Get documents about "Internet Marketing Basics 101
Document Sample
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Internet Marketing Basics 101
By Armand Morin
-1-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Why Internet Marketing Basics? …………………………………… pg 6
2. What is Internet Marketing? …………………………………… pg 8
3. Research Your Market …………………………………… pg 9
3.A. Resources …………………………………… pg 11
4. Starting Your Internet Business …………………………………… pg 15
5. Tools For Your Business …………………………………… pg 17
5.A. Hosting …………………………………… pg 17
I. Hosting Accounts …………………………………… pg 18
II. Dedicated Servers …………………………………… pg 22
5.B. Web Design …………………………………… pg 23
I. HTML …………………………………… pg 24
II. Website Designers …………………………………… pg 27
III. Website Templates …………………………………… pg 29
6. Keys To Selling On The Internet …………………………………… pg 33
7. Traffic …………………………………… pg 35
7.A. Google Adwords …………………………………… pg 35
I. Setting up Google Adwords…………………………… pg 36
II. Keywords …………………………………… pg 39
III. Pay-Per-Click …………………………………… pg 41
IV. Daily Budget …………………………………… pg 42
V. Google Overview …………………………………… pg 44
VI. Writing Your Ad …………………………………… pg 44
8. Sales Letters …………………………………… pg 46
8.A. CopyWriting Concepts …………………………………… pg 47
I. Chunks …………………………………… pg 48
II. Bullets …………………………………… pg 50
III. Tracking …………………………………… pg 52
IV. Tracking Resources …………………………………… pg 55
-2-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
V. Headlines …………………………………… pg 57
9. What To Sell Online …………………………………… pg 59
9.A. Information Products …………………………………… pg 59
I. Ebooks …………………………………… pg 61
II. Interviews …………………………………… pg 63
9.B. Product Formats …………………………………… pg 64
I. Definitions …………………………………… pg 66
Start of Day 2
10. Autoresponders …………………………………… pg 68
10.A. Types of Autoresponders …………………………………… pg 68
I. Basic …………………………………… pg 68
II. Follow-up …………………………………… pg 69
10.B. How To Utilize Your Autoresponder……………………………. pg 69
I. Following up …………………………………… pg 71
II. Teaching …………………………………… pg 72
III. Creating Value …………………………………… pg 75
10.C. Autoresponder Resources …………………………………… pg 76
I. Types of Autoresponder service……………………… pg 77
i. On Someone Else’s Server…………………… pg 77
ii. On Your Own Server…………………………... pg 78
10.D. Autoresponder System ……………………………………. pg 79
I. Offers In Your Autoresponder Message……………… pg 82
11. PopUps …………………………………….. pg 85
11.A. Why Use PopUps …………………………………….. pg 86
11.B. Developing Your PopUp …………………………………….. pg 87
11.C. PopUp Reminders …………………………………….. pg 91
11.D. Windows Dialoge PopUp …………………………………….. pg 93
12. Questions & Answers …………………………………….. pg 96
-3-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
13. Recap …………………………………….. pg 98
14. Graphics …………………………………….. pg102
14.A. The Value Of Graphics …………………………………….. pg102
14.B. Where To Get Graphics ……………………………………. Pg105
14.C. Do Your Own Graphics ……………………………………. Pg106
14.D. Header Graphics ……………………………………. Pg107
14.E. Choosing The Right Graphics…………………………………. Pg109
15. Automating Your Sales System ……………………………………. Pg112
15.A. Click Bank ……………………………………. Pg113
15.B. Download Page …………………………………. Pg115
15.C. Redirect ……………………………………. Pg116
16. Sales Process ……………………………………. pg118
16.A. Building Relationships …………………………………….. pg119
17. Just Do It …………………………………….. pg122
18. Merchant Accounts …………………………………….. pg123
19. Merchant Accounts Part 2. …………………………………….. pg129
20. Affiliate Programs …………………………………….. pg131
20.A. 2 Tier Affiliate Programs …………………………………….. pg133
20.B. Affiliate Software …………………………………….. pg134
21. Start Small …………………………………….. pg136
22. Recap …………………………………….. pg138
23. Questions &Answers …………………………………….. pg141
-4-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Introduction
Hi, my name is Armand Morin and what you are about to read is a transcript of a
teleseminar that I’ve recently done about how to get started in your own business
online the proper way.
I know you’ve probably have been looking through all kinds of websites and
ebook trying to discover and find out what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s just a
total waste of time.
What I’m about to show you is from my personal experience after having made
millions of dollars on the Internet. There’s no fluff, just straight marketing facts
which I know you will appreciate.
Take the information in this product seriously and if there’s one thing I would urge
you to do, it’s to take action and start implementing the ideas and strategies
outlined in this book. Every day you wait is one more day without profits in you
packet. So just go ahead and do it now.
Best of Success,
Armand Morin
-5-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
1. Why Internet Marketing Basics
My name is Armand Morin and tonight’s call is on a topic that I refer to as Internet
Marketing Basics 101. The reason I call it that is because it’s the real basic
concept of starting a business online with a simple step-by-step format: What do
you need to do first? What do you need to do next?
I’m going to break everything down for you because what I found when I got
started online is that once someone told me what I needed to do, it was easy for
me to get started.
The way I came up with this topic was very simple. Right now, on the phone
listening just like you are, is my brother. My brother lives in New York and he
came down to Raleigh, North Carolina. He had an idea about what I do online,
but he didn’t really have the whole picture as to what I do. As many of you
probably can relate, your friends, relatives, wives, and husbands know that you
market online but they really don’t know what you do.
I showed him what I did this past week and we started working on some
products. As I started to explain to him step-by-step what to do, I said, “You know
what? I bet there are probably a lot of other people in the exact same position
you are. So I’m just going to do a recording and record the whole thing.” And
that’s how this call came about.
I’m going to treat you as if you were my family, just like you were my own brother,
on this call today. I’m going to give you the straightforward facts. I’m not going to
pull any punches. I probably will say some things that you may not want to hear,
but you really need to hear. I’m going to shoot straight from the hip with you so I
hope that’s okay with everybody because I’m going to do it anyway.
-6-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
What we’re going to do is cover a lot of different topics. Every one of those topics
that you’ve read on the website, I’m going to cover on this call today. I’m going to
try to jam as much information in as I can. I’m going to make sure that you
understand not only what to do, but how to do it, and more importantly, the
reason why you are doing it. If you understand the reason why you are doing
something, you are going to do it more often. It’s just a fact.
We’re going to cover a lot of different things on this call. Again, we’re going to be
doing some note-taking for you as far as resources go. You’re going to probably
want to take some notes yourself. I suggest you grab a pen and a piece of paper
or open a Word document, however you take notes; I suggest you do it.
-7-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
2. What is Internet Marketing?
So let’s get started right into the topic of internet marketing. Internet marketing
isn’t necessarily a topic. It’s really a process, meaning, you don’t just market on
the internet. You have to have a product or service in order to market.
There’s really one secret of marketing on the internet that people tend to
overlook. The really basic element of what the internet is and how to make
money with it is you are simply finding a need and filling it. That’s it. That’s all it
is.
Think about it and think about it hard. You have a solution to a problem and then
you are finding a person with that problem, and you are showing them what your
solution is.
The more people you show your solution to, the more sales you are probably
going to make. This call is primarily intended for people that are looking to make
money selling products or services online. It doesn’t matter what you have or
what your concept is because anything is possible online.
Whether you think you can do it yourself, personally, or if you think you need
someone else to actually do it for you, it doesn’t matter. But the basic element
that you need to understand is how to find a need and fill that need. That’s the
first thing that you need to do.
The question is: how do you do that? How do you really find that need? I’m going
to share with you some different ideas and some different concepts on basic
product development. I’m not going to go in-depth on product development, but I
am going to go over some basic elements, and we’re going to cover some
aspects of it later on in this call.
-8-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
3. Researching Your Market
The first thing I want to introduce you to, as far as websites go, is Google. I think
we’ve all probably heard of Google. They have indexed over 3 billion websites
online. We’re not going to use Google as far as the search engine goes. We’re
going to use Google.
If you go to Google right now (http://www.google.com) and click on the top tab
that says “Groups”, you are going to see “Post,” “Read comments,” and “Usenet
discussion forums”. These are what are referred to as newsgroups.
Newsgroups, very simply, are a place where people can talk to each other and
they can post information. A lot of it, honestly, is just filled with useless
advertising. But there are some discussion groups that are very intense on topics
that can be utilized to research any given topic.
Now let’s actually do some research while we’re going over this so you can get
an idea and feel how quickly it is to do.
I’m going to type in “home garden”. That’s a topic that many people do
throughout the world. Let’s look at some of the topics. “National home gardening
club, anyone.” They’re talking about an e-mail that they received from a home
gardening club. If I wanted to read more about what that topic is, I could click on
it. That’s in a newsgroup called “rec.gardens.” It’s specific to gardening.
The next one down is warning about National Home Garden Club. The next one
down after that is “National Home Gardening Club: is it legit”? What’s happening
is that people are posting different topics on home gardening. What you are
looking for are answers to these questions: What is a hot topic? What are these
people looking for? What are these people’s interests in the home gardening
industry?
-9-
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Honestly, you may not know anything about home gardening. There are two
trains of thought when it comes to creating a product online. One way is to create
a product out of something you already have a passion about, and that’s fine. But
I’m passionate about things that probably hardly anyone else is passionate
about. And I’m sure you probably have a few interests like that yourself.
Let’s go at it from a business standpoint because we are in a business. We’re
starting an internet business. So with business, emotions are out the door.
Seriously! They’re not there any more.
What we need to do is look at what other people want. I chose home gardening
because I knew that people search for that a lot and I’ll go over another aspect of
that in a moment.
Let’s look at home gardening again. I’m going to scan through a couple of pages
here to look for a problem.
Here’s one problem. In fact, it wasn’t really posted as a problem but rather as a
statement which says, “Home Depot not lowest prices.” For those of you who
don’t live in the United States, Home Depot is a garden store like Lowe’s or a
lumber yard. You’re able to go there and buy your home gardening needs, just
like a K-Mart or a Wal-Mart. They deal specifically for things around the home.
It says, “Home Depot not lowest prices.” Now the first thing I have to look at is
whether or not this is a problem. And yes, it is a problem. What is the solution?
How can I make money with this problem?
What if I put together a resource that provides all the lowest prices of where to go
to get your home gardening needs, and tools and other things of that nature?
That was just one simple idea.
- 10 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Let’s go on here a little bit. It says, “Food products: have you noticed?” It says,
“Home gardening would be a solution if we didn’t have such sorry dirt and
ravenous deer population.” So that would be a topic: food products for your
garden as far as what to put in your garden.
Here’s another one. Someone has a big problem. In fact, the title of it is “Just
can’t stomach it any more!” Obviously they are on a rant about something.
I’m looking for problems. What are the biggest problems that people have in the
home gardening market (if that’s the topic that I chose to develop a product in)
and how do I solve it?
Nine times out of ten you can usually solve it with a “How to” or information
product. We’re going to cover information products more later on in this call. But
the first thing I want to try to get you into the idea and frame of thinking is to look
at possibilities and spotting potential markets where you can make money.
3.A Resources
One of the biggest resources I’ve found in doing that is Overture. Overture has a
search term suggestion tool. The link is:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion.
When you get there, you are going to find the search term suggestion tool for
Overture. We’ll stay with the home gardening topic because it’s a pretty generic
topic. I type in “home gardening” into Overture and what it tells me is how many
people searched on the topic of home gardening last month through Overture.
What I find out is that there were 12,009 people who searched on “home
gardening” last month on Overture.
- 11 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Underneath that it says “National Home Gardening Club.” So whoever sent out
that e-mail regarding the National Home Gardening Club did a heck of a job
because almost one thousand people clicked on that link or at least went to their
sight or at least searched for it.
When we search in Overture, whatever number we come up with, we will need to
multiply that by about 20% to get a true figure of the internet. Supposedly,
Overture accounts for about 20% of website traffic, or about 20% of internet
searches.
If you multiply that figure, 12,009, by 5, you get about 60,000 searches per month
worldwide, supposedly. Now this is really just a guideline. We don’t care if it’s
exact or not. But it gives you an idea of what people are interested in.
The number one topic underneath “Home Gardening” was, as I mentioned, the
National Home Gardening Club. What most people don’t know when they use
this tool is that each one of the listings underneath it is clickable.
Here’s what I mean. “Home gardening” was the first. The next one underneath it
was “National Home Gardening Club.” The next one underneath that was “Better
Home and Gardening.” The next one underneath that was “Gardening Home
Improvement.” The next one underneath that was “Depot Gardening Home.”
Now if I click on any single one of these links underneath it’s going to expand that
search. In this case it didn’t expand the search because that’s exactly what
people are searching for. But if I have “Better Home Gardening” has “Better
Home and Gardening” and then it broke it down under 38 people specifically
searched on “Better Home Gardening garden gardening.” I don’t know why they
would type in that phrase, but apparently 38 people thought the exact same way
and thought that’s what they should click on.
- 12 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
If you look at any topic when you search in Overture on the search term
suggestion tool, you are going to notice that you can click on those links to find a
deeper dig of the results getting more specifics as far as what people are
searching for.
“Home Gardening” may be too general of a topic. For example, the title “e-book.”
One hundred and four thousand people searched on “e-book” last month. But the
number one term under “e-book” was “free e-book”, and the number one term
underneath that was “Harry Potter e-book.” And the next one underneath that
was “download Harry Potter.”
When we are looking at any kind of topic, we need to actually look at what the
subtopic, or niche, is. The smaller the niche, the more profit potential it actually
has online. So what you need to consider when you are thinking about creating a
product is: what’s my niche and how do I get there?
Again, I just want to cover that up front because you need to start thinking about
your niche right now. Where are you going on the internet? Are you too general?
If you currently have a product or service, is it too general to actually market?
If my topic was just “business” and I type that on Overture. It’s too general. How
do I know what people want in that category? I don’t. I have to be very specific.
Now underneath “business,” one of the main topics was “Better Business
Bureau.” It had 241,000. You know that there were 135,000 people last month
that searched on the topic “business card.” That’s a pretty good topic. There
were “home business,” “business opportunity,” and each one had subcategories.
As an example, underneath “home business,” when we click on it, it says “home
business,” then the next one down is “home based business,” then the next one
underneath that was “home based business opportunity,” then the next one
- 13 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
underneath that was “work at home business,” “home business idea,” “internet
home business,” and it goes on and on.
It’s a subcategory of the original topic. The more specific we can get, the better it
is. You just need to dig down until you find a niche that you feel comfortable with
or a niche that you find that other people aren’t advertising in. I hope everyone
understands that. It’s a very simple process. So start thinking about your niche
market first.
We’re going to go on and talk about the actual product a little later in the call
because I want to go over some things first that you need when you start a
business.
- 14 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
4. Starting Your Internet Business
Starting a business on the internet is just like any other type of business. There
are some things that you need to do. Most people feel that because it’s in their
home that it isn’t real. They think they don’t have to pay taxes because they
aren’t making enough money to really care about it or because the business isn’t
big enough to pay taxes on. Wrong. You are in business and are collecting
money from other people. They are paying for a product or a service. You are in
business. You are official.
That means you need to have official documentation for your local state,
government, or whatever the case may be in order to run a business. It’s not a
big deal.
You can go downtown or maybe even go on the internet in many places now, but
you need to contact the local person in your area. It can be called the County
Clerk or the local town hall. They will literally just tell you what forms you need to
file to become a legitimate business in your area.
Then it’s up to you to have a consultation with an accountant in your area to find
out how to pay your taxes and what you need to do.
It’s part of doing business. You have to be legitimate. Once you go through those
formal steps it’s going to mean more to you as far as starting your business.
So make sure you do this first. It’s going to legitimize your business in many
respects. It’s going to legitimize your business to your family and friends, and
second, it’s going to legitimize your business to yourself. You are going to have a
different frame of thinking when it comes to your business if you know it is
legitimate.
- 15 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I don’t know about all the legal aspects of business, but I can tell you that you do
need to take these first steps.
- 16 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
5. Tools For Your Business
5.A Hosting
In starting your business, you need certain tools. There are certain things that
you have to have in order to build a business.
The first thing you need to do, if you are doing an internet business, is get a
hosting company. You have to have a hosting company. That’s a company that’s
going to host your websites.
The thing is, with a hosting company, it’s the biggest hype I’ve seen on the
internet. Think about it. Everyone talks about, “Oh, come use me. I’ll give you
500 megs.” “Come use me, I’ll give you a gig worth of hosting space.”
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with me or how many people that
actually bought my products, but probably the people on this call right now
probably have purchased a product or two from me in the past.
I have probably twelve or thirteen different websites, separate internet
businesses going. I sell products and services with these and get a significant
amount of traffic every month. And you know what? I have never reached 500
megabytes (MB) on my hosting account. I have never reached 300 MB. I’ve
never reached 400 MB. I’ve never reached 200 MB, and I still haven’t reached
100 MB. That’s including the recordings and all this other stuff.
I’ve never reached even 100 MB worth of space. And you know what? You
probably never will, either. Now remember, that’s all of my sites put together. So
if that’s all of my sites put together, guess what? You’re probably not going to
- 17 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
reach it with just one site. So when you are looking at hosting space on the
internet, don’t worry about it.
Don’t worry yourself thinking, “I’m going to get more space with this company,” or
“This one’s going to do this for me.” “I’m going to get this neat little piece of
software if I join this company.” It’s all bogus. It’s all bull.
I. Hosting Accounts
You only need to know three things when you’re looking for a hosting company
online:
1. Do they have customer service, meaning, do they actually answer your
questions if you have one, and if something goes wrong, who do you
contact? Do they have 24/7 customer service because if something
goes wrong with your website, it’s not going to happen at 10:00 AM in
the morning on a Tuesday, during the normal business week.
It’s going to happen at 9:00 PM on Sunday night during a holiday
weekend. That’s when it’s going to happen. It just works out that way
and who do you call? Unless you’ve researched the hosting company
that you’re working with, you may find that you won’t be talking to
anyone.
2. The second question that I always ask the hosting company is, “How
long have you been in business?” “How many clients do you have?”
Now I don’t really care how long they have been in business, but I do
care how many clients they have.
If they have a bunch of clients, chances are they are doing something
right. If they have 10,000 or 2,000 or 100,000 clients, they aren’t going
- 18 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
to keep that many people with their service if they provide bad service
or if they provide a bad hosting account. It just makes sense.
3. The third question I ask is their average uptime. Most of the time they
will say the same thing: 99.1% or 99.7% or 99.9%. There’s not a single
hosting company that will have a 100% uptime. Don’t look for it
because it doesn’t exist. I would be leery of the ones that claim 99.9%.
The fact is that hosting companies have to go down every now and
then. They have to reboot their servers. They have to do different types
of maintenance. Hopefully they are smart enough to do their
maintenance late on Sunday night when there’s the lowest amount of
traffic.
Ask them those questions. One very crucial piece of the puzzle when you are
looking for a hosting company is to simply send them an e-mail. Send them an e-
mail and see how long it takes them to respond to you. If they respond to you in a
timely fashion before you buy the service they are probably going to respond to
you in a timely fashion after you buy the service.
Don’t send the e-mail to “Sales” at blah-blah-blah hosting company. Send it to an
e-mail that you know is probably going to be answered by one of their customer
service people like “support@blah-blah-blah hosting company.com. This way,
you are going to find out the same kind of treatment that their customers are
getting.
Now I did a little bit of research and I found a little piece of software the other
day. It’s called “hostevaluator.com.” If you go to www.HostEvaluator.com what
you are going to find is a piece of software that you can download for free. What
it does is analyze all the different web hosts for you.
- 19 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
It does an analysis of server connection speed over time and graphs it for you. It
tests for server uptime and alerts you if the server is not responsive by the
system. It allows you to add the feature of the web host and a web wizard type of
format.
It’s very, very easy to use and allows you to weigh the characteristics of different
servers so you can find out which is better than the other. It’s a simple software
application that you can download and start utilizing immediately. It’s going to
save you a lot of time and a lot of money. So look at that when you are looking
for hosting companies.
Now the next question that is probably on your mind, or that people are going to
ask me right after this call is, “Who do you recommend for a hosting company?”
That’s a good question. Personally, I don’t use one. What I mean is I have a
dedicated server.
You see, at a certain point in time, your business is going to get big enough that
you are going to have to have a dedicated server in order to run your business.
When you are getting started online you don’t need one at all.
I’m going to give you different ranges of hosting companies that you can utilize
right now. And the hosting companies that I’m going to mention are companies
that I know that friends of mine use or customers of mine use and that people are
very happy with.
The first one that I’m going to give you is actually somewhat of a free hosting
company. It is called “DotEasy.com”. I know there are probably a couple of
people on this call right now who are saying to themselves, “I want to get started
on the internet, but I don’t really have a lot of money to get started with so I need
something that is inexpensive. I just need to get something up so I can make
some money first.”
- 20 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
That’s okay. I was in the same position. I didn’t want to spend any money for
marketing online because it’s the internet. Everything should be free!
I did some research and analysis and I found this company called DotEasy
around 1996. I still have that website hosted with DotEasy right now. It’s still
there. In fact, one of my first products, “Take Online Payments,” is with DotEasy
and it’s still there at this moment. I’m too lazy to move it. I use DotEasy and you
can, too.
If money is an issue for you and you don’t need a lot of space, you don’t need a
lot of transfer as far as bandwidth goes, you don’t need a lot of tools, and you
don’t need the CGI running special scripts or anything like that, then DotEasy is
probably a good solution for you.
I don’t recommend DotEasy as far as their hosting is concerned. I think you can
probably get better deals elsewhere on the internet.
Some of the good companies that I’ve found on the internet that people have
been happy with, as far as a standard hosting account, includes:
3rdSphereHosting.com. Miguel Alvarez hosts that and it’s a great service.
I’ve utilized it and set up an account on there. It has great backhand and is
simple to use. I’m not sure what the pricing is, but it’s less than $30 a month.
The next company is “Host4Profit.com.” Alan Says owns that company. It’s also
a great company. It’s easy for the beginner to utilize in starting their business.
You are going to find all kinds of variations.
- 21 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
II. Dedicated Servers
One of the companies that I use is where I have a dedicated server, which
means, on this server the only thing that exists is my company, my websites, my
domains. That’s it and nothing else.
You might think that costs a lot of money to have. How do you know when to go
from a regular hosting account to a dedicated server when it makes sense as far
as your costs are concerned?
Let’s say I’m with Host4Profit or 3rdSphereHosting and I’m paying $24.95 a
month for four accounts. That means I’m paying about $100 a month. With six
accounts, I’m paying about $150.
