Matt Goffrey

Moving to a new location

2013-07-21T16:21:00.001-06:00

Because I get asked so often, "why don't you have a real blog at a real domain?"

I'm moving this blog to my "real domain."

Now let me be clear, I have owned MattGoffrey.com for a long time. However my intention was for that to NOT be a blog.

I also understand that sometimes trying to use blogger or a generic wordpress.com blog detracts from the total image. So, I'm moving this over.

All new posts will show up at MattGoffrey.com from now on.

The only one that matters

2013-07-15T14:34:00.000-06:00

I cranked out a book (and when I say "I" what I really mean is that I compiled some stuff from other people) in three days.

Uploaded it to amazon as a kindle book, and in three weeks the sales I've generated can only be called "enviable."

Now here's the thing. I only used ONE marketing technique to do it. Every single solitary sale came from doing just one technique and that's it.

And the crazy thing about it is that this technique is actually EASIER to do for something like an app than it is for something like a kindle book. In fact the reason I'm only showing the results from this one KDP account is so that you don't see a bunch of earnings that were made because of other things that I did. Every cent that was earned on this account came from doing just one thing.

That one marketing technique is in fact the single most powerful marketing method that I know. It is responsible for more earnings, with less effort than anything that I do.

Now of course, someone showing you one amazon account, or one of anything ... well that could just be luck. I mean it happens with apps, books, and all kinds of things all the time. Sometimes you just get lucky and a bunch is made.

While people might THINK they know what caused the success, the truth is, unless they have duplicated that success, then they don't really know.

So let me show you some even better results. Once again I am showing you earnings from an amazon kindle account. These are easy to show because I have everything all nice and separated.

With both of the accounts I just showed you, I utilized JUST ONE marketing tactic to gain all of the sales. Now these times are overlapping because I just pulled these screenshots.

The short version is that you are looking at nearly 200 grand in sales in just the last 6 weeks and only from two books!

And let me say this again ... this tactic is a great deal easier to do when you are doing it with apps.

However, this tactic seriously works to market virtually anything you can imagine.

I have used it to market apps, books, health supplements, sporting goods, camping equipment, and so on. It works every time, without fail.

Now you should know that I haven't taught this technique to anyone ... ever. I have at most hinted at how it's done, or in some cases gave a VERY "watered down" version of the technique.

I am going to be teaching a few people what this method is and how it works.

Now I do want to be clear about something. This isn't a "learn it and money falls from the ceiling as if by magic" kind of thing. This is a "learn it, apply it, DO IT, and you make money like crazy" kind of thing.

In other words, this method is something for the action-taker. If you're some lazy jerk that wants to sit around watching oprah and "imagining" money falling from the ceiling ... well this technique probably won't do you much good.

Like I said, if you're the kind of person that is ready to DO THINGS to make success happen then this technique is probably the "key to the bank vault" that you've been looking for.

I'm going to be teaching how to do this through a series of emails, videos, and PDF files. The class is going to have a cost.

But think of it, I'm showing you almost 200 grand in earnings in just 6 weeks from doing this. If I can show you how to make just HALF of that, this class is worth ten grand.

However, I'm also aware that if you need this technique then you probably don't HAVE ten grand.

So I'm going to run this class very differently from anything else.

If you want into the class, leave a comment and let me know you want in. I'll explain how you join the class, what the cost will be (probably just 100 or 200 or something), and so on.

So, the first step is really simple. leave a comment and let me know you want details for joining the class.

The comment won't be posted but instead will be sent to me as an email so that I can reply with the details.

New Special Report

2013-03-11T09:35:00.004-06:00

There are a lot of people out there that like to talk about how to rapidly create new business or new traffic. I have a method that for only about 5 grand can let you enter a new market and make upwards of fifty grand in a month. Yes, fifty grand, yes one month. See how you can do it by checking out the special report by clicking here now.

You aren't being told the truth

2013-02-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

I have to tell you that it's frustrating. How often I see people being fed a line of bull about how much can be made with apps, or how fast things can happen online using "online only" techniques.

Let me give you an example. The game angry birds. Do you know that Roxio makes MOST of it's revenue from angry birds from licensing the angry birds logo to t-shirt companies, pillow companies, and so on?

In other words, while it is true that angry birds, the single most popular game in existence, is successful in it's own right, MOST of what it makes does NOT come from the app! This same thing can also be said of the now wildly successful "Temple Run" game as well.

These are companies that are using apps as a way to fuel REAL business ... where the HUGE money is made. Here's the thing, apps are a great way to make a little extra. The issue is that you can make SO MUCH MORE ... and do it so much faster, when you combine apps with other strategies and tactics.

I mean really, aren't you tired of wondering where your web traffic is going to come from? Aren't you tired of wondering how you're going to get downloads of your apps? Wouldn't it just be relaxing to know that you're making way more than you can spend? That your apps are getting huge downloads and your sites are getting hordes of traffic?

That's probably why my "Profit model" video on my blog is already overwhelmingly the single most watched video that I have despite not even being a month old yet. The truth of that video is resonating with people.

Now here's the thing, last week I ran a test where I was going to mentor someone for only 500 bucks and take only one person. Obviously that spot filled up quite quickly. That program is proving to be so successful I'm going to open it up to three more folks.

I will teach you exactly how to use facebook, youtube, blogs, and forums to drive HUGE traffic to your sites AND how to leverage that into insane downloads of your apps. (yes, I'll be showing you how to create apps "on the cheap" and in only a week or two as well that will run on both android and iOS) That will then turn into INSANELY MORE traffic to your sites.

All of that will then be leveraged into tens of thousands of email list subscribers, tons of product sales, and on and on. In other words, if you want to know how to truly turbo charge your success, this is it.

In fact, this mentoring program comes with a guarantee unlike ANY other online. If I haven't helped you to make at least 10k within 60 days, you get the mentoring fee you paid back (and that's only 500 bucks).

How the program will work is that we will talk by voice about 3 times a week in the beginning. The full program will run 3 to 4 months with the goal being to set you up with a 100k per month deal ... just from recurring auto-bills.

You'll be making still more from doing other things, but once you have the 100k done, lots of other things become so much more possible. Plus you'll really like me :-)

If you are interested in joining this program, email me using the email address on the Contact Me page right away and let me know you want in. I'm only taking 3 more people and that's it.

Email me right away with any questions and to let me know you want details on how to get in. We'll speak by voice and during that conversation I'll answer your questions and give you the full scoop.

So when you email me, give me your phone number if you're in the states, or your skype ID if you're outside the states, and we'll talk.

"Cheating" to get traffic (part 1.5)

2013-02-13T17:49:00.001-07:00

In this video I go into more detail regarding exactly how to use apps to drive traffic ... including how to drive traffic in huge numbers to the app itself. Check out the video by clicking here now

"Cheating" to get tons of traffic (part 1)

2013-02-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

The first part of the series I promised when you signed up to the list. This first piece of the puzzle starts the process. Click Here to get the first report.

Traffic Generation - Get a lot of visitors to your site FAST

2013-02-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

Just posted how to do this over on the facebook page. Check it out by clicking here now. One thing, I will be giving some REALLY cool stuff ONLY to people that "like" the facebook page. Go ahead and do that and get all kinds of cool extra information.

The Profit Model: how to make 100k per month

2013-02-05T09:56:00.001-07:00

I know it's been a VERY long time since I posted anything over here but that's because I've been busy doing business instead of talking about it :-) Anyway, I just created a video that shows you a profit model you can use to build a 100k per month business. Check it out: The Profit Model Video

Interview With Marcus Sheridan!

2012-04-28T08:45:00.000-06:00

Marcus Sheridan is a guy that is taking the inbound marketing field by absolute storm. The best part is that this guy is the real deal. He put inbound marketing principals into play for his swimming pool business in 2008 and while other companies were going out of business, his company thrived.

(will look better in full screen mode)

The Triangle Of Trust: Secrets To Better Rankings, More Traffic, And Killer Sales

2012-04-25T09:38:00.000-06:00

The Triangle of Trust can bring you
better rankings, more traffic and ...
more sales!

Frank Kern was the first person to use the phrase "Triangle of Trust." However, what I want to talk to you about now is much more than the way he uses the phrase.

I want to show you how to use a better, more improved "triangle of trust" in a way that improves search rankings, gets you a ton more traffic, but more importantly gets you a TON more sales.

If you want more traffic, better rankings, and more sales then ... read more by clicking here now.

How A 7 Day Old Blog Attracted 500 Visitors And Over $1,000,000 In New Customers

2012-03-30T15:15:00.001-06:00

Apply These Tips To Make More
From Your Site As Soon As Next Week

A week ago today I started a blog over at wordpress. It's at http://mattgoffrey.wordpress.com

In that single week I've gotten 500 visitors to the blog, 50 people signed up to the mailing list, but more importantly 12 new consulting clients. Because of how I'm paid, each of these should be worth $200,000 to me pretty easily if they follow my advice (and most do because of how I work with people).

So how did I do this? How did such new blog ... and a free blog hosted on wordpress no less ... get traffic, email subscribers, and new business?

If you take a look at the site (http://mattgoffrey.wordpress.com) you will see a couple of things fairly quickly. The first is that it's about something very specific, and that's making money with mobile apps. There are quite a number of really great mobile development blogs out there but almost none that talk exclusively about how to make money with apps. This draws attention.
I have been unabashed in giving away some of the best knowledge and information that I have. This helps to establish expertise which helps to establish trust. When people contact me I've already shows that I know what I'm talking about.
I would then share that content on the various social network sites and social bookmarking sites to drive traffic. This is literally the only thing I did to get traffic to that site.
The site is intended to drive people quite purposely into my subscriber list. From there I give even more great content. However, that content that my subscribers get is intended to get people to want to talk to me about my consulting.
I make it extremely easy for people to become consulting clients because I tie my success to your success. The more you make, the more I do. It makes it incredibly easy for you to say yes to having me consult with you on your project when you know that I get paid directly proportional to how much you make. That means my incentive is for you to make as much as possible. This is unlike other coaches/consultants that charge these massive upfront fees and what they are paid isn't dependent at all on how much you make. I've never understood that, which is why I do things differently.

In other words, that new site was set up to establish obvious expertise first. ONLY THEN would someone join my mailing list. Once on my mailing list, I establish further expertise, and only then do they become a client.

It's a simple marketing funnel that works like crazy. Just be aware of the fact that the funnel starts with the creation of great content that people will find enormously valuable. From there just make sure that joining your list is as easy as possible with the fewest number of fields required as possible (to join my list all you need is an email address and that's it).

This Process Seems Very Simple, Because It Is ... But It Works Like Gangbusters

This process can work for you ... and it can start working in as little as a single week from now. You just have to start actually doing it. Yes it's simple, but that it's simple is the reason it works so well.

Check out http://mattgoffrey.wordpress.com and have a look at the articles. Join the mailing list and see how the content is delivered and how I move people to getting in touch with me. Then simply use what you see as a template for your own business.

Best Business To Be In Now

2012-03-27T12:14:00.001-06:00

This is going to be an uncharacteristically short post.

Here's the bottom line. If you're relatively new in business, or struggling with the business that you are in, then you DEFINITELY need to stop what you're doing and start a mobile app business.

There is no question that this is the best business to be in right now.

You can make an insanely huge amount of money in an insanely short period of time.

Now, let me point something out, I said "you can make..."

As in it's possible. That doesn't mean that "you will" by any stretch. However, in my opinion, you can make more with less effort than ANYTHING else. I'm even starting to switch everything I over to focusing on this for some very simple reasons:

Over the last 9 months I've made over 1.5 million dollars with that amount going upward WEEKLY
At the same time I've spent only about an hour a day working on it

My point here is that I'll probably not be posting here too often anymore.

If you'd like to learn more about mobile app development and how to make a TON of money doing it, check out My Mobile App Developer Blog By Clicking Here Now.

In fact, I've even put together a start-to-finish toolbox on how you can create your own apps and start making money from it even if you don't know anything about programming. You can get my App Developer Toolbox by Clicking Here Now.

Web Traffic 101 (special report)

2012-03-16T13:48:00.003-06:00

I just finished up a special report on how to easily gain traffic to your site.

It covers the basics of how to build traffic to your site in a way that also builds authority within your market. The goal for the report was not just to get you more traffic, but to do it in a way that made you more money.

Click Here Now to gain access to the report.

Gaining Attention In An ADD World

2012-03-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

In this day and age everyone is screaming for attention.

In fact that's the problem, more and more people are screaming for attention. Advertisements are showing up in more and more places.

Do you realize that right now there's actually some idiot out there selling urinal cakes with ads on them. That's how bad the situation is with everyone trying to gain attention anywhere and everywhere you look.

The problem is that in order for anyone to buy anything from you they first have to give you their attention. Yet attention is becoming harder and harder to get. The reason for this is simple:

Advertising Pollution:
This is what I just referenced above. Advertising is everywhere and in so many places anymore that it's rapidly getting difficult to cast your eyes almost anywhere outside your house without seeing an advertisement for something. This is creating "noise" and people are literally beginning to simply block it out.

Paradox of Choice
Want that in red or green, the larger screen or the smaller form factor, this brand or the other. There is so much choice that more and more people are beginning to simply choose not to choose at all. It's the great paradox. So much choice means that people are choosing not to choose. In fact, the "choice overload" is leading to ...

Lack of Focus
The huge amount of advertising pollution, combined with far too much choice means that it's more difficult than ever for someone to actually focus on anything. Add into that the always connected society that we live in with smart phones and texting, and focus really is hard to come by. People are spending most of their time multi-tasking instead of focusing on any one thing or person.

