Magic Bullet Marketing Blog

Yesterday I went shopping online for a high-priced item.

The item or ‘thing’ isn’t important.

What was interesting was how hard some people make it to buy from them.

Some examples.

1. “Call this phone number to order” — I did and got stuck in voicemail HELL!

2. “To order FILL OUT THIS FORM” — 25 fields before I order. You’re kidding, right?

3. “To order call 555-5555″ — I did and no-one called back.

And so the saga went.

My suggestion, “find someone non-computer savvy and give them the task of ordering from your site”.

Ask them to explain what your site offers.

Ask them to go through the order process.

Listen to their questions.

This simple exercise could be worth a small fortune to you.

I am looking for someone to help test out some new marketing methods I have pioneered at my expense.

I’ll pay to promote your business, you keep the revenue but I get to see how well my methods work and I can use these results as ‘proof’ my methods work.

There is a slight catch!

I want to try these methods on marketing SOFTWARE not ebooks, CD or DVD’s.

The software must be your own unique product. It can be a hosted script or a PC product.

If you are interested then reply in the comment box below.

The comments are moderated and won’t be published.

I will contact you privately.

I run several niche web sites outside of the Online Marketing community.

Using SEO methods which I teach, I happily drive free traffic to these sites.

One particular site generates several million unique visitors a year.

For a long time I built ONE big email list from the site.

BIG MISTAKE!

I found that buyers from the site bought diverse ClickBank.com products I had listed on the site.

The point?

SEGMENT or build multiple lists.

Realize that just because you thought your site visitors were their for YOUR reason they are really there for their OWN reason.

Now, had I known that several years ago my auto responder sequences (yes, plural) would have been more highly targeted… and THAT dear reader cost me a @##$@ fortune.

Don’t copy my mistake unless of course you have YOUR reason for doing it.

Check out the sales page — see how I ‘stack’ the benefits?

The next few blog posts will be on turning site visitors into buyers. That should interest you.

I use video extensively in my product creation.

Of course, for screencapture you can’t go past Camtasia but often I need something more powerful and flexible to edit ‘live action’.

After buying almost EVERY P.C. video tool on the market I found ‘Sony Vegas’. In the U.S. you can pick up the product for under $100 and this software works flawlessly.

I have bought ALL the other tools, Magix, Pinnacle and a bunch that are no longer sold and Vegas is by far my favorite.

Once I edit my footage I either burn it onto CD/DVD or load it onto Youtube.com

And for those of you that have started using Youtube.com as an excellent lead generation source… here is how you get your video rendered into the site.

If you’ve seen some of our sales pages you’ve seen our use of screenshots.

There is a fantastic tool we use to create these screenshots and today I am going to share it with you!

In fact, this tool ‘rocks’.

It is called, “FastStone Capture” and you can find it here,

http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm

The best part is that it is, “Freeware” or FREE!

I have even used this tool to create whole products but I’ll leave that for another post.

Sometimes I am on the phone and instead of describing what I see on the screen I just email or send over the image using this tool.

- Michael.

p.s. Do you have a favorite tool? Post it in the comments field for others to see.

If you are already a an experienced niche marketer, I want today to share with you a really good resource for, “Finding products that are of high quality, convert well, and profitable”. This is also really useful when researching niche markets.

The site I am talking about is, http://www.cbtrends.com/

I use this link to find new products and when I want to see how well a particular product is doing I go here.

Often I will send traffic to an already developed site as an affiliate to see what kind response I am likely to get.

In future posts I will share more about niche marketing but for now check this resource out and see what is already working well.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again: Internet Marketers picking niches completely based on the ability of money that they think they will be able to make.

Not that there is anything wrong with making lots of money right?

Well, the problem is that if you pick a niche that you have zero interest in, it makes it A LOT harder to promote.

And guess what? A niche that is jam-packed with money will make you ZERO dollars if you never get it off the ground!

I have found that my niche websites seem to come together so much easier when it is something that I at least have a bit of interest in.

For example, in school I despised history class. I don’t know why, there was just something about it. I can pretty much guarantee you that if I sat down and planned a niche “history book” site, I’d probably abandon it before it even saw the light of day!

