Use the Power of Newsletters to Magnetically Suck Web Savvy Traffic Into Your Irresistible Offer!

People that use newsletters will tell you that it is one of the most powerful ways to stay in touch with their clients and customers.  

Whether you have an Internet based business or a regular bricks and mortar company, the newsletter can act as a viral vessel that can get your message into the hands of the people you already do business with.

There are two flavors of newsletters: One sent through your email service and the other through the regular postal service and into the mail box of your subscribers. 

Snail Mail VS Email – Which is Better?

As usual, some people will tell you that the email version is better than the snail

 

mail version, and vice versa. In my humble opinion, they both have their pros and cons. 

Email newsletters are obviously cheaper and easier to send.  You don’t need to spend money on postage stamps or spend gas going down to the local post office to drop them in the mail.  (Unless you can hand them to your postal carrier, and that depends on how many you have to give him or her.)

However, if you are going to use the email route, you’ll need to get a monthly subscription to an email service.  Email services of this nature are like any other business, so you should look around on the Internet to see which one you can afford. 

Most of the good services I've seen online will run you in the $30.00 a month area.  If you add up $30.00 a month times 12 months you’ll get $360 a year.  So much for it being as cheap as you probably thought.

TIP: Don’t get an expensive auto-responder subscription right off the bat. It takes time to build a list and there are plenty of cheap to almost free email/auto-responder programs that will get you started.  You don’t want to start your business with all kinds of money going out the door.

In the past I've used two businesses, one was called “SendFree” and the other is “MailChimp”.  Both of those businesses will allow you to use their services for free up to a certain limited number of email.  When I last checked, MailChimp let you send up to 1000 email addresses at once. So, you are better of getting started with a service like this.  

One Major Advantage of Snail Mail Newsletters

One of the big advantages of snail mail is that the people that you are sending your newsletter to will actually have it in their hands.  With email newsletters, you’ll have to compete with all of the other email and newsletters sent electronically.  One click and you’re gone. 

However, if you make your snail mail newsletter interesting and something your target audience looks forward to, then you’ll have a much bigger chance of them actually looking at it. Not only that, physical newsletters can be shared off line as well.   You can also use a physical newsletter like a business card and hand it out to potential clients. 

The Ultimate Newsletter Tactic

What’s better than sending a newsletter by email electronically or by snail mail? BOTH! If you so desire, you can send out your email using both methods, because there’s no law against it.  You can use the exact same message in both venues and you’ll have an even bigger chance of getting your message in front of your audience. 

TIP:  Use the material that you would normally use in your offline newsletter in your online newsletter!  Actually, if you have a Blog, you can use the material in your blog for your online and offline newsletter! Wow!  Now you’re a three-way winner! 

But Wait, There’s More!

If you write a blog regularly, you can not only use that material for your newsletters but you can compile all that information and use it to make an eBook too. Now you’re a four-way winner!   But seriously, you can easily leverage writing and information in this manner if you’re smart.  

When you do crank up your newsletter machine, there are two or three things to consider.  First, you need to think about whether or not your newsletter will be something that your readers will want to look at.  If you’re sending out newsletters and people aren't reading them, it may be a waste of time.  If your readers aren't excited to get your newsletter and eager to share it with others, it isn't worth writing and sending out.

Another thing to think about is whether or not it’s profiting you to put the time and money into it.  If you aren't getting more clients, prospects, or sales from it, chances are you are wasting your time.

The last thing you might want to consider before you even start a newsletter is to ASK or SURVEY your target audience on what they are interested in reading about. Come right out and ask them what they’d like to read about in your industry and how it would help them. 

This way, you’ll know for sure you are hitting subjects worthy of your time and your newsletter will have a much bigger chance of getting read.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
www.MarkEllisCopy.com
(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

How Are Internet Marketing Strategies Like Fad Diets?

I’m starting to look at marketing plans like diet plans.  Before you tell me that I’m mad, hear me out.  Within the last two days, I have heard another two revolutionary methods of marketing your businesses online that supposedly was a new way to do it.  While I must admit, there are different styles of marketing your business, there pretty much isn't anything new under the sun.

