As I was coming back from class early last week, I was walking down the subway platform to get to the end as I usually do when I noticed a giant mural that wasn’t there before.

I was walking relatively quickly, so I didn’t pay too much attention to it. However, I did notice that the art was pretty good looking. It was nice to see some colour on an otherwise dull wall.

Except, it wasn’t a mural…it was an ad!

No problems so far – the ad definitely got my attention.

But then I got to the company’s logo and slogan, and that’s where I had a WTF moment.

“American Express – Realize the potential.”

Whaaa!?

Beautiful artwork -> Credit card company -> Realize the potential (?)

I have this reaction all the time to car commercials. They generally play the same two types of music (lively/upbeat, or sentimental/emotional stuff), the slogans don’t match the products, and what you see doesn’t relate to what you hear.

Realize the potential?

What potential…my potential of using your brand of credit card more often so you can earn more in fees?

They make their credit card sound like a gift from heaven that is supposed to enrich your life in a profound way.

Nuh-uh, I don’t buy it at all.

I got an email the other day with the subject line “RE: Paypal” from a guy who will remain unnamed. I don’t mean to knock the guy because I happen to respect him as a person, but you can’t help but question his email marketing methods.

I had a WTF moment after reading this email. See for yourself:

Hope you had a great weekend!

PayPal is NOT accepting payments for
this offer as I have arranged to make
it free for you today

<link deleted>

Grab this now before the “Buy Now”
button reappears again.

<link deleted>

Talk soon!

Putting aside the vagueness of the message and the poor choice of subject line, one thing that strikes me is the lack of relevance between the advertising and the offer.

The offer in question, by the way, was a free traffic report.

I won’t go into false advertising as that’s a pretty different topic, but this is just poor advertising.

Trying to grab people’s attention is one thing. Being totally irrelevant is another.

That ad in the subway platform grabbed my attention, but totally lost it with its incongruent message.

To be fair, incongruence isn’t always a bad thing. A term I learned from Jason Fladlien is “incongruent juxtaposition”, meaning to stick together two things that don’t logically go together, at least not at first glance.

I actually find that kind of funny, because I knew of the words “incongruent” and “juxtaposition”, but never thought of putting them together

Anyway, an example of incongruent juxtaposition would be the following headline from the legendary John Carlton:

Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks And Slices… And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight!

You wouldn’t expect a one-legged person to be able to play golf, much less teach you how to dramatically improve your game.

So in that instance, incongruity is effective because it piques your interest.

Incongruity used improperly, however, is usually an instant turn off.

Would you dress up as a clown and walk around your neighbourhood to advertise your newly opened martial arts school?

Sometimes the craziest things actually end up working (e.g. goats on the roof), but there’s a fine line between crazy and stupid, and unless I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t take any chances.

Until next time,

Curtis

We’ve all seen the giant red headlines, we’ve all been to sales pages with auto-play videos, and we’ve all landed on squeeze pages with ridiculous graphics (good and bad).

The headline of a sales page is a mini sales letter for the actual sales letter beneath it. If the headline is underwhelming, the reader is likely to exit the page.

So is it important to quickly grab your visitors’ eyeballs as soon as they land on your page?

Absolutely. Not really. It depends.

The forum post that inspired this post (which I will not link to because I don’t want to distract you), talked about how most people will leave your site in seconds without taking the desired action (e.g. purchasing your product, opting in).

That’s why, the person said, you should make it so that your prospects’ eyeballs are grabbed very quickly, thereby ensuring their continued attention for at least a little while longer.

Good point. I agree…kinda.

Let me explain myself.

You see, there are many different types of prospects.

For example, there are random passers-by who couldn’t care less about what you have to say. They’re prospects, although not very good ones.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are your HOT prospects – people who love you and would buy anything you had to offer/recommend.

In the middle, there are people who are partially interested, but need convincing.

You don’t need to hard sell your HOT prospects with flashy graphics, clever headlines, or never-ending sales videos.

But with those “middle people”, you will need to grab eyeballs in addition to building some rapport with them.

Different types of prospects require different types of marketing.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy.

Don’t just employ flashy graphics or long and boring sales videos because all the other kids are doing it. Keep your marketing strategies relevant to your target audience. As always, test to see what works best. Video might turn out to be the way to go, but what about the auto-play function? What about the length and content of the video? What about the buy-now button?

