Now don’t get me wrong, selling is selling, We all know that. The message has to deliver value, it has to be compelling and it needs to call on the prospect to take action. That’s all fine and dandy. But, The thing is.. the message can be delivered in several ways right…

1. - A long form sales letter with a call to action at the bottom of a page that scrolls all the way down.
2. - A sales video with a timed order button that pops up at a specific part of the video.
3. - A hybrid with a video on top and then a moderate sales message and product description beneath it.
4. - And naturally… a webinar. (can’t forget those)

So let me ask you this… in your opinion, with the advent of #2, 3 & 4 do you feel that #1 is dead?

I mean really? Have long form sales letters seen their day?

Personally, I think that “WE are not our customers.” Everyone is unique and has their own preferences for the way they absorb information.

While the great majority of people are going to respond well to videos over reading a bunch of text, there are still some people that would like to read the words or maybe even print the page to read it later.

Due to iPads, tablets and smart phones.. I know that not many people print things on paper anymore cause they can just read them on the go now a days. I think that video engages the prospect more because it can trigger several parts of the brain simultaneously. A video can follow a story line with pictures thereby connecting words with images and sound. This combination draws the viewer closer than just a written letter.

One of the biggest shortcomings of the long form sales letter has always been the ability for the prospect to scroll. Many studies have been done on this, and in most cases the user begins scrolling down almost immediately after landing on a website. It’s almost like they want to just go see how big the page is before they actually dive in. The challenge here is that this action typically ruins the “big reveal”. It shows the viewer the price long before having a chance to explain the value. Now the visitor has pre-judged the product on price alone and IF they still read the page the sales process has become about justification instead of impulse.

You see there is a big difference between retail selling and conventional selling. In retail, the products are each laid out with price tags on them and the viewer is “shopping”. They are here to make a choice on a product, they have already decided to make a purchase long before they went shopping. But in conventional selling…  the prospect sometimes doesn’t even know they need the product, they must be educated first. That’s where real “selling” comes in. And in REAL selling you simply can’t lead with the price if you want to be successful. The prospect can not control the pace of the presentation in real selling. Just like you can’t go to college and skip to the end of the lecture, if you want to pass the test you have to take the class at the professor’s pace. One bit of information is introduced after the other to comprise the complete lesson.

Sales videos allow us to control the pace. We can establish the need and then educate the prospect feature by feature, benefit by benefit thereby building VALUE before the big reveal. This brings up another important point…  “The Transport Bar” You know, the little controls at the bottom of the video that allow you to pause, rewind and FAST FORWARD. So, knowing what you know now…  do you think that a SALES video would be as effective if it allowed the viewer to Fast Forward to the end and see the price?  Of course not. That’s why the EFFECTIVE sales videos of today do not have a transport bar on them.  Does this upset you? Well.. if it does then the chances are that you were not going to buy the product anyway. You are probably watching the video through the impatient eyes of a marketer or competitor not the needy eyes of a prospect. WE are not our customers.

That being said…  a video should always be “pauseable”, that’s just common sense. In case we have to step away from the computer we should be able to click the screen, pause the video and return later. But, from a marketing perspective, allowing the prospect to control the pace of a sales message is a big NO NO. The salesman sets the tone, the salesman presents the pitch, the salesman closes the deal when the prospect has been primed and ready to commit.

The question I pose before you is this…

“Can a long form sales letter still deliver business value in today’s day and age?”

I would love to get your opinion on this sales letter that I recently created myself :

My Sales Letter

When you click the link take note of your actions, come with a clean slate. What are you compelled to do? Do you scroll? Are you looking for the price? Did you click the links to see the payment processor I’m using? Did you read it? Did you look at it through the eves of a prospect or a salesman?

After you have a good look at the page, I would love to get your thoughts below.

One of the things that I had a heard time wrapping my head around was “Outsorcing”. For some stupid reason I convinced myself that I had to learn everything about internet marketing and do it all myself too. What the hell was I thinking?

Normal people that need a hole can buy a drill.

They can take the time to drive over to “Home Depot” peruse the power tool section and find a good deal. Then they bring their shiny new drill home and read the users manual before they make their hole. The entire process took about 2 hours… At least that’s what you would think right?

Internet marketers that need a hole tend to do this instead…

Internet marketers start at Google and begin researching “hole drilling” After several hours of surfing they end up opting in to 5 hole drilling lists and purchase 2 ebooks on drills and bits. Next they download a “FREE” drill assembling blueprint. (They are super excited that they finally found it for free!)

