APD-Marketing Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the August 2010 Newsletter.

So…what happened to summer then? Huh? If you’re in the U.K (well the South of the U.K anyway), you’ll know summer started off really well but that it has now reverted to type. Yesterday it rained so hard Alison told me it reminded her of dark winter days in Vancouver (where it rains hard constantly in Winter).

So much for the U.K Met Office promising us a “BBQ Summer”. The second year on the trot they have promised us such a summer and the second time it has failed to materialize! So, we’re going to Spain to get some much needed sunshine - see ya!

On the basis that I’m waiting to go to the airport, it’s going to be a really quick newsletter this month. This and the fact that I have very little to say this month…for a change.

So, what’s been going on and why have I been so quiet?

Well, in short Lee and I have totally changed direction now.

We are now heavily into Adwords Consultancy (we have circa £1m worth of Adwords spend under management) and will finalise the Adwords course very soon. I know I said a summer launch, but it is going to be late September (because of holidays). But, it will be the best, most detailed Adwords course available. Some of the techniques will blow you away, Lee has managed to get a “line” into Google, some of the stuff he’s found out is real gold! Suffice to say, if you spend BIG there are different rules! More on this soon.

We have also finalised our new strategy for online profits and we are overjoyed with it! If I say so myself it’s bloody brilliant! whilst we’ll leave all our “Internet Marketing” stuff “out there”, we will not be developing or building any more products for that market. I’ll still let you know if anything interesting happens or a good product comes along and keep my finger on the proverbial pulse, but not much else.

We have yet to decide if we are going to teach this new strategy, certainly we have to thoroughly test it first. We’re just about to start testing and are still doing some research into added tools we might need. We also have a ITT out for some software development work. If you’re a top notch PHP developer drop me a mail, I may be able to utlise your services!

As for the Internet Marketing market, well not much to report to be honest.

I managed to have an in depth chat with a reclusive Internet multi-millionaire on Sunday and it was very revealing indeed. I can’t say who this Guy is, but it was interesting that he has made so much money that he is now a tax exile. And, he’s made NONE of it from the “how to make money” niche.

His view was very much in tune with my own that the market is full of pretty much duff information. It’s fair to say there are little scraps of useful information in most IM “how to” products that are released, but that is all, scraps.

I also picked up another very interesting snippet of information this week. Did you know that 95% of all “things” sold online are physical products. No ebooks, or download “how to” video, but hard physical products. TV’s, DVD’s, Olive Oil, Clothes and Toys.

It’s also interesting that my conversation also covered the fact that people now expect to buy one $47 “how to” product and make a million. Sorry to burst your bubble but that just doesn’t happen. Why would anyone sell you all their secrets for $47? Think about it, would you?

You see, and I have said this before, working online is like any other business. There are certain things you have to do to become successful, and…in line with other businesses you have to do a lot of them and build that unstoppable momentum  you need to become truly successful.

All the so called Gurus make loads of money online, but…and here’s the rub…they don’t make it from selling how to products to you and I, oh no!

They make it with little underground websites that sell all manner of things. The “how to” stuff they sell is the icing on the cake, but…it is normally re-hashed or out of date techniques that worked well and made them money at one stage. However, as other jump on the bandwagon the effectiveness of these techniques starts to wane and guess what…they sell it to you as a new technique for making money online! Q.E.D

Knowing my point of view at least you’ll know a product is worth it if I recommend it to you!

You see, you need traffic and driving traffic takes a lot of hard work. So, there is no quick fix. Sorry but that’s a fact. If you want to make money online you need to have a strategy and the automation tools to work it, then you have to apply and work that strategy. only then…and over time, and if you persist you will start to make money. Slowly at first, until you hit critical mass when you then have a residual type income. But…it takes a lot of web properties to achieve that, an awful lot!

Whetted your appetite?

More next month :>)

As always, have fun and make money.

Cheers now

Derek

Hello and welcome to the June 2010 newsletter.

I can’t believe that the FIFA World Cup is just a few days away, it seems to have been so far away for so long and now suddenly here it is. Another example, if you needed one, of my thoughts on time and how it can play tricks on you!

Anyway, I know it is close now because I put my World Cup wallcharts up today! Sad? Nah, I love football (or soccer as many of you know it).I’ve stood on the terraces since I was nine years old and it’s in my blood, so I just cannot wait for the soccer feast to start! I will be the proverbial child in a sweet shop! Don’t expect to hear too much from me in June and early July :>)

So, I promised you some information on the people I genuinely feel are worthwhile in the world of Internet Marketing training this month.

To a large degree it really depends on what you are looking to achieve, but when all is said and done there are two people I really listen to when it comes to learning all about how to make money online.

One is very straight down the line, one is a little edgy, a bit “black hat”.

Firstly Armand Morin. I have met Armand a few times now, and I always find his training superbly structured and very easy to understand. There is always a well thought out process and everything fits very neatly into place.

He clearly thinks very deeply about what is the best way to get the required information across, and it wasn’t until I finally bit the bullet and went to an Armand Live event that I really got fully to grips with Adwords. I also learned some amazing techniques that have saved me a fortune in Adwords costs.

If you didn’t act on the emails I sent out last week, you missed a trick as Armand was giving pretty much everything he has ever done through the AMP product, but it’s gone now. And that highlights something else I like about Armand. He said he was going to take the offer down at a certain time and he DID! It wasn’t just marketing puff!

This Guy does what he says he’s going to do and that is in very short supply in the IM market.

So, here’s what you should consider if you want to get some of the best training available on the following subjects…

Pay Per Click Basics - Secret Adwords Tips. I paid over $2,495 for this as part of an overall IM training package from Armand, it has been worth every cent! This is everything you need to know to keep Google 100% happy, your cost per click down and your click through rate high.

Presented in an easy to understand concise video format, this course is invaluable.

Pay Per Click Advanced - Get Secret PPC. It’s the best Adwords course around for new techniques that very few people are using with Adwords. You will get incredibly low cost per click using the techniques taught in this great little product.

If you want to be trained from the ground up on everything to do with making money online, then you should get into something like AM2.0 Silver from Armand. This is a ground up training program that takes you by the hand and teaches you how to make money on the Internet. I guess it’s a sort of “getting started” type training and you can graduate to a higher level program as you become more skilled.

If you have the basics under control and you want more advanced trainings then I would suggest either Internet Marketing Complete (which you can only get on to through one of his other programs) or Internet Marketing Explained. These are detailed products that go deep into each and every corner of how to make money online. I have got both and they are excellent.

In short I have followed Armand Morins training to achieve what I have so far online. If you can get to an Armand Live event do it. You’ll learn the latest advances and technqiues in online marketing and get access to Armand himself as well as training programs that are not available elsewhere.

At the VERY least you should sign up for Armand’s Internet Marketing Newsletter which is free!

Next Howie Schwartz. O.K, this Guy isn’t for everyone. You have to be made of stern stuff to follow Howie. He’s off the wall, which I like, but he’s down and dirty too. He’s “black hat” in some of the stuff he does, but depsite that he teaches very sound principles…and you can’t argue with what he earns online.

I mentioned last month that I was getting a bit fed up with the direction the “IM How To” market is going, and I stand by that. It’s getting too glitzy, there’s far too much puff and boast and not enough good content/substance. Too much reccyled crap about.

What I really like about Howie is that he gives everything away in terms of his techniques. He does this by way of teasers that he uses to promote his products. However if you get everything he releases by way of the free PDFs, then you can piece together his strategies. I’ve had to buy a couple of his products to fill in the occasional gap, but generally you can piece it together.

However, be warned, it takes a lot of work to unravel them! And they’re not for the faint hearted!

And, I got our new direction from Howie. This Guy creates stunning success with affiliate marketing and it’s his strategies for physical products affiliate sales that I am going to be following from now on.

That means I am walking away from the “Internet Marketing” market.

I have thought long and hard about the newsletter, and for now, I will keep it going for now. I’ll keep a watching brief on what is happening in the world of Internet Marketing as I have decided I want to remain informed. So, I will continue to pass on my oberseavtions each month by
way of this newsletter. Although the nature of the information may well change given my stance, but it will evolve and I’ll always endeavour to deliver value to you. If I don’t unsubscribe :>)

But, I will not be building new IM styled products from now on. I’ll add to Internet Marketing Strategic when something is worth adding and there are a few bits I still have to add. I’ll let you know when that is done. You might as well join if you haven’t already done so…it is free and always will be.

So, my new strategy is to sell physical produts as an affiliate. I think it was Jonathan Volk (check out his blog) that suggested 95% of products sold online are physical products, so that’s where I am going.

It’s more fun and the cost of sales is so much less.

I have already started putting the plan into place and already have four sites up - no point in hanging around! It’s great fun selling stuff like TVs and Train Sets (yes, I am definitely a BIG kid at heart). Check out my embryonic site at Train Set Junction, how much fun is that?

Sadly though, in implementing this new strategy I have already come up against a problem that reminded me of why I wanted to move away from dear old IM.

