Mid Life Marketer’s Kick Start

It’s really strange how so many of us Internet Marketers buy into all sorts of tools and services that we never get round to using properly.

I subscribed to Leadsleap when it first appeared on the scene earlier this year. Because of the number of different schemes I have used to promote PROSPERIZER, my primary online business, I kind of forgot about Leadsleap. In my absent mindedness, LeadsLeap continued to grow and its active members have been generating very focussed leads and increased turnover. The turning point for me, was when I started looking at the relative costs of the Pro membership compared with the classic PPC system on Google. For that reason alone, if you are working in the “Making Money Online” niche you have a highly targeted audience for your ads in this enormous market. As a pro you are able to have your PPC style advert displayed on LeadsLeaps viral blog for what amounts to something approaching just 6 cents a click. And remember, the readers are your target audience! Well worth a try.

The blog posts themselves are a classic series of tips, how tos and explanations of the basic nitty-gritty knowledge we need and the “arcania” of this marketing world. The information is not in itself highly original or innovative, BUT it is presented in a very simple clear cut manner that beginners can learn from and which clarifies the concepts for us overloaded and confused post-beginners.

These posts are produced by Kenneth Koh who is a bit of a rising star. This is one system where your inbox is NOT buried under the deluge of marketing emails, so many systems produce. Herein lies one of its magical elements. I have included an extract from the latest post below, to give you a flavour of the material. Here Kenneth is trying to encourage you to look behind the “Hoo Hah” publicity that many gurus present about themselves. It’s all too easy to be sucked in by the publicity if you don’t choose a product line that fits your psyche. The full post can be found on the LeadsLeap blog itself!

Here’s what Kenneth has to say about gurus:

How To Come Out With Innovative Ideas That Sell

I’m quite sure that you have constantly been bombarded with offers from different internet marketing gurus asking you to buy their products or other guru’s products.

Let me give you another example. continued on the LeadsLeap blog.

** Prosperizer/Winners Of Wealth Links Update 17th Oct 2008 *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Prosperizer is beginning to take off BIG STYLE. This is mainly due to the efforts of our dedicated back room team of Simon Tofield, Paul Ward and a cast of dozens. Last week, on the back of the success of the Winners of Wealth; system they launched a whole range of new products which I detail below. The simplest way is just to include Paul’s over excited newsletter (typos and all!!) I’ve just tidied up the links so you can see our information more easily. I’ve been a bit remiss in my own marketing and educational efforts this week as I have been full on, developing a virtual tour for some friends and their hotel. I’ve nearly cracked it!!
Here’s Paul’s email:

Hi Ray

We’ve been absoultely manic over the past few weeks, we’ve
had hundreds of new members join our club, the launch last
week of the WOW Products went down a storm, and we’re all
burining the midnight oil, getting the next range of new
products and websites ready for our members…

…so, just in case you’ve missed some emails, here’s a quick
sumummary of all our latest offers, so you can have a look
and if you like what you see, there’s buttons and forms on
each page to signup.

NOTE. For Winners Of Wealth and Prosperizer you only need to
signup to one or the other, because all the products and
services are available ! PLUS We now have offline payment
options to join our club !

Winners Of Wealth (WOW Tips) - Paper Trade 1 Month for £9.95

Prosperiser (Secret Files) - Money Making Fies for £9.95 (I think he means the “Money Making FILES!)

WOW Products
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Credit Crunch Buster
http://products.winnersofwealth.com/creditbuster/

Racing 4 Cash
http://products.winnersofwealth.com/racing4cash/

Coming Soon….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WOW Paradise - Win & Make Money..

Members Links
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tips & Files
http://www.winnersofwealth.com/members
http://www.winnersofwealth.com/members

Members Forum
http://www.prosperizerforum.com
http://www.winnersofwealthforum.com

Regards

The WOW team
Prosperizer

Now do you think he was in a rush!! I have a good idea how hard these guys have been working for us

Why is the, oh so, Alternative Frank Kern trying to achieve world domination like one of the hypnotic megalomaniac arch villains from Dr Who? Come and Save the World at these events. Prove to Mr Kern that he is a misguided misanthrope and the marketing world is far better for adopting the World Saving Marketing Model

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.

The third episode is short and sweet. It also reflects the part of this game I just haven’t got on top of as a relative newbie: it’s the whole tracking and testing scene. Without doubt it is completely crucial in helping you avoid wasted dollars and effort and yet the whole concept is furry, fuzzy and incomplete in my head. This is the next big area for me to work on. Here is Willie Crawford’s take on it.

