internet business

Jan

2008

What’s The Difference Between Those Who Do And Those Who Don’t?

I’m talking about achieving here.

The difference is attitude.

Those who don’t have one or more blockers that stop them from achieving. These blockers usually boil down to the individual’s perception and attitude.

Yes, I know you’re probably saying to yourself, “oh no, not another Positive Mental Attitude article”. Well, maybe this is a little different. Maybe not…

Have you noticed that the people who gripe in life are ALWAYS griping? Nothing is ever right for them. They’re always unhappy with something, and expend a lot of energy looking for the next thing to moan about.

“I can’t come up with a product idea.” “I’ve got my product idea, but I can’t get started.” “I’ve created my product, but I don’t know how to create a sales page.” “My sales page is up but I can’t get any sales.”

It’s just worn me out writing that and thinking in that way. It’s so negative it makes me feel ill just experiencing it, and I’m sorry if it’s taken you the same way.

How do people get anything done with an attitude like that?

Well, in most cases they don’t, but there are always some that do, and then they hit a “blocker”.

A blocker is that one thing that they can’t get past. Correction. The one thing they think they can’t get past.

All they need is a little help to change their thinking.

Let’s take the final example above. You have a product, but no sales.

The first question to ask yourself is “do I have traffic?” and if the answer is no, then that’s the thing to work on.

There are probably as many traffic sources as there are ways to make a million dollars.

Here’s a few…

JV partners
Forums
eBay
Squidoo
YouTube
StumbleUpon
Article sites
Blogging…

I don’t think I need to go on – just ONE of those sources worked upon and used exclusively should be enough to bring in traffic to make at least a sale a day.

So… You match your traffic source together with your product.

For instance, you might be selling something that helps ebook sellers deliver their ebooks. Such as SmartDD. 😉

Then JV partners and eBay would be the first / best way to go, and the way to build affiliates. Once you have enough affiliates, you reach “critical mass” and they do all the selling for you.

Now… As always, the devil’s in the detail.

You may know about all of the traffic sources above, but how do you get traffic from one of them? Well, they’re all different and need to be treated in different ways.

But choosing one and trying to get traffic from it is probably a good start.

This is where many people fall flat on their face.

They try… and after a month or 6 weeks, nothing’s happened.

They decide that it’s impossible to do.

Despite the fact that people are milking traffic from many of these sites, some people don’t get immediate success and that’s it, they give up.

(I blame all the BS artists out there who get people excited by the prospect of it being “easy”. When the real world hits and they find it isn’t as easy as they were led to believe, then the depression sets in.)

I’ll put you right now so you don’t get the wrong idea.

It isn’t easy.

Anyone that tells you it is has either got to the nice place where affiliates are now making sales for them, and / or they’ve forgotten that to start with it was actually quite hard.

See my post on Your Big Steel Ball.

Let me give you an idea of the kind of sales you should be making – these are pretty much standard numbers.

If you get 100 mildly interested visitors to your site, you will make 1 sale.

If you make less than 1 sale per 100 visitors, then you may have a poor product, or more likely, your sales page is at fault.

If you make 2 sales per 100 visitors, then you’re doing pretty well.

3 sales and you have an excellent combination of product and sales page.

More than that and it looks like you’ve found yourself a highly qualified (well targeted) traffic source.

In most cases, if you have traffic but no sales, then your sales page is crap.

I have a site that I’ve never done any work on since I set it up a couple of years ago. It was a practice for me when I was learning. (I think the domain may have just expired.)

I’ve never promoted it, I’ve never done anything with it since the day I set it up. To my knowledge, I may have submitted it to Google once, and that was it. There are no graphics other than the PayPal button, it’s text only.

To my amazement, that site has resulted in a sale about every 3-4 months… A tiny amount of traffic must be finding its way there, and every so often it results in a sale.

I’m quite pleased with that…

All I did was follow a few rules about setting up a sales page.

All I did was try.

All I did was give it a go.

I went in with the right attitude, not knowing whether it would work or not. I believed it would, and I was more pleased with myself for having done the site as it was good practice for my next one.

You can do the same as me. Be pleased with what you’ve done, be pleased with what you do. Don’t get upset or decide “it doesn’t work”.

If you want to achieve, if you want to build a successful business, then you have to give it your very best attitude.

Moaning when things don’t magically work out won’t achieve anything.

Being pleased with any of your achievements puts you in the right frame of mind to go do some more.

-Frank Haywood.

Jan

2008

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

There’s a correlation between those people who take responsibility for their lives and those who are successful in all aspects.

There’s an equivalent match for those people who don’t achieve and those who point the finger at everything and everyone else for their condition.

Look, it’s like this. Once you take responsibility for the fact that where you are in your life right now is no-one’s fault but your own, is when you can take the next step and do something about it.

Are you with someone you don’t like any more? Got a job you hate? Feeling sorry for yourself because you don’t have any money and you’ve racked up huge credit card bills?

