internet business

Feb

2009

The Importance Of Testing And Tracking

Do you test and track?

Logically you may know you need to, but you may be a bit like I used to be where testing and tracking was the absolute last thing on my mind. I put it to you that if you don’t test and track then you don’t really have any basis on which to make decisions.

I’ll give you some examples.

#1 – If I didn’t know how many visitors I get to this blog, I would have given up a long time ago.
#2 – If I didn’t know what keywords people were finding my various sites with, I wouldn’t know what to change the words to, so that I could increase the amount of traffic to those sites.
#3 – If I didn’t try different things and then look at the resulting data a few weeks afterwards, I wouldn’t know if what I was doing was right or wrong.

More recently if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I’ve been putting up sites to promote and sell physical goods on Amazon and the like.

Every single site gets tracked completely.

When I get a visitor, I know how they found the site.
I know what keywords they used and I know what search engine they came from, or even if they’ve bookmarked the site and are returning via that bookmark.
I know what pages they looked at while they were visiting and the path they took.
I know what link they clicked on to leave the site, or if they left by closing their browser.
I know overall how my sites are growing (or not) and as a result I can see if I picked a good product and keywords to promote, and I know if I should give the site any more attention.

I wouldn’t know any of that if I didn’t track all the traffic on my sites.

My question to you is…

Do you test and track?

-Frank Haywood

Feb

2009

How To Find Hot Niches With Dead Simple Market Research

Going on from my last post about market research, I’ve finally finished editing the video that shows you how you can find hot niches using a few minutes of your time and free tools from Google.

Google released a new search tool a little while back that pretty much tells you which niches people are searching for products to buy. It’s supposed to be used to assist AdWords users uncover keywords to match pages on their web sites, but you can also use it in reverse.

They don’t make it very obvious how to do that though and hide the link at the bottom of the page. 😉

The thing is, when you start using it you can quickly work your way down to a relatively quiet and valuable sub-niche with a little thought.

I say it in the video, and I’ll say it here too – it’s a gold mine!

This data is coming from the biggest database in the world, all pre-processed and packaged up for you. And Google are giving it to you for free.

No other market research tool can compete with Google – they know for a fact what products people are searching for – and they’re telling you where the hot markets are.

What I’ve done is uploaded a 15 minute video on how to do niche market research, and then I’ve put a much longer post about it which is a transcript of the video on the Warrior Forum.

You can read the post and the transcript, and get a link to the video and a downloadable PDF here:-

How To Find Hot Niches With Dead Simple Market Research

I hope you enjoy this, and if I get enough positive feedback about it on the Warrior Forum, I’ll do more.

If you like it and you’re a Warrior Forum member, then please say so on the forum. If you’re not a Warrior Forum member, then you should be – go sign up.

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2009

Market Research – The Easy Way

I’ve been a little busy the last month and a bit, so I haven’t really had chance to do any blog posts.

But… I’ve had more than a few people contact me to say they’re having problems with Market Research.

And when I stopped to think about it, I realised that it’s been a fairly recurrent theme. In the past I’ve looked at things like product creation, surveys and putting up sales pages etc, but I’ve never really had anything to say about market research.

Yet this is something that people have been asking me about, and I guess it makes complete sense, but it’s something I’ve just completely overlooked.

So what I’ve done is I’ve put together a short video on how to do niche market research.

Tomorrow I’ll release a link to it – it’s just 15 minutes long, and I’ll supply it with a transcript too so you can have a read if that’s your preferred learning style or if my “brummy” accent sounds a bit funny and you can’t catch what I’m saying. 😉

-Frank Haywood.

Jan

2009

We All Want To Be Liked

(It’s All In The Mailing List Part 2)

I said in my last post we’d continue the day after but there’s been a few things going on since then. I’ve had a couple of power cuts and Paul and I have been busy working on the Site Builder for IPK sites.

Okay, that aside, let’s continue.

Many people say that the size of your mailing list has a direct bearing on your income. On the face of it this is true, but there are a number of other things involved too, and the biggest one is having a good relationship with your list.

I can tell you from experience that if you have a good relationship with your subscribers then you don’t need a huge list. I’ve certainly found this to be the case.

Thank you.

(I feel that I can make that relationship even better – I’ve already instigated a few changes for this year, and you’ll start to feel the benefit of that in the coming weeks and months.)

Apart from the comments made against my last blog post, I’ve also had people contact me separately, and the common threads seem to be…

“I’ve got a small list. How do I make it pay?”

