Detlev's Marketing Insider Thoughts

I am shocked: Internet millionaire Corey Rudl died in a car crash today!

2005-06-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

I know, I haven't written anything into this blog for months but what I've just read really shocked me. According to the L.A. Times, Corey Rudl, Internet pioneer and multi-millionaire died in a car crash with a Porsche this morning. Although I am from Germany, I soon found out the original article from today's issue of the L.A. Times. This is the direct link where you can read more about it:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-speedway3jun03,1,3324057.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

I am in a state of shock. Corey Rudl's website was the first one about Internet marketing I've ever visited and the reason that I became an Internet marketer, too. To know that he has gone is very sad. He was only 34 years old (1 year younger than me) and he had just married. Many of his colleagues and associates were at his wedding party.

His death will leave a big hole in the Internet marketing community and reminds us how precious life is. It can end any time. Live your life before it is too late!

My prayers go to his family, especially his widow and his parents.

Detlev

You should not buy the hyped up Underachiever Mastery Course...

2005-01-31T05:28:00.000-08:00

Here's why:

They have been creating the same hype and marketing tactics John Reese has used to promote his Traffic Secrets course. And I already thought that he charged a steep price for it. Now Frank Kern and Ed Dales Underachiever Mastery Course valued at $1497 is trying to top this with affiliates who are trying to shout out loud "Buy from me and I'll throw in another $11,589 (or any other sum of several thousands of $$$) of bonuses". No wonder because his affiliates will earn about $700 per sale.

Oh, boy... With that kind of money you could already hire 2 people to write 2 ebooks for you.

I've read in another newsletter I received today that it is total nonsense to create 21 DVDs for this course. Even the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica is available on 1 CD/DVD so why can't they put their course on 1 DVD? If they were using flash for their videos, it would be absolutely no problem. Everything would fit onto 1 DVD.... But what would happen then?

It would minimize the perceived value of the package. The more CDs/DVDs you'll get, the more they can charge for it. 1 DVD would probably not sell for more than $497. That would leave $1000 on the table.

Why should I buy the package? They have revealed everything already even before the course was available.

For those of you who haven't taken a look at their pre-selling tools...

The following steps are required to become an underachiever:

1.) Find a hungry target marget (preferably one that has some money to spend) which is irrationably passionate about what they are doing e.g. breeding tropical fish.

2.) Find out what it is that they need to know. Do this by setting up a so called Fly-Catcher page which is nothing more than a form where they can enter their personal details and their most burning question(s).

3.) Make a list of all the questions which have been asked.

4.) Go to Elance.com and hire someone to (ghost)write an ebook for you and give him the sheet with questions. Let him find the answers to the questions you got from your Fly-Catcher page. Find someone who has some good feedback and who doesn't charge too much.

5.) Register a domain name related to the subject e.g. tropicalfishtips.com to stay with that example.

6.) Get web hosting for your domain name.

7.) Write a salesletter for your finished ebook and add a payment processor link (Paypal, Clickbank)

8.) Pay the writer his fees and let him sign a document that you will have exclusive copyrights to the finished product.

9.) Upload the salesletter and product to your web server.

10.) Find the best keywords for your product by using WordTracker or the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool.

10.) Send traffic to your site using Google Adwords.

11.) Test different headlines/prices if the number of sales is too low

Instead of creating ebooks, you can hire people to create some advanced products for you like
how-to videos and audio interviews in order to have some multimedia products. These have a higher perceived value so you can make more money per sale than by selling a "simple" ebook. That's the whole topic of this "advanced version" of the Underachiever Mastery Course.

And I can say all this even though I did not get a copy of their course. Not for the first part of their course, nor for this hyped one. I agree that these tactics are great and you can make a lot of money from it. But $1497 is by far too much. For a complete marketing "newbie", it can be a jumpstart but for anyone who has been in this arena for a while, he/she knows what needs to be done as common sense.

It all depends on taking action! You can buy this course and get a lot of education but it is all in vain if you don't do anything with it. Create different products, try to sell them and if it doesn't work after refining everything, reasearch the next market.

What can they still show me?

Are they trying to show me how I can create an account with Elance.com or Rentacoder.com? I don't need any videos for that...

Why I didn't write any blog entries in the last few weeks...

2005-01-29T05:53:00.000-08:00

Hi. I just want to update you on what I have been into in the last few weeks. I really have been too busy with my own projects and...

You probably already know that I am also having some local clients here in Germany for whom I do SEO and some web design. A doctor from Switzerland came across my German Internet marketing site and hired me to do several projects for him. One you can see here: http://www.anaesthesieprodukte.com/ which is, as you can see, a site for medical equipment. But that is not all.

This doctor is, as it happens to be, also into Internet marketing and wants me to create some sites for him. Nothing special you would say. But he wants me to create sites for infoproducts in the German language which IS something new. Not too many people are selling digital information products here so it is a kind of experimental ground. Until now, the site which you can see here: http://www.innovation-verstehen.de/ did not sell one copy of the ebook written by his father-in-law.

And that even though I tried everything to let the salesletter be as convincing as it can be. I have been putting all my Internet marketing knowledge into the salesletter. But it doesn't work so far. One thing you can notice is that there are no testimonials so far.