Whose fault is it?

Go look in the mirror.

And before you respond back and say “ah yes, but…”, well, that’s just an *excuse*. If you’re unhappy, that’s you that’s done that, sunshine, no-one else.

Don’t agree?

Okay, just tell me, who is the person that’s responsible for your life?

Is it me?

Is it your government?

Is it one of your parents?

Did one of the above make the decisions that got you to where you are today? Are the reasons you are where you are, because those things in the past just happened to you?

Or are you prepared to face the truth that your life is your life? And that you are all grown up, and that you are responsible for everything that happens to you?

You make decisions every day about your life, and you should know that you can make dramatic changes with the smallest of those decisions.

Like…

Today, I’m going to accept responsibility for my life. I don’t like my job, and I don’t much care for working for other people, so I’m going to do something about it.

I’m going to create a product, and I’m going to offer it for sale online.

While I’m working on the traffic for that, I’m going to create another related product, and put that one on sale too.

And another, and another…

Trust me. That’s all it takes. That’s all there is to it.

It’s not a secret. If it is, it’s the worst kept one ever.

Make a decision, NOW. Take control of your life.

Take some simple steps, and change things forever.

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2008

Would You Like To Work Less and Earn More?

Well of course you would, who wouldn’t?

Hmm… Well, a lot of people *say* they would, but then aren’t prepared to make the effort to get to that nice place.

A lot of it is down to a few small organisational changes you need to make. Do it now, and reap the reward for the rest of the year. It’s not a big deal, but for most people it’s something they never get round to doing.

One of my buddies, Alex Jeffreys, has put up a couple of free videos that everyone should watch. It’s the perfect time for these, it’s a new year, everyone is fired up, but if you don’t do just a few simple things, you could end up wasting the year away.

I admit it – I “freewheeled” for part of last year and I realised my mistake towards the end. That’s all changing now, and I’ve moved into a new (smaller, quieter) more private office space in a corner of my home.

I have a new white board for details of my current task, I have two 28 day charts with spaces for small post-it notes for the upcoming tasks, and I have a far clearer view of my year ahead.

The post-it chart is something I learned years ago, and it can really keep you on track when you have a lot of small tasks to complete. I’ll write more about how that works in another post.

For now, go take a look at Alex’s videos. If you’ve ever brain stormed anything before, you’ll find it second nature to you.

As Alex says, when he was shown how to do this by his business coach he thought “what a load of old cobblers”, but he found it really does work.

If you do anything at all today, read these posts and watch the videos.

http://www.postlaunchprofits.com/blog/work-less-make-more-money-video/
http://www.postlaunchprofits.com/blog/work-less-make-more-money-video-2/

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2008

The Power Of Social Proof – Airline Crashes and Britney Spears’ Pregnant Sister

What have Jamie Lynn Spears and this blog about internet business have in common?

The message here today is about the power of social proof. We all look at what other people are doing to help us make decisions about what we should be doing – that’s called social proof.

(Social proof is why many people still use AdSense on their sites even though it isn’t profitable any more, but don’t get me started on that one.)

I’ve just read a blog post pointed out to me by my wife, about a concerned mother whose children watch Zoey 101 starring Ms. Spears. The character Zoey is supposed to be about age 13 or 14, while the actress who plays her (Jamie Lynn Spears) is 16.

Here’s the thing. It’s almost certainly likely that while the children watching it will know the factual difference between the real person and a character being played by that person, they will behave as if that character is a real person.

(I’ve only got to look at my own children talking about what Ben 10 will do next to know I’m right on that count.)

So the concerned mother opens in her blog post:-

“Today, when my kids arrive home from school, I predict the first thing they will want to talk about is the fact that Zoey 101 is going to have a baby.

And then the questions will start. ‘Mom, isn’t she in like 9th grade?’ ‘Mom, Jamie Lynn Spears isn’t married.’ ‘Mom, how can a kid have a baby?'”

I can imagine the problems she’s had sorting that one out.

She knows that we all look to our peers to see the correct way to behave. We learn this as babies, for example, staring into our parents faces to see when it’s appropriate to laugh.

And she’s worried that her children will think it’s okay to be pregnant while still at school.

(For a while here in the UK, if a girl became pregnant while still at school, she was immediately taken out of school so as not to set an example for the other girls. I don’t know if that still goes on.)

If you’re wondering about Jamie Lynn Spears behaviour here, just look at who her role model is – her older sister who has been fussed over and chased by the media over her own pregnancies. It may seem to Jamie Lynn that it’s good to be pregnant because you then become important and “special” like her older sister.

I don’t know…

If you doubt the power of social proof, in Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence – The Psychology Of Persuasion”, he relates a story about a previously unexplained rise in plane crashes in the US every so often. This was a charted “blip”.