I didn’t want to turn this post into another “test test test” post…hopefully I haven’t done so

Maybe I wanted to say that relationship building decreases the need for selling.

Or maybe I wanted to say that grabbing eyeballs quickly is not the most important thing you have to do to increase conversions.

Or maybe I don’t know what I wanted to say.

But in any case, I hope you got my point.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Here’s a sales letter I recently came across which I found incredibly fascinating:
http://cheapverytargetedtraffic.com (not an affiliate link – opens in new window)

It’s a service run by Willie Crawford – you may have heard of him?

Humour me for a second though, and imagine that there wasn’t any name or contact info listed on that site. Also, imagine that I hadn’t mentioned Willie at all.

What would your impressions be of that sales page?

Graphics? Pretty tacky and lame.
Headline? Not very believable or effective.
The copy? Again, not very believable or convincing. Quite boring, in fact.

And the funniest part – a $2000 price tag with a butt-ugly Paypal Buy Now button.

Without Willie’s name attached to it, that sales page would be pathetic and ineffectual.

But with Willie’s name attached to it, the need for good graphics, powerful copy, and stuff like that, disappears.

If you know Willie, or know of him, you probably trust him.

That instantly makes his claims believable.

Cool, huh?

Being a good person will save you a lot of time and money in this business

Until next time!

Curtis

More often than not, I’ll click on a link in an email even if I have absolutely no intention to buy, simply to look at the page on the other side. In fact, and don’t laugh at me, but I’ve actually watched entire sales videos lasting 50-60+ minutes even when I had no interest in purchasing the product.

IMO, Perpetual Traffic Formula is going to be really good. Of course, I have no solid foundation upon which to base my conclusion. Ok, now I’m rambling.

So I clicked through to get to the sales page and I was genuinely shocked, or at least surprised (pleasantly).

You know what I found? Two things:

1. A video player configuration that allowed you to see how long the video was and to skip back and forth to different parts within the video.
2. Two “add to cart” buttons, one of which was for the payment plan.

I’m sure you’ve seen them around, but I was expecting a video sales page that did not allow you to control the video, nor to purchase right away.

Typically, the buy now button either appears “magically” X minutes before the end of the video, or you have to type in a special URL to get to the order page.

Leave it up to one of the best split-testing guys on our industry to deviate from the norm, right?

Ryan’s actually done a sh**load of split-testing over the years. In case you’re interested in this kind of stuff, check out Ryan’s updated-for-2010 split-testing Bible (opens in new window).

It contains the results of dozens of studies that he has done into stuff, even the littlest of things, that have increased his conversions, from emails to sales letters.

The colour of a buy now button, the wording of an ad, the font of a headline…you’d be surprised what kind of things can improve your conversions, and by how much.

Chances are, you hate the type of video sales pages that I was expecting. You know – completely blank page, no control over video, no buy now button. At least it seems like everyone hated them.

One of my upcoming blog posts (look for it in the coming weeks) will be about why individuals don’t matter that much when it comes to marketing. As in, you shouldn’t let your individual desires or the desires of a single subscriber of yours determine how you do your marketing.

The lesson you should take away from this blog post is to go with what works, but also to meticulously test various aspects of your marketing.

I admit that I’m not good at it, but I try.

It’s simple – having a higher conversion rate means that you make more money (or get more subscribers, for example) with the same amount of traffic.

A single word or colour shade could be the difference between making what you’re making now, or 10% more.

That’s freaking scary!

As you may or may not know, I like to hang out in a couple well-known IM forums. I like them too much actually, so I often spend a little too much time on them each day when I should be doing more productive things.

One of the forums, the Warrior Forum, charges $20 to list a Warrior Special Offer (same with a classified ad and a Warrior-for-hire listing).

The WSO is basically a place to sell IM-related products and services, although you could technically sell other stuff if you wanted to.

But this post isn’t about WSOs or the Warrior Forum, or even the War Room (which is a gold mine of information that costs $37 for lifetime access).

It’s about spending money to make money.

To make money online, you’ll need to either invest your money or invest your time, preferably both.

If you literally have no money to spare, then you must be willing to invest much of your time to learn and work. There’s no way around this if you cannot spend any money.

But say you don’t have much time to spare for whatever reason, and you do have money, then you have to be willing to spend it.