So how much does it cost for a dedicated server? Simply go to
www.rackshack.net, and when you go there, you are going to see that they have
specials running all the time. For $99 you can get your own dedicated server. It
has 700 GB worth of monthly transfer. That means bandwidth, and bandwidth is
the amount of traffic going to and from your site every month. If you start
generating a lot of traffic, bandwidth is going to be very important to you.
You’re not going to hit 700 GB, though. I’m not hitting it. I hope you do hit it. If
you do hit it, give me a call because I want to know how you did it. But if you hit
700 GB of monthly transfer, you are doing well so it’s not an issue of cost from
there. I don’t know how much traffic that is, but I can tell you that it’s an awful lot.
The fact is, you can get a hosting account from these guys for $99 and up. I think
I pay about $140 a month for my dedicated server. So when does it make sense
- when you are paying for enough hosting accounts at $25 a month to pay for
your own dedicated server. You have more leeway with it where you can do
- 22 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
more with it. That’s when you move up to a dedicated server. Until then, stay with
the other aspect of it.
The other part you also have to consider when you are using a dedicated server
is that you are either your own technician, or you will need someone to do your
technical work on your server for you. It’s not done automatically. So you need to
have someone or at least have the ability to know where to find somebody to do
any kind of technical support on your server because now it’s in your own hands.
Think about that before you make the move to a dedicated server. For some of
you, that may be immediately. For others, it may take a little while. Don’t worry
about it, but just keep it in the back of your mind as you are putting your site
together and as you are putting together your business.
5.B Web Design
The next thing I want to talk to you about is not only hosting but what we are
going to put on that host, which is web design and what you need to know about
it.
Honestly, very little. You really don’t need to know much about web design at all.
It’s very simple. I looked at some very popular companies online and also at what
I refer to as direct marketing companies, meaning, people who sell one or two
products and they do it only from a sales letter, which is primarily how I market
my products and services online and it works very effectively. These companies
don’t really have a lot of web design skills because it doesn’t take much in order
to do a direct marketing type website. What you really need is simply a basic
sales letter. That all! A simple, basic sales letter is all that you need.
How many people know how to type on this call? Can you type? If you got here,
you can type because you filled out an order form to make it on the call today.
- 23 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The second thing is, can you use Word? Do you know how to make a Word
document? I’m talking about the word processing software, Microsoft Word.
Those of you that are on a Mac, you might not have Microsoft Word, but you
have something that you can actually write a letter in on your computer. If you
can do that, then you can make a website.
There are also WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) website editors.
What they are is a simple piece of software. There are different ones out there
such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver and AOL Press.
Basically it goes to the lowest common denominator where a person can actually
just type in a letter or make it just like what they see here. They don’t need to
know any programming. If they can type, they can do it. It’s very simple. It’s very
easy. And if you can do that then you can make a website.
I. HTML
When you are typing, even though what you see is just words, underneath that
actually makes the HTML code already built into it. One of the things I utilized
when I first got started and still use to this day is a free HTML editor that used to
be around but doesn’t exist anymore. It’s called FrontPage Express.
Many people are familiar with FrontPage, but a lot of people are not familiar with
FrontPage Express unless you have been around for awhile. FrontPage Express
was like the first rendition of FrontPage. It’s obsolete now and is no longer
supported. It’s hard to find on the internet and chances are, you won’t be able to
find it.
But guess what? I’m a packrat. I’ve saved all this stuff. So what I did was I saved
a copy of the original download file of FrontPage Express and I uploaded it to my
- 24 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
server today so you guys can grab it. Here’s the URL to download FrontPage
Express:
www.gogenerator.com/FX.exe.
When you download the free HTML editor, FrontPage Express, it’s in a self-
extracting zip file, which means, when you double-click on the file, it will install
itself automatically into your C drive.
What you need to do when you go to your C drive, though, is make a shortcut
from the actual FX.exe. file and put it on your desktop so you can get to it easily
because it doesn’t install directly to the system. Rather, the file is an executable
file, which when double clicked on, opens the file.
When you double-click on that, it’s going to look just like a Word document. You
simply start typing and you can put in tables and things of that nature. The more
you play with it, the better you will get at it.
My point is that it’s a simple HTML editor that works. You can use it immediately
to make your own website. It’s as simple as typing.
Your biggest skill is going to be copywriting. I’m going to tell you how to do that in
a minute to make it easy for you for building and designing your website.
The fact is that many people don’t want to build their own website. They want to
get somebody else to do it. And that is perfectly fine. If you don’t want to build
your own website, don’t. You shouldn’t have to be a technician in order to make
money online. Many people I know don’t do their own websites.
People like Yanik Silver, a friend of mine, don’t do their websites. He couldn’t. He
can’t. But he’s smart enough to hire someone else to do it. He has a webmaster
- 25 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
he pays in order to do all his website design work. He doesn’t know how to do it
and doesn’t want to know how to do it. I totally agree with him. If he doesn’t want
to do it himself, that’s fine.
Personally, I do my own website design. That’s just me. The reason why is
because I at least want to know how to do it so I can make changes to my
website.
The bare minimum that you should know, at least, is if something is on your
website that shouldn’t be there or if you need to change something on your
website, you should at least have some basic skills in order to at least change
the date or change the spelling on the website. You don’t need to know how to
make it, but you do need to know how to edit it real quickly and real easily. So
just develop some basic skills.
Let me tell you about a great resource that will allow you and show you a little bit
about HTML so you don’t have to know how to write HTML but you should know
how to edit it a little bit.
A great resource that I have found for a lot of different things is called
www.w3schools.com. Now w3schools.com is a great training resource. At the top
it has HTML tutorials on the upper left hand side.
If you click on “Learn HTML” it’s going to walk you through this whole process as
far as teaching you some basics of the internet and HTML and how it works. It
gives you some exercises and tutorials on how to do it.
It’s in a great format. It even gives you some quizzes that you can take so you
know you are actually learning something about this topic. Sit there maybe once
a day if you can (that would be great) and read through some of the tutorials that
they have. Or if you need some kind of reference to go back and figure out what
- 26 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
this means in HTML, go back and look it up. It’s very easy. They break it down by
different tags and elements that you need for HTML. It’s a great resource and I
advise that you use it. You’ll probably find a few other things there that you also
want to learn because it’s a great learning resource.
II. Website Designers
But for those of you who want to have a website designer (you can get one for
pennies on the dollar), I’m going to tell you about something else. The first thing
I’m going to tell you about is what the first “w” in “www” stands for. It stands for
“world,” “world wide web.”
The reason why I say “world wide web” is that there are people in other countries
who are willing to work for less money than they are in your own country. Yes, it’s
true. There is more than the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom,
and we have all these countries represented on this call today.
There are places such as India, Trinidad, Japan, or China where people will work
for less money because in their country, what we are paying them is a great sum
of money. We are not doing them a disservice or ripping them off. We are
actually giving them great money for their country as far as what they can do with
it.
Basically I pay as much money as what some people would make in two months
to have a little bit of work done in those countries. But it was a great exchange.
He got a great income from me as far as cash and I get a great service that this
person performed.
When you are looking for a website there are a few places you can go to find
these people instantly. I can put a posting on one of these places and I can get
someone to respond to me in the next 30 minutes. It’s that fast.
- 27 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The places I am talking about are “ScriptLance.com,” “RentaCoder.com” and
“WebDesignLance.com.” that Miguel Alvarez owns. I haven’t used that one
much, but I was there the other day and there were some new posts on there. I
know people are looking at that board and people are responding to it.
You can post your bid up there if you need a website done. You don’t have to
pay $500-$5,000 to get a website done. You can get it done for less than $25,
less than $30 in many cases, and certainly less than $100.
You can get some great graphic designers on there if you need graphics. We’ll
talk more about graphics in a moment. You can have someone create you a
custom website for very little money by simply utilizing people from other
countries than your own because when you start going to different countries, they
are going to work for less money. It’s just a fact.
Start outsourcing some of the things that you need done. Anything that you need
done you can go to any of these places and actually hire someone to do for you.
It’s a very simple, step by step process.
I use ScriptLance and RentaCoder both. I more or less use just RentaCoder right
now because I feel it’s a better service. There’s more stability. It works on a
reverse auction. In a standard auction, such as eBay, you start at say $10 and
the next person bids higher trying to outbid you.
On a reverse auction site you offer to pay something like $100, and someone will
come along and say they will do it for $80. Then another person comes along
and offers to do it for $70. The price is going to go lower. They work for less and
less and less.
- 28 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You might not always choose the cheapest as far as price goes. You might
choose someone in the middle. The thing is you determine the original price and
everyone is going to bid lower than that.
Always, always, always look for the people who have had the most positive
responses from work that they have done for other people. That’s just to save
you time and energy. That’s one of the key parts as far as using a “lance” typing
site.
Never be a person’s first project on these sites. That’s very important when you
are actually utilizing a lancer on a freelance type service.
Also, utilize these words. Some of you have heard me say this on other
conference calls and I am going to say it again. The fact is that they work and I
use them all the time on every post that I use. The phrase goes like this: This is a
simple project for someone who knows what they are doing.
In your case, I would put: This is a simple project for a web designer who knows
what they are doing. And the reason why you put that on is because it’s all
psychological. If they say it’s a complicated project then obviously they are
admitting that they don’t know what they are doing. You see how it works? It’s
simple. But you have to put it out there first and you will get lower bids in each
and every time that you utilize this.
III. Website Templates
Now one of the easiest ways that you can actually create a website online is to
use a template. It’s a pre-designed site and you can get them for free. There are
people out there who are giving away free website templates. They are all over
the place. You can get thousands upon thousands.
- 29 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I’m going to give you three resources that will give you thousands upon
thousands of websites at your fingertips. Now some of these are really, really
bad. I’m going to tell you that up front. But then again, some of them are
unbelievable. They are awesome and fantastic and I can’t believe that someone
is giving them away for free.
Let me give you the three resources. One of them is
www.FreeWebtemplates.com. The next one is www.FreeSiteTemplates.com,
and the third one, which is probably the best out of all of them, is
www.FreeLayouts.com.
You are going to have to do some searching at these sites. You are going to find
different categories. Look at what your topic is and find a template that appeals to
you. These templates are already made. They give you the graphics and the
website. Everything is already done for you.
You may have to edit them a little bit to put your name on it, or you may just have
to simply put in your text and content into the template and you are done. That’s
it. There’s nothing else. So think about those templates.
I found a resource that I love. They are awesome. In fact, if you start looking
through this site you will see some of the templates that I have personally
purchased from this one company, and they are very, very cheap.
It’s called TemplateMonster.com. It’s the best website I have ever seen in my life.
They are fantastic and awesome and have the best graphics. The pricing is
about $50 per template. If you want exclusive rights to it it’s going to cost you
about $400-$500. But the designs are incredible.
The second runner up to www.TemplateMonster.com is a website called
DesignGalaxy.net. This website is almost as good as TemplateMonster, but in
- 30 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
some ways better. You are going to find a different style, different graphics, and
you might like some of the sites as well. You can even get logos pre-designed for
you.
Think about those sites. You might want to use a pre-defined website where you
can edit it yourself or go back, buy the template, and then go to RentaCoder or
ScriptLance and hire someone to edit it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that.
No one says you have to do everything from scratch.
In fact, I don’t think you should have to do everything from scratch when there
are these great resources out there for everyone to use. Some of them are free
and some of them are not, so don’t worry about it as far as utilizing free
templates or having to buy a template. Nothing says you have to do it for free.
My websites are pretty much just a couple of graphics and that’s it. They aren’t
graphic intensive because that’s not the most important part of my website.
In designing your website you have to think about this. If you have identified the
niche market that you want to market to and have done your research and found
that there are people who want a product or service in that niche market,
everything else doesn’t matter.
That’s why Fortune 500 companies mean absolutely nothing to you when you are
starting online. Because we have all these preconceived notions of what the
internet is before we get involved on it. We have this idea that the internet is
MSN.com, or Yahoo.com, or Google.com, or eBay, because these are the things
that we see. They have these big fancy graphics and flash graphics and are very
corporate-looking sites.
You know what? They aren’t selling from these sites necessarily. They’ve spent
millions of dollars in branding campaigns in order to drive traffic to it. Well, you
- 31 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
don’t have millions of dollars. Maybe you do, but don’t go throwing it at a website.
There are a lot better things you can do with that million dollars than to throw it
on a website and try to make a big, fancy website to sell a $29.00 e-book. Don’t
do it!
- 32 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
6. Keys To Selling On The Internet
Don’t try to compete with Fortune 500 companies. Go in the opposite direction.
That’s what you need to do. Because if you are trying to go head-to-head with
someone who has already spent millions of dollars in their advertising, then if you
don’t have millions of dollars to do it yourself, then guess what? You are going to
lose. You are going to waste time and money. More important than the money,
you are going to waste time. Because when you are building your business you
only have one thing going for you and that is time.
You can make money fast or you can make money slow. I prefer to make money
fast because I’m like the rest of the population out there in many respects in that I
like things instantly. We are an instant society. Think about it. We have
microwaves. We have dishwashers that will wash everything in just a few
minutes. We have instant this and instant that. I can put a steak in the microwave
and have a full dinner in less than 30 minutes without doing any work
whatsoever: it’s called Swanson.
But the fact is that the internet can be done slow or fast. We don’t want to
compete with these Fortune 500 companies at their own game. We want to do a
grassroots marketing campaign in many respects.
The reason why I say that is because we want to hit people where they are less
likely to compare us to these other things. This means you want to appeal
directly to their interests rather than trying to use these fancy advertising games
in order to get our point across. And that is through direct marketing. That’s really
what direct marketing is. It’s a grassroots campaign to get your product or service
out to the people who are really interested in buying it. That’s what we are doing
online.
- 33 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
There are several keys to selling on the internet that you need to understand.
One key that we already discovered was finding a need and simply filling it. We
already discussed that.
For example, a few years ago in the late 1800’s, there was the gold rush. The
gold rush brought people from all over the country and all over the world into
California in the hopes that some day they too would find gold in California and
become rich overnight. The internet is the same thing.
But you know who really made money in the gold rush? It’s the guy selling the
picks and shovels to the people out there searching for the gold. You see, I
would rather be the person selling the tool than the dream. Because the tools
that people want to teach people how to get there are a lot easier to do. I don’t
have to think too much. “What’s the next logical step that my market needs or
wants?”
It’s always the next logical step. And when you understand that, the next logical
step is figuring out how to make it, how to do it, how to perform it, and how to
give it to them in a simple step-by-step format. It’s easy. So find the need and fill
the need.
- 34 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
7. Traffic
The next thing you need to think about when you are starting your internet
business is, how can you find those people out there who are interested in what
you have? When you are getting started online, the biggest problem that I find
that most people have is driving traffic to their site.
How many people on this call right now are in that position? You don’t know how
to drive traffic to your site. So what do you do? Most of the time, nothing. That’s
bad. So what you need to do is figure out how to get traffic.
I’m going to tell you how to do it here. It’s real simple and real easy. You’ve seen
it already and you may not even know how it works. It’s called “Google
AdWords.” I’m not an expert in it but I do advertise on it and know how it works. I
may be able to give you a few ideas and a few tips on how it works so it will
benefit you.
7A. Google Adwords
Very simply, when you do a search in Google you are going to find out that
whatever you are searching for, when you type in a search, on the right-hand
side there are a bunch of ads. Above it, it says “Sponsored Links.” Each one of
these people on the right-hand side paid money in order to be listed every time
that I type in a search.
For example, when I type in a search for “homes,” the first ad happens to be a
company called Inest, and I imagine they are probably paying big bucks to be in
that space right there, especially for the keyword “homes.”
- 35 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The next ad after that is some company called “Agent Connect” and I would
assume they are some kind of agency for realtors. The next one under that is
“Realty Tract.” Each one of these companies paid money to be shown on the
right-hand side whenever someone searches for whatever.
Now the reason that’s so powerful is because it is targeted traffic. There’s traffic
and then there’s targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is what you are looking for.
Regular traffic you don’t really care about. All I care about is people who are truly
interested in my product or service and want to spend their money in order to get
it. Does that make sense?
Well, this is what you need to do. You need to first find your topic. For this
example, we will stick with the topic of “home gardening.” The first ad is
“Gardeners.com,” a tools and gardening supply.
On the right-hand side there are a lot of people advertising that I have to
compete with. Hopefully you can find a topic that you may not have to compete
with that many people on the right-hand side of Google.
I. Setting up Google Adwords
Here is what you do and how you do it. When you go to Google, click on
“Services and Tools” and you are going to find that Google AdWords is actually
on this page. Let me give you the shortcut to take you directly to the page. It’s
www.adwords.google.com.
It gives you a brief overview of what Google AdWords is and you can sign up for
it and things of that nature. It’s pretty easy and pretty simple. I think anyone can
understand how it works.
Now let’s do some real-time Google AdWords advertising. Let’s first create the
account. When you are filling out an account to utilize “Google Ad Words”, here
- 36 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
is what has to happen. The first thing is step one, to target customers by
language and countries.
Now targeting your languages and countries is very important. I usually select “all
languages” and I usually select “all countries.” You see, even though all our
websites are in English doesn’t mean that other people don’t understand English.
So choosing “all countries” will give you the maximum amount of traffic. Then you
are going to select “save and continue.”
On step two of the process you are going to name this group. We are going to
call it “gardening.” It’s up to you. You can put whatever you want in that space.
Then we are actually going to create the ad, and they give you a sample ad. The
sample ad says this:
Widget World
Wide variety of widgets
Check out our special deals
www.widgets.google.com
It’s a very simple ad. Four lines and that’s it. That’s all you have. The most
important part in what Google will do for you is make you a better copywriter
because in four lines you have to get it across to another person why they should
click your ad as opposed to any other ad on that page. So you have to choose
your words very carefully.
One word that I found out pulls better than any other word in my description that I
should start every one of my Google AdWords with is “New.” “New whatever,
blah-blah-blah.” If it’s my e-book software, then “New E-book Software” even if
it’s been out for three years.
- 37 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Then I’m going to take the most powerful benefit of my product or service and I’m
going to write it in the description. You have to be careful you don’t use too many
capital letters or they will rule out your ad. You can only capitalize the first letter
of each line. You can’t put it all in bold to make it stand out. It’s very fair, so your
words are very important.
Use action words. By “action words” I mean things that are going to make people
take an action. If you look at a lot of the words, they don’t force people to make a
decision. The example is actually pretty good. It says, “Check out our special
deals.” Personally I would have probably put something like, “Click here now to
check out our special deals” or “Special deal for next 24 hours.”
Use words like that in order to get people to do it. I like “new” for some reason.
That’s just a small tip. I’m not a Google AdWords expert but I do know that there
are a few things that have worked for me in the past.
I always want to force people to make some kind of action. A limited time type of
promotion works really well on Google. “Less than 24 hours left.” Some of you
clicked on that link and that’s how you are on this call right now. Some of you
clicked on the link, “Only a few hours left.”
The point is, we want to create a sense of urgency to get people to click on our
link as opposed to somebody else’s link.
For this example I’m going to write an ad for a new gardening book. It sounds
pretty boring but we’re going to use that as our title.
New gardening book
Makes gardening easy as pie
Don’t hesitate, click here now
- 38 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
There are two URL’s that you need to know on this. Let’s cover each line again.
You have the headline, description line one, description line two, and the next
line down is to display your URL.
This is the URL that Google is going to show when you are actually shown on
Google’s website. You can make your URL basically look prettier than what it
really is. Some of you are advertising an affiliate link or maybe even utilizing a
tracking link when you are utilizing Google. That’s okay, because guess what?
We can make a very, very short link just by entering in what we want to display
there.
Also we have a destination URL which is really what that URL is pointing to. So
when we do that we might have the URL to show up maybe as
“HomeGardeningTips.com” and the actual link or destination URL would actually
be “http://www.homegardeningtips.com/google/tracker.cgi_1.” The point is that
one is shorter than the other and I cleaned it up just by using the main domain.
I click the next button “Create ad and continue” and then I have the ad:
New gardening book
Makes gardening easy as pie
Don’t hesitate, click here now
Homegardeningtips.com
Now if I like the ad I can keep it and then go to the next step, which is step two
out of four steps, “Choose keywords.”
II. Keywords
Here’s the hard part. Any kind of advertising, whether it is pay-per-click or
Google, which is very similar, it is basically a pay-per-click campaign that we are
creating here. We have to select our own keywords. They have a tool that they
- 39 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
have which is called their keyword suggestion tool which is very similar to
Overture.
It’s not as good, in my opinion, but it’s easy to use. If we type in just “home
gardening” and if I just click “show matching queries and suggestions” it’s going
to give me the words that match up “home gardening.” Your ads will show for
these searches, and it gave me:
National Home Gardening Club
Home and Gardening
Home gardening
Gardening home
Gardening and home improvement
Gardening home and garden
And then it also gave me some examples or similar keywords that I might want to
add on the right. They give me a big list of keywords that they found that if people
searched on this, they are probably also going to search on this. I could simply
just copy and paste and put in my keywords, one per line, in step two of this
process.
I pasted all those. Then I just simply click a button “save keywords, home
gardening.”
Then I can figure out what my estimate is that I am going to be paying per click
on Google. So let’s find out what we are going to pay here. The average cost per
click is going to be $.57 per click under the term “home gardening” and my
average position will be 1.2.
- 40 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
III. Pay-Per-Click
Now what does that all mean? The term “clicks per day” means they are
predicting that three people every day are going to click on “home gardening”
from my ad word on the right hand side. That’s just their estimate.
The average cost per click is $.57. That’s what they are going to charge me
every time someone clicks through it. So my estimated cost per day is going to
be $1.70 and my average position is going to be between number one and
number two throughout the day on the page.
Does that make sense? It’s pretty easy and it’s not very complicated. They have
many different things that will actually walk you through this process. Anything
that you do you can always go in and change later. You can add more keywords.
You can change your ad. You can choose to "pause" the actual ad as it goes out.
The reason I’m telling you all about Google AdWords in detail is because it’s
easy. Some people start going through the process and they think it’s
complicated. But it’s not. It’s the fastest way for you to drive traffic to your site
immediately.
It’s not complicated. It’s very simple. In fact you can start driving traffic today or
tomorrow on your site.
We just created the ad groups and specified your ad budget. I can create my
budget now as far as how much I’m willing to spend per day. $1.70 per day on
my advertising budget is something like $50 per month for me to advertise on
home gardening, which is a very competitive topic.
You are probably going to pay a lot less than that. I chose a very high-end
keyword. You are going to have words that are a lot less than home gardening.
