Since its the weekend, I thought it’d be good to relax. And what better what to blend relaxation with learning at the same time. ?
By watching Episode 1 of The Next Internet Millionaire, you can view it for free at The Next Internet Millionaire
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I just found out from Willie Crawford and Patrick Pretty ’s blog that Dr.Mani is conducting a firesale to raise $50,000 for children in India who cannot afford the money needed for their heart surgeries.
Dr Mani is a heart surgeon in India who operates on children with heart defects. He operates on children who don’t
have much hope without his help. To fund the heart operations, Dr. Mani sells products over the internet and then uses that money to save lives. His efforts has also be recognized on the Sept 2006 edition of FAST COMPANY.
I sincerely hope that you can assist by checking out the The “Save a Child’s Heart”Firesale and support its cause. 100% of the proceeds will be channeled towards this charity cause.
It’s at http://www.chdinfo.com/firesale/
Without saying, Dr. Mani has also included tremendous value in the firesale, so besides helping yourself to a horde of valuable products that can boost your income, you also get to feel good knowing that you have helped less privileged children in India.
As an added bonus to purchase the firesale, I’m throwing in an extra UNCUT and RAW 1hr long interview with Ted Nicholas (valued at $47) if you purchase the firesale.
Ted Nicholas is a giant in the marketing field! He’s known as the “Four Billion Dollar Man” since he’s generated billions for himself and his clients. This often copied pioneer of the business has influenced the path of every direct marketer to come after him. You won’t want to miss hearing what he has to say!
And this is rare opportunity to get your hands on his UNCUT & RAW interview where he shares his secrets of generating the billions that he has!
There’s no affiliate link, this is just an extra bonus I’m throwing in for supporters of Dr Mani’s Firesale. So grab Dr Mani’s “Save a Child’s Heart” Firesale at http://www.chdinfo.com/firesale/
After you have made payment, just forward me your clickbank receipt to alvin(at)alvinhuang.com and I’ll send you the 1 hour UNCUT & RAW interview of Ted Nicholas in mp3 format.
Looking forward to your support. =)
Popularity: 8% [?]
In the 1st part of the series “It’s Your Positioning Strategy, Stupid – Part 1”, I covered why positioning is extremely important for gaining mind share amongst your clients.
While in the previous article “It’s Your Positioning Strategy, Stupid – Part 2”, I covered why personal branding is important and how you should go about building your personal brand.
Now in this 3rd series of “It’s Your Positioning Strategy, Stupid”, I will be covering the aspect of positioning your commercial websites and products. The material covered will be applicable to both information products and physical products sold online.
Why is Positioning Your Website And Product Important?
If you are a new entrant in the e-commerce community, you will definitely find many strong competitors already anchored in the different niches. And despite the 1,173,109,925 (source: www.internetworldstats.com June 2007) internet users world wide, you can be sure that majority of online purchasers already have their favorite websites to purchase from. Furthermore, new websites numbering the tens of thousands pop up everyday, eager to be the next Amazon or eBay.
With the intensive competition merely for eyeball attention, you would need to position your website to stand out from the masses. So how do you go about doing it?
1. Select a Niche
Despite being one of the most common advice given to online marketers, a huge percentage of websites still fail prey to the “I want to appeal to everyone” trap. I did a search for “online mall” on google and it returned 45 million websites. The first one being www.super-shopping-mall.com which was registered in 2002. From what I gather, its basically a portal with a list to a vast variety of products of which it is probably an affiliate of.
Its traffic? Alexa shows a ranking of 1,668,834. It’s a ghost town and no wonder. It did not have a specialized niche which it was strong for. Same goes for the other websites returned in the search results.
Is starting up a shopping portal in today’s age possible? Yeah sure, if you have the big marketing dollars numbering in the millions to start with, then maybe, yes maybe you might have a shot.