A final element of creating successful ads is testing. You must test EVERY ad that you use. Experiment by changing different elements of your ad. Change the headline or a few words in the ad body. Record the response rate that you get.

Now change the url or capitalization and note the results you get. Just changing one element in an ad can result in 100 times the response rate. Then, when you find an ad that works, stick with it until it stops working. Continue to test other ads for the same product or service, but don’t stop running the one that’s working!

You never know what ad is going to strike just the right chord in your prospects. At the same time, what worked today may not work tomorrow. There are certain advertising concepts that never seem to change but many do.

A classic book called Scientific Advertising is one of the best books on writing and testing ads available anywhere. I use techniques from the book every advertising campaign I run. If you would like a free copy you can download it from my site at:
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=DXH8Z&m=9K9rtmU2IOtW5&b=Vqgqfhm9azWcKnMmU3GJcQ

Download this ebook and study it carefully. Some of the most successful copywriters around regularly mention this book as one they learned to write great ad copy from. Then it’s largely a matter of creating an ad following the proven steps and testing, testing, testing!

To your success - Willie Crawford
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=DXH8Z&m=9K9rtmU2IOtW5&b=xTTuztqlaHuZh71FpO8GDw

A couple of weeks ago I got a message from Dan Foley. Just another in a string of infommercials after I had subscribed to one of his list offers. That’s what I thought at first glance. I read on for a few sentences, because it was obviously a case of Dan TESTING his advertising and trying to get feedback about whether his readers favoured longer articles or “chunked” information. Thinking back, I don’t think I actually answered his original question… “Doh!”

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.;-)

As a climber, of the rock and ice, rather than social persuasion and a bloke who was in an ivory tower, believing he was completely immunised against the influence of marketing; I still wake up some days and wonder what I’m doing following the on-line marketing path. When I started climbing, I didn’t have a lot of cash - frequently I had none. I used to make my climbing “breeks” from chopped off army surplus trousers and a touch of needle and thread. I was always a bit cautious about the contents of my cranium and I used to lug an old motor cycle helmet around the hills, I certainly looked a state and I certainly wasn’t pulling like some of my smooth talking mates. But the freedom, adventure and the feeling of escape from my hometown where nothing happened apart from the Country and Western Dance on a Saturday night and the after hours punch up on the way home; that feeling was indescribable. Scruffiness almost became my badge of rebellion - I was such a compliant “good boy” back then! What has all that got to do with our marketing businesses? I suppose it’s about looking past the veneer of first impressions when we are trying to crystallise our WHY!

When I look at the image so many people like to project; of the sports cars, luxury yachts and sunny beach lifestyle, I find it grates - at first. I sometimes think many people (myself included all too frequently) miss the real point of all the hard work we do, to have our own businesses. It goes much deeper than the material manifestations of wealth. Time freedom and the ability to be there for the ones you love are the key things for me. And … eventually, I am sure, financial freedom! To me those kinds of freedoms are worth far more than the big house, the Merc or the yacht. And then, when I wind my inverted snobbery down a notch or two and look carefully at the message that the “flash car photo” entrepreneurs are putting out; it’s actually the same as mine. We’ve all got dreams of an ideal lifestyle and we project a picture to catch people’s attention. It doesn’t necessarily define our values.

When I left my job and was able to see my kids out to school regularly, I knew I had found the start of my own road forward. I was looking at a pretty scary fall from high power assistant headteacher to unemployed and broken down ex teacher. I was ready for the change though and the initial “poverty” has been very “motivating”.

You might be amused by my tag of CosmicRay and it might surprise you to know that there isn’t a shred of hippy in me! It’s all the fault of a friend from York 25 years ago, who spotted me strung out on the crux of a hardish rock climb in the Lake District, when I was an aspiring hard(?!)man. “Blood*@ hell,” he shouted up in his wry way, “You’ve got better! You must be getting cosmic Ray!” He was shocked to see I’d progressed onto scary routes. Not too helpful at that precise moment, as I was looking at the prospect of taking a big fall, because I couldn’t work out the sequence to get around a steep nose of rock. When he realised I was in trouble, he quietly told me about the “secret” hold around the corner - I breathed again and an eighty footer onto a ledge was avoided (in contrast to a lad from our club the previous weekend, who had missed the hold). Fortunately he was young and bouncy and got over his battering in a couple of weeks.