We're still in the testing phase. So the next step will be to use some different headlines for the salesletter. We'll see how that goes. Traffic comes from Google Adwords and so far the site has had about 140 visitors. Not really a success if you consider that I had to be paid by this doctor, too. Perhaps it's a topic that not too many people are interested in. After all, "innovation" is something that is used in the "real world" and would they buy digital products? It seems to be a misfit.

I'll set up some split-testing campaigns for the new headlines today. Then we'll see if something changes. My guess is that the topic is not interesting enough for a German audience. I will try something similar with an ebook I have written in German. But this one is about online marketing. That should do better - at least I hope so.... See the salesletter here:

http://www.powerwebmarketing.de/

See you.

Santa is back - with a bigger bag and 9 top Internet marketing CDs added!

2004-12-09T07:23:00.000-08:00

It seems that the problems with SantaDealTime.com have disappeared. The deal is back and even better than before. In fact, it is already worth investing in it just because of the bonuses that come with it. John has changed the main entry page and it's much easier to see what's included because he has removed all the product pictures from the deal page. Instead, you can now find pictures of the bonuses, CDs with the following:

1.) 2 Turbo CDs by John Delavera, $177

This is a complete set of video tutorials about online basics. Here are some of the contents:

Autoresponder Basics 1 - 12MB
Autoresponder Basics 2 - 23MB
How To Create High Quality EXE eBooks
Introduction To The Features Of Activ eBook Compiler - 5.5 MB
How To Structure An EXE eBook - 5 MB
3 Different Ways You Can Password Protect EXE eBooks - 5 MB
How To Use The Start Up Features Of Activ eBook Compiler - 3 MB
Advanced EXE eBook Password Security - 5 MB
How To Customize Your eBook About Me page - 2 MB
How To Add The Search And Table Of Contents Function To Your eBook - 3 MB

+ many dozens more!

2.) Andrew Fox's Secret Internet Marketing Lab Videos - 1 CD, $197

Find out how Andrew consistently churned out a six-figure income from affiliate programs. After testing traffic generation and followup emails for 3,5 years, he has a success rate of 98% for every campaign he starts. During this time, he made more than $800,000 in profits!

3.) Andrew Fox (again) together with Lee Benson - 2 Marketing Quickies CDs, $147

The tricks that can be used to improve your conversion rates, coupon tricks that will increase your bottom line, business models that can earn up to $2,500/hour, 4 proven, super-effective salesletter templates, how to build a list of 30,000 qualified email prospects in 45 days, magic and irresistable pop-ups and much more.

4.) 4 CDs of Mini Site Mastery by Paul Barrs, $97

The "voice of Internet marketing" has created a set of 4 CDs with highly educational audio material on the topic of building sites for under $50 and profiting 24 hours a day from. Find out why these kind of sites generate more income than the big content sites and how you can follow his footsteps.

But the rest is still there, too. Dozens of products by the top marketers worth $11,573.21.

It's here:
SantaDealTime Package

You should at least have a look at it. I highly recommend it.

Detlev

No, this is not a marketing trick...

2004-12-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

Bad things happen even to Santa... If you were visiting SantaDealTime.com recently you've probably seen that this Turbo Offer has been frozen due to technical problems. If you got that offer then feel lucky! As a JV partner I am going to be informed by John about the future of Santa's Big Bag. I'll let you know asap when the offer will be continued.

Meanwhile, all of you that ordered: You will not notice anything since I know that you're downloading all day long;)

I know it for a fact because that's what I did yesterday, too, and I couldn't even get it finished... Seems that I need to spend another day on it. But if you've ordered your package already, you'll have time until March 2005 to download everything. That's almost around the time when Santa Clause meets the Easter Bunny... ;-)

Cheers,

Detlev

Santa Deal Time - Your chance to partner with me and make $100/sale!

2004-12-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

I mentioned it already in my previous post and you probably received some emails about it already: Santa Deal Time by my good friend John Delavera. On his website there are more than 60 indivdual products (probably even more by Dec. 6th) offered for a one time price of just $497. These are not reprint rights products which can even be sold on Ebay.

No, these are products their respective owners are selling every day. Most of the products are in the $67 to $97 range and some of them are even valued at $197. Included in the package are for example Adrian Ling's RSS Made Easy, CB Mall, my AffiliateTurbo, Resale Rights to Jason Mangrum's "Instant Marketing Miracle" (never offered before...), How to profit from RSS feeds by Dr. Mani, Easy Article Manager by John Taylor, Ebook Basics package by Eva Almeida (with resale rights!) , Zoom to Super Success by Richard Quek (includes a report on SEO by yours truly...), Solo Ad packages worth $297 , 12 months access to Paul Barr's Home Business Success membership site $179, Order Button Triggers by Michael Nicholas and many, many more products.

Check out the package here:

SantaDealTime Package

And if you like what you see and you want to promote this goodie then you can sign up for the affiliate program here:

SantaDealTime Affiliate Signup Page

The order link will go live on Dec. 6th and the package sale will end Dec. 26th. This should be enough time to earn some additional "pocket money" ;-). If you remember the MarketingDealTime this summer then you know what a big success that was.