Don’t get me wrong though: spending money on ebooks and courses will not make you any money. It obviously still requires work, but say you need a few articles written and you don’t have time to write them all yourself, why not pay someone a few bucks to write you some?

I think my whole point is this: no matter what aspect of your online business you look at, you’ll need to invest something into it.

If you lack the knowledge to do something (e.g. programming, graphics), then you have to pay a professional to do it.

If you’re lacking a direction and you really need someone to hold your hand and show you the way, you’ll want the help of a coach or mentor.

If you’ve found a direction, but would like to get more advanced training, you should be willing to pay someone for that training.

There’s a really stupid myth online that everything you find in paid products, from $7 ebooks all the way up to $1997 courses and beyond, is readily available for free online.

In other words, some people think that there’s no point in buying products, especially high ticket stuff, because it’s all already floating around on the Internet.

What a load of crap.

You really think you can find all the information contained within Mass Control (for example) for free online? Unless you illegally download the whole thing, you probably can’t.

And even if you could, how many weeks and months of research would you have to do to find that kind of knowledge and to piece it all together in a coherent manner?

If you’re interested in product launches, good luck figuring out how to do one by scouring the Internet for free information.

If you’re interested in list building, good luck finding anything beyond the basic stuff that everybody already knows.

The lesson here is to be willing to spend money.

You know why I don’t have a problem with jobs (as long as they’re tolerable) or with people online having jobs? Because they can help pay for your IM education, products, and services.

So if you don’t have money, get a job. Do odd jobs. Stay at your current job. Do what it takes, within the law of course, to acquire start-up funds.

You’ll be able to do a little at first, but if you plan on creating a real business online, you better start spending some dough. But as always, be smart about it.

It’s a list – you absolutely need to have a list before you can have a product launch. You can’t just stick a product up on Clickbank (for example) and call it a launch. You can’t just set-up a sales page and drive organic traffic to it and call it a launch. You need a list.

But here’s the cool part: the list doesn’t have to be yours.

If you want to use someone else’s list though, you’ll need to give them a reason to let you “borrow” it. Have you read my report about how to attract more JVs and affiliates yet? If you haven’t, now would be a good time to do so

The main things that JVs and affiliates look for are:

• a really good product
• solid conversions (“good” depends on the product)
• lucrative sales funnel (high payouts + good conversions)

They care about other things too, but these three are biggies.

The bottom line is that if you want someone to promote your stuff, you better give them a reason to. I see too many people asking for affiliates, but offering nothing in return.

Everyone wants super affiliates with big lists to promote their stuff, but these folks only have so many slots available. That’s why they only have room to promote friends, trusted JV partners, or up-n-comers with wicked products.

So back to my original point about needing a list for product launches.

It’s obviously better if you have your own list.

You can test conversions on your own list. You can promote the products of potential JV partners to get on their radar. You can do some ad swaps to boost your list size.

Making money online is so much easier with an email list.

In fact, the surest way of breaking into the inner circles you keep encountering is to sell a LOT of their stuff. There’s two ways that the gurus we all know and love (or not) got to know each other:

1. Meeting and chatting at live events back in the day.
2. Selling a TON of the other person’s stuff during a product launch.

I believe that’s how Gary Ambrose (the guy behind such sites as Email Aces, List Bandit, List Wire, and more recently, MemberSpring) met Mike Filsaime.

Back in 2006 I think, when Mike first released Butterfly Marketing, some random guy sells well over $200K worth during the launch. Do you think Mike was excited to introduce himself to this guy? He calls the guy (who turns out to be Gary) and a friendship was born.

You see how having your own list makes your product launches so much easier?

Having a good list attracts other people with good lists. It’s simple.

Now all you need is your own list

Curtis

P.S. Sometime last year, I bought a neat little list building report from a fellow young marketer (he’s a year or two younger than me, I think). It wasn’t ground-breaking, but it does give you a few proven ways to build your list for free, in addition to some other important list building fundamentals. It’s not bad – well worth the asking price. Check it out.

My affiliate link: http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?18539

The following bonus package is only available for the next 7 people who buy through my affiliate link.

Bonus #1: One Hour Personal Skype Consultation

I would strongly recommend you use this one hour to talk about a product launch of yours, simply because you’re buying PLF and I’m a product launch manager. I can help you with any problems you have with the material, or better yet, I can analyze your planned product launch and suggest ways to make it better.

