book the line for the call. Make sure you find a company that can do a recording of your call for you. The nice thing about this is that you don’t have to worry about recording after you turn recording of the call on and you can focus on the interview instead.

That’s really it.

Then once you have all the interviews you just need to figure out how to bundle them, your bonuses, creating the web page, etc…

And this works for both Small and Big Ticket items.

Keith’s first product was given away for free but he had a built in up-sell or one time offer to get the deluxe version of the system (which was really the complete audios and transcripts and some other bonuses for around $40.00). And the beauty of it was that Keith didn’t have to do anything extra. He simply took part of the information he already had for the interviews and provided it for free. If people wanted everything, they had to upgrade.

In Sterling Valentine’s case, he create a huge information product for JV Formula. Approximately 11 DVDs and 12 Audio CDs and transcripts for everything. All told he interviewed 52 great online JV marketers. The price tag: $997.00. Can you say Big Ticket?

And both Keith and Sterling used exactly the same method to create their products. Ok, Keith’s product was only audio and Sterling had both video and audio. But the point is, they created the products exactly the same way – by interviewing experts and recording the conversations.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got time for this week.

Best In Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck

What You Should Know From Joel Christopher's Fun Shop

2006-06-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

The last several months have been a blur as I have worked exclusively on two major projects.

Joel Christopher’s Birthday Blowout & Big Ticket Experts.

By the way if you haven’t checked out the Big Ticket Experts site yet, you definitely should.

You can find it at: http://www.bigticketexperts.com

Over 800 people have already joined the site and there is a lot of free, big ticket marketing and selling information available there.

Plus, if you like the site and decide to promote it you can also make yourself just under $100 for every person you refer to the site who buys the exclusive bonus offer.

Recently, I was a speaker at Joel Christopher’s FunShop in San Antonio Texas on May 4–9, 2006. It was an extremely fun event.

I loved the chance to talk to people about marketing and what projects they are working on and spend some time with the other great speakers and marketers at the event.

If you’ve never been to an event of this type you should definitely go. You’ll have a chance to learn and to visit with people who love what they do and don’t mind talking about it even until the early hours of the morning.

For example, Joel Christopher and I spent hours talking with Mike Filsaime (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/ButterflyMarketing) and Tom Beal (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/MLMExperts) until 4:00am one morning :-)

By the way, The Butterfly Marketing Package is awesome! I used it to create the Big Ticket Experts site.
(Note: this package is not for newbies. You need to have some knowledge of how to upload and download files from your host, edit HTML and be able to work your way through the different files supplied in the package with only some documentation to help you. But if you can do that, Butterfly Marketing makes it really easy to have a nice consistent look and feel and have a site up and running fairly quickly. Plus the information about how to apply Butterfly Marketing to your business is priceless!)

And even though I’ve been attending these events for a long time now, it always surprises me how approachable and nice these folks are.

Here’s a few pictures from the event:

Here I am talking about the Benefits of Selling Big Ticket Items

Joel Christopher, Glen Hopkins, Chuck Daniel

Here’s a picture of Joel Christopher (my mentor and JV partner), Glen Hopkins and me out on the town at a nice Mexican Restaurant after the funshop ended for the day.

Chuck Daniel and Mike Ambrosio

Here I am with Mike Ambrosio. Mike is a super nice guy and gave me some help getting my Butterfly Marketing Site (http://www.bigticketexperts.com) up and running. You can learn more about Mike at (http://www.chuck-daniel.com/recommends/MrOverDeliver).

Terry Dean and Chuck Daniel

Here I am with Terry Dean. Terry retired from the internet marketing business at a very early age but has recently started doing some private coaching for select clients. He is soft spoken and also a legend in the internet marketing business. He gave 3 presentations at Joel’s FunShop all on different topics (some of what he covered was Branding, Article Writing, Joint Ventures and Creating a WOW customer experience). You can learn more about Terry at http://www.mymarketingcoach.com.

Front Row (left to right): Joel Christopher (standing), Gary Ambrose, Tom Beal, Chuck Daniel, Mike Filsaime
Back Row (left to right): Terry Dean, Socrates Socratus, Jason Oman, Glen Hopkins, Reed Floren

The Expert Panel fielding questions at the FunShop

Ok, now, I want to pass on to you a couple of things I learned from others at the FunShop.

I believe the following two insights are brilliant and that you can use them to make a lot of money, build a list and brand yourself or just dramatically increase what you can do personally or in your business. The first insight is something I have only seen a few people do. The second should be common sense yet it was one of the biggest problems and questions raised by the attendees at the FunShop.

Insight #1: Provide A Valuable Software Product With Built In Registration For Updates

I got this idea from Gary Ambrose. Gary is a very smart guy both technically and in marketing. You can learn more about Gary here: http://www.garyambrose.com.

The concept is this. Either create or have someone create for you a software tool that solves a key problem or makes your target customers lives easier. The cost of doing this is either your time or a relatively small amount of money to have someone else create the tool to your specifications. Trust me, the amount of money you pay to have this created once will be paid back many, many times over either by selling the tool or by using it to build your prospect and customer list. I’ll tell you how in just a moment.

What’s one of the consistent things that happens when you install software?

You get asked to register the software in case there are updates, right?

Well, Gary’s idea is that in order to install the software you get asked to register for updates, FIRST. One way to do that is when customers install the software, the first thing that happens is that they get asked to “Check for Updates” OR “Cancel Installation”.

What a choice… Of course you’re going to Check for Updates because then you can be sure you have the latest and greatest version. And you’re not going to pick Cancel installation because you really need this tool!

Anyway as part of checking for updates the program asks you to register your software. The request to register reads something like this:

Thank You For Registering

To get instant access to the latest version of this software please complete and submit the form below. Please enter your information carefully, including your primary email address, to ensure proper processing.

Once registered you’ll be able to download the latest version of the application and the resellers website. You will also be notified of all future product updates.

Thanks

-Gary Ambrose

This message is followed by a form with fields for their name and email address.

Ok, what just happened here?

You just captured the name and email address of anyone who installs this program.

Now, you can sell that product yourself or you can sell it to other marketers with resell rights so they can sell it to other people too. You can also have your affiliates sell the software for a percentage of the profits. BUT, no matter how the customer ends up with the product, YOU capture their contact information. You’re building your list!

Guess what? You can then market similar products and services to these people on an ongoing basis. If you’re doing a good job building a relationship with your customers than you are going to eventually make far more money from those other products and services than what it cost you to create this application in the first place. And that includes the big ticket items you have to offer on your backend.

I think this is just an absolutely beautiful technique with lots of possibilities and applications. What will you do with it?

Insight #2: You must prioritize what you are going to work on and when

Ok, I can almost hear you saying “But that’s obvious!”. Well… maybe its obvious to you but don’t dismiss it lightly. One of the questions that was asked of the expert panel I sat on was “How do you ensure that with everything you have to do that you focus on what really needs to get done and complete it?” In fact, I personally talked to several people, at the FunShop, who had so many ideas or so many projects on the go that they found they weren’t making progress on any of them.

In fact, during Mike Filsaime’s talk he had a series of powerpoint slides that showed exactly what happens if you try to work on too many projects at once.

First of all, it takes much longer to get any of the projects done because you are spending only a little time on each. Some projects never get done because you lose interest or somebody else beats you to the market before you are finished.

And second, Mike showed, very dramatically, that if you work on more than one project at a time you are really stealing from yourself.

The reason is that if you, instead, focus on a single project at a time, you dramatically increase the quality of the project because of your continuous focus on it, without distraction.

And also you bring the product to the market sooner, creating a revenue stream that now brings you money on an ongoing basis. Forever!

Isn’t it better to be making money while you are working on your next project than not making any money at all while you try to finish multiple projects?

Every single marketer on the expert panel said the same thing. Focus on one project and get it done. Avoid distractions. That’s why I have only worked on two major projects in the last several months. First the Birthday Blowout. Then Big Ticket Experts. And that’s why all the other presenters at the FunShop do it too.

One idea that Mike mentioned, that I don’t use currently, but am going to start doing is to have a project or idea journal. You put all your ideas down in a notebook. And anytime you have a new idea you add it to the notebook. Then you rate each idea as a “Now” project or a “Tomorrow” project. “Now” projects should be able to be completed in about 1 month.

Then pick 1 “Now” project and only work on it until its done!

Then when you are finished, go back to your project or idea journal and pick your next “Now” project.

Work on that project until it is finished. And so on…

After 1 month you have 1 income stream
After 2 months you have 2 income streams
…

Can you see how valuable this insight is? Start your own project or idea journal, TODAY!

By the way, if you can afford to, outsource some tasks of each project to others so you don’t have to do everything yourself.

-Chuck

BIGTicketExperts.com Launch News

2006-05-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

As you know, the Big Ticket Experts site was scheduled to launch today - May 1st, 2006 at 6:00pm PST / 7:00pm MST / 8:00pm CST / 9:00pm EST.

However it has taken us a bit longer to complete everything we wanted and we also realized something very important.

Joel and I realized that given our current schedule we would not be able to give you, our pre-launch first movers, a chance to see and promote this ahead of everyone else.

And we don't think that's fair.

So, we've decide to delay the launch of BigTicketExperts.com for a few days for 2 main reasons:

1) Give you, our first movers, a chance to see and promote the site ahead of everyone else. (I'll be sending more information on that today or early tomorrow)

2) We're going to launch the site live during Joel's upcoming Master List Building Fun Shop Event in San Antonio, Texas. We'll use it as a live example of listbuilding and site promotion.

So, although we are disappointed about the delay, the new launch date is:

Thursday, May 4th, 2006
6:00pm PST / 7:00pm MST / 8:00pm CST / 9:00pm EST

I'll send out the other information I promised soon!

Best in Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck

Chuck Daniel
==> http://www.BIGTicketExperts.com

Making Money From BigTicketExperts.com

2006-04-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

As you know, the Big Ticket Experts site is launching on May 1st, 2006.

And it's FR^EE to join.

Yet, it also has an affiliate program.

So what is the #1 question we've been asked about the new site?

Well...

Many people asked:

"If the site is FR^EE then how can we make money promoting it as an affiliate?"

And that's a great question.

Here's the answer:

The site is FR^EE and Joel and I have done our best to provide some great content for all the visitors to the site. The way that you can make money by referring people to the site is because when people first join, they will be offered a chance to purchase an absolutely killer package for $197.00.

As an affiliate you'll get 50%!!

Or $98.50 for every person you refer that purchases the exclusive bonus offer.

And there are some promotional tools right in the site to help you promote it with more tools being added over time.

Anyway, I hope this answers the question most people are asking.

Best in Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck
==> http://www.BIGTicketExperts.com

You should be excited...

2006-04-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty excited!!

Why?

Because the Big Ticket Experts site is launching on May 1st, 2006.

Would you like to make BIG Bucks with BIG Ticket items doing the same amount of effort selling low priced products?

How would you feel about having a highly lucrative business with no employees, no Products and most importantly - No Hassles!

Imagine learning a proven system to market big ticket items...

And hearing the "Insider Secrets" to earning large sums Of money selling your own or other people's high ticket items... online & off...

Well, starting today, you can!

You see we are going to launch the site this upcoming Monday. BUT...

...we are also planning to pre-launch the site to a select number of people who sign up in advance.

As an advance member, you'll get access to the content before anyone else. AND you can even sign up to promote the site as an affiliate
before anyone else!

But we're only looking for around 200 people for the advance membership list. So you have to act fast.

Head on over to:

http://www.BIGTicketExperts.com

and sign up to be notified in advance about the pre-launch.

Best in Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck

Chuck Daniel
==> http://www.BIGTicketExperts.com

How To Be An Alexa Mover & Shaker in ONLY 28 Days!

2006-04-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Whew, I must apologize. I have been so busy these past several weeks that I haven’t had time to post here.

Which really bothers me because I love to give you information and tips that I think you will find useful in your own lives and businesses.

But… to make it up to you I hope you will enjoy the following teleseminar that was recorded on April 10th, 2006 with Joel Christopher, my joint venture partner.

On this call, Joel and I discuss our most recent marketing campaign for Joel’s Double Birthday Bash.

Here’s just some of what you’ll learn:

What type of challenges you might encounter as you approach your launch date
(We’re talking both routine challenges and those that you don’t expect and probably don’t plan for)

Why you must have a backup plan for every campaign you launch
(We almost didn’t make our launch date because we had to change our plans for the website only weeks before the launch)

How we made it to # 2 On Alexa's TOP Movers & Shakers!
(As you may know, Alexa.com is the official site which records the ranking of websites in terms of traffic and popularity...And it ranks hundreds of million of sites)

How we managed to run this campaign, from concept to launch, in just 28 days.
(Now you know why I’ve been so busy :-)

How surprised we were, when the campaign we thought would run for 3 weeks, almost completely sold out in 3 days!
(We were extremely happy, and I hope you can apply what we learned to any promotion you plan with the same success)

Here’s the streaming audio for the call. It’s in 6 parts of about 15 minutes each. I hope you enjoy it. If you’ve got questions or comments about this please post a comment on the blog.

Alexa Movers and Shakers Call #1

Alexa Movers and Shakers Call #2

Alexa Movers and Shakers Call #3

Alexa Movers and Shakers Call #4

Alexa Movers and Shakers Call #5

Alexa Movers and Shakers Call #6

-Chuck

Birthday Blowout, A Cool Tool, And A Gift

2006-03-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

Birthday Blowout

What a couple of weeks! They went by in a blur.