Consider diet plans for a second.  If you watch any daytime TV at all, one of the popular Doctor talk shows that permeate the airwaves have a different diet plan almost on a continual basis.  Of course, this is marketing in itself, because women, which are the target market, are always looking for ways to look younger and thinner.

So, the shows are geared for this.  The products and plans they have on those programs talk about books and equipment dedicated to this industry.  Not only that, these shows are interrupted by obligatory commercials that have all of the low- calorie foods and plans dedicated to this market as well.

And the diet plans are endless:

The Mediterranean Diet
Low Carb Diet
South Beach Diet
Chocolate Diet
The Spartan Diet
The Paleo Diet
The Diet Diet
The funniest one I heard was the Peter Pan Diet.  (I wonder if it involves peanut butter.)


I once had a book given to me that was produced by Men’sHealth magazine.  It was a real interesting book because it had huge, luscious, full-color pictures of food in it that YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO EAT.  I took one look at that book and shouted, “Finally a book that tells me what I want to hear, eat all of this incredible food!” 

The part of the book that stood out the most, was a section at the beginning of the book.  It went through all of the most popular diets, and described what you were supposed to eat or not eat on them and the editors and nutrition experts at Men’s Health dispensed their 2 cents worth on what they thought of each of these diets.  At the end of the day, they said that all of them were not realistic ways to lose weight and that each one of these strategies of losing weight was not sustainable over the long term. 

However, the real kicker came at the end of that particular chapter.  Men’s Health decided to tell you the one and only method of losing weight that would actually work over time. Yup, according to them, there was one diet that worked, and it was so complex and hard to do you just wouldn’t believe it. 

However, because I have worked out an exclusive deal with this top of the line magazine, they have signed a massive 500 page release allowing me (and me alone) to unveil this ultra-secret diet plan.  And now for the first time anywhere, I am going to unleash its awesome power to you so you can use it.

Here, now, for the first time, is the Ultimate Diet Program by Men’s Health Magazine, exactly as appeared in their book:

(Uh-hem…Sorry, I get nervous revealing such incredible information.)

Burn more calories than you take in.

Yep, there’s no arguing the logic or the science behind that plan. 

Marketing Strategies are like Fad Diets

As I mentioned above, I recently heard two new marketing …I guess you’d call them philosophies that I had not really heard before.  However, when I got past the fancy titles, (I think one of them was “Ninja Marketing Tricks for Businesses on Steroids” or something like that.) and the double speak, it was the same marketing ideas I’ve heard a million times before.

One was a sure fire method of making millions on the Web, but when I got deep into the eBook, I looked at the blue print which really wasn’t much different than one I had sketched out for myself years ago.  Although, I’ll have to hand it to the guy that wrote it, it was a pretty massive eBook that the blueprint was in, even though it had quite a few advertisements that tried to upsell you to bigger and more expensive ideas.

The other marketing idea was from a lady that was into “Natural Marketing”.  In other words, her approach was predicated on trying to relate to people, get to know them, and then sell them.  The video that played, as well as the copy that went with it on the page, kept telling you that you were struggling in life and that there was a natural way to market via relating to likeminded people.  Right underneath the skillfully made video was a button telling you to “find yourself” by paying around $10.00.

Just Like Losing Weight 50 Years Ago…

If you study the principals that were used 50 or so years ago, you’d notice that the basics of sales and marketing don’t really change, even though the vehicles they’re delivered from do change, like the Internet.  

However, many marketers and businesses are starting to realize that people are getting savvier to their marketing techniques and are beginning to adjust.  Perhaps in the future new marketers will have to actually get to know their clients and prospects instead of going for the quick and easy. 
It may actually be a breath of fresh air.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
www.MarkEllisCopy.com
(859) 797-9560
elmo033057@gmail.com

Write a Short Book or Manual to Create a Flood of Traffic to Your Business

Today we’re going to talk about the “Thump Factor”. The Thump Factor is a sound that will give you credibility, draw attention to your expertise, serve as a business card, and get you the traffic that your business so dearly needs. 

This is just one of those techniques that you can use offline to drive people to your online business.  Moreover, it can be used in the regular bricks and mortar world to get you great clients that’ll look to you as an expert in your field or niche. 

