Joking apart, Kern is obviously a very confident, very alpha type character with lots of dough to spend on his launches: he obviously loves stirring up the masses and turning up the volume for his product launch events. But even old Frankie boy had to start somewhere with his lap guitar and his marketing.

So what have I got to compete against the big boys with?

Several giveaway events looking for marketers who have at least a small list and the ability to upload a gift and associated squeeze page. If you are stuck on these ideas, get in touch.

These include the IM-REI event, The Internet Marketing Stampede and especially for the newcomers to our weird and wonderful world, the Newbie Giveaway.

These giveaway events are all looking for contributors, they are suitable for anybody who has at least made a start on building their lists.

What Does it do for you ? Benefits Benefits Benefits

Simple - it’s a great way of growing your list … and you know what that means for your sales and long term prosperity … it can literally Save Your Marketing World

Additionally, the Olympic Giveaway is still in full flow and you can get a range of goodies there.

What To Do Next!
You know what to do. Sign up
Upload your gift
promote to your list

Watch Your List Grow!!

Just a brief post this as I’m off out the door to pick the kids up from the airport. More after the weekend.

Like most people who are new(ish) to this way of working for a living, I would log on and be “eyeball smacked” by a dozen different must have, UTTERLY ESSENTIAL, you’re a dork if you haven’t got this piece of myxomatosis, … tools tweaks or widgets.

Even for a marketing resistant mutant like me it was all too much and I now find myself with a rack of gear and software that frankly I don’t really know where to start with. There are some great tools: and for keyword research Nichebot has turned out to be an absolutely brilliant piece of kit. This gives you access to a whole raft of complementary keyword information sources at a far lower cost (it does cost though) than if you were to try and access these services on your own. This ranges from simple scans by Word Tracker right through to the Google Keyword Cruncher. Need a 100 keyword list? No problem with Nichebot. The training videos within the site are absolutely excellent. Chris really knows what he’s talking about and keeps it at a shop floor level that is understandable: even if you’re not a “Google Geek”.

Now marketing Big Boy, Mike Filsaime has released a report that summarises all the software and tools that he uses.

If you are wondering, “What do I need to get myself going?” This free “RESOURCE REPORT” is a good guide to what 1 multi millionaire thinks is the essential package. Don’t be naive though, of course he is trying to sell you something, but the free report is definitely worth the read. If you are about to invest in your E Office, the resource package he is offering on the other side might just be the most cost effective purchase you ever make. I wish it had been on offer before I set out on the last 6 months of spending.

You can get your copy here it is a very informative read, giving the thinking behind each tool.

There is something very cobwebby about Internet Marketing. There are so many strands to it that it is very easy to be diverted from your primary focus. At least, that’s my excuse for this second part of Willie’s article taking so long to appear. In reality, I stumbled across a higher priority. I needed the SKILLS to prepare myself as a contributor to a JV Giveaway event. And am I glad I refocussed? You Bet. I will try and publish a post on what I learned when the final part of this article has been aired again.

This is what he says…

My Ads Aren’t Working! part 2 by Willie Crawford

The KEY to writing an effective ad is telling the customer “what’s in it for him.” Spell out specific benefits in both your headlines and in the body of your ad. Talk directly to your customer in your ad, telling him what you are going to do for him. Don’t list product features - list benefits!

Many ads don’t even tell the customer WHAT they are selling. Instead they hype how much money can be made with the “ground floor opportunity” or “proven program.”

Others yell about how many will already be placed in your “downline.” Why would anyone respond to such an ad? Many online people are sooo fed up with trying different hyped up opportunities. If yours is different, at least tell the customer *how* it’s different and *what* it is. More importantly, tell the customer “what your product or service is going to do for him.”

After you have a good headline and good body copy, you need a call to action. You need to tell the customer what action you want him to take. Do you want him to: visit a website; request more details; download a trial copy; get a sample chapter; vote? Tell the customer what he should do next. Your ad may have him marginally interested but he often will not take action unless you tell him to.

Give the customer several ways of taking advantage of your great offer if appropriate. For example, you may want to give both a website url and an email address.

Consider what you want him to do AND the medium you are using. For example, if your ad is in an ezine that is sent out via email, you may not want to force you prospect to open a browser and visit a website. Maybe he doesn’t want to open his browser at that time, and maybe an autoresponder message would better serve your purpose.

If your ad will be posted on a webpage, maybe you don’t want to force your prospect to open his email program to respond to your offer. The preferred method of having the customer contact you depends upon a lot of circumstances including what you are ultimately trying to accomplish with you ad.

While on the topic of methods of contact, a lot of ads turn the customer off with the email address or website urls used.