I’m currently working on two different marketing campaigns and one of them is going to launch tomorrow Tuesday March 28th, 2006 at 8:00am PST, 10:00am CST and 11:00am EST. Here’s a brief blurb and the link so you can check it out:

YOU are invited to celebrate the biggest *BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT* you've ever seen on the Internet!
YES, Joel Christopher "The MasterListBuilder" is celebrating his 39th birthday on March 28, 2006. And you're invited to be part of this colossal celebration.
Go ahead and be part of his 'By-Invitation-Only VIP Guest List', by going to:

Joel Christopher's Birthday Blowout

Joel is my mentor and joint venture partner and so I’ve been helping him out with this site. This is going to be a huge launch so make sure you check it out now and when it launches tomorrow. If you’re on my list, you’ll get notified when it goes live.

Cool Tools

One thing I’ve done a lot of lately is login to many, many different sites.

Why?

Because we are setting up the main websites on a different host, posting to various blogs, transferring files up to servers, posting audios out on audioblog.com, etc…

I was amazed at how many different sites I had to provide a username and password for. I was getting pretty tired of looking up credentials and constantly entering them to gain access to the places I needed to go. REAL tired…

But then I remembered this utility that Mark Braunstein from visiongateportal.com told me about at Joel’s Double Birthday Bash two years ago.

It’s called Roboform.

It’s a cool little browser toolbar that among other things records and keeps track of login ids and passwords. I downloaded the free version at first, but I am addicted now! I can’t go back. I upgraded to Pro. It was cheap for the value this tool provides.

Click here to see a picture of the roboform toolbar.

Roboform makes it dead simple to save your login credentials in what it calls passcards. Each time you are at a login screen, roboform knows and prompts you to save the login information in a passcard.

Later, if you want to login to that site again you simply click on the roboform toolbar and select the login or passcard for the site you want to enter. Roboform goes to the site and automatically logs you on. No typing of userid or password is required because Roboform remembers them for you.

Roboform also has benefits like you can fill out standard fields of any form by creating a personal and business id with all your information.

And you can save credit card numbers and personal notes for sites as well.

You can also use it to search the web from the Roboform toolbar using multiple search engines like google, msn, yahoo and others.

Now, I realize, that the google toolbar has some of these same benefits but it cannot remember your credentials. Roboform has the convenience of providing all these capabilities at once.

Roboform can also generate new random passwords (making them harder to guess) and store them so you don’t have to remember them. And it stores all the data, encrypted on your local hard drive.

Of course you still need to to save your passwords including those generated by Roboform someplace else in case you have a hard drive failure but I would recommend you do this whether you use Roboform or not.

And although I haven’t tried this yet, Roboform can apparently be transferred between multiple machines which means you can take it with you if you travel.

One final benefit that I really like about Roboform is that it defeats keystroke logging programs.

A keystroke loggers is spyware that tries to steal your userid and passwords for important accounts like banking and financial institutions and sends them silently off to be used by internet thieves.

Roboform doesn’t enter passwords by generating keystrokes so keystroke loggers won’t be able to steal information that way.

One side note: Spyware is a very REAL problem these days.

I had spyware issues 6–9 months ago and decided to learn more about spyware and also about how to protect against it.

I highly recommend Spyware Secrets Exposed. It’s a very inexpensive book and the information is awesome. The tools it recommends are all free to download.

Since installing them and following the practices in this book, I’m happy to report that I’ve had no further problems with spyware.

Anyway, Roboform has really made a tedious, repetitive (but important) task much easier. If you want to check it out you can get it at Roboform.

Ok, that’s it for the cool tools section. Whew!

A Gift For You

Several weeks ago I let you know (via email) about a gift I wanted them to have called 15 Ways To Boost Website Response.

It was a nice, executable e-book with easy to understand video tutorials.

But I just found out that there’s an even better gift I can offer.

Ewen Chia put together an incredible collection of "Ultimate Website Videos" (including the one I already told you about).

And it's jam packed with step-by-step video tutorials walking you through the entire process of website profit generation!

All told it’s a $427 value.

And he’s throwing in resale rights too!

Open this pdf document to learn more: Ultimate Website Videos.

That’s it for now… I hope to post again soon and let you know about the second big marketing campaign I’ve been working on.

Until then,

Best in Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck

Online Classified Ads - The Next BIG Thing

2006-02-15T10:27:00.000-08:00

I read a very interesting article recently in the January/February issue of Business 2.0 (http://www.business2.com).

The article was called “The Big Guns Next Target: eBay” by Michael V. Copeland.

The article compares e-Bay and several up and coming e-commerce marketplaces.

The current leader: e-Bay (http://www.ebay.com).

The challengers: Google Base (http://base.google.com) and Microsoft Fremont (http://fremont.live.com).

According to the article, e-Bay is currently the largest (90% market share) online marketplace with 40% annual profit growth between 1999 and 2004. If you’re looking for a deal or for special, hard to find products, you should be checking e-Bay.

However, the article also points out that even though e-Bay revenues for 2005 in the US are projected to be $1.7 Billion, that market is still dwarfed by the OFFLINE classified ads spending for 2005 in the US of $27 Billion.

Also, from the article: “at current growth rates, listings traffic could surpass that of auctions within four years” and that online classifieds are “the format that many analysts think will define the future of e-commerce”.

Is it any wonder that Google and Microsoft want to leverage their expertise in online advertising and search to build an online platform for classified ads?

Both these companies have serious experience already with pay per click ads and web search. Certainly Google is the dominant player with its web search and Adwords and Adsense programs. But Microsoft also offers MSN search and their own pay per click listings.

If you’re not familiar with Google Adwords or Adsense here’s a quick description of each:

Google Adwords – Allows advertisers to bid on certain keywords or keyword phrases such that when someone searches for those keywords on the web, their advertisement will show up along the right hand side of the search results. Whether your ad is displayed on the first search results page is a combination of how much you pay and how popular your ad (i.e.. how many times people click through to view your ad).

Google Adsense – Allows content providers (e.g. blogs or article directories) to display Google Adwords ads on their webpages. Google allows you to tailor what type of ads are displayed on your page but the ads must be related to the content being displayed on that page. If consumers click on one of these ads, you make money for displaying it on your web page.

Google also allows you to configure what regions of a country and even what countries your ads are displayed in.

So the combination of web search and ads which are highly related to the content being searched or the content being displayed mean that the ads are highly targeted to consumers who are interested in that topic.

Now, both Google and Microsoft want to expand their technologies to support online classified ads that are easily searchable with highly targeted search results. This is something that e-Bay is currently unable to do well.

Both Microsoft and Google have the financial and technical clout to create these online classified marketplaces and a backing e-commerce platform from which to sell products that are advertised in those classifieds or that are related to searches done on those classified ads.

Google has already launched Google Base in November of 2005 and Microsoft expects to launch their Fremont service around the middle of 2006.

How will e-Bay be impacted by these new services?

It’s too early to tell.

As a marketer, the best thing to do is to figure out how to advertise using all three services.

Also I see some great business opportunities created by the launch of these new services:

In the same way that there are people selling information products about how to sell stuff on e-Bay, there is a real opportunity for someone to get on board the Google Base and Microsoft Fremont services early and create the same type of information products for those services.

Note: Not just writing an e-book about how to sell on these services but also full blown multi-media products that describe, step-by-step how to get up and going with these new services.

Some of these products would definitely be Big Ticket. You can have an e-book as a lead generator and sell the multi-media package as the back end product.
Create a business that offers to sell or market people’s products on e-Bay and these new services with great results for a portion of the proceeds of each sale.
Pick a niche (e.g. cars) and specialize in selling those via the classifieds or in telling other people in the niche how to be successful selling in that area using these new services.
Launch your own classifieds site on top of Google Base or Microsoft Fremont and sell to a niche market. (At the time of writing, I don’t know if this will be possible but it seems like something that they could allow).
Have a service that monitors all online classified ads or marketplaces for products or items of interest and send alerts via email or chat to people.

This might be a free service supported by pay per click ads or other advertising sent to the subscribers of the alerts.

Or you could charge a small monthly fee that consumers would be willing to pay so that they can have all three marketplaces monitored on their behalf rather than having to check each individually.

I called this article Online Classified Ads – The Next Big Thing. Online ads have been around for a long time. But the new services provided by Google and Microsoft really open them up to a much broader market than was previously possible. Hence the Next BIG Thing :-)

I hope this article gave you some great ideas. If you’ve got comments about these ideas or what you’d like to see covered in this blog, please leave a comment for me. I always like to hear from you.

-Chuck

How many DOZITS do you need?

2006-02-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

Hi and welcome. I meant to post this on Sunday but Superbowl got in my way :-) And I am not the greatest football fan either.

But we our mourning Seattle’s loss to Pittsburgh. First time to the Superbowl and we just couldn’t pull it off.

This week, I’ve got a guest article from Marlon Sanders. I’m posting it for two reasons. One, Marlon dared me to do it! And two, the article is slightly funny but with a very important message. Give it a read and then see my comments at the end.

Hi,

Marlon here.

How many "DOZITS" do you need?

If you don't have the success or results you want, then this will probably be the most important email I sent you in 2006.

So please PRINT IT OUT and read every word. And then listen to the audio. And if you have a friend who needs to read this, please pass it along to them.

Let me explain why I ask about how many DOZITS you need. I'm gonna give you 42 DOZITS in this email. If that isn't enough dozits for you, please email me and tell me how many dozits you need.

Hunker down a second. This will take me a minute to explain...

In the emails I've exchanged with several hundred customers over the past few weeks, I've found out two things:

You are probably overwhelmed
You are confused

There are many people with many different ways to make bux on the Internet, many of them with HUGE numbers to show you.

But if you put on your thinking cap one second, how are they in THAT moment stacking paper (you know, making bux).

They're doing it by what?

Selling YOU a what?

A BIG TICKET information product.

Yet, for some reason, I have a devil of a time convincing people that THIS is what you need to be doing.

The facts are...and I'm talking facts here. NOT hype. NOT speculation. NOT maybe this is what the person is doing.

I'm saying flat out, this is what is being done:

It is how John Reese made his million dollar day
Ed Dale and Frank Kern? They're doin' it Under Achiever's style! (Love those podcasts guys.)
It's how Jeff Walker did well with HIS product launch formula...I mean, by definition if you're launching something, it's your own product.
It's what Mike Filsaime is fixin' to do this week using Jeff's product launch formula and is gonna rock the Net.
Jonathan Mizel does it.
Declan Dunn does it.
Armand Morin does it.
Yanik Silver does it.
Jim Edwards? You guessed it. Does it with FLAIR!
Dave Fry? He does it.
Ewen Chia? He does it.
Paul Colligan. He does it.
Mike Mertz. He does it.
Johan Mok? Does it.
Ted Ciuba? Does it.
Alan Smith? Dozit in UK
Stephen Pierce. Doz it big time.
Brett McFall....Does it in Australia
David Cavanaugh? Does it with authority
John Childers? Nobody dozit better
Robert Allen? Teaches boot camps on it!
Alex Mandossian? He's doin' it with the big stars
Perry Marshall? He's doin' it with the pay-per-clicks
Mike Fortin? He's doin' it and writin' it twice
Big Al, Rod Cook, Joe Shroeder, Art Meakin -- they're all doin' it big time. Super big time.
It's how Corey, when he was here with us, brought in millions
It's how Dan Kennedy makes his living, albeit it in the form of seminars and newsletters. But take my word for it, they ain't cheap. That would make him selling information as a big ticket.
Gary Halbert does it
It's what Ted Nicholas has done and continues to do
Carlton Sheets does it to the tune of multi-millionaire
Vincent James does it
Matt Furey? Dozit with POWER!
It's how Anthony Robbins makes his substantial living
20 years ago, it's how E. Joseph Cossman was doin' it.
And before that, it's how my mentor's (Lew Williams) mentor Thomas Hall was doin' it.
Back in like the 1920's Napoleon Hill and W.D. Gann were doin' it. Bigtime. Yeah, you heard that right. Back in the 20's and 30's, W.D. Gann doin' it BIGTIME bigboy.

A few for you ladies....

Dottie Walters (for you ladies) -- does it with CLASS!
Oh, Ezine Queen? She's doin' it Cally style.
Jeanette Cates? She's doin' it and keepin' it REAL.
Lorrie Morgan? She's doin' it red HOT!
Fione Tan does it in Malaysia.

I'm gettin' carried away here. But one more. Brian Sacks?

He's doin' it in the mortgage industry.

Every ONE is doin' it!

So why is it that it seems SO CONFUSING the formula that you use to make bux?

There's ONLY ONE THING all these people have in common in terms of how they have stacked paper. And that thing is creating and selling big ticket information products of some sort.

THEY ALL ARE DOING IT.

How many "Does Its" or DOZITS is it gonna take before YOU

are the one who DOZIT?

You see what I'm saying? What PROOF or EVIDENCE do I need to give you that if you take away all the smoke.

Take away all the mirrors.

Pull back the curtains and see what the Wizard of Oz is doing....

He's pulling levers that sell products...and THAT is what makes the cash appear on the screen at the end of the day.

Yeah, there are some exceptions. But most of them are STILL selling information products....just maybe not big tickets.