Of course, we can talk about anything you like

Just FYI, I normally charge $497 for product launch consultation, which includes one hour on the phone plus an accompanying customized PDF. You only get the phone call here, but still.

This is redeemable within 6 months of your purchase.

Bonus #2: Personal help with your next launch.

Whether or not we talk about your launch during the 1 hour Skype call, I’ll still personally help you out with your next launch. You will be allowed to email me as often as you like about your launch specifically.

The amount of info in PLF3.0 may be a little overwhelming to you…I will be there to personally answer any questions you have, plus I’ll answer many questions you didn’t know you had

Again, 6 months limit.

Bonus #3: Unlimited email coaching for 6 months

This kind of ties in with the last bonus, but this is really your chance to ask me as many questions as you need answered.

The reason I put a 6 month time limit on all the bonuses is to get you to take action. Realistically, you could build a list and launch a product within 6 months, but only if you commit to following through with PLF3.0 (just like I talked about in earlier blog posts).

In the next 6 months, you’ll have me at your side while you go through the PLF3.0 training, providing support and guidance.

Best of all, you’ll have a product launch manager (me) for your first (or next) launch, telling you what to do and how to do it.

Here’s my affiliate link again: http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?18539

There are only 7 spots available in all. I simply can’t and don’t want to make any more spots available. The level of support I’ll be giving each person will be very time intensive, so I don’t want to stretch myself thin.

Make sure to clear your cookies so that I get credit for the sale. Otherwise, you will not be eligible to receive 1-on-1 phone and email coaching from me.

After you’ve ordered, forward your receipt to citrus.ng [at] gmail.com or use the contact form on this blog.

I’m looking forward to working with you.

Curtis

But if you’ve got some cash to spare after you’ve taken care of the necessities in your life, here’s my case for spending your last dollar on IM.

You see…I DID spend my last dollar on IM.

Whenever I make money online, I tend to reinvest it pretty quickly. This means that I tend to have little cash to work with at any given time.

Last fall, I heard of a program called the Product Launch Management training put on by Jeff Walker. The pre-launch videos were great…I was hooked.

When I saw the price, I was shocked. Let’s just say it made Product Launch Formula look inexpensive. But you know what? I had to enrol in the PLM training. So even though I did not have enough money to pay for the entire thing, I took a leap of faith and ponied up the grand for the first installment of the payment plan.

Was this advisable? I didn’t have enough money in the bank…I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pay this thing off.

Let me tell you a story. I posted this story a while back in a popular JV forum, but I wanted to put it here as well because I truly believe in its teachings.

A long time ago, there was a general. The general led his army across the sea to take the fight to the enemy. The problem was that the enemy outnumbered his army 3 to 1. The general was wise; when his army landed on enemy shores, he ordered his soldiers to burn all the ships. He then addressed his soldiers: “There is no going back now. The only way to get home is to win this war.”

Faced with this ultimatum, the general and his soldiers prevailed against superior numbers, or so the story goes.

So what’s the moral of this story?

When I spent my last dollar on the first installment of Jeff Walker’s PLM training, I was giving myself an ultimatum: I either had to give it my all and succeed, or fail (and dig myself a bigger hole).

I took a calculated risk when enrolling in the PLM training. I could see myself managing product launches and I could see myself liking it. I promised myself I’d followthrough with it, no matter what.

That calculated risk paid off…I made back my investment. Not only that, but I’ve made some new connections which may prove to be extremely valuable to me in the future, I’ve started to make a name for myself in the community, and my confidence has grown.

Regardless of whether you have a lot of money or very little, I want you to keep this is mind. The next time you make a purchase online, big or small, you’ve got to commit to following through with it. Otherwise, you’re wasting your money.

I’ve already made my commitment to follow through with Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 3.0. I’m going to buy that sucker when it is released to the public on June 29th, two days from now.

I know that PLF3 is right for my business – it obviously fits in with my business model. There’s no way I can fail to make money with PLF3 because I’ve already made up my mind that I’m going to succeed with it.

Is Product Launch Formula 3.0 right for you?

If you’re still not sure yet, this video should clear it up.

That’s my affiliate link – I get paid if you click on it and buy PLF3.

