APD-Marketing Newsletter

Hello and welcome to this month’s newsletter, February already! I am in apology mode once more…late again!

In my defence Lee and I have been hugely busy getting the new website up to speed and…it’s amazing how many bugs you find once you start testing! I was once told (many years ago when I was setting up a recruitment business)… ”large projects like this always cost twice as much as you expect and take three times as long”. It’s very true!

The bottom line we are now behind on just about everything! But we keep going! Persistence is the one thing failure can’t live with! If nothing else, I am a persistent old ********!

However, I promise that once everything is ready, it will be a much better “user experience” that you have when “interfacing” with APD :>)

So, moving quickly on, let’s get going.

I haven’t talked about the dreaded downturn for quite a while now. I’m sure you can see for yourself that this is not a normal “blip” now. If you can remember back, I first called trouble when I got home from Vancouver in August 2007. Go back and have a look if you don’t believe me!

I’ll be the first to admit it’s taken a while to really hit the world economy, but summer 2007 was when the sub prime crisis started to break in the U.S.

What I hadn’t realised was the extent of the mess the Banks had caused (mind you, none of my Banking chums knew either, says it all really). So, I hope you have been following Robert Peston for the inside track on this because you do need to understand what is going on. And, he is particularly good at breaking things down into words of a few syllables that we can all understand!

I admit that I got the scale of this thing wrong. I definitely said “in the great scheme of things it will only be a ripple”, but it is bigger than that. I should have guessed when I was told by an exotics trader that a bank (that has to remain unnamed) had posted profits of close to $1 billion in a quarter on derivatives trading. His exact words to me were, “Someone has to be holding the other end of the stick…I’d hate to see what happens when this all unravels”.

It’s unravelling!

I’m not going to explain how the Banks made this mess again, but never before have we had a Banking led recession. And the fact that there is now less than zero confidence in the world’s banks is hurting the global economy big time – even the most robust economies.

However, and I have said this before, the online world is still prospering. It is where you MUST take your business if you want to succeed.

The top ten retailers who operate online saw an across the board 37% increase in Internet sales over Christmas…while the high street squirmed, screamed and squealed (and kicked a bit too).

Nielsen Online reported Amazon was the most visited website in December 2008 with 15.6 million visitors 17% up on 2007 (I think that is a U.K figure). Is it no surprise that Zavvi (ex Virgin music and U.K CD/DVD retailer) is going out of business?

They can’t compete with Amazon in the more niche markets where Amazon clean up and make that incremental profit on the higher margin items.

The world is shifting and Amazon wins because of the economies of scale and variation they are able to supply. It is impossible for the high street to offer this breadth of product, they don’t have enough shop space. And, here in the U.K we see Tesco’s and Sainbury’s (and the other major supermarket groups) offering the top 50 CD’s and DVD’s at giveaway prices, the traditional music retailer is being squeezed out of existence.

Music and film was a large proportion of now defunct U.K retailer Woolworths, again, couldn’t compete with Amazon (they also had other issues as well, but you get the idea).

Littlewoods (a U.K catalogue operation) saw online sales increase by a massive 66% in December. What further proof do you need??

There is NOT a recession happening online! Taking your business online offers you numerous advantages over a traditional business model.

You should be seriously thinking about how you can productise what it is you do? Think about what you know that people would pay for? What do you find easy that others find difficult? What comes naturally to you?

Then…how can you turn that into a product? Ideally an information product that you can deliver via CD, DVD, Online audio or video download. Ebook or PDF report, all are great, cost effective delivery methods for information products.

I have heard it argued that you dilute your offering by not being personal - but that’s not true. You are making your valuable information available to a wider audience at a far lower price than you would be able if you were offering 1 to 1 consultancy.

This is, as they say, a “no-brainer” and is a great way to start your online “information empire”. It’s the only way to go…you know it makes sense!

Yes, there is a learning curve to getting online. But, it’s not that difficult. If I can do it, you can too! (I haven’t said that for a while).

Find a PLR product and get it online!

www.apd-marketing.co.uk/infoprods.html

This was a PLR eBook that I found, (paid very little for) re-hashed, added about an extra 30% and now sell online. Easy!

www.apd-marketing.co.uk/buildwebsite.htm

This one I got from Tom Hua’s excellent Ebook Wholesaler site. I haven’t changed one thing on this site or in this book, this is how the PLR package came. O.K, I know I need to make it unique, but I haven’t had time and it’s doing O.K.

Go to the new site and the free stuff page. If you don’t believe me download Armand Morin’s “An Obvious Truth” or just click this link. Armand is quite explicit about this. He re-enforces what I am saying here, so don’t just hear it from me…hear it from someone who has generated over $50 million worth of online sales.

Time to get tough on you…you have NO excuses. It’s true there is a lot of crap taught out there. And it is also true there is no such thing as a get rich quick scheme like some so called “Guru’s” would have you believe.

You have to make the effort and learn what you need to learn in order to suceed, Internet Marketing is a business like any other…which is where so many people fall down. They expect to read one $37 eBook and earn a million dollars – sorry.

But, if you are prepared to put in a little effort, learn how to do this, it’s not difficult, time yes, brain power…some required. I repeat…the online world is simply not partaking in this “alleged” recession. Whoops, I said the “R” word, not as bad as the “D” word though! If you haven’t been listening, Gordon Brown accidentally called the current recession “the depression”. Oh dear, Gordon. How not to rally the economy, he really has goofed big time with this one (unless he knows something he’s not telling of course).

I think that’s enough for this month. Please do explore the new site at www.apd-marketing.co.uk Let me if you find any “glitches”!

Also remember the new blog at www.apdinternetmarketing.blogspot.com

You can also now catch APD on YouTube under the name apdmarket and why not check out our HubPages at http://hubpages.com/profile/apd%20marketing - do give us the “thumbs up”!

Although, amusingly, Hub Pages haven’t quite worked out what APD is about yet…the Adwords ads on our home Hub are offering pictures of Anna Kournikova and bikini clad young ladies. I’m sure Google will work it out soon, but I did laugh when I noticed!

By the way, I hope you are paying attention to this new strategy I am implementing here! More of that very soon.

And finally…I was really hoping to have the new newsletter blog up and running. It’s coming along, but Lee and I simply bit off more than we could chew this month. You’d think at my age I would have learned, but hey…why not push yourself.

If you aim low and miss your goal, well, urghhh, what have you achieved?

However, if you shoot high and just miss chances are you will have achieved something very worthwhile.

With that thought I will wish you well. If you have any comments, please drop me a mail through the website.

As always…to *YOUR* success.

Cheers now…and have fun!

Derek

www.apd-marketing.co.uk

www.gain-money-and-power.com

www.write-for-riches.co.uk

If you feel anyone else would benefit from this information, please feel free to pass it on.

Hello and welcome to the first edition ofthe APD newsletter in 2009! Happy new year.

I’m sorry it’s a bit late this month… I have been snow bound in Vancouver– yes that’s right… snowbound.We went over to Canada for Christmas and landed in a blizzard (not recommended) and left many, many hours delayed with deep snow still on the ground.

Vancouver had 104cm (I think that’s about 3 and a half feet!) of snow while we were there when they norm ally only manage 48cm in an entire average winter.

Of course all of this bad weather played havoc with the flights,and once something goes wrong the knock on effect is devastating… ask British Airways.

W e had a nightmare journey hom e and ended up being awake for39 hours straight.

Now I know why sleep depravation is used as a method of torture!I have only just regained my senses! It was a surreal experience!
And, to cap it all just when you think BA really should do everything possible to make their customers happy after such a huge delay… they left us standing in baggage reclaim for45 minutes without telling us where our bags were… when, you’ve guessed it,they had been enjoying the ride on belt 11 for 30 minutes.

Nice as T5 is, I really just wanted to get home by this time!

This is not how to deal with customer service! Needless to say, BA probably got 50%  more complaints than they would have got without this “final straw”.

M oving on… this month will probably be the last “formal”  monthly newsletter as APD moves to a more “flexible” method of information delivery.

The new website is very nearly finished and the best way I can describe it is that it is like an “online newspaper”.

Alison, Lee and I will be making sure the information contained on the site is a “living entity” which will be updated regularly, as I said last month, hopefully on almost a daily basis.

The newsletter will become blog-based and you will just get a quick mail directing you to the blog when a new post is made. Blogging really does make the entire operation much easier to manage, so I envisage blog content (newsletters) on a far more frequent basis.

The whole ethos will be to get hot and profitable information to you far, far quicker than currently. That has to be good for both you and me.