Amazon started out selling books, and further expanded their category offerings in the later years, offering beauty products to even Pampers. (Check out the Pampers link here) through different merchants. This is still a hotly debated topic of between marketing experts, of whether Amazon is sacrificing short-term profits through this form of brand dilution for long term value and sustainability. Sure some people will still buy these products from Amazon because of its brand name, but for me, I think I will stick to just buying books.
Zappos started out selling a vast selection in shoes in terms of brands, styles, colors, sizes, and widths shoes in 1999 but eventually ventured into bags, accessories and apparels. With sales of $597 Million in 2006 and projected sales of $800 in 2007, guess they aren’t complaining.
But the main crux of the issue is that even the big boys started off in niches, being specialists of their field before expanding their product offerings after amassing a huge clientele base.
Information internet marketers are also specialists do the same thing with their 1 page sales letters. They have 1 product to sell, and probably have an upsell through a special one time offer. John Reese is probably setting up a mega membership/mart at income.com for IMers soon too. But these aren’t the ones with the problems, it’s the affiliate marketers who are spoilt for choice through the myriad affiliate programs available and just bombard their prospects with different sorts of product offerings at their websites.
If you are an advanced marketer, you would probably not have this problem. But this is a common problem for newbies.
2. Differentiate or Die
Stealing the title from Jack Trout’s book, you have to differentiate or watch your business crumble, earn mediocre returns at best. The internet has given your website access to the millions of prospects worldwide, but it has also taken down the barriers to entry. A manufacturer in China, Vietnam or Cambodia with savvy enough internet marketing skills will be able to beat your pants off in price. Product designs can be copied the very day itself and sold the next day. They might be the very same supplier where you are getting your goods from.
How do you differentiate? Have a brand story…
Don’t you just love a good story? Well everyone does. And similarly for your website and business, it is essential that you have a brand story. The story and meaning of a brand is its most valuable and irreplaceable asset. Stories capture our imaginations, intrigue and engage us. And more importantly, having a brand story greatly helps customers in remembering your brand.
We are hard-wired, as a species, to connect to stories. That is why some of the most effective teachers throughout history were master storytellers. We’ll quickly forget carefully-crafted statements, and even the most profound principles, but we’ll remember a compelling story, sometimes for decades. And even pass it down for generations.
Let us take the popular cosmetic brand SK II as an example, they talk about how a scientist visited a sake brewery and noticed how an old lady’s hands were soft and youthful. He held multiple tests and eventually discovered that the secret lay in an all-natural yeast derivative, which they call Pitera®. Positioning Pitera as the secret ingredient that is present in all SK II products, the brand has emerged as market leaders in many countries worldwide.
For info-products, most of the better selling products usually tell a story behind the product creation and hence the eventual creation of the product. Make the story stick, like I said before. People just love stories. Even master copywriters talk about how weaving a story into the sales copy attains higher sales conversions.
Don’t have a story? Well create one…if you brainstorm the benefits of your product long enough. You should be able to come out with one. I’m not telling you to lie outright, but to squeeze out one.
How did I get started in internet marketing? A few years back, my ex-girlfriend was down with a terrible fever and had to take medicine at stipulated timings. So I stayed up all night long to feed her the medicine. And whist staying up, I surfed and came upon the Story of the Singaporean Joe Kumar (Read about Joe Kumar Here) and how he managed to earn tens of thousands of dollars quickly online and also destroyed his reputation. His story (the positive side) inspired me to learn more about internet marketing and I never looked back then. Back then, Ewen Chia was a small fry, not the affiliate master revered now, Michael Filsaime was just starting out and Michael Fortin still had hair. My only regret back then was not going into it full steam but merely dabbling here and there.
Anyhow that was my story. Ain’t really a good one but heck it can potentially be tweaked to work for sales copy. So just think up a brand story for your info-products or physical products.
How do you differentiate? Focus on your Unique Selling Proposition
Yes this has been drilled time and time over and over again by marketers. But bear with me for a minute. Or rather bear with Marketing Whiz Jay Abraham for a minute and read this.