If your ad offers a free email address for contact (such as Hotmail) or a website hosted at a free site (such as Freeyellow) a major percentage of qualified prospects will not respond to your offer. They will reason that if you are not serious enough - professional enough - to invest a little in your business, you probably are not stable enough to risk doing business with.

If you don’t have your own domain name at least use the email address provided by your ISP. People who have been online for a while associate many of the free email addresses with fly-by-night operators. Regardless of how fair this assessment is, you will loose many potential orders if you don’t acknowledge this point.

Having your own domain name makes sense for the same reason. Many people who have been online for a while, associate websites on free hosts with fly-by-night operators, or those not really serious about their business. They reason that if you will not invest a few dollars in your own domain name, how serious and credible are you?

Domain names are dirt cheap!

Professional web hosting comes in a range of prices - depending largely upon the amount of customer support and website capabilities you want. (N.B. My favourite, and I’ve signed up for a 2 year deal, is IX hosting based in Kentucky I’m hopeful it’s a better export than fried chicken!! Ray). If you want readily available customer support, then the web host needs to charge enough to have technicians standing by. If you can wait a day or two to have someone respond to your email when your website is down, then the web host doesn’t need to have technicians standing by and they can charge less. If you want to run cgi scripts, have a shopping cart, have a database or other such features, you will be using more of your web host’s server resources. He needs to charge more to afford greater capability.

Proof positive that having your own domain name, professionally hosted, dramatically increases your chances of online success is readily available. Simply log online and visit a few successful online businesses. They will ALL have their OWN professional-sounding domain. If YOU don’t do this, your ads referring people to your website will NOT pull.

In my next post of Willie’s article he explains a final crucial piece of the marketing jigsaw. On reflecting about what’s contained in this section and my first year or so’s effort, I can see where many of my marketing messages were so wide of any known effective mark, it’s almost embarrassing. However recognising the shortfall and skilling up to meet it are rather different beasts. Copywriting is without doubt an art form and there is a lot of psychology and skill to grasp…

And just to remind you of some resources you might find helpful; any good book on copywriting will give you more of these terms so I won’t elaborate on that here, but if you want a good ebook on how to write using language that excites a customer get a free copy of “The Net Writing Master’s Course”

Here’s a useful blog by Ron Castle on the noble art of copywriting. He’s also a bit of an SEO expert.
Good luck with your marketing everyone and don’t forget, your prospects are going to say, “What’s in it for me?” and ,”Is the guy a pro or a t+@ser?” Make sure they get the right answer for you.

The article was by a guy called Willie Crawford and I am going to put it up in 3 sections on the blog as it was a “Right Riveting Read!”

It set out out in words, even I could understand, how to set up your advertising copy and test the results. So here ya go! Here’s part 1.

My Ads Aren’t Working!
by Willie Crawford

My ads aren’t working! I don’t get much response to my ezine ads! How can I improve my ad response rates? These are comments I hear frequently from associates who advertise regularly online. After taking a look at their ads, here is the advice I often offer them on improving their ads:

First of all, the ad must be BELIEVABLE. Fully 80% of the ads that I review lack credibility. Yes - people want to believe that they can earn a fortune - in a month - with absolutely no work. However, things don’t work that way! If it were THAT easy, everybody would be doing it.

After all, we like to share secrets with our family and friends. Anyone discovering a way to earn money THAT easy would have shared it with their friends .. who would have shared it with their friends….. and they would have shared it with their friends. Soon everyone would know about it and be making a fortune.

This great moneymaker would not need to be advertised since it would be spreading so fast by word-of-mouth.

Your potential customers are very intelligent. They can spot a hyped-up exaggeration when they see one. Don’t use them - make your ads believable.

Starting with the most important part of your ad - the headline. It must be believable and it must grab their attention.

How do you get their attention? You tell them how you are going to solve a problem for them, or how you are going to prevent them from having a problem in the first place. There are many “hot words” that have been proven to grab a persons attention better than others. You need to use these in your headlines too. Examples of these words include:

“Free”
“You”
“Discover”
“New”

Any good book on copywriting will give you more of these terms so I won’t elaborate on that here. If you want a good ebook on how to write using language that excites a customer get a free copy of “The Net Writing Master’s Course”

Here’s a useful blog by Ron Castle on the noble art of copywriting:

After my initial growing pains in this game, I was pleased to find a plain English guide to getting the advertising right. I doubt I’ve got it right yet, but I am now working on it with a lot more of a “clue”.

Keep an eye out for part 2 coming soon to a blog near you!!