Marlon Sanders says:

Here's a model that isn't smoke and mirrors..

Now, you can argue if you sell ebooks or multi media. If you sell to a small niche or a big niche. If you do it deep or do wide.

(If you didn't hear my discussion of building deep or wide, listen to my audio)

http://members.instantaudio.com/postcard/?3443101X1413

It starts slow but we pick up steam. Matt and I brainstorm MANY ways to come up with big ticket ideas and then about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through discuss a lot of other good stuff. It's really worth listening to all the way through.

My question remains, how many DOZITS do you need before you decide that YOU need your own big ticket info product (B.T.I.P.)?

If you do NOT think YOU can do it, if you feel there's no way YOU could create one, if you think YOU aren't an expert, if YOU don't have a niche, then listen to the audio ALL the way through to the very end.

http://members.instantaudio.com/postcard/?3443101X1413

These are ALL issues Matt and I talk about.

Oh, and you know Jeff Walker's product launch formula? Well, you may be thinkin' that YOU don't know anyone to do JV's with and that you could never get anyone.

I talk about THAT on the audio too.

Or, if you just realize it's high time you stop jumping around from model to model, chasing the latest thing that sounds easier and better than the last one, and finally get your own DOZIT on record where YOU do it just like everyone else in this business DOES it (after you take away the smoke and mirrors) then hop on over to:

Marlon's Action Grid

It's the most in depth, most A to Z, most "everything is covered" product on creating information products I know of.

Yeah, I know, you think you can't do it. You think you don't have the time. You think you don't have the whatever.

When are you gonna quit making excuses and get it done?

See, half done, almost done, gonna be done, done next week, done next month, done next year, --

It all equals one thing --

NOT DONE.

It's done. Or not done.

The people who I listed above? They all got it DONE and that's the difference between THEM and YOU. People always wonder, what do they got I ain't got?

What DO the gurus got?

What's their REAL SECRETS?

Their secret is in the DOZIT and the DONE.

They turn not dones, gonna be dones into DONES.

They DOZIT. (Scuze the bad grammar.)

Funny thing.

Why is it everyone wants a short cut?

I realize some people have gotten started by buying reprint rights. They make great bonuses. And there are ways to use them.

But you really need to have your own product. And I say you can crank one out faster than you may think if you really just hunker down and do it.

By next Jan. will you be in the chips?

Or still sending me emails about how you've bought all this stuff and haven't made anything because you STILL don't have a product to sell.

There are lots of ways that people apparently bring in zillions on the Internet.

But there's ONE that nearly everybody does and agrees on.

You create and sell BTIPS -- Big Ticket Info Products.

Will YOU be the next DOZIT?

Or the next email from someone confused, overwhelmed and clueless about what to do to stack any paper?

That URL one more time is:

Marlon's Action Grid

Don't let anyone tell you there's a course that's almost as good.

Almost?

That equals isn't.

Isn't as good. Not as good.

There's only ONE.

Action Grid by Marlon Sanders

Marlon's Action Grid

P.S. You have the rights to publish this in your ezine or as an article on your web site if you have the guts.

How did you enjoy the article? Marlon makes a great point!

You NEED to market and sell Big Ticket Information Products as part of your business.

Now, I need to tell you, I don’t own a copy of Marlon’s Action Grid.

So I can’t make any comments about that product.

I do own copies of Marlon’s Amazing Formula and Associate Program Handbook and they are both great products.

HOWEVER, I can HIGHLY RECOMMEND the Big Ticket Home Study System to you.

This is a joint venture project between myself and Joel Christopher, The Master List Builder.

I’ve personally, gone through the content of the system several times and every time I do, I learn something new that I can apply to my own business.

If you want to really learn about selling Big Ticket Items: either your own products or selling as an affiliate, you should definitely sign up for the Big Ticket Home Study Audio E-course here:

Big Ticket Home Study System

You’ll learn specific strategies for selling Big Ticket items and you can read more in depth about they system itself.

Your information will never be rented, traded or sold and your complete confidentiality is guaranteed.

-Chuck
Big Ticket Home Study System

What I Learned From Joel Roberts at The Power To Influence Seminar

2006-01-31T10:18:00.000-08:00

First who is Joel Roberts?

I got this brief biography from
http://www.worldtalkradio.com.

A former top-rated, syndicated radio show host whose show ran in the hottest markets in the country, Joel Roberts has trained the Chicken Soup for the Soul authors (i.e. Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield), and a host of other authors for the media. Considered one of the preeminent media trainers in the country, Joel’s techniques serve authors particularly well.

I had a chance to hear Joel speak at the Power of Influence Seminar I attended in San Diego, CA on 11/9/05 – 11/12/05.

I want to pass on to you several key points I learned from just one of the presentations that Joel did at that seminar. Those points are extremely relevant if you are in a sales position, needing to influence someone or even just writing copy for a sales letter.

Aren’t we all?

Any errors or omissions are my own.

Joel was talking about credibility.

Joel started by asking these questions. What moves you? What moves all of us? What moves people as a group but also what moves others about you? Impact and Influence: Where does it happen, how does it happen, why does it happen, and when does it happen?

First, Credibility and Charisma are two key aspects of impact and influence. They often go hand in hand and separating them from each other is an artificial thing to do.

The CORE of credibility is a function of the LISTENER. Credibility of a person is ASSIGNED by the LISTENER. If YOU don’t think someone is credible then they are NOT.

Front loading your key selling propositions about yourself …your key credentials you walked into the room with are an important part of establishing your credibility. But it is NOT sufficient.

How can you establish credibility in an area where you may not have expertise? Powerfully state the limits of your power. Tell people when you aren’t an expert in an area because the honesty of it makes people regard you as all that much more credible.

This is especially good news for people who have less experience than others.

Enthusiasm plays a key role in impacting others. People love people who are enthusiastic and passionate about what they do.

What is the other side of the coin from expertise? HUMANITY.

The power of your communication is a balance between your expertise and your humanity (especially in the public sphere).

Where does power reside in language? Impact resides in concrete language. This does not mean we are enemies of abstraction but power is in concrete language.

Having specific data and numbers help credibility. Also, having credible clients is a HUGE credibility booster as well. The truth is NOT enough to make you credible. You need to have PROOF.

Stories help any presentation.

Now here are some practical ideas you can use in your own life or business based on what I heard Joel say:

Make sure you have specific proof to backup what you say. Use actual, detailed numbers from the real world. This might be in the form of customer testimonials, real account statements if you are making income claims or personal references from other people who are credible themselves.

If your product or service has a weakness or isn’t right for everybody, point that out up front. People will thank you for it if its not the right product for them, you’ll get less returns and you’ll build your own credibility for having the honesty to point this out right up front.

Remember, that people aren’t looking for just a product or service. They are looking for a solution to their problems. They are looking at the whole package and that package includes YOU. So make sure your presentations, sales literature and copy show your personality. This is part of your humanity. You are just like all the rest of the people looking at your product in some ways. Make sure you identify with them.

-Chuck

A Big Ticket Niche in Health Care

2006-01-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

As I sit here, recovering from a severe flu, I can’t help feeling extremely grateful now that my health is returning once again.

We take for granted our ability to just get up and go do something until we get sick and have reduced energy and struggle to do even the simplest things.

But since I’m on the mend I did want to say thank you to my readers. I appreciate you for reading and for any feedback and ideas you have shared.

Now, onto this interesting idea in a Big Ticket Niche…

I was catching up on my reading while resting up. One article I read was from the Feb 2007 issue of Business 2.0 magazine. The title of the article was “The New Skin Trade” by Elizabeth Esfahani.

Here are some points from the article:

“In 2005, Americans spent $12.5 billion on cosmetic procedures most of which were non-invasive, meaning no knife required.”
“The number of nonsurgical treatments has skyrocketed more than 764 percentage since 1997, far outpacing the growth of plastic surgery.”
“With baby boomers and more men looking for creative ways to slow the aging process, the ‘medical-aesthetic’ economy — including device sales and doctor’s fees — could easily surpass $20 billion by the end of 2006.”
“ ’Despite the large number of companies, this is very much a demand driven economy’, says Jose Haresco a Merriman Curhan Ford analyst who covers several medical-aesthetic firms. ‘It’s still very underpenetrated.’ ”

Basically the article says that we have an aging population who are now more and more concerned with how they look than in the past.

Those people want options to slow the aging process down without resorting to plastic surgery.

It’s a very big business that’s just getting started.

If you want to know more about some of the procedures discussed, I’d suggest getting the original article.

But just as a test I took some of the keywords from the article and type them into the Keyword Selector Took at http://inventory.overture.com. Here are the results

Searches done in December 2005
Count	Search Term
45226	botox
11431	botox alternative
6294	botox injection
1701	botox cosmetic
1148	botox side effects
998	botox cost

Searches done in December 2005
Count	Search Term
105795	laser hair removal
4932	permanent laser hair removal
4114	laser hair removal los angeles
3771	laser hair removal new york
3598	laser hair removal cost
2680	laser hair removal prices

Searches done in December 2005
Count	Search Term
694	wrinkle removal
573	cream face removal wrinkle
467	cream facial removal wrinkle
385	cream eye removal wrinkle
349	face removal treatment wrinkle
343	face product removal wrinkle

Searches done in December 2005
Count	Search Term
6554	chemical peel
553	chemical facial peel
478	home chemical peel
445	chemical face peel
383	cost of chemical peel
321	chemical peel picture

So a lot of people have interest in those topics.

Ok, so what’s the opportunity here?

Well an obvious one is to start a business that provides some or multiple of these services. And that is a growth area according to the article.

In fact the article says that many doctors have migrated their regular practices to become centered around only the needs of this niche.

Or you could consult and help those health care providers market their business effectively.

How about becoming a joint venture broker between several of these services and setting up deals to provide similar services to each of the businesses client lists?

Another idea might be to write an e-book that clearly explains the options available for all types of these non-invasive procedures.

And you could also provide back-end sales for certain types of products that are related or enhance the treatment someone decides to get. This happens today with many of the skin cream or other beauty products you see advertised. They sign you up where you pay by credit card and then they just refill your order every month until you tell them to cancel.

So it becomes an ongoing revenue stream (definitely a Big Ticket item especially the more people you sign up).

Now, you may not be able do this with Botox or some of the other treatments because they require someone with specialized training (like a doctor) to apply them.

But you could still get one or several joint venture partners who can do these procedures. Then for every customer you bring them you get a share of the profits. These profits can be substantial because the cost of these procedures is high.

Best in Health and Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck

P.S. I did run across one other book that looked really interesting in my research. I can’t recommend it because I haven’t read it. But it’s called “The Wellness Revolution : How to Make a Fortune in the Next Trillion Dollar Industry” by Paul Zane Pilzer Amazon

It might be worth looking at because of Paul’s brief bio which I’ve copied for you here:

Paul Zane Pilzer (Park City, UT) is a world-renowned economist, a multimillionaire software entrepreneur, a part-time rabbi, a college professor, and a bestselling author. As an entrepreneur, Pilzer earned his first $10 million before the age of thirty. A former commentator on National Public Radio and CNN, Pilzer has been a guest on Larry King Live! three times, and he has been on the cover of several national magazines. He speaks to nearly 500,000 people a year, and more than 10,000,000 video and audio copies of his speeches have been sold.

Return Rates - Should They Be High Or Low?

2006-01-15T09:34:00.000-08:00

First, let me just wish all readers of this post a very Happy New Year. I hope 2006 brings you all the happiness and prosperity you could wish for.

This is the first post of 2006 and I must apologize for not posting more often over the last month or so. I’ve been traveling in Australia and back to Alberta, Canada where I grew up.

I’m not complaining. Alberta was actually reasonably warm for this time of year. It’s usually 10 or 20 degrees below freezing! It was good to see family and friends and I got to watch 3 of my nephews play in a hockey tournament. (Boy, I know I’m getting slower when I watch their games and compare them to my own :-)

And, Australia was absolutely beautiful. I can definitely see why people live there or want to move there. And speaking of Australia, I’d like to thank Wayne George for clearing up the mystery surrounding the batcave from my last post.

Here is what Wayne wrote in a comment to my last post:

“With reference to Batman and Melbourne (my birth city)- Melbourne was originally discovered by a guy named John Batman and, set in the pavement of one of the main streets there, you will find a plaque stating that this was the spot John Batman stood when he announced "This will be the place for a village" - some village huh?. His name is pronounced Batmn with all the emphasis on the first syllable.”

So I guess the real location of the batcave remains a secret. If you know the location please comment on this blog. Thanks.

Ok, now on to some marketing insights I got from reading Joe Sugarman’s “Marketing Secrets of a Mail Order Maverick”.

This one was a surprise to me. See what you think.

In the book, Joe tells a story about a seminar where he was showing ads he had written for a particular product. The president of the company whose product was featured in the ads was attending the seminar.

Joe asked the president how the product did.

The president said that they had sold thousands of the product and had a very low return rate of 3%.

A return rate is just the percentage of people who purchase an item, receive it and then decide to return it (for whatever reason).

Return rates of 20% usually mean that the product has either a defect or that the customers expectations are not met because the product wasn’t described properly.

So Joe asked the seminar attendees if they thought that a return rate of 3% was good and if so, why?

Most of the attendees responded that 3% was quite good. Obviously the quality of the product was high and customers were pleased with their purchase.