Information Overload
The average person is subjected to more new information in a single day than the average person back in the early 1900s might receive in their entire lifetime. Now throw in everything talked about above with lack of focus, too much choice and too much advertising.

The bottom line is that attention is the single most scarce resource of the modern economic times.

That last sentence is so important to understand that I can comfortably say this, "the entrepreneur that understands how to obtain and hold attention is the entrepreneur that will win in the marketplace ... every time and every day."

In fact, let me give you some relevant statistics to prove the points I've been making.

45,000 = the average number of products in a supermarket
75,000 = the average number of products in a walmart
500,000,000 = the number of websites
Billions = the number of web pages online right now

All of that is why:

Only 14% of people trust any advertisement at all
69% of people want technologies to block advertisements
65% of people feel that they are bombarded with too many advertisements
56% of people will avoid buying from advertisers that they feel advertise too much

So lets recap:

Attention is extremely valuable
While at the same time there's less attention to obtain
As time goes on, attention will get still yet more difficult to obtain

In fact, numerous online studies have shown that people absolutely do not trust marketers or advertisers at all. Trust comes only from friends or authorities and that's it.

The problem is, you don't want to become a "friend" to your market exactly. There's an old saying, "You're never a celebrity at home." Basically that means to your friends, you're just you. People ask for favors from friends. People do not pay a premium just for the privilege of doing business with a friend.

Flip that around however, and someone that is a trusted market expert and authority; that person is a celebrity and people will pay a premium to do business with that person.

This is why it's so incredibly important for you to become a market authority and thought leader.

The question becomes, how can you become an authority and garner lots of attention?

Image Credit From Zazzle

Start By Creating A "Stalker List"

If you want attention one of the best ways to do that is to associate yourself with people that already have lots of attention, and "ride their coattails" so to speak.

Find the 5 to 10 big celebrities in your market and "stalk" their every piece of content. Take what they say and improve on it and show it to them or give it to them Create "top 10 best of" lists of their content and include some killer graphics and data visualizations with it. Now let me be clear, this content needs to be off the charts great. It needs to be worthy of one of your market celebrities to talk about.

Associating with your celebrities, and getting them to link to you, puts you at their level in the mind of your market. You become a celebrity, and this can happen with an amazing speed as well assuming you truly are creating great content.

Do interviews with the celebrity and give that interview to the person for use on their site (again, associating you with them). Or take their content ... lots and lots of it ... and compile it into an ebook or special report. Now don't just dump their content into Word as is, you'll need to modify things a little bit so that one piece of content flows naturally to the next and one chapter builds on the previous chapters. When appropriate, link to some of your own content on your own site.

Again, give that to the celebrity/big dog/guru/whatever. Now of course there'll be information in there about you as well, again creating the association and links back to your own site and your own content.

These strategies are designed to not just associate you (and therefore create an authority presence in the mind of your market) with the celebrity, it's designed to generate links from them to you, to get traffic from them to you.

These strategies are designed to obtain the attention of your market in a way that makes you an authority.

But Don't Just Become An Authority, Actually Be One

It isn't hard to capture attention once, the real trick, the real key is to capture attention repeatedly.

The problem is, doing that isn't exactly easy since people aren't just sitting around looking for someone to give their attention to. If you want attention, you have to take defined and purposeful action to become an authority and to actually demonstrate that you are.

Now you don't want to say that you're an authority, simply speaking authoritatively is enough. In fact in some ways this is where I talk about the creation of great content again. If you speak with an authoritative "voice" at the same time that you're creating great content with great visuals, your market will naturally see you as a market authority and thought leader.

In fact, by associating yourself with other authorities, you garner more links of a higher quality (assisting your search engine placement), you garner more traffic, and a wider reach.

But How Do You Actually "Be" An Authority Other Than Speaking Authoritatively?

That's actually easier and more difficult than it sounds. What it takes is:

Commit to lifelong learning in your market of choice
Be willing to be a thought leader and espouse new ideas and concepts
Be willing to say things like you say them, even if it means going against entrenched "wisdom"
Work hard to create absolutely the best content there is in your market space
Speak and write for free to establish yourself

What you want to do is start by writing free reports and making them available on your website.

Then move to combining content from major celebrities in your field into ebooks and linking to your free reports where appropriate. Again, just give those to the celebrity so that they can give it to their people.

Then look around at your local newspapers and contact them to see if you can write some content at no cost. Look for other blogs and write posts for them, again make these great posts and again link back to your content where appropriate. Believe it or not, this almost always works, even writing content for papers or often even major magazines and publications.

Next, you need to begin blogging like crazy. Create the kinds of great blog posts that you wish other people in your market would create. Don't just be good, be great, and be willing to be great for longer than anyone else, in more detail and depth than any one else.

Go one step farther than even that and offer your help to others in your market for free. Start a free coaching program or offer to give strategy sessions at no cost. Be willing to go farther and do more.

Find out what seminars or conferences are available in your market and write the conference director or manager with a proposal to speak there at no cost. This is a huge secret. When you can become one of the speakers at a conference you are automatically deemed an expert by every single person in attendance.

You will also be considered an expert by the people that get any of the marketing for the event and an expert by the people that read blog posts about the event. In other words, speaking at seminars and conferences can be huge for helping you become an authority and for helping you to capture your markets attention.

Dare to be great.

What Is Inbound Marketing

2012-03-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of talk about inbound marketing. My last article on SEO Chat was specifically about it in fact.

So lets first talk about what Inbound Marketing is, then how you do it to almost literally control search.

In a nutshell, inbound marketing is the convergence of content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.

Knowing what "inbound marketing" is does you no good if you don't know how to do it, or just as importantly why you should be doing it.

Why Inbound Marketing Should Be Your Focus

Let me start by saying that if you're advertising I'm not suggesting that you should stop. What I am saying is that inbound marketing absolutely should be the focus of your marketing efforts.

There is one overriding reason for this, one reason above others. Inbound Marketing has, as its main focus, to make you an undisputed authority in your market. As an authority you have your pick of customers at the same time you charge more and have better profits.

Inbound Marketing, once fully in place, can mean that you will no longer need to waste money on advertising because the best customers you can have are already seeking you out. More customers than you can handle will look for you without even considering if there is anyone else in your market.

Inbound Marketing In More Detail

I explained what inbound marketing was and why you should be doing it, why it should be your focus, but there's more to explain before going into how it's done.

Inbound marketing starts with content creation, sometimes referred to as content or article marketing. However, inbound marketing goes well beyond some of the inane article marketing strategies I've seen with taking crap articles and spinning them into more crap and putting them into even bigger crap article directories. The problem with those strategies is that you become associated with crap articles uploaded to crap article directories that almost no one actually uses.

Inbound marketing starts with the creation of great content that goes beyond the 500 word length junk most people produce. That content is then placed onto your blog and shared through social media.

If your content actually is great then you will find that the social sharing will spread out. People will further share your content out which means top search rankings.

Additionally, the constant addition of detailed, in depth content for your market will also mean an overwhelming possibility of top search rankings. Google likes new, fresh content and ranks sites well that regularly post new things.

In other words, over time, Google itself will see you as the authority in your market and for that reason automatically give you good rankings.

Not only that, but between the sharing, multiple top search rankings, and great content, customers will be much more inclined to do business with you over anyone else because you'll be the only person in the market actually answering questions.

How Inbound Marketing Is Done

Even in actual practice, inbound marketing isn't complicated. In fact it's fairly straight forward. The steps are:

Start a blog for your company. If you have one, understand that a blog is not simply some mechanism for company press releases or milk toast about products. If you don't have a blog let me highly recommend using wordpress.
Use the Google Keyword Tool to find out what questions customers are asking. (add what, how, why, and when to relevant key phrases to your market) .Take every question that any customer has asked either on search that you found or that has been asked to your sales or customer service teams, and create content around it and post that to your blog. Share on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, and every other social network.
Create content on things your customers should know and share that content as well.
Do product comparisons to help your customers out ... in depth, detailed comparisons and give your opinion as to which product is better and why.
Give your opinions on anything and everything going on in your market.
Find forums relating to your market and engage in conversations there.
Find people on the social media sites talking about your market, especially Google+ and Facebook and engage in those conversations.

In a nutshell, that's all there is to it.

While that may seem like there isn't much there, the truth is that those seven steps constitute something incredible. Something that can allow you to be the top player in your market very quickly.

They constitute your ability to demonstrate an overwhelming expertise in your market that no one else can hope to over come. Preciously few markets have anyone in them doing anything like the above.

You can be the undisputed local market authority with all the customers you can handle. That authority translates not only to more customers, it translates to the best customers that will pay you more just for the privilege of doing business with you.

How Create The Psychological Desire To Buy From You (part 1)

2012-02-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

Understand How Buyer Decisions
Are Made In This Article

Content marketing is great, getting something to go viral is awesome.

But the truth is that those things won't actually make you more money. At the end of the day you have to get people to want to actually buy your products and services.

This series of posts is going to deal with how people make buying decisions and will cover that process all the way down to the psychological level.

The goal will be for your business to implement a process that is so great, that appeals so much to how people make decisions, that someone almost can't help but purchase from you.

There are many techniques for doing this, and in this post I'll be sharing a few of them.

Continue reading to learn how people make buying decisions so that you can get more customers easier than ever before.

"I'm right and you're wrong and there's nothing you can do about it" (from the movie Matilda)

People do not like to be wrong. Almost never will someone older than about 21 or 22 change political parties. In any discussion of politics, minds are never changed. Both parties will stridently walk away from the discussion continuing to believe what they did before it.

People have such an unending need to be right, that when they believe something that is wrong, and demonstrated absolutely that they are, often they will make up reasons why they couldn't actually be wrong.

The so-called "Heaven's Gate" cult believed that the Hale-Bopp comet was actually a spaceship populated by aliens. Those "superior beings" would, upon passing the planet, take up the faithful and take them away to live on an alien paradise. The belief was that they were going to be alive when this happened.

Part of "getting ready" process basically meant that the leader, Marshal Applewhite, killed his followers and also himself.

The two remaining people were left with a dilemma. The people were not taken up to the spaceship.

To continue to "be right" they basically changed the belief to say that instead the people's energy was sent up, or that their DNA had already been captured, or any number of other things so that the "aliens" could simply "revive" the people into more perfect bodies that would be suited to the aliens world.

People hate to be wrong and will make things up or change other things in an effort to continue to be right.

So how can you make use of that to make more sales?

When someone does something, they will look for reasons why the action they took was the correct action to take ... often by doing even more.

In other words, if you can get someone to join your list, they'll want to know that they were right to do that.

Give their minds some ammunition by giving good content. If you don't, their need to be right will shift to a belief that you're just another two bit huckster.

Now that you are giving good content, when it comes time to ask for an order, it's a fairly simple matter to have them continue walking the path they already started.

Get you potential customers to clearly understand that they were right to follow you in the first place. Then get them to understand that they were right to join your mailing list. If those things were the right thing to do, they could "prove it to themselves" by doing even more of what's right by buying from you.

Now, I stated that in a way that was insanely obvious. If you state it in those terms it'll backfire. I just wanted you to understand the point. Create a journey for your potential customers that they want to be on and enjoy.

Give great content to make following you the right thing to do. Give more great content when the take other actions (joining your list, following you on other social media, etc). The more you can make it the right thing for someone to expand the number of actions following you, the more likely they will also "be right" when they buy from you.

You can make it very easy for someone to purchase from you in this way because it becomes for them a natural thing to do. You won't have to "convince" them, or "sell them" or any other hard selling nonsense.

It's a journey that you can put people on where they naturally flow into being your customer.

Here is a video that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about here:

Uhh... What did you just say?

The next step to getting your customers to understand, at a deep an unwavering subconscious level that they should buy from you is to use their own words when you talk to them.

I'm not saying you should be a parrot. That would be annoying and then they'd think they'll be right to leave you. The concept behind this technique is in a lot of ways an extension of what I just talked about in the last technique.

You see, one of the ways to know that someone is in total agreement with you is when they use your own words. The same can be said of your customers. They will know that you understand them the best when words very similar to their own are being used by you.

Here's the great thing about this. Once you are using their own words, and understanding where they are coming from and what their wants truly are, you actually do understand them better and can actually help to give them what they want.

You understand the exact problem, the exact desire. Doing that however requires that you know what words your customers are using to describe their problem or what they want.

So how do you get that information?

The first and easiest answer is a forum (or multiple forums). Forums allow you to see what people are talking about, what their problems and desires are, but just as importantly what words they are using to describe it.

The second way to find out is so unconventional, so downright strange you may not want to do it.

You ask. :-)

Ask the people that follow you on social networks what their issues are and use their own words.

Ask them what they want, ask them what they need. Just ask. It really is that simple.

The Lesson of the Bohemian Club

It's probably the single most exclusive club in the world. They won't just accept anyone and getting in is an enormous challenge. They literally make it difficult for someone to give them a reported one hundred grand a year, and those few times when a spot is opened up people will go to great lengths to join.

The same could be said of the women's version, the Belizean Grove. Getting in is exceedingly difficult.

So how does any of that help you to make more?

It does in two ways. First, and I've talked about this before, taking just any client that comes along is a really bad idea. By being exclusive, by not taking just anyone, it sets you up for only taking clients you'll actually enjoy having.

Not only that, but when you're exclusive, you set yourself up in a position where people will literally fight for your acceptance. Now I don't know about you, but instead of having to "sell" a client, I'd much rather a client try to convince me to accept them.

