list building

Apr

2015

Webinars Made Easier

Everything you wanted to know about webinars, but were afraid to ask…

Part of the changes I’m making in my business for this year are to provide you with useful training content.

I’ll be doing this by a series of free videos covering various topics such as copy writing, building a sales page, mindset, product creation, outsourcing and so on.

I KNOW lots of people want this kind of stuff after doing my course on auto backing up your web sites last September.

(Incidentally, there will be an updated version available soon to everyone that bought with a proper members area and an affiliate scheme. Watch this space and wait for the email – it’s no additional cost to anyone that has already purchased.)

It’s mainly swilling about in my head at the moment, and only exists as a comprehensive set of notes. But videos and documentation are coming.

Most of it will be free, some will be paid for.

And… One of the things that I’ll be doing later this year are webinars.

Webinars are easy. I know some people get a bit scared, but believe me it’s a LOT easier than standing in front of a room full of people who are waiting to hear you speak. 😉

The best bit is that you get to do the whole thing in the comfort of your own home and even have someone giving you a big hug if you need it.

No-one would ever know…

I know people like them simply because of the useful stuff you can learn, and I ALSO know that when you do any *selling* via a webinar, then people buy.

Simply, the conversion rate is much higher. It’s far more normal to achieve rates of 30-40% conversions rather 3-4%.

And I think I understand the psychology of why this is too, but I’ve not seen anyone discuss this anywhere.

Ingrained in the human psyche is the need to pay back for any perceived favours given. It’s a co-operative mutual help thing that’s been proven to help in individual’s successes.

You can read all about this in Robert B. Cialdini’s book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” which you can pick up for a few dollars on Amazon. Well worth it if you do ANY kind of selling – either products or services.

Anyway…

I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground for anything to do with webinars.

And then along comes this quite nice training at an 80% discount for a few days – it ends quite soon.

http://frankhaywood.com/wa/

A heads up first though. The content is good, but you have to pick your way through some of the more obvious stuff before you get to the goodies.

And the members area isn’t laid out in modules as you’d expect it to be.

Those things aside, you could do a lot worse than to grab yourself a copy of this training while it’s on discount.

I love a bargain and I figure that if I like this then you may like it too.

http://frankhaywood.com/wa/

-Frank Haywood

Feb

2015

Clever Marketing, I Think…

There’s some very clever marketing I’ve just come across. Or at least I think it’s clever on the face of it, I haven’t quite thought it all through yet for the pros and cons. It’s hot off the press of my mind and onto here.

When (if) I find out more about how this works I’ll let you know.

At any rate it’s certainly something I’ve filed away in the back of my head for future reference.

So what is it?

A couple of days ago I was sent an email about some FaceBook software. I don’t use Facebook in my personal life but of course it’s very important for a lot of people including my own family members.

(My dad has a FaceBook account that he uses to “stalk” the rest of the family, leaving funny and vague comments on various posts the family make and any photos they upload. My eldest son is often killing himself laughing at things his grandad has written…)

That aside, when I hear about some new software, I always go check it out because you never know what use it might be.

It turns out this software lets you post optin boxes together with teaser videos on FaceBook.

Don’t confuse this product with a ~~$67~~ launch that’s going on at the moment that I guess you’ve probably had emails about. (Not from me.)

This product isn’t that, it’s something very similar, but doesn’t have ONE of the features of the larger product.

In any case… I took a look at the sales page, watched the explanatory video (it could be a service, I haven’t bought yet, but it looks like it) and scrolled to the bottom to see the price – it was a one-off ~~$20.02~~ on a rising price sale, which I thought was reasonable.

So far so good?

I then forgot about it but left the page open in a tab. I’ve been hibernating my laptop the last couple of days so I knew it was there for when I got back to it.

My inbox has had quite a few emails for this (slightly?) bigger ~~$67~~ product, so I took a look and thought it was just like the one I’d left open in a tab. It’s not the same thing, and it’s definitely a different product as it also has a countdown timer you can add, which the first product didn’t have.

So I decided to go check out the details of both on JV Zoo, and did a search for the first product. I then got stopped in my tracks because I found 38 products that matched the description.

I opened the first one and clicked the sales page.

It was the same product, same sales page, different price – $11.

I clicked on some of the others – all the same domain, same sales page, different prices, with the lowest I could see at $7, all with different sellers offering different commission rates for affiliates in JV Zoo.

Hmm. Brain engaged and I did a bit of thinking.

The clever marketing bit was that the creator of the product didn’t appear to be selling it himself. I could be wrong.

Each page had its own reference in the URL (?r=9999) which I originally thought was the affiliate ID. I now realise it was a way of identifying each vendor and so placing the correct payment button on the sales page.