I purchased a product to help me build my affiliate sites. It automated the content for affiliate sales Wordpress listings.

The product is a Wordpress Plugin from a company called Digitalquill here in the U.K. I really don’t like to bring people down, but I have a duty of care when I find something amiss. I don’t want you getting burned if you decide to go the same route.

So…Don’t buy any of Digitalquills Wordpress pluging products.

Not only are they inferior and give very poor functionality, if you ask for a refund you won’t get it. To not offer a no questions asked refund on a product purchased on spec over the Internet is the worst sort of bad business ethics I can imagine.

I have had extensive contact with Matt Houldsworth, the owner at Digitalquill and depsite my protestations he simply refuses to offer me a refund. This is exteremely poor form and I felt I should warn you.

It also irks me that he is a Brit and is clouding our good name for fair play! If you are offering ANYTHING for sale online, you simply have to offer a minimum 30 day, no questions asked money back gaurantee.

Moving on, give me a couple of months to refine my new processes and to find all of the tools I need (I think I’ve identified most of them) and I may run a course on what I am doing. Keep an eye out for the autumn.

Talking of courses, Lee and I have developed an Adwords one day course and we are going to be delivering the first course in mid July somewhere in Hertfordshire UK.

If you are interested in learning all about Google Adwords, how it works and how you can make the best from it, then join our Digital Marketing Online list at www.digitalmarketingonline.co.uk For now this will just be UK, but I can promise you a great fun filled day where you will learn everything you need to know to tame the Google Adwords Money Sucking Monster :>) This is another new strand to our business which again has proved to be so much fun.

And finally…watch out if you’re using Twitter for your business. We just got banned!

Am I sorry? Not really. Truth be told, Twitter did very little for my business. Maybe I didn’t get it right but it doesn’t matter as the APD Twitter account has been banned!

What happened?

Well, take a look at the new search results page in Google. It is outstanding by the way and I love the way you can now break down and refine your searches. However, if you take a look at the new “updates” section that appears when you click the “more” link on the left hand side…you’ll notice most of the results in “updates” are…tweets!

Ummm, so Twitter has got into bed with Google and now thinks it’s a BIG player on the Internet? So…whilst it was OK to market anything you liked while they were growing as soon as they get into bed with Big G, sorry…you’re not allowed to use Twitter for marketing any more.

O.K, I’ll be the first to admit that I probably abused Twitter, as I auto followed and auto posted, 99% of my posts were links to my sites as opposed to “I’m making a coffee”. But, if I’m honest I think it sucks. Twitter were happy for me to be there until they got in bed with Big G and then they don’t like me any more. Cast aside like an oily rag!

Seriosuly though I made very little from Twitter, so I think it was over-hyped and probably only worthwhile if you’re Steven Fry :>) I may set up a new account under my real name, but I won’t try like crazy to build followers like I did before, it’s just not cost effective.

O.K, that’s it for this month and what a lengthy tome it is! I hope you appreciate me and all
this brilliant free info I give you each month!

Keep the faith, and may your team do well in South Africa…as long as England win!

As always, have fun and make money.

Cheers

Derek

Hello and Welcome to the April newsletter…

…and at last after what seemed like a very long, dark and cold winter here in the U.K, some nice weather!

I’ve been promising myself a holiday for it seems like ages now, but we have been pretty busy and it just hasn’t happened, but, it was nice to be able to sit in the garden, in a t-shirt and enjoy a cup of tea in the sun over the weekend!

So, why have we been so busy?

Well it’s a long story and I don’t want to say too much just yet as we haven’t finalised our plans, but it does involve a change of direction for Alison, Lee and I.

It may even mean the demise of this newsletter.

The reasoning is that it just seems that the Internet Marketing niche has started to get a bit silly! I have always had this “thing” about a lot of “IM” products being recycled, old, pretty useless information.

And, it annoys me that no-one tells you the full picture, or very few Gurus do. The products that they release a fad based rather than rooted in factual, hard profit-making information you need to suceed.

And the bottom line is I’m getting even more pissed off with it.

It also seems that some of the Gurus are getting desperate as well! The headlines on emails are becoming ever more sensationalised. The stories are becoming harder and harder to believe and the sales pitches are getting ever more incredulous.

Headlines like “Accident”, “I was *dared* to do this” and “1.2 Billion Email Leads”, for goodness sake, come on! Credit us with at least a bit of common sense!

I haven’t purchased an “IM” how to product or software for…well I can’t remember!

Don’t get me wrong here, there are good products out there, but the really good stuff is not hyped up, it’s sold factually, under the radar even.

I guess this frustration is one of the reasons we launched Internet Marketing Strategic, because we wanted to really help people and rip away some of the hype.

So, we will be changing direction and soon. Some of that change of direction may be relevant for you, most of it will probably not be.

We are currently researching the tools we need to take us where we want to go!

So, in the spirit of wanting to see you succeed while the newsletter lives (as it has for nearly three and a half years now), I am going to give you as much useful info as I possibly can.

We haven’t publicised this, but Lee and I do the ocassional one-to-one consulting for local businesses. Generally for friends of friends. So, I am going to use an example of from one of our live coaching clients to illustrate a point.

This particular client knew he was spending too much in his PPC budget but didn’t know why, so Lee and I had a look.

In a fiercely competitive market, where clicks are $3.00 or more,  we were able to quickly establish that he was wasting around $77 PER DAY on irrelevant clicks that had absolutely no chance of becoming sales.

Why?

Keyword match-types.

You should (hopefully) be aware that Google Adwords provides three different keyword match types; broad match, phrase match and exact match.

Exact Keyword matching will only show your ad when the search term (what your customer types in to Google) matches your keyword exactly, in the exact same order, no misspelling, no typos, no plural, no partial matching.

Secondly, Phrase Match will match the search term if it includes your phrase somewhere; the phrase “red dress” would be matched to searches for ‘ladies red dress’, ‘girl in a red dress’, ‘make a red dress’, ‘red dress design’, ‘red dress lyrics’. Now, of course some of these are relevant, but some are not and the irrelevant keywords waste your budget.

Phrase Matching is quite tightly targeted though, so the same phrase would not match searches such as ‘red evening dress’, ‘red cocktail dress’ or even ‘dress red’. The words are in a different order or do not form the phrase you’re bidding on, so you should thoroughly research and include each variation in your campaign to avoid missing that traffic.

Lastly, Broad Matching is the widest possible match type, and matches any search which includes the words in your keyword, misspellings, plurals, the words in a different order.

This is fine in some circumstances, but you need to exercise extreme caution when using this match type;

You should research all possible search variations which might match your keyword. But you do need to be oh so careful with broad matching. In the example broad match ‘red dress’, this matches; red head dress, dressing in red, red gingham dress, red white and blue dress, red or
dead dress, red dressing gown and many other, potentially wasteful clicks which aren’t relevant enough.

Can you now see why you have to be so careful?

Yes, some of the terms may be relevant, but other will be completely irrelevant.

You may argue that you wnat the traffic, but what use is a click for red head dress if you are selling red dresses? It’s a complete waste of your PPC budget.

Also, matching one broad match keyword in this way will make it difficult to target that keyword with a relevant ad and to land that searcher on a totally relevant page on your site. This in turn will make it impossible to measure the success of each search term and…of course you WILL pay a lot more for each click.

Worse still, Google will uses what it calls, ‘expanded matching‘ on broad match keywords, often using synonyms. Can you see where this is going?

In a recent example I saw, fujitsu bracket was matched with ‘mount fuji’! And ‘monitor mount’ matched for ’shower screen bracket’!

Completely irrelevant.

So, what should your keyword strategy be?

Depending on your market, budget…

I would recommend bidding on exact phrase matches to begin with.

I would research as many variations as possible and stick with exact match to see what results you get. Once you understand how your market is working then you could introduce some phrase matches, but just a small number and in a separate ad group…and monitor closely!

Once you have monitored and understood your market further then maybe a small number of broad matches could also be included to pick up anything you missed in your research.

You should continue to monitor frequently and in particular the search query report for your account to add more phrase or exact match variations.

Finally, make sure you use negative keywords to exclude the irrelevant searches you find and obvious mismatches. For example if you have “wilson federer tennis racket” as a keyword make sure you have negatives such as wrap, handle, bag etc. (You don’t want to get clicks for tennis bag if you are selling rackets do you?)

One final word of caution if you have been using broad match keywords in your account, removing them all in one go can upset the ecology of your campaign – be very careful before implementing a policy change such as this.

O.K, that’s it for this month, I will be back next month, but as I have said, I’m not sure for how much longer as this newsletter does take up a lot of my time and I don’t think it is going to fit in with our new direction.

Enjoy it while you can!

Have fun and make money.

Cheers now.

Derek

Hello and welcome to the March edition of the APD newsletter.

At last, some nice weather here in the U.K, Monday and Tuesday last week were wonderful. So, I took a day out on Monday and Alison and I went for a nice walk around the Hertfordshire countryside in the sunshine.