It flips around the whole dynamic. You see, I don't want to be in a position of having to convince people, or do any number of hard sell games. I want them to have to convince me they're going to be worth the time and effort I'll put into them.

You do that by partly by being exclusive (along with using the previous two techniques). By letting potential customers know that you have plenty of clients right now, don't really need any more necessarily, so they'll need to give you reason to accept them.

Not only that, but things that are "exclusive" are also more expensive. That means you can charge much more, have much better profits, and enjoy your time off that much more.

You Shall Obey

How would you like people in your market to do what you said, simply because you said they should do it?

How would you like to be able to say, "This is the best product or service of its kind," and have people listen to you and buy from you, even when you come right out and say that you're going to be making some money in affiliate commission (always be up front about that by the way).

In fact, if you do this correctly, people will happily buy products you recommend. They will buy things glad that you're going to be getting some of the commission on it (I'll be talking about this later).

This power to get people to do what you want stems from being an authority in your market. Take a look at how often someone like Marcus Sheridan recommends some kind of action which people then happily follow. I know I talk about him a lot, but that's because he's awesome, knows what he's talking about, and speaks with authority.

The power of being an authority is crazy. In the book MindControlMarketing.com (written some years ago but still one of the best books on the subject) the author Mark Joyner gives several stories of how potent being an authority to your market can be. Then there is this video from CarmenSognonvi:

Notice how much this plays into the previous things that we've talked about. The great thing is that you can do this from the very beginning of when someone makes their very first contact with you. You can create things that are epic, and only create things that are epic. Nothing simple good enough, nothing that's the same junk as everyone else.

If all of the content on your blog/site is massively high quality, that will build authority. However, it's also the way you present yourself. It's the "tone" of your content, the "tone" of your videos. It's creating content that has more than one method or style of presenting information the information (text, graphics, video, cartoons, etc).

Is doing this easy? No it isn't. Which probably explains why there aren't very many authorities in any market. Being an authority in your market is simple, but not necessarily easy. All you have to do is create better content than everyone else, for longer than they are willing to do it.

That one sentence is unquestionably the hallmark of a top market leader. It is what allows someone to make very simple comments that potential clients (and current clients) will follow almost without question.

How To Quickly Generate Lots Of SEO/SMM Clients

2012-02-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

The story of how I went from struggling and broke to highly paid consultant ... and how you can too

If you want to get more business for your SEO/SMM consulting practice then what I’m about to share with you can revolutionize how much you’re making and how easily you do it.

It is my hope that you'll avoid the mistakes I made (I explain the pitfalls) as well as gain an ability to more quickly experience success though the 4 simple steps I now use to gain top paying clients with less effort (my clients now have to explain to me why I should accept them).

Read on for the full story...

You see for a very long time I struggled to actually build a practice. I did all the “usual things” like advertise, attempt to network at various events, and even a little article distribution and the like here and there. While I did get a few clients, it was frustrating to me that I was helping them to make a lot of money while they often acted like they were doing me a favor to pay me the $100 or $200 per month I charged.

I was working insanely long hours to have customers I ultimately hated, and a family that neither understood what I did nor did they like how long I spent doing it for the small amount I made.

It was a struggle for me and my family, and it was horrible.

To understand what happened, it’s important to know why it is that I struggled to get clients.

1) Focus on SEO that was incorrect

I did reasonably okay with my own SEO efforts. I ranked well for local searches on SEO and even got some traffic from the various search engines for the phrases.

What I didn't understand however is that the only people who even know what "SEO" is are other people offering those services. In other words I was doing a good job of teaching my competition how to beat me while not reaching my target audience at all.

Regular business people do not look for things like "SEO" or "search engine optimization" or other such phrases. Only those of us "in the business" look for things like that.

My point is that the reason for struggling was that I wasn't ranking for phrases that my customers actually searched for. By the time they knew things like "SEO" they were already the client of someone else.

2) I charged far too little to do far too much

This was probably the second largest mistake that I made, and it's why I talk about charging more so often. You can solve an awfully large number of problems by taking better clients that pay you more. I've said this before, but your clients will place a value on your services directly depending on how much you cost them.

If you are just some little nothing of a cost to them, then you are a little nothing of value. It becomes easy at that point to waste your time because you've proven to them that your time has no value.

Further, even if I was able to prove that I was bringing in millions of dollars worth of new business; to my clients I had little to do with it because I had little value. So when I did prove to them how much I was helping them, in an effort to raise my prices some, they would get furious and stop doing business with me all together.

3) I took any and every client that came along

This was easily my biggest mistake. Even when I knew a client was going to be a jerk, treat me like crap, try and not pay me while they demanded far more of time than what they paid me deserved, I still took that client. This was mostly because I was broke and struggling and I needed the money they were going to pay up front.

The end result however was that because of the time they sucked (sometimes hours a day for only $100 per month) on top of how poorly they treated me, it continued the cycle of being broke and frustrated in a way that was only compounded by charging to little.

How That All Turned Around And Struggle Became Success

A few years back I had just gotten off the phone where I had been trying to get a client that I had worked very hard for over the previous year to pay me more to renew the agreement with me. When I started working with this particular client his chiropractic practice was in a small hole in the wall office in a bad part of the city he lived in, he was the only "doctor" and he barely made enough to pay the one assistant that he had.

Following my advice, over the year I worked with him he dominated searches in his area, his practice boomed, he hired other people to work in his office, and after the first year of working with me he was doing over 1.5 million per month just from the people that came off of the internet stuff I was doing for him, and I could prove it.

I could prove the massive benefit I brought him but he still saw little value in my services. He said that I wasn't "the expert in the field," and he wanted to transfer to working with someone more of an expert now that he could afford to pay more.

He told me that he had already signed with a larger firm, ran by a recognized expert and wanted to stop working with me when the year contract was up. The receptionist had grown to become a friend of mine and she told me that he was going to be paying that other firm $10,000 up front plus an additional $2,500 per month. Understand that he was only paying me $200 per month and all I was asking for was an increase to just $500 per month to renew the agreement for another year.

That was when I realized I had to do something different. I spent some time talking with my wife and we completely revamped how I was going to get new clients, what I would charge, what clients I would and would accept, and so on. I was given one month to turn things around, or I'd have to "get a real job" which was something that I really did not want to do.

Fast forward to today and I am now easily the highest paid consultant of my type making four times more per client than my next closest competitor. That happened in a period of only about two months, and this is how I did it.

1) I Immediately dropped every client that didn't immediately see my value and pay me much more

To do this I emailed every client (I was doing this anyway but they got an extra report) with the exact results of their traffic and rankings before I started working with them compared to what they were now. Where I could (which was most of the time) I gave information on the number of calls being generated from my activities, number of sales I was instrumental in generating, and so on.

I then proceeded to tell every one of my clients that effective immediately all contracts were terminated, my work on their behalf was going to stop, all websites I had created would be shut down, all accounts at any services closed, and so on. I showed each client exactly how much traffic and business that likely involved.

I called up each client and told them that I would rather keep them, but instead of a flat fee, I wanted 25% of what I helped them to make instead.

I would negotiate down to 20% and nothing less. Anyone that said no (and nearly all of them did) I dropped and did exactly what I promised.

I think at the end of it I had like three clients left. However, the very first month after I implemented this I made nearly ten times more what I had made the previous month, and like I said, that was from only three clients.

2) Stop "networking" and start building authority

I immediately stopped going to various and sundry meetings for the purpose of "networking" with other businesses and trying to get clients that way. To them I was then yet another "sales person" trying to drum up business. As a result, people were mentally building up barriers when ever we talked. I know this because I did the same thing.

I would go to events if I could speak at them, but not if I was just going to be another of the "rabble".

I essentially immediately began to put myself out there as an authority and only as an authority. If I couldn't be put into that kind of position, then I wouldn't go. I scheduled extra seminars through any and every organization that I was a part of. I also began doing webinars and teleseminars for organizations outside of where I lived.

I demonstrated at every chance the results I got for my clients and what I did to get those results. In other words, I would freely and without reservation tell anyone what they should do if they wanted more business (not how to do it, only what to do). Every time I explained a technique, I would explain how that would generate more clients and more business and then ask, "do you see how getting clients that way will help your business?"

It was a question meant to reinforce that I was the authority they should be looking to. I explain this technique fully, explaining the full presentation method and exactly why it converts so many clients at this post here.

I also turned my own sites into incredible sources of content, began guest blogging, and doing tons of other things to establish authority

note on this subject: When I started doing things this way my sites were too "corporate" with a big business feel to them and no personalities or "real people" behind them. I'm now "branding myself" as well as putting some personality into the way things are done. This actually makes getting business much easier.

3) Massive price increase

When I talk to other SEO/SMM business owners I often work with them on increasing their prices between 4 and 12 times their current rates (which is less than the increase I went through). That's because most people aren't undercharging as badly as I was. Anyway, instead of 100 or 200 per month, I began charging 20k "up front" (actually it's spread out over 4 payments) plus 25% of what I help them to make. I don't negotiate this, I don't mess around.

The clients I work with now clearly understand my value and interestingly all of them have a much greater respect for my time and don't just waste it.

Not only that, but by charging so much I can bring services to the table that my competition can't possibly duplicate because they don't charge enough. Sure, there are other firms out there charging 20k for a year's worth of services. More than a few charge 60 to 75k for a year's worth of work (with that amount spread out over the course of an entire year).

My smaller clients pay me a quarter of a million per year. Just think of all of the great things that I can do for them when they are paying me that much.

4) I don't take just anyone as a client. A client has to prove to me they are going to be worth my time.

The presentation method that I teach instills a sense of trust and authority in me.

When I speak either to a large group, or even to a potential client on the phone, as I end the presentation I'll switch to something along the lines of "now it's up to you to prove to me that I should accept you as a client."

I am not kidding, I actually make people prove that they are going to be worthy of my time. At this point, I don't need any more clients. Every new client I take is time away from my family and I consider that time very precious. In my mind it's therefore only fair for them to have to explain how they'll be worth the loss of that time.

In fact, let me give this to you as a secret.

Your Time Is Valuable! A Potential Client Should Have To Prove They Will Be Worth The Time They Take From You!

If you take nothing else away from this post, please take that away.

How I generated new clients quickly

I really sort of said how, but I slightly danced around the issue and included how I did it while talking about something else. The bottom line is that I scheduled seminars through every chamber of commerce that I could on how a business could use social media.

Basically, I got new clients through being an authority.

I expanded on that with additional webinars and teleseminars through other organizations and groups.

There is no question that if you want to get new clients for your SEO/SMM consulting practice then the best way to do that is to be perceived as an authority. The best way for that to happen is to give talks, trainings, and do events.

All Is Not Rosy! The Massive Growth Mistake I Made

As I shifted to being an authority, and taking on much larger clients for much larger fees, I also took on two partners to help with different areas of the business. (that is beside the mistake that I made with corporate looking sites with no "people" behind them)

Let me say that again. I took on partners.

That ended up being a massive mistake. If you have a consulting practice, then you run it. If you take my advice, and that leads to your practice growing, then hire any skill gaps you want filled.

If you take on partners, and give them a piece of your business, then you lose control and they can screw you over. If you instead hire people, then you have and maintain control and that is less likely.

In my case, I literally had to just walk away from a 10 million per year practice.

Well, over half of the clients came with me. My two "partners" who decided to screw me, are making less now than before while I'm making more than I did with them "helping" me. I look at it as a sort of "success is the greatest revenge" kind of thing.

However, that experience did end up turning into something good.

A friend of mine, with some pretty good SMM talents of his own, wanted to start a practice and stop working for the web design company.

So I taught him how to find and close clients. He's now on track with his clients to hit two million this year.

I've since then I've done the same thing with several smaller SMM practices in my area and I genuinely like it.

Not only that, but as I've said before, in some ways we SEO/SMM people have a responsibility to help local businesses to do better. That in turns spurs local economic development. By helping local businesses, we are in turned helped.

Just remember, that you actually help your clients the most when you charge much more. By charging more, they have a greater value for you and what you do and are much more likely to implement what you suggest to a greater degree. Charging more is good for you and it is good for them. It's literally a win/win as strange as that sounds however, it's very true.

If I can help you to make more, if I can show you how to get more clients, then your local economy is improved as well. How would you like me to show you how to build your own practice to over one million?

How would you like to have clients fighting to convince you to do business with them? How would you like to not only get a much larger amount upfront, but also get paid hundreds of thousands on top of it?

I'll do a free strategy session to help you with this. Just click on the "strategy session" link above and I'll help you with your business.

From Cold To Sold In One Conversation

2012-02-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

How To Sell More Of Your SEO/SMM Services, Easier, and for MUCH More

Before I get into the report, know that you can download this as a PDF from Google Docs.

Businesses of every stripe and color can use much more help in the the SEO/SMM space. Far too few are gaining the benefits that come from being found in the search engines and being engaged with their markets.

The thing is, I believe that with the global economy the way it still is that we SEO/SMM consultants have a duty to help small businesses. Think of it like this: No matter where you live in the world, small businesses are probably the number one growth area for new employment.

If you can help a business to make more, then they can hire more people. More people working means a better economy, which means more people working, and so on.

We, the SEO/SMM consultants, literally have it in our hands to improve our local economies and through that the economies of the countries we live in and through that the globe itself.