A USP is that distinct and appealing idea that sets you and your business, or practice, favorably apart from every other generic competitor. The long-term marketing and operational successes I help you achieve will, ultimately, be helped or hurt by the USP you decide upon.
The possibilities for building a USP are unlimited. It’s best, however, to adopt a USP that dynamically addresses an obvious void in the marketplace that you can honestly fill. Beware: It’s actually counter-productive to adopt a USP if you cannot fulfill the promise.
Most business owners don’t have a USP, only a “me too,” rudderless, nondescript, unappealing business that feeds solely upon the sheer momentum of the marketplace. There’s nothing unique; there’s nothing distinct. They promise no great value, benefit, or service — just “buy from us” for no justifiable, rational reason.
Try it. With paper and pen, prepare a one-paragraph statement of your new USP. At first, you will have trouble expressing it tightly and specifically. It may take two or three paragraphs or more. That’s okay. Ruthlessly edit away the generalities, and tenaciously focus on the crispest, clearest, most specific promise you could possibly hold out. Then, rework it and hack away the excess verbiage or hazy statements until you have a clearly defined, clearly apparent Unique Selling Proposition a customer can immediately seize upon. And then, integrate your USP into every marketing aspect of your business, such as display advertising, direct mail and field selling.
Read this on Effective USP Components by Larry Lim, MarketingSphere.com
When formulating and implementing your USP, it’s crucial that you bear in mind the following components:
1. Your USP must be truly unique
2. It must be strong enough to excite your target market and get them talking about it
3. It mustn’t be easily imitated or copiedLook, anybody can claim that they provide the best service in town - “We’re The Number One Service Provider In America”. Do you think this is credible? Of course not. It’s lukewarm and is an empty promise because you can’t measure it and you can’t hold them accountable and people can easily see through it. USP such as this can in fact harm your business instead of helping it.
Your USP really needs to pack a punch.
Now, let’s take a look at a good example:
“Your Parcel Delivered To You The Very Next Day, or It Costs You Nothing!”The above is a powerful USP. As you can see, you can actually measure it and hold the Company accountable; the Company actually guarantees the delivery of your parcle the very next day or it doesn’t cost you a cent.
Can you imagine what this will do to the Company? It’ll put it head and shoulders above its competition.
Pepper up and strengthen your product(s) with endorsements. Zappos.com offers free overnight shipping, a 1 year return Policy and 110% Price Protection Policy (Read here for details)
Now try beating that!!
Or the more important question is…what are you doing to differentiate your website, business and products?
In the meantime…if you haven’t signed up yet, you should…
Click here to Download The Strategic Domination White Paper for FREE
It reveals the strategy that any business owner, online or offline should be adopting to maximize profits in the shortest time possible. All of us have limited resources, and we owe it to ourselves to only concentrate on the areas which yield the highest profit.
Lastly, the beauty of it all is that the concept is universal and applicable to every business owner. You have to face the million dollar question now, “Do you have a strategy or are you just waiting for that lucky break?”
Click here to Download The Strategic Domination White Paper for FREE
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This is a slight deviation from my strategy postings. And I must admit that affiliate marketing isn’t my forte as I mainly market my own products online. The occasional clickbank cheque still comes in, goodness knows from where though. Probably some mini viral ebooks thats I sold about 3 years back. Nonetheless I thought you would benefit from this.
Andrew Wee of www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com brought my attention to these Affiliate Marketing Training Videos through his blog post.
In case you’ve missed out on making it to the recent Affiliate Summit East in Miami, the event’s co-founder Shawn Collins has posted the videos up.
Aside from the speech by Ze Frank which I understand had the audience rolling in the aisles, almost every other presentation is available for free.
I’ve watched about half of my buddy Amit Mehta’s Super PPC Affiliate presentation, and am looking forward to checking out the other Super Affiliate session with Jeremy Palmer, Vinny Lingham and Ros Gardner, as well as Wil Reynolds andKris Jones too.