The new form at will allow me to get better information, better product reviews and news to you faster than before and will make sure that all you need to do to ensure you are fully up todate in the IM world is to be subscribed here. Easy,eh?

O .K, so for the final formal newsletter, I’m going to talk about money not being a problem !

What? M oney’s notthe problem ?

Not a phrase one hears very often, is it? Particularly in these allegedly dark recessionary days.

In fact, I can remember back to my own dark days when there genuinely was too much month at the end of the money and life as a wage slave seemed a never-ending drudge.

Money very definitely was a problem when I got my first mortgage!

However, I’m not talking about life in general here. I’m talking about in business, and the point I’m getting at is that in most cases… money isn’t the problem when starting up your business.

Now, if you’ve hankered after your own business or tried and failed to get started,you will know what the problem is.

I’ll give you three guesses, but I think you’ll only need one.

Got it?

Yep, correct, the idea is the problem .

I read a quote from a guy called Ken Hakuta (he was the creator of some wacky products in the 80’s) and quite simply it was this,

“Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea IS an obstacle.”

This is so true.

I hear from loads of people who all want to get their slice of the e-business pie (and believe me it is a big, big, profitable pie, so why not?), but they all lack this one critical ingredient.

The bottom line is thatyou don’tneed to spend an awful lot of money marketing on the Internet if you’re prepared to put the bulk of the work in yourself. But… .how do you get started without an idea /product/service?

W ell, the first thing to do is to take a step back and consider some key points. Now this has to be done seriously, or it won’t work. And you HAVE to be committed to doing this, or again it won’t work. I hate wasting time, so should you!

So, take that step back, get yourself a pen and paper and start to jot down some thoughts on the following questions:-
1. What are you interested in?
2. What are you passionate about?
3. What topic(s) do you have in depth knowledge about?
4. What do people come to you for advice on?
5. What do you find easy (that others find difficult)?

It is vitally important that you take your time on this and fully consider the implications.

However, what I would say is that many of the greatest successes I know of come when people pursue something that they are passionate about.
Friends Reunited is a prime example of people with a passion making a profitable business out of it.

How much did this site sell for last year?

Think of YouTube, why did Google spend over$1 billion buying YouTube?
Of course, the best side effect of doing it this way is that it doesn’t feel like work, it will be fun.

I think the last statistic I read on this (back when I was in recruitment) was that less than 5% ofpeople enjoy their work.

How sad is that?

Now I have heard it said that this can lead to some obscure ideas and highly specialized products. If that’s what it leads you to, don’t worry.

The Internet is ideal for marketing to niches. Indeed, your marketing costs will be much lower if you only have to target one specialized market. Adwords costs are likely to be much less for a start if you go after one small, specialized niche. It just gets better, doesn’t it?

Anyway, moving on, just one more little tip before I close.

Did you know that most successful entrepreneurs get their business ideas from studying niche markets and then developing a product or service that solves a common problem or need.

You know it makes sense.

This is a beautiful model simply because people will already be actively looking for what you are going to develop.You will already have identified the market and therefore will be able to focus your efforts  “laserlike” on those people most likely to buy from you! O nce you do this, I
guarantee, money will no longer be a problem for you either!

Now, having said all of that, I have given a fairly simplistic overview here. I mentioned last month that I am developing a major new all encompassing Internet Marketing product with Lee Brooker.

I have just finished another part of the course this week and it is an in-depth niche research and product idea development lesson. I’m rather proud of it and if you get your hands on it I am confident you will NEVER struggle for product ideas again!

Lee and I are now just over halfway through so we’ll be out to you later in January with the pre-launch,which you’ll want to make sure you get registered for.

W e’re going to be giving away loads of a azing info just for registering.

The pre-launch info will be just a small taster of what will actually be contained in the product itself.

This really will be a “no fail” option… just what this market needs to blow away the smoke and mirrors!

So, keep your eyes open, it’s coming… soon!

And, just before I finish this last “official” newsletter, some food for thought. I read today (in the London Telegraph) that retail sales were very poor during December and that 2008 will go down as a very bad year all round.

What they also reported, tucked away in a little corner, was that sales online were up 30% in 2008.

I have a friend who works for a major clothes retailer here in the UK, he told me shop sales were down 6% but that online sales were up 12% .

The message is clear. Online is the place to be in 2009.

And, finally, finally, we are in recession, big time. I’m old enough and ugly enough to admit I called this slightly wrong. Even having spent 15 years supplying into the City and with the inside contacts I have, I totally underestimated the magnitude of the current situation.

It is bad, very bad. But… the place that is bucking all the rapidly escalating downward trends in online.

I rest my case!

If you haven’t already seen it and want to know how close we came to meltdown, watch the
December 23rd issue of Panoram a… here’s the link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/program m es/b00gbds9

This is the BBC iPlayerlink, so Idon’t think you’ll be able to watch outside of Europe (or more than a month after publication), but try
anyway, it’s certainly worth it if iPlayer does let you watch.

O .K, that’s it for this month. Hopefully we will be blog-based by the time I next mail you about the newsletter!

Have a fantastic and hugely prosperous 2009.

As always… to *YO UR*success.

Cheers now…and, have fun!
Derek

www.apd-marketing.co.uk

Internet Marketing from APD

Turn Time Into Money
If you fell anyone else would benefit from this information, please feel free to pass it on

Hello Again,

And welcome to the Christmas 2008 edition of the APD Newsletter. Yes, here we are again, the time for festive cheer and plenty of beer.

Indeed, it must be Christmas as I actually got an apology from Google last week! I just didn’t think that happened! As far as I knew Google was *ALWAYS* right…apparently not!

Here’s the story…

Now, you’ll notice I have been very quiet this last month - in fact, I haven’t mailed you anything since the last newsletter. As it happens I’ve been watching the plethora of Internet Marketing launches and have deliberately stayed out of the action, but more of that in a while.

The other reason I have been on the quiet side is I have been launching into a new market and this is how I got the Google apology! In fact, I’ve framed it and hung it on the wall.

I’ve actually been working in the health and fitness market for the last month or so…you can see the results at

www.learn-2-massage.com

I will use this site to demonstrate some good solid Internet Marketing principles as well as the Google apology…better than a slap any day! Yes, alright, I know you can’t wait to hear about it but patience…I’ll get there.

Back to learning to massage.

It’s a three DVD set with 9 bonus eBooks at the amazing price of just $67 (great Christmas present for the wife or boyfriend…end of plug).

Seriously though, here’s the lesson on Internet Marketing.

You can buy the entire series at the site above or you can buy a single DVD (plus 3 bonus eBooks) at the various individual product sites I have set up as follows:-

www.learn-2-massage.com/facial.html
www.learn-2-massage.com/full_body.html
www.learn-2-massage.com/indian_head.html

So, you can start to see the structure of the campaign emerge.

What about name and email capture I hear you cry? Good question. O.K, I have set up ad groups around “learn massage”, “how to massage”,
“massaging” and “massage techniques” – these are the root keywords I am going to test on.

I’ve also got some other ad groups planned out and am building a list of longer tailed keywords, should the test be successful.

These ad groups point to the following page…

www.learn-2-massage.com/learn_to_massage_squeeze.html

This is where I collect the customer’s name and email address in return for a free gift that you will notice is closely related to the main product for sale…this is important.

I have also set up ad groups around the three individual DVD main subjects…

“Indian head massage”, “full body massage” and “facial massage”, these point to the following pages.

www.learn-2-massage.com/Indian_head_massage_squeeze.html
www.learn-2-massage.com/full_body_massage_squeeze.html
www.learn-2-massage.com/facial_massage_squeeze.html

Now, some people say you should drive straight to the sales page. But, I was told by Armand Morin, in person, that…

1.  You need to build a list of customers as that is where you maximise future
sales and therefore profitability (back end).
2.  If they are not interested in your free giveaway they will NOT buy the
product, so you might as well “squeeze” that name and email that can be so
valuable anyway!

He has a point! I am not going to argue with him as he’s made $54 million online.

So, a valuable lesson, always, always, always use the squeeze page model.

Yes, you might have to be a bit “brave” about it, but it will multiply your long-term earnings!

And, finally, if someone buys a single DVD, they are, on successful payment, re-directed to a “stop page one time offer”.

You can see these at the following links…

www.learn-2-massage.com/oto_indian.html
www.learn-2-massage.com/oto_body.html
www.learn-2-massage.com/oto_facial.html

All these pages do is offer people who have purchased one DVD an upgrade to the full package for the extra $40 (a single DVD plus bonus items is priced at $27).