In fact, if we have these other topics I just added some more keywords to it so we
- 41 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
can get an idea of some of the other keywords. Some of these keywords go all
the way down to $.45 per click. This is a high-paying keyword-type product as far
as Google goes. But we are going to save and continue.
IV. Daily Budget
The last step is to select our daily budget first. Let’s say I’m going to put $5.00
per day. This is very important. This is a key part, and I want to make sure that
you understand this.
Google is estimating that I am going to spend $2.25 a day at this point because I
added some more keywords. But my daily budget I am going to put at $5.00.
Why? Because I will get shown every time someone clicks on it rather than just a
few.
You see, if my daily budget is only set at $1.00 or $.50, then I’m not going to be
shown every time someone searches on “home gardening.” Even though they’re
not clicking on it and it’s not costing me any money, they are not going to show
me every time someone searches for “home gardening” in Google.
I want to put a much higher amount than what I’m actually bidding at. If my
monthly charge is $2.25 I’m going to probably put in a daily budget of $5.00 just
to make sure that I do get shown every single time and have every opportunity
for a person to click on my keyword.
So always, always, always go with a higher dollar amount.
We click “save and continue” and then the last step of the process is that you fill
in your e-mail address and password and you agree to the conditions. And the
last step is that you are going to login to your account and set up your credit card
and make a deposit which I believe is about $25 right now to start your Google
account.
- 42 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You can go there a start it immediately and you can have traffic going to your site
literally in the next ten minutes. If I went through this whole process right now I
could actually send traffic to this HomeGardeningTips website that I just set up
and it took me all of less than five minutes to actually do it. Do you see how that
works?
It’s easy. I and a friend of mine who was on this call, Bill Barrett, and some of you
might know him from my big seminar. He is actually one of the organizers of the
seminar and does all of our organization for it. Bill and I put together a book
called “Chicken Recipes” and it flopped big time.
But the thing is that we put together this website on chicken recipes and within 12
hours we drove 300 visitors to the site. That’s pretty good. We put it up and
instantly had over 300 visitors go to the site. The only problem was we didn’t
have anybody buy the product. Even after some testing we didn’t have anybody
buy the product.
We did finally make a couple of sales, but the problem we had was we didn’t
research the market that well. And the reason why it didn’t work, I found out, was
that a lot of people searched on “chicken recipes” but a lot of people wanted
“free” chicken recipes. You see, you have to do the full amount of research and
not just the preliminary research to not make that mistake. I made it so you don’t
have to.
But I was able to drive traffic to the site immediately to find if the site pulled or
not. That’s my point. I could drive traffic to the site and find out if it worked. We
sent about 2,000 visitors to the site within the first two days to find out what kind
of conversion we would have. We grabbed some names and grabbed some e-
mail addresses from there and we used Google to do all of it.
- 43 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
We had no list to start with, but many of you probably don’t have a list. You can’t
just go to your auto-responder account and send a bunch of e-mails out to
people because you don’t have anybody to send to. So you need to build the list
first. Google is a great way to build a list. You can go there and you can do it. It’s
easy and it’s simple
V. Google Overview
So utilize Google. Start looking into it more. Again, this is just a brief overview of
how to utilize Google. It’s not complicated. It’s not hard. But again, there are
some key points:
A. Make sure that your daily amount that you have, as far as
your budget goes, is much higher than your cost per day.
This way you will be shown every single time.
B. Look at your ad very closely and make sure there is some
call to action within your ad. Most people don’t have that call
to action.
C. Throw the word “new” up in front. It’s worked for me in the
past and I think it will work.
D. Make the ad sound like it does something for them.
VI. Writing Your Ad
I’ll give you an example. In the ad we just wrote, I’ll tell you why I wrote the ad
this way. “New.” It’s brand new. People like things that are new. People like to
stay on top of the times.
Makes gardening easy as pie
I think the letter "s" is the one letter that people should familiarize themselves
with and here’s why. There have been several studies and several tests that
- 44 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
show that one single letter “s” added to a word like “makes” or “creates” or “puts”
will make a difference. It would make sense for me to say:
Make gardening easy as pie
That still makes sense. But at the same time, “Makes gardening easy as pie”
sounds like my book does it all for you. People are inherently lazy. It’s a fact. And
we want to make it sound like something does it for them, and by putting the “s”
on the end we will increase responses quite dramatically.
In fact in some of the tests on headlines, by putting that little “s” on the end of
certain words has increased responses over 800% in some cases. And in one
case, one very well-known direct marketer actually had an increase of over
1900% by putting the “s” on the end, making it sound like it does it for them.
The reason I used “easy as pie” is that it’s a visualization type technique.
Don’t hesitate, click here now
That’s my call to action. It’s actually not a bad ad. It’s not the greatest ad in the
world but it would probably get me some clicks.
Think about those things when you are creating your ads and creating your
Google campaign. If you currently have a website up and running start utilizing it
today. Start doing it because it will really make a difference to you and your
business.
- 45 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
8. Sales Letters
Now let’s continue on where we left off. Before you get your website up and
running, there’s one thing that you need to have. You need to have a sales letter
because graphics don’t sell, words do. It’s a fact. You have to have the words on
your website.
What do you do? Especially if you are not a copywriter or maybe can’t afford to
hire a copywriter - what do you do? How do you write your sales letter?
There’s been a long controversy over and over again regarding what works
better: short or long copy? The standard answer has always been that it doesn’t
matter as long as you say what you need to say. And I believe that. I truly am a
proponent of that philosophy. But I also believe that a longer sales letter has
always seemed to work better for me as far as sales go.
Printed out, I don’t know how long my sales letters would go. All I know is that
they seem to tell my whole story in a way that gives the information that people
need to make an educated decision in order to buy my product. Does that sound
good? Give them enough information to make an educated decision in order to
buy your product.
The way that I personally like to write copy is a way that many other people
agree with and some people disagree. But it is one school of thought in
copywriting and this is all I can tell you because I know this is what I do. And that
is, tell a story. I tell my own story about that product or service.
When you came to the site to sign up for this call what did you read? You read
the story about how I’m helping my brother with this teleconference call. The
thing is you heard this story about me helping him market online and why I’m
- 46 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
doing this conference call and everything. I told you the story; I brought you into
the story. And it’s the truth.
That’s the best part. You don’t have to lie in order to make money. You just tell
them the truth and it works out fine. Tell your story about your product or service
and why you are doing it.
That’s the real reason why you have this product or service and what it should do
for them - what’s in it for them? My point to you is to simply tell your story when
you are copywriting. Start off with a story.
Let people know what you are doing and why you are doing it up front. That’s
one of the best things you could possibly ever do in your copywriting skills. A
copywriting basic is really this: if you have never created an ad in your life, start
off with a story.
8A. CopyWriting Concepts
I am going to tell you one concept that is going to change the way that you write
copy from this point on. I’ve never really shared this with people before, but it’s
called chunks. It’s not the kid from the Goonies. It’s actually a copywriting
technique that I’ve labeled and I think it works the same way with everybody’s ad
copy.
Here’s how it works. Your sales letter itself is broken down into several different
pieces. If you wrote your sales letter out, and let’s assume that it is ten pages
long. If it is ten pages long and you don’t ask the person to buy until the very end,
the chances of them saying no is 50-50 because you only asked them once to go
to your other page and buy the product.
- 47 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I try to increase my chances by asking people more often, and here is how it
works. When you are writing your ad copy, you are going to break down your
copy into several different sections.
Take your key benefits. In fact, let’s start this from a blank sheet of paper. If you
were writing a sales copy, take the six biggest benefits of your product or service
and write them down. Now write a mini ad copy regarding each benefit of your
product or service.
For example, “creates e-books with the ability to disable them.” That’s the topic of
that one section. I’m going to explain to the person why that’s important to them
and the reasons for me creating it. And then at the end of that particular section
I’m going to ask them one question, which is, “If you’d like the ability to disable
your e-books then click on this link now to get started.”
That’s one chunk. You see, what I did was, I took one benefit of my overall
product or service. I explained it in a little simple mini-headline and then wrote
two or three paragraphs about that and what it means to them and what the
benefits are of them having this ability to do it and why this is important to them.
Then I close that chunk with a link that goes to my order page. You see, the more
times you ask a person for the order, the better your odds of them actually
clicking on that link to go to the order page.
I. Chunks
People go through the sales process in hot spots. What I mean by hot spots is
this. I never know what is going to push your button to get you excited to order
my product or service. If you are excited about my product or service at a certain
point in time and then I go on too long and tell you about something else that you
maybe aren’t interested in, I just blew my chance of you purchasing from me.
- 48 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
With sales, and that’s what we’re doing is selling (except we may not be there in
person), you need to get a person where they are the most interested and then
ask them to buy. At that point they are more likely to buy than at any other time.
If you ask them when they aren’t interested, the odds of them purchasing at that
point are not very good. So get their interest up to a hot point. I don’t know where
that is, and you probably don’t know where that is either. We will probably never
know where that is without extensive testing on our ad copy. But get their point
really high so that they are excited about what we have to offer.
Hopefully they are going to be there on every section, but that’s wishful thinking.
That’s not going to happen. So we give them as much information as we can
about the different segments and then we ask them to buy. We don’t just say,
“Click here to order now.”
Those are the most overused and overworked words there are on the internet.
I’m guilty of it as much as anybody else. They’re boring. I hate them. I can’t stand
them. I’m going to start a whole campaign just to get people to stop using them
because they’re used so much that we avoid them now. They are just another
group of words.
We ignore them and become calloused to those words and so we’re not going to
see them any more. We’re not going to pay attention. And all the impact that
those words ever had are now out the window because now everybody else is
using them.
What you need to do is to take the action which is essentially trying to get a
person to click on that link to go to our order page. And we need to put it into a
benefit-laden statement such as, “If you would like to disable e-books after a
person has refunded or canceled an order from you, simply click this link
immediately.”
- 49 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I said the same thing as “Click here to order now” but I imbedded that around the
essential benefit of that chunk. I give them the headline of the chunk, which is
what I was going to tell them, then I told them why it was important to them, and
then I gave them a reason to click that link if they were interested in what I had
just told them about.
Now what if they are not interested? What happens? Then I go into the next
chunk. I take my next chunk and I give it another shot. So here’s the next piece
of information. And what do you think happens at the end of that piece of
information. I ask them to buy again. I don’t say “Click here to order now.”
Again I input some kind of benefit-laden statement around the actual click or the
call to action to make it not look like the same old thing that they’ve seen before.
And then I ask them to order.
II. Bullets
One of the other things that you need to realize and start looking at and start
making a list of when you are getting ready to make your ad copy is: What does
your product or services really do?
So many times, because we are close to our product or service we are
marketing, we overlook the obvious. The most important, the biggest key
features to us, we overlook. We don’t even tell anyone about it because we are
too close to the project.
If you are that close to the project you need to sit back for a little bit. You need to
start thinking in the frame of mind of your consumer, of the person who is going
to order the product or service from you. Start thinking as to how they are going
to think. What is important to them? What does your product or services do that
is important to them? You write the feature, which is what it does, and the
- 50 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
benefit, which is why it is important to them. The feature is what it does; the
benefit is what it means to them and what it can do for them and why it is
important to them.
You need to start putting bullets in your ad copy. A great person that I’ve actually
seen who puts great bullets in their ad copy is Michel Fortin. He is one of the
greatest ad copiers I think there is out there on the net right now. His website is:
www.SuccessDoctor.com.
If you are looking to get some ad copy, you definitely want to utilize him. He is
just awesome. He has done some work for friends of mine and is just a great,
great copywriter.
Another person who writes some great ad copy is Terry Dean. One of the sites
that I’ve recently seen that had some great use of bullets is: www.ZProfit.com.
That is one of the sites that uses a great example of bullets and I think is just
fantastic.
The reason why you want bullets is because these are the highlights of what your
product does. Did you notice how many bullets I had on the sales letter that
brought you to this call? The reasons I use those bullets are:
A. It keeps me organized.
B. It looks like a bunch of stuff that I’m giving you.
And that was the objective of it, to give you a bunch of stuff all about this topic
and to put it in this format. To make you feel like you are getting a bunch of stuff
and to make it more valuable in the ad copy when I asked you to order the
product at the end. If you noticed that the copy that I wrote, I gave you only one
decision: Yes or no. Buy the conference call or don’t buy the conference call.
- 51 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
That whole sales letter, for example, to get you on this conference call today took
me all of about 20 minutes to write. I just wrote it off the top of my head, spelling
mistakes and everything else in there, and I put it online. Not because this is a
last minute decision to do this call.
Think about your bullets. Think about your copywriting. Think about why a person
should buy from you. Start making a list. Your copywriting isn’t going to take. If
it’s a serious product, then you are going to be marketing it over and over again,
a product that you can expect to make a lot of money on.
I’ve had products that made me $2,500 and I’ve had products that made me
$250,000. And guess what? The sales letter never ends, which means I am
always tweaking those sales letters on every product. Why? Because I want to
find out what works and what doesn’t.
III. Tracking
Here’s something that you should do that no one is really going to tell you about.
No one has told anyone about, yet. We all talk about it but no one ever really
explains it properly. That is, how to track your website. How do you know if your
website is making money or not making money? It’s more complicated than
knowing if you got a sale or not because you can actually increase the value of
people coming to your website. There are lots of people that do it and the most
successful people on the internet track to the “T”.
I track a couple of different things. This is all you need to know, in my opinion. I
discovered that everything that I learned about tracking is crap. I was tracking
things that I shouldn’t need to be tracking and not paying attention to the most
important things that I needed to know.
Here’s what I found to be the most important things for me in my business. I
needed to know how many people came to my website. That’s one thing I need
- 52 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
to know. Not only how many, but how many unique people came to my website
in a given day? That means there were some people who came back who were
repeats. But I want to know how many unique people came to my website in a
day.
I also want to know how many of those unique people actually clicked through to
go to my order form. Now let me give you some numbers. If I have a thousand
people coming to my site in a day and I have 10% of the people go to my order
form, that’s 100 people that went to my order form.
So if 100 unique people came to my site, 10% of those click through to my order
form, and 20% of those actually ordered, I would have had two sales. How do I
increase my sales? There are only a couple of things that I can possibly do. I can
get more people coming to my website. I could do that. It could be pretty
complicated. I could get better search engine rankings and all that other stuff.
But simply, I could get more people coming to my site or rather, manipulate the
traffic that is already coming to my site and get more people to go to my order
page.
If 20% of the people are converting on my order page and I only had 10%, what if
I could get a 10% increase as far as the number of people where I can get 20%
going to my order page and 20% actually ordering.
Now I have doubled my sales. I went from two to four sales. If you get a lot more
traffic than a thousand visitors a day, you’ll get a lot more money. It’s all about
conversion; getting more people to my order page.
Here’s a true-life example. This true-life example is actually on one of my
websites that I currently have up and here’s what happened. Let me give you the
- 53 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
exact statistics. I wrote them down because it was so important to me. Once you
understand this feature you can make money at will.
Think about it. How many links are there to your order page? I bet you there are
less than five links to your order page. And I’m probably overestimating. Most
people probably have only about three. That’s okay, don’t worry about it because
who told you there was any difference as far as that goes.
The fact is that you need to ask people more than once just to get to your order
page. It’s just like direct sales. You need to ask the person seven times just to
get the true answer as far as what they are doing.
Here’s what I found out. These are my actual figures. I was finding that 11% of
the people who came to the page actually clicked on the order link to go to the
order page. And I found out only 13% of those people who clicked on the order
page actually bought the product. So my conversion rate was 1.4%. That’s pretty
good as far as overall conversion rate and traffic coming to my site.
But it wasn’t good enough. I knew I needed better because I’m in it for business. I
knew I needed to get to 2.8-3% for a conversion rate I would be happy with.
There was no reason for that but I felt that that was a good conversion rate for
me on that product. So if I brought 1,000 people to the site, 110 people would
actually go to the order page. Roughly 14 people would order the product.
That is what I started with. Basically I simply drew the conclusion that I needed to
get more people to my order page. If I could get more people to my order page
and maintain a 13% conversion rate from that order page (which I thought was
pretty good) then I would make more money.
Here’s what I did. I looked at my sales page and found that the number of links
going to the order page itself was only five. There were only five links going to my
- 54 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
order page. Again, I’m not a rocket scientist, but I figured that if five got me 11%
then ten links should get me 22%. Common sense, right?
Here are my results. My 13% conversion rate on the order page remained about
the same throughout the whole deal. It didn’t change whatsoever. But here’s
what happened on the figures. The number of people who clicked to the order
page didn’t double. It actually went to 18%. It did increase, though.
Here’s what my new figures were. My new figures of the test were 1,000 people
came to my site, but now 180 people would click on the order link, and since 13%
still purchased from the order page, my conversion rate was 2.34% equaling
about 23 sales, roughly. Right? So on each sale I made $97.
Before, when I made 14 sales, that gave me $1,358 in total sales volume. Now I
have about 23 sales from the same 1,000 people and I make $2,231 on average.
So I just gave myself an $873 raise based on the same thousand people coming
to my site just by increasing the number of order links to my page. Does that
make sense?
Remember we talked about chunks in your copywriting? This works into the
same type of scenario. This works into the same category. This works into the
same way of utilizing all these techniques together. Everything I’m telling you
works all together in this whole process.
IV. Tracking Resources
It’s not complicated. But you do need to know these figures. How do I track this
information? I use a service on all my sites called “Web Trends Live.” It’s a
tracking service. It’s not $19 a month like some of the tracking services, or some
services you can even get for $5. It’s actually $38 per month.
- 55 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Now you may be thinking right now, “Oh, I’m not paying $38 a month for a
tracking service.” I said the same exact thing. Here’s what a friend of mine, who
many of you probably know, told me. His name is Alex Mandossian and here’s
what he told me. “Would you pay 38 bucks to make an extra $6,000 a month?”
And I was like, “Yeah.” And he said, “Then buy the danged service!”
I said, “Oh, yeah, that does make a lot of sense now. I am being kind of an idiot
for not spending $38 to make an extra $6,000,” which I knew was probably on a
small scale.
I started utilizing Web Trends Live and started tracking and finding out what
people are doing and realizing what links they are clicking on my page and
realizing what their activity was because it does it all for me automatically. I didn’t
have to think. It did it for me. I didn’t have to create all kinds of crazy links. It just
tracked everything for me and I could see it all right there in front of me. I can go
there at any point in time and see who went to this page and see who went to
that page. I can see the conversion rate and all this stuff. It’s right there on my
fingertips. So $38 a month, for me, paid for itself for a year in the first week that I
started realizing the habits and how people were actually going through my site.
My suggestion to you is to simply use it. Use Web Trends Live. I think it’s the
best tracking service that’s out there at the given moment. There may be a better
one in the future that maybe has better service or better statistics, but I haven’t
found one, and I look constantly.
When I say constantly, I look two or three times a week for tracking services to
see if there’s anything better because I like staying on the cutting edge when it
comes to tracking. It means so much to me in my business. The most important
time to track your business is at the beginning of your business. Not when you
start to make some money. You need to start tracking from the very beginning so
you can make money. I’m talking a 2.8% to 3% conversion.
- 56 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
If you start off right and you start working this significantly as far as tracking and
habits and buying habits of people and what they do and where they click on, you
can make that monthly fee look like a joke. I’m serious. It’s hard, and it’s going to
take hard work. It’s going to take a lot of time as far as analyzing what’s going on.
But you can really figure out and gauge your trafficking and guide them through
the order process itself. You can get them to buy and do what you want if you
structure things a certain way, and that’s what tracking does; It lets you know
how to do that.
Web Trends Live is the best one that I’ve found so far and I suggest that you use
it. So look for different ways to say the “order now” part and start tracking your
links. It’s a very simple process but most people are not doing it, especially
people just getting started on the internet. That’s my piece on tracking.
V. Headlines
There are so many things on the internet when it comes to copy, but in reality be
straightforward and have a great headline. The one secret when it comes to
headlines (it’s actually not a secret), but the one thing that I’ve found that works
best for me and what’s made the difference is actually putting two or three
benefits in my headline.
What’s worked best on one of my sites right now is a product called
AudioGenerator. Some of you have heard about it. The headline reads like this:
Discover how a measly $1.00 a day can increase your online
sales, explode your e-zine subscriptions and send your
competition home crying to mommy.
There are three benefits in there: increase your online sales, explode your e-zine
subscriptions, and send your competition home crying to mommy. I describe it as
- 57 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
a very low dollar amount, just a measly $1 a day. Obviously anyone can afford
that. Increase your online sales. I sure would love to do that. Explode your e-zine
subscriptions. I sure would like to do that. Send your competition home crying to
mommy. Sure would love to do that.
The point is to put three different types of benefits in your headlines. It seems to
work. I’ve watched other people’s ad copy and seen it work for them, so I think it
can work for you, too. Again, that’s just a basic guideline. It’s something small,
but try it, test it, and see what happens. See how it works for you.
You don’t have to be the best copywriter, but if you lay everything out in a simple,
honest, easy way for people you will have some great success with your
copywriting. Try some of the techniques I’m telling you about. They work. I’m not
going to tell you about them if they don’t work.
- 58 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
9. What to Sell Online
The next thing I want to talk about is products and services on the internet.
What’s the best type of product or service to market on the internet and how you
can create it in just a matter of a few hours?
9A. Information Products
Well, I started to allude to it earlier in the call, but it is information products. It’s
“how to” type products. It’s been around for years and will continue to be around
for years. What is this call? It’s an information product, a “how to” product. Even
though I’m talking to you, you aren’t reading a manual and you aren’t reading a
book, but you’re listening to me and it’s an information product. They are easy to
do. It’s simple to do.
People will pay for information. If I want to know how to do something, at certain
times I will pay any amount of money if I have to know something, especially if I
am in a jam. The more you are between a rock and a hard place, the more
money you are willing to spend.
If you are out in the middle of the road, broke down and you have no spare tire
and a guy comes along and he has the exact spare tire that you need for your
car and he’s your only option and you are in the middle of the desert, guess
what? You are going to pay him any amount of money that he wants for the tire
because there’s a higher demand for that product right then and there.
It’s the same thing for information products. You look at the market and as we
develop the market and look behind the market and what people are looking for
and what people are buying, we can develop an information product to cater to
- 59 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
that and it doesn’t take long to do. It’s very simple. It’s very easy. It’s not
complicated whatsoever.
One of the things that I would suggest that you do is buy a $30 piece of software.
It’s called “Dragon Naturally Speaking.” You want the preferred edition. “Dragon
Naturally Speaking” is a software product. You load it into your computer. When
you load it into your computer, it’s going to ask you to train it first.