However, doing any of that assumes you can do two things:

That you can get business in the first place

That you are charging enough for your client to take you seriously and do what you say they should

What I want to do is show you exactly how you can do both. I want to show you exactly how you can close about 50% of the people (or more) that you talk to as a customer at the same time you are increasing your prices by at least ten or twelve times what you currently charge.

Would you like to do that? Would you like to close business easier while charging much more?

Read on and I’ll show you how.
The Paradox Of Price

Lets start by posing this scenario (and there is a reason I’m starting here, stick with me)

I have the keys to two different cars in each hand. You can have which ever one you want with the agreement that you can not sell it. You have to keep it and drive it. When you don’t want it anymore, I get it back.

There are no strings attached, no money you have to pay, I’ll even foot the bill for the insurance.

The two cars are this one:

That’s a Ferrari 458 Italia. I think you’ll agree that it’s a beautiful car.

Or you can have this one:

That’s a fully loaded, top of the line, Dodge Neon.

Remember, neither car will cost you anything other than the gas you need to drive it, but you can’t sell it. Which one do you want?

I’ve asked this question at numerous events, speeches, and trainings. About 75% of the time people will choose the Ferrari.

You probably chose the Ferrari.

Probably, you chose the Ferrari as well.
The other 25% of the time people would choose the Neon only because they didn’t want to appear “ostentatious” or something. But if I then ask, “really? you really would rather drive a Dodge Neon over that objectively gorgeous car? Honestly? Or are you just saying that to be different?”

The group that initially chose the Neon, when pressed like that, will sheepishly admit that they really would choose the Ferrari.

With that out of the way I’ll ask my next question, “Why did you choose the Ferrari?”

I’ll get answers along the lines of; because it’s a beautiful car, looks amazing, handles like crazy and well, it’s just a better car. Sometimes people will look at me like I’m stupid. I’ve had people laugh at me and say something like, “hmm, dodge or ferrari? Are you serious, who wouldn’t choose the Ferrari?”

Even if you’re reading this I have found that with perhaps at most two exceptions, people will readily agree that the Ferrari is the better car, even if they would still choose the Neon because of their situation or what ever.

So why is Ferrari considered the better car?

Could it be that it has:

A bigger, more powerful engine?
Could it be the better handling?
The better interior?
The better tires?
The better everything?

That then begs the question, “why is everything better?”

The answer is pretty simple and straight forward; because it costs insanely more that’s why!

The Ferrari can be better because it costs so much more. Think about that with your own pricing. How much more and better value can you provide if you simply charge more?

One more quick story.

Following the 2008 global financial collapse GM had a very difficult time selling their cars. They tried reducing prices to the point that they hardly made a profit at all and still they couldn’t sell them.

This lead to them ending up in such deep financial trouble that the US government had to bail them out to the tune of tens of billions of dollars just to keep them in business. Now I don’t want to get into a political discussion about the right/wrong of the government doing that. Honestly it doesn’t matter to me anymore. It happened, that’s water under the bridge.

What matters is that it did happen. GM, in every single solitary ad for every single solitary car they sell talks about how much better their pricing is compared to their competition.

In fact they still sell cars like this today.

They’ll use words in their advertising like “lowest priced car in its class” or they’ll compare the lower price of their car to the higher price of some other manufacturers car.

They are constantly trying to be the low price provider of their cars. Even Cadillac is sold on the premise that it’s a better, lower priced car than a competing BMW or Mercedes.

This is stupid, beyond idiotic, and now I’m going to show you why.

During the same time period that GM was going out of business and needing a handout from the government (actually multiple governments intervened in GM in several countries) … a car company you may have heard of by the name Aston Martin continued to sell out of every single car they made with a waiting list. Aston Martin has a starting price well over 6 figures for it’s “low end” car, could not make enough of them fast enough to satisfy the demand.

Aston Martin is one of the most expensively produced cars in the world.

Despite their astronomical prices, at the same time GM was going out of business, Aston Martin had some of the best years in their company history.

The profit margin on the average GM car is in the single digits. The profit margin on an Aston Martin is estimated around 30%. So would you rather be the GM of your industry, or the Aston Martin of your industry?

There are two things at play here.

People value more what they pay more for
Things that cost more can have more features and benefits because the person selling the thing has the ability to make it better.

In other words there is a synergistic relationship at play.

If you charge more for your consulting services, your customers will value you more. Further, because you are charging more, you can do better things for them.

That translates into them actually getting more value as well.

So let me ask you this, “would you rather sell your services based on price like GM and constantly struggle, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, or would you rather sell cars like Aston Martin and be the envy of your industry, enjoying fat profits and doing great things for your customers?”

Obviously that was a loaded question, but in my mind it’s a fair question. People that try to be “the low price leader” almost never succeed. Sooner or later someone will come along and either sell something cheaper than you or else they’ll simply out market you.

Case in point, Kmart and Walmart. Kmart for most of my childhood was the undisputed king of selling cheap stuff cheap. Along came Walmart with lower prices and more expansive marketing and now Kmart is struggling to stay in business.

If you’re going to sell based on a low price you are dooming yourself to struggle.

Not only that, as Pete Meyers explains in his post on SEOmoz, “6 Reasons You Need to Charge More”, if you charge a lower price, you can’t possibly succeed with it. Charging a low price like $25 per hour or something will almost ensure that you experience little else but struggle.

Further, far too many consultants don’t even understand even what the going rates are for what they sell. Check out this infographic by Ask Your Target Market that shows average pricing by country for SEO/SMM consultants.

Notice how quite a number of people in the US are charging between $2,500 and $5,000 per month.

You don’t even need very many clients at that kind of pay scale to make a very nice living at the same time you are able to provide incredible value to your clients. Yes, there is also a large grouping at the cheaper $200 per month range. However, which would you rather be doing, providing massive value and making a super comfortable living for yourself, or providing little value while you struggle? I mean really, what can you do for someone for a measly 200 bucks?

So what if you come right out to a potential customer and say, “Look, can you get some other cheap idiot who charges you less than I’m asking? Yes, you can. But there is no possible way they can do the same work for you that I can; if for no other reason than because they aren’t charging enough.

Not only that, let me ask you, are you really willing to trust something like this, which can either generate an enormous number of ready to go leads for you, or do absolutely nothing but suck away your time or money, to some underpriced, underpaid, idiot? Doesn’t it make much more sense to invest a little more into someone that you know has the ability to produce actual results?”

See how that works.

Here’s the bottom line: I want you to start right now, from this very moment, with the understanding that you are worthy of charging more and that you are going to charge more. I want you to realize that the more you charge, the more value you can bring to your clients which therefore makes charging extra worth it.

However, charging more won’t help you if you can’t get customers, so lets talk about how to do that.

Actually, let me explain something first.

The entire process can be boiled down like this:

Amount of traffic times lead conversion rate = Number of leads
Number of leads times sales conversion rate = Number of sales

In other words, you first have to get some traffic, then you have to turn that traffic into a lead. Once they are a lead, you need to get them to become a customer.

Done correctly, that process removes every possible objection, especially the four real objections that anyone might have. They are:

Not in a hurry
Can’t afford it
Don’t need it
Not enough trust

If you do the process of getting traffic, and converting that traffic into a lead the correct way, then three of the four objections are handled before you even have to talk to them to become a customer.

If you then run your sales process the correct way, you eliminate the final objection and basically put your customer on a greased slide that moves them right to you.

Why Do People Go To Visit The Pyramids, The Great Wall Of China, The Eiffel Tower, or the Hoover Dam?

That may seem like an odd question, but it’s very much what I want you to think about when you’re looking for a strategy to generate traffic and convert that traffic into leads. Allow me to explain what in the world I’m talking about and why the things I listed in the heading matter.

They matter because they are all undeniably great things, things that are “epic” even, and constructed by people.

Other people go to see them because of their greatness.

The very beginning of a strategy for your SEO/SMM practice is to create content that is truly, no joke, no-two-ways-about-it great.

Content that is incredible, awesome, even epic.

Before you moan and groan, stick with me.

This is NOT some lame article marketing strategy.

You see, most articles that are posted on various blogs, or ezine articles, or something like that are anywhere from 500 to 700 words. Even articles “guest posted” to other blogs are often little more than 1000 words.

Here’s the problem.

Articles that short don’t generate traffic or links, not really. They also don’t do much to demonstrate your expertise. If someone reads something like that it’s too much like everything else they’ve seen or read and thus it has little value.

On the other hand, posts that are much longer … 2700 words plus, that have lots of graphics and visualizations, that have headings, bullet points, numbered items, and so on, are heavily linked to, shared, and passed on.

Things that you create at that length can dig more fully into a subject.

Not only that, but let me show you something:

Articles more than 2500 words in length generate an insanely larger number of inbound links.

This data is compiled across all of my clients across tons of industries. On average, longer articles are much more linked to.

This spreads notoriety much better. Here’s the thing. Articles at this length allow trust to spread.

In other words, you can eliminate one of 4 reasons to not do business with you right out of the gate. Before someone has even contacted you, trust is already being established, your expertise, your ability to do what they need done is already known.

Now, here’s where it gets even more interesting. If you noticed from the chart above, at 5,000 words the number of inbound links to the article fell off a little bit and recovered when the article was around 8,000 words in length.

You might conclude that you should keep your articles between 2,500 and 5,000 words. That however would be a mistake as you can see from the chart below:

If you notice, once an article reaches 5,000 words, the number of leads the article can generate jumps upward dramatically!

This means that the longer the article, the more likely a “call to action” for someone to become a lead for your business will work.

Longer articles, (I will sometimes call these “special reports” to make them seem more valuable) plain and simply work better for your business.

This is what I’m talking about with building something great.

Peep Laja, the owner of ConversionXL (a fantastic blog about how to improve your conversion rates) wrote a guest post on Think Traffic, “How To Get Over 50,000 Visits To Your Blog In One Month.”

In that article he talked about how much more often larger articles are linked to. More importantly, he talks about how to “spread that content” so that as many people as possible hear about it in the best possible context.

This is what I mean when I talk about “content marketing”. This isn’t some lame, idiotic, “article marketing” thing where you spam a bunch of article directories with B.S. “spun” garbarge to generate links to your website.

If you want to take this to a whole new level, make sure that you are truly producing the content that your market needs and wants. How do you do that? Online surveys at forums or your blog for starters.

Kathryn Korostoff, also of Ask Your Target Market, but also the founder of Research Rockstar has an article on “The Voice of the Customer: Find Out What They Really, Really Want.”

By following her advice, you can find out the true wants, desires, problems, and challenges your market is facing. Now you can create your content centered on that thus helping your content to be received positively by even more people.

This is you being so great, so awesome, that other thought leaders want to link to you, they want to share you content. They want to be associated with you and your content because that content is so incredible.

However, just creating great content isn’t enough. People have to see it. For this to happen there simply isn’t anything better to read than that post/link I gave you above for how to get 50,000 visitors to your blog in one month.

By following the advice there, you can move your content around, let other people know it’s there. If you truly do focus on creating great content, people in your market will hear about it, read it, and therefore respond to it.

However, Make Sure That Everything You Write Has A Call To Action To Become A Lead!

It does you no good to spend hours upon hours creating something great, then doing the work so that it spreads into people’s hands, if all they need to do is read it and be done.

A good call to action gives people a reason to move from your content and into your “lead funnel” (typically a mailing list) so that you can give them more great content that moves them to become a customer.

Why is original art in a top notch art gallery valuable?

Once again, I want to start by asking you something that may seem like it has little value but actually does, and probably not in the way you are used to reading about.

If you’ve studied marketing at all then you’re familiar with the concept of “framing” where you make sure that your content is framed properly so that people will see the value in it, and therefore in you.

You may have heard about the value difference between art being sold by some dirty guy on a street corner where all you get is the canvas (value of maybe $10) and the art you would buy in an art gallery that is beautifully framed when you take it home.

What I’m talking about here goes far beyond that.

I’m talking about setting people up with the proper perception of you and your services before you are even contacted by them in the first place.

Let me give you an example with this. I tell pretty much everyone that I am the highest paid SEO/SMM, traffic generation, and sales consultant on the planet.

I say it often, and for some very good reasons. Doing this does two things. First, it immediately gets rid of the idiots that are going to try and “get a good deal” or try and negotiate, or do any of a number other things that are a waste of my time by attempting to get me for a cheaper price.

It also attracts real business people, looking for a real expert to help them out. It attracts people like yourself that want to make more.

In other words I set things up from the very beginning to repel the kinds of customers I don’t want, while attracting the people I do want. Me telling people that I’m the highest paid consultant of my type creates a very specific kind of impression of me in their mind.

I’m not just framing myself, I am literally getting people to think of me in a certain way all the way down at the subconscious level.

We all know that when it comes right down to it, more expensive = better. While from an intellectual standpoint you might disagree. The fact of the matter is that psychologically everyone actually does make that very distinction.

If I am the most expensive, very nearly everyone will automatically translate that into “he must therefore be the best.”

That is what I’m talking about, and it ties into my earlier example about the Aston Martin.

Now I am not at all saying that you should call yourself the most expensive or the highest paid of anything. When you say something about yourself it has to be true. What I’m saying here is that you want to say things about yourself in your content and as part of your call to action, that creates the right kind of perception about you in the mind of your customer. You want to say things that repels the idiot customers you don’t want, while attracting the great customers you do want.

Not only that, but by charging more, you cause your customers to automatically consider that you must be better.

Jonah Lehrer has an article “The Essence of Pleasure” where he shows how people will automatically perceive a more expensive wine as better tasting than a cheaper wine … even if both were actually the same!

