Mchall Media

Fire Your Internet Affiliate Marketing Into Hyperdrive With These 5 Killer Strategies!

Editor — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:19:11 +0000

Article Submitted by: Erik Brillo: Thursday, 11 November 2010

Have you been languishing in your seat in front of your computer? Puffy-eyed and tired, you still don’t know where to start with your internet affiliate marketing. You envy those internet marketers who have embraced success with open arms. Well, you don’t have to suffer these insecurities no more. All you have to do is to read the article to learn the basics of how to start making money online.

In order to be successful in your online marketing, you must adopt a plan that you must follow until you shake hands with success itself.

Here’s what you have to do realize your internet affiliate marketing dreams:

1) Formulate or adopt a proven internet marketing strategy

There are many strategies out there that have been proven to work in promoting and selling online products. But, what I am saying is that you must choose and adopt one of these effective strategies that work best for you. By doing so, you let it easier for yourself to market your online products because you already have mastered the techniques on how to promote/sell these.

2) Make and implement a well-laid plan

The cliché that failing to plan is planning to fail is very true. If you don’t plan on what you well do in your online marketing quest, you will get nowhere. You are like a ship without a rudder. Internet marketing needs a plan in order to foresee the problems and concerns that you might encounter in the future when your do your internet affiliate marketing.

3) Stop procrastinating

Procrastination is the killer of dreams. Start implementing your plans and walk the talk. If you are into articles marketing, then write articles day after day until your first sale arrives. If you promote your product by blogging, then write, blog, and write. One of the mantras of successful online marketers is to “take massive action.”

4) Learn and learn some more

Who said that old dogs can’t be taught new tricks? Our life is education itself. So don’t ever stop learning the techniques and methods of internet affiliate marketing. Learn what works for you and what’s not.

5) Drive traffic to your site

Internet marketing wouldn’t be successful without purchasers and buyers of your products. They’re called website traffic, and traffic is what makes you money eventually. You have to lead many internet users, as many as you can, to your product’s website with the different traffic-generation methods available. You can use article marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, and the list goes on…

These strategies are well-known by successful internet marketers. These strategies made these curios and industrious persons to become the internet marketing millionaires of today.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com

About The Author: Erik Brillo likes to share his humble knowledge of Internet marketing through his written articles.. He manages the Philippines Travel Guide and Saving Money Tips sites..

14 Best-Kept Killer Hook Secrets That Grab Your Audience And Hook Them

Editor — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:59:43 +0000

by Rick Braddy

in Email Marketing

Hook your audience and you can make millions. Fail to find that elusive hook or slant and you’re doomed to mediocrity. Your hook is that critical.

Hooks aren’t just interesting, they’re fascinating and remarkable slants.

These slants resonate with the reader by triggering curiosity and promising a remarkable reader benefit. The forces of a great hook are so strong they’re like a black hole sucking the reader deeper into the copy, even when the reader doesn’t want to read an advertisement, sales letter or story.

Once hooked, the reader must continue reading to satisfy the insatiable curiosity and desire that hooked them in the first place. As ace copywriter John Carlton discusses at length in his Fishing for Hooks article, finding and selecting the right hook is one of the biggest challenges a writer faces.

The hook determines the headline content, the introduction paragraph and extols the primary benefit. Finding the best hook takes time and effort – a LOT of it. The best hooks are simple and brief, hitting the reader like a nail on the head. In marketing, these hooks reflect the Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

These four proven headlines encapsulate the USP and serve as effective hooks for their creators:

Federal Express – “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”

One-Legged Golfer – “Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks and Slices…And Can Slash Up to 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight!”

Cosmopolitan Magazine – “50 Ways To Thrill A Man – Warning By #18 He’ll Barely Remember His Name”

4-Hour Workweek - “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”

Pick up a copy of National Enquirer (if only you still could), The Globe or the other tabloids and you’ll see firsthand the art of developing storyline hooks and slants at its best (and worst, at the same time). Reporters and editors are professional hook developers. They excel in hooking their readers into picking up their magazines, skimming them and then buying them – by the millions.