Next, they go to home depot and buy the motor, the handle the chassis, the power cord and the bit mount. Then they realize they need some specialized tools and electronic supplies to put their drill together so they order those online and wait 12 days for them to arrive. Once they have their special tools, parts and blue print they begin assembling the drill themselves.
Once completed the drill does in fact turn on and spin, however it isn’t powerfully enough because they settled on the cheaper motor in order to afford the special tools. The hole doesn’t quite turn out the way they wanted and by now they are so frustrated that they give up on it all together and blame the hole drilling industry for their embarrassing failure.

I know you are in the business of building websites not drilling holes but do you? One of the keys to succeeding in business and in life is to KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS. There comes a time where you must face that it simply makes sense to let someone else do something for you in exchange for money. Let the experts do their thing FOR you while you leverage your time.

For many of us this seems like a great notion but we convince ourselves that we can’t afford to outsource. I personally did this to myself without ever even having looked into the prices of outsourcing. Did you know there is a website where you can get tasks done for you for $5. Yes, five dollars. The site is called www.fiverr.com, and for more complex tasks there are sites like Vworker.com (RentaCoder) where YOU can name your price and watch people bid on your job.

Any part of your business can be outsourced, specially those tasks that you dislike. I use a simple formula, if it will take me more than 1 hour to complete and someone else can do it for less than $100 then I outsource it. Period. What’s your formula?

Here are some cool outsourcing resources:
Fiverr
Vworker
Odesk
Guru
Elance

Shiny Object Syndrome
Critical Information Overload
Paralysis Analysis
and Technical Hogwash

A long day of work at the J.O.B. has come to an end and he grabs a quick bite to eat then sits at the helm once more on his quest to make some online coin. As he opens his flash drive directory to access his current website project the wicked horseman toils with his sense of better judgment..

“To check thy Gmail or Not to check thy Gmail that is the question…  Whether it is nobler of the mind to suffer the slings and arrows that newbie flesh is heir to …by reading emails and being voluntarily sucked into a never ending cavern of email jokes, threads and next big thing promotions… ”

-OR-

“To stand fast and resist the temptation to keep “informed” by diving into his own project and charge forward….”

What to do, what to do? That is the question.

There is no component of your online business more important than your email client and there is no component as equally destructive either.

Think about it… what is typically the first thing we do when we sit at our computers? We check our emails. Consider the powerful emotional clench your email has on you, it can literally set the tone for your entire day.

For example, Day#1
You sit down to work and right away you see that you’ve gotten 4 payment notifications amounting to a couple hunded dollars… You’re excited, you’re motivated, you’re ready to conquer the world.

Adversely, Day#2
You sit down to work and right away you see that you’ve gotten 4 refund notifications or 11 support tickets… ughhh. What kind of day are you having now???

The worst is day #3
You sit down to work and right away you see that you’ve gotten 16 emails from various marketers promoting a huge product launch… You examine them all for the best bonus offer and get sucked into a 2 hour purchase decision that ends up costing you $197. Whats even more destructive is that now you download the product and spend yet another 2 hours tinkering about in yet another direction taking you further and further away from completing that project on your flash drive. Remember that?

The rider on the pale white horse is names EMAIL and he carries the plagues of marketer death,

SOS – Shiny object syndrome – the browbeaten compulsion to purchase the latest and greatest fad. Over and Over and Over again..

CIO - Critical Information overload – the overindulgence in new tactics that only leads to 37 layered windows wallpapering every centimeter of screen space on your monitor burying your project deep underneath. Have you ever started closing windows as you prepare to log off for the night and suddenly rediscovered the project you stated working on 3 hours ago?

PA – Paralysis Analysis – the overwhelmed state of mind precluding you from taking action due to conflicting information or your own literal translation of various marketers differing view points and marketing angles.

TH - Technical Hogwash – the benign gelatinous substance created from liquified neurons after prolonged exposure to lines and lines of html code, marketing blueprints sales letters and generally useless technical jargon.

The pale horse rider carries the plagues that not only spell out but also turn you into a………

SOS-CIO-PA-TH! (get it?)

Avoid the pale horse vice grip by Limiting your email exposure.
Schedule & allocate a set for email check it once a day and thats it.
Avoid opening chain letters and joke mail. If its that important just archive it and check it on weekends.
Install a support desk with an FAQ – direct all customer inquiries there instead.
Create priority labels for important people that will put the emails at the top of your inbox.
Create a “vacation response” that deters senseless emails and directs customers to you support desk.