By the way; don’t forget there are a whole bunch of giveaway events kicking off at the moment so just have a look at the previous post on my blog. Details of my personal favourites.;-)

This is one project that has the capability to banish the Monday Blues and brighten up the gloom and doom that the media is peddling about 2008.

Because of my direct connection to 2 of the founding members of project MONDAY PAYDAY, I am in the unfamiliar position of being able to get you in early at the top end of the tree. You would be wise to get in quick, because your earning potential is so much higher in the upper levels; as with most programmes.

Unfortunately, because I’m not actually a founder myself, I’m not privy to all the information that will launch this baby. However, as soon as the info emerges, on Monday April 28th, I will be posting here to get it out to as many interested folk as possible. Watch this Space!!

If you want a little more tantalisation - have a sneaky look at the page from Simon’s Diary that is doing the rounds at the moment. This promises to be a big BIG launch without the usual over hyped “Mass Control” hysteria.

The Secret Diary Files

I decided that I really ought to check what I was displaying in the traffic exchanges and check out the hits and misses - so to speak. I got a shock when I started checking the contents of the “My Web Sites” sections of the accounts I hold. Outdated links, links with typos, Web sites not enabled … I could go on but the list just gets more embarrassing. Like I said at the start, I had dived in and got involved at too deep a level in too many programme’s at once, completely failing to check whether I had set up my accounts properly. The up side of that, was that I did at least have thousands of credits sitting “in the bank” ready to be unleashed. So I have had a day and a half of solid graft, up until my ex-wife brought the kids back from their holiday, to get my accounts in order. I am looking forward to some better responses over the next few weeks.

The advice we are given, by the experienced marketers we look to for tips and tricks, is to constantly check and recheck our ads responses. Slowly I am beginning to understand just what that means, but a couple of interesting patterns did emerge. Despite the poor set up of my accounts, I was still getting some traffic and there were some TXs which were clearly more responsive to my ads. At present my top 3 would have to be:

CosmicRay’s Top Three Traffic Programs

Stan’s the MAN - he has set up a very responsive site with (even better) hungry users.

Paul Kinder has obviously learned his business from the top eggs!! Traffic Splash is giving me the second best response rate.

Matthew will give you lots of insider info with his exchange; Web Biz Insider.

These 3 are the ones that have been working best for me personally. What I have used as a kind of umbrella to organise my surfing activities is a programme called Vital Viral. Effectively this provides a programme where you can promote all your traffic Exchange affiliations at one fell swoop. If a member signs up in vital viral and subsequently joins any of the other exchanges below you they are added to your downline instead of some other promoter’s downline. There is also a very helpful support section which gives great advice about how to organise your surfing sessions; particularly - how to use multi tabbed browsing to use your time more efficiently - and importantly - how to give other advertisers at least a few seconds of your time so that the whole Traffic Exchange phenomena is a REAL benefit and remains a 2 way street.

While I was setting up my websites in HitSafari I chanced to look through their forum and found that it had a very well set out series of tips. I’m not entirely sure why, but the information here is much more accessible to us normal “non-geekers” than the info in most of the other forums I’ve checked recently. if you are new to TXs this is particularly helpful. Although I’ve only recently reactivated my HitSafari account, it is apparently well up the rankings at present and getting good responses. And - it does have the free option so you can’t really lose.

Well I hope that you newer traffickers will find the information helpful - remember, these are just my impressions - warts and all. CYA next time.

Many people, new to the Internet Marketplace, buy a series of poorly understood products and fritter away their hard earned cash, believing naively that the promises of rapid wealth creation are somehow more real or believable than the cruel world of traditional business. Not surprisingly, to those of us who have come through initial disappointments and disasters, newcomers fail by the shed-load! Prosperizer is a new kid on the block from a well established stable. It seeks to take the hype out of high income potential and set newcomers up with a realistic game plan for financial independence. MASSIVE plans for the future of Prosperizer are rolling out so that the new affiliate need not go out and waste a ton of money on yet more impulse “must haves”. The most significant enhancements to member benefits are: the implementation of the VIP club and RIS; the Residual Income Systems. Other changes to increase the value for paid members include: the end of the free trial; members only access to the community forum and redesigned squeeze pages to attract more visitors and improve conversion rates!

Prosperizer is the brainchild of a team of entrepreneurs from the UK who are all successful in their own right, but who want to improve the embarrassing drop out rate of around 95% among new Internet marketers. Following launch in January, members are already seeing increased numbers of sign ups and growing streams of income. The great thing about Prosperizer is the attention to detail, in the systems being developed for newbies, to get their businesses off to a solid start. There is a tremendous community within the Prosperizer organisation, which reflects the ethos of the guys and girls who put this project together. They realised that the dropout rate was high because in most programmes there is a gap in the support available to new entrepreneurs; between the point where they have got to the end of the auto responder series that comes with their initial purchase and that point where they feel confident enough to approach their upline. Everybody in this project is approachable and looking out for you! The Prosperizer team has recently developed important upgrades to the system, to increase its value to members.