I expect this one to be even more successful because the sale lasts even longer (3 weeks instead of just 1). Your affiliate link will be activated Dec. 4th. In other words, from this Saturday on, you can start building anticipation for the package...

To our SUCCESS - I hope, I can welcome you in my team!

Re-design of my website successful - RSS feeds in place!

2004-12-02T03:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I spent the whole day re-designing my website so I could have my content syndicated. I have set up different feeds for each individual topic within the "Internet marketing arena". I am now offering feeds for ebook marketing, search engine marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing etc. Take a look at it and let me know what you think of it:

http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/

Personally, I think the site has moved a big step forward. I will try to add new content to the channels almost daily - only the best of the best articles will appear there. I have another feed with my own articles as well but I need to update the design for the article pages. The great thing about the new design is that it automatically adjusts the resolution. So the look will stay the same whether you are viewing the site in 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 (my favorite) pixels or even more.

My next step is to promote the feeds on all of the popular RSS search engines. The more people view those articles, the more income I can make from the site. Not only do my Google Adsense ads make money but I am also trying to monetize some affiliate programs I am promoting there. Of course, only products which I have personally tested will be appearing there. I don't want to recommend inferior products. That could seriously damage my reputation. So you will only find high quality products there.

Apart from that, I am taking part in the SantaDealTime which has been put together by John Delavera. I have contributed my AffiliateTurbo software and because of my active participation, I am allowed to find partners who can promote the deal as well. You can make $100 per sale. I will make a posting later this day with the exact details how you can joint venture with me.

'Til then!

RSS feeds for my Internetmarketing-success.com site

2004-11-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

Blogging is not the only thing that can help you to get ranked highly in the search engines. Another way is to have your own syndicated content. Let me explain. In case that you're not familiar with RSS, yet, it's an easy way to have your own content spread all over the Internet. I don't mean adding content written by others to your own web pages. No, I mean having your articles appear on hundreds or even thousands of website (which means a lot of backlinks for your site as well). This can be accomplished with RSS.

Here's how it works:

Basically, you create your content just as usual. You create one index page for your articles and on that index page, you have links leading to your different articles. In order to have others publish your articles on their web sites, you need to create what is called a RSS feed. RSS is written in a language very similar to HTML but it can do a bit more. It's called XML (extended markup language). This XML feed needs to follow a certain format. You can either hand code this by using a template or you can use a piece of software to put it into the correct format.

I am using a piece of software called FeedForAll to do this for me. This way, I don't have to mess up with the XML code myself. For RSS feeds, the minimum requirements that are needed in order to be read by RSS Readers are the following:

1.) A title for the feed

2.) A short description what your feed is all about

3.) A link to your XML file (RSS feed) on your server

And then you need the items - in this case your articles or your content which you want to syndicate. They need the same type of things:

a.) A title (for your article),

b.) A description (so people know what your article is about)

c.) A link to the article itself (which is written in regular HTML format).

Optionally, you can also add pictures to your feed.

You can enter these pieces of information into the software and when you're done, it will create a RSS feed for you by the push of a button. The format will be like "web-design-articles.xml". The last thing you'll need to do is to upload this xml file to your server. A good place would be the directory where you have the overview page for your articles in.

Then all you need to do to have your content syndicated would be to promote your feed to the dozens of RSS search engines and directories and you will see a very large increase in your daily traffic. I'm in the process of implementing RSS on my Internetmarketing-success.com site now.

I think, until Wednesday, I will have everything in place. The design will change a bit as well in order to make this happen. But it will be well worth it. I'm sure about that. RSS is the next wave of content delivery and if you're ignoring it, you'll get left behind...

John's answer to my email about the high refund rates for Traffic Secrets...

2004-11-24T03:15:00.000-08:00

I received an answer from John why the refund rates for my sales of his Traffic Secrets course were probably that high. He meant it could be that my subscribers were mainly low item buyers and that this was probably the first "big money" they've ever spent on a real marketing course. Then after they received the course, they were worried that the money was missing in different areas of their daily lives and that they would not be able to pay the next electricity bill or something like that. Seems that I was just having bad luck with my subscribers.

Another possibility he mentioned was that his course was probably too advanced. Personally, I think, that's something that can be excluded. Anyone who has at least a few months of experience would have known most of the stuff he mentioned. To me several of his CDs were very basic and one even was what I would call "old-fashioned" e.g. the one about finding JV partners from the search engines. There are a lot of pieces of software out there which can do this like Roy Oron's LinkCapture software which does everything from finding possible JV partners by keyword to collecting their contact data to sending them a personalized email...

Ooops, this reminds me of the fact that I should be using this software more often to find some more active affiliates for my Promobuddy software.

I think, I better go now... ;-)

Traffic Secrets: A total FLOP for Affiliates?

2004-11-21T01:50:00.000-08:00

As you might know, I have been an affiliate for Traffic Secrets and I was one of the first persons to get a copy of the package from John Reese himself (even before August 17th). The marketing for the package was phenomenal and I think, it's something we all can learn from. Did the package live up to its' expectations? It seems not...

You know, I had made 6 sales of that package which would have meant $2900 in commissions. I say would because 4 of my referred customers paid in installments. After these finally had been paid, I checked my statistics again and guess what? 2 of them requested a refund already and today I have seen that there is another pending refund.