It was absolutely wonderful to be out walking without a coat for the first time in 2010. It sort of reminded me that we haven’t had a holiday for a few months! Mind you Lee and I have been hugely busy as you will have seen with the launch of Internet Marketing Strategic. If you haven’t joined yet, and you are interested in making some money online, get along and join. It’s free, and you have my promise that it will always remain free.

So far there’s great video tutorial series on running your website (everything you need to kow about control panel), affiliate marketing, SEO and Adwords. There’s also loads of eBooks and website and Wordpress templates…oh, and a huge file of website graphics…all totally gratis.

Join Internet Marketing Strategic Now…it’s free!

There will be more great info added soon, so make sure you use it to help you get yourself up and running and making some money on the Internet. Even if you know what you’re doing there’s still some great resources, you have nothing to lose.

And, if you know someone else who might be interested do them a favour and tell them about Internet Marketing Strategic

I have also totally revamped the APD site during February, so you can now find that at APD Internet Marketing - loads of Internet Marketing product reviews and links to all of our own products, which brings me nicely to…

..the launch of my Life Mastery System.

I’m giving you the “heads up” on this because it’s at a special introductory price at the moment, only for APD subscribers…so get in quick before I withdraw the offer.

What is it? Well, it’s the distillation of how I turned myself around from no-hoper to the lifestyle I’ve always dreamed about in just a few months.

It’s a short concise eBook (with some bonus items) that shows how I learned from some of the “money-power” giants of this world. How I learned to control time, money and therefore my life and destiny.

It’s hugely powerful stuff that shows you how to break down time and money into their smallest component parts, exercise absolute control over them and then build powerful money making systems from those minute parts.

You see, most people just do not understand time and money at the most basic level. If you can master the art of doing this, you gain complete and utter control over your life and destiny.

Life will be dancing to your tune, not the other way around!

Please go and have a look at www.control-your-life.info/Life_Mastery_APD_Offer.html

Be quick though as I will be taking this offer down on Friday12th March 2010 and then it’s gone forever…even if you plead with me :>)

O.K, I hope you’ll indulge me blowing my own trumpet a little this month, it’s not very often I take a major chunk of newsletter space to do so :>)

So, let’s get on with some money making info for you.

I talk to a lot of people over the course of any given month and obviously, being in “Internet Marketing” I tend to talk about the subject an awful lot. In talking to many people on this broad subject, one of the things that comes up time and again, particularly for those just starting out, is how do you build a website? I’ll admit it was the same for me.

I don’t know about you, but I have a chromosome lose that dictates I just HAVE to know how everything in my business works. So, as sure as night follows day, I had to know how to build a website :>)

So, I am going to make a very bold statement right here, right now.

This “personality defect” has cost me many thousands of dollars over the last four or five years!

Why, I hear you ask?

Well, it held me back in terms of the time it took me to learn how to build even the most basic website. And, it also held me back because the websites I built were, not to put too finer a point on it…complete and utter crap!

There are three issues here.

Firstly, the time issue, which I have alluded to already, secondly a tools issue and finally a training or knowledge issue.

I’ll take these in turn.

Time, I’ve talked about time many times before and by now you will know my view that time is a very precious commodity indeed. This life of yours is NOT a trial run. This is it, you get one chance and once your race is run that’s it…there is no more. A bit unnerving that, isn’t it?

So, if you’re like me and not wonderfully good technically do one of two things. Either, get yourself some proper training in order to make your self good…or get someone who is good and time efficient at building websites to build yours for you.

By default we have gone into the knowledge aspect of this here. What I will also say is that gaining the knowledge can be very time consuming and costly as well.

Where did I go wrong? Well, I guess I tried to learn Dreamweaver, which is a fairly complicated program, by myself from the ground up. It was a stupid task when I should have been concentrating on the making money aspect.

So, talking of tools, there are now tools that can make your life a whole lot easier. I now use Blue Voda, and it’s great, it’s also FREE - yipee! If you can use Word, you can use Blue Voda with about an hour in the online tutorials.

It’s a great tool and when I do build sites, it’s what I now use and I am now reasonably proficient.

However, it’s still NOT a good use of my time…if I’m honest I have come to enjoy pottering around in Blue Voda, but I can get “lost” in it for hours on end. I repeat it’s not a good use of my time.

So, when it comes to technical stuff, if you enjoy it and you are good at it, then great go for it. But if you are not that way inclined…outsource!

I use Rentacoder and Odesk. I’ve stopped using Elance because prices were going up and I just didn’t seem to get what I wanted on the ocasions I did use it.

When you outsource you do need to be prepared to “kiss a few frogs” first. I had a situation where I was looking to hire someone to do a one week “socialisation” project for me.

I ended up hiring a young lady from China, first time I had used her and she was quite aggressive on pricing and closing the deal. I felt she really wanted the work so despite a slight nagging feeling I hired her.

She never did a drop of work, and I ended up having to go through arbitration to get my money back. I guess the lesson here is trust your instincts, if something appears to be too good or doesn’t feel right, be more diligent in checking it out!

But don’t be put off, because this is a very cost effective way to get work (of all sorts) done and after a while you find a number of suppliers that you trust and deliver good work on time and to budget.

I now have a list of “go to” suppliers for websites, writing, SEO and socialisation.

Outsourcing is how you really start to leverage time in your favour and I have become a great fan. It has also taught me that I don’t have to understand in finite detail everything that goes on “under the hood” of my business…I still like to know though :>)

Oh, and just before I go, one other little trick I have used to good effect in certain circumstances is to use the local University for technical resource. I have developed links with a couple of local educational establishments that have Computer Science departments.

One two occasions I have used final year students to do web development work for me. This is a real win/win as the student can use the project towards their course and you get a young, enthusiastic and hungry technician who is very keen to please to do your work for you…for beer money!

It does take some time and effort to find the right people to talk to and to gain trust, but it can be a worthwhile tap into some excellent resource.

And talking of leveraging time, I had to go out in the rush hour this morning! My daughter came round last night and stayed over (she can’t resist my amazing roast dinners), so I had to get her to college by 9am this morning! It’s a seven mile run, door to door, and it took….54 minutes.

What a waste of time and life force! Although clearly I enjoyed extra time with my daughter, but…I queued in traffic for most of the seven miles! Frightening, why would you want to do that just to go to work? Stay at home and make money online, it’s much more fun!

O.K, that’s it for March, I’ll be back just after Easter with the April newsletter. Argghhhh, Easter, haven’t we only just had Christmas?

I’m sure time goes more quickly the older I get…but that’s another subject for another day.

Until next month, have fun and make money!

Cheers now

Derek

Hello and welcome to the February newsletter.

The nights are drawing out here in a very unleafy Hertfordshire and as I sat there looking at the sunset tonight, I wondered what to write about this month. A beautiful sunset indeed, and inspiration indeed…this month the Internet Marketing Guru industry gets it with both barrels!

You see I have been watching what’s been happening recently very closely indeed, and I have some very interesting observations. This is gonna be a hairy rollercoaster ride so hold tight!

Here goes.

First up, what a huge fanfare and who-ha about Twitollower, oh boy!

I watched the video and thought, yeak O.K, how much?

Then when I saw the “just $97 a month” I got really angry. This has to be the worst sort of rip off. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but…if you pay $97 a month for this then more fool you .

Now I didn’t set out to be controversial here, but it annoys me for two reasons!

Firstly Lee and I only started to engage with Twitter back in the autumn. Lee being the technical one in the partnership did some research on follower automation and came up with Tweet Tank.

We had tried manual follower building and it was very time consuming and didn’t seem to be providing much in the way of results.

So, despite the fact it took a bit of working out, Lee implemented Tweet Tank on one of our Twitter accounts and we added over 2,000 followers in something like 5-6 weeks.

Pretty cool you’d think? And, we are still adding 10-20 followers each day, and we’re getting listed. Little tip here…if you do use automation to build followers, I think Twitter has sussed these programs. They don’t seem to mind you using them, but…they will work about four times better if you do a few “manual” tweets each day… I’ve done some testing on this!

Back to the story…I’ll be honest here because we might have missed something in our Twitter marketing as we haven’t looked at it in any great depth, but…we are still not making much from Twitter. (Oooo, honesty from an Internet Marketer!)

So, the second reason? Well, I am beginning to think Twitter has just become “noise”. Yes it’s O.K if you have a reputation or high profile and people already want to hear what you have to say, but I don’t think you can now use Twitter to build a reputation. You just get lost in the noise.

Ask yourself, how much attention do you pay to the thousands of tweets that you see each day? I rest my case.

I would be really interested to hear if anyone is making any decent money using Twitter, drop me a line. As I say, we may have this wrong, but…the fact remains, $97 /month on an ongoing basis versus a one time $27 payment, errr, it’s a no brainer!

So, that’s me off my soap box having got that off my chest!

Now, this whole Twitter thing got me thinking…watch out here comes some real heavy stuff!

Twitter has been hailed as the silver bullet by so many Guru’s over the last six months. It’s the new thing, it’s your saviour, you can build a list of thousands really quickly and make loads of money marketing on Twitter.

