200-Proof Marketing

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.

This is one of the biggest traps in the Internet Marketing community. Everyone says to create products about your hobbies or things you enjoy with no thought of their profitability.

In a perfect world we would all have hobbies that were also great markets to sell to, but it’s not a perfect world.

When I was younger me and some friends invented a sport we called “Extreme Repelling” where we would find tall cliffs, antennas, buildings, and so on to repel from.

Repelling is where you use a rope and a harness to descend down the side of a cliff or other tall structure.

We would repel upside down, backwards, forwards, do spins, time each other to see who could get down fastest, etc. I know it was a little stupid but it was a lot of fun.

Do you think I could create an ebook about how to do crazy repelling tricks or anything similar that would sell at all? I doubt it, maybe some crazy rock climbers would buy it but it certainly wouldn’t be worth my time.

What if you’re hobby is knife making? There is a hardcore group of knife makers out there but it’s a pretty small group and although I’m sure you could make a profitable beginners product for this niche, it would bring in less than $100 a week, if that.

I do believe you should love what you do, but your job isn’t to be a knife maker or a extreme repeller, your job is to be a Marketer and Businessman.

Love what you DO, not what you SELL.

I love Marketing, Advertising, and Business in general. It’s one of my passions that I’m a little obsessed with. I enjoy selling products and making money as you should.

If you just want to make an extra buck by cashing in on your hobby, you’re welcome to try but I doubt you will ever be successful unless you’re also passionate about Marketing.

If someone told me when I was a kid that I would grow up to be a Marketer, I would have laughed at them. I thought I was going to be a Pilot or Police Officer, not a boring business man.

Oddly enough I stumbled across Marketing(fate?) and instantly became obsessed with it. We’re talking 16+ hours a day reading about Marketing for several months or more.

Here’s what I mean by saying don’t love your products…

Obviously you should strive to make quality products that help your customers. Because If you don’t, you will severely damage your products long term profitability.

When you create a product, you can’t afford to get attached to it. Products can and will fail sometimes and if they’re going to fail, you want them to fail as soon as possible so you can move on to the next product which could be successful.

The idea is to Fail Fast. You learn from mistakes and get better each time you try. The faster you fail, the faster you will succeed. Failure isn’t the end, it’s just part of the process. It’s a result that allows you to learn.

Like I’ve said before, there’s no need to be original when looking for a product to sell. Just start looking around at what’s selling well right now.

Find a product that’s already doing well, then create a competing product and do your best to beat your competitors.

Sell what’s already selling, not what you think will sell. Learn that and you will be far ahead of most people.

It’s really not too difficult to find winners when other people have found them for you.

I’ve given away more valuable information on this website than most guru’s would be willing to sell you, and this is one of the most important lessons I can teach. I wasn’t successful until I learned this lesson.

Sell what people want to buy, don’t look for people to buy what you want to sell.

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…

Right now I’m watching a show I like called “Deal or No Deal.” It’s usually an enjoyable game show but tonight it’s a 2 hour commercial.

I’m “roughly” timing it and there’s 5 to 6 minutes of the show followed by 3 to 5 minutes of commercials.

It’s incredibly annoying…

Typically there are about 15-20 minutes of commercials for every one hour of TV, and somehow people have learned to live with that. But a commercial every 5 minutes?!?!

I know that’s a little off topic but it leads me to what I really wanted to talk about…

Image Marketing aka “Marketing Made by Idiots”

Direct Marketer’s generally dislike Image or Brand Marketing because it isn’t sales driven.

The goal of Image Marketing is to make a company or product look good and to get customers to remember it.

The goal of Direct Marketing is to SELL! Screw everything else, just sell the damn product.

Obviously any successful business needs to provide a quality product and build repeat business, but you can’t have repeat business if no one ever buys your product.

Company’s like Pepsi or Reebok, can benefit from Image Marketing because their customers are often faced with two very similar products and rely on “Brand Loyalty” to make the decision.

But Entrepreneurs who start a Small Business get little benefit from Image Marketing.

They usually go to an Ad Agency that makes all kinds of promises, charges a ton of money, and delivers very little.

This leads to the failure of countless small businesses every year.

Sure everyone in town may know your business’s name but if you don’t give people a reason to come to your store and buy something, they won’t.

If you’re going to start a business, take the time to learn about Marketing first, and don’t rely on an Ad Agency to take care of the most important part of your business.

In Direct Marketing your Ad’s should always give you a measurable increase in sales. Exploit the Ad’s that sell and throw out the ones that don’t.