So it's a refund rate of 50% already. And I have been paid for only 2 of my sales so far. Now I have to be afraid that my 3rd unpaid sale will be refunded as well. I don't know how many sales of high end products you can make but to me 6 sales of a product around $1000 was quite good. To see these commissions vanishing into thin air makes me sad.

Here's the email I sent to John today:

Hello John,

I'm very disappointed about my TrafficSecrets affiliate statistics. I've managed it to make 6 sales for a super high end product (which is not too usual for me) and now it seems that all my commissions end up in smoke. 2 refunds and 1 pending refund? A refund rate of 50%...

That is unheard of.

What exactly was the problem? Why is your refund rate that high? Please send at least the remaining $475 commissions because I am already waiting since August as some of my referrals didn't pay in one sum.

Or do I have to expect that even more of them want a refund? Sorry, but I don't think that I will ever promote another product of yours again.

This is more than a desaster...

Best regards,

Detlev Reimer

---------------

I will see how John reasons this... It seems that most of that "1 million in 1 day" has already been refunded if the refund rate is that high. I really would like to know what other affiliates of his have experienced. What are your experiences with affiliate promotions? Have you ever encountered something like this as well? Post your comments - I'm really curious...

I'm guilty...

2004-11-13T05:14:00.000-08:00

Hi.

Yes, I know - I'm guilty... I wanted to write something new every week and now it's almost 4 weeks again since my last post. I have been very busy creating some new TrafficEqulizer sites in the past few weeks. That's why I could not find the time to write something for this blog. But I promise to improve the frequency again. I wanted to see what all the buzz about TrafficEqualizer was all about and if those pages really work. Until now, I have been using them very sparingly because I was afraid that they would get penalized...

After all, these are optimized pages with just one goal: To get ranked highly in the search engines. And isn't that exactly what Google wanted to avoid with their Florida Update which caused an earthquake in the SEO industry? Thousands if not millions of Top Results dropped in their rankings from the first page into nowhere. It was because those pages were OVER-Optimized. They used a filter which sorted those out. So if someone had his keywords in their title, their H1 and H2 tags and in almost every paragraph, Google presumed that they were trying to cheat.

If even their backward links would say the same for every link that lead back to their site, they would have had even more proof that this was not a "normal" result. What can be done to avoid this? You could tell your link partners to use different descriptions for your link text (the link text is the most important part when it comes to search engine optimization). So instead of "internet marketing", they could use internet marketing strategies, internet marketing expert and internet marketing consultant. That's exactly what I am doing now for my Internetmarketing-success.com website. Now it ranks highly for all of those phrases.

The more backlinks you have, the easier it gets to come out on top of the search engines. It's not easy to manage those reciprocal linking requests, though. The software that I am using for this task is called ARELIS which stands for Axandra's Reciprocal Links Manager. It organizes your links into separate directories which is important because you don't want to have all your links on one page. Never add more than 50 link partners to one page. That won't be helpful to your partners because the Google Pagerank would be dilluted and would hardly be transferred to them. Pagerank is important because the more competetive a keyword phrase is, the more important Pagerank gets. Generally, the pages with the highest Pagerank are listed at the top of the search engine results pages.

And please notice: If you do not have at least one link to your site, you won't get listed with Google. This link serves two purposes:

1.) You get a share of the Pagerank from the page that is linking to you
2.) You don't need to submit your site to Google because their spiders will find you automatically!

So all these "Mass Submitters" which claim to submit your site to 400.000 search engines are scammers because to put it simple: There are not even 400.000 search engines. They are talking about FFAs which will bring you spam but not higher rankings... Generally speaking, it's enough to get your site listed with Google, Yahoo and MSN as they will serve about 95% of the traffic that comes to your site. All the other search engines together make the other 5%.

Don't get ripped off by those companies that want to submit your site. Rather use that money to RENT yourself a link with a high Pagerank. If you don't have a lot of time then this is the way to go. It will speed up your rankings by leaps and bounds. A site where you can find a lot of those companies which rent a link can be found here: http://www.linkadage.com/.

That's it for today. I hope, you found this post helpful. Let me know what topics interest you so I can make posts about that.

See ya'.

An Internet marketer's lifestyle...

2004-10-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

Hi! Isn't life beautiful? Especially, when you don't have to be at a J.O.B. where you are working for someone else to fulfill his or her dreams and hopes instead of your own. Not to speak of the fact that I can set my own hours and work whenever I want...

About two hours ago (just around 11:15 am), I have been sitting at my coiffeur to get my hair cut again (I was beginning to look like a hippie...). They have a new apprentice there and she doesn't know me, yet. You simply can't avoid it to have a conversation when someone cuts your hair and so the unavoidable question came up:

She: "Don't you have to go to work today?"

I said: "No, I'm self-employed... - I can work whenever I want. I'm working from home!"

Christine, the apprentice: "Well, is that really possible to make enough money so you don't have to get a real job?".

I answered: "Yes, I am doing this for almost two years already. But it's not for anyone. You need to have some special knowledge for it like designing websites or being able to write a good article on your chosen topic. You have to be or become the expert."