How long has Twitter been around?

Actually I don’t know the answer to that and I can’t be bothered to look it up. However, this got Lee and I chatting and we thought that maybe…just maybe there might be a recurring theme here.

New “thing” hits the street. A few savvy top-level marketers pick up “thing” play with it work out how to make bundles of cash using new “thing” techniques. They may even be “in the know” prior to “thing” happening.

So, they, being top level Gurus (with technical staff they can allocate to work out how “thing” works), take their “thing” technique to the BIG GURU weekend where they share with the top level Gurus.

All the top level Gurus implement and make a bundle of dosh.

All the top level Gurus then share the “thing” techniques with their top level mastermind groups (which are filled Tier 2 Gurus), so you now have Tier 1 and Tier 2 Gurus using the new “thing” techniques.

Then the Tier 2 Gurus implement and make some money, but the techniques are now starting to get a little bit wide spread and diluted. Some clever “non-Gurus” work it out.

Then the Tier 2 Gurus share with their own high ticket paying “students” who then go away and implement the “new” “thing” techniques.

By now the “new” techniques are starting to get really watered down, but…the top level Gurus can show amazing proof of concept and earnings…

…so, NOW (drum roll please), it’s time to roll the techniques up into a $1997 product!

So, the Tier 1 and 2 Gurus sell this package to their best “non student” customers and so the “thing” techniques scale down another tier.

Over the next six months or so a plethora of clone products flood the market at prices anywhere from $497 down to $47 and they achieve massive sales based on the huge proof of concept shown from when the technique was brand new and not being used by all and sundry. It’s not a fair cop!

Of course by now the technique is with the masses and is virtually useless. The masses however are rabid buyers of IM “how to” products.

Most who buy in this price range don’t even do anything with the product!

But the Gurus are happy because they ripped the technique for huge profits when it was new and then did the same when it was clearly past it’s “sell-by date” by selling it as a “how to” “silver bullet”.

Now you may think I’m being cynical here, and maybe I am, and maybe it’s not quite as clinical as that…but it does make you think and want to ask questions doesn’t it?

And…it was interesting to see Adeel and Booby launch Software Submitter this week. Now funnily enough Soctrates Socratous did a free video series on exactly this technique about 6 months ago.

So I tried it.

Admitedly I tried it on a hugely competitive keyword. Want to know my results?

O.K, are you sitting comfortably?

5 list signs ups in 3 months. Somewhat different to what Adeel and Bobby are spouting about. Although in all fairness and in the interests of complete transparency, I only submitted to one directory, they offer you twenty I think.

And do you know what has really upset me about this launch?

I purchased (with my own money) Mass Article Control (including an article submitter) from Adeel and Bobby, and there’s a full review of it at http://www.apdinternetmarketing.com/massarticlecontrol.html

And, it’s not a bad product, but…they are still promoting Mass Article Control - big time, yet, in the sales copy for Software Submitter, one of the major selling points is that article marketing is
dead!

I’m sorry, but that is just not acceptable. It’s wrong and it’s ripping people off.

No doubt I will get shredded by some of the Gurus for opening up like this, but…Lee and I (notice I drag Lee into this) are determined to stand firm…

…and that’s why we launched Internet Marketing Strategic last week.

If you don’t know what it is yet, it’s simply a FREE Internet Marketing Training Membership site.

So far training on Cpanel, SEO, Market Research and Affiliate Marketing  is included as well as a stack of eBooks on similar subject matter. We will be adding more training each month so do get signed up and do keep a close eye for new additions.

Lee and I have also revamped the main site and moved it to http://www.apdinternetmarketing.com

We have taken away a load of the crap and made the site a simple link to all of our products and a simply structured IM product review site.

Again keep watching for new reviews all of the time.

All of the old APD free stuff will soon find a home within Internet Marketing Strategic.

Final word, Lee and I are determined to bring a new freshness and clarity to the Internet Marketing world. It’s about time someone told the truth and stopped the rip off of the uninformed. By massively raising the “free bar”, we hope we have given that process a massive boost…thanks to Armand Morin for the idea!

Why do we want to risk the wrath of the Gurus?

It’s simple…the Internet is BIG enough for everyone. There is room for you, me, the Gurus and most of the population of the world…it’s huge. This rip off doesn’t need to happen, so we are going to do our best to remove the smoke and mirrors and bring transparency.

I hope you’ll join us on our crusade!

Peace and happiness…and lots of fun for all!

Until Next Month - Cheers now.

Hello and welcome to the Full of Festive Frolicks December newsletter…

…and what a bumper edition I have for you this month.

Back, fresh from the World Internet Summit at Heathrow, London I’ll be revealing some of the great tips and techniques I learned at the conference.

I’ll also be revealing something that Lee and I are going to be launching in January that you are absolutely going to want to get your hands on!

Think of it as a Christmas present from Lee and myself. One that will last you all the way through 2010! And…it ain’t gonna cost you a single dime.

Well, after all ’tis the season of goodwill to all men (and women, let’s not be sexist), and what we are going to give you in January will certainly make you very merry!

So, without further ado, I’ll crack on.

The World Internet Summit is rapdily becoming the Internet Marketing Seminar of choice and it’s easy to see why.

At just $197 for you and a guest, it’s great value.

If I’m honest, the flip side of this great value is that all of the speakers do get to sell to you at the end of their presenatations.

However, I think it’s a price worth paying for some of the great profit making information you get given during the course of the event.

So, here’s a few of the gems that came out of the November World Internet Summit over at The Thistle at Heathrow.

The first thing that came out was the move by Google to offer more local services through Google Maps.

If you are running a local business how would you like to have a virtual clear run at a Page One Google ranking? Sounds good doesn’t it?

Well, go to Google Local and that’s what you can have.

This one is a real no brainer for local businesses. Just follow the instructions to set up your local account and enter your business details and you will immediately be on Page One of Google for any searches on your business niche with the relevant local qualifier (town name, zip code etc).

Why will you be on page one?

Two reasons…

Firstly, did you know that 67% of Google searches use a geographic qualifier?

Google ALWAYS listens to what the searcher wanst…and that’s why they have had a “local” campaign  and made this service available through Google Maps.

Secondly, most local business people have not found out about this yet and therefore don’t know - and even if they did know they wouldn’t know what to do about it.

Dominate now, while you can if you are local.

It’s like being able to take everyone else’s entries out of the yellow pages and just leave your one there!

Final word on this, big time Internet Marketers have cottoned on and are now developing products around this, get in quick before this becomes common knowledge.

Get Your Copy Of The World Internet Summit DVD’s Click HERE.

One of the most interesting things that I heard was that global online sales are expected to hit $500 billion plus in 2009. Yes you did read that right $500 BILLION! (Estimates do vary to be fair, but it’s always between $200-500 Billion).

That makes the Internet the biggest market place - EVER.

That makes the Internet the most POWERFUL sales medium EVER!

Who said there was a recession going on? How many times have I told you the online world is simply not participating in “the recession”.

And…the Internet is becoming ever more “social”. It’s about giving and sharing your information.

You only have to look at what people like Howie Schwartz are giving away these days to know that the top marketers are making an absolute mint by giving loads of stuff away!

You see, if you give away loads of (good) stuff, you gain trust VERY quickly. People like you more, tell more people and you build a reputation for quality very quickly.

Lee and I have taken this on board :>)

Remember that Christmas present? Keep reading!

So, the key to Online Success?

It’s a SEVEN step system!

1. Fine a Hot Niche Market - Remember the product comes second, the hot, rabid niche is the first and most important thing!

Solve a major problem and you have a WINNER!

2. Create a product that gives the market what it wants - remember a want is much more powerful than a need. A want allows you to sell on emotion!

3. Create a powerful and compelling sales message - vital.

4. Design a SIMPLE site that converts prospects to buyers. Think…

K - Keep
I - It
S - Simple
S - Stupid

Who are the most successful websites?

Google?
Amazon?
eBay?

What do they all have in common? Lots of white space and powerful messages. Copy the best!

5. Bring Traffic using search engines and PPC. Have you tried Bing? I hear there are some very buyer friendly clicks going at very cheap rates!!!

6. Use eMail marketing to convert yet more buyers.

7. Have an army of people to sell your product for you. That means your own affiliates.

You simply HAVE to get your business online!!!

Learn From The TOP WIS Experts In The Comfort Of Your Own Home Click HERE

Moving on, Nicola Cairncross a Brit who lives by the sea, was one of the most amazing speakers over the entire course of the weekend.

She lives a very simple life here in the U.K, drives an old Volvo but lives one of the most enjoyable lives you can imagine. Totally stress free and not working very much at all!

Before she made a living online she was a financial analyst. Working long hours, she re-assessed her life. Then she took her skills and built a membership site aimed at helping small business manage money more effectively.

She now turns over many times what she made offering her services one to one and because it is a membership model that she has built…

…her income is residual in nature and pours in month after month.