It’s going to ask you to read a bunch of phrases and sentences and things like
that in order for it to recognize your voice. You talk into the software utilizing the
microphone on your computer and guess what? It types it for you automatically.
It’s a dictation type product. You can get it for a few bucks. In fact, we’ve been
doing some research in the last few days and noticed that the price has gone up
slightly but you can get it for about $54.
But at www.DealTime.com you can get it for about $30. Go to dealtime.com and
type in “Dragon Naturally Speaking” and you are going to find a product called
“Dragon Naturally Speaking Standard 5.0” and you can get it for $30. It’s right
there.
It’s a great product. I personally use it. The way I got turned onto this product, to
give you an idea of what it does and how powerful it is, a friend of mine, Randy
Sherak, created a product and he created this product all by simply saying it out
loud, essentially, talking to himself. Kind of like what I’m doing right now because
I have no other activity with people on this call. It’s just me talking for two hours.
I could have someone transcribe this, and I am recording the call right now as all
of you know, but I could also be speaking at the same time, and if I had it set up
properly, be taking all my words and totally transcribing this at the same time.
Wouldn’t that be something?
- 60 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I. Ebooks
Well, you can write an e-book. A lot of times, depending on the topic, if we know
the topic well enough, you can just talk for hours and hours and hours on that
topic and putting out a topic in no time at all.
Think about it. I know a lot of you on this call right now have purchased an e-
book before. Have they been this huge mound of information? Not always.
Sometimes some products out there are 30 pages. I’ve paid as much as $150 for
five pages in an e-book. But I’ve also paid $9 for 400 pages in an e-book.
I don’t know how long as far as content goes, but you need to have good quality
content in order to sell any kind of product or service online. “Dragon Naturally
Speaking” will allow you to do that in a very short period of time. You can just put
on a headset and sit down by yourself at a quiet time of the day when no one is
around and start talking.
I suggest you do it a couple of different ways. The first thing I suggest you do is
really break it down. Break down the different categories of the product. Break
down what you are going to talk about in several different segments. What I
recommend to people, and I was just telling my brother this the other day, is that
you need to take your topics and usually break it down into about 12 different
topics. I learned this technique from another friend, Fred Gleek.
You should break it down into about 12 different topics. Each one of those topics
you break down into about four subcategories. So now this is what the outline for
your e-book is going to look like. There are 12 topics. Each one underneath has
four subcategories so that you now have 48 subcategories totaling your e-book.
It would look like 1, then 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D then 2, 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D, and so
on. And what this does, by making an outline of what your book is going to be, is
that it keeps you on track as far as talking out loud. Because when you are
- 61 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
talking out loud, you will get off into different tangents and will start rambling
about something else that you don’t even know why you are talking about it.
But when you are writing a book, you have to stay on track with it. You have to
stay on track so that it makes sense. When you are writing a book it has to make
sense as far as the order of your information. So think of your outline good and
hard first and then make your outline as far as your subcategories go, and that’s
going to be your outline for when you start talking your book. Does that make
sense?
You see, it’s very simple. It’s easy to do. It’s just an outline. The great part is that
you’re talking and it’s typing and it’s the greatest thing in the world. You can
actually go ahead and make this product in just a few short hours or less. In a
few days you can definitely have the product done. You may not have to do it all
at the same time. You may not want to or you may not be able to do it all in one
sitting.
But in the course of a few days, guess what’s going to happen? All of a sudden
you are going to have all this information out and you are going to have it in a
Word document. You can use it in any kind of thing that will allow you to type
text, it will do it all for you right there. You just start talking your book out. It’s the
greatest thing.
One thing I have to warn you about is that you cannot watch it type. You will
screw yourself all up when you are actually talking because you will be watching
what you are saying and you will be pausing too long in between different words.
You will be reading it subconsciously as the text is typed out in front of you. You
can’t look at it or else it will really mess you up.
- 62 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Keep that in mind as you are using the software. You’ll see what I mean when
you get it and start utilizing it. But that one product will allow you to write books
and information products in a very short period of time.
II. Interviews
Another way that you can create an information product in a very short period of
time is interviews. Interviews are great, but I think they are overly used right now.
I think everyone’s gone the interview route and everyone’s been interviewed-out.
I used to recommend as one of the best ways that you can create a product was
to get experts in the same category and interview them all. I think interviews still
work, don’t get me wrong. I do them quite frequently. I’m doing one in a couple of
weeks I’m sure everyone will read about.
But the thing is that with interviews you have to be careful how you do it. Here’s
how I recommend that you do an interview as far as an expert goes.
Pick your category, pick your niche market, find your expert in the niche market,
and then interview only one person at a time. That’s it. That’s your book. That’s
your product. Interview that one person and that’s the product rather than
interviewing ten, twelve, or thirteen or fourteen people. It’s been done too much
lately online in different markets and people don’t want to do it any more. They
don’t want to share the limelight.
It’s easier to just to do one interview, especially if it’s one of your first products
that you are doing. Make it easier on yourself. Don’t push yourself. Start off with
a small project first and then build upon it. You can get more complicated as you
go on but you don’t have to do it all at once. You don’t have to jump into this
huge project. Start with something small and then build from there.
It’s easy to do, but again, folks, you need to understand that it’s all part of a
process. You are only in one thing. You are not in a race with anybody. You can
- 63 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
take as much time or as little time as you want. You can go as fast or as slow as
you want. It’s totally up to you.
But you need to learn the steps. You need to learn the basic principles as you get
started with this whole thing.
9B. Product Formats
We talked about Naturally Speaking and we talked about getting in with the
product. Now one of the questions that people always ask me about creating an
information product is, “What format should we actually put this product in?”
Two options are PDF and also an e-book. What I mean by an e-book is an ‘.exe.’
(exe.cutable file for Windows) type of e-book file. For those of you who have
Macs, an exe. type of e-book really doesn’t work for you. You may have a virtual
windows system and it might work. But I can probably say that it won’t work for
you.
I know there are different systems that people have that they can get it to work,
but I make no promises when it comes to an exe..
A safe bet, though, is a PDF file. A PDF file can be read by almost anything.
Adobe spent a lot of money developing PDF and a PDF file works great for
anybody reading your books. So I suggest a PDF file initially.
The reason an exe. file works well and the advantages of it and why you might
consider doing both is that an exe. file will allow you to have more interactivity
with the end user.
Here’s what I mean. I’m doing a book to teach you how to design a web page. So
I go through chapter one and you are reading my book. You are thinking, “Yes, I
can do this and I can do that.” You are getting through chapter two when all of a
- 64 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
sudden it says “pop quiz” and it says, “You can’t go beyond this until you finish
this quiz and pass it 100%.”
You see, I’m making sure that you learn the information that I just gave you in the
book. I make sure that you are getting your money’s worth out of the book
because I’m making sure that you know what the correct answers are in order to
pass even to get to section three. It’s a little bit more interactive there.
What if you opened up the book and it starts talking to you, “Hi, this is Armand
Morin and this is my brand new HTML generator and what we’re going to do
today is blah-blah-blah-blah.” It would be a little shocking, wouldn’t it? The thing
is, it’s different. You are breaking a person’s state of mind and giving them a
different format. You are giving them something else that they weren’t expecting.
It’s part of a certain shock value that you can do in an exe. e-book that’s not quite
possible for everyone yet with a PDF.
I do have some good news for you regarding a PDF. Adobe just released the
newest version of PDF, Adobe Acrobat 6 Professional. It allows you to do some
crazy things in a PDF file such as adding sound to it. You can input a flash file.
You could open up a PDF and, all of a sudden, you would see this flash file doing
all kinds of stuff and maybe making sounds. And it allows you to put forms in a
PDF so you can submit them online. It allows you to do all these different things
in a PDF.
We’ve all seen PDF’s before and they are boring. They are just a bunch of text
and maybe one or two graphics. But overall, most of them are just boring. Well,
can you imagine someone opening up a PDF and suddenly they see this flash
floating all around, and, just like that, you just broke their state of mind. They can
no longer ignore this book. They have to read the rest of the book. Why?
Because they want to see what else is in store for them.
- 65 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Here’s the problem, though. In order to provide that functionality to an end user
they have to update their Adobe Acrobat from Adobe Acrobat 5 to Adobe Acrobat
6 and we’re not talking about a small download. We’re talking about 13 MB to
update Adobe Acrobat.
Now in the future we are all going to update to Adobe Acrobat 6 and we’re going
to be able to see all these neat things and this neat functionality. But right now it
can’t be done in a PDF.
But for safety purposes, in order to get your information across to a person in the
best amount of time, what you need to do is put it in PDF format. The easiest
way is initially to start with a PDF and go to an exe. e-book at a later point in
time.
If you are ever going to go to an exe. after PDF, be aware that it’s not that easy
to convert something that was designed to PDF back into an HTML document in
order to be an exe. e-book.
I. Definitions
I just realized that I probably sound very confusing for the majority of you
listening to this call right now. So let me give you some other definitions of an
exe. and a PDF because I want to make sure you completely understand this.
An exe. e-book is simply this. It’s a bunch of HTML files just like a web page, just
like you surf the internet and you view every day, except it’s housed in an exe.
file which means that it will only run, basically, on a PC computer. It’s just a
bunch of HTML files compressed into an executable file.
Some of you who have never created an e-book before probably have your e-
book in a Word document and you are probably going to e-mail me, if you have
ever bought my software or anybody else’s e-book software, and you will say
- 66 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
something to the effect of, “I have this Word document and I need it converted
into HTML” or “How do I use it with your e-book software?”
You will have to convert it to HTML. That’s what I am going to tell you and what
my customer service people are going to tell you and that’s what anybody else
out there, whether it be Cory Rudl’s, Jimmy D. Brown’s, Miguel Alvarez’s, or
whoever else’s e-book software that’s out there on the market, are all going to tell
you the same thing. It has to be in HTML first.
It’s not that easy. It’s just not. You can save a Word document as an HTML but it
doesn’t look the same. It doesn’t react the same, and it looks bad. So simply, you
have to copy and paste into different pages. I’ll go into more detail on that on
Saturday.
I want to teach you one thing that will decrease my customer service big time.
But folks, there’s a lot of information that we covered here today. And here’s my
point. Here’s what I want you to do.
Remember at the beginning of this call I said it’s all about one thing, it’s all about
you. I want to give you as much information as possible. I want to give you
everything that you need to know. And I know I may have gone through a lot of
things very quickly on this call tonight, and that’s okay because we will be doing
this on Saturday again.
- 67 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Start of Day 2
I’d like to welcome everyone to the conference call today. My name is
Armand Morin. What we are going to do is pick up where we left off on the
previous call. This is the second part of The Internet Marketing Basics call that
we had started the other day. We didn’t have time to finish it and I do want to
give you as much information as possible on this call today.
10. Autoresponders
We are going to pick it up right where we left off. We are going to start off with
autoresponders. Those of you that are on the call that are new to the internet
may or may not know what an autoresponder is. I’m going to try to break it down
and make it very simple for you to understand.
10A. Types of Autoresponders
I. Basic Autoresponder
There are two types of autoresponders. The first is the basic autoresponder;
simply put, when you send an email to a certain email address, it will instantly
send you a response back; a pre-defined response. Those of you that are in the
off-line world and have been marketing off-line probably know what a fax-on-
demand is. A fax-on-demand means when you call a certain number from a fax
machine, it will send you back a pre-determined fax instantly. So there’s no work
involved, it automates the deal.
Basically, someone thought of the same idea for an autoresponder for email;
when you send an email to an address, it will instantly send you back a
response. So this way when someone is requesting more information from you,
- 68 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
give them an autoresponder and it will instantly send them back the information.
That is the first type of autoresponder and is just a basic autoresponder.
II. Follow-up Autoresponder
The second type of autoresponder is referred to as a multi-follow-up
autoresponder. A multi-follow-up autoresponder simply means this; not only will it
follow up with that person once, but it will follow up with that person multiple
times. You can follow up with them on day one and then have it set for three
days after that, so it’d be day four. Then you can have it set for three days after
that, which would be day seven and then three days after that, day ten and so on
and so on and so on.
You can imagine what this can do for your business. When someone requests
more information from you, you look like a pro. Looking like you are on top of
your business twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
I get emails all the time just thanking me for following up with them after they
purchase my products or services. These people don’t realize that, hey I
appreciate the comment, but I didn’t do it, my autoresponder did. I wrote the
autoresponder and set it up one time. It does all the work for me. It’s the same
thing with your business. You can do the same thing. It’s very simple.
10B. How To Utilize Your Autoresponder
You can do some things with an autoresponder too that I think you should do.
One of those things you should do when you’re utilizing an autoresponder is to
make it look like you personally wrote it.
How do you do that? Well, the first thing you should do is utilize the person’s
name. Most autoresponder systems, and we’ll go over a couple of good ones
- 69 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
that I think you should use, but most autoresponder systems allow you to insert
the person’s name.
There might be a custom field where, when you captured the person's name
initially, that you can put their name in. Let’s say, to so and so or maybe in the
subject line it might say
“John, read this immediately…”
The reason I want to use John’s name is because it stands out in the crowd. Also
when they’re reading the message, just say
“John, thanks for subscribing to my big newsletter. John the one
thing I want you to remember is to read each and every issue very
carefully because I cover a lot of information each time.”
By using the person’s name, it looks like you personally wrote it. You’ve got to
remember that not everybody that is going to subscribe to your newsletter or to
get more information from you knows what an autoresponder is.
For the people that know what an autoresponder is, like me, I know what an
autoresponder is and so I can spot it real fast. I know this person didn’t write me
personally, especially when I get one every couple of days. Since I’ve been
exposed to an autoresponder, I know what it is.
But for the people that don’t know what it is, it’s very impressive. That’s what you
need to concentrate on. What you need to keep your mind focused on, is the
people that may be not have been exposed to an autoresponder before. Those
are the people that you are going to impress. Even the people that do know what
an autoresponder is are going to be impressed because you’re following up with
them properly. That’s key.
- 70 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I. Following Up
You should have follow-up autoresponders for every time you receive a sale. You
should have an autoresponder going back and following up with them. There’s
twenty-two times you should follow up after a sale. I will go into more detail as to
what that system is and how you should use it.
A prospect, that means a person that signs up for your newsletter or for more
information on a certain product, you should follow up with them how many
times? Twenty-two times. You’ll get my point here. It’s twenty-two times, always,
follow-ups. Twenty-two times and I’m going to tell you why in just a second.
I found is that most people use autoresponders, but they don’t use them enough.
Let me repeat that. Most people on the internet utilize autoresponders, but they
do not utilize them enough or they do not use them to their full potential.
Think about it. Last time that you purchased a product and this is from well
known marketers, people that I know and talk to every single day, they didn't
utilize the autoresponder to their potential. Here’s what I mean. When you buy a
product or service from somebody, how often do you think they really follow up
with you? Three times, four times? Maybe, some of the better ones followed up
ten times. That’s good. I applaud everyone for utilizing an autoresponder but
you’re not utilizing the maximum potential of an autoresponder if you’re not
following up at least twenty-two times.
Here’s what I mean. Let’s cover sales first. The first thing that you’ve got to
consider is that person just purchased a product from you. They just bought it
from you. They just spent their money. You’ve earned their trust and they’ve
purchased the product from you finally. The last thing that they want to have
done to them from you is to try to get them to buy another product immediately.
They haven’t even had time to use the initial product. Why would you try to sell
them something else?
- 71 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
So my advice is, don’t try to sell them something else initially. You just built their
trust and they barely trust you. Think about this. You just started talking to a
stranger on the street and the stranger automatically or instantly asks you, "Hey,
you want to start a coffee shop together?" You just met this guy. You’re not going
to get into a full blown relationship with them and spend thousands of dollars if
not hundreds of thousands of dollars with this person, right? That’s a little bit
exaggerated, but you get my point.
The point is that once a person purchases from you, doesn’t mean they’re going
to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars instantly. You still need to build their
trust. You barely know this person. They barely know you. They have barely
been exposed to you and you need to determine what their experience is going
to be with you.
II. Teaching
Experience is the most important part in marketing. I’m going to talk about that as
well. Let’s get back to the autoresponder follow up system. A person makes a
purchase from you. What’s the first thing that you need to do? You need to teach
them how to utilize what they just purchased. Do you understand that? You need
to teach them how to utilize what they just purchased.
For example, let’s say they bought an e-book from me and let’s assume that the
e-book is in PDF format. Now, a person purchased that product hopefully, to
utilize or to read my e-book.
I need to teach them what a friend of mine, Alex Mandossian, calls "to consume
the product." I need to teach them how to consume it in bite size chunks. So this
means is that after they purchased my book, what I’m going to do is follow up
with them, but I am not going to ask them to buy another product. I’m going to
- 72 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
show them how to get the maximum benefit, the maximum potential out what
they’ve already purchased from me.
My whole objective is nothing less than to create a happy customer, to give them
more value than what they initially paid for, to create so much value that they’re
going to go around and tell everyone they know, "You need to buy this product
because not only was the product fantastic, the follow up and how they taught
you how to use that product was so incredible. I couldn’t believe it!" Does that
make sense?
See, by teaching people how to consume the product, don’t assume they already
know how to do it. Just because a person purchased your product, doesn’t mean
they’re always going to read it. I purchase products on a daily basis. I really do.
I probably spend two to three thousand dollars a month on buying information
products. The reason is because I know I need to continue my education. I don’t
know everything there is to know and never would pretend that I know everything
there is to know. I continually educate myself and that’s a small price to pay in
order to make more money. The two or three thousand dollars that I spend can
make me an extra ten or twelve thousand dollars a month.
Even though I’m spending that type of money on information products, I don’t
read all of them. Seriously. I’ll admit it to anybody. I can’t possibly read all of
them. But I scan them. I scan them left and right.
If someone started following up with a person like myself and they started
teaching me how to utilize their product by reminding me of different things in the
chapters by sending me and email and saying, “Armand, did you read chapter
three which told you how to get a number one ranking in Google search engine in
less than forty-eight hours?” I would stop and think, did that book have that in
there, and I would go back and look.
- 73 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
It would force me to open up that book again and read it. That’s what you’re
trying to do. If it’s a book, you’re trying to get them to open up the book again and
read it to get more value out of the book. You not only do this once, you are
going to do this multiple times. I will give you the steps in a second.
If you sell a software product, well then teach them how to use the software
product. Get them to open it up. Get them to utilize it. There’s a well-known
company that we all know out there. It starts with an A and ends with dobe. You
can figure out the rest from there, but they have some great software products.
Awesome. Industry standards when it comes to some software products out
there.
Well, the problem is that if you look at their software you’ve discovered really
quickly that it’s not the easiest to use. It’s hard to use, in fact. It’s a little over-
complicated for many people out there including myself. I get frustrated, and I put
it aside. I don’t use it.
You see, if I don’t use that product, it doesn’t have any value to me anymore.
But, if I use it, not only once, if I use it multiple times, if I use it several times per
month or several times sometimes per day, it has a tremendous value for me.
For example, there’s a graphics program that I use constantly. I have it open
almost all the time, sitting on my desktop open because I use it so much to make
graphics. It has a real value to me. I would pay if they had a new version or if
they had something that they wanted to sell me regarding an upgrade to this
graphics product. I would buy it in an instant because they’ve proven their value
to me that I am going to be able to use this product.
- 74 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
III. Creating Value
You want create that same environment. You want to create that same type of
value for your product online. When a person receives it, get them to read it. How
do you do that?
The first thing you need to do if it’s a book is to simply take the bullet points. This
is the easy way. Take the bullet points from your sales letter and teach them how
to do each one of those things or show them where in the book where it shows
them about that bullet point.
For example, learn how to create HTML pages in as little as thirteen days. Send
them an email and say, “John, did you know that on page twenty-seven, we show
you how to create an HTML page in less than thirteen days?” Tell them to go to
the PDF file or go to the book and go to page twenty-seven because we’re going
to talk about how to do this in the next message.
The next message will tell them something different and show them where it is in
the book. That’s how you follow-up when the product is a book. You need to
show them where it is in the book that you are talking about.
If you’re selling a software product, it’s going to be different. Show them little
techniques, little tricks, things to make their life easier in using that product and
send them messages like that initially, because again, at this point you’re just
teaching them how to consume the product, nothing else. That’s all you should
be focused on, is to teach them how to use the product.
Don’t try to sell them anything else. If you try to sell them anything else at this
point, you’ve just ruined all credibility with that person. Does that make sense?
You see, you have to build upon your credibility. You have to build upon that
level of trust. You have to make sure that people are happy with the original
product that they purchased. That’s all your intention is. This is so crucial, but yet
- 75 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
few people do it. People that do, do it make a difference and they sell more
products.
Let me give you an idea of how powerful this is. After a person purchases, and
this is a real case study because these are my products and services, when a
person purchases a product from me, in the next thirty days they purchase, on
average, an additional three products. Most of my products sell for $97. Is that
person only worth only $97 to me? No, they’re worth $400+ for every single sale
that I get. How many customers do I really need a month to make it worth
something? Not many. Not when you consider that the average customer is
worth $400 to me. Not over lifetime value, but in the first thirty days. That is what
you need to consider and that is why this follow up system is so powerful.
You can increase you visitor value from $97 to $400, again in the first thirty days
or higher. Again, I don’t hard sell. I don’t even start telling them about anything
else until weeks into it. I’m going to give you this exact same system right now.
10C. Autoresponder Resources
The first thing you need to do before I even go into the system is find and
autoresponder. That’s key. Without an autoresponder, a multi-follow-up
autoresponder, everything else is useless that I’m going to talk about so let’s talk
about the autoresponder first.
The autoresponder that you need to utilize has to be reliable. Reliability is the
key. It has to work and it has to work on time and it has to have some
functionality to it that you’re going to need. There’s only a few out there that I
recommend, because the rest of them don’t make sense. They don’t have the
functionality that you need.
- 76 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I. Types of Autoresponder Services
There are two types of autoresponders when it comes to the actual software
itself. One kind is a service that you pay for every month and this is what most of
you probably want to utilize.
The second kind is where you host it yourself on your own server. You have
someone install a script on your server and it will work off your server rather than
somebody else's, so you don’t have to pay the monthly fee. It will cost you about
$100 or a little bit more to have the autoresponder system sitting on your server.
I personally use both because I’m trying to make the transition from someone
else's to my own, but it’s a hard transition and I’m lazy. I don’t want to move
everything so it’s kind of tough to do it. So I still use both at this time. I will
eventually move everything onto my own server so that I have more control over
what my autoresponders are doing. Think about this later on as your business
grows.
i. On Someone Else’s Server
Initially you’re going to be utilizing someone else's server. You’re going to be
utilizing some kind of hosted application. Companies like
www.GetResponse.com. That’s Get Response dot com. Utilize them. They’re a
great service. I’ve been utilizing them for quite some time and I’m really happy
with them.