This is a problem for us internet marketers, not finishing what we’ve started, and not giving a 100% effort. This is absolutely critical if we are to succeed!

The truth is that there are literally an unlimited number of niches out there. With a bit of digging, you should be able to find something that you have at least a small amount of interest in.

Do yourself a favor, it’ll help you succeed!

Over the past two days I’ve been sharing a story of an old client of mine who came to me because he was unable to succeed online. He seemed to have all the right tools, but he just wasn’t able to put it all together.

This happened several years ago, before I had any personal internet money-making experience (I was working strictly as a therapist).

So we sat down to get to the root of the issue. Did he have the education? Yes. Did he have the smarts? Yes. So what was the problem?

I asked him outright:

“Do you think you can succeed?”

He answered with a hesitation, and said “yes”.

As a therapist, the hesitation said A LOT to me. And then it hit me, this person was afraid.

The fear was holding him back.

How many times have you not done something because you were convinced that you couldn’t?

It quickly became obvious to me that this person was not 100% committed to success, and until you make that commitment, it is pretty hard to get there.

So we took a long look at the barriers he was facing, and what he needed to do to change them.

1) Honestly, it is hard to work on your own. You don’t have the structure that you get in a “dayjob” and don’t have a boss breathing down your neck.

We worked together to create a realistic schedule. Specific times that were set aside each day to completely dedicate to the business.

2) Skepticism. Does this “internet stuff” really work? Believe me, I use to wonder that too. But until you get over the barrier and realize that the internet is a place full of wonderful and amazing opportunities, you will have NO idea what you can accomplish.

3) You Need to Be Realistic. You are not going to make thousands of dollars just by turning on your computer. It is going to take work. This is just how it is. The good news is that if you are willing to put in the work, it is easier then you realize to grow into an incredibly successful business.

So what happened next? Well, my client was able to make these commitments, and also understand the barriers that were holding him back. Once he was able to find his “groove”, he got to where he wanted to be.

No more “desk job” for him

I hope that those of you out there reading this will stop back and take a look at where you are at. Obviously if you are reading this, you are interested in making money online too. What is holding you back?

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I promised to tell you more about a past experience I had where I helped one of my clients through a struggle they were having with trying to succeed online.

It is quite ironic actually, you see this happened several years ago, back when I had not even given any thought to making a living online!

So let me give you some background about my client. He decided that he wanted to build a business online, so he quit his job (yikes! scary thing to do, especially if you haven’t established a reliable income online yet) and went out and bought just about every expensive internet money-making course he could find.

He kept buying the latest, greatest “hot” program, and hoped that it would make him rich. Before he would really sink his teeth in, he was onto his next conquest.

Why was he not succeeding?

Well, something wasn’t right. Something was missing. He had all of this great education right there in front of him (sure, I bet there were some clunkers in there, but some of them had to be good! he had so many!) but he still wasn’t successful.

That is when he figured out that the problem wasn’t the material.

It was him.

And that’s when he came to me.

So how in the world did I help him get on track? Especially without having any internet marketing experience of my own at the time?

Tune in tomorrow to find out. See you then

Hey everyone,

Today I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of succeeding online. No, I’m not going to be talking about some flashy new software, or hot search engine “trick”, I am talking about something WAY more important then that.

Motivating Yourself!

Some of you may know that I have an extensive background in working with people. I am a licensed therapist, and counseling people online was actually how I “fell” into internet marketing in the first place.

I actually counseled a few people that were struggling to succeed online, and though at the time I couldn’t help them with marketing education, I could help them a lot with creating a realistic plan to succeed.

First let’s get one important thing out of the way. The information to succeed online is out there.

Seriously, it really is!

Sometimes I buy a $97 report and don’t do a darn thing with it. Isn’t that awful? I’m going to wager that there are a lot of you out there that have done the same stinkin thing. Why are we like that?

Creating a business online is so incredibly different then a normal business, or a “regular” job. So many people fail to understand that. And it isn’t until you accept what you are up against and make a commitment to what you are doing that you will be able to move forward.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a story of one of my clients, and how he overcame the barriers holding him back from his success. It’s a pretty interesting story, I think you are really going to enjoy it.