Joe on the other hand said that he thought that the 3% return rate was totally unacceptable!

And his reason?

Joe felt that the 3% return rate indicated that the product was not being sold hard enough.

And he pointed out how many more items of the product might have been sold if the return rate was 10–12% which is more typical.

Joe also pointed out that you can’t please everybody all of the time. You will get both positive and negative feedback on your products and services.

Looked at another way … even if you have a 10% return rate that still means that you are satisfying 90% of your customers and selling a lot more product.

I don’t know about you but when I read this story my first inclination was that the return rate should be as close to zero as possible.

But based on what Joe pointed out, this is not the case.

I’m not arguing for a higher return rate due to quality issues with a product. You must always have high quality.

But this insight has big implications for using return rate as a feedback mechanism for how much harder you should be selling.

And for Big Ticket items the ramifications are much larger.

Look at this example:

Say you sell an e-book for $47.00. In a month you sell 15 or about 1 every other day. Total for the month is $47.00 * 15 = $705.00. If your return rate is 3% that’s about 1 book so you refund $47.00 and have sales for the month of $658.00.

Now let’s say you push the sales process a bit. Point out more benefits and really increase the conversion. Say sales double for the month and the return rate moves up to 12%.

So now you have sales of $47.00 * 30 = $1410.00. With a return rate of 12%, that’s about 4 books. So you refund $47.00 * 4 = $188.00. Sales for the month end up at $1410.00 – $188.00 = $1222.00.

So even with a higher return rate you still ended up with almost double the profit because you sold harder and converted more.

Now let’s look at a Big Ticket example:

Say you sell an DVD/CD home study system including a manual for $547. In a month you sell 10. Total for the month is $547.00 * 10 = $5470.00. At a return rate of 3% you that’s about 1 home study system so you refund $547.00 and have sales for the month of $4923.00.

Ok, say you push sales hard again. Conversion doubles to 20 home study systems per month. Now sales are $547.00 * 20 = $10940.00. At a return rate of 12% you would have 3 home study systems returned for a refund of $547.00 *3 = $1641.00. So total sales for the month less refunds is $10940.00 – 1641.00 = $9299.00.

Again, profit for the month are nearly double, even with the higher return rate.

And yes, I know there are probably a few more costs associated with shipping a home study system instead of a digitally downloaded e-book.

My point is simply to show that in both cases we should be pushing sales hard even if the return rate ends up going up a bit.

But look at the dramatic difference in profits of a Big Ticket vs. a Small Ticket item! Except for the creation of the product, the marketing steps to sell both are very similar and cost almost the same. I love it!

That’s why everyone should have one or more big ticket items in their product mix.

That’s it for this week. I hope you found this as interesting as I did.

Best in Big Ticket Success,

-Chuck

The secret location of the batcave

2005-12-03T02:15:00.000-08:00

G’day mate,

Or at least that’s one of the greetings they use down here in Australia.

I haven’t posted for a while due to our travel schedule and lack of easy internet access in some locations.

Our travel schedule includes stops in Surfers Paradise (near Brisbane), Palm Cove (near Cairns), Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney.

Since we are only here for about 23 days total we are flying between each destination instead of driving.

So far, our flights have gone off without a hitch except for one on the very first day. We flew from Seattle, WA to Los Angeles CA. Then we were to transfer planes and fly from Los Angeles to Brisbane, Australia. AT MIDNIGHT! And then we were to arrive in Australia 1 whole day and 6 hours later (its actually only about 13 hours but with the timezone difference you move ahead an entire day and a bit).

Well, our flight out from Los Angeles was cancelled. So we ended up staying in a hotel that night and left at 9:00am the following day.

By the way, despite this glitch, I highly recommend Quantas airlines for travel to and within Australia. They apologised sincerely for the fact that the plane never made it to LA, had already arranged to put us up in a local hotel, gave us meal vouchers for dinner and breakfast, planned transportation to and from the airport and the hotel and gave us overnight bathroom kits with pyjamas, toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc…

We’ve been in other situations where an airline cancelled a flight and we were basically left to figure out what to do until the next flight on our own.

Plus the flight crew was great and there was lots to do on the plane, multiple movies, music, and even video games. And every flight within Australia has left pretty much on time and its a breeze to get through the checkin and security process. It probably took no more than 15 minutes each time. Anyway enough about Quantas. Just kudos for them as an airline who has got it figured out!

Oh, and Australia is absolutely beautiful!

We’re in Adelaide right now and will be going to see Sydney next. But every place we’ve visited has been wonderful. Tons of natural beauty, history, friendly people and fun cities.

So far we’ve toured, walked the beach and done some shopping in Surfer’s Paradise.

Visited the Great Barrier Reef near Palm Cove and spent a day touring Kuranda, a village in the rainforest and Tjapukai, an aboriginal cultural park near Cairns. We also spent an evening visiting a local zoo at night where we saw traditional Australian animals like Kangaroos, Crocodiles and Koalas.

In Melbourne, we saw the opening ceremonies and part of the events for the Pacific International School games, visited the Melbourne market (a huge outdoor market with a diverse collection of articles for sale), went to see the worlds smallest penguins return to their nesting grounds one evening at Phillip Island, took a river boat cruise down the Yarra river and went to visit Williamstown and just hung out next to the Yarra in the Southbank area. Oh, and as I mentioned in the title of this post, I discovered the secret location of the batcave. Here’s a picture:

Ok, well maybe this has more to do with Australia’s interest in Cricket (a game like baseball yet very different). I don’t know but I thought the street might be named after something related to it. But I thought the picture was cool :-)

In Adelaide, so far, we went on a private wine tour in the Barossa valley and visited some less well know wineries. But they were all great! Today, we’ll just be exploring the city and then tomorrow we’ll fly to Sydney.

And here’s a few other pictures from our trip so far. I’ll post a lot more pictures when I return home.

This is the beach at surfers paradise. Beautiful.

This is an actual underwater shot of some fish at the Great Barrier Reef

And here is a picture of a friendly Koala at the Night Zoo we toured near Cairns.

By the way, I just wanted to say hi to a couple of people on my list from Australia. G’day to Paul Niederer and Wayne George. You guys live in an awesome country (even if you do drive on the wrong side of the road :-)

With all the travel time we’ve had I have been reading several books which I can recommend to you. The first is “Marketing Secrets of a Mail Order Maverick – Stories and Lessons on the Power of Direct Marketing to Start a Successful Business, Create a Famous Brand Name and Sell Any Product or Service” by Joe Sugarman. If you don’t know Joe, he’s a legend in the direct mail community. You may have heard of Blublocker sunglasses, one of his more famous promotions.

This is the second book of 2 in a series. The first is called Advertising Secrets of the Written Word which I own but haven’t read yet.

Anyway, the book contains great stories which illustrate key marketing lessons and principles that Joe has learned in his career and then goes on to discuss them in detail. The material in the book has previously only been available in seminars that Joe charged anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 for. Joe’s writing style is clear and entertaining. And while the book is definitely slanted towards direct marketing the lessons are definitely applicable to any type of sales and marketing including internet marketing.

I’ve only finished reading section one (upto page 170) but I can still recommend the book. I’ve learned a lot already. The book is a hard cover and runs around $40.00. But this still seems pretty cheap for the information you get. Here’s a link for amazon.com:

Marketing Secrets of a Mail Order Maverick

The other books I’ve been reading have nothing to do with marketing but are part of a great series. It’s a historical fiction series. The names of the books are:

“Quicksilver” by Neal Stephenson
“The Confusion” by Neal Stephenson
“The System Of The World” by Neal Stephenson

If you like reading historical fiction about people like Isaac Newton, John Locke, Robert Hooke, Gottfried Leibniz and the history of Natural Philosophy or even the time period in which it all occurs you will enjoy these books. But I warn you now, each book is nearly 1000 pages each! I just finished the 3rd and final book and really enjoyed them.

Here are links for amazon.com

Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System Of The World

I’ll try to post again soon, when we reach our next travel point.

Until then…

Best in Big Ticket Success (from Australia)

-Chuck

Three Inner Secrets of Internet Success

2005-11-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

I decided I needed to re-energize myself and one of the ways I like to do that is by spending time just learning for the sake of learning. And I love learning about marketing and just about how to grow as a person.

And that’s why, lately, I’ve been spending more time on learning activities instead of just the day to day business type stuff. I’ve been researching some products and books on both business and personal development. I’ll post about what I’ve learned once I’ve got my notes in order.

But I did want to post this awesome little article by Yanik Silver. I’ve posted an article by Yanik before. As usual Yanik points out that sometimes the simplest techniques are the best. By the way, I have both of Earl Nightingales programs that Yanik mentions below and I can also highly recommend them to you.

I really like and agree with Yanik’s 3 secrets below. I hope you’ll appreciate them as much as I did. I’m spending this week primarily on Secret #2.

How about you?

Enjoy the article!

-Chuck

Three Inner Secrets of Internet Success
By Yanik Silver
http://www.SurefireMarketing.com

In only a few short months I've achieved the ultimate Internet "fantasy" of making a lot of money from a simple (almost primitive) web site that runs itself virtually on complete autopilot. Starting from scratch I banked over $51,351.94 my first 6 1/2 months online, just working part-time out of the corner of my living room.

Now today at age 31, I've gone on to earn over 7-figures.

How did I go from a standing start to banking mega profits?

To do that, what I think you really need are these inner secrets to mega internet success. This has nothing to do with search engines, pay-per-clicks. It doesn't have anything to do with any of the tactical stuff. It's all a lot of stuff that goes on in your head.

* Secret #1: Cheerful Expectancy *

One of my biggest mentors is Earl Nightingale. He passed away several years ago but you need to get everything he recorded at Nightingale.com. He has a program called "Lead The Field" and "The Strangest Secret." Just listen to that thing over and over again. He talks about cheerful expectancy.

There's a big difference between having expectancy versus hoping or wishing something is going to occur. When you have that cheerful expectancy, you know it's going to occur. And that doesn't just come from being "Pollyannaish" or having rose-colored glasses.

It comes from having knowledge. And you get that knowledge from studying in your field whatever it is. It could be Internet marketing or it could be neurology. That means reading, studying and buying everything and absolutely immersing yourself in it.

I learned from Earl Nightingale that if you want to be an expert, you spend an hour a day reading on whatever subject that you're interested in, that you want to be an expert on. So I said, "Well, what would happen if I read for three hours a day?"

I just started learning as much as I possibly could, and that knowledge gives you the confidence to know that you have that positive expectancy. Your expectations determine your results.

* Secret #2: Do one proactive thing a day *

You don't need to do 100 things a day. Just get that one proactive thing a day. So each little brick builds a big wall for you. Trust me it's easy to be overwhelmed with hundreds of tasks. You're like, "Oh, we need to do e-zine ads and free-for-alls and pay-per-click search engines, and I need to do all this other stuff." Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

But just relax and do one task a day.

Your action will create more and more and more action for you. You simply need to make a commitment to do one proactive thing a day no matter what. Even if you're dead tired and worked a 14-hour day - come home and mail one letter or send out one joint venture proposal. I'm telling you - just these little tiny proactive things will have an immense impact.

Most everyone has heard of the '80/20 rule' or the Pareto Principle. It says that 20% of your actions produce 80% of your results, and the other way around. 80% of your work only creates 20% of your results.

So go back and look where your successes came from, and I know that they're from a tiny little group of actions. So if you just get that one proactive thing a day (from the 20% group) that is going to propel you further, that's going to bring you to where you want to be.

Make it a point to focus on those "20% activities". In Stephen Covey's famous work "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" he calls these activities "important but not urgent".

One of my Apprentices, Peter Woodhead, from the UK is a perfect example of simply doing one proactive thing a day. A lot of Apprentices bolted out of the gate during our one year program but Peter was an Internet newbie and he also had a full time job so he was a bit slower getting started.

However, he took my advice and simply managed to do one proactive thing every single day. No matter how big or how small. It could be writing one autoresponder message or it might have been writing 50 headlines. No matter the day - Peter was moving ahead. And not surprisingly his project was completed before many of the other Apprentices were finished.

* Secret #3: Decision *

This is such a big point. A lot of people have so many problems with decision. That's because they don't like it because it cuts off other options. But frankly that's exactly what you want. You want to cut off other options.

One of our top apprentices, Cindy Kappler, WebAdMagic.com, had no other option but to succeed because she quit her job. Now I'm not encouraging you to do that if you still have a real job but it does prove if you cut off your options, you're much more motivated. Successful people make decisions quickly.

There's a magic of attraction when you make your decision. However, when you're hemming and hawing, you don't experience this magic. I don't want to get into too much woo-woo or metaphysical or spiritual stuff.

But there's this magic of attraction. I can't even explain it. When you set your mind up that you're going to do this, all of a sudden, at the next dinner party you're attending you meet somebody that can help you get to where you want to go. Is that luck or is that something else?

I don't think it's luck.

It's like once the decision is made your mind is tuned into the solution and all kinds of 'freaky' coincidences and occurrences happen.

And that brings me to another important point about decisions - fail quickly. Don't be afraid of failure. A lot of people are so afraid of screwing up, or making a mistake that they are forever frozen. Who the hell cares? Screw up quickly! I screw up all the time. And you want to fail quickly.