This marketing game is a bit like trying to tackle a climb that’s harder than you have previously attempted at the sharp end. Jumping off the career carousel was just as scary in its own way because more was at stake - it wasn’t just me any more, I now had children in a disintegrating marriage to look out for. But now, as then, the quiet word(s) from a friend (and a competitor of sorts) was enough to see me on the road to success and safety. It’s turning out to be a rerun of that same tale, as people give me little pointers and go out of their way to steer me round some of the more obvious pitfalls. I have been amazed at the constant help that is available - we only have to ask. It is very difficult for a person upline of you to know whether your lack of success is due to inaction or a misunderstanding of a new technique you’ve been trying. At the moment I am trying to get to grips with advertising on Craigslist and I am running into all the problems that are mentioned, a bit too quietly in that new course you bought!! BUT I will succeed, I will put into action all the tips that I hadn’t absorbed from my course materials and the new information I am turning up in various blogs. In my next posting, I will try and explain how I have gotten around the difficulties of using Craigslist, without hopefully having broken the rules or misused the resource.

My measures of success may be different to yours, but whatever it may be I am here to help you achieve it, no matter how material or “Cosmic” it may be. What I can’t answer myself, I can soon point you towards an answer, because that’s the way we become successful - by networking and building up relationships with each other. It’s a relationship game! Just like the day when a pal who was very competitive about his climbing realised there was a real problem and was there with a ready answer, a “secret” key that those in the know had access to. If you are looking for a business where help is constantly available from myself and many more experienced folk, I’ve listed some character sketches of my main focus. I’m sure there will be one of these busineses that suits your individual approach.

CosmicRay and the NorthernView bring you a range of opportunities from fast money start ups for beginners to high commitment, serious long term earners.

Prosperizer - a great opportunity with all your tools in one place. Join a superb community populated by individuals who are committed to helping and guiding you to success

eLottery - the ultimate system for playing the UK lottery and EuroMillions. With a little effort you even play them for FREE. If you are looking for a more sensible way to have a flutter, with a business that has an extremely low initial investment then this could be the one.

Plug in to Profits with NorthernViewWealth this is one of many turn key full on solutions. It is almost the legendary “business in a box” that many people need.

uVme - this is going to be the standard by which all on-line skill game web sites are judged. Pure fun and games with a built in business plan, which avoids any gambling connections. :wink

Join me in any of these ventures and we will build strong supportive teams that last.

Life Recast

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!

Hallo folks, CosmicRay here from the UK. I’m destressing after having jumped overboard from my teaching career. The last couple of years of professional and domestic stress have added up to my very own mid life crisis. Now, for some strange reason; being the most advertising resistant punter going, I have launched my Internet Marketing CAREER, to calm the crisis. I consider myself pretty lucky, because there’s a small nest egg to keep me going through the first few months of floundering. So, I’ve jumped in with both feet… and now my personal Internet fortune amounts to a magnificent, staggering $50- Yippee - yabadabadoo!

And that’s after only my first month of effort since breaking free to pursue this line of business. Obviously I am a powerful force on the marketing scene. LOL

Well, the drugs have worn off now and the real world has come back to haunt me.

The truth is, I’m a pretty raw beginner, but I’m in for the long haul as this will succeed. These Internet businesses are genuine. That’s the first truth that it took me a while to accept.

Secondly, these businesses are eminently doable. Like everyone, I imagine, I spent the last year or so of tentatively “looking into” this world; feeling totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume and diversity of information that was pushed my way as a “Newbie”. For a long time I was studying one programme, then another, then another… and sure enough I made the semi-fatal mistake of letting myself get drawn into too many programmes (English spelling - the real word!!) at once, so my little nest egg is dwindling rapidly towards cut off point.

Until quite recently I lacked the confidence to jump in and make my own splash pages and I am still nervous about the idea of blogging unless the mis-adventures of a numpty marketer could be a saleable item? So I hope this first foray isn’t a turn off for anybody looking in.

I have however, been fortunate to be taken under the wing of Paul Ward a pretty successful UK marketer. So I now feel a lot more on track. It’s amazing how quickly a guy, with a bit of mileage, can crystallise seemingly divergent ideas, into a coherent whole. Oh yeah - that’d be like a teacher then!! Thanks Paul.