The moral of the story?

Membership sites build massive residual income.

Think what you might be able to develop a membership based model on - it’s a key to easy and recurring income online!

Throughout the entire weekend, one message came through LOUD and CLEAR!

Video is where the immediate future lies.

The most successful online marketers are now using video to sell. Most now use video sales letters and you simply MUST get video skills on board.

If you are not using video you are missing a MAJOR trick. I did a feature on this a few months back.

Did you know YouTube now gets 2.7 BILLION views each month (and the figure is growing).

In fact, you Tube is now a social network. You can build friend lists, market, chat, share, everything a self respecting social site should do.

You see Google now sees YouTube as an integral part of the new and rapidly forming Google Social Infrastructure that I talked about last month.

You have to get yourself fully immersed in the new Google fabric. Why?

Because the more you do in it, the more hard coded links you will have to your sites held on Google servers…and such links carry one hell of a lot of ranking juice.

It’s also interesting to note that everything is driven by Google Friend Finder and…it’s self policing because you have to agree to connect to someone!

Have you noticed you don’t get spam in Gmail?

So, I have started building a Google infrastructure. You should to!

You can connect to me if you like…

derek.armson@googlemail.com

Add me to your GFC or Google Wave.

Indeed, Lee and I will be looking to do some free Q & A waves early in the new year to test out GWave, why not join in?

Anyway, I digress, back to youTube.

The average person watches 150 videos a month on YouTube. No wonder the traditional T.V companies are struggling to get advertising these days!

Yes, that’s another upshot of all this…

…traditional advertising budgets are now making a massive move online. It’s getting close to 70% of all advertising spend being allocated to online advertising.

Ask yourself…how often do you watch T.V these days?

Do you watch more online videos, or do you watch your favourite programs on the T.V company “players”? I know I do!

Sorry, I digress again…it’s such an interesting subject!

Anyway, get your videos on YouTube and you can guarantee getting to page one on Google, normally position four…and you can do it for keywords that you would have no hope of getting a page one listing for otherwise.

Check it out, you’ll see the videos come up in position four!

Just make sure you have the keyword in your title, filename and tags and you’ll be there.

What further incentive do you need to get into video.

And, it’s easier than ever as technology advances.

I use Camtasia to render my video. But, if you get yourself a flipcam, you can record and upload to YouTube in one easy movement!

It’s never been easier to get yourself online and making some money!

All you have to do is TAKE ACTION!

Learn Loads More Great Internet Marketing Techniques With The WIS DVD Set - Get Your Copy NOW - Click This Link.

Yes, I know here I go again…but NO! It’s Christmas, it’s the Holidays, so I shall be gentle on you. I’ll talk about getting off your lazy ass after the festivities :>)

Seriously though, I know many people suffer from not knowing the easy bite sized chunk steps you need to take to be successful online.

So, in January (maybe sooner - watch this space) Lee and I are going to launch Internet Marketing Strategic.

What is it?

Simples!!! (Sorry, only U.K residents will understand that).

It’s a F*R*E*E, yes F*R*E*E Internet Marketing “How To” membership site. I’ll send you the joining link as soon as the first modules are live.

This is my Christmas present to you. I am going to REMOVE all of your excuses for now being successful online.

Beginning to end, chapter and verse, every little thing you need to know to build a successful online business, Lee and I are going to give you!

The first module is seven in depth market research videos - as I said above you need the niche first.

This module is just about ready.

The second module is how to do all that nasty techncial stuff behind the scenes in Cpanel. Everything you need to know in 23 short two - three minute videos. So you can learn in easy bite sized chunks.

Over the course of 2010 we will be releasing modules (regularly) that cover every conceivable Internet marketing subject, all gratis!

Now, I have to say, this is a VERY bold move and may well lead to a certain amount of indignation amongst the IM community…but we don’t care!

You NEED to know exactly how to do this, so Lee and I are gonna damn well show you!

And, finally, I know this may not relate to you and is nothing to do with Internet Marketing, but…

…you may have seen in the press this week Gordon Brown talking about Child Internet Security.

As it happens, we have just launched an Online / PC Child Security product to the world. Please check it out at:-

www.parental-software.org

If this is helpful to you, fantastic. If not and you know someone who is keen to protect their children online, please feel free to pass the link on.

And, finally…

…I promised to tell you about the car key episode at World Internet Summit, embarrassing as it is. Here’s some Christmas fun at my expense!

At lunch on the Saturday, Lee needed to get something from the car, so I gave him my car keys!

At the end of the day Lee went off to chat with Brett McFall while I was chatting to some potential JV partners for the Secure Kids Online product.

We agreed to meet at the car, and when I got there, I realised I didn’t have my keys (no sign of Lee)! Completely forgetting I had given them to Lee, I spent the next half an hour rushing around every place we’d sat at or had coffee in the entire hotel searching and asking if anyone had seen my keys.

Returning to a now empty reception Lee was standing there looking very puzzled.

“Where have you been?”

“I’ve lost the car keys!” I pleaded.

“****, I’ve got them”.

Talk about look and feel a complete Twonk!

Yes, you’ve done it too! Admit it!

O.K, that’s it, there is no more for this month and indeed 2009! Wow, where did it go? Don’t know about you but I’ve had a complete BALL in 2009 and I can’t wait for 2010! It’s great to always look forward with excitement at what the future will bring.

So, I would like to close by wishing you and your family a very happy and peaceful Christmas and a Prosperous 2010…come join me at the TOP! The view is amazing!

Peace and Happiness

Cheers now

Derek

Hello and welcome to the November 2009 issue of the APD Marketing newsletter.

I hope you are well and I find you in fine fettle this month.

Another year is drawing to a close! I won’t go on another one of my “time flies by” rants, but it does focus the mind. After all, we will all be making new years resolutions again soon!

So, what am I going to talk about this month? Well a bit of a mish-mash really. Time, sort of, but more the pace of life…particularly in the world of Internet Marketing.

I recently wrote about a new wave of technology and the changes that were coming. Part of that change was Google Wave, and you’ll be interested to know that Google is now rolling out Google Wave (or Gwave as it now starting to be called), so you should get yourself signed up.

http://www.wave.google.com

Sign up and give me a “wave” at “internetmarketingstrategic”

Gwave is going to become a very important tool for you in your Internet Marketing quest.

Indeed, Google generally is starting to move in more and more interesting circles.

The sixty four million dollar question of the Internet world has been “Why doesn’t Google play in the social media market”?

That question is about to be answered.

Google Wave looks like it is going to be the glue that holds this entire thing together, but…if you look at the tools Google has now developed and is now delivering at an incredible pace…their mission seems to have been re-stated as world domination.

What got me started on this whole thing was a great little product I got from Howie Schwartz a couple of weeks back. You would have got my marketing email about it.

Go Trick or Treating With Howie

I know some of you picked this up and the feedback I have had from the people that did make the purchase is very interesting.

I’ve been watching Howie for a long while but always thought his stuff was full of hot air. Not so.

This product (it is still available) is like a sneak peak into Howie’s world and it made me realise what a very sharp marketer he is.

You see he is master of Web2.0. We told you how to automate Web 2.0 with the Instant Social Traffic Formula, and this little product shows you some great new Web2.0 techniques that I certainly wasn’t aware of.

Lee and I will be incorporating some of this stuff into an upgraded version of Instant Social Traffic in the next couple of months once we have tested and made sure we understand how it fits together and works.

And, now Google has started on it’s own quest to dominate the social environment…well it got me thinking!

Now first up, what is Google doing?

Well, it looks like they are pulling a number of tools together to form a monster social networking “environment”. As I said above I believe Gwave is going to be the glue that holds this all together.

Firstly there is Gmail. This is going to be where you keep your friend list. Some new Gmail tools are going to make it easier to find and connect with people as well as save your friends lists.

Google Reader is going to make it simple for you to keep up to date with what is happening on the favourite sites you follow.

They already dominate video with YouTube which is becoming more and more a social network and they are also releasing Google Friend Connect which is the new friend finder in Gmail.

Then their is Google Profiles where you can keep your online “business card”.

Mix this all up, add Gwave and what you have is an all out assault on Facebook, Linked In, Mixx, Digg blah, blah, blah.

Google is set to dominate again!

Now it is my contention that Facebook is not easy to use. It is a social tool that Facebook are now trying to monestize. As it wasn’t a money making model in the first place monetization is proving awkward.

But, with all these very cool tools from Google coming together it is like they are generating a perfect “online marketing storm”.

If you are going to succeed online…you have to be in at the forefront of this stuff! Because as sure as eggs is eggs, Google will give their own tools the highest weighting in the search results!

And, despite what anyone might say, Google is where it’s at. Yes, they have taken their time in maturing this plethora of tools, but it is clear they intend to retain their dominant position on the Internet.

You have to see the online marketing world through Google’s eyes. It’s vital to your success.

And with tools like the “show options” and “wonderwheel” it is becoming much easier to do just that and see the world through Google’s eyes.