I’m not going to recommend anything to you, and I haven’t recommended
anything to you, that I haven’t tried myself. I’ve at least seen all these servers.
I’ve been on the inside of them. I know what they’re doing. I know how they work.
www.GetResponse.com is constantly making improvements. Simon Grabowski
owns it. This is just a great, great value and I think you will really like it, and it’s
very inexpensive.
- 77 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Another one that I would recommend as far as autoresponders go is owned by a
friend of mine. Some of you may know him and some of you may not, his name
is Raymond McNally. He has a system called Profit Responder and he has
constantly been upgrading this responder all the time. It’s called Profit
Responder. You can find it at www.ProfitResponder.com. We made a special link
for you. Its www.ProfitResponder.com/basics and that will redirect you to the
actual system. www.ProfitResponder.com/basics. You’ll actually get the system
right there and see how it works. It’s a great system. It’s easy to use. It’s simple.
His pricing is great as well too.
Get Response is a great system. www.AWeber.com is another great system.
They’ve been around the longest of autoresponders on the internet today.
Reliability is just so key. The last thing you can have is your autoresponder
system going down because it can really take down your whole business. The
main thing that I’m looking for with an autoresponder is how reliable is it.
ii. On Your Own Server
When you get to a little bit more advanced techniques where you can move
people around with your autoresponders then you might want to start looking at
your own system that sits on your server. Again you need to have someone
install it if you’re not technically oriented.
One of the other companies that I’ll recommend if you want to put it on your own
server, is Auto Response Plus. That’s www.AutoResponsePlus.com. The reason
why I like this is because I have full control over everything. Here’s the neat part.
I can actually move a person from one autoresponder to another.
Let’s say a person buys a product from me. Product A, but then at a later point in
time they buy product B. When they purchased product A from me, I was
following up with them, teaching them how to utilize product A and it goes
- 78 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
through my whole sequence. Now when they purchase product B, I can program
my autoresponder to automatically take them off of A, because I don’t want to
follow-up with them on A, I want to follow up with them on B now and add them to
the B autoresponder. So you see it migrated my person from A autoresponder to
B autoresponder, so now I’m following up on this list as well.
It’s a constant follow-up system, and I can add them to multiple lists and all this
kind of great stuff. Think about what it can do for you as far as the
autoresponders go. If you’re not using autoresponders, you’re missing the boat.
10D. Autoresponse System
Here’s the system. This is really simple. I’m going to tell you the system, and I’m
going to tell you exactly how I utilize it. Day one, a person buys your product or
service. They get an initial autoresponder message. Usually your sales system
will send them something, but you want to at least send them another
autoresponder message welcoming them and maybe teaching them something.
That’s day one.
Day three will be your first tutorial; first information, first inkling of consumption as
far as you showing it to them. Again, that’s day three. The next day you want to
follow up with them is actually day seven. Here’s what I am doing, just to give
you an idea. Every other day for the first fourteen days, you’re going to follow up
with them. So basically day one and then every other day from then on you’re
going to follow up. That’s going to give you a total of six follow-up messages.
In these messages don’t talk about any other products or services. That’s the
key. No products or services other than what they originally purchased. Don’t talk
to them about anything else at that point. This is very crucial. If you try to offer
them another product or service, you just screwed up everything. So don’t do it.
- 79 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The next thing that you need to do is slow down the pace of your follow-ups.
Initially, more frequent follow-ups are okay because you’re teaching them how to
use the product. But now, starting after the first two weeks, you’re going to follow
up with them once a week. So that’s the initial six, day one and then every other
day for the first fourteen days, and then you’re going to follow up with them once
a week for the next thirty days. That means once a week for the next thirty days.
That’s an additional four, so we are at ten at this point.
On that next message, after the initial two week period, you can introduce
something to them. You’ve earned the right. See, everything that you do in
marketing, you have to earn the right first before you can ever move forward. You
have to earn the right by providing value and service to your end user before
you’re allowed to sell them something else. That’s part of the whole process. Its
part of everything that you are doing; you have to work for it. You have to work
for it, you have to earn the right to do it and once you have earned the right to do
it, its okay at that point.
Earn the right first by providing them with content. Teach them how to consume
the product. Starting at the end of the two weeks, send out your initial message.
Don’t make it a blatant ad, but give them techniques as far as how to utilize the
product again and then at the end, use what I refer to as a Columbo close.
If you’ve ever watched the movie Columbo, you've probably noticed that he gets
to the door and he drops his briefcase. He turns around and says, “Excuse me”
and then he goes ahead and accuses the guy of murdering so and so person. It’s
because the person's guard is down at that point and all of a sudden he shocks
them. You don’t want to shock your customer, but you want to present it where
it’s really not like a sales pitch.
So you say, “Oh, by the way, I just ran across a great deal I worked out with
Yanik Silver on his Instant Internet Sales Setters. What you need to do is go to
- 80 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
this website and take a look. Check it out if you’re interested. Thanks again and
have a great day.”
You see it’s not really just a blatant pitch, it’s just like, "Oh yeah, yeah, I forgot
about this" and put that in there. It seems very natural. Now the next step is to go
through and do the next step of the process which is to follow up with them the
following week and once a week for the next thirty days. We’re going to do the
same thing and we’re going to continue on the same process. We’re still
following up with them, but we’re giving them content and we’re also giving them
a message, you know an offer. That’s at the end of thirty days. The next thirty
days you follow up with them once week for the next four weeks, the next thirty
days.
After that it’s every other week for the next thirty days. So that’s two more
messages and now we’re at twelve. A total of twelve messages have gone out.
Again, the same format; no change, nothing different. Now after that, you start
following up with them once a month. For how long? Until the end of the year. At
that point you’ve got about ten months left out of the year. You just followed up
with them a total of two months roughly and you’re going to send a message to
them until the end of the year. So it’s going to be about ten messages or so for a
total of about twenty-two messages.
Let’s rehash this again. The initial message goes out after they’ve purchased or
subscribed to your list. Then you’re going to follow up with them every other day
for the first fourteen days. Then what you are going to do is follow up with them
once a week for the next four weeks. Then you’re going to follow up with them
every other week for the next four weeks. Then you’re going to follow up with
them once a month for the rest of the year.
- 81 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I. Offers In Your Autoresponse Message
That’s about twenty-two messages that you need to write. In fact, if you think
about it, does it really take that long to write those messages? No, not at all. It’s
key though in your autoresponder messages when you’re following up with
people that your offer makes sense. If you’re going to offer them something, if
you’re going to give them insight to a product and/or service, it’s very, very key
that your offer makes sense.
What do I mean by that? I mean that your offer itself has to compliment the
original product that they purchased. If I just bought e-book software, do I really
care so much about an MP3 player? No. What indication did you have that I was
even interested in something like that? You didn’t have any indication,
whatsoever that I would be interested in an MP3 player, MP3 software. Keep the
offers that you make to your list complimentary to the original product that they
purchased, or original topic that they requested information on.
When you try marketing something different, it’s like you might as well have
bought a co-registration list at that point. You’ve lost everything. You’ve lost all
value that you had with them if you offer them something that’s totally unrelated.
It doesn’t make sense. I see people doing it all the time. That’s kind of crazy. A
little off topic, but I think it goes with the same point. Someone sent me a
package in the mail the other day and they wanted me to review the software that
they created. Its an awesome piece of software and we’ll probably do some kind
of venture together in the future, but here’s what happened.
I’m going through his sales letter which he had printed out for me and I’m going
through his bonuses and about three of his bonuses had nothing to do with the
product. That doesn’t make sense. It had nothing to do with it. The subject was
totally unrelated to the bonus. Just because it’s free, doesn’t make it qualified for
a bonus on a sales letter. Keep that in mind.
- 82 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
It’s the same thing with your offer. When you’re following up to people on a list,
just because they show an interest in one thing doesn’t mean they have an
interest in something else. That’s why eventually, for each product or service,
each mailing list that you have, you’re going to have multiple lists. I think I have
about sixty or seventy different lists right now for different topics and I know what
people are interested in. I can tailor my offers for that particular list and you will
too as you build your business. You're going to have multiple lists, but it's not
hard to manage.
Remember we’re doing this primarily once. That’s it. You will want to keep it
updated because everything changes. Websites change; programs come and go,
so you want to make sure your messages are updated constantly. You’re going
to learn how to manage this in a way that will make it very easy for you to
manage all the people that you have.
Don’t worry that it may be complicated in the future because you haven’t gotten
there yet. You can’t worry about something that hasn’t happened yet. If you just
have one list, manage that. When you have two, you’ll figure out how to manage
the two. Don’t worry about it. You’re not going to do this overnight. You’re going
to do it in a progression of steps.
You need to pay close attention to your autoresponder system because that’s
going to make you the most money. The follow up is the key. It always has been,
always will be and no matter if it’s on the prospect or if it’s on the sale or if it’s on
any other communication that you have with somebody. No matter what they
could have signed up for, if it’s a download of a free e-book, a download of a free
video online. It’s always going to be the same. Follow up with them twenty-two
times.
- 83 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
When you follow up with somebody twenty-two times, it’s shocking to them. It
really is. It’s shocking to them because they’ve never been exposed to that type
of follow-up, to that level of service ever before. You're making yourself stand out
from the crowd.
That’s what you want to do. You want to look at your competition right now on the
internet, if you have any, and look at what they’re doing and then go into the
complete opposite direction. I don’t want to be just like my competition. I want to
be totally different than my competition.
I want to stand out. I want to be way more memorable than my competition
through my marketing, through my techniques, through my sales letter, through
my approach. I do not want to copy my competition at all. I want to learn from
what they’re doing, especially if they’re doing better than I am. But, I also don’t
want to be just like them.
I want to take it to the next level. I want to appeal to the person on a grass roots
level that’s going to make sense to the person to make them want to by my
product rather than my competitor’s product. Think like that. Think just like that.
Look what your competition is doing, remember it, keep it in mind and then go
from there.
Let’s go on to the next step. The autoresponder, that’s the follow up system,
that’s what you need to think of and that’s what you need to keep in mind for your
system as far as your sales go, as far as your prospects and things of that
nature.
- 84 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
11. PopUps
The next thing I want to talk about is pop-ups. We’ve all seen them, we’ve all
utilized them. Some of us may have utilized them some of you may never utilize
a pop-up. They’re not complicated. In fact, you don’t have to know any special
kind of programming to use it.
I recently made this real easy and you guys are going to be pretty happy about
this. I recently made a brand new pop-up software, believe it or not. Not the pop-
overs, some of you may have heard of my pop-over software. This is actually
pop-ups.
The reason I did this is because it’s a basic element that people are still utilizing
to this day. I redesigned my pop-up generator software about a month ago
because I found that the average person is not technically oriented. We already
talked about that. I knew this before, except I had this piece of software a person
had to copy and paste code into HTML.
Those of you that are out there that are not technically oriented or maybe are
technically challenged know that it’s not that easy. It may sound easy, but you
may not understand it. That’s okay.
I recreated my software to make it real easy for you to create a pop-up. In fact, it
asks you for the name of your HTML file and it puts the pop-up code in there for
you, so you don’t have to do anything. So basically, you tell it how big you want
your window, and tell them where your window is sitting on the internet. It asks
you for the HTML file and then it inserts the code automatically into your HTML.
So, you don’t have to worry about it. It saves it for you so that all you have to do
is upload it to your website.
- 85 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I made it totally automated to create pop-ups so there’s no reason why a person
can’t make a pop-up. I haven’t even released this version to the public yet so
you guys are going to be the first ones to get it with this product. It’s really
exciting and I think it’s amazing how the programmers actually did this for me.
11A. Why Use PopUps
There are many different uses of pop-ups on the internet. Some people use pop-
ups on entry. Some people use pop-ups on exit and some people use a
combination of the two. The question has always been, should I use a pop-up or
should I not use a pop-up? The answer is yes. You should use a pop-up.
There’s no doubt in my mind that you should have a pop-up on your website.
Why? You need to capture an email address. That’s what I’m trying to get. If my
conversion rate is 3% and 97% of the people don’t buy, I want the e-mail address
of that 97%. Majority does not buy my product. It’s a fact. It’s a fact that we all
have to face. You can become filthy rich on 3%. But, the 97% can also make
you filthy rich if you capture their email address and follow-up with them with the
systems that we just talked about.
You need to use a pop-up on your website. The question always comes up - on
entry or on exit? Well, it’s a good question, and I have some specifics that I can
tell you regarding pop-ups and how they should be utilized. I want to explain to
you and go over some things that I did recently that I don’t think I’ve ever seen
anyone else do. I actually went through and I did some tests on pop-ups.
I wanted to create the perfect pop-up, if there is such a thing. I’m still going
through the tests. I haven't created the perfect pop-up. I think it doesn’t exist, but
I’ll at least give it a shot. I started by testing some basic elements.
- 86 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
11B. Developing Your PopUp
The basic elements were these, the words. I know just like you know and you’ve
heard it time and time again, words are what sells on the internet and it’s true.
Marketing, that’s what it is.
Let me give you some examples and I’ll give you some pictures of these in a file
later today when I send you all your information. Here’s what the headline was
at first. “Get a one year free membership to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter.”
Not shabby, not great, but still it wasn’t bad. “Get a one year free membership to
Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter. Learn new marketing strategies every single
month. Read Armand’s rant of the week and free marketing tools you can use
today.” Then it showed a little graphic of a newsletter as well as my asking them
for their first name and their email address.
That’s what I originally had. That’s what I started with. That was the base that I
started working off with. What I was testing against was just the small variation.
Everything else was the same except I added two elements.
The second one was, “Subscribe to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter. Claim your
free subscription now” right above the graphic. Those are the two. Here’s the
interesting part as far as what the test produced as far as results. Again, Get a
one year free membership to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter and then the
alternative headline was Subscribe to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter.
The Subscribe to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter was beat into the ground by the
second headline, which means the first headline won. Get a one year free
membership to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter. That was the winner. By how
much? Almost 100%. Not quite, it’s actually 96.4% increase. As far as
conversion rates go, it’s a big difference. So now I had a test. I had something to
go by.
- 87 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Here’s what I tested against. Now this is really interesting. Again, I just tested
headlines. I’m only working on headlines at this point. I haven’t even gotten to
anything else, because headlines are very key in getting a newsletter. You need
to stand out. In all of these you have to understand I also had a pop-up on exit. I
didn’t do it on entry. I’m still testing some stuff and I’m going to release it in the
future, but I’m still testing this headline right here.
So here’s the second test that I ran. The second test, which was my control was,
“Get a one year free membership to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter.” We knew
that was the winner from the last time. The second one was, “One year free
membership, $247 value, to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter”. Which one do you
want? Pick one. Most people would probably say the second one. Well you’re
right. How much? Over a 100%, actually it was 126.7% increase in the number
of subscribers on that second headline. “One year free membership, a $247
value, to Armand Morin’s Big Newsletter.”
I thought, well that’s pretty impressive. Now I tested the graphic. I tested the
original graphic that I had, which is a green graphic and it looks like a spiral
bound note-Book against a blue graphic which looks like a stack of magazines
sitting on each other. If you go to any one of my sites right now you can kind of
see that exit pop-up and see what I currently have.
That blue graphic out pulled the green graphic because of the way it looked by
300%. Because I made it look like a magazine and I utilized blue as the primary
color. It looked like a real magazine rather than an e-zine type graphic. It looks
like it’s stacked on top of a bunch of other magazines. It made it look more real,
and it was over 300% actual increase as far as the number of subscribers that I
got just by testing that one small factor.
- 88 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The next thing that I noticed was my window. My window was getting really big
at this point. The people that had 800 X 600 browser couldn’t see the whole
window. I was like, oh well, that kind of stinks. So I needed to change the
window. I figured if I made the window smaller, it might have a change as far as
the number of people subscribing, because maybe some people weren’t seeing
the actual subscribe button.
So I said, let me change that and see what happens. Well, I did have an
increase. It wasn’t significant. It was about a 30% increase though in
subscribers, just by changing the size of the window in order to fit into
everybody’s screen. Yet it’s still very effective.
You may be wondering why I’m giving you all this information regarding pop-ups;
because this works. I just did a bunch of them. This is like twelve weeks worth
of testing over and over again regarding pop-ups and what works on a pop-up.
Listen very closely to this because you can utilize it in your marketing, in your
pop-ups. That’s why I’m telling you all this. The next thing I tried was a flashing
subscribe button. I always figured, if I drew more attention to the button to
subscribe now, it would make a huge difference in my sales because I would be
using subliminal techniques. Well, that would have been nice, and I would to
have loved to have that but I noticed a very marginal increase as far as the
number of subscribers. In fact it was less than 2%, so I don’t think it really made
a difference. But, I kept it anyway because I’ll take 2% anytime.
I’m testing this with not just a couple of subscribers. I’m testing this with
thousands, like a thousand people at a pop. That’s how long I’m running these
tests for. You guys kind of get an idea of what’s happening here. We’re getting
some good statistics as far as what the average person is doing. If you only do
this based on thirty or forty subscribers or something like that, then it’s not going
- 89 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
to be enough. It’s not enough data. It’s not enough traffic to determine what’s
going to happen.
Next, I highlighted key parts in my description and that was pretty amazing
because on that one alone we did have a little over 35% increase in conversion
as far as what we previously had. You see, by highlighting certain words, the
words that I felt that were important to people, that made the difference. It stood
out in people’s minds when they first saw that message. You see that’s how it
works.
Every now and then when you’re testing, you find out that some things are just
amazing. They’re shocking as to how much of an increase in sales that you are
going to receive. Now this one was amazing because I was surfing the internet
one day and I started noticing all these banners and a lot of these pop-ups. The
words that I see the most on these banners on these pop-ups and all this kind of
stuff that I see on different websites was, “Congratulations you won”.
I thought, "Congratulations You Won?" I wonder if that really works. So what did
I do? I put “Congratulations, You Won,” at the very top of my pop-up. When I
put "Congratulations You Won" at the very top of my pop-up, guess what? Again
100% increase in the amount of subscribers, without changing anything else on
the page. 100% increase in the amount subscribers just by putting
"Congratulations You Won" at the top with an exclamation point after it. Is that
crazy? It just goes to show you what you think doesn’t matter. What I think
doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s going to have an effect on our end users
out there utilizing a product and/or service.
That’s what you need to keep in mind always is that you do not matter. You are
not a factor. What your customers want, what your subscribers want that’s all
that matters to a person. Their most important subject is them. If I open up this
call right now and went around the call and asked you what your favorite subject
- 90 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
was, it’s not cars, it’s not fishing, it’s not sewing, and it’s not computer games or
anything else. You know what it is? It’s you.
It’s your favorite subject. Everyone loves the talk about themselves. Whether
they want to admit it or not, that’s their favorite subject. That’s what you know
the most about. You know the most about you. You know yourself better than
you know your kids even.
When you appeal to that individual, when you take into consideration what your
audience wants and just give it to them, you’re going to succeed in everything
that you do. You again, are not a factor. Sounds like a very degrading phone call.
You don’t matter. You don’t exist. It’s true. Not in life, but when it comes to
marketing, that’s when it’s true.
11C. PopUp Reminders
Always, always, always, keep that in mind. I’m going to continue my tests on my
pop-ups and eventually I will probably release a product, I'm planning on it, but
you are the first people to actually ever hear these responses. From what I
started with to what I ended with was almost a 1000% increase in sales. A crazy
figure. I think that it was actually like 600% increase as far as what I was initially
getting compared to what I am getting right now.
Keep that in mind when you are creating your pop-ups. Come back and listen to
this portion because I went through some of those figures really fast. Always,
always, always just kind of a basic run down of what you should do and what I’ve
found out so far when it comes to a pop-up test. Put a dollar value; put a value on
your e-zine. That’s one of the keys. Put a value on your e-zine. That’s one of the
things that increased my sales the most.
- 91 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You should pay very close attention, if you’re going to use a graphic, to the
colors. The colors are key. Blue happens to be the most popular color on the
internet. I don’t know if any of you know that. Blue is one of the most popular
colors on the internet. There’s a lot about color and psychology that would be
way to long for this call to even go into. But blue happens to be a color that’s very
soothing to the individual and that’s why it’s utilized a lot.
When I tested between blue and green, blue made the difference. Again, think
about that. Make sure your window fits in the right browser. Test it in all settings.
Just because your settings on your computer may be bigger than what the
average person sees, make sure that your window fits inside of it. Then look at
what some of the banners say. Pay attention and just really look at the banners
not as annoyances, but look at them as marketing.
Some of these companies you know, they pay big money in research and
development to find out what works as far as a banner go. I’m not a banner
advertiser. I never pretend to be. I don’t really know too much about it. I know
how it works, and I know you can still get it to work, but I just don’t have the
patience for it. I know some of these companies, that is all they do. They still
advertise via banners. Read what they have on those banners. Don’t look at
them as being annoying ads, but read what they have on the banners. You can
utilize that in your own marketing by reading what they have on the banners.
Some of those words they use are getting people to click through at unbelievable
rates. So pay close attention and test some of that stuff. That’s where I got the
"Congratulations, You Won." I’m sure there are probably other phrases out there
that will work equally as well.
When it comes to pop-ups, again, there are different types of pop-ups. The
standard window pop-up that we just talked about is on exit. Again, I only tested
- 92 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
this on exit. I didn’t test any of those pop-ups on entry. Again I just want to make
sure you understand that completely. I only tested on exit. I didn’t test on entry.
I don’t like to necessarily have a regular window pop-up on entry. I could be
wrong, because when I do my testing as opposed to what works better, maybe I
will change my opinion. Again, my opinion doesn’t matter. At this point, I use a
pop-up on exit. But here’s what to use on entry. Many of you have probably seen
these little Windows dialog boxes. Again it’s not complicated. You don’t have to
be brain surgeon to do this. In fact, there’s a piece of software that does it all for
you.
11D. Windows Dialog PopUp
The windows dialog box essentially works off the premise that it looks like a
Windows error message. So it looks like it’s generated by your computer, which it
is. You have to click something. You either click okay or cancel in order to get out
of it or click the little close button. You have to do something with it. It’s not going
to go away for you. They’re very effective to get subscribers.
A friend of mine, Ryan Dice, some of you may know him, he has a product that
allows you to make these things instantly and easily. That product is called Opt In
Automator. That’s www.OptInAutomator.com. It makes everything for you
instantly. You just fill in the blanks. It’s a step by step sequence. When you’re
done it tells you exactly what to do. Again, it inserts the code for you just like my
new pop-up software. It’s simple to do.