Charging more can literally mean that customers perceive you as better. I have presented at events where people disagreed with me. As a matter of opinion, be my guest. The objective, scientific fact of the matter is that people do consider more expensive items to be better than cheaper items.

Once someone becomes a lead, your process from that point makes sure that people that you don’t want as customers you won’t waste your time on in the first place. Your lead process needs to further the process of attracting the kinds of customers you do want while repelling the idiots.

And this is where far too many people with an SEO/SMM consultancy practice screw up big time.

Far too many people will take just any customer that comes their way. This is a direct result of being “hungry” for business and that is a direct result of not charging enough or attracting the right customers..

You see, when you charge too little, you have to take any jerk or idiot of a customer that comes along. That means you end up working too hard, for too little, for someone that won’t appreciate what you’re doing for them anyway.

It sucks.

I’ve been there and it literally seemed like every single customer would hire me, not follow any of my advice or do a single thing I said needed to be done, and would then proceed to blame me for the lack of results.

Fortunately, a free report I downloaded some years ago (can’t remember even the title, let alone where I got it or who wrote it) gave an example of a report that was split tested at several different price points. $19, $97, $197, and lastly all the way up at something like $4,997.

The up shot was that the people that paid $4,997 got far more value out of the report because when the thing cost so much, the people that bought it took massive action because. For them, the report had massive value, because they paid so much, and therefore at a subconscious level they had to take action to justify spending so much.

The people that only paid $19 however got nearly zero benefit out of the report even though it was the exact same thing. They paid next to nothing, therefore the information was worth next to nothing, which means no one really felt a need to take action.

When you charge more, your customers will value you more. They will therefore listen more to your advice and do what you recommend which means they will actually get more value.

That article I referenced regarding wine prices from Jonah Lehrer proves this point. If you charge more, there is no question that your clients will value your services greater.

On your side it also means that you’re making enough that you get to choose who you do business with. You get to do business with people you will enjoy having as a customer; and that means you’ll enjoy your business that much more.

So lets finally talk about how to make more sales!

At this point you’re creating great content that builds trust and drives people into your lead funnel.

Now lets talk about some psychological magic that is some of the coolest stuff ever.

Like I said earlier, there are only 4 reasons that someone won’t buy from you.

The don’t need it
They don’t trust you
They can’t afford it
They aren’t in any hurry to buy it

That’s it. Those are the only four reasons someone won’t buy from you.

When you generate leads the way I just explained, you have automatically eliminated two of the reasons. They’ll have at least some trust (but I’m going to give you a process that will psychologically require a deeper level of trust), and because they’ve taken the time to consume some very long content of yours you also know that they need it. No one is going to read multiple reports and articles with lengths over 3,000 words unless they need the information.

No one asks for help from people they don’t trust … no one.

Let me tell you put you into a situation.

Lets pretend that it’s the middle of the night. You’re on a long windy road up in the mountains and your car has broken down. You haven’t seen another car for hours and you don’t have any cell signal so you can’t call for help. The last town was hours away and you know from the signs that the next one is several hours more down the road.

Worse, it’s subzero temperatures outside and the wind is howling. You know that if you were to try and walk the distance you would surely freeze to death.

You think you’ve gotten lucky when you see some headlights in your rear view mirror pull up behind you. The “car” is a 1970s model panel van with no side windows. It’s making a ton of racket and backfires. From the drivers site gets a mountain of a man with a dirty face and unkempt beard. The light in the cab of the van reveals multiple rifles. As he approaches your car you can see a small axe handle poking out from his jacket on one side and the barrel of some higher caliber pistol poking out from under his jacket on the other side.

As he gets to your window he asks in a voice with gravel in it, “You need some help?”

Preciously few men would take that guys help, and not a single woman I have ever presented this situation to said they would.

Lets instead change who pulls up behind you. Instead of an old rattle-trap van, it’s a brand new BMW. The person that gets out is wearing a suit. He pulls out a nice overcoat as he gets out and wraps it around himself.

That guy walks up to the window and says, “I’m headed home from the doctors convention, do you need a lift at least to the next town so you can call for help?”

Nearly every single person has said they would except that offer. The reason is simple. The person appears upstanding and respectable. There is an air of being trustworthy about that person partly because they explained that they were an authority (a doctor or at least gave that inference) and they explained what they were doing there. You know from the car that they will probably have no trouble getting you to additional help.

Here’s the thing. The instant you mentally agree to accept help from that person, something known as a “minimal trust level” is established. It is automatic, it is unavoidable, it is a psychological fact that this will happen. You may still be cautious, but there will still be some trust established.

No one asks for help, or even accepts it, from someone they can’t trust.

This is a very important thing to understand. So, lets talk about your call to action again in your content again real quick.

Your call to action needs to include something that says “Do you need to learn <insert what you teach when they join your mailing list> to help your business make more?”

Do you see how I worded that? I asked if they needed to learn. It requires that at a subconscious level they are effectively asking for your help. If your content has been created properly, if it really is great content, then you are the guy in the BMW with the nice suit.

If your content stinks, then you’re the guy in the rattle-trap van.

You want to make sure that when the correct situation arises you have demonstrated that you should be the person they ask for help from.

Become an LDS’er

In this case I’m not talking about “LDS” in the context of the Mormon religion. However, I mention the Church of Later Day Saints (or LDS) on purpose to serve as a mnemonic for you; a way to help you remember the “LDS” letters.

LDS in this case referes to “Listen, Diagnose, and Serve”. It is such a powerful method of turning leads into customers that if I told you the results I got with it personally you wouldn’t believe it. So instead of talking about results, let me explain the LDS sales process to you.

If you are going to help a consulting client you are going to need to know two things.

What are their goals
Why can’t they reach their goals on their own.

Once you have that information, the LDS process involves literally repeating it back to them.

In the “L” or “Listen” part, you’re simply listening to them tell you their goals and what issues they have obtaining their goals on their own (this also creates a subconscious “without your help” which means they are asking for you help and increasing their trust in you)..

In the “D” piece of the system you are going to diagnose the problem … by simply parroting back to them what they said their problems were. You will finish with “Did I get that right?”

If you repeated back what they said, they’ll say yes. Trust increases subconsciously and automatically. Again this is not something they can help, it’s automatic. The reason it increases trust is that they are agreeing that you know what their problem is.

You are doing something in the real of "neuro-linguistic programming" called "establishing rapport."

You have demonstrated to them through your content that you know what you’re talking about and now they are agreeing that you know their problem. Once you establish this sense of rapport it literally pulls your potential customer to you.

At this point, you move into the longest part of the process, the “Serve”. For that you need four specific strategies you can just give them that they can use to achieve their goals. After each strategy, you explain how that strategy gets them more customers. You finish with “Do you see how getting more customers this way helps you get closer to your goals?”

That’s a stupid question and nearly always the answer is “of course.” The reason for doing this, is that you actually are serving them freely and without questions asked. However, four times they have to admit that what you are telling them they need to do will help them reach their goals.

During this phase, you tell them WHAT they need to do, freely and without strings attached. You don’t tell them HOW to do it, only what they should be doing. This way, even if they don’t end up doing business with you, they have obtained incredible value from speaking with you. They’ll talk fondly about you to any other business associates they have and very often they’ll refer you to someone else.

Not only that, but almost always they’ll come out and say, “but we don’t know how to do that” or perhaps “we don’t have the time to do it ourselves.”

That’s great when it does happen. You see, this whole situation is designed to eliminate all four possible reasons they won’t buy from you.

It’s why I talked about setting things up from the very beginning to attract the right kind of customer.

So what is the “right kind of customer”?

Someone that can easily afford the value you bring
Someone that will massively benefit from the value you bring
Someone that will implement what you suggest to the fullest possible extent to obtain the most value.

If you focus on attracting that kind of customer, then you know they can afford it.

There is one final piece of the “Serve” portion and that is to have them obtain your services so that you actually can bring them incredible benefit. Remember, that you actually do your customers and yourself a disservice by charging too little. If you charge to little, they won’t value your service and therefore won’t fully implement which means they won’t obtain the full value.

You have to charge enough that they fully and completely understand the value of your service.

The issue however is the “not in a hurry” objection.

I still haven’t explained how you overcome that one.

You start with a price that is really to the point of being astronomically high for your service.

However, if they will complete an order, literally while on the phone (just send them an invoice using Google Checkout or PayPal), then you’ll cut the price in half and break that price into 4 payments.

Tell them (and this is true) that you can work with more customers if the people you work with are decisive business owners. That’s the reason you can offer such a steep discount and break that up into payments. Business owners that can’t be decisive and take action, you can’t work with as many, and so it’s only fair that they pay more. The only way for you to determine if the business owner is decisive or not is for them to order your services now, not later.

If someone does not order from you in that conversation you have to stick to your word.

Your price becomes the higher price and they have to pay it all up front (no payments).

The idea here is to eliminate the “not in a hurry” issue. You are also automatically separating out the people that can not “easily afford the value you bring to the table.”

I don’t like squeezing blood from a rock. If they can’t afford it, then they can’t and my price at that point is irrelevant. If they can there isn’t a good reason for not ordering now.

You see, they’ve asked for your help. You’ve proven you have the knowledge and skill to help them. Followed that up with proving that you know what their problem is, and finished that off with them constantly agreeing that the things you want to do will help them.

After saying yes to all of that, how can anyone possibly say they now don’t want your help?

What moron wouldn’t take a 50% discount and payments on top of it from someone they asked for help from in exchange for getting started now?

Often there will be some “business reason” why they say they can’t pull the trigger now. Let me assure you that the reason is utter B.S.

There is not one single legitimate reason for not signing up with you right away … except that they can’t afford it.

They might tell you that they are waiting for a customer to make a payment or something and then they’ll pay you.

That’s fine, ask when the payment is, send them the invoice so that they are charged on that day, but they have to fill out the invoice today. In other words, things are set up basically while I’m on the phone or they have to pay the higher price.

They are still signing up with you that way, and still doing it the same day for the lower price.

It puts them “on the hook.”

Now, this is important, under no circumstances should you start work until the payment has cleared and been received by you in your bank account.

Far too often people will pay with an “echeck” that won’t clear, or they’ll give a credit card that won’t have enough room on it, or some other such thing. ALWAYS wait until you’ve actually got the payment before starting.

You can get the preliminary information, you can get the invoice put into Google Checkout so that they won’t be charged until the future, but don’t actually start the work until they’ve physically paid.

How To Do It

It’s been said and proven many times, that you need to “touch” a potential customer several times before they will actually pay you anything.

This process starts with creating incredible, top-notch information because it allows you to “touch” a potential customer several times without them having to “risk” giving you anything, even their contact information. You producing incredible information that gets spread around, pulls people to your site/blog where they find multiple other pieces of information.

Each piece of content that you product is a "touch" to that customer that then also includes a call to action to drive them into your lead generation system.

Your call to action should be something that allows your potential customer to get more information, better information, for which they simply join your mailing list. An autoresponder should then proceed to send out 5 to 7 more absolutely, unquestionably great pieces of content to them.

Only now should you begin to ask that customer if they will spend an hour, totally for free, with you on the phone where you will give them strategies to help their business.

Once they are on the phone, you run them through the LDS process you’ve learned here to sell your SEO/SMM services.

Bottom Line

I said earlier that I didn’t want to tell you how well this process worked because you wouldn’t believe it. At this point you should understand why this process would work so well so I’m going to share the kinds of results you can get.

You understand how at the very basic level of a person’s psychology you are doing several things to instill trust, make them ask for your help, get them to agree that you can help them … how can they then say “no” to you if they can afford it?

They can’t. That’s really the bottom line.

When I teach this to people they usually find that they will close 30% to 50% of the clients they talk to, and that number will move upward steadily as they get more comfortable with “presenting” their services in this way.

I, along with my best students, convert between 73% and 78% of the people we talk to. Very nearly every single time I get a potential customer on the phone, they go from “cold to sold” in that one conversation.

If you would like to get more details, and learn how to build a thriving SEO/SMM practice with customers hunting you down, literally begging you to choose them to do business with, I do give completely free one hour strategy sessions.

I’ll give you exact tips and strategies you can use to get more business with less effort. Just check out my Free Strategy Session page for details.

Please understand that I can only do so many of these so give me a couple of days to respond. I do try and reply quickly, but depending on my work load it might take a little bit.

If you have any questions, my email address can also be found on the Free Strategy Session page as well. Feel free to send me your questions or even better to leave your comments on the blog.

10 Best Blog Posts For Learning How To Go Viral

2012-02-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

I recently went about a massive project regarding viral marketing designed originally to benefit my clients that wanted to gain additional traction in their markets. During that project, 10 locations bubbled to the top as the best information if you truly want to know how to "go viral" with your content.

I highly recommend that you check these 10 links out. Inbound marketing simply rocks, and these links can show you how to take your content marketing (or inbound marketing) efforts to the next level.