After a lot of investigation, it turned out that the plane crashes coincided with heavily publicised suicides. If the suicide was in a national newspaper, then both plane crashes and car crashes would increase, as well as suicides in general across the country.

If it was in a state newspaper, then plane and car crashes would increase in that state.

It seems that the only reasonable answer was that pilots and the drivers of cars were deliberately crashing in an attempt to both take their lives and earn insurance payouts for their families.

I know it may seem far fetched – you need to read the book for the full story.

Insurance companies have taken it all very seriously and now plot the number of claims right after a heavily publicised suicide – they know what’s coming.

So the old adage of “monkey see, monkey do” is a good one. Behaviour really does breed behaviour.

Moving away from the examples above, from a business point of view social proof is often used in the form of testimonials. If a good number of people say something is the best thing since sliced bread, then it makes sense for us to believe it.

It’s one of the short cuts we take when we go through the decision making process when we’re unsure about something.

Don’t believe me? Imagine this as a final example…

You pull off the highway part way through taking a long journey, as you’re hungry and you’re looking for something to eat. You see two diners, and both look equally good. However, one has a good number of cars parked outside and you can see people moving around inside, the other car park is empty and you don’t see any people.

Which one would you choose?

Well I think you’d say to yourself…

“What do the people in the busy diner know that I don’t? Is the empty diner awful? Does the busy one have the best food for miles around? I’m hungry and I’m not taking any chances, I’ll go with the one that’s busy. Those people must know something I don’t.”

That’s the power of social proof.

-Frank Haywood.

Jan

2008

The Secret Of Getting Thousands Of Dollars Worth Of Complimentary Software And Info Products

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, then you probably know that I both give away and also sell digital delivery software – SmartDD.

What it does is both deliver digital products and also protects them from unauthorised downloads. It uses a number of clever ways to do this, and we’re not done with improvements yet. Version 2 will be out soon.

SmartDD is relatively cheap for the protection it gives product owners, and yet, as in the case below, many products are still left completely unprotected.

Up to now, whenever I’ve found the download page of unprotected product, I’ve written to the product owner to let them know about the problem. Around 10-15% of them write back to thank me, and I always offer a free copy of SmartDD in those cases if they’ll promote for me.

Some do, some don’t. That’s okay.

Except… I’ve got bored of doing it…

So I’m going to let you know the simplest way of getting hold of thousands of dollars worth of products for free. Actually, if you’ve watched the video on the SmartDD.com home page, or read the text underneath it, you already know how to do it.

But here’s a reminder anyway.

Just go to del.icio.us and type in the product name you’re interested in getting a free copy of, the shorter or more unusual the name, the better, e.g. smartdd.

If the product is unprotected and is either popular or has been around a while, SOMEONE at SOME TIME will have bookmarked the download page. Hilarious isn’t it?

Here’s an example, but I’ve left out the products and download details as it would be a case of “shame on me”.

Last night, I was looking at some software I was interested in, having bought info products from this particular person already. The info products weren’t that good, and I suspected the software wouldn’t be so good either, but it looked intriguing, and I was going to buy on pure curiousity factors alone.

Instead I went to del.icio.us and did a quick search on the very unusual product name.

There was the download page exposed for all the world to see, bookmarked along with a dozen other download pages by someone who I believe is a very well known marketer, which makes it pretty ironic. His name wasn’t there, but his userid was quite recognisable.

So I took a look at the download page, watched the videos of the product in action and decided it wasn’t worth the hundred dollars the guy was asking for it. Having seen it being used, I know I wouldn’t have used it myself. That’s probably the reason there wasn’t much info on the sales page.

As I was in a curious mood, I decided to search for the other products sold by this person. There they all were, the download pages bookmarked under various people’s userids on del.icio.us, and these all amount to thousands of dollars worth of software and info products that I know the guy is selling daily.

It’s a miracle that anyone actually buys anything from him at all considering it can be downloaded for free.

So why am I telling you this?

Remember I said I used to write to people to let them know they had open download pages? And that I’m now fed up of doing it?

Well, why don’t you do it instead? It’s easy, and you can make money from it too. 😉

Step 1 – Get your affiliate link from the SmartDD.com web site. Just sign up as a free member if you’ve not already and you’ll get your aff link inside the members area.

Step 2 – Find an unprotected download page using the del.icio.us method.

Step 3 – Write to the product owner and let them know their page is open for all the world to see. Tell them they can protect their product using SmartDD, and give them your affiliate link.

If they buy, you get the commission.

In step 3, you may think it’s worth being a little cheeky and saying “thank you for the free product” before letting them know about SmartDD, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you. 😉

If you’re interested in other methods of getting hold of unprotected or poorly protected products, there’s a very nice little ebook about it here:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/dlh/

Don’t you think it’s lunacy that some people will go to all the trouble of creating an info product, but then can’t spend the extra little bit of time protecting their investment?

Get out there and spread the word!