That's the great part about the Internet. You want to go out there and find out if your dumb idea is going to work right away. You can do it in days instead of months. Sometimes hours and if it doesn't work, you move on. You say, "Next!"

Look, I know a lot of people who are working on their products for the last two, three, four years. Get the damned thing out! You just make it better as you go along.

InstantSalesLetters.com, our first product was not where it is now. We've added a ton of stuff to it and made it better. But I just wanted to see if the thing was going to sell.

It wasn't complete and utter rubbish, as my British friends say, but it was enough that it made the point. It found out if there was a marketplace for it. So find out. Some people like to go around at dinner parties and so on and say, "I'm writing a book. I've been writing a book for five years. I'm an author."

Uh huh...

I can show you 6 different ways to have your book done in days. It's a cop-out and complete B.S.

Bottom line - make the decision to get the product out there. See what happens and fail quickly.

Now get out there and do it!

Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on creating automatic, moneymaking websites...and he still doesn't know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling online marketing books and tools, including his quickest and easiest way to create a product to sell – http://www.PublicDomainRiches.com

How To Sell High-Priced Information Products On The Internet And Make At Least 4 Times The Profit For 1/4 The Effort

2005-10-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

How To Sell High-Priced Information Products On The Internet And Make At Least 4 Times The Profit For 1/4 The Effort

From: Brett McFall
THE MCFALL REPORT
The World's Best Advertising Secrets - MADE SIMPLE

Dear Friend,

Did you know that a cockroach with its head chopped off can still live for up to 1 month?

It's true. Cockroaches don't need their head to survive. In fact, the only reason they die is because of starvation. Otherwise they could live until they accidentally crawled up some creature's behind.

Now, how am I going to tie that little piece of news into this newsletter topic?

Good question - here's how: Most small business owners are the exact opposite of cockroaches. Most are living on the edge. They couldn't survive a week, let alone a month, if they don't get sales into their business.

You know why? Their margins are so small, and their costs are so high, that it makes it near impossible to survive without constant sales coming in.

I found a solution to that a long time ago. And I believe the same solution could help YOU in your business.

I've just been interviewed on a topic that's one of my favourites - how to sell products that are HIGH PRICED. See, most people get a bit scared when they have to sell something which is around $1,000 ... $2,000 ... or $3,000.

But really, in my opinion those are the exact type of products you should be striving to sell. Why? Because I think that being in business is hard enough as it is, without having to worry about surviving on small margins.

In order for you to be able to feasibly provide the product or service that you do, I believe you should be well-rewarded for it. After all, it's YOU who is taking the risk of running your business. Why shouldn't you be paid more than a "wage-earner?' Higher risk = higher reward in my books.

So that's why I want to teach you some strategies. Now, if you don't sell INFORMATION PRODUCTS, then you need to go and get a 4x2 plank of timber and whack yourself over the head. An information product is the only product in the world which gives you the potential to make comfortable profits. Often 10x cost ... at least. Which is a lot better than the 10%-30% profit margin of regular businesses.

But all the while, still offering absolutely incredible value.

Now, if you don't sell information products, then you MUST start to introduce them into your business. You can still use what I'm about to teach you in your regular business, but you must look at adding information products like books ... tapes ... CDs ... videos ... DVDs and more to your product range.

Trust me ... you'll be thanking me like a leper who's just been healed.

Anyway....

Let's get stuck into educating that fertile mind of yours. Here now is an interview by internet marketing consultant, Ted Ciuba as he probes me about how to sell high priced products. (Print this out and store it somewhere - it truly could be one of the greatest reads you have this year - NOT BECAUSE OF ME ... but because of the potential and power of the concepts)

**NOTE: If you'd rather listen to the interview than read it, you can. You'll find it stored in the archives of World Internet Summit at:

http://www.worldinternetwebcast.com/archives.html

(It's about 2/3rds of the way down the webpage and carries the same title as this report)

Ted: Well I am ready, and everybody’s been real patient. But here’s what I have to ask you to do, Brett. You’ve got to give us the lead-in as you gave before. Because what we’re really interested in is the topic that you announced – how to sell high-priced product from the internet and make four times the profit for a quarter of the cost, a quarter of the effort.

Brett: Yeah, absolutely. I want to cover the reasons why you actually want to do it, for a start.

You don’t need a very high conversion rate to make a lot of money on the internet, when you’re selling high-priced products. Everybody talks about maybe getting a 1% conversion rate when you send out an e-mail, or a 1% conversion rate from a website. And sometimes, that can be hard on the internet because conversion rates tend to go down. Direct mail is generally double the conversion rate of what the internet is. So conversion rates can be an issue.

So with a high-priced product, that means you can actually have a conversion rate sometimes of maybe .5% or even less. And because you’re selling something at let’s say $2,000 instead of $20, it doesn’t take many sales for you to make a fantastic weekly income.

But there’s actually another benefit there. It’s easy to get JV partners, joint venture partners. Because on the internet, one of the best ways, the quickest ways to actually make some money or to get a business running is to have a joint venture partner who will help promote your product to their database.

If we go to someone with say a $20 product and trying to make a whole heap of sales with that, and somebody comes along with a product that’s maybe $2,000, you’re in a whole different league. And the joint venture partner can see the dollars. They know their mathematics. Doing a JV with you at $2,000, it’s not going to take too many sales to make a whole lot more money.

So it’s much, much easier to actually do business when it’s a high-priced product, in a lot of ways. And if you want to talk numbers...

It’s easier to sell one product at $2,000 than it is to sell 100 products at $20.

Ted, you’ve been in direct mail. You know how the numbers work. It’s always easier to make less sales than it is to make more sales. And what we try and do is find or create a product that can justify a higher price, so you can make a much, much better income.

Another thing, too, is it’s actually easy. Let’s say you don’t have your own product, at this stage. It’s actually easy to find products on the internet which are selling for around $2,000 to $5,000. And I’m talking things like products, but seminar tickets as well. You could actually sell those tickets for them for a price cut, sort of a portion of that price.

So it’s easy to find products for which the marketing really, really sucks, to be honest. It really sucks. So it’s easy to go in there and actually apply some of the techniques I’m going to show you today and start making some sales for other clients. And then you can start to get experience on how to actually do it for yourself.

Ted: Could I ask you a question? I just happen to be reviewing the sales statistics for the World Internet Summit, the one we did in Sydney, Australia, and I saw several names that I didn’t even know. I knew the name, because I’d seen the name. But as far as the person, I’d never met them, never talked to them or anything. And they were selling five, six, seven of these seminar seats that you were talking about, which are going for about $2,000.

You have to have a lot of connections to make that kind of money on those high-dollar sales.

Brett: That’s actually a pretty good example there, Ted, because one of the seminars I’m involved with right now, one lady has come along and she sold three tickets to the event. And a ticket, at this event, is like $1,749. She’s actually paid to come to the event itself. So she’s actually going to try and earn some money before the event. And just by telling some friends that she had on her e-mail list, she sold three tickets, of which she got 40%; 40% of $1,749 for just sending an e-mail.

Ted: Over $2,000, by the way. I’d say she’s paid her ticket for free.

Brett: That’s right. So she’s coming for free. But here’s probably the greater lesson. She’s actually learned the power of selling a high-priced product.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s bad to sell low-priced products, because I have those as well. What I want to try and give you today is the edge on trying to make more money from the internet with less effort.

If you make just $2,000 a week, I’m sure you might agree, as a listener, that’s an okay income to start off with. Here’s a lady who tagged on to our promotion and using a few little techniques that we taught her, which is part of the affiliate program, she’s made over $2,000 before the actual event.

But more importantly, she’s learned that lesson about how to actually make money much, much easier because of a high-priced product.

Ted: That’s good. That’s good. And there does come a change when you actually do it. Doesn’t there, Brett? I mean this lady has now seen that it’s possible. I’m not saying that she ever thought it was impossible, but I’d say a lot of people, when they make their first real money online – and surely, a quick $2,098 is real money – then they believe that it’s real.

Brett: Yeah. Often, the biggest barrier is believing that you can actually sell something for let’s say $1,000. That can be a really big barrier to you mentally.

I’m here to tell you, you can sell products on the internet for much, much higher prices. I’ve tended to sort of drift that way because I’ve had clients come to me, and they’re obviously challenged about selling products for $2,000, $3,000, thinking that it can’t be done on the internet.

It absolutely can. Forget all of the sort of myths that you may have heard about. It is absolutely possible. And, in fact, I believe you can make more money that way than any other method, very, very quickly.

Here’s why. The principles still apply. I’m going to talk to you about some things a little bit later on in this interview. And Ted, if you don’t ask me the question, I’ll certainly try and remember to bring those up. But there are certain principles that we’re going to apply on a website, which work no matter what the price is.

So if you can take these principles, get good at them, you can start to move up the chain from the lower-priced products and move up to a $100 product, to a $500 product, get your experience up, and then move on to $2,000 products because the same principles apply. And that’s what’s exciting.

Ted: That is. And I want to approach you now, Brett, as a “newbie,” someone who hasn’t gone beyond the $100 threshold because I think most people begin that way. What do I do next? How do I do it?

Let’s say I’m selling a course on covert hypnosis. In other words, hypnotizing people and they don’t even know it’s happening. It could be anything, but I’ve been selling it for $97. And now, I’m listening to Brett McFall and I’m getting fired up about selling this. You’ve been throwing figures like $2,000 and $3,000. What can I do to do that? What type of products do I have to have? Can I still deliver them digitally? And what if I’m not all that big of an expert, etc., etc?

Brett: Okay. I’ll try and answer a few of those questions there for you, Ted.

Say you have a product - a $97 hypnotic product. There are many things you can do to actually sell it at a higher price.

I’ll talk about the product first,
then I’ll talk about the marketing.

In terms of the product, you can do things like adding to the product. Let’s say that it’s a manual. Or perhaps it’s a downloadable audio file, or something like that. What you can actually do, if it’s an audio file, you can do little techniques like this. You can take every word of the audio file and have it transcribed, which means you have someone actually type every word on the audio file and turn it into a separate manual.

Why would you do that? Because some people like to listen, but also some people like to read. And if you leave those guys out, you could be losing like 30% of your market by just having an audio product but not having it written down in a transcribed form.

I’ve actually done that with many products, where I actually just interview an expert for one hour. I have that interview then transcribed into a manual. Now, I can effectively double the price, if not more, just by adding the manual. But the interesting thing is the actual cost on my side, for creating that product and producing that product, is maybe an extra $5. If we were talking in direct mail term, physical product, it might cost me an extra $5 for the extra manual. But yet, I can actually double the price of the whole package.

Ted: If we’re talking digital terms, you might include, in addition to the recording, you might include a PDF for an e-book of the document.

Other than getting it transcribed, which could cost a couple hundred bucks, you don’t have any expense, do you?

Brett: This is the thing. This is why I start with direct mail first, because that’s where most of your costs are. So it’s like the conservative environment.

Take it to the internet, and suddenly it costs no more to provide that extra document to download the transcribed version of an interview. But it doesn’t stop there.

Ted: It still has perceived value, though.

Brett: It still has perceived value, because every single word is captured. That’s right. But it doesn’t end there. How do we get people to pay $1,000 for a product? Are we ripping them off? That could be a valid question. Are we ripping them off?

All we’re talking about here is about value. You can do things like you can create extra little bonuses to go with the product. There’s nothing stopping you from exploring every single angle of your product, in order to add bonuses to it.

For this hypnotizing product, there’s no reason why the person producing the product couldn’t actually ring up some people who have actually had the actual course for a while and ask them what their thoughts are, what they’ve learned about it, what they’re doing now because of the course.

It would be easy to create an hour interview like that, with just some past customers of the product. Again, there’s another added bonus. It could be an audio, which then would be transcribed as well.

Then, there’s nothing stopping you from adding to it by actually interviewing some other experts about it and getting their opinion on it. You may just be offering a product with one view of hypnotherapy, and these guys may have another view of it. And it’s all interesting to the customer.

So what you’re doing is just adding and adding and adding. Now, the fantastic thing about the internet is you’re not actually adding much cost to your package at all. Because it’s downloadable, the cost is virtually zero.

But the perceived value, when you’re actually selling the item, is a huge package of products. It’s very simple to diversify. Looking at it from all different little angles like that is how you actually increase the value of the product.

Let’s talk about the marketing now.

First thing I want to tell you is here’s what you need on your website, guys, if you want to sell something at a higher price. You need what we call a sales letter. A sales letter. And I just like to call it a letter because here’s the thing. Believe it or not, a letter to your customer will sell better and more effectively than an ad to your customer. We don’t like ads, but we don’t mind letters. And I’m talking like a letter, it just reads from like you to a friend, from you to a brother or sister; a simple, nice, understandable letter on a web page. And I’m talking so basic here, Ted. And you’ve seen some of the things that I’ve sort of been doing lately. And you know what is happening around the world as well, with some of the experts.

A basic letter on a page, it even has like a dark border around the outside, and that is it. It’s just simple communication. And that is the system that you need to use if you want to sell a high-priced product.

Why do you need a letter? Because a letter is simply selling in writing. Your letter is basically like a salesperson walking up to the front door of a person’s house and trying to sell them the pots and pans. That’s really what it is.

So what you need is a full sales argument, and a letter will talk them through it.

If you’re selling a product for $1,000, you’re going to need a little bit of explanation there to your customer, or your potential customer, in order to get them to justify the $1,000. Right?