You should view your email client as a tool and not a distraction. Turn that hinderance toting horseman into your very own pony express. Make him your allie, Domesticate him, Rule him, Control him! Use him to carry your message along on the rest of his stops rather than just leaving everyone else’s at yours.

I remember 4 years ago when I tried to submit one of my first products to Clickbank I got rejected. That product was and still is one of my best sellers and it has gone on to make me well into 6 figures and grown me a huge list.  Its a very informative ebook about how to create long form sales letters. Naturally its quite a bit out of date at this point since most of what we do is video but the free mini-course and tutorials still get me raving reviews to this day.

Would you believe that Clickbank refused to allow it in their marketplace because of the word “ASS”… they rejected me (the nerve) and when I called them they said that they could never list a product called KickAssSalesPages.com!  I was furious, I went 2 years without using the Clickbank marketplace because I was so taken back that they would do that to me.

Today, I see Clickbank approving pages that use foul language in the sales videos, they allow images of Cocaine lines and drug paraphernalia, they approve of blatant lies and ridiculous refund rates. They even tolerate vendor scams like downgrading refund requests and gravity manipulation among many others.

The sad part is that they are a leader in our industry yet rather than setting a high standard they just continue to lower the bar with each passing launch. These Autotraffic Scams have gotten totally out of control. Many of these product creators boast in public about their deceptive sales pages and literally laugh all the way to the bank as Clickbank provides the platform for them to scam millions upon millions of dollars from unwitting entrepreneurs.

How long can it last?  How much is enough?  Well, rest assured that the Government will eventually step in…  knowing the US government they’ll probably try to take control of Clickbank like they are with healthcare so they can further perpetuate the problem and make use of the money. (Don’t get me started)

In reality, it wasn’t long ago that the FTC stepped in and put some pretty stern policies in place for merchant accounts. The credit card companies bitched enough and they had their way with forced continuity, negative options and one click upsells. How long before the FTC steps in and forces Clickbank to take a good hard look at what they are empowering these crooks to do?

The sad part is that I like Clickbank, its a GREAT friggen service, and fills a big need for internet marketers. Unfortunately when the hammer comes down even the good guys will suffer because of the actions of a select group of scum bags. And let me make this clear…  it’s THEIR fault, the scum bag marketers that produce unethical and immoral products that lie on their sales pages and fail to deliver. Sure Clickbank plays its role in empowering them and can step in if they want to, but the blame falls first on these unethical marketers NOT Clickbank.

These guys are even lying to each other now… the JV recruitment pages promise bonus prizes that they never deliver, and they often just arbitrarily list the names of other marketers that are “Onboard” when in reality they don’t even know them…   I have been invited to a JV page many a time only to find upon arrival that I am already listed as “Onboard”!!  Wow.

So where do we go from here? How do we protect ourselves from the scum bags? Well for one we stick together. We isolate the scum bags by NOT promoting for them. This means that as marketers we will take responsibility for the actions we take and the products we endorse. YES it means that you’ll actually REVIEW the product and demand to see the sales video BEFORE you agree to promote something or let them list you as “Onboard”.

It also means that we will be much more vigilant when buying products from other marketers, we should actually seek out reviews FIRST. We should investigate the marketers first and we should protect one another as a prudent colleague should.

Ultimately, we will start to fix our industry by individually adopting prudent practices in our own businesses. Set the bar high. Put your customers first. Create a list of business practices that are important to you, post it on your site and hold yourself to the task. I have begun to make these changes in my own business and I have created a service that will help clean up our industry with IMtrustworthy.com

In conclusion, I think we should ask “What can I do to make things better.”  If everyone of us did that, then the scum bags wouldn’t have a chance. What’s your opinion? I’d like to know.

Article marketing is effective, affordable and relatively simple. The concept is basically to saturate the internet with back links to your website. This is done by creating niche specific articles that target a specific keyword related to what you are selling. Each article you create will have a “Resource Box” at the bottom. A resource box is nothing more than a blurb about you, your website, or your product. The key is that the resource box contains a link that will bring the reader to the site of your choice.

Creating articles can be outsourced to ghost writers. All you have to do is send them a list of tittles and keywords and they will do the rest. I have used a company called cyberhubonline.com and they are very affordable. Just be sure to always read and customize the articles once you get them back from the ghost writer.