That’s one of the things when I was doing on my testing previously, because I’m
testing now on my subscribers as far as getting them on exit. I’ve removed most
of those windows from my main websites because I want to make it a fair test.
Adding it to the front is one of the things that I’m going to be testing in the near
future.
- 93 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I know previously, when I did add it for the first time, it started increasing my
sales and my subscribers by an average of about 250-300 per week, just by
adding that on entry. That’s pretty significant in anybody’s book.
I would really advise everyone to do that on entry - have one of those types of
windows come up. Also, one of the most powerful places you can put a
subscriber box to get a list and to build a list is three quarters of the way down
your web page. Three quarters of the way down your web page.
Why? Simply by putting it three quarters of the way down the web page, you’ve
had the chance to build a little trust in people at this point. Again you’re building
trust in them because they read a lot about you, they’ve gotten to know you, and
they’ve gotten an idea of your products or services. They may have built an
interest in what you have to offer at this point.
Three quarters of the way down the page, they feel that it’s okay now at this
point. You’ve earned the right with them for them to give you their first name and
their email address. That’s why it’s one of the most powerful places and its three
quarters of the way down the page. I’ve tested it in the upper right-hand quarter
and three quarters of the way down the page.
Guess what? It’s the same thing. They pull exactly the same number. I don’t like
having it at the top because I don’t want to get people off track. Three quarters of
the way down the page, to me, works. It just makes more sense to me. If they
pull the same number then it doesn’t matter whether you place it on top or on
bottom. It doesn’t. How do you truly know? Everything that I’m telling you today,
everything that I told you the other day, some are you are going to believe it and
then some of you are still going to buck.
- 94 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You’re not going to believe it and you're going to go through the hard way still.
I’m not telling you anything that I haven’t done. There’s not a single thing that I
haven’t done here that I’m telling you about. I’m reading my actual results.
Just test it yourself though. If you don’t believe me in anything I say, just test it
yourself and find out what the results are for your market, for your industry,
because there is a chance that it will be different. Different markets react
differently to different marketing techniques. It’s a fact.
What works for my industry may not work as well for your industry or maybe will
work differently as far as what the results for your industry are. Always test.
Always test in everything that you do. If you have some basic guidelines like the
information that I’m giving you right now, it’s going to make it a lot easier for you
and you’re going to know what to test. You are going to know how to figure it out.
You’re going to know what to do next.
Think about those things and constantly, constantly test your marketing. Again,
three quarters of the way down the page to me works best and it makes much
more sense because you’re building up credibility with that person prior to them
actually subscribing.
- 95 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
12. Questions & Answers
Armand: I’m going to open up the call. Any questions while we’re waiting?
Question: Did you say that you shouldn't sell anything in follow-up e-mails?
Armand: Well no, actually I’m saying the initial two weeks shouldn’t have
anything. The next ones after the initial two weeks, you can put the ad
in but put it after the initial message. Give them some information first,
give them quality content. What you’re doing essentially is building a
false sense of security, if you want to think about it that way. If they
know that every time, here’s what happens, many times people send
an email and they know, I know before I open it it’s going to be an ad.
So I don’t open it. So what you’re doing is you’re getting people used
to reading your email. That’s really the psychology behind it.
Question: So the e-mail shouldn't be a long ad?
Armand: That’s a good point. I think that people need to understand this. I’ve
done a lot of testing on this part as far as advertising in your e-mail.
Your e-mail should not be a long advertisement for anything. It should
really just be a way to get a person to click on a link. That’s why we
write a sales letter. It should just give them enough information to
make them want to click that link, that’s it.
Question: So the e-mails should just be to teach how to the customer to use the
product?
Armand: Yeah, pretty much. Not all twenty-two, remember after the initial two
weeks that’s when you’ve earned the right to do that.
- 96 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Question: What was the HTML tutorial link?
Armand: That was the www.w3schools.com. Again, just like it sounds
www.W3Schools.com and that’s basically a tutorial on different
aspects of HTML and a lot of other things.
Question: Will you recap everything that you've covered so far?
- 97 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
13. Recap
Armand: Yes, no problem.
For a recap, we ended up last week on where to get a web designer for
Pennies on the dollar and we mentioned three different websites. One was
www.ScriptLance.com, www.RentACoder.com and www.WebDesignLance.com.
That’s where you can get a programmer for pennies on the dollar. It’s a freelance
type website.
Then we covered real quickly how to find all the pre-designed websites you could
never get for free, anything that you want, basically for free it’s
www.WebTemplates.com, www.FreewayOuts.com and www.FreeSites.com.
I also gave you a couple of resources regarding paid sites. One of those
resources was www.TemplateMonster.com and the other resource was
www.DesignGalaxy.net.
Then we talked about a free HTML editor, which was the predecessor to
FrontPage and that’s called www.FrontPageExpress.com and I gave you the
download link for that. For those of you that may have not written it down
correctly or maybe didn’t get all of it, it’s really simple. Its
www.GoGenerator.com/FX.exe, so again that website address is
www.GoGenerator.com/FX.exe.
Then we also talked about Fortune Five Hundred companies real quick. They
don’t matter. Who cares? You’re not competing with them. You’re marketing
directly to the consumer so you don’t really care. You’re not trying to build whole
brand awareness on the internet. You may in the process, but that’s not the
important key to it.
- 98 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The number one ingredient on the internet, again, is finding a need and filling it.
Find out what people want and fill it. That’s it. The number one ingredient to
making your product and service sell like hot cakes, just tell your story. People
love to read stories, so always tell your stories when you're copywriting. When
you’re copywriting also write in chunks.
When I say chunks, I mean simply break your sales letter down in just about five,
six or seven major categories and then tell a brief story. A couple of paragraphs
about each one and then have a call to action and just don’t use "click here now
to order" because it’s very redundant and everybody uses it on the internet. It’s
over-used all the time.
We also talked about what’s the best type of product to market on the internet.
"How to" information, very simply. It’s been around for years and years and years
as long as anyone can remember. Someone’s always selling information on how
to do something and the software that you can utilize that costs less than $30 is
Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon Naturally Speaking and you can get that at
www.DealTime.com. Just do a search Dragon Naturally Speaking. You can find it
for less than $30.
There are a couple of different versions. There’s the standard version and a
preferred version. You can look on the internet. If you can find the preferred
version, there are times when you can find it for about $30 and I think recently
I’ve seen it for about $49 when I did some research the other day.
Autoresponders. We talked about autoresponders today, which was a majority of
our call so far. Autoresponders are very key. Again, to recap of the follow up
system, there are a couple of things that I just want to clarify on this too that was
mentioned on our break.
- 99 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
The autoresponder system is the initial message every other day for the first
fourteen days. That’s a total of six messages teaching people how to consume
your product. After that, you send a message every week for the next four weeks.
Every two weeks for the next four weeks after that, so an additional two
messages and then one message per month for the rest of the year.
The question was asked about not putting a blatant ad in autoresponders. I don’t
really think it’s appropriate to do that. The whole purpose of a message, an
email, is to get the person to click on a link. E-mail marketing is something else
and obviously autoresponders are e-mail marketing. In email marketing your
whole objective is to get a person to click on a link.
I truly don’t believe that you can effectively sell from an e-mail. Some people
claim you can. Maybe they can sell to their market from an e-mail. Maybe they
have a different market and people react differently.
From all the testing that I’ve done on it, the best e-mails that I’ve found to work
were less than fifty words. Because all I want is a person to click on the link
where I can send them to a web page that I’ve spent time, sometimes weeks or
months working on a sales letter to sell them.
I’m not trying to get them to buy through my e-mail. You should never send a
blatant sales message in an autoresponder.
Aside from this autoresponder message there is one thing that I really didn’t
explain properly, which I think I need to. There are going to be messages that
you are going to send to your list outside of the autoresponder sequence. These
are above and beyond your autoresponder.
There are going to be times where you send a blatant ad. When you guys clicked
on the link to order this product, it was a blatant ad. There’s no doubt, but it was
- 100 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
not part of an autoresponder sequence to get you onto this call. It was very short
and to the point. I don’t know how many words it was, but I will bet you this, if it
was fifty words it was probably a lot. It was probably less than fifty words and
maybe slightly over, if that, but it was probably around fifty words. I didn’t count it
up, but it got you to click on a link that took you to a sales letter which told you
the rest of the story. I did send you a blatant ad, but again, it was not part of my
autoresponder sequence.
Any ads that you send out to your list are above and beyond the actual
autoresponder sequence. I think that probably makes more sense to you now.
Then we talked about pop-ups and what you should do. Should you use them?
Yes. Test. You want to test pop-ups on entry, pop-ups on exit. I gave you some
examples of the results that I gave you that I did on pop-ups on exit.
Look at your headlines. That’s very key to get people to respond to your pop-ups.
You have to look different from the rest. Look at the colors. Colors are very
important. I utilize blue. I happened to increase my sales quite dramatically by
using blue. I say sales, but I mean conversions as far as numbers of
subscribers.
I also told you to look at the banner ads; the banners that are out there. It’s very
key for you to look at the banners and see what people are utilizing on banners.
The words, I’m looking at the words. The words are very important.
That brings us pretty much up to where we are right now. The next topic that we
are going to talk about is graphics and the dangers of using them on the internet.
- 101 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
14. Graphics
Graphics are something that they can be the most beneficial thing for you or they
can be your worst nightmare. You see, everyone has different opinions on
graphics. Some people say that you should use them. Some people say that
you shouldn’t. I’ve done quite a few tests regarding graphics. Why? Because A)
Many of you know I have a piece of software called e-Cover Generator, which
generates an e-book graphic or a software box graphic.
14A. The Value of Graphics
Just a little note on that, a software box or an e-book cover will increase your
sales. There’s a lot of research regarding graphics on your website. I just want to
give you some quotes as far as some famous companies that have actually done
some research. Way more than I could ever possibly do, and you are going to
find this pretty amazing. Listen to this:
“Many consumers are still hesitant to buy online because they want
to see and touch a product before they buy it. Accurate, photo
realistic, 3-D models help because they tell the whole story.”
Forester Research
Again, they’ve done a lot of testing on this. Here’s another one:
“We’ve actually noticed a difference between fifty and one hundred
percent when promoting your own print book using the same ad
copy, but including a picture of the book cover can double sales.”
Mike Mikowitz, www.SitePoint.com
Here’s another one:
- 102 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
“When companies incorporated 3-D to show off their unique
products online, they saw a 300% increase in page views. A 200%
increase in sales and a 50% increase in time spent on the site per
user. Also websites that used 3-D to show off their products
experienced a lower return rate than companies who only used 2-
D.”
www.SpinImageDV.com, they’re a web technology provider.
Heree’s another one:
“3-D products enable web marketers to increase sales in some
cases up to 25% versus traditional 2-D images and reduce product
returns by better communicating features with online shoppers.”
www.Cone.com
There’s so much value in having a graphic, a realistic graphic, on your website.
For example, here’s another one. There’s a couple. I just want to give you an
overview of how important this is. These are from people other than me.
“A growing number of eBusinesses are experimenting with the
rapidly emerging field of 3-Dimensional web technology. Others
are counting on 3-D to add new levels of excitement and realism in
the eCommerce website. Photo realism really enhances
believability.”
CIO Magazine
Ralph Wilson from Web Marketing Today, many of you probably know him,
hopefully from his newsletter.
- 103 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
“I don’t really care what purists say. Photos sell products and color
sells better than black and white. How else can you explain the
mega millions spent on full color newspaper sale inserts? If you
use color photos of new products, you stand a good chance of
getting another sale.”
Ralph Wilson
Web Marketing Today
Listen to what CNN said:
“According to retail experts 3-D is seen as one of the most
promising ways to convert online browsers to buyers. If you get
them past the point where they need to see a product in person,
they’re much more likely to buy according to the VP of eCommerce
and Marketing Research Company.”
CNN
Intel Corporation. Again many of you have already heard of them:
“You’ll probably never be able to let an on-line customer actually
hold a product in his or her hands using a standard browser. 3-D
graphics enhance a consumer’s visual enjoyment of your site.
They help convey information in a more compelling format and they
increase your sites so called "stickiness" by making visitors want to
return again and again.”
The last one. Andrew Jackson of MGI an internet software services company:
“There is a 30% increase in sales and a 50% reduction in returned
goods with the use of 3-D imaging.”
- 104 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Andrew Jackson of MGI
Now, what does that really mean to you? Put a graphic on your website. That’s
what it means. It’s pretty simple. Everyone says to do it; you should do it.
Graphics are good, but a bad graphic will have the 100% complete opposite
effect.
14B. Where to Get Graphics
If you are not a graphics designer, if you are not graphically inclined to do your
own stuff, don’t do it. Don’t play; this is money, this is your business that your
playing with. You’re not playing Monopoly. You’re playing with real money now.
So don’t risk it. Don’t buy Baltic up in the left hand corner because you have an
extra $60. Again, we’re not playing Monopoly.
What you want to play is real business and you're not playing at it. It’s a serious
game and you can stand to lose money if you do it wrong. Don’t take your
graphics into your own hands if you don’t know how to do it. If you do not have a
good eye, if you’re not graphically inclined, if you’re not artistically inclined, don’t
do it yourself.
If you are not going to do it yourself, what are you going to do? Well, I
recommend you hire somebody. The person I recommend is only a couple of
people. The first one is Vaughn Davidson. Vaughn Davidson's website is
www.KillerCovers.com, one of the best in the industry. Vaughn Davidson, again,
www.KillerCovers.com.
The other person I recommend with your graphics is probably this next person is
probably the best one I’ve seen so far and that’s Brian Terry. The guy is
amazing. He’s amazing. He’s no doubt one of the best graphic designers out
there. He’s great and his website is www.e-BookWOW.com. That’s www.e-
- 105 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
BookWOW.com. Brian Terry is just fantastic graphic artist. All of his work is
great, all of it is just amazing.
14C. Doing Your Own Graphics
Some of you may want to do it yourself. If you want to do it yourself, for e-Books
and eCovers and things like that, you can be the greatest artist, but you need to
have the perspective right as far as the angles to make it look realistic, to make it
look 3-D. Obviously, I’m a little biased, but my eCover software will actually let
you do that.
The thing is if you are graphically inclined, you’re not going to use the standard
templates that I give you on my eCover software. You’re going to make the
graphics yourself in something like Fireworks.
For those of you that don’t know what Fireworks is, Fireworks is a graphics
program that I personally use. It’s the best, to me, it’s the best graphics program
that there is on the market. It’s easy. It’s simple and you can do some fantastic
designs once you learn how to use it a little bit. I search for tutorials, free
tutorials, all the time on Fireworks to learn different things on how to utilize it to its
maximum potential. I still haven’t figured it out all the way, but I can do it to make
some really neat graphics when I need to and when I have to. Fireworks is a
great software program. I really recommend it.
Another graphics program that you guys should have if you need do something
yourself on it is a product called Real Draw. That’s www.RealDraw.com. You
can go there or actually you can get to it another way too. It’s called
www.MediaChance.com. It’s a great graphics program. It’s simple. It’s easy.
It’s not complicated and it produces results that are just amazing. So take a look
at those two graphics programs if you’re going to do an eCover graphic, a
software box graphic or a newsletter type graphic.
- 106 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You might want to make the cover yourself and then utilize my software to
actually put it into a three ring binder or to a software box where we’ve already
spent the time having programmers make a photo realistic shape for you
automatically. It takes your images and utilizes one of our predefined images that
we have actually in our software. It really is true to life imaging. We’ve done a
lot of research on this.
One of the things that some of you may or may not know, we actually have
upgraded our software so much that we haven’t even had a chance to put it on
the site. We actually made a 3-D twist to our software where we can make eight
different types of graphics including CD’s and a lot of different things. It will allow
you to rotate it and turn it in the software so you can see it from different angles.
It’s the neatest thing and we’re getting ready to update our website in the next
few weeks regarding that. It’s just amazing. Again, you can see what it is. It’s
just amazing. You’ll be shocked with the software. We’re releasing it to
everybody already. We want you to have it. If you don’t have it, just send us an
email and we’ll get you a new updated version. We actually provide lifetime
upgrades for all our products.
14D. Header Graphics
Let’s get back to the graphic. Should you have one? Yes. For selling anything,
you should have one. Yes. The question comes down to should you have a
header graphic.
A friend of mine recently, John Reese, really upset me because he did some
testing with and without a header graphic. We’ve tested it multiple times. Some
people have tested it where they have had better results without a header
- 107 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
graphic on your site than with one. They’ve had better results without a header
graphic than with one. John was the first one to point that out to me.
We had different people test it and in some markets it’s absolutely true. It’s
100%. I tested it. I personally tested it because he said he tested it and I
thought, chances are you probably just had a really bad header graphic. That’s
what I told him.
Well I did it and I made one myself, personally and I consider myself to be a
pretty good artist as far as graphics goes. I made the header graphic myself and I
made it look really nice. The classic header, graphic style and layout, and I did
everything I thought I should do on a header graphic. I tested it against the exact
same page, exact same sales letter without the header graphic. Guess what? I
had a 400% increase in sales on the page without the header graphic.
Do header graphics mean anything? Yes, they do, but you have to test it for your
market. Some people had the complete opposite results. In some cases they
had a header graphic and it increased sales as opposed to decrease sales, in
some markets, because that’s what they’re expecting and that’s what works best
for them.
The reasoning and the logic behind this is that you have to understand is that a
header graphic may detract, if it’s not done properly, from your actual headline.
The most important aspect on your site is the headline. It is the headline of your
website that will make more of an impact, more of a difference than any other
factor on your whole site. It’s your headline for your website.
Always, always, always, always, test to find out what works for your market
rather than mine. You have to think about this. It does me no good to tell you not
to use a header graphic. I have no personal gain in it. In fact, I lose out because
some of you may know I make header graphic software that I sell. So I am telling
- 108 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
you the truth on this because I have nothing to gain and a lot to lose if you don’t
use a header graphic on it.
But always, always, always test it. Always test it. Make sure that it is going to
work for your market. If you have a header graphic now, test it without and see
what happens. If you don’t have a header graphic, add one and see what
happens and test both against the other.
14E. Choosing The Right Graphics
Look at your graphics and everything else. Some people flash sites. Flash sites
are becoming popular now. Again, when Flash first came out on the internet, only
the big companies could use it because it’s expensive to have. It still is
expensive to have a Flash designer come in and make you a website or pieces
of a website and develop the whole thing for you. It can cost you $5000 or $6000
in some cases. It’s getting lower now, but it’s still pretty expensive as opposed to
a standard webpage design.
Is it necessary? I don’t think so. I say I don’t think so. You have to understand
again, it’s not a multimedia presentation that you’re making. You’re posing a
direct sales letter to a person for the most part. For the most part you’re selling
one product, one site, what do you do? What are the most important factors?
The headline. The words. The fancy graphics most of the time are a distraction.
They don’t get your point across. They don’t do anything except look cool up on
the top of your page.
Don’t worry about the fancy flash graphics. What’s the purpose of it? Always ask
yourself what’s the purpose of it. If it’s not needed, if it doesn’t show an increase
in sales get rid of it and if it shows a decrease in sales; you definitely want to get
rid of it. If it’s not helping you, get rid of it. That’s the simplicity of the website. If
it’s not helping you, get rid of it and find something that works. Just change bits,
- 109 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
look at your whole website like that. Look at the different elements of your
website.
Cheap graphics, stock graphics, I shouldn’t say cheap graphics. Yeah, I can say
that. Cheap graphics like these little icons that people have all over their sites are
annoying and they look bad. I don’t care what anyone says, people do judge a
book by its cover. People do have a first impression when they come to your
website and people will decide if they are going to purchase from you or if you
even have a chance of getting their business in the first ten seconds when they
get to your site. That’s a fact.
They are going to make a decision right from the start. Don’t kid yourself and say,
"Oh but my sales letter is so great." Well let me tell you this, if I have a good
sales letter that’s just a sales letter and I have another sales letter that is a nicely
formatted sales letter with the same words, which one do you think you are going
to get the sale from? The one that looks more appealing to the naked eye is
going to win every single time without a doubt.
Think about it. Do you want to do business with a company online? Ask yourself
this question. Do you want to do business with a company online that looks like a
five dollar company or do you want to do business with one that looks like a five
hundred million dollar company? I’m not saying you’ve got to spend the money to
look like these fancy websites. I’m just saying that you have to look professional.
That’s my point on this.
Look professional in everything that you do because people want to deal with
people that are already successful. They want to know that if they have a
problem, if they need questions answered, that there’s someone on the other end
that’s going to answer them. Again, it doesn’t have to be the fanciest website,
but it does have to look clean and professional.
- 110 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Always, always, always keep that in mind when you’re dealing with your website
design. It doesn’t take a lot. You can get a graphic design from someone else for
about $100. If you can’t afford $100 for a graphic, don’t launch the product.
Borrow it. Do what you need to do, but I would rather not launch a product that
looked bad and didn't have all the potential for me to make sales, than to release
it out there and just make a big mistake.
If you release a product too early that’s not ready or if you release a product or a
website that’s just not up to par, you’re not doing yourself a favor. You’re doing
yourself a disservice. You are messing up big time.
Always, always do everything in your power to make sure that everything is right
from the start. Don’t launch something too prematurely because if you do, you’re
not going to have a second chance with those people. They’re going to come
back and say, I’ve already seen this and they’re going to click off the page. Don’t
do it.
- 111 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
15. Automating Your Sales System
Let’s move on to the next topic; automating your sales system. How many people
think I work all hours of the night? Well, that’s not a good example because I do
work all hours of the night. Do you think that every time person orders a product
from me or anybody else that’s marketing online, that we're working all night? Do
you think that we actually send them an email ourselves, personally, every single
time? No. We don’t, because our system’s already automated.
We don’t even know when we make a sale. I have to actually go in and check
how many sales I made today. At the end of the day, I’ll go in and check how
many sales I made because I don’t know. Unless someone says to me or sends
and email to my customer service or one of my other email addresses that tells
me they had a problem, I don’t even know they ordered because it’s all
automated.
Systems will do everything for you. Now there are several different types of
systems. First is what I call a beginner system. When you’re first getting started
online, you don’t need some fancy system. There are a couple of systems out
there that are pretty good.
Some of you may know I have a product called Quicksales.com. It’s an
automation system. It’s a private label that I did with 1shoppingcart and it works
pretty well. I’ve been pretty happy with it overall. I’ve processed a lot of business
with it and through it, and I still use it to this day.