What is this “Thump Factor”?

The “Thump” is the sound a book makes when it lands on someone’s desk. 

With this strategy, you’re not trying to create a regular published book or bestseller.  In this instance, we’re trying to make a marketing tool that has all the looks of a well written book.  Your chances of getting anywhere near the normal world of publishing are close to zero and you’d probably have a better chance of winning the lottery. 

However, you can easily write and create a well written professional looking book without out spending much money at all.  And that’s all you’ll need to do to get it into hands of the people that you’d like to see as your clients and customers. 

How Can a Thumper Help Me Out?

There’s no question that a regular looking book carries clout. If you carry a book into a prospects office and show him or her how your book can help out their business, they are not very likely to forget you.   Not only that, but a book of

this nature will work great for you as a replacement for brochures.  If someone comes into your dentistry office and you've already written a book called “101 Ways to Make Sure You Never Get Cavities” and they can just pick up a free copy for you, then chances are, that client will never forget you and he or she might pass the book on to a friend. 

Amazon, will also let anyone sell a book from their site so even if you only sell just a few copies of your book you can walk away as a winner.

TIP : You can always set up the book to sell it on Amazon.  Next, give out your book to as many friends and people that you've done business with as possible or offer the book to anyone that promises to write you up a nice review.  Ask them to go on Amazon and place reviews on there about how much they liked it.  This will automatically give you clout on Amazon if anyone wants to check you out to see if you’re the real deal.  

You don’t have to make your promotional book massive.  You can make it fairly thin if you so desire, it’s all a matter of personal preference.  Of course, you need to bear in mind that the thicker you make your book, the more time it will take to put it together.

In reality, the effect of the Thump Factor is bigger that the number of people that will actually read it. Most people you give it to will be impressed, but won’t actually read it.

But think of it this way.  A company wants to hire a Web designer and there are two candidates, you and some other designer.  The other designer has a great portfolio and a pretty good reputation as do you; you’ve got an awesome portfolio and a good rep.  However, YOU HAVE THE THUMP FACTOR! You drop that book on their desk and …THUMP!  They’ll be impressed with the fact that you are an authority.

See the difference?

So, writing your own book is rather easy.  You can either hire a ghostwriter to write the thing or do it yourself.  Writing is so much easier these days anyway.  With word processors like Microsoft Word, you can create an outline or table of contents with just a few clicks of a mouse button.

You can also outsource the work of writing your book. Get a digital tape recorder, record yourself reciting the material that you want in your book, and then send the digital file off to an online transcriber that will type it up for you.

Don’t like that idea?

Get a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software.  All you have to do is speak into the microphone, and your words will magically appear on your word processor.  You can knock out about a chapter a day with this powerful software if you wanted to.  I used this software quite a bit when I was in college.  I had so many papers to write for my Master’s degree and this was quite simply the fastest method to get a lot done in a very short time.

When using Dragon Naturally Speaking, it’s always better to have in your head what you’re going to say before you say it, though.  The other problem with this method, is that it requires time to go back and read what you've spoken into the microphone.   Many times the software will misinterpret what you've said and you’ll have to edit.

What Are You Waiting For?

If you see a value in what I just said, then the time to act is right now.  I shouldn’t have to sell you on this idea, because the benefits are real.  The hardest part of writing a book of this nature is getting off of your rump and getting it done.  That will take commitment and drive.  

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Use eBooks to Cheaply Drive Free Traffic to Your Website or Blog

I have written eBooks, and as a marketing tool, they work pretty well.  There are two schools of thought on how to create them.  One is to sit your butt down and knock it off and the other is to hire a ghost writer to make one for you. 

Since most of you are like me (lazy), in this post I’ll tell you how to hire a ghost writer to create an eBook. In the next post, we’ll explore how to write your own and some of the pitfalls to avoid, but for this episode we’ll go the ghost writer route.

What Are eBooks and Why Does Everyone like Them So Much?

Just in case you’re brand new to Internet marketing, here’s a brief description of electronic books or eBooks. You can easily become a publisher without having to print up books the traditional way.