So a letter takes them through why it’s important to them, what they’re going to get if they do buy it, all the benefits, all the features. And then it would talk to them about how the actual purchase is risk-free. It might actually show them some proof of what other people have done with the product.

And on the marketing side, that sales letter is the key to selling anything at high price. It is absolute gold for you.

You could have a sales letter, and I’ve had one working for me for the past two and a half years, that has made me $248,000. One simple, eight-page sales letter. And people come to me and they say, “Do these sales letters really work?” They just cannot see how it works. They see them on the internet every now and then. They might receive a letter through actual direct mail. The same principles apply. And they’re asking, “Does it work? Who’s going to read all that stuff?”

Well, the point is not everyone is going to read a letter on your website.

But here’s the thing. We work off percentages of say 1%, which means 99% of the people who see the letter don’t buy. And that might sound terrible to the uninitiated business owner. But we’re only focusing on 1%, who actually will read every single word you write because they are in your target market. They are hot for your product. You’ve targeted them properly, so they’re getting the message they really want to hear, because you’re going to the right people. And that’s another important part of the marketing. But they’re going to read every single word.

So if you ask me, “Does everybody read this stuff,” no, they don’t. But 1% do, because they really want to – and they buy. And 1% of any sort of database, selling something at $1,000 or $2,000 can make huge dollars for any businessperson.

Ted: I agree. I agree. Hey, you brought up a couple of good things. Number one, first of all, as you know, many people are on the webcast. Do you have a website or two where people could look at a long-form sales letter like you might be talking about?

Brett: Sure can. I’m glad you brought that up, because examples just make it concrete. Would you like to go to a website which has made over $85,000 in the past three weeks?

Ted: In the last three weeks?

Brett: Yeah. Would that be okay? Okay, here’s where to go, folks. You go to http://www.amazingmum.com.

We’ve virtually done very little with that site whatsoever, other than let a few databases know via e-mail, Ted. And on that site is a basic sales letter. Everything I’ve talked about up to now is on that site. It hasn’t even got any of these audio tracks on there.

I have dumbed down that site to its absolute essence, which is the actual sales process on the actual website, on the letter. There’s no audio. A lot of people talk about audio, and I have no problem with audio. I actually use it and I think it’s fantastic to bring the site alive.

But I wanted to prove to people how simple this can be. That one has made over $85,000 in three weeks, and we haven’t even started really using that letter to its full potential.

Ted: That will be great. I can’t wait to see what it does, whenever you do start to use it to its full potential.

Brett: Sure. Would you like another one? Would you like one that made about $1-million in about six months?

Ted: Love that.

Brett: I’m preaching to the converted here. Okay, here’s where to go, folks. Write this down. I’ll read it first, and then I’ll actually go back and do it letter by letter. It’s http://www.Vital-Link.com.au/event2.htm

That letter, which is on that site, has made well over $1-million in the past six months alone. And the exciting thing about that one is that will keep on making it, as long as it’s seen by people. It will just keep on ticking over and over. Pretend it’s like a McDonald’s franchise, sitting on the corner of a busy street. It just ticks over, on and on and on.

Isn’t that an exciting thing to have? It might just be 2,000, 4,000 words, but it’s absolute gold. It’s like a treasure chest. It just keeps on working and working.

Ted: That’s a phenomenal thing. You’re telling us about how to work and make a lot of money with high-dollar products. But what you’re really also saying – and, of course, it would be natural from you – is it’s the power of words, the amazing, incredible power of words that converts people to spend that kind of money.

Brett: Yeah, absolutely true. You can talk about products all you want. You can talk about your JV’s all you want, and all the other internet marketing strategies. If you do not have the words on your web page right, it’s all for nothing. It is that important. It’s that powerful.

I tell people, and it’s actually true as well, you can absolutely earn as much money as you want in your life if you learn how to write sales messages. It is the most exciting and powerful skill you will ever develop.

R How would you like to be able to write yourself a holiday to Disneyland?

R How would you like to be able to write yourself a brand new Mercedes Benz or write yourself a new house?

That’s what can happen, once you know how to be able to sell on the internet, via words, but also selling higher-priced products. That’s when everything really goes in your favor, when you’re selling high-priced products. And that’s the power of it.

Ted: Incredible! Let me ask you one other thing, though, that you were talking about, that came up from what you were saying. You were talking about targeting and getting your message in front of the right people.

And really, of course, I’m relating to the effectiveness of a message. What is your opinion? You’re actively involved, and I know you are not spamming. But how does it relate to being a target market and why is it not working? Clearly, spam is not working.

In addition to being now illegal, it just isn’t effective. Is that not correct?

Brett: Well, here’s my thoughts on it, Ted. I think that, actually, spam is effective in a funny way. It is effective for the scumbags out there, the gutless people who actually want to spam and send e-mails to millions of people who have no idea they’re supposed to get it, have no desire for the product. But you know what? The old percentages start to kick in. If they get .2% of people that actually take them up on their offer, I believe they actually do make money.

So in terms of dollars, yeah, I think it must work. But here’s the deal. What are the consequences of doing that? Yes, it’s illegal, but it’s just not right to do for a start. And it is terrible marketing.

The consequences could be you end up in jail. That’s the worst it can get. But it’s just so bad. Why would you spend so much effort offending millions of people, when you don’t even need to talk to those people. You can just talk to as little as maybe 50,000 people of someone else’s database or you might actually have to place a little ad.

So when someone does a search for your word, Las Vegas real estate might be something you’re selling. When someone types in that word, your ad comes up on a search engine.

Then, those people you’re talking to are the ones you want to. You’re not breaking any rules. You’re not offending anyone. You’re just talking to the people that want to hear you.

It’s just good marketing, to make sure that you target it right. It will take less effort, it will take less money, you’ll make more money, and you’ll never be in danger of doing something illegal and getting in trouble. You can get shut down, no matter where you are in the world. Your business is like gone.

Here’s another thing about the internet community. If you start doing something wrong on the internet, it travels like wildfire. And if you’re sitting here trying to work ahead to sell a high-priced product and you dare go into those sort of waters, it’s going to be all over the internet about what you’re doing and you will not get a single sale.

So it’s dangerous territory, and I thoroughly never, ever recommend it.

What we’re talking about here is getting the marketing right and finding the people first; finding the people who are right for your product or service. That’s when your response goes through the roof. That’s when you make real money – real money you can take to the bank. And it’s all yours to keep. No having to pay fines, just keep it nice and clean.

Ted: So to find those people, you have spoken of joint ventures as being a primary tool.

So how do we go about finding those joint venture
partners, which seems to be a logical question?

Brett: Yeah, very easy. You can do many things.

A) You want to get on the databases of some of the people in your market. One of the biggest ways to market yourself on the internet these days is to have your own e-zine, which is a newsletter. So a lot of the guys who may be your competitors or in your market, may actually have their own newsletter. So you want to get on their database and find out what those guys are doing and just listen to them. Because once you understand them, it makes it much easier to approach them to do a JV deal because you know more about them and their company.

B) But a simple search on using a search engine like Yahoo or Google will find you other companies or other products to actually JV with. You want to ask yourself, “Who has my customers already? Who already is selling to my customer and may just want to sell them to me?”

If you’re selling tennis rackets – and I’m going to choose something which is a hard thing to sell on the internet, tennis rackets – who else has your product? Who else has your customer? Would it not make sense that tennis schools might have your customer? Would it not make sense to go and do a JV with tennis coaching clinics? Because those people might just need tennis rackets, at some stage.

Would it not make sense to even approach school, because they might need them for physical education classes? Would it not make sense to approach sports stores and try to JV to their databases, to try and sell your tennis rackets?

Now, in a matter of 15 seconds, we’ve already got three different markets that we could approach to JV and be able to sell your product to.

Ted: Wow! And those are huge markets, also, when you really think about it.

Brett: Yeah, that’s right.

Ted: Like schools, how could you run out of schools? There’s a constantly renewing population every single year.

Brett: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

Ted: Cool!

Brett: I’d actually like to see if I can tell you some things here, which I think are really critical, Ted, to selling something at a high price.

Ted: That’s what we want to hear, Brett.

Brett: There’s two ways you can do it. I’ll come back to this in a second. Let’s say you can’t sell your own product. You haven’t got a product to sell at $1,000 or $2,000. You can approach other people who are already selling them, and offer to sell their package for them. If they’re selling something at $2,000, you’re going to take the affiliate approach because you’re going to try to say to them, “I want to bring customers your way. I want to actually sell your tickets for you. And all I want back is say 30� on the dollar. For every dollar I help you make, all I want is 30�. Does that sound like a fair deal?”

Most entrepreneurs can see the mathematics there, that they cannot lose. It’s not going to cost them anything, they’re only going to make money.

Now, we have a guy here in Australia, his name is John Singleton. In America, you probably don’t know him. But he’s worth around $214-million here in Australia. And he’s been in advertising most of his life, and a fantastic marketer.

I was just reading about him recently, how he made his fortune was he would go on radio and he would take a product which was selling for $2.50, and he’d ask the actual company, the actual supplier, if he could have 25� for every one that he was responsible for selling.

So he might pay for the actual radio ads, and then he’ll get 25� more of the profit.

Now, what happened is the products went on to sell hundreds of thousands of them. So he made his millions by taking a slice of the action.

So what can you learn from that? It means you can approach companies and entrepreneurs who are selling high-priced products, and offer to sell tickets for them, at no cost to them, just for a slice of the actual profits you help them make. And that’s when knowing how to write a sales letter on your website comes in very, very handy. That’s when you can actually create your own website, write a letter on the page, and when it comes to the order link, you send that through to the actual company. So that’s one way to really get started.

Let’s talk about your own product. Let’s assume you have something that’s about $1,000. Perhaps it was maybe $300 yesterday. You’ve added value to it, like we talked about at the start of this call. And now it’s worth maybe $1,000.

I want to tell you something. You’ve got to use a sales letter. I’ve already said that. You’ve got to use a sales letter. But the second thing is I want you to leave all of the branding, all this branding – and excuse my language here, Ted – branding crap to the big boys, and all of this image stuff of the idiots on TV.

I don’t know about in America, but here in Australia we have shows on TV here which try and tell us how important branding is and your image, and you should be spending thousands and thousands of dollars on your logo. It’s just not true. Absolutely not true.

What I’ve told you up to now, a simple letter on a web page is all you need. It’s all that communication. That stuff can come later, if you have the budget for it. But don’t waste your money in that area.

I had a guy come to me, and I’m not going to mention his name because I have great respect for him and we talked just last week. When you type in my name into a search engine, Peter Sun’s name into a search engine, Chet Townes into a search engine, guess who’s sites come up first? His. His sites come up the very first. Any of those stars’ names, and you can type in people like Jay Abraham, I believe. Type in his name in a search engine, and his company comes up first in the search engine.

He is technically brilliant. He lives here in Australia. And his sites are absolutely first in all of the search engines. He’s so smart, he knows how to do it.

But guess what? He’s hardly making a cent because he doesn’t have the marketing side covered. He’s first in all the search engines, but cannot make a cent. I can’t believe it. I’m going to talk to him and actually work something out with him over the next six months to try to help him out there. The sales letters are not working on the site. He’s not using the very simple thing I just talked about, a sales letter on a web page.

So he’s first on all the search engines, being seen by millions of people. But the sales letter is not in place and it’s just not working for him. Hardly making a cent from all that good effort.

So that’s why I say the search engines and everything is all great, but it means nothing if you can’t get the sales letter working properly.

Ted: That’s it. You’re talking about our typical marketing problems. There’s two separate issues here. Obviously, with his search engine optimization, he’s getting the targeted traffic. He’s found his market, because people do not go and type in specific words in a search engine if they’re not interested in that topic.

But now, here’s the whole story. People have asked him to hear his message, and he cannot convert them. On the internet, we call, number one, and even better, targeted traffic which comes off a search engine. Number two, conversion.

And that’s, of course, what you’re saying, where the real power of a sales letter is.

Brett: Absolutely, yeah. You’re talking to Brett McFall, and his actual site’s got before mine. Mine might come two, three or four down the actual search engine. But mine would be kicking his butt, so to speak, in terms of sales. Simple as that. And that’s why the sales letter is so important.

Ted: Let me ask you. We know that we got together this evening or this morning to learn about high-priced products, and you’ve identified copy as being real important.

What are some of the hottest tips that we could know as people who are trying to write our own sales letter, for writing our own web page?

And I almost hate to say it, but some people call it a struggle. How do we make that easier?

Brett: Well, the good news is it’s actually quite simple. Here’s one of the biggest tips I can tell you about selling high-priced products. What to actually put in your sales letter, so you can sell something for $1,000, $2,000.

What they are is – this is one of my favorite tools ever – bullets. Now, if you don’t know what bullets are, bullets are simply little short statements of fact, and they might have a little dot at the start or a tick, or some sort of symbol at the start. It’s a list of things down a page, and they’re called bullets in the industry. And a bullet, basically, you need to make your bullet make the reader curious.

Let me give you a bad example, first.

A bad bullet is something like let’s say you’re selling an information product, because really there is no other product to sell other than information, as far as I’m concerned, because there’s so much profit in it and so little cost. So information products are the key. You’ve got to sell those.

But a bad example of bullets, in terms of information products, is in this package you get two audiotapes, one videotape, one manual, one three-ring binder manual. They’re bad bullets.