It’s like they are telling anyone who cares to look exactly what you need to do to succeed online.

See the World Through Google’s Eyes!

So, to learn all this stuff and implement becomes somewhat time consuming. Add to that the time needed to do all of your Web2.0 and socialization and you need to be in control!

So, this month, I’ve got two things to help you.

I have just revamped Total Control and added some even more powerful time management techniques to it. The bottom line, you need some advanced tools to overcome information overload and paralysis of analysis these days.

The workload to dominate Google is now more than ever. The savvy Internet Marketers are working behind the scenes, using these Web 2.0 and Google Tools to complete dominate any niches they choose.

You simply have to control the most valuable resource you have – time!

Control your time, means a controlled life. Total Control will help you achieve more than you ever thought possible. And, as you massively increase your effectiveness and time and money come under control,..You will feel stress melt away – I can vouch for this!

Get in control now!

Secondly, Lee and I have been working hard on a new review site for you. It’s called Internet Marketing Strategic and you can see the bare bones of it at www.internet-marketing-strategic.com

It should start to gradually come online over the next two weeks.

What is it?

Quite simply we are going to be reviewing all of the new Internet Marketing product releases so you will know, up front, if any given release is right for you.

We’ll be doing in depth product reviews and telling how, where and why you should (or shouldn’t) use any product.

I don’t know about you, but my inbox is bulging every day with new product releases. It’s impossible to tell what’s good and what’s not most of the time. So, now we’re gonna do it for you!

I know some of the Guru’s ain’t gonna like us for this, because if a product is out and out crap, we’re going to tell you.

So, keep an eye out for Internet Marketing Strategic - enter it in your Google Reader account :>) there will be regular updates! If you are subscribed to this newsletter, by the way, you don’t need to get signed up to that list as well

Finally, Lee and I will be at World Internet Summit from Thursday through Sunday next week. There is stunning line up for speakers including Tom Hua and Brett McFall (obviously), but also Armand Morin, Sean Roche, Ewen Chia, Howie Scwartz and a host of others.

At just $197 (plus a free guest ticket) it’s a ridiculous price to help secure your future…plus there’s always the chance you could be the subject of the World Internet Challenge and be invited up on stage to start an Internet business live at the event…and KEEP all of the profits! At the last event in Singapore the lucky subject earned over $22,000 and fainted when she found out how much she’d earned in just four days!

Sign up for the World Internet Summit here.

Anyway, if you are there, look us up, we’d be delighted to say “hi”!

O.K, that’s it for this month, I’ll be back with a bumper festive edition in December!

As always…to *YOUR* success.

Cheers now.

Derek

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

 Hello and welcome to the October issue of the APD newsletter. Sorry it’s a bit late this month, Lee and I have been negotiating some big deals in what for us will be new markets.

It’s exciting stuff and I hope to be able to tell you a bit about it before Christmas (Ouch…I said Christmas…did you see the Christmas ads on the T.V this week? How ridiculous!)

Anyway, as promised last month, I am going to finish off the Internet Marketing route plan to success in this newsletter.

Blame Google for the delay :>)

If you remember back to August I was just about to configure your autoresponder.

Once you have set up your autoresponder (with the “global” settings) and your confirmation page… you will need to send the course parts in sequence.

Now, you can send the content within the body of your emails if you like, I have done this in the past. However, you want to subtly sell stuff in your course…to try and make some money.

Yes, you can have affiliate links in your email, but I prefer to send readers to a page on my site where the course is housed.

This gives me many more options. I can add graphics (and make them affiliate links) or have Adsense on the page, show banners and also have hyperlinks to my own related products or…to be honest whatever I like.

I get so much more flexibility if I get them to a page on my site…plus there are links to the rest of my site! This is not really rocket science is it?

Just a quick note on the subscription confirmed page…this is the web page that your subscribers will be sent to when they click on the confirmation link in the email they receive from your autorsponder (to check they actually did sign up for information).

I don’t sell to my prospects on this page. I simply thank them for subscribing to my mailing list and give them a brief overview of what they can expect. You can use this page to sell or direct to a pre-sales page if you wish.

So, your site is set up, now you have to get people to come to the site.

I will talk on market research in depth over the next couple of months as it is an absolutely KEY area that you must get right…along with your keyword research.

Normally I like to send people to a squeeze page to collect their name and email address so that I can plug them in to my autoresponder. They get value from me in terms of the eCourse and I can sell to them on an ongoing basis. Yes, the money is in the list!

You’ll need to have a way for people to sign up to your list and for this you need to get the html code for a subscription box from your autoresponder. Insert this html in the appropriate place on your squeeze page.

So, your autopilot system is now ready.

Before you do anything in terms of live marketing…TEST out your system. From top to bottom, start to finish!

Here’s a list of things you MUST check!

Once you are sure that everything is working, you can start marketing!

During your market and keyword research you should have worked out all of the main root keywords (for example “social traffic”) as well as a full list of long tail keywords associated with each root keyword.

Again, I will return to how this should be done (in detail) over the next two months.

Once you have found your ten best (high KEI) keywords, you need to market around these. Again, I will deal with the criteria you should use in the research newsletters.

Write articles at the “authority” sites (HubPages, Squidoo, MySpace etc)

Post articles at the main article sites. Lee and I have just tested out Mass Article Control, you can read our review by clicking this link.

The problems are now sorted and I highly recommend this product as a huge time saver!

When you set up your article site memberships make sure you write a relevant author resource/bio box. This is a crucial part of the system that you need to spend some time on. Don’t waste the efforts of your article writing by slapping down an ineffective bio box like, “Derek Armson is an Internet Marketing expert. Click here to find out more info www.internetmarketing.com”

Your author resource box is a mini salespage where your one goal is to get that reader to click on your link. You only have a few sentences to hook the reader with curiosity and then give him a powerful reason why he should click on your link.

In our example, I would probably use something similar to the follow:

“Derek Armson is a Internet Marketing expert who recently developed an eCourse that details a step by step process for building a profitable online business. If you are interested in learning “How To Make Money Online” then get this eCourse and get yourself up and earning in no time at all, please click here: http://www.internetmarketing.com”

Note…most article sites DON’T allow anchor text links in their bio boxes. Where they do, the link would read “click here to find out How to Make Money Online”

Better isn’t it?

So, your article sites are now set up, so pick your first long tail keyword, and write an article about it.

Be sure to include the keyword phrase in the title, the article keywords and an article density of about 2-5%

Writing articles is a pretty basic action. You start of by saying what the article is about (using your keyword phrase). Then you talk about the importance of the keyword phrase and how to improve on it. And then you end with a paragraph summarizing what you just wrote about.

An easy solution is to create “tips” articles, people love these particularly if you use a number as well. I’m not sure why this works so well, but it does! So if our first long tail keyword is “make money with affiliate marketing”, the article would be: “Ten Great Tips to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing”.

The next bit is important. The authority sites have VERY strict rules on duplicate content. Post your articles there first adding videos and images.

Before you post to the article sites, make sure you change your articles! You need to change them at least 15%. This is easier said than done and is why I use Mass Article Control as it has a great article spinner in it which makes it easier to get that variation in a relatively quick time span.

You now need to repeat this process with the remaining 9 keywords! Who said this was easy!

Why so many so quickly? Like I said before, most newbies tend to get discouraged prematurely because they don’t see immediate results. By forcing yourself to write and submit the initial 10 in one shot (over 24 hours), you will see big results quickly.

I can write a decent article in about 20 minutes, but most people (I believe) take a little longer. With practice, you’ll get much faster.

Now, the critical part is to “socialise” your articles, hubs and squidoo pages.

If you use the Instant Social Traffic Formula this is all automated and you can do this very quickly. If not, it’s a long slog!

But you need to bookmark all of your articles and authority pages to as many of the social media as you can.

If you do this you will find that you start to rank very highly on Google Page One for your target keyword. This will of course bring you a flood of traffic.

Clearly you can use Adwords to get paid traffic quickly, but it is becoming expensive and there are more and more hoops to jump through.

If you have done your market and keyword research correctly, your keywords will automatically be in relevant groupings for your ad groups. However, the vagaries and “ins and outs” of Adwords are not for this month!

Having got to this stage, give yourself a break!

eriously, it’s intense stuff. Which is why I use tools such as Mass Article Control to help! (Remember I only ever tell you about tools I actually use and have PAID for out of my own money).

After a couple of days find the next ten keywords and rinse and repeat!

Try and get in to the habit of writing and submitting at least one new keyword rich article every day. Somedays you will do two, or three articles, somedays it just won’t happen…but always try to get at least one done. It should take you no more than an hour a day. Whenever you run out of keywords, build a new group of 10!

Very quickly you will have 40 or so articles floating about. Once you get to this stage you should be getting a fair amount of traffic to your squeeze page. My squeeze pages convert between 15-40% of website visitors. Yours will probably do the same.

You should start to see the gradual increase in daily Adsense income generated. You will also get a growing number of affiliate product sales as your subscribers go through the series of autoresponder messages you are sending them.