Silence.

She: "How long did it take you to become an expert?"

Me: "I can't really tell. It all added up. You don't start out to be "the expert". Maybe, you try something that doesn't work, first. Like in the beginning; I tried to be a master at Photoshop and created my own designs. But then I realized that others could create the same graphics that took me 4 or 5 hours to complete, in just 1 hour. That isn't really what I would consider a serious advantage. Even at that time, about 6 years ago, there was too much competition already. Then I started learning webdesign and from there, it really took off. I designed websites for some local clients and I also started learning about traffic generation."

The conversation didn't continue as I guess it was getting a little too complicated and too technical for her. Nevertheless, this short talk made me realize what I have achieved already. Not that I am making millions, no. But I don't have to leave home early in the morning each and every day, facing the traffic jams and doing something I don't love.

For years I have been struggling to find the perfect "job" for me. It seems that I finally have found something that I like AND that makes me enough money. You can make your own choices as well and if you are not satisfied with what you are doing now, you have made a wrong choice ONCE. This doesn't mean that you have to be stuck in a dead end position forever. Make a change when you feel it is the right thing for you. Just do it - it's never too late!

Should you use co-reg services to build your list?

2004-09-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

Hi, I am getting JV requests almost every day as my site Internetmarketing-success.com is getting more and more popular. It's been within the first 100,000 websites in the Alexa rankings for more than 1 year already. Therefore, a lot of people approach me for those JVs and a lot of them get declined because to put it simple: A lot of those products suck...

Today, I have received a JV request for a listbuilding service. They are selling "fresh" opt-in leads, opportunity seekers with a genuine interest in setting up a home based business. By fresh leads I mean prospects who confirmed their interest just about 2 weeks ago. The thing that made me curious was that a lot of big name marketers were recommending this service but only from the perspective of being a JV partner. And if I can make a lot of money by recommending a service which allows you to build your list quite easily, I would be satisfied as well. But I will not be recommending this service and here's why:

Of course, if everyone and their dog says you need to build your list, you need to find a way to add hundreds if not thousands of new subscribers to your newsletter or opt-in list.

One way of doing this is by using so called co-registration services. Basically what they are doing is this: They are approaching high-traffic site owners with an offer to make money from their exiting traffic. They tell them they can monetize it by adding a pop-up on exit with an opt-in form. If it gets filled in, they are getting paid. Some co-registration services are using pop-ups with some kind of sweepstake to offer an incentive for these site visitors. But for the ezine owner this is not a good thing as many of those subscribers are entering their details just because of this sweepstake and not because they want to subscribe to the ezine.

Anyway, I want to give you my opinion and my experiences about those co-registration services.

When I was starting out, I used a lot of those services because in order to have a chance to make some money, I had always been told: You need a BIG list. And in the beginning, you add a few subscribers here and there by publishing some articles or doing some ad swaps and submitting your ezine details to the directories and announcement lists but that's it. If you don't have enough subscribers, it's very difficult to do some JVs and being able to give something back. Of course, sometimes if you have a good idea it can still work but that's the exception.

What's the solution to this? You guessed it already... You start buying those co-reg subscribers. I have been using at least 3 different ones from Worldwidelists.com to Profitinfo.com and I can tell you: It's very difficult to make money from those subscribers. I received about 50-100 subscribers per day with them and for me, it simply didn't work. Most of them were freebie seekers and had not been interested at all in what I was selling. They wanted an instant solution à la "make money quickly". That's something I never have been recommending even though I tried several of those MLM companies and got burned. Some of these subscribers even complained that I have been spamming them or they shouted at me and generally showed a very rude behavior, even though I had their opt-in details including their IP-address!

Another problem I always had is this one:

Which autoresponder should I be using to send them their subscription details? You must be able to import at least 5000 subscribers each month AND the autoresponder must be able to deliver those messages. And most of them do not allow you to import that many subscribers. If they do then they are probably one of the services that don't deliver their messages (I think, I mentioned it already but ProAutoresponder was the one I had been using until I found out that only 20% of their messages had been received by my subscribers). As you might know a lot of those autoresponders are on blacklists for sending out spam. Because not only are they used to send confirmations to legitimate opt-in leads but also for sending out spam if is too easy to import thousands of harvested leads.

That's a serious dilemma!

Because of all these problems I have changed to this blog format and I will be adding RSS to my site soon as well (this one, the detlevreimer.com because unfortunately, my main Internetmarketing-success.com site does not allow me to do this ;-( ....) . This has been a result of having read the ebook 378 Internet marketing predictions (see my blog archive for a review) in which the author "predicts" that this will be the next big wave. I, too, think that a lot of email publishers will switch to this format sooner or later. The only problem I have with this format is that I am not able to see how many people are really reading my posts or how many are subscribed. But I can still use the website statistics to get a rough number for it.

To make a long story short: If you haven't started at all with your own newsletter then you should consider starting with a blog as well. It will save you many hassles and worries about spam filters, autoresponders and getting your messages delivered. And no one can accuse you of sending them spam because they are the ones who are requesting your news. They need to become active to get your news, you are not pushing it to them like with email, they are pulling it!