Conservatively if I were to put a value on this material, it’d easily run into the thousands of dollars.
Thanks Andrew! I was particularly interested in the Topic of Web 2.0 - The Ten Critical Affiliate Strategies, more so for the launch of the affiliate program of one of my niches. Always thought it good to be sitting at the other side of the fence to understand the mentality of an affiliate marketer and hence providethe best affiliate tools possible.
You would need to visit Shawn’s blog post “Watch Affiliate Summit 2007 East Videos Free” to get the free registration access to the videos. The topics covered are listed below:
Popularity: 9% [?]
It has been a while since Yahoo! Search Marketing mentioned that they would no longer be supporting the Overture Keyword Research Tool
Andy Beal reported this in May 2007 but yet we still see many internet marketers and gurus recommending this tool. Or worse still, using it. So much for perfect knowledge spreading fast among the internet eh.
Probably the main reason why a significant portion of people are not in the know is because the Overture Keyword Research Tool still gives you the keyword search results.
OUTDATED keyword results that is! It returns to you data drawn from Jan 2007. Bummer eh.
Just do a search on anything at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion and see for yourself how rotten…Oops…old the data is.
Implications
If you are just interested in generating a monster keyword list for Pay Per Click (PPC) of 5000 to 20000 keywords, then the numbers will probably not matter that much.
But if you are using them for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes, then the keyword estimates and rankings might matter a lot more for you. Especially if your niche market is seasonal, then the searches in January might not be indicative of real searches. Imagine gunning for the wrong keywords in your anchor text backlinks and other SEO efforts.
Listed below are the keyword tools/services that are still drawing data from from outdated overture data. So if you are still using them. Take the results with a pinch of salt.
Outdated Services
Note:
Two free services listed above estimate Google and MSN searches by multiplying Yahoo Search results by 2 and dividing it by 2 respectively. Imagine if the margin of error for outdated January data is 10-15%. The error for Google and Msn results would be further magnified through these estimates.
Applications drawing from Outdated Overture data:
Note:
Some of the applications mentioned above have the capability to draw data from keyword services like WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery etc, but that requires a separate subscription and doesn’t come included when you buy their products.
Ok so which free services can you use for keyword research then? Try these:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
ttp://www.nichebotclassic.com/
http://www.longtailadwords.com
For paid services, you can try these.
(No affiliate links. Zip Nada!)
Do leave a comment if I missed out any information. =)
Popularity: 23% [?]
So sorry to break away from providing content today. But this holds more importance today.
I chanced upon Jason Moffatt’s Blog earlier today and he shared a personal and sincere story about his friend Cy today. While I know it ain’t a perfect world, it simply irks me to know that such things still happen in the world today. I hope that you will read the story by clicking here.
And if possible, give whatever you can find in your heart to give. Every bit goes a long way.
A couple of warriors from the warrior forum have stood up and did whatever they could to help out a this thread. Even the legendary John Reese of Income.com has helped out by donating $1,000.
I hope we can all pull together to show Cy that there is still light in this world today.
Other bloggers contributing:
http://www.braidsbybreslin.com/blogger/4-kids-stranded-no-money-abuser-at-home
http://tishialee.com/podcastblog/2007/she-needs-our-help/
http://starva.com/wordpress/living-with-the-enemy-never-again-if-we-help/
http://www.wahmtalkradio.com/blog/ive-never-been-afraid-but-she-is-please-help/
http://cashtactics.net/08/11/do-a-good-deed-for-those-in-need/
http://www.kyletully.com.au/4-kids-stranded-on-the-road-no-money-abuser-at-home/
http://www.edmundloh.name/2007/08/12/no-4-kids-to-fend-for-and-an-abusive-husband/
http://highprofitwriters.com/blog/?p=13
Popularity: 37% [?]
In the previous article “It’s Your Positioning Strategy, Stupid – Part 1”, I covered why positioning is extremely important for gaining mind share amongst your clients.