Those 10 best are:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-increase-the-odds-of-your-content-going-viral-whiteboard-friday While this video is brief, some of the "distribution" information is some of the best around.
http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/ This "guide" is much closer to an entire book regarding how to go viral and covers an incredibly large amount of ground from product creation to distribution.
http://www.voltierdigital.com/portfolio/creating-quality-linkbait/ In this post (along with the next several) there is a discussion on how to create quality "link bait". Posts or content that you create that are heavily linked to are much more likely to go viral.
http://www.audienzblog.com/2012/01/in-the-age-of-social-media-link-bait-content-for-seo-still-rules-supreme/ Another great "link bait" post but in this case you are shown how to use the search engines to assist with your content going viral.
http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/16/guest-post-12-link-bait-techniques-for-catching-the-seo-big-bass/ This "link bait" post focuses on how to use "guest posting" to assist with getting your content to go viral. This is possibly one of the more unique methods.
http://www.7boats.com/9-proven-link-bait-ideas-to-boost-back-links-and-traffic-to-your-website/ Honestly, even though some of the others might seem like they give more information regarding the creation of "link bait" this is one of the better posts due to how the information is presented.
http://techlunatic.com/2011/09/how-to-write-viral-blog-posts-people/ Tech Lunatic is an odd blog with tons of guest posting. That said, this is a great post even if it is a bit brief, it gets straight to the point and gives some solid information.
Louis Gray 10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+ You might be wondering what being discovered on a relatively tiny social network has to do with going viral. Well, the methods discussed within this post are some incredible was of creating content that goes viral as well.
http://thinktraffic.net/write-epic-shit If you want to go viral, try producing content that is so good, so intensely awesome that it's "epic". This post on Think Traffic talks about that and what it really means.
http://mattgoffrey.blogspot.com/2012/02/viral-manifesto_10.html I titled this post "The Definitive Guide On Going Viral". In this guide a small mountain of information on going viral, from creating the content to distribution to building links is discussed. Because it is a "definitive guide" it is a bit long, but if you want to go viral, then learn as much as you can with this post.

If you want to reap the extraordinary benefits that comes from viral marketing then absolutely begin your research with these top posts and videos.

I hope this helps.

The DEFINITIVE Guide To Viral Marketing

2012-02-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Definitive Guide To:

Creating Content That Can Go Viral

And Doing Everything You Can To Make Sure It Does

Introduction - Why You Should Read This Report

This report is designed to walk you through an entire process that should be virtually guaranteed to help you create something that goes viral.

Everything from planning your content, to how it gets distributed to the widest possible “seed” audience, to even “content association” will be discussed.

Understand that because this is meant to be a “definitive guide” I go into a fair bit of detail. If you want to know how to “go viral” and enjoy the massive traffic that can happen as a result, sit back and enjoy.

Actually, one thing before I go into the report itself.

I am not going to cover “viral idiocy” in this report. Lots of people do lots of stupid things in an effort to capture their fifteen seconds of fame. Idiocy and/or stupidity doesn’t lend itself well to turning traffic into sales/money.

Therefore, this report is going to focus on methods and techniques that will let you leverage your viral content into a better reputation, growing market authority, more sales, and more money.

Chapter 1 - Getting Started
(or Introduction part 2)

+Corbett Barr of Think Traffic calls it “writing epic shit.” Honestly there is simply no better way to put it than that which is why I started the actual report content with two separate links to Corbett’s site (the second goes to an article about writing epically).

I’ve also talked about this somewhat extensively both on my own blog and on articles I’ve written for SEO chat, about “being worthy.”

Before we get into a discussion about content types, or content creation, or anything else, let me say this:Mediocre junk doesn’t go viral.

If you want to go viral, start with an understanding that you’ve got to be “epic”, that you’ve got to create something worthy of going viral. Something that if half the planet got their hands on it, you’d be damn proud to call your own and not just because half the planet got it.

The point here is that you don’t want to just create something “as good as” something someone else did that may have gone viral. You want to create something truly “epic”.

You want to create something so incredibly great people can’t help but talk about it. Seth Godin calls this a “purple cow.”

Imagine for a minute you were driving down a road, and there grazing on the side was a nearly neon bright purple cow. That would be something so unique and incredible that you couldn’t help but talk about it for probably days after you saw it.

If you want something to go viral, you want to create a proverbial purple cow. Something so great and unique that people can’t help but talk about it.

Once you’ve decided from the very beginning that you’re going to be worthy of the attention (and dare I say it, admiration) of a bucket full of people, we can talk about what actually helps something to go viral.

The “SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait” has a FANTASTIC chart about what it means to truly create something that goes viral (on the next page).

Notice that there’s only one surefire way of getting something done and that’s to have all of the pieces of the puzzle. An awesome concept, a great “USP” or unique selling proposition, excited market participants, available resources to do the job, great design, an “outreach plan” so that other experts in the space will spread it, and an easy mechanism for spreading the content.

Chapter 2 - Movers & Shakers

The next thing, before you even go any further, is to identify who the “movers and shakers” are within your market.

Who are the bloggers, forum owners, and social media “stars” that can share your content to their people?

If you don’t know exactly who these people are then stop now and find out first.

Here’s the thing, your viral content needs to be spread and often that’s done by people in your market, or somehow related to it, that have blogs, forums, or active social media presences.

If you don’t know who these people are, or if you’d like to expand your reach, there are numerous services that can help with that.

http://ontolo.com dramatically assists with finding sites and the link as does http://buzzstream.com. However I personally really like the Link Acquisition Assistant from SEOmoz. Those tools are designed to help you find sites which you then use to find the people. You can also point http://xenu.com at your competitors sites and find out who’s linking to them.

Which brings me to something important:

You aren’t looking for “sites”
you are looking for people

However, it’s by finding the blogs, forums, and social media profiles that you get to the people.

You should also consider checking out the Competitor Analysis for LinkBuilding by SEOmoz as well. This is a fantastic resource that can help you find a bunch of people you can contact.

You’ll also want to check out http://BoardReader.com which is a forum specific search engine you can use to find out who the active forum participants are in your market. Additionally there is the social site http://www.quora.com which has quite a number of bloggers and journalists (who are amazing sources of links). Just search for profiles with one of those words in their profile.

In a nutshell, what you’re trying to do is build the largest database of people related to your market as possible.

However, if you’re smart, you’ll do one more piece of analysis. You want to see how often the people in your database share something that is then shared by their followers. In other words, you’re looking for “network hubs”.

Ask yourself if the site is popular with other twitter users or social media folks. In other words, is there anyone out there sharing what they do.

The more sharing you see, the more you want to craft a customized method of contact and the more you want to follow up. Getting even just a few larger “network hubs” to share out your content can push it into the hands of the most folks and cause the most amount of discussion.

The Wider Your Viral Content Is Initially Distributed The Broader Of An Audience It Will Reach

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to start building a database of relevant journalists in the relevant print media as well. Often journalists are desperately seeking things to write about and you can be a bit of a savior for them at the same time your score some major links for yourself.

Journalistics has an article on finding journalists on twitter as well as “helping them find experts” (meaning you through something they call “expert engine).

You want to start cultivating lists of journalists relevant to your viral content. This often starts by getting twitter, facebook, Quora, or G+ profile pages and using that to contact them.

However you need to get the journalists on the phone to find out what their schedules are as this may dictate your own deadlines.

However a true pro will actually meet with a journalist face to face when ever possible.

That’s when you can also find out about what they have coming up that may fuel viral content ideas for the future. Basically, buy them lunch, be a resource, help them out, and they’ll help you out.

The reason this section is all the way up here, before we’ve even started talking about content creation is the fact that the cultivation of resources like this takes time. It’s relationship building.

And this is done offline much more than it is done online. You want to talk to these folks on the phone, and face-to-face as often as possible. Attend conventions, go to meetups, and just take them out to lunch or dinner.

Now here’s the thing about building these relationships. You want people that will share. You’re looking for the sharers. Contacting someone with 200,000 followers that won’t share your content out doesn’t do you any good.

People with social media accounts where 80% of their posts are them sharing other people’s stuff, even if they only have 1,000 followers is much better.

You’re looking for people willing to share others content. Building your relationships with those folks is simply incalculable.

Build Your Linking and Journalist Relationships Now

Chapter 3 - Idea-lize

Before you can create anything, especially anything of a good enough quality to be called epic, you’ve got to brainstorm some ideas and plan out what you’re going to do.

At this point you need to understand something. There are lots of places where you can find information about “link bait”. In some ways (a lot of them actually) the process of creating link bait is the same as the process to create something that goes viral. In fact the very best pieces of link bait go viral and how viral a piece of link bait becomes is actually a gauge of its success.

Having said that, some link bait is create solely for the purpose of generating the links for the search engine optimization perspective. I’d rather you not do that. Instead, you want to create something that can stand on its own and is good enough to literally expand the perception of the market that you’re a genuine market authority.

Brainstorming

Before you should even have a brainstorming session everyone needs to know what’s going on.

What kinds of things are people in general finding interesting along with what the hot topics are in your market?

Everyone should spend some time before the brainstorming session doing a little research.

Easily the way to start getting your finger on the pulse of what people are thinking right now is http://whatthetrend.com which uses twitter to produce it’s results. That means what this service shows is literally real time information which makes it absolutely invaluable.

In fact, there are several places that you should go and do research for this and my own personal list is below:

http://www.google.com/trends/ (Lets you see trends based on what people are searching for on Google)

http://whatthetrend.com/ (twitter term trending that I just talked about)

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/ (What’s trending in the news and other sources and in some ways better than Google Trends)

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/regions/us/ (The Google Zeitgeist can give an impressive array of information)

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends (This is a “sort of” curated list of the hottest trends going on with search right now)

http://pulse.ebay.com/ (This will tell you what’s hot in the market place and often gives some great ideas even if the results have nothing to do with your specific market)

http://technorati.com/ (Technorati is a massive blog search engine so you can see what’s being talked about)

http://trend.icerocket.com/ (a Technorati competitor with a slightly different take on blog search that can also provide you some unique insight into what’s being discussed right now in the blogosphere)

http://www.PopURLS.com (This is basically your one-stop shopping for best of and most popular lists. It includes feeds from numerous social media sites, including Digg.com, Reddit.com, YouTube.com, News.Google.com, and a whole lot more. Seriously, this should be your FIRST stop).

Now don’t stop there.

You see, there are actually entire trend watching communities out there that can provide a wealth of information and ideas.

In fact I personally get ideas from the communities about as often as I do from my own research.

www.TrendHunter.com gives a daily report of some new and interesting concepts, which can spark your more creative side. They also have a information that will teach you how to spot trends, a community where you can become a “Trend Hunter” and create your own trend portfolio, and a ton of different web applications for your social media site of choice (Facebook, Twitter….).

www.TrendWatching.com This site starts with its own curated list of interesting trends that it collects. However, the site focuses its effors on its “monthly briefings”. but you will want to check out their tips on trend watching.

www.SpringWise.com This is a great site that posts some interesting trend ideas via daily blog posts. Seriously entirely new businesses could be started with some of their ideas, they are that good. This is one of my personal favorites.

www.TheCoolHunter.net This site reports weekly on new trends. What I like about this site is that you can send them information as well as them sending you their weekly updates. This makes the trends reported here truly a “communal” effort which means some of the trends will be dramatically different from other sites.

There is a TON of stuff out there regarding brainstorming and even some debate regarding the best ways to go about it. To me, I think a very limited number of bounds need to be placed on your brainstorming session. During this session you’re looking to come up first with the content your viral initiative will cover. In fact, that’s the first rule for your initial brainstorming session.

The Rules

1) limit to either talking about what content will be created
2) Strict time limits. Each person has 5 seconds to spit out some kind of idea and each person has to say something for an idea. Often I’m after “titles” for the piece that will be created as that will drive much of the later content.

I like 5 to 7 people in the brainstorming session, with each person getting six different times to give ideas.

Each person will get 5 seconds (or more if they have several ideas, but they have 5 seconds to give some kind of idea) and then the next person will go and the next. I like to set a total time for the “throw ideas out there” portion so that gets each person in the brainstorming session gets 6 “times” of being visited and asked to contribute something (and when it’s time for someone to give an idea, more than one is fine).

Understand what that means. Even if each person only gives one idea each of the times they are visited and even if I only have five people, that means 30 different ideas. Something can be come up with. Now imagine that there’s seven people and people are giving more than one idea each time they come up for a turn (which is what happens most of the time because ideas from a different person will fuel their own creativity) and now you’re talking 50 to upwards of 100 ideas.

Once that’s done, it’s time to pare them down.

Start by considering the implications of your titles.

Also, as a point of something to think about when doing this the farther “out there” you can be the better (remember, the idea is to create something people will talk about). Having said that, if your brand or persona requires a certain level of seriousness then you may need to dial it back a little.

Also consider your market as well. If you’re in a super serious market, then some outlandish piece of viral content may not go viral at all as no one in your market will want to associate with it.

The idea here is to create something that people want to talk about with and several people in your market will even want to be associated with when they share it out.

Now, one important thing about this brain storming session is that there are no bad ideas.

You want to throw stuff out there and you want to encourage others to throw stuff out there. Further you need to make sure that no one is teased, laughed at, or anything else for any idea they give. You want ideas and the more ideas you get the better.

Often the best pieces of viral content will come from combining odd ideas together that may not have seemed all that great when the idea was given.

Scott Berkun has a great article on how to run a brainstorming meeting.

What’s the hook?

When planning your viral initiative, there’s got to be something interesting, eye-catching, some reason why people would want to not only take their time to look at what you have … but to feel good about sharing it.

You need to realize that attention spans on the web are abysmally short.

Seriously, you’ve got about the time it takes to glance at a headline or a subject line. That’s how long you’ve got.

A glance.

You need a hook that will drive curiosity enough that people will, once they’ve given you the glance, decide to look farther.

Some great “hooks” comes from an article by 7boats where they list (among others):

interviews
case studies
original research.

In just about every market consumers love to look at them which makes it more likely that they’ll spread. Additionally, Megan Marrs in a guest post over at the compete blog gave 12 ideas for hooks.

