Thursday, September 28, 2006

The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript Comes Out Of Its Cocoon

After spending almost 10 years marketing online, and having purchased tons of marketing ebooks and software, I'm naturally somewhat skeptical and jaded when a new product is hyped by every Internet marketer in existence. I don't claim to know it all nor to have even seen it all, but there's a lot of garbage out there.

I first heard of Mike Filsaime about a year ago. I purchased an affiliate link tracking script that I could never get to work. Not his fault. I lacked the know-how and needed someone with more script experience to help me. Mike sensed my dissatisfaction and refunded my money without an argument. He even offered to install it on my web server at no cost, but I had already lost interest.

Then during the summer of 2006, when I started to receive dozens of emails from every top marketer on the planet about Mike's new Butterfly Marketing script, I once again prepared to tread lightly. The script purported to implement a new and improved marketing strategy that was capable of boosting your revenue and your affiliate base for a new product or service. When I found out the script cost $1500.00 I gasped.

Who would buy such an expensive script? I don't know, but Mike sold around $1 million worth of software in a matter of days. Somebody thought it was worth it.

Then sometime in August 2006, Mike Mograbi, the creator of VIP Profit Zone and IM Newswatch suggested I read the less expensive standalone Butterfly Marketing manuscript. I scoffed at the price, but when Mograbi offered to cover half the cost, I knew he must have had good reason to want me to read it. I took him up on his very generous offer, and imagine my surprise when I found myself reaching for a highlighter and then a pen and pad to make notes. This was good stuff -- better than I had imagined. Very powerful techniques he was teaching. He explained everything his $1500.00 script did, and how to implement it. He lifted the veil and what it revealed was nothing short of miraculous.

His manuscript is filled with credible examples of his butterfly techniques in action. And judging by the huge army of Internet marketers who have purchased his $1500.00 script and have created hundreds of sites using his automation, I must say I am impressed.

Whether I agree with all of the techniques covered in the Butterfly Marketing manuscript is relatively unimportant. Like popular business books such as Think and Grow Rich, the Butterfly Marketing is liable to become a necessary purchase for anyone seeking to do business online in the future.

All I can say is my thinking has been drastically changed, and I have begun to change the way I market my products and recruit new affiliates for them. I am certain the Butterfly Marketing manuscript will have a significant impact on my present and future projects. Click here to download a free chapter from the manuscript or here to visit the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript web site.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Sometimes People Amaze Me ...

People sign up for your newsletter, then they:

1. Never add your email address to their SPAM filter. So every time you send them an email, you receive a challenge email from Earthlink or AOL or some other SPAM filtering service that asks you to verify your email and type in stupid little numbers and letters that only the blind can read. And your message still remains unread because you have to go through this same process every week.

2. Send you a threatening email complaining that you are spamming them and that they never signed up for your stupid newsletter in the first place and if you don’t stop emailing them they are going to sue you for $1100 for every SPAM email received. Then you send them a copy of their original opt-in request — you do save those, don’t you? — and then they shut up and apologize.And they still don’t read your emails.

3. They never check their ISP email box and let it stay full and over quota all the time. Then the second you remove them, they re-subscribe under a new email address from another free ISP. And the problem goes on and on and on.

God, help us. And we want to use email for marketing? Even if you have a large list, and even if your autoresponder gets more email through than you can on your own, you still face the same problems. There has to be a better way to get your marketing message into the hands of your target audience.

But you can’t call them unless they provided that info when they opted in. And besides they would probably put you on the do not call list anyway.

Pony express anyone?

Monday, September 18, 2006

Ebook Cover Artist Debuts

Over the years, I have repeatedly stressed the importance of having a cover graphic for your book. It's like going to a job interview without any clothes on. You always want to put your best foot forward when trying to convince somebody to buy you or your work. People judge people by their appearance and they do judge a book by its cover.

I receive many inquiries about the best ways to create a cover --- hire someone or do it yourself. For the do it yourself crowd I send them to http://www.ebookcovercreator.com to read my reviews of the top graphics tools and to see samples of artwork created with them.

But now, for the folks who want to hire someone to design their cover for them, I have just launched a new site called http://www.EbookCoverArtist.com. After spending years working with authors and creating covers for their works available on EbookoMatic.com, I decided to create a site dedicated to providing graphic and web design services, too.

Please visit this site today to learn more.

http://www.ebookcoverartist.com

Friday, September 15, 2006

What Really Burns My Butt...

What really burns my butt are membership sites that place the Forgot Password link right after the password field instead of after the Submit button.

Why is this such a pain? Simple. If you are like most people, once you enter your login name and password, you hit Tab and then the Enter key. If the Forgot Password link is placed after the Password field, what usually happens is that you get prompted to change or retrieve your password. PayPal is a perfect example of this design error. Visit their site and look at their screen. This is not the way it should work.