These are electronic books that you can get online and read on your computer.  These are sometimes called .PDF files. (PDF is the file extension that means that the file is basically text and graphics in book format.) You can have great pictures, and text laid out in such a way that makes the book look great, and the book can be as big or small as you want it.

One of the best thing about eBooks is that you could really load one up with pictures and graphics and you’d save a lot of money over traditional publishing because using traditional methods, you’d have to spend butt – loads on money getting full color pictures into a book.

Not only that, but distribution costs are super cheap.  They can be downloaded as file from one place on the Internet to the other, and they can also be sent as an email attachment from one place to another.  You can also sell them from a variety of places online such as Clickbank, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.   

Another super-plus benefit to eBooks is that they can also be Interactive.  Just like the Internet, you can place links to websites and products you’re trying to sell, and you can even embed video into them.  However, the computer that you are reading them on needs to be connected to the Internet for the links and video to work. 

The main benefit of creating an eBook is that no longer will you need to go through a publisher and all of the traditional routes to become an established author.  You can call yourself an author without needing anyone’s backing or permission and you can do all of this for next to nothing.  Amazing!

The Downside of eBooks and How to Overcome It

As I see it, there are two main setbacks to using an eBook.  First, everyone is making them and giving them away.  Some of the best eBooks I have read were eBooks I’ve gotten online for free.  (I’ll leave links to these at the end of this post.) 

However, a lot of the eBooks that are given away SUCK.  Plain and simple. We’re not going to go that route.

The other drawback is taking the time to sit down and write them.  The two disadvantages go hand in hand when overcoming them, as you’ll see in a moment.

 So, let’s tackle both problems at the same time in steps.

Step 1: Identify the Niche You’re Operating In.  If you don’t know what your business is all about, you are in an extreme disadvantage.  You’ll need to figure out where you are and how you’re going to get there.  If you haven’t taken the time to read the post I’ve already written on exploring niches, check it out here: Ways to Find Niches

  

Another method of finding out what your niche is, as well as your unique selling proposition (USP) is to actually sit down and write out a business plan.  The way I wrote mine was I got a copy of Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Workbook.  This book is not only a great marketing book, but it will help you write out a fairly decent marketing and business plan.

Step 2:  Gather Resources.  Once you’ve identified your niche, go online and

peruse books and courses in your niche from Amazon, eBay and other book – type resources.  Find out what’s really hot in your niche and start buying and gathering information from them.  If you have to buy books from Amazon, you can get them cheap by buying them used.  You are looking for the absolute best information you can find in your niche.  The best way to determine this is by looking at the Amazon ratings as well as the number of comments that are on the site. 

TIP: Another awesome place to get this type of information from is forums.  Start reading and copying and pasting the best posts, questions and answers you can find from them.  Some of the most incredible advice I've gotten is from forums, so copy and paste your favorite readings into a word processor and keep them.

You’re going to need quite a stack of resources on your subject.

Step 3: Start Reading and Highlighting Your Resources.  Now, take the resources that you’ve been gathering and start reading.  Whenever you find something in them that you think is dynamite or useful, highlight it with a highlighter.  Do this to all of your resources. After doing this, you should have quite a pile of information.

Step 4:  Get reasonably priced writer and have theme write your material.  There are many places on the Internet to find writers that will do your ghost writing for you.  Here’s a partial list of places you can go to on the Internet to outsource writing:

Moving AheadCommunications 

Ghosts R Us – Specializes in outsourcing eBooks     

Fiverr - A unique site that vendors can only charge $5.00 a gig.  

oDesk 

eLance 

Freelancer 

99designs 

Hire the World  

There are loads of outsourcing sites and you’ll need to get used to using the one or two that you’ll feel most comfortable with in order to get your eBook or eBook written.

Step 5: Send your highlighted material to your ghostwriter and have them rewrite it.  Once you have your ghostwriter hired, send them your highlighted books and have them rewrite the material for you.  You are not plagiarizing, but rewriting the material into someone else’s words.  Not only that, but you are picking material from a variety of resources.  So, you are not copying, but using the material you highlighted as source material. 