So, there you have a full Internet Marketing model that you can copy (and get your partner a great Christmas present into the bargain)! I am just so good to you…it must be Christmas!

So, what about that apology…don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten.

This is what happened.

When I set up the ad groups, I kept getting messages from Google saying the URL didn’t point to an actual site. So I made some changes but kept getting the automated message back.

In the end I was absolutely sure I had everything right, (I even check clicked on one of my ads from within Adwords), so I re-saved the ads and sure enough back came the automated message.

So, after a while of digging I found the “email us” button (they don’t make it easy do they? Bless). Anyway, I politely asked (you must be polite with Google) if a human could have a look as I was as sure as I could be everything was right!

Less than 12 hours later an apology arrived for all the time and trouble Big G had caused me and confirming their system had blown a gasket!

What really interested me about all this though was…as soon as I posted the ad group I was given a quality score. Now, if the landing page is so critical to QS and they couldn’t read my landing page…how did they give me a Quality Score?

Answers on a postcard, best answer get’s a free set of massage DVDs! (And a
mention in the January newsletter – Wow, what a great prize!)

O.K, moving on.

I mentioned earlier the incredible amount of “how to” Internet Marketing products that have been launched over the past 4 or 5 weeks. I’ve also noticed the rapidly increasing ticket price on a lot of these products.

My belief is that as the recession starts to bite, more and more people will be looking to build themselves personal protection via an online or home-based business. People are realising it’s not particularly safe out in the job world at the moment and want to become self-sufficient.

Whilst I applaud that with gusto, I think many of the “Guru’s” are taking advantage of that new will and ripping off people with high-ticket items that are either not worth the money or aimed at the wrong sector of the market.

In fact I will be making big changes to my business in 2009. I have partnered with a long time Internet “co-hort” of mine, Lee Brooker, and we will be revamping APD over the festive period, so look out for some major changes in the way we “interface” with you.

The first example of our collaboration is a new home page for Total Control, which you can see at:

www.gain-money-and-power.com

You will notice the implementation of video…another must for the savvy Internet marketer!

As I say, though, next year will see big changes…for example the newsletter will become Blog-based fairly early on, and we will be implementing a co-ordinated Web2.0 strategy. Exciting stuff.

But…the main reason for raising this issue is simply this.

Lee and I are currently building a new product that will be a full, no-holds barred, in-depth detailed inside track “how to” on Internet Marketing. We’ll be showing you exactly how we build our own Internet Business.

It will be video-based training and launch in late January (hopefully)…and I promise you NOTHING will be left out.

The second question…what do YOU want included? What do YOU need to know to push your business to where you want it to be?

The top five answers will get a free copy of the product…and believe me this is one you will not want to miss!

Wow, that’s two give-aways in the same newsletter…it must be Christmas!

Back to all of those Internet Marketing launches, well, too much of the same stuff re-hashed for my liking. And a lot of it old stuff at that.

In my opinion the one that was really worthwhile recently was PPC Classroom, but that is full up for the time being. Keep an eye out in case Anik and Amit make spots available again. If you want to make a bundle in Affiliate Marketing, this is one of the best “how to’s” I’ve seen for a while. No affiliate link as nothing to sell, but keep an eye out if you’re not a current member…it’s good.

Right, that’s it for this festive, bumper, giveaway packed edition of the APD
Newsletter.

I don’t expect to be in touch before the new year now, not unless I get any major news from the markets (notice I’ve steered well clear of the doom and gloom this month as it’s Christmas).

So, all that remains is for me to wish you and your family a happy and peaceful Christmas, enjoy quality time with your family and friends and I hope you all have a prosperous 2009…stick with me and you may well do just that – despite it all!

Peace!

As always to *YOUR* success.

Cheers Now…and have fun!

Derek
www.apd-marketing.co.uk

How To Get Information Product Ideas

If you feel anyone else may benefit from this information, please feel free to pass it on!

Hello and welcome to the cold, wet, windy September 2008 issue of the APD Marketing newsletter.

Well…where do I start?

I was in audience with Tom Hua yesterday afternoon and my mobile suddenly went beserk…much to my embarrassment! I thought I’d switched it off!

I mentioned on Friday that I was holding off the newsletter while I was waiting for some hot info from one of my old City chums, little did I know what was going down!

By now you will all have heard the incredible news about Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae.

To give this news a little perspective, these two giants of the U.S mortgage market underwrite (that means guarantee) nearly half of the U.S mortgage market.

What’s that worth? Well between them Freddie and Fanny “own” $5.3 TRILLION of mortgage debt.

That makes Abramovich and Mittal look like small fry!

It’s my guess that my City chum knew this was going down but couldn’t say until this morning…that’s what he alluded to anyway.

It’s also my guess that the Fed announced this on a Sunday to make sure they had at least some degree of control over how the markets reacted. If this had suddenly been announced once trading had opened today, all hell would have broken lose!

Sadly it stole my thunder a little, but I can live with that :>)

It was also interesting that the Nationwide takeover of the Cheshire and Derbyshire building societies was buried in that old chestnut “the bad news day”.

No fanfare, no big takeover, no windfall prizes for account holders, just relief that the smaller account holders savings and mortgages are now safe…after all Nationwide is safe. No, I’m not playing with you here, Nationwide is still a membership organisation (one of the few left) and it has to play by very strict liquidity rules.

So…what’s the point of all this?

Well, if you remember back when all this bad news was first breaking I wrote about how all this supposed economic turmoil was to a very large degree “whipped” up by the press and that these supposed economic tsunamis were, in the great scheme of things, just little ripples.

I still believe this to be true, although this ripple is turning out to be quite a bit bigger than I originally thought.

However, the fact remains that the economy (in the U.K) has just stopped growing. That means that multi billions of pounds worth of business is still completed each and every day.

If you look at the job pages in the papers, they are still full.

I guess an old recruiter never dies…yes, sad isn’t it? But…I still look around the job boards and still occasionally set up job search agents!

So, out of interest, I set up a few job agents for recruitment jobs and not to put too finer point in it was overwhelmed by responses.

The job market is alive and well (if you should happen to want a new job…can’t think why though). Although the City is squealing, but…that seems to be the only market that is. I had to cock a wry smile at that!

Coming back to the weekend. As I mentioned a small group spent the weekend being trained by Tom Hua. He also brought along Brett McFall and Ewen Chia (more of these guys in a minute).

The point is this. These guys are reporting their best ever sales figures. That means the online world is not only alive and kicking, it’s profiting from the uncertainty that abounds.

That uncertainty is more uncertain than I thought, but Internet Marketing will continue to grow and get bigger. And, it is at times like this that people, smart people like you, look to take their destiny into their own hands and build online businesses with long term residual income potential.

It really, truly is the only way to fully protect yourself against the economic “bad weather”. Yes, those ripples might be relatively small, but if you get caught on the downside of one, it can still hurt.

Indeed, if Freddie and Fanny had “gone down” that would have caused a tsunami. Now the poor old American tax payer is picking up the bill!

But, if you put all the hype aside, there is still plenty going on economically and online sales continue to grow exponentially (in all niches)…it really is the only place to be. To secure your own future!

So, what did I learn at the weekend?  First up, I got another serious injection of positive. I just love spending time with like-minded people who just want to learn and grow their businesses… secure their futures. Gain peace of mind.

Would you have been prepared to “give up”…I really should say *INVEST… a weekend to learn more about how to take your destiny into your own hands?

Here’s a little taster of what I learned over the weekend.

How about “how to get a ton of free traffic to your site”?

Sound good?

Actually, that “ton of free traffic” phrase is somewhat overused isn’t it? But, there are many techniques you can use to drive traffic to your sites for free.

And, there is a difference between paid traffic (pay per click) and non-paid traffic. The main difference is this.

Paid traffic is short term. You pay for it, it comes, hopefully it has a look, even more hopefully it buys…and then it goes…that’s it. It is because PPC traffic is so “nebulous” that you *MUST* have a contact capture mechanism on your site!

So that you can collect a name and email address and market other products and services…the money is in the list…but you know that don’t you?

However, free traffic has a more long term nature.

Take article marketing, a great way to get free traffic to your site.

If you write an article about your given subject and submit to an article directory, that article stays there forever.

The article itself should be 300-500 words long and optimised around a *SINGLE*  keyword. That keyword should not be generic or broad, for example “tennis”.

It should be at the “buying search” level (sometimes called “long-tail” keywords). Perhaps a review of the advantages of the “Dunlop Super Server 500” tennis racket. O.K, yes I’m sure you can tell I don’t play tennis! Does a “Dunlop Super Server 500” exist? No idea, but you get the point.

