Meatballs and Banner Ads

Just got done presenting "The Ten Biggest Mistakes Businesses
Make with Their Web Sites" to my strategic partners, and it was
very well received. Normally, I spend about an hour going over
this content, but I had to compress it into 20 minutes -- about 1
slide a minute. I've reviewed this content in past newsletters.
If you think you missed this series, you can read it all on my
blog where I archive all newsletters here:

http://marketingcowboy.blogspot.com/

I've been working from home today and cooking. I love to cook
Italian food. Raised a Jew in NY and surrounded by Italians, I
eventually had to learn how to cook Italian food or be forced to
leave the neighborhood. It's been kind of nice to take a break
every now and go stir the gravy. Smells pretty good right now,
too.

I think it's important to love what you do and do it well. It's
also important to break up your day every now and then. The
cooking helped balance my day today. Other days it's simply
alternating graphical development and copy-writing so I don't get too
burned out by doing any one thing too long.

Today I received an email from a client who asked me to revisit
her sales letter and some changes she wanted to make. I reviewed
her changes, added some more of my own, and also created some
additional product images for her site to help make the sales
letter a little more compelling.

Some consultants might get annoyed when a client from a past
project requests changes months later. I look at as a chance to
improve things. It really doesn't take long to do. With a passage
of time comes distance and a fresh perspective. I saw some things
I did not see before and helped her improve them. Hopefully, the
combination of those changes will boost sales to a higher level.

Of course, there's the flip side of things: it may not be the
sales letter, it may be the medium of the info product. So many
people are racing to sell ebooks to capture some cash, but the
truth is you may be better served (and your customer, too) by
creating a series of videos instead of yet another all-text
ebook. This is especially true if you are trying to sell a
process or teach someone how to do something. If your ebook isn't
doing as well as you think it should, re-think the information
delivery method. Moving to an interactive medium such as video
also gives you a chance to bundle a text ebook and an audio, too.
Bundles sell for multiples of what an average ebook sells for. So
moving to video can not only boost sales but book profitability,
too.

A lot of people ask about Google AdWords and if it is a good
idea to promote their products this way. The short and the long
answer is I have done it for as long as 1 year. It did help me
promote the visibility of Ebookomatic.com, and after gaining 300
affiliates, I no longer had to promote it through Google AdWords
because I had 300 sites linking to me through their affiliate
links.

The way I handle promotion today and what I recommend to my
clients is to compile a list of terms you think people will use
to find your site. Then visit the sites in the top ten position.
Instead of trying to go head-to-head with them in either Google
AdWords or SEO positioning and spending a ton of money and time
on it, find a way to make these top ten sites into partners.
Invite them personally to become your affiliates. Offer free
product or service or content. I've converted many a competitor
into an affiliate this way. The approach works. Try it.

It also helps if you provide your strategic partners and
affiliates with good creative. By that I refer to banner ads and
text ads. Here's a simple tool you can use to create
great-looking banner ads very quickly and easily:

http://www.resellerproducts.com/easybannermakerpro2/index.htm

Let me know how that works for you.

Until next time,


Steven

P.S.: Please help me to help others. Think of five friends you
know who want to learn how to market their products or services
online and then click the link below to forward my email to them:

http://getresponse.com/forward.html?x=a62b&m=IDbh&s=BM46r&y=O&