* Highly
Recommended *
Do
You Need To Start Out Small?
If
you don't have an Internet business yet, or if your company
is smaller than $1 million then you need something different...
something that lets you start off small.
One
man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How's that for starting
small!
Let
me show you how to get a similar Internet
income stream running for almost nothing.
-
Patrick Coffey
Seven
Figures in 18 Months ... and Then What?
By
Michael Masterson
I've
said it before: I'm no expert in the stock market. And I've
always been fairly conservative in my own investments. But
I do believe in stock market investing - as long as you have
reasonable expectations and you invest with discipline.
It
is very, very hard to make a profit. Most professional money
managers fail to do as well as index funds. And most individual
investors actually lose money on a net- and inflation-adjusted
basis. But some investors do very well. Warren Buffett - one
of the world's richest men - is the primary example.
The
handful of investors I personally know who've beaten the market
over a long period of time all have the same advice about buying
stocks:
- Buy
good, profitable companies.
- Buy
them when they are relatively undervalued.
Rodney
Dir did just that.
The
year was 1996. The Internet was booming, and so was the need
for additional hard-drive storage on personal computers. Putting
those two elements together, Rodney envisioned that people
were going to need massive amounts of portable memory in the
future. And only one company could provide it: Iomega.
At
the time, Iomega had great portable memory technology - but
with the U.S. government as its primary customer, Iomega's
sales and profits had been slowly eroding. Then it hired a
marketing guru from GE to turn the company around. The new
CEO took a boring technology and made it into a sexy product
to sell to consumers. The result: the ZIP drive.
Seeing
all this happen, Rodney bought $10,000 worth of Iomega stock,
and set his day job aside. All he did was track Iomega's management,
its products, its sales, and its profits. Because of this deep
due diligence, he made over $700,000 on his investment. In
18 months, he banked over seven figures. Then he used the profits
to start a brokerage firm to do the same kind of research for
other investors. That business continues to thrive.
Rodney's
core path to seven figures was to invest in small, growing
businesses, first in Iomega and then - the smart, long-term
strategy that I recommend - in his own.
[Ed.
Note: This article was adapted from a chapter in Michael Masterson's
newest book Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast Track
Plan to Becoming a Millionaire, Copyright (c) 2006 by
Michael Masterson. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons,
Inc.
The
book is scheduled for release in less than a week. We'll let
you know as soon as the publisher gives us the "go."]
"If
you don't sell, it's not the product that's wrong, it's
you."
-Estee
Lauder
The
Most Common Online Marketing Mistake - and One Easy Way
to Fix It
By
Bob Bly
Did
you ever go to a website to learn more about a product you
are interested in ... and then end up, for whatever reason,
deciding against buying it?
I'm
sure you do this all the time. I know I do.
Next
time you do it, watch what happens when you click away from
the site without having made a purchase. If you are allowed
to leave without further interaction, you have just witnessed
the most common online marketing mistake: The website failed
to capture your e-mail address.
Why
bother to capture the e-mail addresses of visitors to your
website? There are two primary benefits …
First,
if you have their e-mail addresses, you can send these visitors
an online conversion series - a sequence of follow-up e-mails
delivered by auto-responder. The conversion series gives you
additional opportunities to convince these prospects to buy
- and can significantly increase your overall sales.
Second,
your in-house e-list is the best list of names for your e-mail
marketing efforts ... far better than rented opt-in lists.
So the faster you can build a large e-list, the more profitable
your Internet marketing ventures will become.
How
much more profitable?
Internet
marketing expert Fred Gleeck estimates online revenues of 10
cents to $1 or more per name per month. Therefore, a 50,000-name
e-list could generate annual online revenues of $600,000 a
year or higher.
Many
businesses do much better ...
Hewlett-Packard,
for example, has 4.5 million e-zine subscribers, from whom
they generate $60 million in monthly sales.
Okay.
So how do you maximize the capture of e-mail addresses from
your site visitors?
Well,
for those who buy something, you require them to give you their
e-mail address on the transaction page in order to complete
their order.
But
what about those who visit but do not buy? For them, you use
an "exit pop-up" window.
This
is a standard Web tool. You don't need to buy special software
to create one. Any Web designer can do one for you for a nominal
fee. Here's how it works ...
When
a visitor attempts to click away from your website without
making a purchase, a window appears. The copy in this window
says something like, "Wait! Don't leave yet!" - and
it makes a free offer.
Typically,
this offer is for an information product - something like a
downloadable PDF report, an e-course delivered via auto-responder,
or an e-zine subscription - given in exchange for the visitor's
e-mail address.
To
see how this works, go to one of my sites - BecomeAnInstantGuru.com
- and leave without buying. (You might want to turn off your
computer's pop-up blocker before trying this.) You will be
offered a 50-page special report that normally sells for $29
for free. In exchange, all I require is your e-mail address.
Some
marketers ask for the e-mail address - and offer the free info
product - on the actual website page itself ... often in a
boxed sidebar. The problem with such an approach is that it
gives the prospect a choice between a free option and a paid
option for information on the same general topic. And by giving
them that choice, you risk having them take the free offer
and bypass the paid offer.
The
big advantage of the exit pop-up is that the visitor sees it
only AFTER he has read to the point where he is leaving without
ordering. Therefore, the free info-product offer doesn't compete
with or distract him from the paid offer.
