Now That’s Niche Marketing!

I’m heading out of town tomorrow morning - going to Pennsylvania for a family wedding and I’m not bringing my laptop.  I could use a 4 day break to recharge my batteries.

I was just reading an article about a company called Mascot Books.  They write and publish kids books about sports team mascots.  It started in 2002 when Aimee, Naren, and their 2 year old daughter, Anna Aryai, went to a college football game.  Afterwards, little Anna requested a book about the mascot so they visited the college bookstore.  They couldn’t find such a book anywhere.  Lots of people would say, “Gosh darn, sorry honey,” but Aimee Aryai decided to go ahead and write one for her. 

Aimee and Naren’s entreprenerial wheels started turning as they realized they had found an undiscovered niche!  They started writing books about other college mascots and then branched into the pros.  They didn’t stop at football, but hit other sports too.  One strategy they’ve used is to get retired baseball players and even a professional basketball team owner to write some of these books.  That’s like Yanik Silver sharing his list with me!  Great strategy!

So far they’ve sold over 500,000 books and expect to hit up to $12 million annually by 2010.  All that came from fixing a tiny problem! 

It’s time for me to start looking at tiny problems and try to figure out solutions, instead of whining about them.  It’s a whole different way of thinking, isn’t it?

Ebook Covers Done Easy

Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

Outsourcing an ebook cover was incredibly easy!  I simply went to http://planet-divinity.com, on Randy Smith’s recommendation.  It cost me only $14 and saved me from myself.  Even if I had taken hours to figure out how to do it, my DIY book cover would have been plain and amateurish.

Anyway, Planet-Divinity had a simple form for me to fill out with the title and what I wanted on it; like what kind of graphics, colors, and anything else I could think of.  The form also asked me to tell them what the ebook is about.

I sent them my $ and request this morning, and I got it back this afternoon!  And I must say, it looks pretty cool.

I didn’t know it could be this easy!  I can tell you that I’ll be using them for some website headers in the future.

Opt-In Report - Plan of Attack

As I was researching affiliate marketing (see previous post), I realized that should not be my priority right now.  While I am waiting for the last internet marketer to get back to me regarding my opt-in report, I should be getting everything else set in place for the report:

1.  Have my autoresponder  totally set up; the opt-in form for my website, the double opt-in message, the thank you message, and the thank you page that gives the PDF download link.  Did I forget anything there?  I’ve got it mostly ready, but I need to reword a few things and spiffy it up.  If I’m really efficient, I’ll have a second opt-in form ready to go for split-testing.

2.  Get the squeeze page set up.  I’ve got a real rough draft, but it has a long way to go.  I’ve spent part of today learning about opt-in squeeze pages and downloading good ones.  They’re scattered all around me.  I think I’ll take the scissors and cut out the parts I like from each of them and rearrange them on a blank paper.   Why reinvent the wheel, eh?  I want it to be short and sweet, but I also want people to opt-in!  The report has some great information and I want people to have it -  a win-win for us.

3. Make sure I totally understand how to create the PDF and that the questions I still have are answered beforehand.

4.  Ask for 1 or 2 testimonials to put on the squeeze page.  Can’t do this until the report is done. 

5.  Get an eBook cover made.

6.  Ask the Warrior Forum and Copywritersboard.com to critique the sqeeze page and then do what I need to make it better.

7.  Figure out my plan of attack on getting the report out there.  Let’s see, put the link in my signature line so it gets seen, and then comment in all my favorite forums, write and post a few articles to drive traffic to the squeeze page, ask people to send it out to their lists as it’s free content.  That’s a start. 

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what’s on my list right now.  I’m not having an OTO or backsell or upsell or whatever.  Some would say that’s stupid, but I want to start off by giving free information.

Battling Information Overload

I’ve only just begun to explore the vast wealth of information on the Warrior Forum.  What a place!  Why didn’t I know about it sooner?  Well, I actually did, but I’m on constant information overload and forgot to go back and check it out. 

To battle information overload, I’ve decided on an approach of sorts.  I will keep taking action, and as I need to learn how to do something I’ve come up against, I will research how to do it at that time.  I know I can find out about the information I need as I’ve got a kazillion downloads on every subject of interest to internet marketers.   Plus, I know how to beg for answers.