The 14 most common types of hooks are:

Numbered lists
Infographics
Comics
Interviews
Case studies
Videos
Data/statistics/facts/figures
Data Visualizations (charts & graphs)
Quizzes
Special reports
Controversial statements
Apps for mobile devices (these are new but becoming hot)
Software
Flash games

Where’s the barb?

Now that you’ve hooked them, you have 5 to 30 seconds to give them something that will keep their attention. Almost like a barb on a hook.

It’s the thing that keeps people sticking to your content and enjoying it.

It starts by asking yourself, “is this interesting enough that I’d read it if I didn’t know who created it?”

In other words, once someone has gotten past the headline, will it be read beyond that? Is there something interesting, unique, or compelling that they’ll want to continue looking?

Is there some kind of interesting story

that you can tell?

Can you weave in some kind of “strange intersection”?

If you’re a lawyer wondering if Bella shouldn’t maybe sue the werewolf pack.

Or if you’re a fitness person if Jennifer Anniston shouldn’t gain a little weight.

Or perhaps if you’re a firearms manufacturer if Selene from the Underworld movies should be using better guns … e.g. “Is Selene packing the wrong heat?”

Or can you in some way be controversial?

Can you say something that some people will strongly disagree with while others agree with enough to defend the detractors? Controversy can spark insane amounts of sharing and virality.

You just need to be aware that you’ve got to have a thick skin to do this one. The people that disagree with you may all too often not be nice about it.

I remember some time ago (probably 4 or 5 years ago at this point) an SEO expert that I can no longer remember the name of said that Google was going to start tracking clicks through websites as a means of determining how things should rank.

People went nuts. Some of the biggest names in the search optimization business at the time thought he was off his rocker and said that Google had no such way of doing anything like that. This SEO guy was positively filleted by others in the space at the same time his notoriety grew extremely quickly.

Then along came Google Analytics and guess what … they did exactly what the guy said they would. Tracking clicks through websites became one way that Google determined which links should ACTUALLY carry link juice and which shouldn’t. The SEO expert proved to be right (though it did take longer for Google to implement than the guy said it would) and to this day I’ve never seen anyone ever admit they were wrong.

Today we have Search+ Your World and Google has gone far beyond anything those folks said would be possible.

Long story short, if you’re going to go the controversy route then understand that you can gain notoriety quickly … but you may not necessarily like the attention either.

How Will You Deliver It?

What I’m really getting at here is how will your viral content be given out.

Will it be an:

article
special report
full blown “manifesto”
massive guide like this is
quiz
video
perhaps a cartoon, or even an app
or …

literally there are an endless number of ideas. Just keep in mind something, if you want people to talk about your viral content then you really kind of need to deliver your content in a way no one else is doing it.

Ideally, you want to present something new, or present something old in a new way.

But Don’t Create Anything Yet

Let me say this however, during this phase of your viral initiative you just want to plan things out.

The reason you should plan first before you create anything is that you can plan anything.

Planning is limited only by your imagination. That means you can make your viral “thing” almost anything. It can be much grander and much better that way.

Not only that, but before investing time and effort into the project, why not begin your outreach now?

Contact the other folks in your industry that have a large following and discuss your idea with them.

If you want to create a piece of viral content then getting buy-in from other folks in your industry that you are hoping will spread the content early in the development process is a good thing. Besides, you never know what ideas they will have that will improve the project.

This could almost be looked at like a secondary brainstorming effort. Since it’s the other bloggers/social media players that you’re going to be looking to help spread what you’ve created, getting early buy in and their own ideas and input on it can only help make things happen.

+Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz has a fantastic whiteboard video where he talks about increasing the odds of your content going viral.

In that video he not only talks about running your content by your influencers to get their ideas, but also talks about getting their direct opinions on the project. Doing an interview with them.

Basically, actually getting their formal input directly into your project.

He also describes other methods for improving the odds of your content going viral so you will definitely want to see the video.

Not only that, but to create something “epic”, something “worthy” of going viral, you’re probably going to need to do some detailed research so you definitely shouldn't be creating anything yet.

Chapter 4 - Research

Going back to the “SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait” they have this to say: In general, look for data sources rather than information sources. If you can find data sources that publish fresh, new data regularly, then being the first mover to do something interesting with the latest ‘annual population figures’ or something has advantages over rehashing previously published information.

I can’t tell you how crucial this is.

For one thing, taking the time to find data sources can often mean the generation of still more ideas for more viral content.

For another, most pieces of viral content are either written reports, infographics, or videos and most of those are going to need some kind of hard data to back them up.

Now the SEO Guide I’ve linked to a couple of times already gives a number of sources for your data. I’m not giving sources in this report because the sources you need will vary greatly depending on what you’re wanting to create.

What you need to do is make sure that the data that you’re using is from a reputable source. A great piece of viral content can absolutely kill your reputation if you use bad data or if the way you’re using the data isn’t correct or valid.

Once you have some data, the next step is to create “visualizations” of the data; charts, graphs, that sort of thing (just use excel, numbers, or even google docs for this). Often when the data is visualized you’ll find further interesting trends or outliers that you can talk or write about.

Which brings me to writing about your data. You could just describe what the visualization says that you’re putting into your content. But besides being boring it misses the point.

Why not instead start by asking a question and use that to lead into a story that is then followed by a shocking statistic?

In other words, write in a way that leads your readers through the data visualizations.

Now go back, and rewrite it. Consider what I said earlier: attention spans on the web are short. Most people are just going to skim what you wrote. If you want people to fondly receive your content then it has to be digestible very quickly.

That means to write with bullet points, and other things that can allow someone to skim your content and still get the “gist”.

Short
Concise
To the point

You could almost think of this as being a bit “punchy”.

Short sentences.

That can be consumed quickly and easily.

Not that doesn’t mean that you can’t write something longer with a bit more “meat” to it, but that needs to be broken up with graphics, bullets, headlines, and so on. In other words, it should be able to be consumed at a skim, and in further detail for those that want the whole story. Make sense?

At this point I suppose you could start writing. But honestly that’d be a mistake.

Grab a whiteboard or a legal pad and layout what your piece of viral content will look like at a high level.

What graphics will you have created?
If there’s going to be headlines, can any of those be done as graphics?
Will you really need a set style or can you “mix things up” graphically a little to keep things interesting?

What’s important is to lay the thing out, just a wire frame is good enough for this point.

Seriously, the point to this piece is to make sure that your content is not only visually appealing, but also keeps people interested. Something can be visually appealing, but if it’s the same thing, for too long, even appealing gets boring.

So how (and when) will you change things up?

What will you do to not only keep your content appealing, but also keep in interesting? Again, laying out a wire frame of what you’ll do and when is a crucial step.

Outsourcing A Graphic Artist

If you don’t have a graphic artist, or the one you do have is busy on other projects, then your best bet is to outsource this piece.

Understand something, hiring an artist isn’t much different from hiring any other skill or profession.

Just because you don’t clearly understand what they will do doesn’t mean you can’t clearly understand the kind of result you want.

What you will need to do for any graphics you want is give a description of what you’re looking for. Is there something similar to the graphic you want that you can show as an example?

The more descriptive you can be about each piece of art you want, the better.

And here’s the thing, with many kinds of graphics there are numerous examples you can find, especially at a major site like http://fotolia.com or one of the other large stock images sites.

Now, this is stock imagery that we’re talking about and if you want something unique to your piece that means employing an artist. That doesn’t mean you can’t take some of those stock images and explain how you would like them to be different

What colors do you want?
Or perhaps you want several of an image together (like this report’s title)

Take examples and simply explain how you would like them to be different or more appropriate for what you’re doing. The more descriptive you can be the more likely you will get the exact kind of image that you’re looking for.

It is in the imagery that something merely good can become great; so you want to seriously think about this piece of the puzzle.

Having said that, you want to be careful. Give an artist a single thing to work on and make sure that they’re doing the kind of work you want before giving them anything else to work on this way you know the person you’ve hired will produce great work for the rest of your project as well.

Now you just put it all together.

It Takes Time

By now you’ve probably come to the inescapable reality that producing something great is actually a lot of work. Folks, there is no doubt about it … it is.

It’s also very worth it!

Now at this point I want to say something that might leave you gritting your teeth because I waited until now to say it … viral content that is a “blend of media types” is seriously killer stuff.

As an example, embed video into anything written. Include copius use of cartoons in your videos. Or cartoons in your written work, along with graphs and data visualizations.

In other words, take the time to create something epic.

Further, while this takes even more time, I want to share another strategy with you that’s proven in multiple niches to be amazingly effective.

Very often there are a lot of struggling smaller players. Many of them are pretty good and really know their stuff. What if instead of gaining a bunch of insight from just a few big dogs you instead created a major post with input from a large number of smaller players.

What you’ll find is that every single one of those smaller players will then link to the content when it’s created giving you a surprisingly large reach very quickly.

And to be clear, it’s far easier to get those folks to work with you than it is some huge top 5 influencer in your market that is getting 50 such requests every single day.

In other words, by working with smaller folks you help them out at the same time you’re helping yourself out making it a win for everyone.

Chapter 6 - Distribution

As I said earlier, the wider you can distribute your content, the better.

If you’ve followed my earlier advice, you’ve already started talking to people about what you’re creating. In fact hopefully you’ve gotten their direct input and contribution.

It’s tempting to want to jump the gun and send something out at this point but don’t do that yet.

Your link partners should know what you’re doing, they’re on board, and possibly are even excited to be associated with the project. What you want to do now this:

Get Your Link Partners To All Share Your Content
On The Exact Same Day

Ideally this is the exact same day that your content will in some way be linked to or talked about in the print media.

The idea here is two fold:

Your content will suddenly appear everywhere at once (which will help to stoke conversation)
None of your big dogs will seem to simply be copying any of the others. This helps them out as well.

And again, when you start to distribute your content, remember that getting several “sneezers” who will share your content is better than distributing to massive people that won’t.

In fact, this whole concept of making sure that you are putting your content out through people that will share it is a major reason why I’m going to say …

You Must Be On And Share Through Google+

In fact I would say that this should be the place you consider starting your viral efforts because there is much more sharing that I see going on at G+ than on any other social network.

Not only that, but it’s much easier to seem as if your content is everywhere on a smaller network. In other words, it’s easier to make what seems to be a big splash which can then carry over to the other social media platforms.

And that my friends mean using +Daniel Treadwell’s “Google+ Your Blog” plugin for wordpress. There are both free and paid versions, but seriously the paid version gives some hardcore, no joke KILLER functionality, and when you figure it’s only 10 bucks I say that what you get is money well spent.

Having said that, because the Google+ community is so small, they will know if you’re just faking it which means you out to consider going on a “Google+ Diet”. That’s where, at least during the planning, production, and distribution phases of your viral content, you focus your efforts ONLY on Google+, and use the other networks simply to repost.

Not only that, but thanks to the fact that Google+ is a smaller community, it becomes far easier to connect with people that will share you content and to build a following yourself.

Louis Gray has an incredible post “10 Great Ways To Get Discovered On Google+.” With a smaller network, you can:

embrace the community more fully
Speak from your experience without being drowned out by everyone else
Have a sense of humor that won’t look like another “me too”
Gain the attention of others through mentions of them and their stuff in your own content
Embrace “Hangouts” (some of the most cool functionality of G+)
Break news.

Now that’s just a seriously hacked to bits and summarized version of Louis’ post which goes into much more detail and provides some incredible examples as well. Here’s the other, and it kind of goes without saying but I’m going to anyway.

When you create something truly great, tell everyone you possibly can about it. Talk about it on your YouTube Channels, tweet about it, write G+ posts about it, and tweet it. Share on Pintrest and Quora. Sheesh, talk about it on the elevator!

Which brings me to something.

Your content needs an easy to remember URL to get at it.

This way even if you’re just talking to someone and you bring it up, the URL should be something they can remember so that they can take a look when they’re back in front of a computer.

Secondly, and this is nearly as important as anything else in this report, you must make sure that sharing your content is as easy as possible.

Next, I want to circle back around to something somewhat important.

The smaller social networks like Pintrest, Quora, and especially Google+ really are the places to be focusing your efforts. It’s so much easier to get noticed and to be heavily shared in those places. If your content is also easily shared on the other social networks through sharing buttons then the excitement on one should eventually spread to the other.

Next, once your content is create and once your sharers are sharing … keep the discussion going.

Write posts with excerpts from the full content and then link to the actual thing.
Create videos and talk about the full content and link to it.
Talk about it until people are sick of hearing about it and then talk about it some more.

Once you’re building a following, you are not done yet!!!

Now follow that up with more viral awesomeness and continue to “spread your fame.”

Here’s the thing. The first time you do this it may not get you much attention.

Sure, it’ll get you some, but probably not a bunch.

If you follow that up with something else awesome following the same steps in this report, you’ll find you can spread your content a little farther … a little wider.

Do it again, and you’ll get farther still.

Soon producing epic content will become a habit and getting that content into the hands of hundreds of thousands will be a piece of cake.

The Steps

With the details and information out of the way, I’d like to give you the steps without all the other stuff in there.

Build your database of people

Build your database of possibly interested journalists

Contact and talk to the people and journalists (just let them know you’ve got something coming)

Research what’s going on out in your market and the general public

Brainstorm ideas with 5 to 7 people

Decide on your “hook” and your “barbs”

Research for data and sources

Decide on how that content will be structured (report, video, etc)

Contact your resources and reach out to people that may be interested in sharing and let them look over what you have. Get them involved early as contributors to the project

Create a wire frame design of your content

Decide on unique graphics and data visualizations

Production

Distribution

Bibliography

Before I get filleted by any academicians out there, I am well aware that just laying out the links isn’t exactly an appropriate “MLA” cite. However, I wanted to give people credit where it’s due. Below are the various and sundry places that this guide was generated from. I’d like to take this time now to thank each of them for their work in this area which contributed greatly to this definitive guide.