So what are some of these best-kept hook “secrets” anyway. Well, actually they’re not secrets at all. Professional writers choose the slants and hooks that will be used for their stories, book titles and articles every single day.

Here they are, excerpts from “The Most Common Slants to Capture Reader Attention“, in “Nonfiction Book Proposals Anyone Can Write“, by Elizabeth Lyon. These are the slants recommended for book writers to develop the best possible book titles – the ones that sell the most book copies.

These slants used to develop hooks for book titles can be used to locate and construct effective hooks on virtually any topic.

Below you’ll find two examples in each category. The first is a published book. The last is an imaginary title as if I was brainstorming for a slant on a book about ‘cats’ (assuming your audience is cat lovers, for example):

1. NEW – what’s never been done before, the cutting edge. Example: New Rules of Marketing and PR, or New Cat Breeds.

2. MONEY - any allusion to the buck attracts attention. Example: Big Profits from Small Stocks, or Million Dollar Cats.

3. SEX – either direct reference or sexual innuendo. Example: Nuts! The Battle of the Bulge, or Furry Bedwarmers: The Cat in Your Life.

4. SECRETS - inside accounts, behind the scenes. Example: Secrets of Fat-Free Baking, or Behind Bars: The Untold Story of Impounded Cats.

5. PROMISES - this slant offers the moon and better deliver. Example: Eat More, Weigh Less, or Cats That Can Change Your Life.

6. FIGHT OR FLIGHT – meant to arouse brain-stem feelings of survival, this slant gets adrenaline rushing. Example: Jungle Rules: How to be a Tiger in Business, or Catting Around: Stalking Big Cat Home Videos.

7. FEAR - when you want to make your reader afraid, use this slant. Example: Warning: The Coming Dark Ages, How to Survive the Collapse of Civilization, or An Endangered Species: Big Cats Fall to Small-Armed Men.

8. NUMBERS – whether the numbers refer to time, pounds, age, or anything else, it’s a classic slant. Example: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or Ten Ideal Vacations for Kittys.

9. LOCATION - an idea that implies a place. Example: In the Kitchen with Rosie, or Bedroom Designs for Catting Around.

10. AMAZEMENT - a slant that gives you a believe-it-or-not feeling or elicits amazement. Example: Remarkable Discoverys! , or The Cat Who Dog-Paddled the Channel.

11. SUPERLATIVES - any title or headline that involves extremes, such as worst, best, longest, shortest, richest, poorest, etc. Example: The Greatest Team of All Time, or The Sleepiest Cats in the World.

12. REVERSALS - minority viewpoints or an opposite stance from the prevailing views on a subject. Example: Roughing It Easy, or Seeing-Eye Cats.

13. TRAVEL – Unlike location, or in addition to it, the travel slant makes clear the out and about orientation of the book. Example: The Cat Who Went to Paris, and His Human, or Cruises Cats Love.

14. HUMOR - a humorous slant on an idea is enough to provide the sharp focus that every subject needs. Example: Chicken Dishes by Nora Drumsticks, Crocodile Dundee by Ali Gator, or I Purr, Therefore I Am.

There’s a tendency to want your headline, title and product to appeal to a broad group of buyers. In reality, these days it’s typically best to narrow your focus so your hook, headline and USP appeal to a more targeted group. This causes your message to resonate and jolt the audience into action.

So, let’s examine the headline examples used in this post.

Post Title: ”14 Best-Kept Killer Hook Secrets That Grab Your Audience and Hook Them”

Slants Used: NUMBER, SUPERLATIVE, SECRETS, PROMISES

Federal Express – “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”

Slants Used: PROMISES, LOCATION

Slants Used: AMAZEMENT, SECRETS, PROMISES, NUMBERS

Cosmopolitan Magazine – “50 Ways To Thrill A Man – Warning By #18 He’ll Barely Remember His Name”

Slants Used: SEX, NUMBERS, AMAZEMENT, HUMOR

4-Hour Workweek - “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”

Slants Used: AMAZEMENT, PROMISES, TRAVEL, MONEY, SECRETS

Great hooks are elusive. They’re hidden from plain sight. Like the “one-legged golfer”, which was only uncovered after asking the client how he discovered these new golf techniques that he was selling. He said he was talking to this one-legged golfer, who explained how he discovered how to beat the other players by using his disability to his advantage.