My guess is – because I haven’t bought yet – is that the original creator is selling a service, and so will gather the name and email of each person who signs up for it regardless of where they’ve come from.

It’s as if he’s selling it with 100% commissions, but isn’t inserting himself in the sales process at all.

In other words, he’s building a list of buyers without any of the hassle or risk associated with being a product vendor.

I’ve not seen anyone else do this, and it could well be the start of something big – a new trend in selling and list building. I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

I just thought you’d like to know, and to say that you heard about it from me first. 😉

-Frank Haywood

Oct

2014

Ebook Marketing 101

I recently had an email from a customer, Jefferson O I, which I answered and thought might be useful to other people who have the same interests.

He’s asked if I knew about any software that would help promote and assist in the sales of books, and this is my reply. I’ve also added a little bit more content to this version you’re reading here.

–===–

I don’t have or know of any software that directly markets your ebooks. My personal approach to this though is to create a publishing site and send all traffic there.

I know that doing it this way is very important as its Marketing 101. You own the site and you control what’s going on and not Facebook or Amazon or anyone else. 😉

The reason is, if you don’t own the site then any work you may do is building content on their sites and they can pull the plug on you at any time and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I also recommend you build a publisher site rather than an author site as that then gives you room to produce multiple types of books using pseudonyms. You can then allocate a portion of that site to each author.

To me this looks much more professional and lends an air of credibility to your site even if you’re a one-man-band.

Very importantly, you MUST start list building immediately if you weren’t directly planning to do so. Everyone that even looks at your ebook you want to attempt to capture on one of your mailing lists.

What I mean by this is that assuming you’re selling on Amazon, then when people take a peek inside your book, then right in the first few pages should be a nice big graphic that can’t be missed and a call to action to join your list to get a free something that you know the person would want.

It has to be a high perceived value to the reader. Anyone clicking through would then get an optin form to get their freebie, and right away you have a freebie seeker on your list that could potentially be turned into a customer.

Anyone that does buy your book should also see another call to action at the end of the book to get them to sign up to a customer list – give them something useful and related. You know they’re a customer because a freebie seeker can’t see the end of the book on Amazon so couldn’t possibly join your customer list.

You should have different prospect and customer lists for every book so that you can address each list correctly.

You can then send emails to the freebie seekers to gently ease them into buying your book(s).

Of course you should be list building on your site too and enrolling anyone that visits it by offering them a relevant freebie.

As you release new books, then you can write to the relevant prospect and customer list and tell them there’s a new related book available. Instant sales!

These are the two most important aspects of your marketing and will account for 80% of your marketing success.

#1 – Own the site.
#2 – Build separate prospect and customer mailing lists.

If you don’t do these two things, then everything else will almost be a waste of time as you’ll be constantly relying on new customers when your existing customers will be there and waiting if you can contact them.

I’ve seen lots of author sites located on WordPress.com or other free web sites, and not one of them has had an optin form, let alone a strong call to action. So they don’t own the site and they’re not building a mailing list.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Many of these authors have several books released and they’re struggling, some without sales for months unless they’re paying for promotions. Crazy.

In the early days if I was you I wouldn’t bother with any kind of social marketing until you have a substantial list of several hundred customers and prospects – it’s just not worth the effort. Maybe a Twitter account would do as an announce method, but it really isn’t necessary if you have customers on your mailing list.

Get your customers to leave reviews and also to socially share your site and Amazon pages – tell them it all helps to motivate you to write more and that you’d really appreciate any help that they could give you. Some people WILL always help if you ask nicely, and be more motivated if you give them something useful, and speak to their hearts.

One other thing.

Your sales page on Amazon is exactly that – a sales page. Make sure you have a very interesting and intriguing description of your book and that you get people *excited* about owning it.

Again, this is Marketing 101. 😉

–===–

I hope this helps give you a better perspective of the first steps to take to market your books.

-Frank Haywood

Sep

2014

Dynamic Contest Creator Plugin

Update: The sale for the Dynamic Contest Creator plugin is live at just $17.00.

It will eventually rise to $27, so now is probably the best time to get it.

***

Demo contest here. Please note this ISN’T a real competition. 😉

Here’s a list of features.

o Optional list building via autoresponder service integration.
o Optional gathering of name and email addresses via plugin.
o Set date/time for contest start, end, and award announcements.
o Set the number of winners.
o Optionally restrict to WP subscribers only.
o One entry per user, IP address controlled.
o Unique referring link for each user to promote.
o Full customisation of all text fields including error messages.
o Optionally upload your logo and product images.
o Built in product image slider.
o Add your own question and answers.
o Four different template layouts.
o Six colour themes.
o Thirty-seven great looking fonts built in.
o Optionally set your own background image.
o Contestant sharing via optional social network integration:

– FaceBook
– Twitter
– Google+
– LinkedIn
– Tumblr
– Pinterest
– StumbleUpon
– Digg

o Contestant sharing by email and referral link.
o Winner selection via button click.
o Email send to winners.
o Fully loaded statistics section.