If they don't like it, they simply delete the channel/blog!! And the process of setting up those blogs and RSS headlines is not too difficult. If you are not familar with it, you can check out the latest report by Joe Vitale and Laura Childs, RSS Stampede which tells you exactly how to set up those blogs and RSS feeds and how to promote them properly so they get known. Laura tripled Joe's subscriber base with those RSS feeds and she explains how you can do it, too.

That's it for today - I hope you found it an interesting read ;-)

New review posted - Super Affiliates Confessions by Codrut Turcanu

2004-09-20T01:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finally finished my review for Codrut Turcanu's ebook: Super Affiliates Confessions - Revealed. I've known Codrut for years already and we have become online friends. Until now, he didn't have a product of his own as he was mainly involved in affiliate marketing. His interviews go very much in depth and he managed to get marketing gurus like Willie Crawford, Bryan Kumar and Allan Gardyne to tell him how they've become successful. Not only that but they also confess the mistakes they made in the beginning. Mistakes that probably cost them thousands of dollars. But I don't want to tell too much here. Just read my complete review about it:

Super Affiliates Confessions REVIEWED - Click here

By the way, below the review, you will find a link which gives you $33 off the purchase price. That's what friends are for...

Frank Garon's Birmingham Workshop...my experiences

2004-09-07T02:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry - I didn't find the time to post because after the Birmingham workshop, I have been so busy implementing and changing things...

I still owe you my personal experiences from the workshop ;-). Well, on Friday 27th, I started my journey by car and drove about 300 km from Bielefeld to Amsterdam to get my flight to Bristol. Unfortunately, Easyjet.com - the airline I had chosen for the flight, didn't have a direct flight to Birmingham. But a friend of mine, Stewart Alexander, picked me up from Bristol International Airport and we drove another 2 hours before I finally arrived at my destination in Birmingham. All in all, about 7 hours... waiting time at the airport of Amsterdam not included( the flight was delayed for 1 hour)! So as you can imagine, I was quite tired and I fell asleep soon. I stayed at Stewart's home where I got a room for myself.

The next day, we needed to leave early as Stewart's appartment was about 30 minutes away from the NEC and the Hilton Hotel where the seminar took place. We arrived there a quarter to 09:00 am. The seminar room was very nice and before the seminar started, we had spoken to some of the other attendants and made some new friends. Frank arrived exactly at 09:00 am and started the workshop with some personal details about his development from being a truck driver and earning a $14.25/hour to becoming a successful Internet marketer making $130,000 a year without his own products. He also explained the mindset of a successful Internet marketer and that you must be able to know the demographics of your target audience in order to reach them on a personal level. Each attendant also introduced him-/herself and mentioned the level of experience and what businesses they were in. All in all, the first seminar day was mainly a "getting to know each other" day but nonetheless it had been very interesting.

This getting to know each other continued in the breaks where we had time to talk to other attendants again. The main JV time began after the seminar when we sat together in the lounge and after about 1 hour, we changed the location and went to Miller's, an American Grill Bar where we had our dinner together. A good beer and some American fast food made a good atmosphere to talk about business as well as private things. There wasn't a fixed table order so everyone got to know new people again. The number of people who attended the first day was about 20 people, I would say. We exchanged business cards with most of our new friends and also talked about possibilities of joint venturing. Stewart and I were having a nice chat with Peter Twist and Gary Vurnum, two very nice and friendly UK based Internet marketers. Peter is well known for his in depth interviews of Internet marketing "personalities" and his website http://www.internetmarketinglounge.com/ . He told me, he would promote my Promobuddy software to his radio show listeners - channel just for Internet marketers with about 20,000 listeners. Gary also is a successful Internet marketer but his main focus is on self-development and he holds seminars on that as well.

All in all, it was a very nice and successful first day!

The second day was more intensive with regards to the material Frank explained in his workshop. He explained the "order button triggers" which can be found on all successful salesletters. Mainly, it was an extension of his work which he had done together with Michael Nicholas where they have been analyzing successful salesletters and explained exactly why they worked so well. It's a much better concept than just using a software like pushbutton salesletters without knowing what exactly the software does. Now it is much easier for me to understand the hidden psychological triggers which are included. I read the manual "Order Button Triggers" already before I went to the seminar. But having Frank explaining them was an even better experience than just reading about them. It made everything clearer to me. The manual is definitely something I will refer to whenever I need to write a new salesletter.

The afternoon was time for networking again. We mingled and exchanged ideas and by talking to other participants, I realized how much I know already... I thought, all the others were the experts but when we talked about specific projects and concepts, again and again people asked ME for advice. That was really an eye-opener. What I personally learned from the event was that everyone is an expert if he knows something better than others. Even if it is just in one area. With my ideas about traffic generation and the concept of using TrafficEqualizer and RSS Equalizer, I hit the nerves of many. There wasn't even one person in the seminar who had been successfully using these techniques.

My conclusion: Go to as many seminars and workshops as you can afford. Just the exchange of ideas and concepts with like minded people will have a great effect on your personal development as an Internet marketer. Not to forget the main aspect of those events: Networking with other successful marketers, rubbing shoulders with them and getting great JVs is just one aspect of this. You also get to know new friends.

This is what happened to me!

