200-Proof Marketing

John Reese is one of the best known Marketing Guru’s on the internet and he has an absolutely enormous following of dedicated fans.

I don’t like many of the “guru’s” because it’s fairly obvious that the only thing they’re concerned with is selling.

They don’t care about helping people, they only care about making money by selling products that are usually hyped up junk.

John Reese sells plenty also. And I don’t blame him because he does something few others even try to do… Help People.

He has been working on his new income.com project for awhile and it looks like it will be a great website for new and veteran marketers alike.

To promote his new project, he has just launched his new blog as well as a free report about the “rebirth” of the internet.

I haven’t quite finished reading it yet, but there’s some great information included and it’s definitely worth reading.

It starts out pretty “doom and gloom” but manages to deliver some interesting insights and solid advice for the future.

What shocked me was that he mentioned something I’ve been preaching quite a bit recently… Helpful article type sales letters (he calls them Advertorials) out sell hyped up hard selling copy.

Here’s a quote:

“Advertorial style copy on the Web does a lot better than over-the-top copy – and the difference in success rates is continuing to grow.

If you are selling something from a web page think about different ways that you can incorporate an educational story or “sidebar” of factual information that will actually deliver some value to your reader even if they don’t buy your product.”

It seems he agrees with me about actually delivering something of value to your visitors and customers.

I highly suggest you go read this report right now…

Here’s a link: http://www.income.com/blog/

As you know, I recently re-built this entire website. The new version not only looks better, but it’s also more functional and expandable.

The cool thing is that as I’m learning more about customizing this new setup, I’m having some great ideas for making it a better website.

As you can see the first of those ideas is my new “Ask Chad” page. Which will be “members only” soon (more on that later).

That’s something other marketers would charge $100-$500 a month for. But in the spirit of this site I made it free.

When I was getting started… (more…)

Want some free marketing advice? Ask me anything you want to know by going to the new “Ask Chad” page.

Just click the”Ask Chad” link at the top right of this webpage to find out more…

As many of you know the copywriting legend Gary Halbert died recently. His sons and John Carlton are orginizing a public memorial in LA. I would go if I wasn’t across the country but if you would like to go you can get the details from Gary’s website: http://www.TheGaryHalbertLetter.com/

Gary’s newsletters were an enourmous help to me when I was learning how to write copy that sells and anyone who hasn’t read and reread all of them should put it at the top of their to-do list. Those newsletters are a marketing gold mine and best of all they’re free. You can view them at the above site as well.

I’m sure you noticed that this blog looks entirely different. If not, you need to put down the bottle of Jack for awhile.

What you might not have known is that the old blog was running on custom PHP software I designed. Being a programmer, I like to create my own software so I can do what I want with it. But the reality is that Wordpress is much better than my software and I don’t have time to code the old software the way I want it.

The biggest motivation was a recent outbreak of spam. I didn’t have time to create my own spam blocking software, so it was time to switch. There nothing worse than seeing Viagra ads all over your website.

So far I really like wordpress. The plugins are cool and I really like alot of the other features.

I had to move all the old blog posts to the new blog and in doing so I lost all the comments attached to them. I started to go and redo the comments but decided not to. I also did some light editing of the posts/articles and removed some that were boring or that I didn’t like.

I still have alot to do, to get everything setup right so expect many changes over the next few weeks.

To those who use my Testing Calculator, it can still be found at the old address, but it will be a few days until I get it going with the new setup.

I’m constantly getting questions about my calculator. Unfortunately, I’ve been too busy to answer them all.

So here are some of the common questions:

Can I have a stand alone version or the source code?

No, I don’t have time to program a stand alone version and since it brings a decent amount of traffic to this website, I don’t want to just give it away.

However it is just a math equation, that you can learn freely on the ‘net. It may take you awhile to figure out if you’re not a math geek though.

Why doesn’t the Calculator show a exact percentage instead of above 80, 90, 95, etc?

That’s because I couldn’t find a math equation for getting the exact probability, instead I found a table of results and their probabilities and used it to program it the way it is.

Is this the best way to tell if my results are statistically accurate?