You
may be wondering how successful the pop-up offer will be when
most people have software that blocks pop-ups on their computers.
According to David Cross, Senior Internet Consultant for Agora
Publishing, you'll still get through to a large number of users
and be able to capture their e-mail addresses.
Any
time you create a website to sell a product without having
a mechanism for capturing visitors' e-mail addresses, you are
leaving money on the table.
As
Fred Gleeck says, "The two goals of your site are to generate
orders and capture e-mail addresses." And he notes that,
of the two goals, capturing the e-mail addresses may be the
most important.
After
all, if you are serious about making money with Internet marketing,
there is no asset more valuable to your online business than
a large, qualified e-list of prospects and buyers. Your future
profits are directly linked to how quickly you can build that
list.
[Bob
Bly, a freelance copywriter and the author of 70 books including The
Copywriter's Handbook, is the editor
of ETR's
Direct Marketing University: The Masters Edition,
a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail
business.]
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White Rock, British Columbia, Canada
Could
Green Tea Help You Live Longer?
By
Al Sears, MD
You
may have heard that Japan has the highest percentage of centenarians
(people aged 100 or above) of any country in the world. Japan's
Health Ministry just released the latest figures, and there
are more than 28,000 centenarians living there today. More
than double the number here in the U.S. There are probably
many reasons (including a diet high in protein and omega-3
fatty acids), but I find it intriguing that 80 percent of them
drink green tea every day.
You've
read about the healthful properties of green tea many times
in ETR. (See Messages #1719, #1745,
and #1796.)
For one thing, it's high in polyphenols. These antioxidants
help protect your cells from the "fire" of daily
metabolism.
A
new study of more than 40,000 Japanese men and women indicated
that those who drink a lot of green tea do live longer. The
research also revealed that green tea may protect against heart
disease. And the more you drink, the better. Those who drank
five or more cups a day had rates of heart disease 16 percent
lower than those who drank only one cup a day - and their rates
of death were 26 percent lower.
I
usually prefer tea made from the whole herb - but if you don't
like to drink it, green tea extract is available at most health
food stores. I recommend 500 mg to 700 mg daily. (Check the
label before you buy to make sure it has the antioxidant EGCG,
which is 25 to 100 times more powerful than vitamins E and
C.) But remember ... green tea has a moderate amount of caffeine.
(Source:
Reuters)
[Ed.
Note: There's a list of Dr. Sears' preferred antioxidants -
and how to use them - in his book The
Doctor's Heart Cure.]
Money-Saving
Tip: Affordable Business Cards
By
Will Newman
When
you're just starting out as a small-business owner or freelancer,
you're probably going to want to get some business cards printed
up. There are three ways to get them done ...
1.
You can design them and then have them printed professionally.
This
is a good option if you know for certain you won't be changing
your information in the near future. Here are two printers
to consider:
- 48
Hour Print (48hourprint.com)
You
e-mail files in one of 14 formats, including Photoshop, Word,
and PDF. They ship your cards back in 48 hours. For 2-sided,
4-color glossy, heavy stock, the cost is $55 plus shipping
for 500 cards; $75 plus shipping for 1,000.
You
bring in your pre-designed cards on a CD or disk. They help
you set up the files. A 1- to 24-hour turnaround for $20 to
$100 for 500 cards, depending on complexity, stock, and other
factors.
2.
You can design and print your own.
This
is a good option if you're not sure your information will stay
the same. Use your word processor template to design the card.
(See your word processor "Help" file.) Print on the
heaviest business card stock you can find. Here are two possibilities:
- Avery
photo paper Clean Edge Business Cards are available in matte
($17 for 200) and glossy ($23 for 200) at avery.com or your
local stationer.
- Paper
Direct (paperdirect.com) has a wide variety of professional-looking
preprinted stock. You can match your business cards and stationery.
3.
You can have your cards professionally designed and printed.
This
option is not recommended for you at this point in your career.
Too expensive ... and not necessary.
[Ed. Note: Will Newman is the editor of AWAI's The
Golden Thread online newsletter - a free
weekly alert loaded with writing and marketing secrets, tips,
and insights.]
* Highly
Recommended *
How
to Get the Heart of 370 Business Magazines in Just 30 Minutes
a Month
Did
that headline catch your eye?
How
about this one:
"32
Ways to Save Time and Money From the Pages of Good Housekeeping."
Gene
Schwartz knew the power of a compelling headline. He wrote
those two - and went on to generate over $2 billion in advertising
sales during his career.
Now
you can find out, step-by-step, how to accomplish breakthrough
marketing results no matter what you are selling, with our "accelerated
marketing" program.
If
you are involved in any form of sales, the benefits you'll
receive could be worth hundreds of thousands to you in future
earnings. Read
on…
-
Charlie Byrne
Word
to the Wise: Hirsute
"Hirsute" (HER-soot)
means hairy. The word is derived from the Latin for "rough,
shaggy, prickly."
Example
(as used by Richard M. Sudhalter in The New York Times): "The
Bear ... makes the rounds of the clubs 'disguised' in trench
coat and broad-brimmed hat, hoping (successfully, it seems)
to be mistaken for a rather hirsute human."