During the summer, I started looking into real world conferences and on-line seminars and to be honest, I felt like a fish out of water. I was almost frightened to approach these apparently confident giants of marketing who were strutting around the foyers. I was very uncomfortable letting people see how clueless I really was. Until, I actually started an email conversation with one person, who turned out to be an ordinary bloke like me, or you or the lady over there.

So, what’s the point of this negative sounding monologue? Very simple; if you are new to this game and floundering, get in touch with your up-line and pick some brains. A recurrent theme in much of the sales copy is that it doesn’t take Einstein to work these systems. It may have been someone with a streak of the Einstein about them, who developed the system, but it was in their interest to develop a straight forward(ish) but DUPLICABLE SYSTEM.

The upshot of that for you new guys and girls, is that behind all of the glitz, the hype, the mega launches and the “never been seen befores” are just a few variations on a system or three. Most of these systems will work for you if you don’t system hop and YOU APPLY yourself seriously. Don’t be taken in by the instant wealth that is implied by much of the advertising copy you see. You’ve got some hard graft ahead of you to start building your own list of potential customers. That list and your relationship to the people those names represent is your starting point. It took me nearly 6 months to grasp and visualise what that simple point really meant. More about that in a future posting. If you are looking for someone to help you build your business, who isn’t already up there in the stratosphere, please get in touch. I’m not Terry the Tip Top Mentor, but by getting a gang of of us new guys together and swapping experiences we could probably save each other from a load of grief. I promise I won’t SELL everything at you in one go!! Honest! And together, I bet we couldn’t half pick some up-line brains!!

Seriously though, what I will show off now are the businesses I am involved with, which despite being too numerous for a simple bloke to keep a handle on, are the projects which seem to be genuine opportunities for producing life changing incomes. After a month of real focus, I haven’t “life changed” my income yet, but suddenly my lists have started to grow and I have pulled in my first couple of proper customers.

So, my main threads are: firstly, the best of the bunch, UVME This is a fantastic mixture of straightforward (!?) games of skill played on-line for cash prizes; with a superb and rapidly evolving social marketing system and the whole lot nicely capped by a superb back office to support the business opportunity. This is going BIG. It’s not cheap to commit to, but it really is a quality business. Before the “.com” games platform launched a couple of weeks ago, there were over 300,000 pre-registrations with lots of these becoming paid sign ups; once people had to show the colour of their cash.

Even more exciting is the news, revealed at the last training webinar: that there had been 15,000 completely new people who had signed up to play the games. Best of all, despite the hammer the servers were getting and despite the fact that we are only in soft launch / beta testing mode - the system works amazingly well and is being improved almost daily by 3 dedicated teams of software engineers, game developers and multi lingual support staff. Apologies if this gets close to hype, but it is a genuinely exciting on-line business opportunity with a highly desirable product - it’s cool folks! And you can have a look at (preferably) my site here. If you like what’s on offer, I wouldn’t say no to a few new associates in Team CosmicRays!
Go here for the games and play for free
Go here to see the business opportunity.

My second favourite is a new project by Paul Ward and his associates. Prosperizer’s best feature is that the team who have put it together are trying to build a resource and a business model where newcomers to marketing do not suddenly lose the support of their up-lines when the auto responders have banged out their last emails. If you are unsure of a direction to take, this is genuinely worth a careful look. It is developing into a very supportive community without the hype often associated with programmes trying to grab the newcomer.

Power Up Your Income With Prosperizer

At first I sank a lot effort into Stone Evans Plug in Profits programme. It’s a hell of a system even though it could be quite an expensive start up, if you blindly follow all of his recommendations straight away. Its big advantage for a newcomer, is that it opens up 6 separate but related streams of income. It does need a very focused approach but there are lots of subgroups of entrepreneurs who are willing to help or who offer full on mentoring. The products cover a very wide range from Vitamin supplements and audio books for your MP3; to Marketing and self development information; all the way through to Web hosting and domain name services. It’s a very broad church.

Plug in Here For Profit

For traffic building I am starting to get results now with Vital Viral. This clever set up, is a way of organising your activities in multiple traffic exchanges and then, if you gain an affiliate in Vital Viral, you gain that affiliate in the other exchanges as well.

Organise your surfing by using Vital Viral as explained here

So I’m up for networking but I daren’t get involved in any new projects unless they are very powerful, because I’m up to my eyeballs at the moment. But, instead of that sinking feeling that’s been around me for 2 years or more, I feel like I’ve just started surfacing.

All the best for a fantastic New Year in 2008
Ray