Then there’s another company called 1ShoppingCart. A friend of mine Rob Bell
owns that. It’s a great automation system. Both systems will run you somewhere
between $45 and $70 a month and it will do all kinds of crazy things that are all in
there. At first you don’t need to spend that. You really don’t. It’s overkill for you
- 112 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
and it’s probably just going to confuse the heck out of you. It’s just going to give
you another reason not to do it.
I can’t launch my business yet. I can’t launch my product or service yet because
I’ve got to figure out how to use this big shopping system that I don’t need. Well
what do you do? You simply use a different system.
15A. Click Bank
Here is a system to use when you’re first getting online. I’m going to show you
the system that I still use to this day on my product to take online payments. This
is what I did. I set this up way back when and I still use the exact same system
today. Here is how this product works.
When a person comes to my website here is what happens. They want to order a
book, so I use Click Bank. I use Click Bank and we’ll get more into payment
processors a little bit later. But right now Click Bank, just for those of you that
don’t understand what it is or what they do, they’re a third party payment
processor and they allow you to accept payments online. They allow you to
accept credit cards and actually checks online as well.
They charge you a premium for using their service. In fact it’s 7 ½ % plus $1 per
transaction. That means for every transaction I make, I pay Click Bank 7 ½ %
plus $1 to process that order for me. Then every two weeks they send me a
check. That’s essentially what Click Bank is and I’ll get more of a detailed
explanation in a moment when we talk about payment processors.
Click Bank processes the order and then I can define a "thank you" page. I can
define a "thank you" page in Click Bank itself, which tells a person where to go
after the sale. Where do I want to send the customer after I know that they’ve
paid for the product? After I know that their product has been processed and
- 113 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Click Bank has the money that they will send to me in a couple weeks, where do
I send these people?
What you need to do is create a download page, if it’s a digital product or a thank
you page basically. So you put a "thank you" page there. Remember, we talked
about autoresponders. One of the things that you can do with an autoresponder
is to simply have a form that’s in a website and a person will fill in their first name,
last name maybe and also their email address and subscribe. That’s a form on a
website. That will go into your autoresponder.
The person pays for the product through Click Bank, they come to my download
page, they fill out this form, which is connected to my autoresponder, they click
submit on the form and then they’re taken to my download page where my
product is, where it says click here to download your product.
Now at the same time they just received an email from my autoresponder that
says, "Thank you for your order." "Here is your download link in case you forgot it
or in case you missed it." Now I can follow up with them just like I talked about a
few minutes ago regarding the follow up system.
That product has been running for years and years off that same system. I’ve
never changed it, again as I stated earlier, I’m too lazy to change it. It’s still
working off a free hosting account as well too. I just haven’t bothered moving it,
but that’s the system that I’ve utilized. When I first got online, I used the same
system I just explained over and over, time and time again and utilized it for a
bunch of different products because it’s easy.
I knew enough when I got online, as many of you probably know, that you need
to have a way a.) you can take your customer's credit card and b.) you can follow
up with the system automatically without any work on your part and then get a
person to the download page so that they can download your product or service.
- 114 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You know, everybody that’s on Click Bank probably uses a very similar system. I
certainly didn’t invent that system. It’s been around for a long time before I did it.
Except when I finally figured it out, I didn’t really have anyone that could tell me
how to do this. So I was really proud of setting this up like that.
A lot of you may know Jim Edwards. I his website is www.e-BookFire.com. Jim
Edwards did all his work through Click Bank because it’s easier and he finds that
they do all the work and he doesn’t have to. He has all of his systems on Click
Bank; all of the products that he sells online are done through this system. The
customer pays for the product, they go to the download page, they fill in the form
and then they connect to the page where they download the product.
It wasn’t until recently that Jim finally went to a full blown shopping cart system.
How much does it cost you to get started with Click Bank? It cost $49.95 one
time and that’s it. You’re done with Click Bank and they’ll send you checks every
two weeks for any sale that you previously made.
Not only that, but it also gives you the ability to sell about ten or twelve thousand
other merchant’s products through their mall, through their affiliate program. You
can sell those other products as well too. You might be able to make some
money that way.
15B. Download Page
This system, again, is very, very simple. Every autoresponder that’s out there will
have a link or a maybe some kind of a button that says "create form." "Create
form." When you do that, it will ask you which autoresponder you want to create
a form for, so you would select that. Every autoresponder account is different. It
may be different wording, but it’s going to pretty much walk you through the same
process.
- 115 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Then, after you create the form, you're going to press "next" and it’s going to give
you this little code. It’s going to start off with form blah, blah, blah, blah, and a
bunch of HTML code that you don’t even need to understand. Then it’s going to
end with "form" and then these little symbols on each side of it. What you would
simply do is copy that "form"code and paste into an HTML page where you want
it.
Remember I said on the last call, you need to have the ability to at least go in
and edit an HTML page. This is what I mean by edit, that you would paste this
"form" code where you would like to see it on your webpage. Again, just simply
copy and paste it. By playing a little bit, you will be able to figure out a lot of the in
between things from there.
If you have someone else do your webpage, you simply send them the "form"
code and they can paste it in for you. It’s not difficult. It’s not complicated to do.
What this does is make sure you set your download page, or may they may call it
a redirect, to the page where your actual product is sitting, where a person could
download the product.
Always make sure that redirect is your download page. That’s key. The
important part is the redirect. I was talking with someone the other day that is
actually on the call right now and they were asking me if a person comes to a
page and they fill out a form how do I get them to go wherever I want them to
afterwards? That’s called a redirect.
15C. Redirect
In your autoresponder account, as your going through this process it will ask you
the question, where would you like to redirect the person to after they filled out
your form. If it’s after a sale and you’re collecting their name and email address
- 116 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
to put into your database so that you can follow up with them, then you are going
to put the download page where your products or services are sitting. If it’s after
they subscribe to a list and you want to redirect them to another page that may
be a product or service that you are trying to promote, then yes, you would do the
same thing there.
Autoresponders are so powerful and you can use them to not only collect email
addresses on the front, but to follow up with people after the sale as well too.
Your autoresponder will do all this for you. Again, it’s not a lot of work for it.
- 117 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
16. Sales Process
You have to understand this process and think about this. Here is the whole
sales process. When a person comes to your website, they show an interest in
what you have. Hopefully maybe through an ad, maybe through an affiliate link or
whatever, but they have at least some kind of interest in your product and/or
service or whatever you’re offering to the marketplace.
You’re building upon that basic interest through your sales letters. Again, you’re
feeding them chunks of your website in bits and pieces so they’re going to create
more interest. Hopefully you’re building up on their key interest. You're going to
hit one of their hot spots and then what’s going to happen is they're going to click
to your order page. Then they’re going to make a decision whether or not to
order. They may order the first time and they may not. Either way, they’ll
probably go back to the sales page and they’ll continue reading until they get
enough value. They will read until they feel confident enough that your
information, your product, your service is going to give them exactly what they
need. Then they’re going to order your product or service.
They are going to take their credit card out of their pocket and they’re going to
put in their credit card number and then they’re going to press the submit button
and then they are going to order your product. You receive their money and then
you are going to follow up with them in some way, shape or fashion.
That’s not the end of the process though. The process does not end when a
person purchases your product. You do not repeat the process at this point. It’s
not time to start and go over it again. That is not the end of the sales process.
You have to understand that the end of the sales process never stops. It never
stops.
- 118 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You only did half your job if you stop at this point. If you stop at this point with
people, you only did partially what your responsibility is to that end user, because
all you did was get their money and give them the product. Your other
responsibility is the autoresponder series that I talked about. It’s your
responsibility to teach them how to use that product. That’s still part of your
methodology. That’s what you should be incorporating into your sales process.
16A. Building Relationships
This all fits in now. All of a sudden you start following up with the person, then
after you teach them how to use the product, after a couple of weeks you start
introducing them to other products and when they click on a link to go to another
product page that maybe you own or someone that you recommend, guess
what? The process starts over at that point and it continues to start over and over
and over again. It never ends.
That’s why relationships are so important in your online business. Some of you
are on this call right now that I’ve talked to lots of times. I've talked to you not just
via email, but we’ve talked on the phones; we’ve met in person. With some of
you, we’ve even met each other’s wives, we’ve met each other's kids. There’s so
much as far as a relationship goes.
You can build upon the relationship where some of your customers are like some
of you on the phone. I’ve gone beyond just a business relationship with you. I’ve
gone into a personal relationship, where you’re actually one of my personal
friends. You see your customer base will happen. It will evolve. The more they
know you, the more they can hear you, the more they can feel you, the more you
communicate with them on a level that they can understand, the better your
relationships going to be.
- 119 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
That sales process is never going to stop. You see its all part of the process. The
relationship is part of the process. It’s very key. One of the key points that you
can tell how well or how good of a relationship you have with your list and the
people that have purchased from you is how they address you.
For example, if I get an email from someone that says Mr. Morin at the top; I
don’t really have a relationship with that person, do I? Or else they would know
not to call me Mr. Morin. That’s the first thing. The other thing is that they don’t
know me. They just don’t know me, period.
How do I know if I have a good relationship then? They’ll start off with Armand.
When people start utilizing and emailing you on a first name basis, then you
know you have a good relationship. They feel comfortable with you enough to
just call you by your first name. If you don’t feel comfortable with someone, if you
don’t feel you know them, you’re going to say Mr. So and So, just out of respect.
We’ve always been taught that, not only as kids, but in business. Mr. So and So,
you don’t know me, but … then they go into it. If they feel they know you,
whether they do or not, if they have the perception, the perceived idea that they
do know you and that they feel that they know what your going through, and they
know what you can do for them; then they will call you by your first name.
This is the real quick test to test yourself. Start watching your emails in the next
few days and how people address you. What do they call you? If you have a list
and you are currently marketing a business online right now, do they say Mr. So
and So or do they call you by your first name. What’s the case? That’s your
relationship with your customers.
The more people you have calling you by your first name the better your
business is going to be. It’s going to be a better relationship that you have with
your customers. When you realize that the sales process doesn’t stop, it’s going
- 120 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
to take your business to an entirely different level. You are going to be aware of
it.
- 121 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
17. Just Do It
You see, some of you are only aware of certain things at this point. You’re aware
of what you should do. See if you actually knew what you should do for sure,
100% without a doubt, there’s no question in your mind, you would do it. There
would be no hesitation in building your business. When you know that there is no
other way, that this is the way, there’s only one way to get through that door then
you have to open up the dang door and go through it in order to get to where you
want to be.
Some of you right now are right at that point. You’re not quite sure. You know
there’s a door, but you’re really not sure where it goes to at this point. If you can
build enough confidence, enough excitement, you’re going to just grab the
handle, open it up and walk through.
That’s what’s happening right now. You’re aware of what’s going on, but you
don’t know it. Does that make sense? If you knew it, you would do it. That’s
where you need to be. Hopefully these conversations these last few days have
been helping you do that.
- 122 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
18. Merchant Accounts
One of the keys in your business online is this; the ability to accept a credit card.
Sounds like a simple ability but it isn't. It isn't. It’s complicated and it’s one of the
most often asked questions that I get.
Let me tell you a story. It’s kind of a sad story in a way but you’ll see how I got
over it very quickly. I made a four million dollar plus mistake with credit cards
online. Four million dollars, that’s a lot of money no matter how you put it. I
started way back. When I say way back, I mean in '96’. I got online, and I had this
idea that I would put together this link page.
My idea was a bunch of links to a bunch of free stuff on the internet. I thought it
was neat. I had collected all the information; it was just all my bookmarks.
That’s all it was. All of a sudden it grew. People started buying it, believe it or not.
In fact, over thirty-five thousand plus people purchased this in the first twelve
weeks. I processed over four million dollars in credit cards in the first twelve
weeks.
But then, one day I received this fatal phone call. This phone call went
something like this: "Mr. Morin," they did call me Mr. Morin; they didn’t know me. I
had no relationship with them whatsoever. They said, "Mr. Morin we’re your
credit card processor and we’ve just found out that you processed four million
dollars in twelve weeks, and we feel a little uncomfortable with that. So what
we’re going to do is we’re going to hold half of that for you for the next six
months. In fact, we’ve gone into your bank account and pulled in what we feel is
half." Seriously, they went into my bank account and actually pulled out half that
money.
- 123 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
They had some that they didn’t give us yet, but then they went back into the bank
account and pulled out the rest. That was it. Now I did have affiliates at that point
and I couldn’t pay my affiliates. I had to pay them with what I had. Still it wasn’t
bad because I had roughly two million dollars. Any way you look at it that's two
million bucks. That’s how I got over it. The two million that I had just kind of
soothed me over for a little bit and made me feel better about myself.
They still held two million dollars, but it was impossible for me to continue
building the business and building that company. We were on track for about
fifty-five million dollars for the year with very little overhead and very little costs.
Again it may sound like a sad story but it was one of the best learning things I
ever did in my life. We crashed servers; we did all kinds of crazy things. It was a
time where things like this were happening almost every day.
What happened was that we couldn’t process a credit card. Let me explain to you
what happened here. It’s a little bit more in depth than just not taking credit cards.
They not only told us that we couldn't accept anymore credit cards, they took our
merchant account away from us. Then we went to the next merchant account
company and they asked us who we previously utilized. We told them. We told
them the truth. This is the company that we utilized, and they said, "Let us look
that up" and when they did they said, "We can’t take your application because
you’ve been shut down by this company."
We didn’t do anything wrong. They felt extended because what would happen if
all these people wanted a refund at one time? We didn’t have a high refund rate.
In fact we had almost a zero refund rate because we sold people a yearly access
to this site. What they did was they looked us up and they told us that because
we had one merchant account taken away that they wouldn’t give us another
one.
- 124 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
We went to company after company after company. They would not give us a
credit card merchant account. So I could not take credit cards online, therefore,
couldn’t continue to do business.
At that point you can imagine my frustration, knowing that I had an opportunity to
continue on and I couldn’t find a way. What’s referred to as a third party system
right now didn’t really exist back then. There was a few of them, yes. Click Bank
was around back then. There were one or two others but really not to the extent
that they are today.
I was on a vengeance to figure out how to take a credit card. How can I take a
credit card without having a merchant account?
I did all this research. I researched every minute that I was awake. I was
researching a way to take credit cards online without a merchant account. In fact,
that’s how I wrote the book, Take Online Payments, because that’s all the
research that I did. That was the first e-Book that I ever put out on the market.
The mistake that I made, and you can avoid it, was that I did not research my
merchant account company well enough. I hope each and every one of you has
this same problem. I really do, because it means that you are doing a heck of a
business. If you have this problem, it’s probably a nice problem to have. You
may not see it at the time, but later on you’re going to reflect on it and say, "You
know, that was probably a good thing that happened to me."
You need to prepare so that you don’t have this problem. Let me give you some
tips. First of all, if you have your own credit card merchant account right now,
look very closely at it. Tomorrow, I want you to pick up the phone, call your
merchant provider and ask them what your limit is. The first thing you need to do
is ask them what your limit is. If you have a regular merchant account right now,
that’s key. I’ll talk about third party processors in a moment. But if you have a
- 125 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
regular merchant’s account, to avoid this situation always, always do this. Make
sure that you know what your limit is. Call them up and get the information if you
don’t have it right now.
The next step after you check your limit, is to make sure that what you’re
authorized to process. What I mean by "what you’re authorized to process" is
what kinds of products and services do they have you written down for. A lot of
people don’t know this, but if I have merchant account to sell diet pills and let’s
just say that I’m processing a hundred thousand dollars a month; that’s what
they’ve got me approved. All of a sudden, I start to sell teddy bears online. All of
a sudden my volume goes up to a hundred and fifty thousand per month.
Do you know that your merchant account company can come back to you and
say because you’re not processing diet pills, even though you did nothing wrong
and you may have zero refund rate, you are processing teddy bears and we
didn’t approve you for teddy bears, we’re going to hold your money and we’re not
going to pay you, and we’re going to wait till everything settles down and you’re
out of business because you processed orders for teddy bears instead of what
you were approved for.
You see you have to get approved for everything that you do. If you add a
product that is not consistent for what they originally approve you for, you need to
get an authorization and then get that authorization in writing. Always, always
when you are communicating with a merchant account, get it in writing. If
anywhere along the way, you have a mistake or if someone tries to take away
your account for whatever; you have a track record. You have a paper trail to go
back and say, "No, here it is." "I got approval from this person on this date and
this is what their position is with your company. They’re acting on your behalf
and this is your fault."
- 126 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
You always, always want to have a paper trail every time you talk to your
merchant account; take notes. You should have a log, seriously. Some of you will
take me seriously and some of you won’t. Some of you will have run through this
mistake because you are going to have a big business in a short period of time
and you are going to be saying, "Jeez, I wish I would have listened to Armand."
You should have your own log book, specifically for your merchant company. No
lie. I’m serious. I’ve talked to several lawyers regarding this.
You have to sit down with them and log every person that you talk to, what time it
was that you talked to them and what the conversation was about. Not word for
word, but you do want to write it down so that you can have a record of who you
talked to, when you talked to them, anything, any agreement, any changes or
variations that are made. Always get in writing from your merchant account
company.
If they’re going to increase your volume, get a letter stating that they are
increasing it. If you volume is only for ten thousand dollars this month and all of a
sudden it’s the fifteenth of the month and you’re at your ten thousand dollar mark,
get an authorization. Call them up and say, "I’m going to hit my volume." Always,
if you know you’re going to hit your volume ahead of time, before the end of the
month, always, always, always call them up. Call them up and tell them, "I’m
hitting my volume and I need an extension." "I need to get more volume for this
month." They’ll probably do it for you. Most of the time they’ll do it for you with no
problem, but always get it in writing.
If you go over your volume and you don’t get it in writing, they can take your
account away. It’s another reason for them to take your account away, believe it
or not. Because you’re processing more money, because you’re succeeding,
they’re going to take your account away because you process too much money.
- 127 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Seems kind of crazy, but even though they’re making a little piece off on the top
every time that you process an order, they’re still very leery about doing it.
Always, always, always get an approval for whatever they’ve authorized you for.
If they tell you something on the phone; get it in writing, always, always, always.
Merchant accounts are one thing and you might even want to have a backup
merchant account. Meaning if you hit the volume or something ever happens
with one merchant account, you have another one to fall back on. It’s just a good
idea. You should always plan for the worst. I’m telling you because I’ve had it
happen to me where you don’t have another merchant account. You can’t
continue to make payments and all of a sudden, guess what? You’re out of
business; you can’t take a dime. Unless someone fills out a check, sends it to
you in the mail or goes to the store and gets a money order or sends you cash;
you can’t take an order.
On the internet, that’s the kiss of death. Prepare for this stuff. You may not ever,
ever use that other merchant account. You probably want use it every now and
then because you want to get a good pay record with them, a good volume
record.
Pay very close attention; document everything, every conversation that you have
with your merchant account. That advice alone, I’ll tell you, will save you a lot of
money when you start getting into big volume.
This is the exact reason why I didn’t use a merchant account for several years
until recently. In fact, when anyone even mentioned a merchant account I
cringed.
- 128 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
19. Merchant Accounts Part 2
As my business started growing and I wanted to do different marketing tactics, I
needed a merchant account. I started doing seminars, I was speaking all over the
world and I needed to process orders online and offline. With a 3rd party
merchant account you can’t process your own orders.
So, like anyone else, I asked around and took the dive and got one.
Everything was going fine. Orders were going through with a problem and I was
happy with my new merchant account… until one day it stopped working!
Ok, let me give you a little background. I was in Australia speaking at an Internet
Marketing Seminar down there and my wife called me. She said orders were not
going through our shopping cart system. People were getting a strange code on
the thank you page.
I happed to be in Australia with Rob Bell the owner of 1ShoppingCart.com. I
immediately called Rob’s room and asked him if he knew what the code was.
He said… “Sounds like a merchant account issue”. As you can probably guess, a
ton of thoughts went through my mind. I knew they shut me down. You see, I just
processed about $100,000 in orders the week before. So I had a good clue what
happened.
Well, it turns out that the company that I got my merchant account through was
not the actual company. They were only a reseller. So we called the company
they went through and they too were only a reseller. We followed the chain until
we got to the main company and I called them.
I talked their Fraud Control manager. His name is Jud Smith. I told him who I was
and asked what was happening. He asked me some strange questions. If I was
- 129 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
processing money illegally or for people in foreign countries and other questions
like that.
Obviously, I told him no and then he asked about my business. I told him what
we do and how we market. Immediately his tone changed. He started to ask me
about how we can joint venture together.
We did. I have now referred a huge amount of business to his company and my
merchant was back up and running in 10 minutes. ☺ If you are looking for a
merchant account there is only one person to call and only one company to deal
with. It’s Jud Smith at PowerPay.biz.
Here’s the deal though… Jud will give the people I recommend an UNLIMITED
MERCHANT ACCOUNT. That is not their norm but he knows the types of
businesses I deal with and their potential.
Here’s how to contact Jud Smith for your unlimited merchant account.
Jud Smith
www.PowerPay.biz
Toll Free: 877-877-3737
Local: 207-775-6900
- 130 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
20. Affiliate Programs
With Click Bank, it will allow other people to sell your products. They’ll run your
affiliate program basically for you as far as putting that all together. They will
send checks to your affiliates for you too and then they’ll send you a check every
two weeks. Click Bank will send anyone that has ever made a sale for your
product or service a check, and then they’ll send you a check.
It’s a pretty good deal. Depending on which way you want to go, I like to have a
little bit more control over my affiliate program. I think what you need know is that
on your affiliate program, you really need to have a two tier affiliate program.
The reason I say a two tier affiliate program is because of the perceived value.
People are not going to make a huge a amount of money on the second tier,
although I do have one or two affiliates that do make a lot of money on the
second tier, the fact is that it’s perceived value.
When it comes to marketing, most things are about perceived value. They feel
that there’s a potential. There’s a hope. There’s a possibility that they may get
that second tier sale. They may get money for essentially doing nothing. More
people will sign up to your affiliate program if you have a two tier as opposed to a
one tier.
It’s just possibilities. I keep it and I like to have more control over my affiliates. I
like to know who my affiliates are. I like to log in at any time and know exactly
how many affiliates that I have. I do that quite frequently. For the last few days,
I’ve been actually going through and watching my affiliate program very closely
because there are certain milestones I like to keep track of on my affiliate
program.
- 131 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
For example, right now I need forty-seven more affiliates. I want to try to get
forty-seven more affiliates in the next few days. The reason why is because I’m
at that next level for myself.
When I say level, that means I’ll have 17,000 affiliates out there in the market
place marketing my products and services if I get forty-seven more people.