The most significant enhancement for ALL members, is the Residual Income Systems squeeze page - with FREE Report. Prospects signing up here receive access to a concise report explaining frequently misunderstood concepts around building a residual income from the start. (Something the author wishes he had understood better in his early days). The member benefit here, is that the prospect is automatically directed to the member’s personal autoresponder so that the member’s own list grows. For the prospect, there is a multi-part email course that is relayed to them over the period of a fortnight. The content is basic, clear, concise and generic, making it highly relevant to developing Prosperizer or any business system.

The second major upgrade to member’s benefits is the launch of the Prosperizer VIP club. This is effectively an advertising co-op. Members subscribe to 1 or more shares in the co-op each month. The revenue is then used to buy advertising and leads from sources that the founders have used successfully over the years themselves. The first national media advertising appeared in the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror in the UK this week. The leads generated by the co-op are then directed to the individual affiliates squeeze pages according to their share investment. The focus is on helping new marketers to monetize their businesses at an early stage, using the clout and leverage of established marketer’s contacts. The signs are already good, with the Prosperizer forum buzzing!

On the 25th of February, the 7 Day FREE Trial with Prosperizer was terminated. Now; people who are interested, are required to show a little more commitment to building their financial future with Prosperizer. There is still a 7 day trial period which costs £19.99, effectively the initial set up fee. After a week, if the new recruit wants to continue, because they find the content valuable - and like me, they will - they start paying their regular monthly fee of £39.95. For the referring member, there is a commission of 50% on all fees paid by new affiliates. The membership gives affiliates access to some superb training materials in a variety of media. The training is cleverly differentiated for the member, so that materials can be accessed at a comfortable level. It is under the member’s control when they move themselves up to the next level. Another well thought out feature of the training materials in Prosperizer, is the way that fresh material is unlocked at different times. This allows members, particularly new starters, to take action on the basic steps before they are swamped with more tips and instructions. The emphasis is always on encouraging people to TAKE ACTION to build their Prosperizer business and any other business with which they are involved. Greg McKenzie’s technical training videos are also superb, in the way they explain unfamiliar concepts such as; pre-loading auto-responders and redirecting URLs: they could be destined for greatness as training gems - with a quality Scottish accent ;0). Great work Greg! Additionally there is a marketplace section where affiliates have access to a series of hot ebooks with PLR rights and affiliate marketer’s tools that will shorten the learning curve significantly.

Other improvements include the redesign of the squeeze pages by graphics and copywriting maestro Simon Tofield and the closure of the Prosperizer Forum to non members. Why do this you might ask? Because we feel, a freely accessible public forum devalues everything that we are trying to achieve with Prosperizer. And that is to create an Exclusive Wealth Building Club! We are taking the hard and fast approach. If you’re not in you’re out! However, the investment required for this scheme is superb value for starting up a business, with such life changing potential! Prosperizer is also intimately linked to - and provides a springboard, for some of the rising stars of the online marketing world: UVME, eLottery and GDI. Membership includes squeeze pages for these opportunities and the developers are determined to give all entrepreneurs the tools and the skills to develop a stable financial base within Prosperizer and then branch out into the other superb opportunities or build any other business of their choosing. The extra pages are:

1. uVme squeeze page that’s exclusive to each Prosperizer Membership. This will help members build their uVme online games business if they so choose. (See http://viralurl.com/Cosmicray/UVME for access to the games site and http://viralurl.com/Cosmicray/uVmeBiz to examine the business opportunity video)

2. E-Lottery DVD site - this is a funded proposal where members keep the £4.95 that is charged for the excellent quality DVD, promoting this well established, rock solid business. (eLottery has been in existence for nearly 6 years and is a market leader in on-line entertainment businesses. The parent company, Virtual World Direct, is also responsible for launching uVme)
3. Residual Income Systems - with FREE Report as described above.