Step 6:  Brand your eBook.  Make sure all of your marketing information is in the eBook before you give it away or sell it.  Make sure that your Web address, email, business number and any other contact information that you have is in the eBook.

Pretty much, that’s all there is to it.  One thing to keep in mind, you’ll need to check and read the material sent back to you by your ghostwriter.  You don’t want to have your name on anything substandard because you’re trying to build an excellent brand and reputation, here.

To Your Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Free eBooks that are just outstanding:

How to Make MoneySitting on Your A** by T.J. Rohleder

Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy 

Blow Away the Competition Using This Traffic Generating Method of Giving Away Free Content

One of the biggest words in marketing besides “New” and “Sale” is the word “Free”.  If you read my last post, you’ll know that I’m an advocate of “Paying it Forward”.  It’s one of the best things you can do for yourself and others, and a super easy way of building a loyal group of followers as cheaply as possible.

However, before I give you some great FREE ideas, let me just mention that just because you’re giving away something as cheap as FREE you don’t have to make it cheap.  You still need to make your gift as high quality as possible.

Recently, I heard a podcast by a young guy that mass produces eBooks on Amazon. His business model was to pick a group of pen names, (a different one for each niche he was targeting) have someone ghostwrite eBooks for himself - dirt cheap, and then sell them for $5.00 each because there wasn't any pain for prospects in parting with such a small amount of money.

He claimed he was raking in the dough.  Maybe he was...don’t know.

The problem with this business model, as I see it, is he will always have to rebuild his customer base.  People that buy cheap items that are just thrown together probably won’t be back, and probably aren't successful enough to buy anything that you’ll want to sell them later at a higher price. 

That’s just my way of thinking.

Why the Big Boys are Big

The reason why marketing experts like Dan Kennedy can command $300 an info product, or charge $3000 a seat at a seminar is because he DELIVERS super-high quality information, products and services and carries that reputation around with him wherever he goes.  And he’s been doing it for over 30 years.

That kind of clout comes with putting YOUR back into it, rather than hiring a ghost writer to dash out some fast junk. The Dollar Store does well at selling super-cheap stuff because that’s exactly what it is--super-cheap stuff.  

You won’t find Dyson vacuum cleaners that will last for 10 years or more there, because that’s not their niche.  (Of course you won’t find me buying a vacuum cleaner there either, no matter how cheap they sell them.)

Now, I know what you’re gonna say.  “Wait a minute Ellis! You’re telling me on one hand to give stuff away for FREE, but then you’re telling me that I don’t want to have a cheap reputation.  What kind of double talk is that?”

They Already Have the Job

People that want to become teachers go through a gauntlet you wouldn't believe.  In order to become a school teacher in the U.S. you have to go through at least 4 years of college, take a whole battery of certification tests, do your student teaching for at least a semester in a regular school, and then make sure you follow the rest of your certification requirements in the state you’re teaching in. 

In the state of Kentucky, for example, you have to go through an extra year of a state run program.  That program requires you to be observed and monitored by other teacher’s at your school as well as administrators and state administrators.  

By the time you’re done with that program, you’ll have a book full of state forms and lesson plans that’s as thick as a New York City telephone directory.  If you pass all of that, you still have to teach in your subject area for 3 years or take some upper level graduate classes.

Full-fledged teachers don’t make that much money for the first 10 years they’re teaching either.

I remember when I was doing my student teaching in college, there was a professor that was prepping us for that experience.  She really hammered out the fact that she didn't care what the rest of the staff at the cooperative school was dressed like, we had to be dressed to the hilt, very professionally.  She went through the whole laundry list of what women and men were to wear while doing their cooperative teaching.

Some of the students asked why we had to get so decked-out if the rest of the school teachers were dressed more casually.

Her response was quite blunt. “They already have the job.”

So, consider what other professions have to go through just to get started before you start whining, please.

The Reasons to Provide Free Content

•        Your customers, prospects and fans want it, plain and simple. 
• 
  
•        You are trying to establish and prove your knowledge and expertise in your niche. Cheapest way to do it.
• 
  
•        If done correctly, it could be used to provide an online watering hole for your fans to congregate, comment and exchange ideas on a regular basis. 
• 
  
•        If you use offline newsletters, online eBooks and other wonderful vehicles, they could be passed around so you’re ideas and reputation could be spread virally.