Why Position Your Personal Brand?
Your personal brand defines who you are in the eyes of the external world. Whether you like it or not, you have a personal brand.
Positioning your Personal Brand is important for those who are interested in becoming a recognized expert in their specific field. With recognition and respect, you would be able to sway and control public opinion to a certain degree. Furthermore, you become the “go-to-guy” (or girl) whenever there are questions fielded in your area of expertise. You will also be able to:
When people mention the word “Cashflow” or “Rich Dad”, it is highly likely that the author and businessman Robert Kiyosaki comes to mind. He is best known for his Rich Dad, poor Dad series of motivational books and other material. He has written 18 books which combined have sold over 26 million copies. No easy feat.
Or let’s say you mention the word “Strategy”. A huge majority would definitely think of Michael E. Porter - the Godfather of strategy. Maybe Jay Abraham and hopefully this Singaporean doofus Alvin Huang. Hah!
Being more specific and looking at the internet marketing arena.
When you think of “Search Engine Optimization”, Aaron Wall (SeoBook.com), Jill Whalen (HighRankings.com), Rand Fishkin (seomoz.org), Danny Sullivan or Dan Thies (SeoResearchLabs.com) would probably come to mind. Or maybe some other names that I did not mention.
The key point to understand is that majority of us (hardcore SEO followers excluded) would only be able to remember a couple of experts offhand. And perhaps buy material and subscribe to the newsletters of 1 or 2 experts.
Google Adwords? Perry Marshall, X….
Affiliate Marketing? Ewen Chia, Jeff Johnson…
eBay Marketing? Jim Cockrum, John Thornhill…
Product Launches? Jeff Walker…(dang he seems alone at the top as king of his hill)
Most Charitable? Dr Mani
Ok these are well established experts that I have mentioned. A look at a more recent example might prove more useful.
Recent Case Study
Tiffany Dow (tiffanydow.com) is an up and coming marketer whose name seems to surface again and again. With rave reviews from other experts, she looks set to dominate Web 2.0 marketing tactics with squidoo (SocialMarketing101.com) and her recently launched www.TwitterTraffic.com
If she continues to go on and create Web 2.0 products in say Stumbleupon, Digg, myspace or other social marketing mediums faster than other Web 2.0 experts. She will be the #1 “go-to-person” for a lot of people for Web 2.0 marketing methods in the future!
Though of course there are some issues to iron out as she still markets Private Label Products and has a “Building an eBook Empire” product. Don’t do that Tiffany, don’t dilute your brand name and expertise. Leave the old and make way for the new.
How Should You Position Your Personal Brand?
The makeup of a personal brand has four main elements: personality (think Rich Jerk), appearance (think Jason Moffatt’s Videos), competencies, and differentiation.
DOs:
DON’Ts
Personal Branding Gone WRONG
You might disagree with me but it really didn’t make sense to me. Not that PLR sellers are below copywriters but the PLR package seemed like a stringed together package from elsewhere. And having a master copywriter like Carl Galetti promoting it just to make a quick buck?
Master Copywriter Carl Galetti launches “Private Label Rights Product” Read more about it at http://www.imnewswatch.com/archives/2007/08/carl_galletti_l.html
While you are digesting the above ideas and thinking of how you can implement them. You should…
Click here to Download The Strategic Domination White Paper for FREE
It reveals the strategy that any business owner, online or offline should be adopting to maximize profits in the shortest time possible. All of us have limited resources, and we owe it to ourselves to only concentrate on the areas which yield the highest profit.
Lastly, the beauty of it all is that the concept is universal and applicable to every business owner. You have to face the million dollar question now, “Do you have a strategy or are you just waiting for that lucky break?”
Click here to Download The Strategic Domination White Paper for FREE
Popularity: 18% [?]
The Strategic Domination White Paper reveals the 1 Simple Concept to Optimize Your Business Profits
Read Interview Here