Why are they bad bullets? Because they don’t excite you in the least. A sales letter is all about exciting the prospect. It’s not about hype. It is not about hype. It’s about exciting the reader to the real benefits of what you’re actually selling.

Good bullets, we’re talking about advertising and how to write, so let me show you the example of these bullets, which sort of jump off the page.

If you’re going to write a bullet about an information product based on advertising, here’s what they might be:

R Why the advertising you’re probably running right now is wasting you thousands of dollars, and what you need to do to turn that loss into cash.

R How to turn a sleeper ad into a blockbuster in just five lines.

R The powerful tool which becomes your own unique product and customer magnet, page 133.

Ted, I’ve just read you three bullets, and they’re bullets which create curiosity. Because we haven’t actually identified what the actual real answers is, we’re talking about what the actual benefit of the answer is. How to turn a sleeper ad into a blockbuster ad in just five lines. We’re not telling what the actual five lines are, but we’re just telling them that it can be done in five lines and that we are going to reveal how to do it in the actual product.

That’s the secret to bullets.

Ted: If I’m a potential buyer and that hits with me, that resonates, I actually am motivated to buy your high-priced product, so that I can buy that and get that information.

Brett: That’s what it’s all about. It’s about getting those benefits.

If I could tell you how to get movie and TV stars to help you sell your product or service, would that be interesting?

Ted: Oh yeah, it sure would.

Brett: If I told you how to get hundreds of prospects to seek you out, would that be interesting?

Ted: Very interesting.

Brett: And I haven’t told you exactly how I’m going to do that, right?

Ted: You’re right. Just the saying, not even the how, just the saying is what we’re really…

Brett: That’s right. And your brain goes into overload. It goes, “Wow! I’ve just got to know that.” And sometimes, I’ll write up to 50, and sometimes 100, but maybe about 50 bullets in a sales letter because I know that just one of those is going to catch my market. I can’t look at which one it is because different bullets work for different people, but it might just be one bullet out of that 50 that absolutely has them going crazy. “I’ve got to find that out,” because they can see the potential. Their mind goes crazy with all the amazing things they’ll be able to do once they know how to do that certain bullet.

That’s one of the biggest secrets I could ever give you about selling high-priced product s. Powerful bullets, which create curiosity.

There’s only two types of bullets, folks – ME bullets and YOU bullets.

The me bullets are all focused on you. As I said before, two audiotapes, one videotape, one manual. You bullets are all about you, the customer. You’ll find out this, you’ll discover that.

That’s the difference which allows you to sell something at a higher price. And that is very exciting. Isn’t it, Ted? Just that one little technique. I’m going to give you a couple more right now. But just knowing that alone, just knowing how to write bullets and knowing that you need them, you can actually just write a headline to the site or the letter, a little introduction saying, “Dear friend, if you’ve ever wanted to know how to do XYZ, then this could be the most important message you ever read. Here’s why.”

And then, you could actually go into a list of all of the bullets, 50 bullets straight in, if you wanted to. That’s a very basic way of actually writing a sales letter.

But just to get the bullets right is so powerful.

Ted: It’s so much more exciting, too. What you classified as a “me,” this is our company, this is how long we’ve been in business.” It sounds like research, and nobody likes boring research. But “You’ll get this and you’ll get that and you get this, it’s a little bit more action, just in the creation.

Brett: That’s true. That’s true. The point to remember is the customer is not interested in you, at all; how many trucks you have in your yard, how many delivery vans you have, how many seats you have in your hairdresser salon. What’s in it for them, that’s the whole thing. Always, what’s in it for them.

Ted: They don’t care that you have 25 seats. They want to know that they can get in, see somebody within 10 minutes, and get out within 20 minutes after that.

Brett: That’s right, Ted. What good is 25 seats in a hair salon when I’ve only got one bum?

Ted: Yep.

Brett: Let me give you something else, which makes it much, much, much easier to sell something at a high value - $1,000 to $2,000, even more. And that is this. You want to blow people’s minds with high-value, low-cost bonuses. And I’m talking about adding value with information products. Again, they’re the only bonuses you want to have, because the value in them, the inherent value can be hundreds of dollars, but yet the cost is like maybe $1 to you, perhaps even less if it’s electronic.

Your goal is to blow people’s minds.

See, the sales process, let me just give you a demonstration of this, Ted. Can I ask you, do you own a mobile phone, a cell phone?

Ted: Oh, sure.

Brett: Okay. Can I sell you one at $2,000 right now?

Ted: Not a chance, because I know what the competitive market is.

Brett: Okay. So you’re saying you don’t want a mobile phone from me. I’m selling it for $2,000, and you’re saying you won’t buy it from me. Is that right?

Ted: Not unless there’s some other extenuating circumstances.

Brett: Okay. Let’s see how rock solid you are on your convictions here, Ted.

What about if I was to say, “Buy my mobile phone, my cell phone for $2,000, but I’ll also throw in $300,000 worth of free land?”

Ted: Well, of course, I would immediately go skeptical and say, “How could you do that,” and look at the land.

I can tell you this, though. Provided the value was a fraction of what you’re actually saying and claiming, it would make that $2,000 cell phone, mobile phone, an incredible value. Wouldn’t it?

Brett: Now, hold on. Have you just changed your mind there, Ted? Are you almost saying yes to buying my mobile phone, my cell phone at $2,000?

Ted: I’m almost saying, “I’ve got to get the money out of my pocket so fast that you don’t have time to change your mind.”

Brett: Okay, now that’s a really silly example, but I use that to underline the fact that it’s all about the offer.

If I really had a $300,000 house and land package here sitting for you, and I was offering that as a free bonus if you bought this phone for $2,000, how many phones do you think I could sell?

Ted: I think you could take over the market.

Brett: Couldn’t I just outsell everyone else out there? So as many phones as I want. And that would be with no advertising agency, no big budget, no big corporate website, nothing. Just that little offer alone, and I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the amount of mobile phones I could sell.

Ted: And not only would you affect the people that you could directly influence, but that kind of an incredible offer, a blow-your-mind offer, would preclude or would initiate or strike up viral marketing. In other words, others would tell others about that kind of a deal, wouldn’t they?

Brett: Absolutely. So the overall principle – and this is what it all comes down to – the offer is king. If you’re selling something for $2,000 but you can find bonuses that are worth $2,000 and much more than $2,000, suddenly it’s not a matter of whether I can afford it. It’s like, “When can I get it?” There is so much value.

I remember for our World Internet Summit in February, we offered bonuses of $7,000. But the price itself was around $2,000. That’s a good example of what we call “bonus overload.” You just keep adding bonuses and bonuses and bonuses, which are a really good value for the actual customer. But on your side, they’re not costing you too much as a business owner.

I always advocate to sell high-priced products, because there are so many risks involved in being in business. The risks are less when you’re on the internet. But I always try and advocate that you want to keep as much profit in your business so that you can continue providing that service or that product to your customers in the first place.

So that’s why high-priced products are so appealing, I think, to any small business owner. And you can do it if you just get that offer right.

By adding bonuses, there’s nothing stopping you.

There’s no rules here, folks. If we’re talking about the internet marketing industry, there are so many experts you can go to and ask them, “Hey, how can I promote you for free? Is there something you’d like to give me, because I’d like to promote you absolutely free?”

“From an entrepreneur’s point of view, they might just throw you a product or two because it’s free advertising for them. It doesn’t cost them anything upfront. It doesn’t cost them anything to actually execute it. But they’re getting their name out there, which will result in backend sales later on.

So you can approach experts in your industry and say, “How can I help you to get more publicized? How can I promote your product at actually no charge? Look, whoever’s advertising right now, whichever businesses you know of advertising right now, they’re losing money. An enormous amount of companies are losing money on their advertising, because they don’t know how to do it properly.

So instead of taking ads, paying for advertising, paying for marketing strategies, you come along and say, “Look, I’ll tell you what. If you’re going to lose money over there, how about you give me something and I will promote you absolutely for free? And it can only increase business. It will never lose you business.”

So what can happen there, folks, is you can have all of these experts within your industry giving you things. And if they can’t give you something physical or electronic, you can make it up. There’s nothing stopping you from ringing them up, taping the call, interviewing them. Simple as that. Adding all of these bonuses in until a price like $2,000 becomes like, “Wow! That’s really good value, because I’m getting so much more value in bonuses.”

That is one of the biggest secrets I could ever give you, Ted.

Ted: Man, that’s incredible. You, of course, started a whole string of further questions. But I want to ask one thing. Let’s just talk. Nothing’s stopping you from calling somebody up, ringing them, and getting a couple questions answered.

Now, if a person did that one time a week, how many products would they have at the end of a year?

Brett: If my math is correct, Ted, I think that’s 52 products.

Ted: Man, is that a simple way, or not, to create something that would have relevance to whatever market somebody’s in?

Brett: So you sell one product on a website for let’s say $1,000. But it comes with 52 bonuses? Then you start writing the bullets about each of the bonuses and tell them what they’re going to discover in each bonus. You would have sales going through the roof. It’s absolutely infallible. You’d have sales going through the roof.

Ted: It would, I tell you.

Brett: And that’s the power of the offer, and that’s the really amazing thing.

Ted: Brett, you are an absolute professional, and I know that you deal with people in corporate board rooms and you deal with people that are calling you in cutoffs on the beach.

But what is it? You make it sound so simple when you say, “Hey, I’ll get a JV partner, I’ll call an expert and ask him for an interview.” But yet, the majority of people – in fact, I think the US government, I don’t know about others – the US government makes advertisers say something to the nature of “these results are atypical.” And it has to do not with an ability, but with execution. What could you say that could help people understand that, yes, it really is that easy. You pick up the phone, call an expert. They’re not going to shoot you, they’re not going to send out the Gestapo to get you. It’s a conversation.

Brett: Okay. I think I know where you’re going with that. Here’s what I would do.

We’re talking about adding bonuses. If you wanted to interview someone, one of the best ways to make sure that they say yes is to do this. Let’s take that example. Let’s say you were going to create 52 fantastic bonuses, one a week, by doing interviews and things like that. You offer the absolute complete reprint rights to the person you’re interviewing.

So when I interview you, you’re listening at home now, I come and I interview you and it goes for an hour, I give you a copy of that interview and I say to you, “That is yours to keep forever. You own the complete rights to that extra recording. So do I. We’re joint owners in it. That means you can sell it, you can give it away, you can use it as a promotional item to sell things in your own business. That is your own promotional tool, and it’s my gift to you as a thank you for helping me through this process.”

You do that deal with 52 people you might do the interviews with, in this example. But guess what? You own the 52 interviews. But each of the 52 people only own their own interview. So you’re the only one which has all the rights to the whole package, which gives you total uniqueness in your market. You’re the only one who has everything.

And what’s more, you’re probably the only one who actually knows what to do with those interviews once you do have them, as information products. You’re going to have them transcribed and everything, so you know exactly what you’re going to do with them. Whereas most of the people you’re interviewing won’t have a clue about really how to sell it, which is another advantage for you.

So it is absolutely possible.

Your only goal is to try and make it win-win. I always try and search for the win-win deal. Make it a win for the person you’re going to interview in that instance, and a win for you. Simple as that, Ted.

Ted: I’ll tell you what, isn’t there another thing that most people don’t realize quite distinctly at the end? When they go to interview an expert, number one, that expert of course has an ego. We all do. But isn’t that expert trying to put themselves out there through every normal medium of communication that they can anyway? And you come and offer them a free interview, that you’re going to give them rights to? Why would they say no?

Brett: That’s how simple it is.

Would you like me to give you a master strategy right now? I’ve never talked about this to many people. It’s a master strategy. Let’s take this to the next level.

Ted: Okay, let’s do it.

Brett: You go to an expert. You’ve already told us that they’re eager to do any sort of interviews like that because they want to promote themselves. Well, guess what? That expert might have a database. Chances are, they just might have a database. And after you’ve interviewed them, would it not make sense to offer that interview to their database, where you both get to keep the names of the people who request that interview.

So he actually helped you make the interview. It hasn’t cost you a thing. You’ve got a good hour interview, let’s say. And then you say to them, “How about we actually promote it to your database? It’s your database. They’d obviously like to hear what you’ve got to say on XYZ topic. And when they do, they simply e-mail me on this address, and I’ll send them the CD or I’ll send them the download code, and you get a database from that expert.”

Let’s say that expert has 30,000 people. In a matter of a couple of days of offering that free bonus interview to that database, absolutely for free, you might have 500 to 1,000 people, bang, on your database because of that one interview. And if you do that with every one of those guys you’re actually interviewing, those people, you can just grow your database – in a matter of weeks – just through the roof.

Ted: No kidding. Just think, if you couldn’t do it with all 52, let’s say you could only get 25 of 500, using your figures. You’ve created a database of 12,500 people throughout the course of a year, and they’re all people who opted-in, who have a definite interest.

And I’ve known people – and correct me if I’m wrong or if this doesn’t jive with your experience – I’ve known people who made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and didn’t have 12,500 people on their database.

Brett: Absolutely true. You could do it within a couple of months, if that, using that one little strategy.

Ted: Man, that’s so great. Brett, you and I, we could go on and we could talk about this stuff for hours on end. But, of course, we’ve got to be respectful. Everybody’s kind of expecting it to end up pretty much pretty soon.