The Grateful Dead Goes Live

A real good example of this type of FREE activity actually working, is from the famous rock group the Grateful Dead.  From a marketing perspective, they were unique in many ways.  But one thing stands out that they did which nobody else was doing at the time:  they’d let you record their concerts for FREE.

As a matter of fact, there was an area right next to the mixing board, where the best recordings could

be made called “taper sections”.  This is where people recording their live events could make their own recordings of Grateful Dead’s concerts.

Most music moguls would freak out at the revenue lost, but not the Dead.  They went viral before the Internet. People were exchanging recorded tapes, talking about them, and spreading their fame very quickly, and it paid off handsomely.  Hardly anyone hasn't heard of the Grateful Dead.

Google Gets a Jump on Free

Still don’t think high-quality FREE works? Take a good look at Google.  They have great free services that would take pages to list here.  It’s even been rumored that one of their latest ventures is to provide free Internet services to anyone that wants them, but that’s a future goal I’m not sure will happen.   

Google, like the Medici banking family of the Renaissance is collecting geniuses; there’s a whole battery of tests you’d have to take to get in their doors.  These people work in an environment that does nothing but give them freedom.  

Freedom to think, play around with ideas, and learn more.  People that work for this company don’t want to go home, so they stay and put in many hours. 

They are keen on FREE.  If they’re that smart, perhaps we should follow their lead.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy Content Generating Ideas That’ll Drive Free Traffic to Your Site

It appears that we are moving toward a more sophisticated economy.  About a year ago I watched a fascinating expose on how our education system MUST change.  It appears that we have been graduating from schools that are based on the Industrial Revolution production mindset.   The speech was given by Sir Ken Robinson, a man that was described as a “world-renowned education and creativity expert”. 

The premise of his speech was that basically, our education system was built to fuel factories with more warm bodies.  We had a factory driven, industry based economy and it was the civic duty of our leaders, government, and citizens to perpetuate it.

(If you are wondering why I am starting down this road instead of jumping right into the subject matter outlined in the title of this post, please stay with me.  I always want to tell you why you should do a thing before you go out and do it.)

Our Industrial Based Thinking Sucks

Anyway, we went to school, went from one class to another in lines, and with kids that were the same age as we were, and we were programmed.  Follow the rules, do what you’re told, sit at your desk, keep up or be left out, and DON”T BE DIFFERENT!!!

In the ‘60’s rebellion kicked in.  The “in” thing was dropping out and letting your hair hang down.  However, most of it was rather pointless.  As a matter of fact, some people could objectively look at the 60’s rebellion and call it another form of conformity, but that’s getting too deep.

Hence, the Industrial Revolution conditioning stuck and the education and labor system that we have become used to is still in place today. 

To see the video by Sir Ken Robinson on our industrial revolution school system click here:

The reason why I’m bringing this up is because our brains seem to think along the same business model/economic lines.  We still look at doing business the same way we were always trained:

Draw people to our site, try to sell them something, move on to another victim…er…customer or client, contact your previous prospects, try to upsell them something more expensive, and leave never to return. (Except when you want to sell them something else.)

People are catching on.  They know when you are merely looking at them like a piece of raw meat that you can suck the life from. 

Undercover Boss - The Bad Side of Things

The trouble with this business model is that there is a very high burn out rate, mainly because you’re just churning out CRAP. Even if you finally make a lot of money getting people to buy into your scheme, you’ll still have to fight like the dickens to keep replenishing your clients and prospects. 

And what kind of entrepreneur will you become as a result of this?

A perfect example of this was on a 2015 episode of the TV show, Undercover Boss.  Without going into too much detail, the show highlighted a seminar/real estate tycoon that was obviously a charlatan.  

He bragged about himself so much, you wouldn't believe it. He announced that if he died he’d want to be reincarnated as himself, because he was the “&%$#*” luckiest man on earth.  His claims were that he made about 40 million or so and was getting richer every day.  He charged attendees of his real estate seminar $43,000 per seat, for a 2 day session.

