A Traveling Salesman Finally Arrives at Home

Issue #2360

• WEALTHY: Stealing from the "future you" (Andrew Gordon)
• HEALTHY: Proof that I know what I’m talking about (Craig Ballantyne)
• WISE: David Joseph Schwartz on success in business

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• An online solution to the "traveling salesman problem" (David Cross)
• Are you really saying what you think you are? (Judith Strauss)
• It’s Fun to Know… about flirting for college credit
• Add "disparate" to your vocabulary

== Highly Recommended ==

Revealed: Probably the Biggest Red Herring in History!

While the world’s been stock watching (and losing!), the elite quietly play a different game with different rules…

Feeling cheated and disillusioned by the stock market? Sure, you may have made a good trade here… but then lost on another. The people dutifully pour their hard-earned cash into investment banks to put into the stock market for them… and those investment banks gladly oblige, for a fat fee… which they invest somewhere else! I’m no conspiracy theorist, but in my opinion the stock market is really a diversion for the masses… a distraction from where the BIG and consistent money is made… in the world’s money mountain. And when I say “Money Mountain,” I speak quite literally… the BIGGEST mountain of money on the planet. Click here to read more…

Our Next ATM Machine

By Andrew Gordon

Sad but true: Spend-happy consumers who can no longer use their houses as an ATM machine are simply finding other ATM machines.

From raiding the equity in their houses, they’re now raiding their retirement plans. At the end of 2006, only 11 percent of workers had outstanding loans from their retirement plans. At the end of 2007, 18 percent had such loans. As we’re approaching Memorial Day weekend, I’m betting it’s well over 20 percent.

Why steal from the "future you"?

Banks aren’t lending money. So people are forced to go to the only lender who’s willing to give them a break - themselves.

The problem with this trend is that the "future you" will probably need the money just as badly as (if not more than) the "present you" - considering the "future you" will be retired and out of a job and trying to live on reduced Social Security benefits.

I beg you to try hard to stay away from your retirement fund. For every $100 you’d be getting from it now, you’re taking $150-$200 or more away from yourself 10 years down the road. You need to give your retirement funds as much time as possible to grow.

Now, more than ever, listen to ETR’s advice to generate additional streams of income.

[Ed. Note: ETR's Investment Director, Andrew Gordon, is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]

Click to comment on this article.

 "The success combination in business is: Do what you do better… and do more of what you do."

David Joseph Schwartz

A Traveling Salesman Finally Arrives at Home

By David Cross

For as long as I can remember, there’s been a fundamental problem with running pretty much any business. Finally, we’ve figured out the solution.

In the old days, it was known as the "traveling salesman problem." You see, a salesman needs to visit a number of geographically disparate cities. The problem - known in mathematics as a problem of combinatorial optimization - is how to visit all of the locations in the least amount of time.

The same problem applies to baking a cake. How do you combine flour, eggs, sugar, and butter in the right combination to make a light, moist, delicious cake?

But this problem extends beyond traveling salespeople and cake baking. Every businessperson faces the same challenge every day. Namely, how do you combine the resources you have at your disposal to produce the best outcome?

The traveling salesman problem may still have mathematicians scratching their heads. But there’s now a solution - which I’ll get to in a minute - for similar problems facing online businesses.

Let’s use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as an example. How do you combine headline and content and offer at an optimal cost to convert the highest number of qualified prospects into paying customers or newsletter subscribers?

A problem like this can seem nearly impossible to solve. There are so many elements to consider that you can quickly come up with thousands of possible combinations. And that makes it unlikely that you’ll be able to calculate the single combination of elements that will produce the best result.

So you take a chance, pick one of the possible permutations, and say, "We’ll do it this way." Let’s face it - you have to do that, or it would take forever to make a decision and get on with your business.

But "this way" may not be the best way. A different combination of elements could produce a better result. The only way to find out is to test a new combination. And then another one… and another one.

Baking a Better Cake

What you need is a way to test a number of possible combinations simultaneously. If you could test several different combinations of offer, headline, and content for your PPC ad, you could come to a pretty definite conclusion that one is truly better than the others.

Now, this is actually possible. It’s known as "multivariate testing." And it can be used for any aspect of online business where there is a measurable goal.