Sounds like a lot, but I can tell you this, last month, guess how many of those
affiliates' checks I sent out? Not many. In fact, last month I sent out only 200
checks, actually a little less than 200 checks.
Out of 17,000 people almost, I only sent out a little under 200 checks. The
majority of people aren’t doing anything, they’ll drive traffic. They probably still
have my banners on their websites and they may advertise it a bit here and
there. But chances are they’re not going to do anything. It’s just a fact. It’s okay.
You can’t expect every single person to work to be an affiliate for you. But you
can just build and build and build.
I think Yanik has at least two times as many affiliates as I do, if not more. Same
thing, I am sure he has probably same number of figures as I do, roughly. It’s just
amazing what with the number of people you would think that you would probably
have if you pay a few more people, because we pay people on everything. Some
of those checks I send out to people are pretty big. There some pretty big
checks.
My number one affiliate has been my number one affiliate for the last two, three
years now and she probably always will be. It’s a woman. She does a fantastic
job as marketer. She doesn’t actively market; she just has the right website for
the people would appeal to my type of products.
An affiliate program is very key to your overall business success. You should
always have one. There’s a couple different ways for an affiliate program to work
- 132 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
and I think if I didn’t explain to you about affiliate programs, I would probably be
cutting you short at this point.
20A. Two Tier Affiliate Programs
So I’m going to go through and actually talk about affiliate programs, two tier
affiliate programs. I think that’s key. The important thing with your affiliate
program is that you need to break it down into two payments, obviously.
What I do is I pay 35% and 10%. That gives me 45% that I’m paying out to my
affiliates. With me paying out 45% to my affiliates, that leaves me 55%. Now
remember I said I pay 3.95% to Pay Systems and $1 per transaction. So that
leaves me with approximately 50% of every sale.
If I make a sale myself I’m getting paid 100% minus my processing fees or if an
affiliate sells it for me, I still make 50% of the money that’s processed. That’s why
I structure it that way because I still make the lion's share.
Some people will have, especially lately, 60-75% and 80% payouts in their
affiliate program. I just got an offer from someone the other day. Someone
wanted me to promote their product and pay me 80%, because they want my list.
Quite honestly when you’re doing a joint venture or you sign up an affiliate and
you offer that kind of price it’s because they want to grab people off you list.
That’s what the deal is.
You have to understand that. If I market their product or service to my list, who
do you think is going to buy? The people, my most valuable customers are going
to buy from this person. I’m giving them my list if I promote his affiliate program
and so I’m very careful as far as whose affiliate program I promote or make an
offer on or put out and you should too. Always be aware of that as far as affiliates
go.
- 133 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Getting back to the actual affiliate payment, that’s the reason why I structure
mine the way it is. You may structure yours differently, but always keep in mind.
Whatever your percentages are as your payouts, you always have to make sure
that you take into account that you have your processing fees for your credit
card. So no matter how big or how small that is, you’re always going to come out
the top.
Then you have whatever there is left. In my case, I pay 45% and I have 50% left
for me. That leaves you a great margin to make money from. Keep that in mind.
20B. Affiliate Software
Affiliate software is the next topic. If you're going to have an affiliate program, you
can have Click Bank run it for you. I Bill is another one you can use. You notice
when I mentioned credit card processors I didn’t mention I Bill. That’s because I
feel that they charge too much money. I really do. They take out like, I may be
wrong, but it’s like 10 or 15% up front and then a 10 or 15% reserve. Basically it
works out that they’re holding 25% of your money before you even see one dime
of it.
So that’s why I don’t mention I Bill, even though some people like a friend of
mine, Kirt Kristensen, does everything through I Bill. He does everything; he says
it’s worth it. I just can’t get over that 25% that they’re taking off the top even
though some of that I get back in a reserve. What I mean by reserve, in case I
didn’t explain it before, is that a reserve is amount of money that they hold back
in case someone charges back. In case someone wants a refund, they have
money to pay that from that reserve fund. That is what a reserve is.
As far as an affiliate program goes, you need affiliate software. Click Bank can
certainly do it. I Bill has programs and software that will integrate into I Bill and
- 134 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
there’s a couple others out there. I mentioned 1ShoppingCart earlier and I also
mentioned my system QuickPayPro.com. Both are good systems as far as what
you’re looking for.
Many of these systems are going to charge you a monthly fee for and so you
need to really try them out first. Most of them will have a dollar or a two dollar
trial, maybe even a three dollar trial where you can try out the system for thirty
days to see if you like it or not. I would really recommend that you do that. Then
find out what one feels best for you.
Look at the features. Compare the features. Can you email your affiliates
directly? What other features does it have? Does it have autoresponders
included into it? For example on my system, I have unlimited autoresponders
built into it so if you sign up for the system you’re going to have unlimited
autoresponders. It has a tracking mechanism and it has your affiliate program all
built into it.
This is how I explain it to people. If you had to pay for an ad tracker separately it
would cost you about $20, plus another $20 for one autoresponder and then you
have still need to have your affiliate software. So you’re already paying roughly
about $40 and the system we charge is $45 a month, so it’s really kind of a wash.
You can get rid of these other two things with these advanced systems, but it’s a
little more complicated to run.
There may come a time in your life when these systems like this like
QuickSales.com or 1ShoppingCart make sense. But until that time, you can use
that simple automation system that I talked about earlier on the call. When it
comes time to upgrade your system, then you’re going to be in the right place.
You’re going to be at the right time as far as doing all this, as far as being ready
to handle this new system as your business grows.
- 135 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
21. Start Small & Grow
I always believe in this. You should start small in your business and then grow it
from the profits. Rather than reaching into your pocket and throwing a bunch of
money up front, a couple hundred dollars, two, three, four hundred dollars to start
your business, that’s not an unreasonable request to get started.
Now I’m not telling you to throw out a thousand or two thousand or three
thousand dollars to start your business. What I am saying is that start it for a
couple hundred bucks; less than five hundred dollars, less than a thousand
dollars even is great. It’s plenty to work with.
Then from the profits that you generate from your business, reinvest those
profits. Every business I’ve ever started in my life has always started with just
very little money, some of them with no money. We’ve built it from there.
I built a long distance company with $1.73 in my pocket between me and two
partners. That’s all we had left when we started the company because we put
everything else into it. Then we built that to over two million dollar company in
less than ten months. It certainly wasn’t the amount of money we put in, but it
was the amount of work that we put into it.
We ended up selling the company and then with the internet thing, I went and did
that being as cheap as possible because I had the same mentality that some of
you probably have right now.
Here’s what I mean. Because it’s the internet, some of us have this preconceived
notion that it should all be free. It’s really kind of stupid if you think about it.
Seriously. I mean think about this. You’re trying to build a business and you’re
trying to do it all on free stuff. It seems kind of crazy, but we still have that
mentality. I still have that mentality. If I can find something free that does the job,
- 136 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
I’ll use that instead, because I don’t want to spend the money on something else
unless I know it’s going to do its job for me. There’s a point between being frugal
and there’s also a point between being crazy and just not buying the tools that
you need.
Graphics tools, I’ll buy them all day long. I’ll spend as much money as I can on
them. Website design tools like FrontPage or DreamWeaver, I own both. I own
Macromedia
Flash and I don’t even know how to use it. It just sits there, but you know what? I
may need it some day in the future. I will spend money where I think it will help
me in my
business, on something that’s going to be a tool, that’s going to be a resource
and I won’t care about the price.
FrontPage doesn’t cost a lot of money. You can get it for less than $200.
DreamWeaver doesn’t necessarily cost a lot of money. It’s a little more expensive
than FrontPage but it does its job. Always buy the tools that are going to do the
job for you. That’s the most important key. That’s the key part to this whole
process.
- 137 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
22. Recap
Putting this altogether, let me recap some things. You first need to have a
product or idea that you want to market online. Without the product idea, you
can’t go any further. What kind of product is it? What kind of idea is it? Do your
research. Utilize Overture, the search engine as far as a search tool. Look up the
key words. How many people are searching on it?
Go to Google. Are people buying advertising for it in the Google ad words on the
right hand side of the page? Determine if people are paying for it. Find out how
much people are paying in Overture, on a pay per click basis to give you an idea
of how expensive it is to advertise in that category. Maybe your category is fine
or maybe your product topic is fine, but you have to make sure that you are
niche-ified enough. Does that make sense?
What I mean by niche-ified is that it may be too broad of a market the way that
you have it listed. Pick a certain segment of that market and then develop the
product around that certain aspect of it. It’s not just about books. Its about
romance novels. It’s not just romance novels, its romance novels written by
women. It’s not just romance novels written by women, its romance novels
written by women in the US. Do you see? You keep narrowing it down to until it is
a very niche market.
When you hit that niche market it’s easier to make money out of that niche
market than it is some broad sense of the word or topic. So find your product, do
your research, make sure it’s going to sell prior to you even doing this, even
getting started. Get your website together. Again, depending on your budget,
$24.95 is probably going to be the max you’re going to have to spend. You can
probably spend still less than that, ten, fifteen bucks per month of course for your
website.
- 138 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Make sure to do your research on your website. Make sure that it’s a good
hosting company that you’re going to be with and get a website designer if you
don’t know how to do it yourself. Hire one from Rent-A-Coder or Scriptlance,
they’ll design your website from scratch. If you want to use a template, utilize the
template resources that I gave you. If you want to buy a template, Template
Monster is phenomenal; just go there. Look at them. Look at their samples.
They’re just great and then hire someone to edit those if you don’t know how.
Those are a little complicated, but again for the price; you can’t beat it.
Getting your website and getting traffic. Once you get your website up and once
you write your sales letter utilizing the chunks, the different techniques that we
covered, once you get that done and you have your payment processor in place,
then what you need to do is start marketing it. Utilize the Google ad words. Have
your autoresponder system already in place.
Make sure that you know what’s going to happen when a person comes to your
website. Meaning, how are you going to capture the e-mail address? Are you
going to utilize the Opt-In Automator? A product that I talked about on entry and
then have an opt-in box about three quarters down the page and then have an
opt-in box when the person exits out of the page, if they should decide not to
order.
You know what happens when you order. Here’s a very key point. Before you
release your product to the marketplace, test it, which means act like a consumer
and forget everything that you know. Go through the process and go through the
order yourself. Look for ways someone can screw it up, because if there’s a way,
someone will figure it out. They’ll figure out how to screw up your whole system.
You just need to know about it first, before they do. Test it out. Take someone
that knows nothing about computers and have them read the website and order it
and see what happens. See if they can figure it out. If they can figure it out, then
- 139 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
you’re probably in good shape. Make it very simple. Anything that needs
explanation, explain it and let people know. Follow up with them. Create the
process over and over and over again.
Folks this is a simple process, but it’s not easy. It does take a little work. It does
take some work to do, but it’s not complicated. You can do it yourself. People do
it all the time and once you start doing it, it’s the same process every single time.
I have the exact same process every time I release a product or service out to
the market. It works for me time and time again. They are the same things that
we just talked about.
All I did was tried to simplify it as much as possible and I hope I did. I used some
simple tools that you can utilize here but you know what? It’s easy to do.
- 140 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
23. Questions & Answers
What I want to do right now is, and I know we went over, that’s okay. I hope you
guys didn’t mind. But what I want to do right now is I want to open up the call a
little bit and if you have any questions, I will take one question at a time. We’re
going to try to answer your questions here on the call as well, too. I want you to
leave knowing that you don’t have anything left to ask. So let’s just try opening up
the call and doing that.
Armand: Go ahead.
Question: What should be in the pop-up?
Armand: It’s a good question. You don't want to have anything that is going to
be objectionable or questionable. That’s the one thing you shouldn’t
have in your pop-up, but other than that, what’s your main purpose of
your pop-up? Is it to get a newsletter subscriber? Is it to get them to
get more information on a certain product or service? That’s really
what you’ve got to consider. What’s your objective for it?
Question: Can pop-ups be utilized to make sales?
Armand: That’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t necessarily do it on the pop-up.
What I would do is have the pop-up trying to get a subscriber, getting
them to subscribe to my newsletter, to get them more information or
collect their email address in some way, shape or form. If I’m going to
sell something or I want to advertise something, I will do it on the thank
you page of the pop-up. Does that make sense?
No. Actually, no on the pop-up when a person subscribes on a pop-up,
remember they have to fill in their email address and they have to fill in
their name and then they click submit. Then they’re taken to a page
- 141 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
that says thank you for subscribing, you’ll be receiving an email very
shortly. Then you can put a little ad on that page, which is in the same
window still that says, hey if you’re looking for this click here.
Armand: Any other questions? Go ahead.
Question: Does the autoresponder keep all of the names of people who
subscribe?
Armand: Yes. That’s correct. They’re actually in the autoresponder. The
autoresponder will take care of all that for you. You can access it from
anywhere in the world just through a simple browser. You can export
that out any time you want it. You can collect all the information. You
can leave it there.
I usually don’t do anything else with it. I just kind of leave it where my
autoresponders are and then what happens is if I need that
information, if I want to do maybe a mailing or something else or if I
want to get that information out I just click export and it will allow me to
export it and I can have a copy of it on my desktop.
Armand: Any other questions before we wrap up?
Question: How do you upload your template to your website or your hosting
company?
Armand That’s a real good question because somehow I overlooked that.
Here’s the software that I use. I’ve tried all kinds of stuff and there’s
www.CuteFTP.com, which is really good. I think that’s a good piece of
software, but you know the one that I use all the time is
www.WSFTPLE.com. It’s very key that you put the LE in. The reason
- 142 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
why is because it’s the lite version and also it’s the free version as well
too.
To find that piece of software you can go to www.Download.com and
then when you go to www.Download.com there’s a search box in the
upper right hand corner. You just type in WSFTP and when you click
"go" it’s actually the first one and you’ll notice that over eight million
people have downloaded it. WSFTPLE it’s 5.08 that’s on there right
now.
Here’s what it does. FTP stands for file transfer protocol. Here’s
basically the run down of that. You have files sitting on your computer,
your hard drive and then you have a computer which is your hosting
company sitting on the internet somewhere. What you need to do,
what this program allows you to do is to take your files and then simply
click a button, essentially works left to right. Here’s what I mean. Your
computer will normally be, in most FTP programs, be on the left hand
side.
You would select your files that you want to move from your computer
and on the right hand side would be your hosting company. It’s simply
a matter of pointing because there’s an arrow pointing left and there’s
an arrow pointing right. You would simply select the files that you want
on the left, click the middle button which is the arrow pointing to the
right and it will then move those files that are highlighted to your server
for you.
It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but let me give you an
example. Let me give you a resource that you can learn more about
this. There’s a tutorial that I found recently online when I was using it
for my seminar and here’s the website address.
- 143 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
www.FTPPlanet.com/tutorial. Now when you go there, there’s a tutorial
on how to use WSFTP and there’s the pro version and there’s the LE
version. I recommend, again, the LE version. I think it’s a better piece
of software. I really do. No matter how much they upgrade it, I think it’s
the best. I still use the free version myself to this day.
It’s a tutorial. It will walk you through how to use that. It’s easy. It’s
simple. It’s not complicated but again. If you're not going to do it
yourself hire someone to do it. That’s the best tutorial I’ve found to date
and it’s easy and it’s free. I would recommend that. Hopefully that will
work for everybody.
Armand: Any other questions?
Question: What is the best way to build better relationships with your
customer's?
Armand: Your email. The best thing that you can do is keep your email short
and brief. That’s one of the things. The other thing that you can do is
really look for different ways that you can communicate with your
organization without having to go through email.
For example, some friends of mine that you probably all know, Jimmy
Brown and Ryan Dice, what they did is create a blog. This is a great
resource actually. It’s called www.InTheLoopDiary.com/blog. If you go
there, what you are going to see is basically different articles and
resources and it’s mostly articles that they wrote. They are some great
articles.
- 144 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
What they’re doing right now to get past all the emails, people are
coming back to there. One of the interesting parts about this is if you
take the
www.InTheLoopDiary.com/blog, and you look at their traffic rank, it’ll
show you some of the spikes that they’ve had. They were at 15,000 at
one time and things of that nature.
One of the tools that I use to see how well or how much traffic a
website is getting is Alexa.
If you go to www.Alexa.com and simply paste this in “InTheLoopDiary”,
it will tell you how much traffic it’s getting. Right now it’s at 45,934,
which means that it is the 45,000th website there is on the total
internet, which is pretty good.
Another thing that you can do is utilize the various spam checkers that
are out there. There are a couple of services that are coming out in
the near future that will actually check your email address to see how it
rates as far as will it
get by the spam filters. In fact, one of them, myself and another
gentleman are creating that we are going to release later in the month.
What it does is, it will check your email before you send it and doesn’t
call any red flags in the spam assassin and all this other stuff. You can
see if your email is even going to get through to the end user or not.
That’s the key because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We
don’t know what the deal is going to be.
I think you are going to find out as more and more happens, I think
email is still viable, it still works, but I think as time goes on and this
may take years, two to three years, I think you are going to see an
- 145 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
evolution happen. I don’t necessarily know what that evolution is going
to be though.
It’s going to be some kind of communication without the email client.
It’s probably going to be some kind of application sitting on your
desktop that will pop-up a window when someone wants to send you a
message, not like an instant messenger but just kind of like message
notefire. Does that help? I think maybe I’m muted still.
Does that help?
Question: Can you give us the address for the spam filter check?
Armand: There isn’t one right now. I know that Ken Evoy has one, currently,
where you can actually check the spam filter. I believe its part of his
Site Build It product. If you go to www.SiteBuildIt.com there will be a
link there that you can send an e-mail to, that you can check your e-
mail against.
Armand: OK any other questions?
Question: (inaudible)
Armand: SiteSell is pretty good. I mean, that one Microsoft and yahoo. Some
people have had good luck with yahoo. Microsoft’s I don’t personally
know about it. There are a couple of them that are pretty good. The
SiteSell product is good with Ken Evoy’s Site Build It program. But also
one of there other things you can utilize to build a website is something
that Simon Kribowski has and I believe it's called Website Wizard.
- 146 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
And let me just make sure this is correct, I’m pretty sure it is. This looks
pretty promising as well too. Yet it’s www.WebsiteWizard.com and it's
an all inclusive type of deal. Check it out, again, I personally have not
tried it but
I’ve heard good things about it. But you can try it for like 15 days for
free to see if it’s any good for you. If it will do what you need it to do
and I believe it’s the same deal that you can do with Ken Evoy’s
product with the Site Build It program.
Again, try it out and see what works for you. The reason why I
recommend these two programs as opposed to like Microsoft or Yahoo
because these two programs are designed for direct marketers. They
have the tools already built in that a direct marketer needs where as
Yahoo is catering to a slightly different market.
Armand: One last question before we wrap up.
Question: How much bandwidth do you recommend?
Armand: You don’t need a whole lot. Okay, bandwidth is for example, when
you go to a web page and there are a couple things that happen. First
of all your web page, as far as your graphics go, for example, I’m on
Google’s page right now, and the Google image itself is eight
thousand, five hundred and fifty eight bytes. That’s 8K and then their
whole page itself may be I’m going to say another 30K. Every time that
page loads, it’s going to take 30K worth of bandwidth from the internet.
So now what happens is if you have bandwidth let’s say five gigs worth
of bandwidth which is…
- 147 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
Question: Is bandwidth the same thing as transfer?
Armand: Sure it is; its transfer. The bandwidth is the transfer, as far as how
much information is being transferred between your host and you, the
end user. Does that make sense for you?
For example you’re going to have two things that are going to be
measured with every hosting account. One thing that’s going to be on
the hosting account is a.) The amount of space that you have. Let me
bring up the hosting account for you is just with a company. Let’s go to
Third Sphere host, one of the one’s I told you about.
So if we go to www.ThirdSphereHosting.com, and we click on their pro
packed features, you get five hundred megs. of disc space. That’s how
much space that we can actually hold on the server. That’s not
bandwidth. Disk space is not bandwidth. Now when we look at actually
bandwidth, data transfer, they get thirty gigs per month of data transfer,
that’s bandwidth. Transfer and bandwidth are the same thing. Again,
thirty gigs per month, which is a huge amount of space, Google’s page
let’s say if it was 30K, you could host that all day long and not even
touch thirty gigs and have a huge amount of traffic coming to it.
Here’s a general statement to make regarding bandwidth. If you have
about five gigs per month, even if you had three, your average
website’s never going to hit it. I hit five gigs per month on one of my
really busy sites.
Let me give you an example of how much five gigs is. On my e-Book
Generator site, I hit about five gigs every month, slightly over actually.
Now here’s why. Every time someone opens up an e-Book that utilizes
my software, it hits my server and tracks their statistics. Now I have
- 148 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
over three hundred thousand people right now with their e-Books
hitting my server every single month, as far as the number of e-Books
out there. Every single month, three hundred thousand different e-
Books are floating around that hit my server every time that they’re
opened. I’m getting millions and millions of hits to that server and I’m
hitting five gigs.
So unless you’re getting that much traffic to your site, unless your
transferring a whole huge amount of hits to your site, it’s not going to
matter too much.
Again, so if you had five gigs that would probably be a safe bet. If
you’re getting more than that, you’re doing really well because you’re
getting a lot of
traffic, and your problem isn’t going to be transfer, your problem is
probably going to be, at that point, conversion regarding the transfer.
So I hope that helps.
Armand: We’re almost at the top of the hour; we’ve been almost three hours on
the phone today. I hope we’ve provided some information that you can
take home as useful information for you and I hope it does make a
difference as far as getting your business started.
Hopefully I’ve explained some things that maybe you didn’t understand
before the call or maybe have you look at some things a little bit
differently, as to how to market online and if I did then I’ve
accomplished my job. Hopefully, you’re going to learn a lot from it. I
like the idea of people listening to this, and then actually taking action
with it, actually do something with it, rather than just letting it sit. You
know apply the knowledge. I hope I’ve explained things in a way that
- 149 -
Internet Marketing Basics 101 By Armand Morin
you can understand. A way so that you can see how it works now
maybe or just in a way that’s going to help you, maybe not now, maybe
it’s going to be in the future, who knows.
Again I’d like to thank everyone for being on the call; I’m going to have this call
up on a website later on today. We’ll have the host send you an email regarding
downloads for some of the resources that we talked about and also the
recordings of both call, between today’s call and the other day as well too. All the
calls will be on there, five hours of information will be put up, and we’ll break it up
into segments so it’s going to be a small download for you so don’t worry about it.
Really that’s it. So thank you again so much for being on the call and we’ll talk to
everyone really soon. I hope you’ve gotten a lot from this call - as much as I did.
So everyone have a great day, and this is Armand Morin. Bye!
- 150 -
Related docs