You should have seen the poor, deceived people he was fleecing.  Some of them looked like they were living out of their cars.  Some admitted that they were running up their credit cards to feed the beast.

(Not only that, but as the show was running, I was following the comments of people on Twitter about this show, and you wouldn't believe how hated this man was, especially by women.  The comments ran on and on and NOBODY had anything nice to say about him or his business.)

It was sad.

One of the reasons it was so sad, is because ANYONE COULD HAVE GIVEN THOSE POOR PEOPLE THE EXACT SAME REAL ESTATE INVESTING INFORMATION FROM AMAZON USED BOOKS FOR LESS THAN $20.00!!!! Actually, the information from the books would have been better than the info they would have gotten from HIS seminar. I guarantee it.

Why Am I Telling You This?

The reason I’m telling you all of this is because, your mindset has got to change!  

Gone are the days of merely taking people’s money and forgetting about them.  If you are just in this for the fast in and out, just be aware that people are becoming attuned to the fact that they are getting fleeced.  It’s little wonder why the term “Internet Marketing Guru” is now considered to be a negative term and the gurus are doing their best to distance themselves from that moniker.

People want to feel like they know you and they want to feel that they are a part of something.  They‘re sick and tired of being thought of as nothing more than a consumer that’s there to line somebody’s pocket with money. 

Consider a Facebook ad that looks like this:

Actual ad from Facebook- (URL removed). Apparently they were using Shutterstock’s pics without even paying.

Do you really think that anyone is going to feel connected to this, much less believe it?

The reason why I’m telling you this is because you are going to have to give, connect, respond, enrich, enliven, educate and HELP people if you really want true success.  And when you do sell them something, your product should be the best it can possibly be.  

You don’t want to cut any corners, and when you do sell somebody your wares or services, you’ll want to be extremely concerned that it is doing every single thing you said it would.

Hey, here’s a new concept:  After the sale, follow up and ask your customers how it’s working.

Generating Content – It’s Not Expensive to Give This Away

This brings me around to the subject matter at hand, generating content ideas.  The cheapest way for you to help people out and educate them about what you do, is to give them excellent, mind-blowing content.

 Here are a few ideas to help you get started:

• Cruise forums that are specific to your niche and read the questions that people are asking.  If you keep seeing the same question asked over and over again an excellent, FREE, well-written article will be something they’ll benefit from.

• If you have a list of people that have already purchased your products or services, ask them questions about what they thought the product lacked or helped them with the most.  This will give you fertile ground for subjects you can write about.  Make sure that you send this information out to people on your lists.

• Sit down and brainstorm a list of benefits that your product or service gives, as well as a list of problems that it solves.  Remember the color or size of your product isn't usually a benefit it’s a feature. Benefits are things that your product will do for you.

• Go on Amazon or eBay and look at products and services similar to yours. What benefits do you see vendors talking about the most? (NOTE: If you are rendering services, look at the books related to your services that are being sold.  Use the “Look Inside” feature of Amazon and look at the table of contents. There’s loads of ideas you can write about there.)   

Also, look at the comments sections of the products and see what people are complaining about the most.  That‘s pure gold for content creation.

Make a List and Create Your Programming

Once you have gone through these content generating ideas, use a calendar and make a schedule of the subjects you’ll be talking about on your blog, podcast or website.  Since I’ve already written a post about this, I won’t bore you by repeating myself, you can read it here:

Using a Calendar to Create a Content Schedule  

I hope you find this message enlightening and it has helped you in some way.  If you’d like to fire some ideas or comments at me please feel free to do so.  

Send them to:

Elmo033057@gmail.com

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

Web Savvy Content Creation to Generate FREE Traffic to Your Website

If you are going to use free content to drive traffic to your website, then you need to pay close attention to this one important tip I’m going to throw at you in a second.  Free content online is huge, and there is a lot of competition. 

However, for those of you out there in the vast Internet heartland, reading this message might be just what you need to push you to greater heights of Internet marketing glory.