We’ve started to use this approach at Early to Rise and other Agora businesses, and have seen remarkable results. Specifically, we’ve used multivariate testing to improve a number of our landing pages for PPC campaigns. (The landing page is the page a person arrives at after clicking on a PPC ad.) To our surprise, we were able to improve many of our existing campaigns by at least 24 percent.

On one landing page where people sign up for an e-mail newsletter, for example, we increased sign-ups by 57 percent by testing different combinations of headlines, copy, and the sign-up form.

On a shopping cart checkout page, we found that only 2.9 percent of people who started the checkout actually completed it. This was costing millions of dollars in lost sales annually. We tested various content, the placement of security seals, etc., and the result was a 375 percent increase in the number of people completing the checkout process.

And a client of mine who offers a free report on living and buying property in Ecuador increased the number of people signing up for it by 29 percent. He did so simply by testing the placement of elements on his sign-up page. He’s now bringing in about 3,000 additional e-mail names a year… without spending any extra money.

How to Get Started

A number of companies offer software that can help you develop multivariate tests. These include Google, Verster, and Sitespect. You can also find "behavioral targeting" systems, such as Omniture’s "Touch Clarity," that adapt site content based on site visitor actions.

At ETR, we chose Google’s Website Optimizer tool. It’s quick and simple to use, it integrates well with our existing websites, and it does the math for you to show what is working and what isn’t. Plus, it’s free. You can also find a good online support group for it, and a number of tutorials and learning resources.

If you’re unfamiliar with testing, or need a brush up, I recommend that you read some of the classic direct-marketing books. Ogilvy on Advertising will give you a good understanding of why and how to approach testing, and what to test. Other classics include Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (available free online), and Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene M. Schwarz.

One of the first things you might want to test is your PPC landing pages. For instance, you could test two variations of a headline. Or you could test the content of a page by breaking a paragraph into benefit-driven bullet points.

Google’s tool guides you through the process, and calculates all the numbers. Depending on the amount of traffic your landing page gets, you get an indication of what is working within a few days. For example, you might start to see that a certain headline on your PPC ad is starting to get more orders… or that including a certain price in the ad gets more people to click through to your landing page.

Over time, a more accurate picture begins to emerge of which combination of individual elements produces the best overall result.

Of course, you could do the statistical analysis yourself to see how the variations you’re testing are performing. But it would mean a huge expenditure of time and energy. Since you have a business to run, using Google or some other multivariate testing software is a much better option.

A Winning Combination

In the multivariate tests I’ve conducted, the "worst" improvement I’ve ever seen was 24 percent. And I know of reputable marketers who’ve had improvements approaching 400 percent.

What kind of results can you expect? I believe you can reasonably expect an improvement of between 20 percent and 60 percent on any campaign you are running today.

I first started doing business online 20 years ago. In my experience, multivariate testing is the most powerful tool that has emerged since then for Internet marketers. I encourage you to yoke this approach to your online business without delay.

[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. You can start your very own Internet business - from the ground up - at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. David and ETR's team of Internet experts will teach you how to use multivariate testing and dozens of other techniques that can help your brand-new business grow.

Breaking News: The 5 Days in July conference is now TOTALLY SOLD OUT. However, we MAY be able to squeeze in a few additional spaces. Check the website to find out if any remain.]

Click to comment on this article.

== Highly Recommended ==

Can I Make you $103,000 Richer This Year?

This is kind of embarrassing, but I have a ridiculously easy way of making money online that you can copy step for step. If you are into complex, time-consuming, technical know-how programs for Internet money-making (and some of them are very good for the right person), this is definitely NOT for you. It’s just that some people hear “easy” and think it has no value.

But if you are like me, value means how much money this can make you.  And $75,000 to $100,000 this year is well within reach. Maybe a lot more. 

I guarantee this new program is exactly what I say it is. To learn all about it and to get started right now just click here.

Let’s Talk About… Talking

By Judith Strauss

I picked up the phone and Miss Blake, the school nurse, was on the line. "Mrs. Strauss," she said, "I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your daughter fell on the playground and hit her head."

"Where is she? Is she in your office? Should I come and get her?"

"Oh, no. Oh, no. I’m sorry… she’s gone."