The article should be based around this keyword that people would type in when they have done their research and are interested in actually buying.

Now, having written the article you have the option to put a resource box at the bottom of the article with a back link to your sales page (for “Dunlop Super server 500” tennis rackets!)

Really hot tip…put a benefit in the resource box, don’t just make it about yourself. People (buyers) want to know “what’s in it for them”. Remember WIIFM (pronounced “wiffum”) – “what’s in it for me”. Everyone buys from their own perspective!

Now, here’s another really hot tip for you. You only need to put the article on one site!

Yes, all of the other article sites take from…

www.ezinearticles.com

That’s all you need do. This site is a PR6 and in the top 350 on Alexa! That is some serious “clout”. And…hey presto you have a back link to your site from a PR6 site and Google will start to take notice.

Other people can now use your article on their site, in their ezines (they have to keep the resource box) and suddenly you have a little workhorse out there pulling traffic to your sales page.

How easy is that?

Put twenty articles up and…well you get the picture. A couple of hours work…traffic for life.

If I’m honest I knew this before the weekend, but…it jogged my memory and reminded me that the last time I sent an article to ezinearticles.com was over 9 months ago!

I dread to think how much traffic I have missed out on because I’d forgotten this very simple, but hugely effective traffic technique.

That, is a great example of what you can learn when you go to events such as the (albeit private) one I attended at the weekend.

You get to meet great marketers in person, and they are genuinely giving people, they want to see you succeed, as I do!

They will give you as much time as you need to get your own questions answered and…they will impart great knowledge to you.

Yes, they will sell to you as well! But wouldn’t you in that situation :>)

However…you gain so much at these events.

I can pinpoint the moment my business started to really take off and it was when I started to attend these seminars!

Luckily for you, Tom Hua, Brett McFall and Ewan Chia, plus a host of others are pulling a 4 day repeat performance next weekend in London.

I seriously hope you will be able to make it along so that *YOU* can learn how to take your business to where you truly want it to be.

Click on the following link to get the full story.

www.apd-marketing.co.uk/apdrecommendswis.html

In short, you can spend 4 days rubbing shoulders with *ELEVEN* of
the Internet’s most successful entrepreneurs. Watch as they show you *LIVE* how to build an online business and secure your very own financial future. And I must stress…this isn’t theory, you will see live worked examples of money making websites and businesses built before your eyes.

You’ll get to see the insider workings of successful online businesses.

Do have a look.

www.apd-marketing.co.uk/apdrecommendswis.html

You know it makes sense!

O.K, that’s enough for this month. I hope to see *YOU* at World Internet Summit next weekend.

As always…to *YOUR* success

Cheers now, and remember to have fun!

Derek

www.apd-marketing.co.uk

Why not Learn to Massage!

If you feel someone else would benefit from this information, please feel free to pass it on.

Hello and welcome to the July 2008 APD newsletter.

I’m pleased to report I’ve just about recovered from the Andrew Reynolds bootcamp
the weekend before last. It was hard work, but as I said last week, well worth it. 9am
through until 7.30 for three straight days, and then of course…the delights of
Brighton’s finest restaurants and hostelries had to be sampled afterwards!

In fact, I had to go away for a few days R & R in the Lake District. My partner and I
got soaked on numerous occasions as we yomped up and down very large hills and
round very large lakes. Allegedly this was fun!

I deliberately didn’t take the laptop as an exercise in restraint. Do you remember I was
talking about that feeling of wanting to get back to your business if you were away?
With all of the new information I learned at Bootcamp, that pull was incredibly strong,
but I did resist!

Anyway, moving on…as I said a few days back, over the next few issues I’m going to
cover some of the content and ideas that came up at the seminar.

It really was an excellent three days and it certainly filled in some gaps that in all
honesty I didn’t know I had! It just goes to show that you can never stop learning in
this business. I guess that’s a lesson in itself. More of that a bit later.

Part of this need to keep learning is created by the pace of change in online marketing.
This was also a subject that was raised a number of times. You see, when you put
something “out there” online, no matter what it is…it’s there to be copied. And, if it
looks even remotely successful, believe me it will be copied and pretty darned quick
as well.

In fact someone asked Armand Morin “doesn’t it worry you that your ideas / products
(whatever) get copied almost as soon as you put them out there?”

His answer was a resounding…”no”.

His rationale was simply that he had to be better than the rest, more innovative and
put better products out at a faster pace. His view was to make his products so
valuable, over deliver to such an extent, that it made copying almost impossible. In
Armand’s situation, where his products carry a high-ticket prices that is certainly
easier to do.

His seminar offering went out at £2,497! Included were software and a
comprehensive Internet Marketing how to video series. He told me that the video
series alone had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and 13 months to develop.
When you’re already earning $4.5 million a year, you can afford to develop products
such as these that pretty much takes most of the competition out of the equation.

Simon Coulson also talked on this subject as well. His early business model was to
sell low priced (£20) ebooks in very specific niches. He showed one particular
property ebook that he used to demonstrate the points.

His “take” on this was that a product (any product at these lower price points) only
has a finite “shelf life”. His view is that once sales start to decline or you are
overwhelmed by competition…you simply make the content into a free Adsense site
and enjoy the advertising revenue. What a great idea and certainly not one I’d thought
about!

However, the overriding theme for the weekend was the need for constant learning
and the fact that you (yes, that really does mean you) can do all of this!

You see, all of the so called “Gurus” that I met at the bootcamp are just ordinary guys
and gals like you or I. They are not technical whizz kids. Let me repeat that…they are
not technical whizz kids. In fact, many of them don’t know one end of a PC from the
other.

They are marketers and they use their knowledge to bring new ideas to market. They
use their skills to understand niche markets, to unlock the needs within them and then
build products to service those needs.

If they need technical stuff done, they outsource or hire young local talent.

This is something you need to get on board. I have said previously that I like to
understand “what goes on under the hood”, but I have re-committed myself to
outsourcing post conference! Indeed, I have just hired a new techie person into my
business.

From now on, I will be concentrating on product development and marketing. Yes,
I’ll still keep a “handle” on the tech stuff so I know how it all works, but…I won’t be
actually doing it from now on.

Now, I know there will be some people who trot out the “oh, it’s alright for you…”
line. But…one other message that came through loud and very clear is that all of these
hugely successful people have one other thing in common.

Any guesses?

Let me tell you…and this is vitally important.

They do WHATEVER it takes. They go the extra mile and beyond. This is especially
important if you are in start up phase. You need to do whatever it takes to become
successful.

Now that “whatever” can be in terms of learning or  making sure you have the right
information… the bootcamp was certainly the right place for that!

It can be in terms of working to uncover those niches, to build those products, to find
that unique twist on a product or market that ensures you win big.

It might be just putting in those extra hours outside of the day job…missing that
“important” football match or Eastenders.

Just how committed to your own success are you?

The lifestyle these guys talked about is amazing. To be brutally honest, I’ve got a long
way to go to catch up with the likes of Andrew Reynolds or Tom Hua, but…I’m
committed to joining that elite and I’m working very hard to make that happen.

To give you an example, it’s now 9.34 in the evening. I’ve been at the PC all day
putting a new product website up (not the IM niche) and I’m still here now writing
this newsletter for you.

That’s a commitment to succeed, a will to win. So, please don’t ever say “it’s alright
for you”, because I work damned hard to make it happen. How many of you would be
prepared to still be at the PC at 9.35 (now) in the evening?

So, if you need to hire some technical help, give up a night at the pub or a meal out.
That’s all it will cost to hire someone from elance or rentacoder to do whatever you
need done! It’s not difficult to do that if you are genuine about achieving success.

Finally, feed the mind. You need to get the right information. I mentioned constant
learning a little while ago. This is so true.

The Internet changes at breakneck pace, and you have to keep up with what’s going
on. The latest buzz is Web2.0, gaining traffic via YouTube, MySpace, Facebook et al.
How up to speed in these areas are you?

How up to speed on the latest niche markets and product development techniques are
you? Have you got up to speed with online video yet? The latest changes in Adwords?

You need to make sure you are fully armed with the latest information.

O.K, I know this makes it all sound very difficult, and I do have a certain sympathy
here.

It took me a long time to realise I just had to get in and learn as much as I could and
then take action to the best of my ability. If it turns out wrong…make sure you learn
and put it right next time!

You do have to make a commitment to learn what you need and then take action. No,
it’s not always easy, but…the rewards are worth it.