So today I wanted to learn about PDFs and how to download whatever it was that I needed to present my opt-in report in PDF fashion.  I read some info on PDF and downloaded some free software from http://pdf995.com per Paula Brett’s eBook, Mailing Lists From Start to Finish.  As I was trying to figure it out, I noticed an option on my computer to download their version.  Woo hoo!  It was already on my computer, was easy to download, and it worked the first time I tried it.  That’s a first for me and technology!

Now I’m putting this new approach to work again.  I posed the question of where to go and what to do to the helpful people at the Warrior Forum, and they told me to get started in affiliate marketing while I’m working up my own product.   I’m off now to do some in-depth research on affiliate marketing.  If you have any great links with good info on that subject, please let me know!

 Thanks,
Peggy

Great Info on Article Writing

While I’m sitting here trying to buy World Series tickets online (Go Denver Rockies!), I thought I’d tell you about an ebook that I have really gotten some good kernels out of.  It’s free if you want to get all 26 chapters, one at a time, in your in-bin.  I started out that way, afterall - free is good, but then decided to just go ahead and plop down the $7 so I could just download it all at once.  I’d gotten to chapter 7 and decided it was a keeper. 

It’s called Writing Articles, An Internet Marketing Strategy, by Steve Gillman at http://999articles.com.  This guy has over 840 articles on Ezinearticles.com and makes his living through Adsense, so I guess he knows a thing or two.  He’s not slick though, if you know what I mean.

If you’re interested, go get it for free or $7.  I don’t make anything off of this, it’s just a heads-up in this crazy internet marketing world where so much info is not much info.

New Rich Experiment Update

Whew, glad that’s done!  Let’s see what I accomplished in my 3 hour intense working blitz:

• Added Technorati to both blogs - although I don’t know why it’s out of order on this one.  It doesn’t show that way on my dashboard.
• Added del.icio.us to both blogs.  Need to explore it further, but it’s up.
• Wrote 2 articles for submission to article directories.  Will proofread them tomorrow with fresh eyes and submit them.
• Posted an old article on a forum.  Did not read any other postings - honest!
• Answered 1 email.  I wasn’t peeking, it just appeared like a ghost (Windows Vista is cool that way) and I answered it because it was a customer.
• Posted on this blog twice.
• Posted on my other blog once.  Surfed only long enough to add some website examples to my post.  Amazing for me!
• Created a thank you page for this website.
• Created text for a double opt-in autoresponder
• Consolidated info from 3 scraps of paper onto a word doc for one of my great upcoming schemes.
• Answered comments on my blog.  Misspelled “forum” because I’m exhausted.  I hate typos.

Wow.  I would have been happy just completing 1 article.  I kept reminding myself of the deadline every time I wanted to stare into space, or answer the phone, or start surfing, or see what mischief my son was getting in to.

Cheers!
Peggy

The New Rich

I’ve been reading Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week in which he describes the new rich.  I want to be one of those!  I’m not very far into the book, but some of the stuff he writes about really resonates with me.  Plus, I like his writing style and think he’s funny.

You know how sometimes when you read something right before bed, it really sticks with you?  Well last night I was reading the part about Parkinson’s Law and how a task will become increasingly more important and complex the more time we have to do it.   The magic is in the upcoming deadline and how close or far away it is.

So tonight I’m conducting my own little experiment.   I have 3 hours to myself right now and I am going to see how much I can DO in these 3 hours.  No answering the phone, no raiding the fridge, no checking my email or checking to see how much money I didn’t make with my Adsense.  No downloading anything or opening up and reading eBooks.   After the 3 hours are up, I will list here everything I’ve achieved.  

Stay tuned…

To AWeber…or Not To AWeber?

“Everyone who is serious about marketing over the Internet needs an autoresponder.”  How many times have I heard that?  What’s the big deal and how does it help me?  Well, the short answer is it’s an automatic responder that automatically answers emails that are sent to it.  The long answer is an autoresponder can be used to do all sorts of things like confirm subscriptions, send a series of instructional emails, send content, redirect customers to squeeze pages, give unsubscribe confirmation, assure someone that their help ticket will be handled shortly, and more.   