Great hooks are remarkable. They grab the target audience’s interest and demand an answer.

Great hooks are relevant. They encapsulate the primary benefit and speak directly to the reader’s own selfish desires.

Great hooks resonate. They strike a chord within our existing memories and experiences, triggering an emotional response. These hooks tap into stories, memories, beliefs and values that already exist within the reader.

The art of hook-making remains a difficult, yet worthwhile endeavor – for marketers, writers and bloggers. The better the hook, the more fish that will be caught and weighed in each day. The better the hook, the more ReTweets and email forwards a viral message receives. And the more likely word of mouth will spread like a wildfire.

Fortunately, we have many avenues available to quickly and inexpensively test and validate hooks today, including email, Google AdWords ads, Twitter, Facebook and blogs. We can test a hook, slant and headline, measuring the response rates, blog comments, ReTweets and other actions each one causes – then choose the hook and headline that resonates and provides the desired response.

Finding and crafting great hooks requires knowledge of the target audience, some detailed detective work, careful selection of slants – and the courage to stand out and rock your readers’ world.

Why Safety is Risky Business in 2010

Editor — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:41:18 +0000

By Rick Braddy

Safety is the Riskiest Marketing Strategy in 2010

Those who dare to be remarkable and get noticed will win in 2010. Those who play it safe will lose.

Why? Because everyone is attention deficit today – with too little time available and too much competing for what time is available. There’s simply so much noise all around us, we’ve been forced to filter most everything out in order to get anything done.

It used to be that all you had to do was find a market need, develop a great product and advertise it to your target market. That’s the safe strategy – and it no longer works in 2010 (and it didn’t work in 2009 either). There’s simply too much noise for broadcast signals to penetrate.

Today, you need a Big Idea that’s so extremely remarkable that it actually feels risky to use in order to get noticed…

Marketing Signal-to-Noise

When I was 12 years old, I got my amateur radio license and first learned about the concept of the “signal-to-noise ratio”, which applies here. Signal-to-noise ratio is defined as the ratio of a signal’s power to the noise power corrupting that signal. A ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise.

In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as your marketing message ) to the level of background noise. The higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is and more likely your signal will get through.

In the past, we could simply turn up the signal level to break through the noise by running more ads, sending more emails, saturating the market with our message. And as everyone became more efficient at this, the noise became unbearable, so people found ways to “tune out”, treating virtually everything as noise because it’s simply too much.

Break Through by being Extremely Remarkable

To break through today actually requires a completely different strategy – you must be “extremely remarkable”. When you are extremely remarkable, what you have to say rises above the noise and gets noticed, because it gets passed onto people directly from others they know, listen to and trust.

Seth Godin talked about the need to be remarkable to get noticed. Today, you must go a step further. You must be extremely remarkable. Instead of a single Purple Cow standing in the field, you need a small herd of Purple Cows – and some of them need to break through the fence and graze by the roadside – then you will get noticed.

In a world where everyone knows they must stand out, you must become more extreme about your differentiation – and when you do this, it will feel very risky – hence, the title of this post.

And being extreme isn’t the only qualification. Your extremeness must resonate – with your target audience.

So what does it mean to “resonate”? The word “resonate” means to “strike a chord; to relate harmoniously”. When something resonates, it strikes a perfect balance within the mind of the audience, if just for a moment.

This doesn’t mean we need to go crazy with everything we do – far from it. But on the “front-end” of our marketing and advertising, we must become extreme in order to break through the noise, get noticed and heard, then have our message passed along (because it’s extremely remarkable).