The Giant Failure-Filter…Don’t Quit Your Day Job

If the statistics are close to accurate, Internet based businesses have a 90%+ rate of failure within the first 120 days.  There are many reasons for this that have been cited:  Lack of business experience, very limited technical skills, poor understanding of starting and running a business, no capital at all, unrealistic expectations. 

Should I go on?

This is why my blog is dedicated to teaching you how to work the Internet as cheaply as possible.  If you've never had a business before, start and learn as cheap as you can.  The most beautiful thing about the Internet is you don’t need to spend a wad of money to get started, and therefore, if you don’t succeed, you’ll financially live to fight another day. 

But don’t quit your day job, no matter what the gurus tell you.  Every stinking’ one of them had failures along the way.  Rarely, (emphasis on rarely) are the ideas, economic conditions, and your personal life so perfectly in sync that you’ll hit a homer on the first swing.

If you are persistent in business, you’ll bounce back from your failures.  You will find, especially on the Internet, that you’ll fail more times than you succeed. 

Writing Content for Free Online Traffic

Writing content in order to get free, organic traffic to your site or blog is

probably the cheapest way to get Internet traffic.

Just think of these benefits:

• If you wrote a post or added a webpage every single day of the year to your site, at the end of the year you’d have 365 pages of content out there on the Internet working hard for you, every day of the week.  Over two years you’d have 730 pages of content over three years that would give you over 1000 pages.  Those pages work 24/7/365 for you and the charge will be almost nothing. 

• If you did keyword research correctly for those pages, they would definitely bring in some traffic.  

• You could also post short notices to social media sites about those posts, generating a flood of traffic, and you can use the same post on social networking sites months later to generate interest in it again.

• If you organized those posts, and put them into a .pdf file, you could also brand it as an eBook and either sell it online or give it away free as an incentive for giving you their email address.

• Not only will you get comments from people visiting your site, but your website or blog will definitely draw attention from Google and other search engines.  People contributing to your blog by commenting on it will help it generate more attention from Google, and therefore, move you further up the search engine results pages.

The Downside to Using Free Content

I present to you now, the downside to this strategy:

• Most of us are lazy, let’s just face it.  In order to pull this off, you are going to have to write and actually enjoy it.   The only way out of this is to hire a ghost writer, but that costs money and the good ones don’t come cheap.

• You’re going to have to set a part of your busy day away to write and post.  This requires discipline as well as commitment.

• Quality is the order of the day.  In order to pull this strategy off, you’re going to have to give people the highest quality content you can muster.  It doesn’t matter what your services or products are, if you aren't producing excellent information and content about them people will ignore you.

• You need to know how to write.  If you write posts or pages that people can’t easily understand, then chances are they will click and go elsewhere.  Yes, this blog is about using the Internet as cheap as you can to make money, but don’t think for a second you can give out used Volkswagen efforts and get Rolls Royce results.  

• This is time consuming.  You’ll need to spend at least an hour or more writing every day.  Anything less is ludicrous.

• You need to know what you are talking about.  If you have no clue about your area of, ahem…”expertise”, then it will definitely stick out like a sore thumb. 

• You’ll need to know how to post to the Internet and do Keyword research.  You can use WordPress, Blogger or a website editor like Dreamweaver.  If you are going to build an actual website, you should learn how to hard code HTML so you can create the pages that you’ll post your writing to. 

  Blogging the “Easier” Solution

If you want my two cents about the easiest way to get content onto the Internet, I’d say Blogging is the way to go.  Both WordPress and Google’s Blogger are very easy to use and you can get free versions of both to cut your teeth on.  I personally use Blogger, both the free version and I also have a .com I pay for on another Blogger blog as well. (www.markelliscopy.com) 

Blogger is the cheapest way to go because even if you get a .com (URL) for that blog, all you have to pay for is the .com.  To have a URL with WordPress, you’ll have to have a hosting package from a company like HostGator and know how to set up the blog through the control panel. 

Here are some resources for you to consider:

Dreamweaver : Web Design Software

Learn HTML and how to build websites online...FREE!

Blogger

WordPress

In my next post, we’re going to explore how to organize your subject matter and research it in order to be able to write blog posts that people are actually going to WANT to read about.

Until then…

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com