Monthly Archives: October 2009

Internet Marketing Lessons From The Peaceful Warrior

8 Replies

Internet marketers can take a leaf out of the movie “Peaceful Warrior” and apply techniques for success to their marketing campaigns.

Based on a book by 1964 World Trampoline Championship winner and co-captain of the 1968 NCAA University of California gymnastics team, Dan Millman, the movie Peaceful Warrior contains a number of success lessons.

Dan Millman’s the author of 14 self-improvement books and has served as director of gymnastics at Stanford University and as assistant professor of physical education at Oberlin College.

Here’re some lessons from the movie:

  • Focus on the now: Get ride of distractions while work. This’ll include interruptive communication like IM, cell phones, email, twitter. Focus on the now.
  • There’s always something happening: Even if there seems to be nothing to do, or nothing going on, keeping your eyes and ears open will open up new opportunities, new promotion methods, new offers. But you have to look.
  • Dealing with setbacks: In the movie, the Dan Millman character is set for a place in the Olympic gymnastics team, till he gets into a motorcycle accident and shatters one of his leg bones in 17 pieces. The movie goes through his effort of rebuilding his career and his life, just like most marketers will be picking up the pieces after a traffic campaign gets slapped, or a highly profitable offer is removed.
  • The Emotion game: You’ve probably heard/read/seen how emotions, especially a fear of failure – a failed campaign, uncertainty of  a new campaign – can shake a marketer’s confidence. Likewise, I think the movie does a great job of highlighting some of the challenges that almost every active internet marketer will face, and how Dan deals with these issues (not always successfully).

I know a number of marketers have a preferred film to psych themselves up when they’re in need of a motivation fix. Some watch Rocky, some watch Chariots of Fire. Peaceful Warrior is different in that it will psych you up and might fire off ideas for your business too.

Links:

-> Way of the Peaceful Warrior (book)

-> Peaceful Warrior (DVD)

Inside Pay Per Click Formula 2

1 Reply

Following the last Friday Podcast with affiliate marketer Gauher Chaudhry, I’ve received questions via email about his product, Pay Per Click Formula 2 (PPCF2) and if it’s all its cracked up to be.

Here’s a product review for those who’re on the sidelines about getting a copy:

First the bad news: PPCF2 is not a magic bullet that will instantly make you a top affiliate. Heck, if you’re dead broke and don’t have any money, you might be better off doing bum marketing or some other “free” method of traffic generation, because PPC marketing requires a budget to fund your ad campaigns.

So contrary to those “instant internet riches” ebooks, PPCF2 will require some real work and some cash to get started.

–

Here’s the good news: PPCF2 is pretty expensive. It costs about $1,297 to be exact. Why’s that good news? From past experience, I’ve seen “hobbyist” internet marketers buy ebooks, then store them in some dark recess of their hard disk, never to be heard from again.

In contrast, because you’re likely making some type of sacrifice to purchase the course, you’re more likely to take action.

The other important factor is that the single price grants you admission for the lifetime of the product. There’s no monthly rebill/subscription that will end up dinging you for $50 or $97 each month to the tune of an extra $1,000 per year. To Gauher’s credit, he’s been supporting the product since it’s launch in 2007, with new updates coming out regularly (the last webinar/training call was held on Oct 13th and downloadable from the member’s area).

One price gets you everything? Check.

So what goes on behind the curtains?

I contemplated publishing screen captures of the stuff in the member’s area, but Continue reading →

Landing Page Giveaway – The Results

7 Replies

Here’re the results of the landing pages giveaway:

  • Finch of FinchSells fame (though I think he’s doing well enough to not need a freebie…)
  • Claudia

I’ll be emailing you to get your preference for which pack you want as your prize.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out the great landing pages that Thien Hoang has put together.

If you’re doing lead gen or CPA marketing, these are a great reference as they come complete with PSD files, CSS and HTML source files.

dating

Stay tuned for next month’s contest/giveaway.

Landing Page Templates Giveaway!

66 Replies

Besides direct linking, you may find that incorporating landing pages into your affiliate campaigns might help with improving your Google quality score on the search network, plus it opens up opportunities to incorporate emailing into your campaigns.

If you’re like me, the design element is a major stumbling block when it comes to landing pages, and modifying an existing design – by replacing graphics, changing ad copy – is a much more attractive proposal.

Which is where these new landing page template packs come in handy.

dating

Designed by Louisiana-based Thien Hoang, who’s a 19-year old designer focused on custom landing pages (and his own affiliate campaigns), his new Landing Page packs bundle about 16 new templates each month (effectively about 6-8 different design in various color variations).

What’s handy is that the templates are coded in CSS and besides the html and graphics, you get the PSD files too. Together with your preferred html editor, like Dreamweaver, or even a text editor, you can insert Aweber autoresponder code, collect an opt-in, send the lead to the merchant’s page and continue marketing other offers via email.

Besides PPC, I expect that they’d work well for social bookmarking, social network ads, PPV, article marketing, etc.

So rather than open up a copy of fireworks and attempt to swipe/edit/copy some other landing page, you can spend more time on your campaigns.

Thien has kindly offered to do a giveaway to my blog readers. So two readers will get their choice of either the August or September landing page pack.

The Contest:

Although I could ask you do something silly like follow me on twitter or retweet this, or something else which would inflate someone’s ego, I’ll spare you that effort.

Just insert a comment below (make sure your email is valid, else I can’t contact you if you win…).

Two random winners will be drawn on Monday.

Prize: choice of either August or September landing page pack. See links below for a preview of the templates.

If you’d like to view or buy the packs, you can check out:

Good luck!

Is Your Social Media Marketing As Annoying As Paris Hilton?

10 Replies

In 2004, mistress of sensationalist media, Paris Hilton, grabbed headlines for most of the year with antics like the leaked sex tape “One Night in Paris” (featuring ex-boyfriend Rick Solomon), the launch of her “The Simple Life” “reality” TV show, and general hobnobbing with the paparazzi.

paris hilton

If you were among the star-struck celeb stalking crowd, you probably could not get enough of Miz Hilton, even if she’d been appearing on Entertainment Tonight, US Weekly, People and your favorite celeb blogs with a frequency almost like diarrhea brought on by a case of really bad shellfish.

If, however, you were like the other 90% of Continue reading →

Looking For A Few Lazy Affiliates…

24 Replies

Unless you’ve been surfing a narrow range of websites, chances are you’ve seen ads promising to generate you an affiliate business with no effort at all. Some of the clues are the use of words like “automatic”,  “auto-generated”, “24-7 income”, “in your sleep”, “everything you need”. My favorite phrase is “business-in-a-box”. So if you plonked down $47 or $97 for this ebook or software, does it mean you’ll be cruising along on Easy Street?

lazy affiliates

Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that many newbie internet marketers are falling into the trap of buying products and never doing anything.

A case in point: I went for a “guru” workshop a couple of years ago and got a 4-DVD set of the workshop recordings. I attempted to rip disc 4 from the DVD to the XVID format, so I could carry it around more easily. But it turns out Continue reading →