First of all, I’m shocked by the amount of people that are coming to this blog. I had over 1,500 visitors to it last month. Evidently, you’re all just to lazy to leave comments and discuss what I write about.

Since I’m getting decent traffic I will post some more marketing info here soon.

Alright on to the crappy weekend… You may have noticed that this site, as well as all of my other websites have been down since sometime Saturday. Unfortunately I didn’t find out about it until sunday morning when I noticed I had made no sales for the day.

I’ve had the same webhosting company for a few years now and I’ve never had any problems. But this weekend my traffic exceeded my bandwidth limit, so my webhost shut all of my websites down and locked my webhosting account.

I could go on a rampage about this because it cost me HUNDREDS of dollars in wasted advertising and lost sales but I’m not because it won’t help anything.

Oh yeah, I also lost a lot of money playing poker friday. I’m good and usually make money pretty consistantly but I got hit with a feirce streak of a bad luck for some reason.

So it’s been a crappy weekend, I had planned to launch a new product this weekend but that has now been put off until I have time tonight or tommorow.

There is a upside to it all though… I stumbled on a new Niche a few days ago. It’s not really new, just new to me because I had never considered it.

What I noticed was a huge market of highly passionate, almost desperate customers. The market is huge but even the biggest competitors (some minor celebrities) have weak marketing.

Digital products wouldn’t be too effective for the market since they are buying DVD’s and physical items. That’s actually good because I want to get away from clickbank with some of my products so my entire income won’t fall victim to the “Clickbank Rollarcoaster” of sales fluctuations.

The most popular product in the market doesn’t even do what the customers want, it’s just the best option available. That “half working” product costs maybe $5 to make and ship, yet sells by the thousands for $500!

With some pre-launch hype, that would spread easily on it’s own in this market, I could probably make over $250,000 in sales the first week and over a million in the first year.

How did I find this Market?

Well I actually became a part of the market(ADD leads me to alot of different things) and after hours of research(and buying a few products) I realized the market was hugely underserved.

Lesson: Be your own customer… Become a part of a market before you sell to it, so you can better understand what the market wants.

You may have heard this story before because it’s kind of common, but I really like it so I’ll add it here anyway.

One day, while walking through the wilderness, a man encountered a vicious tiger. He ran for his life, and the tiger gave chase.

With a tiger above, another below, and two rats continuing to gnaw on his vine, the man tasted the strawberry and found it absolutely delicious.

Do you get it? It’s probably the most important lesson you could ever learn. I’m not going to tell you what it is either. I want you to really think about it and then leave a comment with what you think it is.

Besides being a computer geek and marketer. I also like to read philosophy(it’s good to get a new outlook on life).

Here’s a well known chinese story that really hit home for me several years ago. Next time you get upset about things going bad in your life, think about this story…

In the northern frontier of ancient China, there lived a man who was particularly skilled in raising horses. People knew of him and called him Sai Ong - literally “Old Frontiersman.”

One day, for some unknown reason, his horse got loose and ran off into the Hu territory beyond the Great Wall. The Hu tribes were hostile toward the Chinese, so everyone assumed the horse was as good as lost.

Horses were very valuable to the people living at the frontier, so they regarded this loss as a great financial setback. They visited Sai Ong to express their sympathies, but Sai Ong’s elderly father surprised them by remaining calm and unaffected. Much to their puzzlement, the old man asked: “Who says this cannot be some sort of blessing?”

Months later, the horse returned to the stable with a companion - a fine steed of the Hu breed. It was as if Sai Ong’s wealth suddenly doubled. Everyone came by to marvel at the new horse and to congratulate him, but again his elderly father showed no great emotions. He said: “Who says this cannot be some sort of misfortune?”

Sai Ong’s son enjoyed riding and took the new horse out for a ride. An accident occurred, causing him to fall badly and break a leg. Again sympathetic people came to console the family, and again they saw that the grandfather remained as calm as ever. Just like before, he told them: “Who says this cannot be some sort of blessing?”

One year later, the Hu people amassed and crossed the border into China. All the able-bodied young men were summoned into the army to take up arms in defense. Fierce battles ensued, resulting in heavy casualties. Among the inhabitants of the northern frontier, nine out of ten men died.

Sai Ong’s son did not go into battle due to his broken leg. Because of this, he was spared that terrible fate, and his family survived the war intact.

Everyone can think of one example in their life where what seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen turned out to be blessing in disguise.

If something bad happens in your life don’t look at it as a set back. Look at it as an opportunity.