The next step is to submit your article to as many directories as possible. This is the only tricky part in the process. See, there are thousands of directories called Ezines (Electronic Magazines) as a matter of fact, there are just too many to subscribe too. This makes the whole article submission process quite tedious. Moreover, to be truly effective you can’t submit the “same exact” article to every directory because it will actually hurt your search engine ranking.I use 2 integral components that make this all go smoothly. An article spinner and a mass article submitter.

“Spinning” an article means that you are creating multiple versions of the same article by replacing, and reorganizing certain words. By using a spinner software, one can actually create several hundred variations of the same article in just a matter of a few minutes. Some spinners are more effective and produce more “natural” articles than others. Here is a free one you can try articlechanger.net (not too fancy.. but it works)

I use SubmitYourArticle.com this is a more sophisticated application that not only spins the articles for me but it also submits it to hundreds of Ezine Article Directories for me at the click of a button. This saves countless hours for me.

Article traffic is not instant, it takes time to build and the key is getting hundreds and hundreds of articles out there, each linking back to your site. With time and the help of a spinner and mass submitter you can literally saturate the web with your links and get some serious traffic back to your sites.

Twitter is not a toy. Many people look at social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and they see them as toys. As places to go and have fun, and connect with friends. And yes, they are all that. But for entrepreneurs like you and me, Twitter can be a very powerful tool.

Social media websites dominate internet traffic. Here’s what that means in plain english just to help you understand. At any given moment, more people surfing the web can be found on a social network site than any other website period. That means, people, “your potential customers” are in the social media networks. Think of this like fishing in the ocean, what if you knew that special spot where all the big fish are? What if the bottom of your boat was equipped with a special fish detecting sonar system that could tell you exactly where to stop and fish?

Your fish are found on Facebook and Twitter. They’re all there but what are you doing? Are you just playing and swimming in the water or are you there to fish? Or are you the person in denial that stays on shore building sandcastles in the sky?

Twitter is an excellent source for potential customers as well as joint partners and affiliates. I think of it like being at a party or a social get together. As you’re mingling through the crowd, you’re listening to others and all you do is insert yourself in the most interesting conversations. So, what if I told you exactly how to find the interesting conversations on Twitter? You can find people that are shopping around for your product or maybe you can find someone that wishes they had a product like yours to sell to his friends. It’s a win win win scenario. So go now and insert yourself in the twitter conversations by going to www.search.twitter.com.

Millions and millions of people look for things on the internet each and every hour of the day. How do they look? Well the majority of them, almost all of them, are typing something into a search bar somewhere. What they’re typing is called keywords or key phrases. If your site contains those exact keywords it will be returned to that seeker in the search results.

Unfortunately for you, thousands and even often times millions of other websites are also included in those search results. It is every marketers desire that their website be the number one site returned by the search engines to that product seeker, this is called rank. Your site is on it, but it might be on the six hundredth page and the product seeker rarely searches past the second page of their results.

All search engines have a grading system for websites that are targeting similar keywords. The better they grade you, the higher you will rank on their results page. The best way to rank high is to target keywords that are very very specific this can be done a number of ways by using key phrases instead of just a word, better known as long tailed keywords. For example, if your website sells travel supplies the word “vacation” may not be the best choice for many obvious reasons. The main ones being cost and competitiveness.

By using Google’s keyword research tool you can see the exact amount of searches conducted locally and worldwide for any keyword you can think of. Better yet, Google will even display related keywords and their results. This process will better help you pinpoint specific keywords. It will also help you avoid keyword traps like indian head massage.

If there’s one thing that I get asked more than anything else it’s “Omar, how can I get traffic to my website?” Unfortunately, my response is typically harsh, because in many cases the person asking the question finds themselves in this dilemma due to pure stubbornness.

Why stubborn? Because they still haven’t accepted that internet marketing is a business. It’s a business of online selling, where the product itself is of little consequence. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that I advocate selling crap, what this means is that you shouldn’t be so hell bent on one particular product or website. Sell what sells or rather, sell what people are buying. It’s much easier to sell what someone wants to buy then it is to get someone to want to buy what it is you’re selling.