But you know what? I don’t want you to buy it if you don’t like what you see, if you don’t think you need it, or if you can’t promise that you’ll follow through with it. You’ll just be wasting your money.

I would never recommend anything that I didn’t believe in 100%. I’ll see if I can do a video of myself buying it so you can see I’m not just blowing smoke.

Anyway…thanks for reading.

Curtis

In a way, this post is kind of like a follow-up to that one.

So immersion means to, well, immerse yourself in something. Whether it is a language, a culture, or a home study course.

=====
Cool story: last August, I went on a three week vacation with my family to Europe. One of our stops was Switzerland.

We knew a guy who knew a guy (who went to school with him back in their homeland) who happened to be a priest in a mountainside village close to Zurich. So instead of staying in Zurich, we opted to stay in this village with our new friend, the priest.

Here’s the wicked part though: the priest was originally from India. Many years ago, the Church called and said “Hey, pack your bags. We need you in Switzerland.” Needless to say, he did not speak one word of Swiss German.

Within a few months, he could carry a conversation. Within a year (or two, depending on who you ask), he became fluent in Swiss German. He’s been there for quite a few years now Loved the accent…
=====

I got sidetracked there, but I wanted to show you how powerful immersion can be.

So how does this apply to your online business?

Well, have you ever purchased an ebook? Of course you have. Now try counting the number of ebooks on your hard drive that you have never opened, let alone read the whole way through.

What about training programs and membership sites? Did you dedicate yourself to following all the instructions that were laid out for you?

Here’s something to try out: the next time you buy a product, whether it be a home study course or an ebook, shut yourself off to everything IM-related for an entire week and focus solely on implementing whatever’s in the product. Or better yet, find a product on your hard drive that you know is good, but just haven’t “found the time” to go through it yet.

That means no buying anything, minimal forum posting and email reading, no going through other products, no watching unrelated videos, nothing.

For an entire week, you have to devote your time to understanding, digesting, and implementing the techniques and strategies found in a single product of your choosing.

I guarantee you’ll learn a ton and be a lot more confident in your abilities after the week is over.

And I can’t guarantee results, but…

Until next time!
Curtis

I forget how I made my first dollar, and I also forget what product or marketer got me into this industry. I do know that I dabbled a heck of a lot.

I dabbled in affiliate marketing. Safelists, traffic exchanges, co-reg list builders – tried ‘em all to promote affiliate products. Created a fugly website, tried building a list…to no avail.

I dabbled in eBay stuff – signed up for Worldwide Brands, found a dropshipping company, bought random crap from eBay, and so on.

I dabbled in CPA without actually knowing it – have you ever heard of those incentivized freebie sites? Yeah. Been there, tried that, failed hard.

Hmm…what else did I dabble in…oh yeah, PPC and MLM. Massive faceplant.

I can’t pinpoint an exact date, but one day, I went through my hard drive and deleted many gigs worth of digital crud. I then proceeded to unsubscribe from dozens of lists.

When all was said and done, I still had tons of digital crud and was still on dozens of lists, but the difference now was that I liked the remaining crud and, for the most part, liked the lists I was on.

Before, when I was dabbling in stuff, I had no direction and no plan to grow my online business. I bought half the stuff that was thrown my way, and not surprisingly enough, made zero progress.

After my little revelation, I still was only making negligible amounts of money, but now I had a direction. I knew I wanted to provide a service and to build a list.

From that point on, I stopped buying stuff that wasn’t strongly related to these business models. And that’s what they are: ways to do business.

This isn’t just some way to pay your next month’s bills, to make some quick cash, or some game. You must commit to this, and that’s one of the secrets to success, in my opinion.

I was spinning around in circles until I found a business model I liked, enrolled in a high level training course from a top guru that everyone in the IM space has heard of before, and I committed to it.

In case you were wondering, my preferred business model is product launch management. I had no idea this even existed until around October of 2009. I enrolled in Jeff Walker’s PLM training, committed to it, and saw results pretty quickly.

Let’s just say that I project a 6-figure income for myself in the next 12 months.

The moral of the story isn’t to buy Jeff’s stuff, although that would be a great idea. The moral is to find a business model that you like, learning from the experts, and committing to implementing your new-found knowledge.

Otherwise, you’re just dabbling, and that won’t get you anywhere.

Best,
Curtis