“My list are only interested in freebies and they never buy anything. What can I do?”

The answer to these questions are as I’ve said above. It’s the relationship you have with your list that dictates how they’re going to behave to any mailings you send out. Do they like you or are they disinterested?

You know that in the offline “real” world that you like some people, and some people like you. It’s impossible for everyone to like everyone else as there are some personalities that just clash. Sometimes you meet someone and you just get on, other times it’s the exact opposite.

But did you know you can make most people like you by applying a few rules and changing your own attitude?

Think about this. If you meet someone and they smile a lot and agree with you, and then after a few minutes they smile and say “I like you”, isn’t it difficult not to like that person back?

The psychology behind it is that we all want to be liked. We’re hard wired to like people that like us and sound, look or have the same ideals as us. It’s that feeling of belonging we all want.

If someone smiles at you, then it’s hard not to smile back. If someone tells you they like them, then it’s hard not to like them back.

That’s why if you go around spreading happiness and smiles, that’s what you’ll get back. It’s obvious when you think about it isn’t it?

Okay?

So how can you apply this to the online world?

You can’t tell everybody you like them – it’s clearly false when you’ve never met them and is likely to engender the opposite reaction. But you can put a smiling photo on your blog and connect with your subscribers that way. 😉

And…

You can give them useful things such as information to help them achieve what they want.

So if you give your subscribers useful information (such as this blog post), and intersperse it with promotions for other products you recommend, and every so often a new paid product of your own that people will realise they’re getting stunning value for, then you’ll gradually build up their trust.

As their trust increases then so will your profits.

It doesn’t matter even if you have a relatively smallish list of a few hundred subscribers, it’s possible to make that list love you let alone like you, and that’s my aim for 2009. 🙂

I’ll be doing things this year that I know will raise your estimation of me. I’ll explain them as we go if you want me to, and if you want to do the same kind of thing with your own list, you’ll find it’s very straight forward to do.

But if you can’t wait and need to know this information now, there’s a short cut you can take to get started right away, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

You can have a small list and still make a decent profit from it.

How?

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

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2009

It’s All In The Mailing List

Every so often, I get asked by someone who’s clearly frustrated how anyone can possibly make a living online. Yet lots of people do it. They know that, but they just can’t see how it’s at all possible for THEM to do it.

I understand the frustration, as at one time I found it difficult to grasp just how other people could it and not me. It wasn’t so very long ago either.

I try to answer their specific questions as best I can, but sometimes the questions are so general it’s too hard to give a good answer.

By the way did you know that 60% of newbies give up in the first 12 months? There’s almost certainly a direct correlation between those who succeed and those who give up before they’ve given it their best.

(That 60% statistic came from a survey Mike Filsaime did just over 2 years ago. I don’t think it’s any real surprise to regular readers of this blog, and I don’t expect that number to have changed significantly. And I don’t think Mike would kill me for revealing that…)

So that means that every 12 months a load of people throw in the towel. Which I guess in a way makes it easier for us that keep going. 🙂

But even more interesting is that most of the people in that survey had a mailing list of less than 1,000 with half of those not having any kind of mailing list at all.

That’s not just interesting, it’s preposterous. How on earth do you stand any chance of running an online business without a mailing list?

Think about it.

I’ll tell you now that your internet business is your mailing list. You probably think you already know that, but I just have to wonder sometimes at the importance that people put on having a mailing list at all, especially as it seems a lot of people don’t have one.

If you’re a newbie reading this, then start thinking about building a mailing list or several, right away. For instance, there’s a good chance you’re reading this because you had an email from me with a link to this site. You almost certainly would not be reading this if you hadn’t signed up to one of my mailing lists.

Now you might be feeling a little glum if you have a small list, or if you don’t have any list at all. But it’s not all doom and gloom – it never is when you look at things in the right way. If you accept the proposition that your mailing list is your business (Which it is. Don’t argue. Keep up.) then you know it’s time to get going.

What if you knew that even with a relatively small list of a few hundred people you could make a full time living online? 🙂

That’s a bit cheering on a cold January day isn’t it? Apologies for that comment if you live somewhere hot, but it’s freezing here in the UK.

If you knew for a fact you could build a mailing list and start making money from it right away, you’d make the effort wouldn’t you?

How?

I’ll tell you tomorrow. 😉

-Frank Haywood

P.S. If you haven’t done so already, come take a look at the forum and say hello. http://www.vendiva.com/forum/