At this point, you should have a consistent and growing source of income. If you keep writing and submitting articles the proper way, you should maintain or further grow your monthly income.

What does this mean to you?

Remember to keep plugging new messages into your autoresponder sequence to not only promote new and different products aligned to the niche, but also to give away free valuable information.

I like to give free information two out of every three emails and promote one out of three. It shows you are keen to give true value to your customers.

And with the unlimited lists you can keep on your autoresponder, you can repeat this process as many times as you like in as many niches as you like!

What if you were able to get your first stream to generate $1000 per month? Wouldn’t you be confident that you could repeat that amount in a different niche?

This plan can work in any niche. Just follow it and you’ll do O.K!

Oh, and don’t forget about the ability to send broadcasts out.

Say someone who has a new product wants to do a joint venture with you. He’ll split the profits with you 50/50. So then you send out a broadcast to your list recommending this new product.

Because you have taken the time to develop a relationship with your list, you will have created a level of trust with them - and that is vitally important.

So when you recommend a product, many of your subscribers will definitely review the offer. And you will get a fair number of sales for virtually no work other then sending out an email to your list. I repeat, the money is in the list.

So, that’s the end of part two! I hope this plan helps you. It’s much easier when you have a step by step plan to follow!

That’s all for this month, I’ll be back at the normal time in November, when I will talk about niche research.

Until then…to *YOUR* success.

Cheers now and have fun!

Derek

Instant Social Traffic

Easy Info Product Creation

If you think anyone else would benefit from this information, please feel free to forward this link.

Hello and welcome to the August edition of the APD Newsletter.

If, like me, you are in the U.K, you will have noticed that the Met Office retracted their promise of a B-B-Q summer last week.

Talk about stating the obvious. It hasn’t stopped raining since mid June! It’s apparently due to the fact that, for the third year in a row, that naughty old jet stream has failed to “go north”.

So, it’s sitting right above us dropping one low pressure system after another on top of a wet and soggy U.K. If they ever talk about droughts again!!!

Add this to the recession, and as usual the press are having a field day peddling the doom and gloom.

And, this was the subject I was talking to a friend about a couple weeks back. He was fed up with his job and the weather and was looking for a way out. Now the interesting thing is that he had totally ridiculed my Internet marketing efforts when I first got started!

However, he had come to realise that I was having much more fun than him so, given his own situation, he started asking some questions.

In the end, he asked for a route plan he could follow to get started online, so…this is what I gave him! A step-by-step guide to getting your online business up and running…I am good to you :>)

Firstly, a plan is vitally important. Failing to plan is planning to fail! O.K, I know it is awful, but it is true…it’s vital you have a proper strategic plan.

This is where most people starting out fail. I have said many times, and I repeat, there is so much information out there (most of it not very good) that it is very easy to fall into the information overload trap.

If you have a plan, this problem is immediately overcome, you can read my Hub on this issue here, just click the following link Internet Marketing Pitfalls.

The first thing I advised my friend to do was to make the best of his knowledge and interests. Maybe look at a specific talent or experience. List them out.

Then go and have a look in Clickbank and see what products match your areas of experience or interest. Look for products that you have experience in, or a passion about. This is key as you will already understand some of the motivations and mindset of the market.

Having researched Clickbank, pick the first niche you are going to go for!

Then, having decided on your niche, list all of the products and pick the best three based on…

Sales page effectiveness (hint…does it sell to you?)

Gravity (higher the better)

Percentage Commission (at least 50%)

Commission payout (ideally at least $25).

Next, you need to register a domain name that is relevant to the niche. I recommend Namecheap, as the name suggests, it’s cheap - $8.96 If you can’t afford $9 for a domain, then you shouldn’t be here.

Despite what some might tell you, you definitely need a domain. Having a domain name that is relevant (like www.instant-social-traffic.com) helps in so many ways!

It keeps your PPC costs down, increases your quality score and generally helps get you recognised by the search engines (and added PR) because relevancy pertains throughout!

Is this message starting to sink in? The thread through your entire campaign MUST be common! Even down to keyword level (more on this subject in Part 2).

So if we have a site about German Shepherd Dog Training, the domain www.germanshepherdtraining.com would be ideal (no idea if it exists by the way). I tend to use hyphens if the domain I want is not available, as in www.instant-social-traffic.com

There is a lot of argument about this and many people say using the hyphenation harms your effectiveness. I have not found that, and it does allow me to create keyword rich domains that might otherwise have been taken.

Having got your domain, you now need to get it hosted.

I use Hostgator and Hosting Bay for all of my sites. They are both good as recommended in last month’s newsletter, I’ll say no more on this subject.

Both are really easy to use and give you explicit instructions on how to transfer your domains to them. Generally two or three fields to fill in and click the button!

Now, the bit most people dread…you have to put up a website, or at very least a squeeze page to promote your products. Make sure you have a mechanism for collecting names and email addresses. (You will need an autoresponder for this – more in a minute).

Three years ago I couldn’t have built a website if my life depended on it! However, as with all things Internet marketing, there is a learning curve…and you simply MUST make that investment in learning unless you can afford to outsource.

Initially I learned to use Dreamweaver, which is a fair task for a technical bonehead (that’s me by the way).

Nowadays I use Blue Voda. This is a free download product and is so easy to use my Mum can do it! It took my Mum three years to learn email and she still rings me to ask questions about it! So, that gives you an idea as to how easy it is to use Blue Voda. If you can use Word, you can use Blue Voda with about an hours learning – maybe less.

If you can afford to outsource your web build, great go for it.

I use the following outsource sites when Lee or I don’t have the time to do our own web work…

Elance

Odesk

Rentacoder

There are others, but I have built good relationships with service providers at all of these sites.

They can be a bit “hit and miss” to start with and I had some horror stories, but over about 6 months, I have found a number of providers who have done excellent work and I can now trust. If I need work done, I turn to these trusted suppliers.

It’s the same as everything, you have to start somewhere and you can’t expect everything to flow right away. As long as you learn and gain experience from the setbacks, it makes you more effective in the long run.

I’m sure I have said before every negative has the seed of at least an equal or greater benefit within it. Sometimes you just have to look a little!

Back to autoresponders. You need one. I use Aweber.

It’s the best for the budding Internet marketer! There are free autoresponders, but…beware, many of them are blacklisted so your delivery rates will be poor.

Aweber is $19.95/month and worth a bundle more than that for the functionality you get. It’s a professional, well-respected service that will stand you in good stead in the market.

An autoresponder will automate all of your communication with your customers and potential customers.

Why do you need one?

Well, research has proven that it takes seven contacts for people to buy. After years in sales I can confirm this is true. Your customers need to trust you before they will buy as a general rule…and that takes around seven contacts from you. So, if you do not follow up with people who show an interest, you are leaving money (lots of it) on the table!

I like using the seven part free course that allows you to market the products subtly and build trust at the same time.

Again, Aweber is so easy to use. If you can point and click you can do this. And…Aweber now have extensive video training so nothing is left to chance. Everything is demonstrated in fine detail.

Now you need to enter information into your autoresponder.

As I said, at least a seven message sequence.

This is where I think it’s important that you have an interest and understanding of the niche you are attacking. If you have that understanding, then you’ll be able to write your messages as an “insider”. People will relate to you and you’ll be on the “same page” as your readers.

This is so powerful when you are trying to sell – that you can sell from your prospects “point of view”. That you’re seen as an “insider” who understands their problems and troubles.

Yes, you can outsource the writing of your content and autoresponder series, but I don’t like doing that. I like to have intimate knowledge of what I post online so that I can respond effectively to any questions. I think that is important and show’s you are serious about your niche.

There is a lot of information in this month’s missive! I still can’t believe I give all this away free to you every month! I was reading about the Red Hat business model this morning (they give their software away free), but I am convinced that if I keep giving all this great free stuff away…I will be rewarded in full (plus some) for the products I do sell.

Plus, I enjoy writing the newsletter, it’s my subject and it’s fun – and so we come full circle!

One final thing, Lee and I have upgraded the Instant Social Traffic free members area. There is now at least $497 worth of freebies in there that show you how you can start to profit from “social traffic”.

The product itself has been delivering some spectacular results for paid members. I’ll be putting a video up with some case studies soon. Keep an eye out for that.

O.K, that’s it for this month, I’ll be back with part two of the IM plan next month when I look at configuring your autoresponder, the sales process, keyword research and a few other sneaky marketing methods!

Until then, as always…to *YOUR* success.

Cheers now.

Derek

Instant Social Traffic

How To Control Time and Money

Instant Social Traffic

Instant Information Product Ideas

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–><!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–>If you think anyone else would benefit from this information, please feel free to pass it on. <!–[endif]–>

Hello and welcome to the APD Marketing May newsletter.

The weather has been brilliant here in the UK up until a couple of days ago…and we are being promised a really warm summer. So, on that note of optimism, I thought I’d write about goals this month.