What I am trying to say here, is that you need to do your research first. You need to find the traffic first and most people that find themselves in a traffic crunch, are in that dilemma because they did the opposite. They found the product first or they built the website first and now their life is completely consumed with driving traffic daily with expensive ad word campaigns and with the never ending quest for a guru to promote their product. In conclusion, how do you get web traffic? You don’t get it, you don’t create it, you find it and you divert it. You find the need, you create the solution and then you put a sign for the solution in front of the needy potential customers.

This module covers something I call page flow. This is essentially the process that a visitor goes through when making a purchase on your website or at least it should be. There are many different ways to set this up and the method I described in the video above, as simple as it may seem, it has served me quite well. As a matter of fact, it has served me to the tune of nearly a million dollars over the past few years.

The premise is simple, it basically deals with offering your customer multiple options to suit their purchase mentality. Every customer that begins the sales process is somewhat interested in your material. However, they are not all equally committed to investing their money. Therefore, it behooves you to custom tailor the process for each of them.

It all begins with your landing page. This can either offer something for free to get the process started or it can call on the visitor to make some sort of a payment, even if it’s a free plus shipping offer. Those that take action are taken to the payment page. This is where you collect the customers information. Conventional wisdom tells us that the next thing we should do is give them the product they have purchased, but marketing genius tells us that true profitability comes from showing them a one time offer next.

At the one time offer page, you present them with a great value congruent with the product they just purchased. Your customer is now faced with a decision. They will either choose yes to purchase the OTO or they will choose no thanks to decline. In either case, the process is far from over.

Now this is where the magic happens. If the customer chose yes and took you up on the one time offer, you know that they are highly committed You are obligated to present them with one final offer. As Marlin Brando would say, “this is where you make them an offer, they can’t refuse.” The secret formula here is simple, half of your OTO buyers will also buy your upsell as long as you use this simple formula. For the upsell, give them double the amount of stuff you gave them in the OTO only this time, charge them half the price, that makes it a no brainer and I have found time and time again, that approximately half of your OTO buyers will also buy your upsell.

But what about everyone else? How about all those people that paid the low amount on the first page but declined the one time offer? Well, as marketers it just simply wouldn’t be prudent to let them off the hook. Those customers are taken to what we call a “downsell.” The downsell formula has to be a no brainer as well. I’ve found that if you remove a small portion of the product, but still give them the basic meat and potatoes, half of them will be willing to pay half the price of the OTO to purchase your downsell.

So when it’s all said and done, you’re left with four types of members.

1. Free members (those that only paid the small price upfront and then purchased nothing else)
2. Silver members (those that paid the small price upfront, declined the OTO but purchased the downsell)
3. Gold members (those that paid the small price upfront and purchased the OTO but declined the upsell.)
4. Platinum members (those that purchased the small product upfront, plus the OTO, plus the upsell)

Naturally, the greatest amount of members you will have are free members followed by silver, gold and platinum respectively. The great thing about this is that you know exactly how committed each member is which gives you huge leverage with further marketing efforts.

What the heck is social media anyway? Well my friend… it’s the wave of the future and if you don’t know much about it then you need to learn or you’ll be left in the dust. Social media is literally shaping the way humans communicate. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Myspace are redifining communication as we once knew it.

Through social media websites, one can have a circle of friends and followers with witch they communicate and share information with. You no longer have to “Remember to tell that story to each of your friends whenever you see them again.” Just write it on your “wall” or send a “tweet” about it for all your friends to see.

Social media enables us to share small things in our everyday lives that dont necessarily warrant a phone call. These websites make us feel more connected regardless of physical distance between us. The greater majority of internet users have made social media sites a daily task on their surfing routine. They login to see new photos or videos from friends or perhaps to post about what happened in their lives today.

Social media sites enable “potential followers and friends” to find you based on what you post and by the friends you have in common. These gives businesses and entrepreneurs a huge advantage in the development of a customer base. More and more we are seeing newscasts and live TV shows post their “Twitter Feed” live on the screen during television broadcasts. Famous actors and actresses utilize Facebook to “connect” with their audience. And even Rock Bands and Rap artists leverage this power to their advantages.

In my opinion, the recent US presidential election was hugely influenced by social media. Obama was one of the first candidates to show such a heavy social media internet presence throughout his campaign This enabled him to reach alot more young voters (target market) than his opponent. Brilliant marketing.

I strongly recommend that you create accounts in the main social networks and post to them daily. Let people get to know you. Speak from the heart. Share photos and videos and invite followers back to your blog. On the blog you should also display icons that lead visitors to your social networking sites. This will create a web of credibility and establish your brand while your presence is made to be known.