I’ll tell you what, Brett McFall, "ad wonder from Down Under," thank you for being with us this evening or this morning.

Brett: It’s my pleasure. I hope what I’ve given you here today gives you some insight to what can be done, folks, how simple it can be. Go to those websites I gave you. See how they read, what’s in them, and see what you can apply to your business. I truly hope that you can.

And you can always visit: http://www.brettmcfall.com

But I hope you do something with this information today. It’s fantastic to hear it. But what are you going to do with it? How are you going to apply it in the next four weeks, to do something with it? And I’d really like to see that you do do something. And make something happen really quickly, because in action, that’s where the real excitement starts. So I wish you the best of luck with that.

There you go my friend. Now if you didn't get some ideas out of that, then you better call the Doctor to check your pulse. It is absolutely possible for you to do exactly what I've said. You've been given the strategy ... now comes the implementation.

Go for it.

Till next time.

Warmly

Brett McFall

Brett McFall is an internet marketer of 15 years and co-founder of World Internet Summit - the world's biggest internet marketing seminar.

http://www.brettmcfall.com

http://www.worldinternetsummit.com

Some BIG Ticket Resources I Use

2005-10-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

I had planned to post a great article I found for you today but I am waiting for permission from the author before I do.

So instead, I decided to share some resources that I find useful in my marketing business. I think you may find them useful too.

First, make sure you read a lot and read from lots of different sources. You get great ideas that you can apply to your own business even if they were used in a completely different area.

Recently, I was reading the October 17th, 2005 issue of Fortune magazine. I really like this magazine because it combines articles on business with articles on big money players. You can check it out online at http://www.fortune.com.

This issue had a sub theme of “The Big Money World of Leisure”.

One article that attracted my eye was “The Man With The Golden Gut” (page 156)

I probably got interested because I just got back from playing in an ice hockey tournament in Las Vegas. We lost but had a great time :-)

Anyway, the article is about Sheldon Adelson who is trying to help build the next Las Vegas in Macau. Macau sits just off the southern edge of China and is not far from Hong Kong.

Basically, the article says that Macau is going to surpass Las Vegas in terms of the amount of gambling and hotel revenue generated.

Gambling is a huge business and there is a lot of interest in it online. e.g. I searched for gambling at the overture keyword search tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion.

Here are the top 10 results for September 2005:

Searches done in September 2005
Count	Search Term
907255	gambling
695371	online gambling
103419	virtual gambling
93960	gambling site
91934	online virtual gambling
84479	internet gambling
66856	football gambling
63270	casino gambling
60245	offshore gambling
54015	gambling card
45409	online casino gambling

That’s 907,255 searches for gambling followed by 695,371 searches for online gambling. And that’s only for one month!

This got me thinking about some possibilities for Big Ticket items:

Gambling vacations to Macau
Shopping/Vacation getaways to Macau and surrounding areas like Hong Kong (for gamblers families)
Complete Package on How to Start a Business in Macau (laws, language, culture are all different)

There may be some items like this out there already but since this seems like an area with extreme interest and it is only now being developed, it could be worth further investigation.

Also in this issue of Fortune, there was an insert called Power Tools. Here are just a few of the items included:

Power Timepiece – The Calatrava 5296 wrist watch from Patak Phillippe at http://www.patek.com. $17,400!!
Power Carryall – Alexander McQueen’s signature purse called the Novak Bag at http//:www.alexandermcqueen.com. $13,270!!
Power Chat – Signature stainless steel Cell Phone with 18 -karat yellow-gold buttons from Vertu at http://www.vertu.com. $11,700!!

Now, I have no idea if these retailers have affiliate programs, BUT imagine if they did? You wouldn’t have to make too many sales to make a bunch of money. Find articles like these, in demand by people with the money to spend, and you have a ready made Big Ticket Niche Market.

Also, in the same issue of Fortune, there was another article called “The 4,000,000 Plymouth” (page 192). This article talks about the renewed interest in “muscle cars”. Muscle cars are cars from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s which were of intermediate size and large big block engines. Think Chevy Camaro SS or Z28. Also, Chevy Chevelle SS and Pontiac GTO.

A quick look on Overture shows a lot of searches done in that area.

Here are the top 10 results:

Searches done in September 2005
Count	Search Term
71805	car muscle
15288	car muscle sale
4656	car classic muscle
4611	american car muscle
3638	car muscle picture
1837	car classic muscle sale
1616	car muscle part
1464	car muscle wallpaper
1414	car chevy muscle
1311	car muscle pic

So what could you do around that?

Some possibilities for Big Ticket items:

Sell Muscle Cars on EBay (people already sell cars on EBay today… I don’t know if anyone has a muscle car niche)
Become a Joint Venture Broker for Muscle Car Buyers and Sellers
Create A Forum for Muscle Car Fans and Charge a Monthly Fee

Anyway, enough from Fortune.

Another magazine I like and read regularly is Business 2.0. You can find them online here http://www.business2.com.

The reason I like this magazine is that it most of the articles are pretty short. Some are 1/2 page or less. The feature articles are longer. But it is an interesting mix of business, investing, high tech, people bios and marketing.

Many times my ideas for articles come from some short article I’ve read in Business 2.0. For example I wrote one on Infomercials based on an article I read there.

And because Business 2.0 looks at current trends as well, its a great stimulator for business ideas you could launch, including Big Ticket businesses. You’ll still have to do a bunch more research, but the magazine is a great idea generator.

And speaking of trends, I also like the http://www.trendwatching.com and http://www.springwise.com newsletters.

I signed up for their newsletters so that I can receive them in email.

Trendwatching.com has the tag-line “Global consumer trends, ideas and insights”.

Springwise.com has the tag-line “Instant inspiration from the world’s best new business ideas.

They have an irritating habit of making up their own names for the trends they are watching but other than that the quality and information are great and a real kick-start for ideas.

In the latest issue of the Trendwatching.com newsletter they talk about a trend they call UBER Premium. Here is the definition they used:

“UBER PREMIUM is all about status-craving consumers hunting down the next wave in uber-exclusive goods, services and experiences that are truly out of reach for 99.9% of the MASS CLASS. Not an easy feat, given that the rapid proliferation of MASSCLUSIVITY (exclusivity for the masses) has, over the last few years, commoditized all but the most luxurious products on this earth.”

These folks are the massively rich. The newsletter talks about exclusive resort and real estate properties that appeal to people with way too much money. The Vertu cell phone I mentioned above is also mentioned in the newsletter. Another was Private Jet Services.

To summarize I have given you 3 good resources for Big Ticket Ideas (and trends):

Fortune Magazine
Business 2.0 Magazine
Trendwatching.com and Springwise.com Ezines

I hope you can put them to good use.

If you have resources you use and want to post them to help others, please leave a comment on this blog.

Thanks

-Chuck

A $44,590 Internet Marketing Lesson

2005-10-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

There is a great lesson in this article.

No matter how successful we become, 
we always need to be open to new ways 
of expanding our marketing and product mix.

In this case, introducing a big ticket product 
(recurring revenue from a private 
membership site), resulted in a six month 
bonus of nearly $50K.

And he did it as an affiliate too!

I hope you enjoy the article.

-Chuck

"My $44,590 Internet Marketing Lesson"
By Jim Daniels

"Just when I thought I was becoming a smart cybermarketer, along comes a humbling lesson I'll never forget..."

"An extremely successful web entrepreneur taught me a basic business lesson last year. His one lesson paid off to the tune of $44,590 last year alone. Are you in need of this valuable lesson too? Read on and find out..."

THE HOLE

For years I had been puttering along and doing quite well online. My income had grown to six figures and I considered my marketing plan solid and well-rounded. It was not.

One day a well-known cybermarketing guru approached me and invited me into a joint venture. I reviewed his service and it was top-notch. However, it was priced at a few hundred dollars. My first thought was that it was not ideal for my audience. After all, most were small or home based business owners like myself, so they were working with limited budgets. I declined his offer.

Like the great marketer he is, this guy didn't give up that fast. The very next day, he took my reason for saying no, and identified it for what it really was... a "hole" in my business plan. And while it was a glaring hole from his perspective, being on the inside I had never seen it.

THAT FATEFUL DAY

He revealed the hard facts to me with one sentence that fateful day...

"Jim, you are severely limiting your income potential by offering primarily low-priced products and services at your website. "

Admittedly, the average amount of each sale I made was in the $30 range. My books, manuals and software sold well and my highest ticket item was about $100. To me that sounded like a high-priced ticket item. He explained that on the Internet, it is not. He was pulling in a better sales to visitor ratio than I was, and his service cost almost ten times as much as mine!

So I agreed to join this expert in an attempt to plug the hole in my business. As I mentioned, at first I was a bit reluctant to offer any high-priced items at my website. I didn't want to seem greedy. But I quickly learned that online, there are more people willing to pay for premium services such as the one I was about to offer.

THE LESSON PAYS OFF

The service I added to my line of products was a private site membership which provided a way for entrepreneurs to increase the speed of their success online. The service worked well for the members and after personally sampling it myself, I too was thrilled with the results. In more ways than one...

By simply adding this one higher priced service to my site I was able to increase my income immediately by over $1000 a week. Actually, I cashed commission checks totaling $44,590 throughout the next six months, from this one program. And in the process I'm able to satisfy the folks who are willing to pay for 'round-the-clock' expert consultation for their online business.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

So do you have a hole to plug in your online business? Are you offering at least one high-priced item at your site?

If not, the time to get started is now.

There are now more reasons to offer at least one high-priced item at your site than ever before. Here are just a few...

1. Online spenders have more money.

By marketing to people online, you are reaching the highest income bracket in the world. Selling one $250 item is easier than selling ten $25 items.

2. Spending habits differ from one person to the next.

Don't make the mistake of thinking your potential customers' spending habits are the same as yours. Everyone spends differently.

3. The big ticket items ARE selling!

Someone is going to sell the high-priced items and someone is going to buy them. That's a guarantee. Why not be the marketer who fills the need.

IN CLOSING

Are you convinced yet? If so, get started today. Find a solid product or service that would fit in well at your site. Make sure it is directly related to what you are currently marketing and make sure it is worth the price.

If there's no affiliate program available for the product or service you want to offer, contact the webmaster with a joint venture proposal. You may be surprised at how many webmasters are receptive to these offers.

If you're in the internet marketing arena like me, consider joining me and my new "expert friends" promoting private site memberships. Full details are right here, and who knows... this may turn out to be an extremely valuable lesson for you too!

* Article by Jim Daniels of JDD Publishing. Jim's site has helped 1000's of regular folks profit online. Visit http://bizweb2000.com for FREE "how-to" cybermarketing assistance, software, manuals, web services and more. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to their Free, weekly BizWeb E-Gazette: mailto:freegazette@bizweb2000.com

Mark Joyner's Irresistible Offer

2005-09-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

The title of Mark Joyner’s new book is:

“The Irresistible Offer
How To Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less”

I just finished reading the book cover to cover and I wanted to summarize a bit of it here for you. The book covers A LOT, so a more in depth review would be much larger than this blog post.

Basically, Mark Joyner says that people today are impatient because they are bombarded with thousands of different messages every day.

So we learn to evaluate whether something is meaningful for us very quickly.

Consequently, you as a marketer or seller, MUST be able to present and and get your offer across immediately (hence the subtitle of “3 Seconds or Less”)

In order to sell effectively, Mark introduces the concept of the Irresistible Offer.

Mark maintains that “Core Imperative of Business” is the offer.

He also talks about the 4 Big Questions that everyone asks themselves when they evaluate an offer:

What are you trying to sell me?
How much?
Why should I believe you?
What’s in it for me?

And he explains why these 4 questions are the basis of how we evaluate anything.

Mark defines the Irresistible Offer as “an identity-building offer central to a product, service or company where the believable return on investment is communicated so clearly and efficiently that it’s immediately apparent you’d have to be a fool to pass it up.”

This definition is the direct opposite of selling through coercion or deception.

There are 3 elements that comprise an irresistible offer:

A High ROI Offer
Touchstone
Believability

Mark goes into depth about how to create an irresistible offer with plenty of examples of offers which he considers irresistible and also examples which he says are not.

Mark also talks about pairing the offer with what he calls the Great Formula because it never fails to sell in business.

The book also goes on to discuss how to make your offers, your company and your reputation viral as well.

Although the thrust of the book is towards business, Mark also has a couple of appendices which talk about how you can personally use the Irresistible Offer approach to sell yourself or if you are a salesman how you can use it to sell your companies products.

If you can’t already tell, I was incredibly impressed with this book.

Mark Joyner’s “Irresistible Offer – How To Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less” shows in plain, straight forward and sometimes blunt language, how to create an irresistible offer and present it honestly and simply so that your product or service is a slam-dunk, must-have, no-brainer and keeps your customers coming back for more and loving you and your business.

In the world of Big Ticket Marketing, if you “get this”, you immediately cut past the skepticism and doubt that is traditionally present due to the higher cost of your product or service.

I don’t make a dime for recommending this book to you.

And you don’t have to spend many dimes to get your own copy and I know that if you get this, and apply it in your business you can make a ton of dimes :-)

Here is the link for the book on Amazon.

The Irresistible Offer - Amazon

and here it is again on Barnes and Noble.

The Irresistible Offer - Barnes and Noble

Check both because they seem to be having a price war. Enjoy the book.

-Chuck