I will be meeting Frank Garon in Birmingham...

2004-08-27T02:54:00.000-07:00

In about 3 hours, I will leave for my first Internet marketing workshop which will take place in Birmingham - UK. My flight goes from Amsterdam to Bristol and from there, I will get picked up by a good friend of mine who actually is living in Birmingham. I guess, I will have a lot of fun there and the main reason that I am taking part in it, is the networking aspect. It is much easier to joint venture with some well known marketers if you meet them in person than if you are just contacting them by email. Frank Garon will hold his workshop about order button triggers or in other words about the factors that make people buy when they are visiting your website. I'm really excited about the whole event and another thing to mention is that I have never been to Great Britain before. I hope, the food will be better than its' reputation...;-). In case you need to reach me, I will be back on Wednesday, Aug. 31. That's it for today. Maybe, we will meet at the one or the other seminar in the future... because I plan to attend many more.

The $1.000.000 Day!

2004-08-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

As you might have noticed, I have been one of John Reese's official launch partners for his Traffic Secrets Course. Today, I got another newsletter from him where he revealed the exact results for his strategically well planned marketing campaign. I know, you probably couldn't escape the (positive) hype about this product, either. Now the result is out! He made exactly $1.080.496,37 in one day...

It's not too often that I admire someone for his skills but what John has done here, is something every Internet marketer can learn a lot from. He built anticipation many weeks before the official release date so people couldn't wait to get their hands on it. Is Traffic Secrets really worth it, you might ask? I can honestly say: Yes, it is! In each case, it is a thousand times better than Stephan Ducharme's (The Free Ad Guru) Money Home, "How to get 1 Million Visitors without paying a dime in advertising" which is close to a scam. But it made the author a million as well (not in one day, though). But in a different way...

John actually overdelivers with his course. He takes you by the hand from where you are and gives you a paint-by-the-numbers blueprint on how to get boatloads of traffic to your site. On the yellow handout, you will find this blueprint and I can definitely say that it works. Because I have done many projects in a similar way. But not with all the details he mentions. Moreover, it's important to him that his students get to know how to convert this traffic into sales which is in my opinion as important as getting the traffic itself. Traffic is not worth anything if no one buys!

If you want traffic to website and you have no clue about how to generate it, then this course is a must have. If you are very advanced already then I doubt that you will find a lot of brandnew and breakthrough strategies in it (e.g. his approach to finding JV partners was a but old-fashioned because he didn't use the software tools which are available by now). Nevertheless, it has some very valuable lessons in it and you don't even have to pay $4500 like the attendants of his seminar (the DVDs have been made out of film material from this seminar).

Hopefully, if you get a copy of this course, it will not just catch dust on your bookshelf but it will motivate you to finally take action. You deserve it to be wealthy. But you have to take action. John will hold several teleconferences for owners of his Traffic Secrets Course. That's what he announced in his newsletter. He will make sure that people know how to use it. Isn't that overdelivering? The product in itself has enough value in itself but he even makes sure that "you get it".

Personally, I have already seen a significant increase in clickthroughs for my own PPC campaigns which resulted in more sales. So just the section about Google Adwords made me money already. I can't wait to put all the other techniques into work. What about you?

Click here to visit John's Traffic Secrets site!

How to subscribe to my blog...

2004-08-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

I have been asked by some people how they can subscribe to my blog if they want to be notified whenever I make a new post. In fact, this is very easy. You just need to download a newsreader for blogs/RSS feeds. This blog is for atom newsreaders which is a special format for blogs.

One of the best newsreaders I have found is called Tristana. You can download it from the following address: http://www.charlwood.com/tristana/download/TristanaSetup.exe . Then you need to install the software and after starting it, you can add my channel by simply clicking on the green "+" symbol at the top.

The URL for my blog is this one (just copy and paste):
http://www.detlevreimer.com/blog/atom.xml

You will now get the latest entries whenever you start the software (put this into your autostart folder!). Moreover, you can also get the latest news by subscribing to e.g. CNN News or other favorite channels. Just do a search in Google for RSS news +keyword and you will find lots of channels you want to subscribe to. Just look out for the orange buttons called RSS or others are called XML. Copy their URLs into the newsreader software and you're done. Only get the news YOU want and no spam anymore.

New tracking script installed - ProAnalyzer

2004-08-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

After I heard John Reese continually mentioning the importance of ad tracking, (in John's Traffic Secrets course), I realized that my tracking which I had in place so far, sucks. That's why I got myself a new script with all the sophisticated bells and whistles an Internet marketer needs. It has a lot of great features like sales tracking AND split testing. Testing is that important and my old script (DynaTracker) did not allow me to do this. Moreover, I can now even track my sales from any ads. Of course, only for websites I have full control over. So tracking of sales for any affiliate programs will not work. At least, as far as I know about that.

The best part about this script is that it is very easy to install. With a lot of CGI programs, I am getting in trouble during the installation process at one point or the other but not with this one. You are guided through a step by step setup process which includes even some screenshots from the WS_FTP software so you can see how it needs to be done. This has been the easiest CGI installation I have done so far (I have done around 7 or 8). When you get clicks to your URLs, you can even see graphical representations of the statistics and it will calculate your ROI. Sales tracking is done by means of adding an image tag to your salesletter and your thankyou page. I haven't seen this in action, though, as it is just about 30 minutes ago that I did the installation. But I am pretty sure it will work great as this tracking software is recommended by a lot of Internet marketers including John Reese.