Phew!

It’s a HUGE plugin that helps you list build by running competitions where the winners are those who refer the most other entrants to you. I would also recommend that you give every entrant at least something so that everybody wins.

We all like to win stuff, right?

In other words you’re adding a touch of excitement to what would normally be a giveaway list building exercise that normally isn’t there.

You’ve probably seen this kind of thing done on TV where a gameshow will advertise a competition in the ad break. The questions are so easy that hardly anyone ever gets them wrong, and often they’re multiple choice to make it even easier.

As for the competitions themselves, they’re impossible not to get the question right. 😉

With the Dynamic Contest Creator plugin, if the entrant selects the wrong answer, they’re told right away so they can have another go.

When they finally get the right answer, they’re asked for their name and email address, and I would also suggest that you tell them to start sharing the competition with their friends via the social networks and through email. They get a unique referring link to enable them to do this.

So there’s two key aspects to this plugin, but it’s up to you if you use them both.

#1 – Optional – Give everyone a prize. We all like to win stuff.
#2 – Give the people with the most referrals something extra.

Once you have their name and email address, then you can send them emails to get them to promote the competition, and even enhance it by adding in unadvertised prizes to build the excitement.

And of course, you can send your new list promotional offers for which you are an affiliate.

Everybody wins, and that’s the kind of thing I like, and I hope you do too.

I’ll get some tutorial videos up on Monday and cover each section in turn. Don’t worry though, it’s very much self-explanatory and a few minutes experimentation and you’ll know your way around it.

-Frank Haywood

Sep

2013

Project Email Part 1

If you use email at all then I expect you’ll find this useful. 😉

This series of blog posts, videos and emails will eventually become part of a saleable product so pay attention if you want to see how I go about creating a learning product. Then you can use this methodology as a guide for your own product creation.

Start the video then change quality to 720p and go full screen.

Gradually over time there have arisen some situations related to email that I think need to change. I’m certain that the changes I’m going to discuss in this series of blog posts and emails will prove to be a substantial improvement of your business situation.

This will arise from both different methods of handling email that you may not be doing at the moment, and also with your email marketing – autoresponders.

So let’s get started with a discussion about email clients and then we’ll move onto autoresponders.

I’ve noticed over the last 6 months or so that an increasing number of small business are using free email services such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail.

I don’t think this is a good idea for two reasons.

#1 – It looks unprofessional to your customers to be receiving a business email from fredbloggs @ yahoo.com, or studly111111 @ gmail.com etc. 😉

#2 – You don’t own the email account, the free email provider does. And they can close you down any time they like.

Ask yourself what it would do to your business if a spam complaint resulted in your free email account being closed.

Nightmare?

Consider Gmail.

Yes we all have Gmail accounts but only because we have to if we want to use any of the Google services such as YouTube, GDrive or Gdocs.

But… Google have a history of closing without warning any service they lose interest in.

They did it with a really useful online graphics editor a couple of years ago, and more recently they closed their RSS reader service too, annoying a whole load of techies out there.

Email could be next if new legislation requires a tax on email addresses, or makes free email addresses illegal to prevent the increasing amount of spam. I don’t think that last one would be a bad thing, and sooner or later a politician is going to have that idea too.

To the public it wouldn’t be a big deal. They’d use their ISP email addresses instead.

But as a business owner, you should *really* be taking charge of your own email and not trust it to chance.

I’d also like you to consider that many free email providers don’t care if the email gets to you or your clients and customers or not. It simply isn’t critical to them. What do they care if they filter 2 million emails out of their network today and yours happens to be one of them?

As far as they’re concerned they’re providing free not business email services, and you can’t afford to rely on them as part of your business.

So learning point number 1 is:-

You shouldn’t rely on free email services as part of your business.

All make sense so far?

In a couple of days or so I’ll show you how *easy* it is to set up an email account within cPanel, and also set what are called DKIM and SPF records – very important!

Now then. To make this whole exercise doubly useful, I’ve created a first video – an overview that explains how I’m going about creating the learning product and what it’s going to be about and where it’s leading to. And iot also explains a lot of things not covered in this email.

If you watch the video and like it, then feel free to give me some love back by sharing and even embedding it on your own site. And of course let me know what you think by leaving me a comment on the post.

IF you’re thinking of leaving a comment on this post with your thoughts, then all I’ll say is that’s a good idea and it’s DEFINITELY in your interest to do so as I’d like to later reward all contributors for their input and views. 😉

-Frank Haywood

http://www.frankhaywood.com/tag/project-email/ <== Click this for a list of all Project Email posts.