The ability to get out of bed and stroll across the landing to the “office” is so cool. To
switch on the PC or laptop and see how much you have earned overnight is even
better. The thrill of seeing the first order on a new product…

…the ability to live life on YOUR terms…not anyone else’s.

The ability to just go off on holiday as and when you want knowing your business
will tick over and a steady flow of orders will come in. Orders that will make you
money while you rest and get ready for the next assault. It’s so exciting to live life in
this way.

I really look forward to getting up in the morning…do you?

Surely it’s worth going that extra mile…isn’t it?

You see…you really can do it. If I can, you can too. I’m really nothing special, so go
on…make a pact with yourself that after you have read this newsletter you really will
go for it!

I’ll see you at the top…the view is bloody wonderful (and I’m only a third of the way
up)!

As always, to your success.

Cheers now…and have fun!

Derek

Internet Marketing from APD

How To Build Your Own Website

Choppy Waters Ahead? How Prepared Are You?

Welcome to this month’s APD newsletter. If I thought September had crept up on us
suddenly, it sure ran out the other side pretty quick! Mind you, this morning was one
of those beautiful crisp blue autumn morns that I yearned for last month!

Whilst that was nice, and I took time to take it all in as I went out for a morning
coffee, I was soon down to business. I guess we ought to get down to it as well as
there is a lot to talk about this month.

Firstly…a run on a UK Bank? The first one for a hundred years, who would havethought it, eh? But, I told you back in August that the US sub prime crisis would hitother markets and so it has proved.

Funnily enough it caused my ‘phone to ring hot with lots of calls from my old
recruitment buddies. You see, I worked selling IT personnel to the Investment Banks,
and to a man, they have all been making their large sub prime losses public this last
couple of weeks.

Deutsche Bank $1.5 billion, Citigroup a similar amount. Credit Suisse, UBS, Bear Stearns, they are all having to admit to hundreds of millions of pounds of losses in the US sub prime market.

You see, they brought CDO (Corporate Debt Obligations) which were basically crap
sub prime loans wrapped up in “little” multi million dollar packages. The problem
was that by the time they had been wrapped up, chopped about a bit, re-packaged, re-
financed a few times, and derivatives made out of them…

…it was difficult to see where the final obligation lay! So, the Banks didn’t check them properly and just brought these CDOs assuming they were “good” debt…which clearly they weren’t! In fact, most of them were very, very bad debt.  So, now the Banks are having to admit the
liability and enter the losses on their balance sheets.

The effective translation of that for my old recruitment chums is that many see their
jobs as being in jeopardy. Most of the Banks have now got a complete freeze on
recruitment activity and that has an immediate effect on the recruitment agencies.
Boy, am I glad I left all that behind!

At the moment, the Banks all expect “robust” trading conditions for the last quarter,
but that remains to be seen. If the market doesn’t bounce back, a lot of my old friends
will be finding life very difficult.

It would appear that the wider economy is still doing OK, well, even, but the full
impact has yet to filter through, in my opinion. Retail sales were up last month but the
full force of recent interest rate rises has yet to be felt.

The full impact of the credit crunch has yet to filter through as well. And…there will be (again in my opinion) some serious fallout from the U.S Fed cutting half a point off of U.S interest rates to
try and stave off recession. That is one very inflationary measure they have taken.

And…if the U.S economy does decide to crash land, being the driver of world trade
(whether we like it or not), it will have serious global consequences.

So, a real curve ball of a question for you this month…if the economy does go into
reverse, how safe are you?

What would happen if you lost your job because your company hit bad times and your
number came up on totally the wrong sort of lottery?

How many months could you survive without income? Ouch! That one hurt as well
didn’t it?

It is an absolute truism that you will never be rich working for someone else.

The only way to make money (in any worthwhile amount – unless you want the stress
of being a CEO with a very finite shelf life) is to have your own business.

And, the only place to have that business is online.

Why?

Simply because your costs are negligible compared to running a “bricks and mortar”
style business. So, having given you some ideas about product development last
month, I thought I’d go a step further this month and give you a blueprint for gaining
some more great ideas and then how to go on and develop an affiliate niche online.

This is powerful stuff. So sit tight!

Firstly, if you are just starting out, set yourself an achieveable target. Don’t shoot for
£10,000 / week for starters.

Start small and replicate! Replication is a key idea here.

To start with, target a small amount, say, £50 profit from ONE promotion. Just aim to
make £50 in a day.

Once you are making £50 / day, it opens all sorts of doors. For example, you can now
afford to hire a writer to write products, marketing material and web sites for you.
How much time will that save you? How much more quickly could you replicate if
you had a person to do all of your writing? And that’s just for starters!

You can find writers on Elance and Craigs List.

You see, most people try one thing and if it doesn’t work immediately, they move on
to something else, and when that doesn’t work after 5 minutes, they….well, you get
the picture.

Work on your first promotion until it is delivering at least your target figure. Once
you’ve understood how to make one project work - replicate! This one piece of
information is worth a fortune on its own. I know, I suffered from it for many years.

So, focus on one promotion at a time and get it right and profitable at your target
level.

Now, last month I gave you some ideas on locating niches. If that wasn’t enough for
you, here is a huge list of niches…

http://ezinearticles.com/category-guidelines.html

Have a browse. If you don’t find at least one niche market you can attack after
looking at this little lot, please…unsubscribe. I’m serious.

Dig deeply into your areas of interest and expertise, read the articles, get ideas and
write them down. You’ll find gem after gem in here.

Once you have found an area that you are interested to pursue, go to Clickbank and
search for products in that niche.

Having done that, have a search on Adwords, YSM and Adcenter and see what other
products are out there in the same market.

If you’ve never written an ad before, simply look at the ones near the top and copy
them. Easy isn’t it?

Search Google on related keywords and see what comes up and note down the ones
that bring up the right ads. This will become your list of keywords. Remember to use
“buy” phrases.

Join the relevant products affiliate programs and then create a pre-sell website. These
are so simple to create it’s untrue.

Here’s an example of one of mine for eBook Wholesaler…

http://www.apd-marketing.co.uk/ebwreview.html

Then set up your Adwords campaigns and send traffic to your pre-sell page.

Make sure you track conversions so you know what not to waste money on and make
sure you analyse your results.

Wash, rinse and repeat in another niche or variation of the same niche.

By the way, the templates I’ve started using are part of Stewart McKay’s Adwords

Excellence (AWE) product. It’s still hanging on there as a free membership, but I’ve no idea how much longer he will keep it open. (editors note 2009, sadly Adwords Excellence is no longer with us)

Just a reminder, get along to www.apd-marketing.co.uk/apdrecommendsawe.html and
get signed up. New facilities are being added all the time. I’ve no idea how Stewart
keeps this free, but I’m sure he will start charging soon – he has to!

By the way, that’s three months in a row I’ve mentioned AWE, it is such an
outstanding resource, if you are serious about an online business, you have to have a
membership.

Yes, I know I’m repeating myself, but…it’s important!

Moving on, ultimately you really should aim to develop your own products, but if you
want to get a good start online, affiliate marketing is the way to go…and it’s so easy.
You just have to take action. Get something done, even it it’s not right. Once you
have something “up” you can work on it, tweak it and ultimately get it right.

But…you HAVE to do something! Get something out there, don’t just sit on your
backside hoping something will happen, make it happen. The chances of the lottery
finger pointing at you are 14 million to 1, sorry, but you can’t rely on your numbers
coming up. If they do – good luck.

However, I’m not prepared to trust to luck. I’m not prepared to trust to the vagaries of
the economic cycle (even though, in reality, they are only little economic ripples). I’m
not prepared to rely on the whim of a boss who doesn’t give a toss about me.

I’d rather rely on myself thank you very much. This may make you feel uneasy, but
no apologies given, you need to know (and understand) this stuff.

Over the last two months I’ve given you a great insight into how you can get an
affiliate business off the ground and earning. I don’t like pleading, but I will. Please
use this information and make yourself safe!

Choppy waters may well be ahead, so protect yourself now. Enough said.

That’s it for now. I thought it important to get this content out to you this month in
view of what seems to be happening on the economic front. I’ll try and lighten up a
bit in November!

As always, to your success…

Cheers now and have fun.

Derek

www.apd-marketing.co.uk

Control Time And Money

Blogging For Profits

If you feel this information may be of use to someone else, please feel free to pass it on.

Thank God for the Bozos!

Indeed, “Thank God for the bozos of this world, for…were it not for the bozos, how would we know we are successful” – Mark Twain.