Paypal

Now look at one of my sites, EbookoMatic.com. I’ve placed the Forgot Password link after the Submit button so these types of accidents don’t happen.

Ebookomatic

It may not seem like much, but it’s my small contribution to help make the Internet a better place to visit.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Best Solution for Online Video

About a year ago, I wrote a review about Instant Video Generator, a new tool brought to market by Armand Morin and his friends, the same team that brought AudioGenerator.com to market a while back.

I enjoyed playing with it during my free trial period (21 days for only $1.00). It was extremely easy to use. All I did was login, and started recording. Then I clicked a button to produce the code that was required to add the video to my web page. Instant Video Generator took care of everything else. It saved my video and Flash encoded it on the fly within a few seconds. No rocket science here. Since that time I have experimented with a variety of new video production tools. Here’s what I found:

  • Serious Magic is incredibly powerful (and expensive), and with it you can produce studio-grade videos with animation fairly easily; however, you need a honker of a PC to do it. Folks with older PCs like me will either need to upgrade their video, audio, processor, RAM, and drive space or more simply buy a new PC! I had a helluva time making this application work.
  • Lesser tools offer less automation and it takes a greater number of steps to produce your final Flash encoded video. The quality of the video may be sub-standard, and you need to consider storage requirements when recording the video on your PC and server requirements when streaming it over your own server. Bandwidth issues may present themselves if the video is particularly long.

So I guess it is no surprise that when I made the decision to start implementing video more widely across all of my web sites that I needed a tool that was easy to use, did not require me to upgrade my PC, created high-quality video, and removed the concerns over bandwidth and video streaming. In this regard, Instant Video Generator is worth its weight in gold.

  • Instant Video Generator takes care of the encoding and compression.
  • It does not require anything other than a cheap webcam and microphone.
  • My videos get stored on their servers not mine.
  • They provide a very generous monthly bandwidth allowance.
  • Adding video to your web page is cut and paste easy.
  • They provide you with an on-screen teleprompter so you can look into your camera and maintain eye contact with your audience.
  • They also provide a number of other tools such as templates and postcards you can use to send videos via email.

All in all, I have to rate Instant Video Generator as a very cool tool. I invite you to check it out for 21 days for only $1.00. You’d be crazy not to at least try it. My bet is you will get hooked on it.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Promo Code Secrets by Jordan Hall Takes The Gold Award

OK, I admit it. I approached this product hype with a great deal of skepticism, but after getting it installed on my server, I am quite amazed by its simplicity and power. In short, if you are looking for a unique way to drive sales, this tool may be it.

This really is a two-part product and review. When you first arrive on Jordan Halls Promo Code Secrets web site, you are really getting a pitch to purchase a brief ebook he wrote about the subject of using special promotional codes to drive sales and list building.

The ebook is straight to the point without a great deal of fluff. The author gives you one brilliant idea after another for a myriad of ways to use promotional codes on your site. 

Think about it: if you have a product that's been slowing down in sales and want to re-introduce it to your list, you can implement a special promotional code form on your site. 

If the casual visitor plays with the form, they won't get anywhere, but if your subscriber enters a special promotional code you send them, then they get to buy the product at a specially reduced price or as part of a larger bundle, etc. 

Certainly the use of promotional codes within traditional marketing has been proven time and again to work wonders. Surely it can do the same in online marketing.

Now once you are done with the ebook, there is an embedded pitch for the software. The Promo Code Secrets software is a small and easy to install PHP script. Once installed on your server, you will be able to generate unlimited forms with unlimited keywords. 

You can even set the promotional keyword to expire after X days or have the form link to a special coupon page with a keyword that is only good for that particular transaction. Using this software there are an unlimited number of ways to use this approach to drive your sales.

I was truly surprised by this combo ebook and script, especially given the author's relative youth, and I think Promo Code Secrets is worth every penny I paid for it. I look forward to using it, and don't be surprised if you receive an email from me with a special promotional code for one of my products! Click here to learn more.

Re-launch of Blog

Greetings to all. I’m re-launching my blog and re-branding it all at the same time. Having spent a little time reading this week, I’ve learned that I need to use my blog more seriously in my Internet communications. Beginning this week, I will be re-publishing editorials and reviews from my many newsletters.

In case you don’t know, I publish and distribute weekly newsletters to almost 10,000 people across a variety of niches including marketing professionals, web site designers, affiliate marketers and product resellers, ebook authors, professional magicians, sales automation specialists and more!

To help segment my content, I’ll be creating multiple blogs for each niche, and then interconnect them through hypertext links. Hopefully this will drive traffic and create a growing audience for my work. Until next time, Happy Trails.