It was a heart-stopping moment. And though it happened decades ago, I’ll never forget the way I felt. Did I hear what I thought I heard?

"Gone?" I repeated.

"Yes, she’s gone. She’s fine. She went back to class."

She’s fine! Well, why didn’t Miss Blake say that up front?

What can we learn from this?

Being able to speak well is a basic communication skill. Along with being able to write well, as Michael Masterson has said many times, it’s necessary for success in business.

Choosing your words carefully is especially important if you’re giving information over the phone. In person, you can judge the effect your words are having. And if, for example, you see a look of panic in the other person’s eyes when you say something like "She’s gone," you can quickly adjust and explain what you meant. But you can’t do that if you’re not face to face.

So think before you pick up the phone. And even if you’re shunted onto voice mail, you can be sure your intended message will come across.

[Ed. Note: One of the best ways to improve your speaking is by understanding more about the words you choose. The bigger your vocabulary, the easier it is to choose the most appropriate word for any situation. With ETR's Words to the Wise CD Library, you can add 120 new words to your personal lexicon. Learn more here.]

Click to comment on this article.

How to Lose Your Belly and Thighs

By Craig Ballantyne

If you want to lose belly fat, you should do lots of crunches. And if you want to tone your thighs, you should reach for your ThighMaster. Right?

Wrong on both counts.

Instead, you should do a form of short-burst exercise that I’ve been using with clients since 1998 - long before the average trainer jumped on the bandwagon.

In one study, Australian researchers from the University of New South Wales put three groups of women through a 15-week fat-loss exercise program. One group was a control group. Another group did three sessions of intervals per week (20 minutes per workout). And the third group did three sessions of long, slow, boring cardio (40 minutes per workout).

Forty-five women were in the study - and it is important to note that they were not all overweight. On average, they had a healthy body mass index of only 23.22 (well below the cut-off of 25 that signals overweight).

At the end of the 15 weeks, only the interval-training group showed significant weight loss and a decrease in body fat and trunk fat. The interval-training group also had a significant loss of fat from their legs. And the more overweight a subject was, the better the interval-training program worked for her.

Oh, and did I mention that the slow, boring cardio workouts did NOT result in a significant loss of body fat? Something we’ve been saying here at ETR for a long time now…

So if you want to burn your belly fat and lose a few inches from your thighs, get started on a short, 20-minute interval-training program done three times per week. That’s all you need.

[Ed. Note: If you are new to exercise but want to lose weight, start with a beginner bodyweight-training program for 2-6 weeks, such as the one in Craig's Turbulence Training manual. You will also get specific step-by-step instructions on how to do intervals at any fitness level. Learn more here.

And to get more articles on how simple lifestyle choices can improve your health, sign up for ETR's natural health newsletter.]

Click to comment on this article.

It’s Fun to Know: Flirting for College Credit

Hoping to boost a sagging birthrate - and concerned that its declining population could hurt economic growth - the government of Singapore has put together a very different type of college course. In it, students learn the arts of flirting, relationships, dating, love song analysis, and online chatting. The new course, which filled up so quickly that additional classes had to be added, is one component of the city-state’s efforts to convince young people to get married and have children.

 (Source: Reuters)

Click to comment on this article.

== Highly Recommended ==

The World Is Shrinking… and the Opportunities to Make Money With This “Global” Economy Are Nothing Short of Staggering! If You Know How…

Imagine how well your business would be doing if you could slash your costs by more than 49% while boosting your profits by more than 57%.

You can do it… if you know how.

Today, as a matter of fact, all the Fortune 500 companies are doing just that, and they’re posting record-breaking profits by taking advantage of the “Global Economy.”

Unfortunately until now, only big companies could even think of doing this. But not anymore. Now it’s your turn.

Click here to find out how you can put the “Global Economy” to work for you.

The global borders are shrinking… The world’s becoming a smaller place… Will you just stand there watching opportunity go by or will you seize the moment and put the “Global Economy” to work for you?

Word to the Wise: Disparate

"Disparate" (DIS-per-it) - from the Latin for "separate" - means fundamentally distinct or different.

Example (as used by David Cross today): "A salesman needs to visit a number of geographically disparate cities."

[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]

Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008