Before I get started properly, it’s interesting to note that Lee and I set ourselves some serious “big hairy audacious” goals when we planned out our new product Instant Social Traffic Formula. After all, you might as well go for it. Think about it, if you set BIG goals and just miss, you still achieve something very worthwhile.

Set pathetic little goals and miss, well…what’s the point? You might as well go for it!

Anyway, we’ll be going into pre-launch in a couple of weeks. I know Lee was working on the pre-launch sign up yesterday, so why not get along and get yourself on the pre-launch list.

Instant Social Traffic Formula

What’s it all about?

Page ONE ranking on Google…overnight!

Yep, we’ve tested the system and it’s come up trumps every single time.

Do have a look, this is very hot…AMAZING stuff!

Instant Social Traffic Formula

So, let’s talk about goals! Did you know that only 5% of people actually have written goals?

Did you also know that 5% are all in the top 5% of earners (US based figures). Come what may, the message is clear…if you want to succeed you simply have to have goals set and written down.

Now I know that “life” gets in the way. But having your goals set in stone, written down and ideally backed up by picture “proof” will move you towards those goals much more quickly.

You may well have heard that doing this “tricks” your subconscious mind. This is indeed what happens. For my part I really couldn’t care a jot how it works as long as it gets me to where I want to be!

So whatever your particular goals are, be it a new car, getting out of debt, running a marathon, or simply that luxury holiday in the Maldives, you need to be completely focused on them.

Now having set your goals, it’s no secret that they can be a little awkward to keep focused on and working towards. Some days it all seems too much and you will shirk the task, and maybe need a little motivation to keep moving forward. But you must try your hardest to keep your goals in focus…because if you do the outcome is so worth it!

So, having accepted that you need goals, I am going to offer some help on how you can keep the fire to achieve your goals burning. Because if you don’t have a consuming desire to achieve them, you’ll fail. Plain and simple.

There will be days when it is that “burn” that drives you on through what might seem insurmountable obstacles. Without that burn you will fall at such obstacles!

When I first started online I failed so many times I lost count. But I just was not going to be beaten. I kept my goals in clear focus and they drove me on.

How do I “manage” my goals?

I have a scrapbook with one page dedicated to each goal. I have a heading with the goal and then I have as many pictures as I can find to reinforce the goal, make it real in my mind’s eye.

Now you may think “what a load of old mumbo-jumbo”. OK that’s fine. But let me ask you two questions.

Firstly, do you have written goals? If the answer is yes, great, you are on your way to where you want to be and further forward than 95% of the population.

If not, is your life where you want it to be? Ouch, tough question. Answer honestly!

And, finally, before I get into how to maintain that burning desire, remember success is a journey not a destination. Always keep that in mind…and enjoy the journey.

There will be times when it seems so dark you don’t know where to turn. But if you keep that burning desire and focus on your goals and enjoy the experience, you WILL get there.

So, how do you maintain that burning desire? Here are five steps that have helped me maintain focus and achieve many of the goals in my life. I hope they can do the same for you.

1. Pick the Right Goal. O.K Derek, specialist in the bleedin’ obvious! But is it? Do you really, truly know what you want? If you’re not passionate about the goal you set, you won’t have the burn and you won’t achieve the goal! I could never get passionate about knitting so it’s pointless me setting a goal to knit a jumper, because it isn’t going to happen!

How do you know if you’re focused on the right goal? The answer to this depends on you as a person, but the following test will give you a very good idea:

• If money didn’t exist, would you still do it? (a good example to apply this test to is your job - would you still do your day job if money was not an issue?)
• Are you already working towards it in your life?
• If I gave you $20m right now would you still do it?

The last question really gets to the crux of the issue. You see many goals are simply a desire for money and are nothing to do with the actions needed to build financial independence.

In itself, money won’t make you happy. Remember it’s a journey and you have to enjoy it…it’s the process of getting there that you should enjoy. If you answered no to any of those questions then you may need to have a re-think. It’s important to get this right.

2. You Can Do It. Some people will tell you how much they would love to achieve their goals, and how amazing it would be. Others run away at the first mention of the word goals. Some will tell you how wonderful it would be to achieve their “true purpose”.

So why is it that most people just don’t do it?

The only answer I can come up with is that quite simply most people either don’t truly believe they can achieve their goals or don’t believe in their goals. So, and this really hurts me, they don’t bother to try. Maybe “the system” knocks it out of them, maybe it’s fear. I don’t know, but I find this horribly sad when really, it’s so very easy.

I can’t remember who said this but “all we have to fear is fear itself”. This is so true.

It may well have been my own limiting beliefs that caused my early failures online. In fact I’m sure it was! I had to change my belief systems and I did that through goals and proof.

I think it was Tim Ferris that said (in the 4 Hour Work Week), “Get out of your own way.”

You are the only one holding you back. You can do it. You can achieve every single goal you set. I’ve done it many times, use me as proof if you like! However, you must truly believe. When this belief becomes part of your fabric it will act as a catalyst for generating that burn I talked about earlier.

3. Build Proof Through The Success Of Others. I mentioned proof in the last section. In 99.9% of cases, someone has already done what it is you wish to achieve. Find them!

Find out how they did it. Find out what they used to achieve it. What helped them along the way? Can they help you / mentor you. Can they show you proof? These are crucial questions that you need to answer. They will offer valuable insight into your goal and…provide proof that it can be done!

Not only will this provide practical help in getting YOU to your destination, but by seeing the proof, you will then know for sure that you can do it too.

When I made the quality decision I was going to become an Internet marketer, I found mentors and followed people who had done what I wanted to do. OK, it took me a while to find my trusted people, but I simply copied what they had done. Simple, but outstandingly effective :>)

4. Find “Soul Brothers” On The Same Journey. When you are experiencing “times of trouble”, it is a great comfort to have people who understand your issues and who you can share with. It is helpful if you can find and talk to people who have overcome your particular problem.

I’ll use the Internet marketing example again. There is so much to learn when you first get started. I found some really helpful forums like the Warrior Forum and the sadly departed Adwords Excellence.

I overcame so many problems with help from the people in these forums. Indeed, I met my business partner Lee Brooker at Adwords Excellence. We started out just helping each other out where one of us had a skills gap. We quickly came to realise we had complementary skills and formed a partnership

That partnership has moved both of our businesses so much further forward than we would have got on our own!

Finding others on the same journey will give you a yardstick to measure your own progress and keep you encouraged to stay on track.

5. Become “Goal Aware” Simply put, make sure you are aware of and can ‘home in’ on things that will help you achieve your goals. To give you an example, if you are reading a book relaxed on the sofa and your son is playing away in the background, you would be able to maintain concentration.

However, if an angry mountain lion were to burst into the room, it would definitely attract your attention and evasive action would be instantly taken (well, I would hope so anyway).

So, we naturally focus on things of high importance to us. This “response mechanism” can be trained to help achieve your goals.

How do you do this? You’re probably not going to like the answer, in fact I can hear you groaning already…visualization! For at least 5 minutes during your day you should visualize your life as it will be with all of your goals achieved.

I love my visualization as I find somewhere quiet and drift away into my own little dream world of sun, sea, and a few other s’s! I feel that sun on my back, I feel the warm sand between my toes and I splash around in the cool crystal blue sea.

This really “turbo charges” and brings the goals to life. It tells my subconscious that these goals are important. And, it’s also why I use pictures to bring the goals to life. And, once the subconscious has “got” the message, it will drive you on to achieve your goals.

So, I know all this stuff about goals and visualization might sound a bit “wishy washy”, but…ask any successful person about goals and I bet you every last one of them will have set, written, picture-backed, visualized goals.

Why? Because when they do this…they achieve ALL of their desires!

You must have clearly defined goals backed up by the techniques I have given you here.

If you’re still sceptical, try to suspend that disbelief and commit to giving it a go for three months and see what happens!

I remember once writing some goals down and then losing or forgetting about them. One of the goals was to get an Audi Quattro 2.8. As I said, I totally forgot about those goals. I was having a clear out some four years later and found them.

I was amazed when I read that goal because…sitting on the drive was that Audi Quattro 2.8. I didn’t even get a picture or visualize, yet I still achieved the goal! The power of the subconscious is truly amazing!

Moving on, enough of the wishy-washy stuff for this newsletter :>)

You may be thinking, come on Derek, what about all the hard edged money-making stuff?

Well, I haven’t forgotten that! I have taken to publishing all of the “nitty-gritty” “how to” stuff on HubPages, so…since the last newsletter I have published the following “how to” stuff. It’s all free so please go enjoy!

7 Steps To Easy And Prolific Internet Product Development

Do You Have The Millionaire Mentality?

5 Steps To Internet Marketing Success

Why Most People Fail At Internet Marketing

There’s enough “how to” stuff there to keep you going for a while. If you like the Hubs, please give me a “thumbs up” and leave a comment.

Well, that brings another lengthy newsletter to a close…I do like to make sure I give you great value!

Until next month, set those goals and go for it!

As always, to YOUR success

Cheers now and have fun!

Derek

APD Internet Marketing

Turn Time Into Money