What a great quote that is to welcome you to June’s bumper birthday edition of the APD newsletter. Now, whilst I’m sure that may cause you to giggle a little, there is a serious point to opening up with this piece of
brilliance from the great Mark Twain.

You see, we are all successful compared to our parents. Thirty or forty years ago people were lucky if they had a television. I remember many of my family being crowded round the television on World Cup Final day in
1966 (yes, I am that old!). We lived in Wembley at the time and my Mum took me up to the High Street to see the Queen before the game!

True, it was a big social occasion and time for a great big party, but the point was…some of my family didn’t have a TV! It was the same year my Dad got his frst car, and boy did he have to scrimp and save for that car.

It took him years – no personal loans or credit agreements, he had to save and buy it cash. He passed his test in 1963!

Nowadays everyone seems to get a new car every two or three years – not then. A new TV every couple of years as the Plasmas get bigger and better.

The standard of living rises daily as technology creates new and faster wealth. Compared with 100 years ago we (the masses) live in absolute luxury.

We also live in the instant gratifcation society.

And…that brings me to a question I have been asked a lot recently.

“How can I make money quickly on the Internet without a product or service?”

Well, I promised you a bumper birthday edition this month, so sit back relax and inwardly digest!

I mentioned a few months back that Affliate Marketing is the way to go and I suggested for people wanting to start on this route that the Day Job Killer product was a good way to go.

I certainly know one person took my advice went for it. I was delighted when he mailed me with a link to his frst site a couple of weeks back. He grabbed the bull by the horns, brought DJK and did something with it.

It won’t be long before he starts to see the money roll in. Good for him!
He couldn’t really afford the outlay, but he knew he wanted more, so he made that quality commitment to get it.

Six weeks…that’s all it took him. Are you prepared to invest just a little bit of time and money in your future?

The lesson is clearly there, are you ready to follow? If so, this issue is a must read!

The reason affliate marketing is so popular is that you can earn online without having to spend time researching or getting involved in product development. You market a fnished product that someone else has
done all this work on.

This in itself is a massive time saving on your part, it is without doubt the most costly part of any business venture.

Obviously you need to do some research into the product and market to make sure you have a ready and willing audience, but the effort you have to put in is nothing compared to developing the product from scratch yourself.

Check out Clickbank for thousands of products you can market.
So, having found your product of choice, it’s now time to put together your plan of action. This is where, in my opinion, many people get it wrong! The frst thing you MUST do is set up a squeeze page. I’m willing to bet you’ve heard that phrase a hundred times and still don’t understand it.

It’s just a simple one page website that “pre-sells” prospects and has a mechanism to collect their email address or contact details in order that they can receive further information from you. It’s a mechanism to
start building YOUR list.

Why is this so important?

Well, it achieves three objectives.

1.  It builds an opt-in list for you (remember the money is in the list).
2.  You start to build a relationship with the prospects.
3.  It allows you to cross promote other products.
4.  It allows you to market the hugely proftable high ticket back end products.

Now, I know that may sound like a lot of work, but once you’ve set up the web page and the autoresponder that’s it. Each “campaign” will then run on autopilot for as long as the product continues to sell.

Rinse and repeat!

This is what you need to do to get started…

1. A domain. I use Biz Hosting. You can fnd them at www.biz-hosting.co.uk (Edit 2009, I now use Tom Hua’s Hosting Bay - much cheaper and much better service…you live and learn!)

They’re not the cheapest, but they are good. The domain is set up and live within 24 hours and if you have a query, they answer straight away. The control panel and stats are easy to use.

2. Then you need an autoresponder. I use .  It’s very easy to use (especially if a techophobe like me can cope) and they are adding new video tutorials every day.

3. A simple website with a pre-sales message on it. There are many web site templates available on the Internet today and there was even a product launched just this week called “Instant Squeeze Page Generator”. Someone saw a gap in the market and moved quickly to fll it! The basic product is FREE, so go get!! What are you waiting for?

Do you start to see how easy it is to get ideas in this market place?? What a great example this product is!

Personally I don’t use it as I use either Frontpage or Dreamweaver and go from scratch. Instant Squeeze Page Generator will do a great job for you, but…if you don’t want to use it or don’t have the “pay for” HTML programs, or can’t afford them, you can use free HTML generators such as Sothink or NVU or Blue Voda (the best in my opinion).

4. The last thing you’ll need is to be able to cloak your affliate links. In my early days I constantly had my affliate links “hijacked”. I couldn’t understand why my conversions were so low. But, I found out that even
remotely “savvy” people could easily recognise an affliate link. They could then insert their own “code” or bypass the link all together.

So, now I cloak! Don’t make the same mistake I did – cloak from the start. You might hear some people suggest this is a “black hat” technique. I say it’s self preservation… and a “no brainer”.You can do this for free, here’s a useful link…

http://www.thatswise.com/free/lessons/0803.html

Or you can buy a tool to do it for you. It’s a little bit “techy” and I did try doing it for myself, but…in the end, I just decided it was easier to spend a little bit of money on a tool to do it for me.

What takes about 5 minutes to do manually takes 45 seconds with the tool I use.

I use Jim Edward’s Affliate Link Cloaker. It is incredibly easy to use and more than worth the investment of $59. That’s less than £30 in proper money.

Am I making this easy enough for you?

Once you’ve got these items together you then just need to write your copy and you are up and running as an affliate marketer.

Just one simple web page for each product you are promoting, that’s all you need. If you want to make your pre-sales page even more powerful, add a free bonus that can ONLY be sourced through your squeeze page.

This has the double-edged beneft of increasing sign ups and sales. It’s a powerful tool to use.

Not sure what to write? Well, simply go to the sales page of the product you are promoting and pick out a few of the more powerful selling points and use them to write your copy.

Keep the page short, certainly no more than 500 words and make sure you paste the capture drop-down box from your autoresponder into the page. Don’t mention the product by name on the squeeze page, leave that
to the actual sales page you’ll be directing the prospects to. Just show the benefts to entice at this stage.

You should have an autoresponder series set up so that as soon as anyone clicks on the drop down, they get an email with the information they need, that is to say directions to the sales site. Use the double opt in method in your autoresponder and offer a free gift as inducement to “sign up”. Tell them they will receive the occasional mail from you when you have something that will be interesting for them and…you are done!

As I have said many times before, over-delivering and offering outrageous value for money is the way to build a BIG business online. Follow this method and you will have built immediate trust in your prospect’s
minds.

Your autoresponder should be set up to maintain contact every 4 or 5 days initially. These messages should be pre-written ready for when you launch your campaign.

Just a side note about the content of your messages. Some people just market, market, market. I like to make sure I send out good and useful content about half of the time and market the other half. Yes, I do mix
marketing in with content, but I do like to make sure what I provide is useful and worthwhile – particularly as it’s free!

This month’s newsletter is, in my humble opinion, a good example of over delivering. It’s free, but the information contained herein is actually worth a lot of money. Especially to YOU, if you use it as the basis for getting your own affliate empire up and running!

Moving on, another major failing is that aspiring affliates set up one campaign and then expect all hell to break loose and their bank account to bulge with thousands of ££££s.

You have to learn by trial and error and fnd out what does and doesn’t work. Look at other marketers and what they do. Look at Google Ads and see the ones that are there week after week – they are obviously the successful ones.

Build a portfolio of products that you are promoting. Keep the ones that earn (until they don’t) and ditch the ones that don’t – quickly. An old maxim from my recruitment days – “If you’re going to fail, learn to fail quickly”.

This is the strategy to build a long and lasting affliate income. Good luck!

If you want to get into this area more deeply, I can recommend Chris of DJK fame’s other products.

Affliate Project X takes it from the ground up. It does assume some basic knowledge, but some of the tips and tools Chris gives you in this product are very powerful. The reader I was talking about earlier purchased  APX along with DJK and he is up and running. Yes, it takes some time to integrate all of the information, but it is well worth it if Affliate Marketing is the way you want to go.

If you are a complete “newbie” (I hate that word), Chris also has a product called Affliate Commandments.

This is a small PDF document (about 15 pages) that has twelve basic rules that you should adhere to when marketing as an affliate. They are, I guess, things that came to light after DJK and APX were released.

It only costs $9.97. Now, you may be asking, why should I pay out even more money?

Good question.

The answer is simply this. If you are new to this game this product comes with a complete newbie guide to everything “Affliate Marketing”.
What I’ve given you today is a “helicopter” view, a basic template if you like. This add on (to a $9.97 product – that’s less than a fiver in our money) is absolutely invaluable to someone starting out in Affliate Marketing.