Click here if you want to see this tracking script in action (goes to the ProAnalyzer page)

My opinion about John Reese's Traffic Secrets Course

2004-08-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

John Reese is going to release his Traffic Secrets Course on Tuesday, Aug. 17. The whole Internet marketing world is excited about that and it is already creating a buzz... Why? Because he's a guy who is doing business online for more than 10 years already and has tested almost everything online. He knows what works to sell huge amounts of products - he has personally sold products worth millions of dollars. Not only does he reveal for the first time HOW he does it, he SHOWS you how to achieve these results. I am one of the first people who has already received his Traffic Secrets package and I must tell you: THIS ROCKS!

It has 7 DVDs which show John at his recent sold out Internet marketing seminar ($4500/seat!!) where marketing legends like Gary Halbert attended. Gary said, it was the best seminar he has ever visited. Personally, I was impressed by the search engine DVD even though "I thought, I knew it all". But even though John did not reveal the secrets himself but some of his seminar attendants, I can tell you that it reveals dynamite stuff. e.g. They tell you how to get your site listed within 48 hours of putting it up. Talk about a big timesaver. But the best thing is that he gives you step by step directions for getting lots of traffic to your site every time you roll out a new product. You can see everything in the DVDs but he also has included some nice coloured handouts where you can see exactly what to do and in which order. I also liked the DVD about tracking a lot and it gave me directions how I can improve my own tracking.

He has another 6 CD-ROMs where he takes you by the hand in a series of screencam videos. These videos are divided into different chapters and everything is made very easy to follow. The videos are played automatically one after the other. Of course, you know Pay-Per-Click search engines. Probably you also know how difficult it can be if you are not getting enough clickthroughs for your campaigns. Or worse, you get too many clicks but they don't convert which can be very costly. John shows you exactly what to do in these situations. And to top it all, he has included two workbooks which let you read everything from the DVDs so it is easier to follow and so you can mark important details in it with a textmarker. Then you just need to put the highlighted sections into action. And in a third workbook, you can track your progress and enter the exact traffic numbers. All in all, I highly recommend this course and it will be a great investment if you don't have enough traffic for your site or if it doesn't convert.

These secrets are not for "cheapskates", though.

Only if you are serious and dedicated to your online business will John let you have his collection of proven and tested website traffic secrets.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT JOHN'S SITE

- THE FIRST CUSTOMERS WILL GET AN ADDITIONAL BONUS WORTH $500 FROM JOHN - EVEN MORE VIDEOS WHICH ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE REGULAR PACKAGE. ONLY IF YOU ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST 17 HOURS, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO GET IT -

How to behave when people are taking advantage of a guarantee...!

2004-08-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

Today, I received a refund request for my AffiliateTurbo software (it submits affiliate programs to the affiliate program directories). Nothing special about it, you would say, but the problem with it was that my customer mentioned reasons WHY he wanted the refund. And these were complete nonsense. He said, the software would not submit fast enough to the directories. As an explanation: My software uses a built-in browser and of course, this browser can only be as fast as the Internet connection of the user. The other reason he mentioned was that it had some affiliate directories included which were not working.

But exactly for this reason, the software has built-in functions to remove those non-working directories. And new directories can also be added manually. I have taken hours upon hours to find new directories today and I have created an updated file for the directories which just needs to be downloaded. I told him that I would send him the updated file which adds even 5 additional directories to the software (it was 43 and now it is 48). And, you guessed it already: He still wanted a refund, even though none of the reasons he mentioned were existent anymore. I told him that I have the impression that he's ripping me off.

Of course, no one likes to hear something like that. But what would you have thought or done in such a situation....? Click on the "0 comments" below if you want to answer this question.

378 Internet marketing predictions

2004-08-11T03:56:00.000-07:00

One of the first comments about new products I want to make is about Mike Mograbi's 378 Internet marketing predictions. It took me quite long to get through all of these pages but it was really worth it. I have found so many new ideas that am now more convinced than ever that Internet marketing still is the correct "niche" for me. Although everybody and their grandpa says to search for new niches. This might be true for those who publish nothing but rehashed materials or who are trying their luck with resale right products only.

In fact, if you have good ideas and know how to put them into practice, even a very competetive arena like Internet marketing offers enough possibilities to make money. In his book, Mike spots the latest trends and predicts how they will develop in the next few years. One example: He's mentioning search engines which will be able to personalize the users input. So if a golfer does a search for "tiger", the search engine will know that the golfer professional Tiger Woods is meant and not the animal.

His book is mainly responsible that I started blogging and that I am adding RSS feeds to my websites.

Read more about it here

Blogging is not easy....

2004-08-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

I must say it took me quite a while to figure out how this blogging-stuff works. But fortunately, there are some manuals available which explain what do. The next step after publishing my first marketing thoughts locally on blogger.com will be to show them on my new site: detlevreimer.com . It's a site I have registered especially for testing these "new" technologies like blogging and using RSS feeds.