You can think of an autoresponder as your own personal secretary who replies to every one of your customers yet who doesn’t get benefits, get sick, or take vacation.  Your autoresponder can follow up with your prospects and subscribers, and do it in a personal way. There are several great autoresponders out there and in choosing one, I first had to figure out just what features I wanted from an autoresponder.  Your wants may be different from mine, but here are the features I wanted: 

·         unlimited # of autoresponders (one time and sequential), unlimited follow ups, unlimited broadcasts
·         personalization features (especially first name, but many different fields to chose from)
·         unlimited list size - this will matter pretty soon! J
·         data analysis
·         split testing
·         automatic handling of subscribers and unsubscribers
·         live chat and good support- very important for me as I’m one of the technically-challenged J
·         cool templates to use for the newsletters I send out from one of my sites
·         affiliate program
·         cost in line with the features I want 

In order to figure out which autoresponders to look at without taking up too much of my already stretched time, I started with looking at which autoresponders the big internet marketers use.  Since I’m on most of their lists, I simply went to my email in-bin and looked at the last line of their emails.  Here’s what my unscientific and informal poll showed:  

AWeber -            21 people (including private label versions)
GetResponse -    3
Infusion Soft -       2
Autocontractor -   2
Other -                   9 (1 vote for each) 

I then took a closer look at the top two, AWeber and GetResponse and tried to compare features.  Check it out here: 

Features	AWeber	GetResponse
Automatic handling of subscribes and unsubscribes	Yes	Yes
Data analysis	Yes	Yes
Split testing	Yes	?
Stylish message templates	Yes	Yes
Live Chat	8am-8pm M-F, 9-5 Sat	9am-8pm M-F
Customer Support	Yes	Yes
Blog and forum	Yes	Yes
Unlimited autoresponders	Yes	Yes
Unlimited broadcasts	Yes	Yes
Segmented broadcast capability	Yes	Yes
Unlimited campaigns	Yes	Yes
Unlimited follow ups	Yes	Yes
Personalized fields	Yes	Yes
Web form generator	Yes	Yes
Form pop-ups/ overs/hovers/exit pops	Yes	?,  at least a pop-over
My customized subscription page, removal page, and opt-in confirmation page	Yes	Yes
Moves people from an advertising campaign to a customer list	Yes	Yes
Cost	$19.95/mo./10,000 leads and $9.95 for each add’l 10,000 leads	$17.95/mo./10,000 leads and $4.50 for each add’l 5000 leads

My conclusion to this informal autoresponder comparison?  They both have everything that I want, plus way more cool features than I need right now.  Most of the features are the same for both autoresponders, so you probably can’t go wrong with either.  It depends on what you want.  Since I really am not sure what will come in handy in the future, I decided to go with the one that my 21 successful internet marketers use - AWeber.  My reasoning is that since these gurus are farther along in needing and using features right now than I am, they must be satisfied with AWeber’s features or they wouldn’t use AWeber.  

I have to tell you, after deciding on AWeber and signing up, I have found it very easy to use.  Their How to Get Started Guide made it extremely easy to get my first autoresponder set up in no time.  When I signed up they hooked me up with an autoresponder series on how to get started.  They then followed up offline with a letter that included a handy dandy little card with my log-in information on it.  A few days ago, I got a follow up phone call from them welcoming me and making sure everything was going fine for me.  Today I got an email from customer service asking how they could be of service.  Now, I haven’t submitted a help ticket or called live chat (yet), but I’m pretty impressed with AWeber’s customer service so far. 

I hope this helps.

Lead Supreme

I just signed up for Lead Supreme’s trial contest to learn how to build my list fast.  I can’t figure out who ends up with the leads - me or them.  I want to go after the $10,000 prize for the most leads generated in the 10 days (10/13 to 10/23) but the timing is not good.  My kids are off school for fall break for the week.  Oh well, we’ll see just how good I am at multi-tasking and organization.  :) 

However it turns out, I think it will be $20 well spent for all that I’m going to learn.

My Blog

Yes! My blog is finally integrated with my website.  I’ve put on my previous “fake” blog posts here and backdated them.   I’ve spent the day, in between walking dogs (as I am a pet sitter), going over some of the “how to” WordPress guides.  I already have a Blogger blog, but WordPress is different.  Next I need to figure out how to add RSS feed and BlogRush.  I’m sure it would be easy for most people, but lately every time I try to do the littlest thing here I run into big obstacles.

Let’s regroup… what have I done so far?

Got a domain name
Set up the website
Got a blog
Integrated the blog into the website
Started blogging
Sent out many emails to my “report experts”
Continuous research and learning - a big chunk of my time but so interesting.
Came up with 2 product ideas but I need a programmer

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