It gives you everything, most of it in point and click detail. For a fiver it’s got to be one of the best value products around. It also gives you access to an on-line video presentation. Cracking stuff!

Now talking of copywriting, which I was about eight paragraphs ago. The Write For Riches product is due to be delivered any day. I’ll be mailing you out when it’s here.

This product really is the “be all and end all” of copywriting products. It is a comprehensive package of DVDs, eBooks and MP3 fles that cover every possible angle of advertising, copywriting and headline writing. It even has sales page generator and headline generator software included.

If you want to learn to write copy that will make you shed loads of dosh, you simply must get your hands on this product.

As I say, I’ll mail you as soon as the physical products land at the offce.

Now…as it is my birthday this month, I did promise a bumper edition, so as I hope I always do, I shall deliver!

I got some interesting “insider” information last week that I thought I’d share with you.

If you’re using article marketing or content on Adsense sites, this might affect you.

Google is currently mounting a sustained campaign against duplicate content on the web. So, if you’ve been using PLR content or software programs that “change” or “spin”content or you’re using articles from the
article sites – beware.

If you’ve noticed your ranking dropping like the proverbial stone, this could be the reason.

Google has always maintained it’s raison d’etre was simply to provide quality content for its users. And, being in the powerful position it occupies, it has decided it’s had enough of crap generated and duplicate content.

From now on, if you want to keep your ranking position, it’s not going to be any good at all recycling old and much used articles or content. What you use is going to have to be signifcantly different – unique as well as relevant.

The autopage generators and article spinner tools are dead – sorry.

Google is using a new algorithm which is called LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing to search out and destroy this type of content. It not only looks at words but phrases as well and it is able to contextualise. That’s to say it can “understand” the context in which a word or phrase, or even a theme is written and…it has over 600,000 phrases as its reference source.

They recently patented this algorithm and it is now in use. You have been warned! Your content MUST now be unique and relevant. The themes must now be consistent and it’s how the themes are weaved into your copy that is important.

If you are going to use PLR or article content, you are going to have to make sure it is at least 30% unique to avoid a duplicate content attack by Google.

You have been warned, keep a close eye on this side of your business.
Well, that’s it for my bumper birthday edition, pretty intense this month, eh? But…lots of useful and proftable information – if you decide to use it that is.

I promise to lighten up a bit in July!

If you have any comments, questions or observations, or indeed anything you’d like to add that might be useful…I’d love to hear from you.

I’ve been reading an old PMA book from the 80s this last week, just to inject a little bit of positive and it has some great quotes in it, so I’ll fnish with….

“Whether you think you will succeed or not, you are right.” – Henry Ford

Until next month, believe you can do it - get out there, do something and go for it.

As always…to *YOUR* success.

Cheers now…and have fun!

Derek

www.apd-marketing.co.uk

Internet Marketing from APD

Turn Time Into Money

One Thing At A Time!

Many, many moons ago (and I mean many), when I was setting up my first direct response business, I was given one piece of advice that has stayed with me throughout the years. That advice was as follows:- “Only ever give your customers one thing to do at a time”.

At the time I wasn’t quite sure about this, but, ask yourself, what are you like as a customer?  Yes I know we all want quality service and think we are discerning consumers, but….. and you know this is true, we can all be pretty stupid on occasions. And, yes…I do include myself in this bracket!

This entire matter was brought home to me very firmly recently when I was
having a chat with one of my colleagues in this great industry of ours. He’d just set up a new website and had two very similar domain names to make sure he caught all customers who tried to type in the variations or had mistyped the URL.

I thought this was very sound marketing indeed.

However, after a while, he changed the offer on one of the domains to something different. Now I think he thought he’d just like to test a variation on the offer, however….

This is what happened. On the Monday morning, the ‘phone became red hot.
Ahh, good you might think. However, people were looking at both and trying to compare one with the other. So, the ‘phone was hot, but with questions like:-

“What’s the difference?”

“Which is the best product?”

“Which product would be better for…?”

“Why is A more expensive then B?”

And so it went on, question after question after question.

When my colleague finished, totally exhausted many hours later than normal that day… sales had slumped through the floor. Very few sales had closed, but web site hits were great. Not good marketing!

The bottom line?

Well, my friend had loads of prospects ready to buy, but they had got confused about the nature of the offer(s), so being unsure, they ordered nothing at all.

So, the message has to be, once you want a prospect to take action, make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do so. Tick this box here, put this
information in there, click this link - sale done!

Make it as easy as possible. As soon as you add some twist into the process
prospects fall out of your sales funnel at an alarming rate.

I remember from my sales days, a saying we used to employ – K.I.S.S.

It stands for Keep It Simple Stupid.

In other words, make it EASY for your prospects to buy from you. Make forms as easy to follow as possible, put instructions in words of few syllables and make sure they have all the information they need to make the right decision. Reinforce the sales message (benefits) at the point of sale.

My friend knew all of this, but thought he would be clever and try to give himself a little sales boost. It backfired badly and is a timely reminder to every one of us in this wonderful business of ours. Always keep K.I.S.S in mind!

By the way, I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t test. You should…but always make sure the tests are separate and you always have a control to refer back to. However, this is a different subject that I’ll cover in a future newsletter. It is also the subject of an entire DVD in our upcoming Copywriting product, more on that later though.

I mentioned last month that the APD Portal should have been live by now.
Unfortunately, it’s still not quite made it. This is the price you pay for trying new technologies – well new to me anyway!

We’ve been trying to build the portal in something called PHP-Nuke. It’s a great tool for building websites that need to hold a lot of information, but…it’s a bit of a law unto itself. The problem has been getting the PHP-Nuke environment onto the APD domain. It’s been quite a challenge!

Anyway, we’re very nearly there now, and I hope to be able to announce the
launch in a few days time. Perhaps another timely reminder to K.I.S.S!

On a different subject entirely, despite my lack of time this last month, I just had to have a dabble with some of the Day Job Killer methods. I am pleased to report that without dedicating that much time or effort, I have managed to mount three campaigns.

I’m still waiting for the sales to complete on two campaigns, but they do look
encouraging. The first campaign made just over £30 in one day. OK, that may not sound like much, but if you tune the methods more finely and get them exactly right, that £30 could easily be £60 or £70. And..if you multiply that over numerous campaigns as suggested, that quickly becomes an awful lot more.

The DJK manual actually suggests that you should be running approximately 100 campaigns at any given time. Each takes between 1 and 2 hours to research and set up.  I reckon if you average out at £45 / day over 100 campaigns that would be £4,500 / day. (Maths GCSE you see).

£4,500 per day for, say 150 hours work, residual type income as well. That
sounds like very good business to me.

I’m not sure if it would deliver at that level day in / day out yet as I’m still testing, but the figures do look good.

So, once I’ve got the portal up and the Copywriting product launched, guess what I’m going to be dedicating some time to? I’ll give you three guesses, I reckon you’ll only need one!

If you want to have another look, here’s the link again.

Day Job Killer - Click Here To Find Out!

I’ll make sure I keep you posted with my progress on this one.

If you want to contact me about anything in this newsletter, please feel free to drop me a mail on  derek@apd-marketing.co.uk  I look forward to hearing from you.

OK, that’s it for March, more next month.

Until then, cheers now and have fun.

Derek

Derek Armson

Internet Marketing From APD

Learn Copywriting

How To Turn Your Time Into Money

Hello and welcome to the February 2007  edition of the APD Marketing newsletter. With Christmas now a distant memory and the new-year “commitment to change” also fading just a rapidly, I thought I’d ask for a bit of help this month. OK, I know I need to incentivise you to help me but more of that later…

But first (as always), I have a question for you.

I know you are interested in starting your own business. You wouldn’t have
subscribed to my “business start-up course” if you weren’t. Ha, got you on that one haven’t I?

But seriously, I have a question that’s been bugging me over the last 6 or 7
weeks. And it’s this…

What Do YOU Need To Be Successful?

I seriously doubt if anyone has ever asked you that before. And…I couldn’t be more serious. This is why.

You see, in November I launched my “Instant OnLine Riches” kit (note March 2009, product now withdrawn). You’ve seen the website. The kit is a basic intro into the world of Internet Marketing and it also has things like an HTML web page (WYSIWYG) generator, and access to myself (and my network) for consultancy via email, so, an ideal kit to get you up and running…Or so I thought.

Time to be brutally honest, sales have been nowhere near as good as I expected.

I have to admit to being surprised, especially as I was using a general business start up course to try and “persuade” you guys into buying. So, you obviously want to start a business, online has to be the place to be (or does it?) and I have an online start up kit, but…It hasn’t sold awfully well.