Others (as noted in the About page of this guide) also contributed heavily as well, but via so much content that linking to any one thing would have been a challenge.

Not only that, but let me highly suggest checking out these source documents and reading them for yourself to further expand your knowledge and capability in creating viral content.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-increase-the-odds-of-your-content-going-viral-whiteboard-friday

http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/

http://www.voltierdigital.com/portfolio/creating-quality-linkbait/

http://www.audienzblog.com/2012/01/in-the-age-of-social-media-link-bait-content-for-seo-still-rules-supreme/

http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/16/guest-post-12-link-bait-techniques-for-catching-the-seo-big-bass/

Google+ Your Blog http://www.minimali.se/google+blog/ from +Daniel Treadwell

http://www.7boats.com/9-proven-link-bait-ideas-to-boost-back-links-and-traffic-to-your-website/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1E78GQ/techlunatic.com/2011/09/how-to-write-viral-blog-posts-people/

http://techlunatic.com/2011/02/how-to-make-a-link-bait-that-goes-viral/

Louis Gray 10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+

http://thinktraffic.net/write-epic-shit

7 Secrets To Spread Your Influence For More Traffic And Sales

2012-02-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

Lets face it, if you have a site of your own, then you want more influence. You want more people to see your site. If you have a business online, then you also want to make more sales.

My latest article at SEO chat explains exactly how to do that. Check it out by clicking here now.

InfusionSoft -versus- 1ShoppingCart: Which Is Better?

2012-02-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

If you’re going to do business online, then using some of the integrated ecommerce packages can save you so much time and make so many things easier that honestly it’s just better to use them over trying to “piece meal” thing together from multiple different vendors..

What I’m going to do is compare two integrated systems for managing the “back end” of your business. Systems that provide, email list management, autoresponder, payment processing, shopping cart, and so on in a way that integrates all of it: 1ShoppingCart and InfusionSoft.

1ShoppingCart is probably the most usedintegrated solution, used by more web businesses than any other; but how does it compare to InfusionSoft which is probably the most expensive?

Does 1ShoppingCart “deserve” it’s most popular position? Is InfusionSoft “worth” the additional cost?

Lets first talk about the two of them on an individual basis and give them a grade on each of five major categories. The grades will be based on cost, list management, shopping cart/payment processing, ease of use, and their sohistication. A point system giving points out of a maximum of 10 possible will attempt to make the grading objective. Let me say now however that since a single person is doing the grading a certain amount of subjectivity is obviously going to present in how the final score comes out.

1ShoppingCart

Cost
Prices for 1ShoppingCart range from $34 per month up to $99 per month.

For the relatively low price (compared to InfusionSoft), 1Shopping cart comes with a fairly impressive set of features. When you figure that if you get the Aweber autoresponder/list management system, that alone will cost a minimum of $19 and will climb quite quickly from there if you start to build contacts of any significant amount, the price for this service definitely falls into the “reasonable” category. However at $99 per month it isn’t exactly “cheap” either so I don’t want to give it the top grade.

Price: 9 out of 10
Email List Management
Email list management however is really only “basic”. Earlier I made a comparison to Aweber and talked about how much this cost in comparison to the cost of just using 1ShoppingCart. To be fair, Aweber really is one of the top players in the list management “game”. Having said that, it seems like 1ShoppingCart could do a better job with this by providing integration with other social networks. The other thing that I don’t like is that I can’t set up mailings so that any given letter in a series is only sent to people that didn’t click on a link in the previous message.

However, as I stated, the other “basic” items are there. List management, autoresponder, the ability to broadcast messages, the ability to put people into various lists, and the ability to send messages to people in one list but having a “not if” they are in a second list.

List Management: 5 out of 10
Shopping Cart/Processing
What I like about these kinds of services is that you can put people into a given mailing list (and take them out of others) when they purchase from you (I know this goes back to the previous topic, but it involves buying so I’m putting it here).

They allow recurring billing, and “one click up sells” as well as providing an affiliate management system (making it easy for other people to sell your stuff) as well as providing a mechanism to protect any digitally downloaded information you want to sell.

Like I said, all of this is fully integrated with their list management, providing at decent “customer relationship management” to help you send people through you marketing funnel in a way that is automated.

Shopping Cart: 7 out of 10
Ease Of Use
The thing that I like the most about 1ShoppingCart is that their system is incredibly easy to use. Most things are push-button-simple and you can have everything configured and ready to go in a very minimum amount of time. If you’re looking for an integrated back office system for your site, it doesn’t get any easier than this.

Ease of Use: 10 out of 10
Sophistication
It wouldn’t be fair to compare these two, give a score for ease of use, and then not also do the same for how sophisticated you can get with your set up. While there is no question that 1ShoppingCart is easy to use, it’s ability to be sophisticated is also all but entirely non-existent. This lack of sophistication can be seen in their email list management pieces which lack what is in my mind some very important functionality.

Sophistication: 5 out of 10
InfusionSoft
1ShoppingCart got its moment in the sun, now lets talk about the other major player in this space, InfusionSoft.
Cost
With pricing that ranges from a low of $199 up to $999 per month, when compared to the price of 1ShoppingCart, there is no question that InfusionSoft is “more than a bit” expensive. That said, InfusionSoft also offers a bit more as well.

Further, with 1ShoppingCart you’d be foolish not to go with their most expensive plan. With InfusionSoft, most businesses will likely only need the second cheapest plan.

However, that “second cheapest” plan is still over 3 times the price of the top end of 1ShoppingCart.

Price: 3 out of 10
Email List Management
In this regard, InfusionSoft completely smokes pretty much everyone. You can do things with InfusionSoft that plain and simply can’t be done with any other provider. If you have multiple sales people their list management/customer relationship management system is so complete that it makes it easy to give different tasks to different people.

In fact, InfusionSoft provides entire components designed specifically for Customer Relationship Management that aren’t present at all in 1ShoppingCart.

Further, they provide a set of components to integrate with multiple social media properties. Like I said, their list management goes so far beyond what everyone else provides as to almost defy comparison.

List Management 10 out of 10 (and honestly I’d go higher, this section alone makes InfusionSoft worth the price in my opinion)
Shopping Cart/Processing
In this regard, InfusionSoft is mostly the same as other providers in the space including 1ShoppingCart, providing every single thing that they do. However, InfusionSoft’s integration of its shopping cart with the other components does, in my opinion, just make this piece better as well.

I also really like their inventory management.

Shopping Cart: 10 out of 10
Ease Of Use
InfusionSoft is incredibly complete, comes with a ton of features, and is also “more than a little” complicated. To make full use of this tool requires quite a bit of planning and understanding of how the various tools work together. You really do want to spend some time going through the various training tools they provide before starting to implement to make sure you get everything done in the best way possible. 1ShoppingCart on the other hand is so easy only the most technology challenged will need to look at any training.

Long story short, InfusionSoft is not (by a long shot) the easiest tool to use in this space and might possibly be the most complex.

Ease of Use: 5 out of 10
System Sophistication
Just like 1ShoppingCart is incredibly easy to use but also incredibly nonsophisticated … InfusionSoft is the exact opposite. Not very easy to use but incredibly sophisticated. There are not very many limitations to what you can do.

Sophistication: 10 out of 10
The Scores
From a pure “score” scenario, InfusionSoft wins, beating out 1ShoppingCart 40 to 36.

However that score doesn’t really tell the whole picture.

Here’s the thing. I would actually say that InfusionSoft is far better than 1ShoppingCart. The problem is that it is also quite expensive for many smaller businesses with a cost of basically $300 per month.

So let me say this, if cost is a major factor then you probably don’t even need many of the services provided by InfusionSoft. In fact the simplicity of 1ShoppingCart is probably a good thing. With it you can get set up and running much quicker. There is no question that taking action and doing something is much preferable to waiting around doing nothing until you “can afford” the better tool. Much better to just go with 1ShoppingCart now.

Having said that, if your business succeeds then you will soon be finding yourself really wanting the features provided by InfusionSoft and changing these kinds of service providers is a pain-in-the-rear (if you’ve ever tried to change autoresponder companies then you know what I’m talking about here). So if you can afford it, and if the additional time and difficulty of fully setting it up isn’t too much of a barrier, then I definitely recommend just starting with InfusionSoft.
The Bottom Line:
If cost is a factor, then go with 1ShoppingCart (but I highly recommend their $99/month package, if you can’t afford that, then go with Aweber for your list management and some other very low cost or even free shopping cart). The integration they provide makes the additional cost over just a “plain” autoresponder company like Aweber, 1contact, MailChimp, GetResponse, and others well worth it. Like I said, there are some things they could certainly do better, however for the cost 1ShoppingCart is honestly an incredible value.

However, if you can at all afford it there is no question in my mind that you should be going with InfusionSoft. The addiitional features that you get allows for doing things with customers, and tracking of results in ways that you can’t with any other system I am familiar with.

How A Hamburger Can Revolutionize Your Business

2012-02-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

Far too many people sell the wrong thing. I'm not saying that their products are wrong, I'm saying that they are selling them all wrong, with the wrong framing and to the wrong people at the wrong time.

On SEO Chat I have an article that shows how I could easily sell you a simple hamburger and coke for $1,000,000 quite easily simply by selling it to you at the right time.

I then go on to explain how you can use that knowledge for top search rankings and massive traffic.

Check it out by clicking here now.

Community Versus Customers

2012-02-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

If you're spending time on social media sites (facebook, twitter, quora, pinterest, google+, reddit ...etc) are you certain that the goal that you're actually after meshes with the activities that you're performing?

Know what you're after. Below is a cartoon that expresses something important. Ask yourself which you would prefer, then make sure your activities get you THAT.

So, which do you want?

The Viral Manifesto

2012-02-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

The Viral Manifesto is literally the definitive work on how to create content and distribute it so that it goes viral. I cover some serious ground in a lot of detail.

Learn how to find out what's interesting, what's happening, so that you can tie it into your viral efforts.

Discover how I quickly find trending topics that become fodder for viral material.

See how to create content so good, so... "epic" that people can't help but stand up and take notice.

Then get the easy methods that virtually ensure your content will be spread like crazy.

Check it out by clicking: http://bit.ly/xi4CaX now.

Matt Goffrey

Moving to a new location

The only one that matters

New Special Report

You aren't being told the truth

"Cheating" to get traffic (part 1.5)

"Cheating" to get tons of traffic (part 1)

Traffic Generation - Get a lot of visitors to your site FAST

The Profit Model: how to make 100k per month

Interview With Marcus Sheridan!

The Triangle Of Trust: Secrets To Better Rankings, More Traffic, And Killer Sales

How A 7 Day Old Blog Attracted 500 Visitors And Over $1,000,000 In New Customers

Best Business To Be In Now

Web Traffic 101 (special report)

Gaining Attention In An ADD World

What Is Inbound Marketing

How Create The Psychological Desire To Buy From You (part 1)

"I'm right and you're wrong and there's nothing you can do about it" (from the movie Matilda)

Uhh... What did you just say?

The Lesson of the Bohemian Club

You Shall Obey

How To Quickly Generate Lots Of SEO/SMM Clients

The story of how I went from struggling and broke to highly paid consultant ... and how you can too

1) Focus on SEO that was incorrect

2) I charged far too little to do far too much

3) I took any and every client that came along

How That All Turned Around And Struggle Became Success

1) I Immediately dropped every client that didn't immediately see my value and pay me much more

2) Stop "networking" and start building authority

3) Massive price increase

4) I don't take just anyone as a client. A client has to prove to me they are going to be worth my time.

How I generated new clients quickly

All Is Not Rosy! The Massive Growth Mistake I Made

From Cold To Sold In One Conversation

So why is Ferrari considered the better car?

Why Do People Go To Visit The Pyramids, The Great Wall Of China, The Eiffel Tower, or the Hoover Dam?

Why is original art in a top notch art gallery valuable?

So lets finally talk about how to make more sales!

No one asks for help from people they don’t trust … no one.

Become an LDS’er

How To Do It

Bottom Line

10 Best Blog Posts For Learning How To Go Viral

The DEFINITIVE Guide To Viral Marketing

The Definitive Guide To:

Creating Content That Can Go Viral

And Doing Everything You Can To Make Sure It Does

Introduction - Why You Should Read This Report

Introduction - Why You Should Read This Report

Chapter 1 - Getting Started(or Introduction part 2)

Chapter 2 - Movers & Shakers

Chapter 3 - Idea-lize

Brainstorming

The Rules

What’s the hook?

Where’s the barb?

How Will You Deliver It?

But Don’t Create Anything Yet

Chapter 4 - Research

Outsourcing A Graphic Artist

It Takes Time

Chapter 6 - Distribution

You Must Be On And Share Through Google+

The Steps

Bibliography

7 Secrets To Spread Your Influence For More Traffic And Sales

InfusionSoft -versus- 1ShoppingCart: Which Is Better?

1ShoppingCart

Cost

Email List Management

Shopping Cart/Processing

Ease Of Use

Sophistication

InfusionSoft

Cost

Email List Management

Shopping Cart/Processing

Ease Of Use

System Sophistication

The Scores

Chapter 1 - Getting Started
(or Introduction part 2)