And as Seth Godin points out, extremes are as far from the center as possible. They’re “edgy” and way out there. Remarkability lies in the edges: biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. Your goal isn’t to please everyone – it’s to please those who notice and spread ideas.

Stand Out or Stand Down

In 2010, you need a Big Idea that’s extremely remarkable. When you have a big idea that’s extremely remarkable and different, it provides enough weight to break through the signal-to-noise barriers and get repeated – by email, on Twitter, on Facebook, in the blogosphere and by word of mouth.

Delight, Surprise and Amaze

Nobody talks about having their needs met anymore. Do you tell people how great your daily commute was? Of course not. It’s boring. It’s painful. And it’s normal. How about your favorite toothpaste? How about what you had for dinner last night?

Do you tell people about the latest movie you watched and how much you liked it? Of course you do. It’s interesting. It’s pleasurable. And it’s remarkable. How about your favorite TV show? What browser you prefer to use?

The movie Avatar is breaking all kinds of movie records right now. Why? Because it’s extremely remarkable – much more so than any other recent movie we’ve seen. And it keeps getting talked about (this is a case in point), which creates the social proof for it to garner more adoption – not only by the mainstream movie goers, but also by many of the movie laggards (who usually just wait for movies to come out on DVD and NetFlix).

Does Your Marketing Feel Safe or Risky?

As David Meerman Scott is fond of saying, it’s time to “Lose Control of our Marketing“. Find a Big Idea that’s extremely remarkable and resonates and you’re message will take off and surf its way to success riding the social network waves. Don’t be afraid to let go and take that risk.

Unfortunately, many marketing departments want control of all aspects of the company’s messaging – and they see blogs and Twitter as undermining that control. It’s amazing, but that sentiment actually still exists here in 2010 at some companies! (yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true).

Turn your employees loose and encourage them to blog, to Tweet and create YouTube videos. And don’t ask your marketing department to review and approve them. Let your marketing get out of control…

Encourage people to take more risks – to become edgy and stop worrying about what people might think. And consider using multiple edgy messages that appeal to different groups of buyers – not a single, watered-down message intended for everyone (that resonates with nobody).

And if employees do somehow “go too far”, don’t smack them down for it…because everyone must learn how far is far enough to be on the edge without falling in.

People are afraid of losing their jobs today, because they’re not sure they could find another one right now. This fear doesn’t help you become edgier with your marketing. Give people the “safety net” of knowing that unless they post something vulgar or repulsive, they can’t go too far.

And if they do somehow go too far, be explicit that the worst that will happen is they’ll be asked to delete the offending post, learn from it and keep on going faster than ever…

That’s how you can get breakthrough performance, not just in your marketing, but in your business in general – remove the perceived risks and make it safe for people to take calculated risks right now.

Here’s a true story and example of what I mean. When I was with CITRIX in 2006, a blogger named Brian Madden wrote this post that sent shock waves through the ranks of senior management (something Brian did on a regular basis, as I recall).

Some weeks later, the company’s CEO wrote an internal memo to all employees, outlining the company’s new, official blogging policy and encouraging people to start blogging. Within a few months, several blogging platforms emerged and blogging was underway and ramping up.

The point here is that the leader’s memo and official blogging policy acted as a “safety net” for its employees to put themselves out there and a catalyst to start blogging. Prior to an official policy statement, people worried about what would happen should they accidentally blog about something considered internal, non-public information (and apparently some who had tried to blog before the official policy had received negative feedback, so everyone stopped).

Due to the official company blogging policy, transparency has improved drastically and there’s now a healthy, thriving community connecting the company, its customers and other ecosystem members known as the Citrix Community.

Bloggers who care and speak up like Brian did can and do make a huge difference, as Brian did for CITRIX back then. Brian knows where the edges are, and he’s definitely not afraid to go there. In fact, he’s built his site and a nice business on it!