I expected it to be an out and out winner, but it wasn’t.

So, having thought about it, it became clear that is not what the market wanted. Yes, I know it shouldn’t really have taken me six weeks to realise that, but… I was just so surprised. I suppose, as I said last month, nothing should surprise us in this business, but there you go. I’ll take it on the chin (can’t do anything else really)!

But, in view of what I’ve found, I just have to ask you, what it is you really need to be successful in your business? What areas of your business are giving you trouble?
What barriers are you finding it difficult to break through?

This got me thinking back to when I first started.

To give you an example, I’m not brilliant with technical things. It takes me a long time to understand these things. So, when I started I needed to learn things slowly in point and click detail. So, for example, would a point and click guide on how to develop a Frontpage website help you?
Google Adwords is a real labyrinth to try and work your way through when you first start. Would an in depth guide help you become more efficient and build sales in your business?

Search Engine Optimisation is an absolute minefield with very few guarantees of success, is this holding you back?

Going back to my early days, I know one thing that I had huge trouble with was finding the right copywriter. It slowed me down by three or four months as I remember. I have an idea that this may be an area of concern. Is this you?

As it happens, I’m in the process of putting together a really comprehensive package of copywriting products. Part of the deal will be a critique of two of your sales letters by my copywriter business parter Alison. Would this be of use to you?

So, just what is it that’s holding you back? What information or help do you NEED to move your business on to the next stage?

I mentioned at the start of the newsletter I’d incentivise you to help me here, so, for every reply I receive (no matter how insulting), I’ll send you a free eBook as my way of saying thank-you for taking the trouble to respond. A fair exchange I hope. I’m not sure what eBook it will be just yet, but I’ll get something good out of my files, promise!

Now, I was hoping to be able to announce the launch of the new (soon to be open) APD Marketing information portal this month, but…alas, those technical bugs have bitten again!

Basically, it will be a website where you can go and find out what we’re up to at APD. There will be some free stuff for you to download and you’ll be able to get any back copies of the monthly newsletter you want. I’ll put the business start up course up as well, just in case you lost a lesson or two along the way! Please feel free to refer a friend once it’s up and running.

So far in the free stuff is planned to contain a copy of Napoleon Hills brilliant “Think and Grow Rich” and an eBay Profits eBook. I’ll be adding more as we go along.

As soon as I’ve got the technical issues sorted, I’ll drop a mail out to you so you can go and have a look. It should only be a week or so…I hope.

That’s it for this month, a little shorter than usual, but I’m sure Ill make up for it next month! I’ll say goodbye until the next time.

Cheers now, and have fun….

Derek

Derek Armson
APD Marketing Ltd
derek@apd-marketing.co.uk
www.apd-marketing.co.uk

How To Control Money And Time

Hello and welcome to January’s edition of the APD Marketing newsletter. I hope you had a very merry Christmas and the new-year hangover is now fading away.

Now, normally at this time of year, all the newsletters tend to talk about goals for the coming year. Is this year really going to be your year and are you actually going to getup off your bottom and make something happen in 2007.

You know the score.
And…as you’ve recently read my business start up course where I go into some detail on goal setting and taking action, I thought I’d spare you and talk about something totally different…

What’s a Customer Worth?

What an interesting question. Have you ever stopped to wonder?

So, what is a customer worth?

The trite answer is, “It depends what you do with them!”

Before I do talk about the value of a customer and how to make sure you get the maximum value out of your customers, (in the nicest possible way), just one small point.

You Do Need Customers!

Obvious, I know, but…you do need to actually have customers. Now, I’m sure you have realised this, but…without customers you simply don’t have a business. Yes, you can have the website, the office, the letterheads in fact…all the expenses. But you just cannot claim to be “in business” until you have customers. Without them all you have are expenses and you will be down the tubes before you can say “London Underground”!

You see, customers are the greatest assets of any business. Your customer list is what gives your business its value. Make sure you understand this.

Your income (and therefore profits) derives from the fact that your customers buy from you. So, as a business owner, your main focus must be the continuous building, maintaining and nurturing of your customer base. This is the life-blood of your business and is what enables you to grow…expand to greater levels of profit and sales.

At it’s most basic level, business is all about…

•  Acquiring new customers
•  Delivering superior products / information
•  Building a relationship
•  Maintaining contact
•  Maintaining a steady flow of new products
•  Keeping customers happy
If you can achieve this, you will have a customer base that buys from you regularly and you will also gain many “word of mouth” referrals for your business.

Keep In Touch

So, today, I’m going to talk about the “maintaining contact” aspect of the business.

For any sales people out there, you will probably remember from your training that, on average, it takes seven contacts from you before your potential customer really trusts you. And, of course, they will not buy from you until that trust is earned.

The same applies in the online world.

Your copy can be the strongest around but your initial conversion rate will be low. That is why you must have some form of personal details capture mechanism on your site. If you don’t “sell” to your prospect (and that’s all they are at this stage) on first contact you will need to “capture” their personal details so that you can maintain contact.

You see, if they don’t buy initially you will probably need (on average) a further seven contacts to make that happen.

As an example, have another look at my site ( www.apd-marketing.co.uk ), and you will see that my “capture mechanism” is the free seven-part business-start up course that you all signed up for. OK, you didn’t buy the Start Up Kit that I was offering, but rather than let you just “slope off”, I offered an inducement for you to give me your contact details.

So, the fact that you signed up for the course offers me seven more opportunities to “talk” to you. Hopefully at the end of the course you will have gained some benefit and feel more disposed towards buying products from me, either now, or at some stage in the future.

You will notice that I followed up the course with my free newsletter (which you are now reading), and so, I now maintain regular contact with you. Again, this can only be good for my business as I deliver benefits to you on an on-going basis. This in turn builds trust and once more, makes you more likely to buy from me.

Now, in the past, keeping in contact on such a regular basis, via the postal system, would have cost thousands of pounds! In fact, it would have meant instant massive losses for any business. The old direct response methods never made a penny until the back end products were sold.

Nowadays, the advent of e-mail makes online businesses much more profitable, even on the front end.

So, how does one make these contact mechanisms work?
The reason that I am able to keep you so well “informed” is that I use an automated system that sits behind my business. It sends out what information I say to whom when I tell it to! Understand?

The Power of Autoresponders

Seriously though… I use an Autoresponder to manage my business. The package also has an integral Shopping Cart, which means online check out software.

These things have really come of age over the last 18 months. The system manages everything as far as customer contact is concerned.

•  It keeps a database of all my customers and people who sign up for my
courses and newsletters – I don’t even need a desktop contact management
program.

•  I can, however, export all the contacts to a desktop program if I feel the need!

•  It allows me to set the dates and frequency of communications I send out

•  I can send out “broadcasts” i.e.; one-off messages

•  I can track my ad campaigns

•  All my orders are managed for me, including the “order” and “thank you”
pages

•  I can manage my product database including all the relevant marketing
materials

•  I can develop custom forms and pop-ups for my websites

•  I can manage my entire affiliate program

•  And, there are superb online tutorials to help me make sure I get everything right with the minimum of fuss.

In short, I manage my entire business through the Shopping Cart / Autoresponder.
The one I use for my business is AWeber. Have a look by clicking on the following link. You can get a free trial run by clicking here.

To be honest, I really couldn’t run my business without this product. It takes a bit of commitment to learn how it all works, but as I said, the tutorials are excellent, so it’s just a case of dedicating a little time to learning what you need to know.

End Game

So, back to the original question, what is a customer worth over the lifetime of a business? To be honest I can’t even begin to imagine. What I do know is that approximately 20% of any customer base will become loyal and long-standing customers – customers how come back to buy time and time again. OK, so the front end product is only £67, but back end products range from £399 up to £1,499.

I also know that without my autoresponder, I couldn’t even begin to plug into this potential. So, the answer, is, without my autoresponder, a customer is worth very little! With it? Well, many thousands of pounds. When I decide to retire, I’ll sit down and work it all out, but I love this business, so that’s some way off. Watch this space!

I love working out new ways to do things, I love helping other people get up and running and hearing their success stories. I love writing these articles, I love finding new and useful products and I love learning about this business. With the pace the Internet moves at the only sure thing is change – that’s for sure! I learn somethingnew every day; it’s what keeps me going!

That’s it for today, so I’ll say goodbye until the next time.

Cheers now, and have fun….

Derek

Derek Armson
APD Marketing Ltd

derek@apd-marketing.co.uk
www.apd-marketing.co.uk