As far as I know, yes. There are many other equations for this type of thing, including one called a “Confidence Interval” which gives somewhat different results.

My calculator uses the Chi Squared equation with a Yates Correction. Which is often used to determine whether survey results are valid.

If someone knows of a truly better equation, let me know and I will make a calculator for it. For now it seems like this is the most dependable equation.

In other news…

This website was attacking by some spam robots that spammed all kinds of weird stuff in the comments. Evidently someone specifically designed software to spam this blog.

Unfortunately I had to disable comments to stop the spam. When I get time I will rewrite the php and add some type of validation that will block the spam.

Also I’ve spent the past few months working on my biggest project yet, and so far the results are amazing.

It’s not an IM product, but if I decide to sell it (via a membership site), I will post a link to it here so you can benefit from it.

That’s it for now…

I was messing around the other day adding a sitemap to this website and came across Google’s Webmaster Tools. Now this might be like telling NASA there’s no gravity in space, but did you know about this?

It tells where you rank for which searches, when your site was last crawled, page rank, and all kinds of other interesting information. Nothing ground breaking but you might wanna check it out if you haven’t already.

Here’s a link: Google Webmaster Tools

When I checked this site on there, I saw that it was #1 for “split test calculator” and some other similar searches. Pretty cool considering I didn’t even try.

That calculator actually annoys me because alot of people use it and almost none of them take time to read the blog. They’re just using me for my Calculator!

Actually, just it case everyone thinks I’m an alcoholic, I should make it clear that I do not drink very often. Maybe a couple times a month. 200 Proof Marketing is just a catchy way of saying “Pure Marketing.”

Back to the topic…

As you may have noticed I tend to disappear from time to time. This time it was due to a mixture of work and vacation.

I love the Bahamas and Caribbean, so I’ve been spending alot of time there.

I also served on a jury for the first time recently. Most the people were whining about missing work and being inconvenienced but I thought it was very interesting. I guess that’s because I work when I want and not when someone tells me to.

They settled before we had a chance to reach a verdict so I didn’t get the full experience. Oddly enough the prosecutions most important piece of evidence was inadmissible because the prosecuter forgot to ask a specific question before submitting it. Without that evidence they had no case. Overall it was a good experience that I would do again if I had the chance.

I’m working on several new projects. Three projects are new digital products and one is a physical product that I think would be very successful.

Stay tuned, I’ve got a few interesting things I’m going to write about in the next few days.

The Income Tax deadline is quickly approaching and it’s a bad time for many people who own their own business.

I’ve noticed that sales tend to drop every year right around April 15th. It’s been one fluctuation I could count on and it sucks.

It’s not just taxes that hurt sales, it’s the coming of Spring and better weather. People spend less time on the computer and more time doing other stuff.

So if you’re new to the game and have seen your sales dropping, don’t worry, it’s to be expected. They will probably start picking up slowly in the next few weeks.

However, Fall and Winter are typically the best times of the year for Internet Retailers.

On a side note… I was cleaning out a file cabinet yesterday and found a 9th Grade Report Card.

I was in a class called Principles of Entrepreneurship which was taught by a lady who’s husband ran a semi-successful Appliance Store.

Here’s what had me laughing… I got a D- in that class!

I almost failed! Yet here I am, no doubt more successful than anyone in that class (including the teacher).

By the way the class had very little to do with real business. We learned all kinds of useless stuff that I can’t even remember (maybe that’s why I almost failed?).

To tell the truth, me and my buddy spent our time surfing the web and messing with other people though the schools network.

Anyways, I had a good laugh at that one…

No, not in the way you’re thinking…

Over 10 Million people have been exposed to sales copy written by me.

That’s pretty cool, eh?

I know that’s nothing compared to big copywriters like Gary Halbert, but I’m not a professional copywriter either.

I personally don’t think I could stand to write copy for a living. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it, I just don’t think I’ld like writing copy for other people.

I think it would get old really fast if all I did was write copy for others and never had any of my own projects.

The fun is in the whole process, from finding the market to seeing something I created turn into a successful business.

Sorry, no useful tips this time… Just some ego boosting on my part. But I am working on some things that will be pretty cool for my readers…