So, are you taking the SAFE road or the RISKY one in your marketing for 2010? Do you have an official blogging policy and Tweeting policy? Are your employees actively blogging and Tweeting about what’s going on? Are they plugged into the conversations going on in your market? Have you encouraged them to find the edges and go there no matter what?

And is your marketing extremely remarkable, so it will get noticed, resonate and get repeated efficiently?

I hope so! It’s the only way your message is going to break through, replicate and move the needle for you in 2010 and beyond.

Step-by-step Launch Plan for Web Sites

Editor — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:35:18 +0000

by Rick Braddy

There are many ways to launch a website. However, if you plan on selling something on your site, here’s ten recommended steps to take that will make your launch more successful and profitable. This step-by-step process will help you launch:

E-commerce websites
Membership and subscription sites
Software as a service sites
Single product sales page sites
Step-by-Step Launch Plan Process

1. Set your launch goals and a launch date

Setting your sales goals is the critical first step to actually achieving them, yet it’s surprising how often this step gets glossed over. Begin by choosing a realistic, achievable revenue target for the launch. For example, let’s say we want to generate $100,000 with our launch. Our average sale is estimated to be around $200 per customer order. This means we’ll have to sell 500 units to reach our goal ($100,000 / $200).

This unit sales volume can be used to calculate how much traffic is needed for the launch.

It is also important to choose a realistic launch date that’s at least 30 to 60 days in the future (to provide an adequate ramp through the preparation, planning and pre-launch phases).

2. Pick your launch team members

Getting the right people on your launch team is one of the most critical things you will do. The people on this team must work together toward achieving a common goal – getting your site and product ready and launched properly. Key people you need on your team include:

Executive / Leader – the person responsible for the outcome of the launch (and funding decisions)
Launch Manager – the person who is the final decision-maker for launch-related decisions and staying on schedule
Webmaster – the person responsible for the website infrastructure and web security
Web Designer – the person responsible for website design
Graphics / Video Designer – responsible for graphics design and videos
Copywriter – responsible for the website copy
Outbound Marketing Manager – responsible for advertising, PR and outbound marketing
Inbound Marketing Manager – responsible for social media and inbound marketing (e.g., bloggers, SEO)
Buisness Development Manager – responsible for recruiting affiliates, JV partners and other partners.

Now, if you are a small company or entrepreneur, you’re probably wearing a lot of hats. The reality is, you cannot do all of these jobs well, so do yourself a favor and make your launch much more successful by outsourcing each of the above areas that you aren’t 100% qualified and capable (time-wise) of doing a great job on. Getting right team in place with the skills required for success is half the battle of a having a top-notch launch.

3. Choose a target audience – finalize messaging and positioning

It’s important to choose a target audience – as in “one, single” target audience for your launch. This is one of the single biggest pitfalls of launching anything new – not choosing (or knowing, as the case may be) who you must target and reach, and how you can motivate them to take action. For example, if your target audience is small business owners, do not try to also accommodate the Fortune 1000, or you will make the wrong decisions about design, copywriting, offers and your sales process will fall flat and appeal to virtually nobody.

Once you are clear about who your “ideal customer” is, then craft your messaging for that buyer. Consider carefully why this buyer will choose your product over the competition and position yourself favorably as the obvious best choice for your buyer.

4. Identify traffic sources and promotions that will fuel the launch

In step 1, you set launch financial goals that resulted in a unit volume target; e.g., 500 units. To reach this goal, your launch must bring enough qualified traffic to website (i.e., enough of your target buyers). As a rough rule of thumb, you can expect your sales conversion rates to be no more than 2% of your traffic. This means you’ll need approximately 50 times your unit sales volume in traffic.

In the example, we said we wanted to sell 500 units, so we’ll need 25,000 visitors to the website during the launch to reach that sales goal. Keep in mind that these are just approximations designed to get you in the “ballpark”. Depending on many factors, you could require many more visitors (or fewer if you have an established relationship with your visitors on a blog, email list, JV partners with lists, etc.).