These three squeeze pages alone would cost people in excess of £1500 if you were to hire web or graphic designers of the calibre of John McNiven and Simon Tofield. In fact, it would cost you nearly the price of your membership just to host these fantastic, high quality sites…. And finally not forgetting to mention the member’s existing Prosperizer squeeze page. And don’t forget there is a re-brandable Freedomizer magazine and The Prosperizer Report! There are more training materials in video and pdf form. There is real time marketing of E-lottery rollover mini-sites. And … much, much more….as the development team steadily ramp up the available resources.
Believe me when I tell you……people will be kicking themselves right this very minute that they never had the foresight to take the 7 Day Free Trial while they had the chance. That’s great news for the members who took the leap of faith and joined early. Prosperizer still represents a tremendous investment in yourself, if you are serious about starting your online marketing career. For the more experienced marketer, the team have some established best sellers and are also developing further novel projects that should whet the appetite of any marketer. The time to get involved is now so that you are in on the ground floor of an opportunity that is causing a frenzy amongst those who understand its supportive philosophy and its very strength within the founding group of entrepreneurs.

Are YOU ready to Power Up Your Income?

CosmicRay at The Northern View. http://viralurl.com/Cosmicray/Residual

This is virtually the text of an article I wrote about the Prosperizer opportunity for press releases and article directories which have gone online over the last few days. I am a newcomer to the delights of press releases and article marketing and despite basing this article on a ready made solo ad within the Prosperizer resources, It has needed several tweaks and additions, in order to suit the 3 basic writing styles required by the different text types found in: this blog, an article or a press release. An additional time eater was the learning curve involved in getting used to the different layouts of the various publishing portals. The real killer though, was when the Free Press Release site went down just before I copied the text of the article body into a notepad file … Coyses!!! This was a little ironic as I had just given my daughter a stern lecture on the importance of saving her work regularly if she was working at my computer!! Poetic justice!

What I have learned over the last couple of days has been very useful. I won’t profess to know a great deal about great copywriting yet, but there are a few little pointers for anyone who is venturing into the world of articles and press releases.

I used a very good FREE services to send out my press release about the changes to Prosperizer. Free Press Release.com is my first venture into online press releases. I found their site a wee bit tricky at first, but after a couple of visits, setting up my basic free account was very simple and once I had clicked around a couple of times I discovered excellent guidance on article writing and bashed away editing and redrafting my basic text to suit the sections of:

HEADLINE
SUMMARY
BODY
CONTACT DETAILS
KEYWORDS

Shortly after completing this article, I realised that I needed to do something to get my article higher in the rankings. I then took notice of the paid options and decided to cough up the initial $50 payment as there was a better value than paying the bare minimum. I converted my writing to a premium article for 1$. I was pleased to see my article on the homepage shortly afterwards, but I was way down the page in about 80th position. My next discovery was the article promotion section. It took me a few minutes to work out how this worked, but by bidding $20 my article was raised to 16th on the page and within half an hour I had noticed about 115 hits. Traffic is the whole point of Press releases and on first appearances that piece of hard work is beginning to have the desired effect. So from my initial experience I would highly recommend Free Press Release- and I don’t even get a commission!!

In my next post I will recount my entertainments when I tried to publish this work as an article. If you found this worth reading, many thanks for sticking around and all the best in your endeavours.
CosmicRay

I left my employment as a teacher on December 31st 2007.

I know my BIG WHY now, with a crystal clarity that I didn’t have before today. More importantly, I understand that nagging gut feeling that I couldn’t articulate for so many years. It was called unhappiness and I never knew.

So, as a newly “ex” teacher and newbie at marketing online, the rest of the entries in this blog will detail how I find ways to overcome the hurdles of a completely new and for me, an almost totally unexpected way of life. The details of how I went from scared beginner to gradually build a list of subscribers. I’ll detail the ways I am learning from experienced people, how the different courses and ebooks rate: the ones that deliver the useful information that is helping me grow my business. I’ll describe the opportunities that I am using to help me reshape my life, including: uVme and elottery from VWD; Prosperizer the most supportive of new start up projects; traffic exchanges and viral list building. I’ll tell it the way it is and describe my cock ups and crowning glories in the hope that you the reader can take something from my experiences and shorten your learning curve on the way to growing your business.
With all best wishes,
Ray of Team CosmicRays
aka MisterC
Oh and by the way, look out for The Northern View!

PS.
What wouldn’t we all do to be at the top of Google’s search results? Well for a limited time - and I suggest you’re quick- 1 on 40 are beta testing their package for getting subscribers to the top of, not just Google’s, but at least 39 other search engine’s results. They guarantee to do this within 120 days and if you get in during this beta phase, you won’t pay them anything until you are top for your 5 keywords for at least a week. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s got to be worth a punt! It’s the first no hype - no brainer I’ve come across in this game. When you go to the web site, just be aware that there is a client login and an affiliate login that you need to keep clear in your mind or your records, to navigate their websites easily. Get ready for the traffic and sales flood!