It is important to be realistic and conservative when establishing your traffic goals, and ensure you have adequately planned and budgeted for bring this traffic, which is the responsibility of the outbound and inbound marketing managers and business development manager to achieve through their launch programs.

5. Develop your lead-capture and sales processes and related offers

You will developing landing pages and sales pages designed to capture leads and close sales, respectively. These processes must be developed using best-practices and solid design principles so they convert visitors first into leads and then into buyers.

Your offers must entice qualified visitors to opt-in and become a lead in your system during the pre-launch phase. You will most likely need to offer something useful and of value for free in order to attract visitors to register for your launch and site.

Want to take the guesswork out of launching?

6. Design the site specifically for your target audience

Your site must be designed to appeal to your target buyers. If your buyers are consumers, then design for them. If they are enterprises, then a different (more conservative) design is required. Again, you can’t appeal to everyone, so optimize the design of your site for your ideal buyer, at the expense of everyone else so your site is optimized for appealing to your buyers.

7. Implement and test site instrumentation (e.g., Google Analytics)

Ensure you have good instrumentation in place so you can track and optimize everything as your pre-launch and launch progresses. You will not have a lot of time to do split-testing and optimization, so it’s important that you have all of these tests and instrumentation in place and ready to go ahead of time.

8. Verify your product is ready for market

I highly recommend some form of early adopter program be used to prove that your site and product are actually ready to be launched, ahead of your main launch. This seems to take extra time and effort, but in reality it doesn’t. You need customer feedback to ensure your product is ready for market and if it’s a new product, you need testimonials and social proof to use during your launch. Limit early access to around 100 or so people – just enough to ensure you are on the right track and actually ready to launch more broadly.

9. Test and validate all e-commerce and user-facing site features are working

After investing so much time, money and effort to prepare for your launch, ensuring that what your website visitors actually experience is of the highest possible quality is paramount. This means you must fully test each and every possible path a visitor can go through to ensure everything is in top working order, is free of typos and ready to go. Be sure to test:

Lead-capture and auto-responder follow-up messages
Checkout and shopping cart for each product that’s available for sale
Affiliate-tracking to ensure affiliates get credited properly
Merchant accounts (and ensure your merchant processor knows when you’re launching)
Website visitor tracking
Website optimization (if any)
Support systems

10. Execute a professional-grade pre-launch and launch sequence

Now that you’ve completed the first nine steps, you’re ready to begin your formal pre-launch and launch sequence, about 10 days to 2 weeks ahead of your grand opening date.

Launching websites and products isn’t rocket science, but it does require proper planning and following a proven, step-by-step process to achieve best results. Like anything, using the best tools makes all the difference in the results you get, as well as how fast (or hard) it’s going to be to launch your site and product right.

Want to take the guesswork out of launching?
Try WinningWare QuickLaunch free for 30-days and launch it faster and more profitably.

Entrepreneurs Unite!

Mark Hallenberg — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:09:22 +0000

What’s the most sought after commodity in business? The one element that isn’t taught in school, or learned on the job? If you’re thinking ‘ideas’ we’re on the same wave length.

‘Idea thinking’ is not widely encouraged these days. It doesn’t generally pay well, it can be stressful, and it opens a person up to unwanted criticism. Not something we’re looking for especially when we need them most.

Why this is, is a matter for good debate, but that’s not why mchall is here. We’re here for one reason – to feed the entrepreneur with the fuel to let their ideas, dreams, and prayers come into reality.

The fuel comes from the right blend of ideas and experience applied with a specific result expected. Which brings us to mchall’s formula;

ideas + experience = opportunity

opportunity x application = success

Notice ideas and experience are added, usually proportionately, to equal ‘opportunity’. While ‘opportunity’ is multiplied by ‘application’ to equal ‘success’.

We’ll expand on this simple and elegant equation throughout our discussions. The main point in this opening foray is to let you know idea thinking is welcome here. Our agenda is to provide the entrepreneur with the resources to start, build, and perhaps sell your business. It’s as simple as that.