Here’s a simple 10 step formula for writing ads or short sales letters:

1. Call a friend, associate or employee and explain your product or service to them.
2. Tape record the call.
3. Have your conversation transcribed.
4. Label every single sentence as “F” for a feature (describes what your product or service does), “A” for an advantage (over a competitor), and “B” for anything that’s a benefit (tells your customer what it does for them).
5. Write the sentences rated 1-10 by their importance. 1 being the least important and 10 being the best. You will have an F-1, F-2, F-3, etc. B-10 would be the most important benefit.
6. Combine the highest ranking features, advantages and benefits and create a headline from them.  In other words, if you’ve got a B-10 and B-9, A-10 and A-9, an F-10 and F-9, combine them to create your headline.  Next, use six to eight benefits to tell your story, six to eight advantages to create interest and six to eight features to credentialize your story with details and facts.
7. Guarantee your product or service using risk-reversal.
8. Tell them how to order and how to order now.
9. Reward them for immediate action.
10. Re-write five different versions.

This may seem like a lot of work, but I find it much easier than starting with a blank sheet of paper (or computer screen). Roll it out small  to test it, and when it works, roll it out in a big way.

Here’s to Your Marketing Success,

Tim

Return on Investment

Every marketing campaign that you launch, online and offline needs to be measured and quantified so you know if it’s effective or not.

That’s the benefit of using direct response marketing.

It’s critically important to determine a way that you can pinpoint how each prospect and customer finds their way to your business. If you’re not doing that now, you’re making a big mistake.

Your marketing is successful if it brings you prospects. If you’re not able to convert these prospects to customers, you might have a sales problem, not necessarily a marketing problem. However, if your marketing incorrectly it could bring you prospects that aren’t really qualified to buy your services or products.

The formula for measuring the cost of your marketing campaign is very simple. It takes into account the net marginal income per inquiry or prospect as well as the cost to acquire each customer.

What this means is you need to write down the total cost of the ad, sales effort, commission or whatever you’re doing to get that person in the door. Now write down how many inquiries you received or how many prospects you generated.

Take the total cost to acquire a lead and divide it by the total inquiries. This gives you the average cost per prospect.

Write down the number of customers generated from those prospects. Take the total cost of the a lead, and divide the cost by the number of customers you got.

Now you know the average cost it takes to get a customer, the average sale per prospect, and the average sale per customer.

This gives you your net income per prospect and per customer.

Now you know how profitable this campaign was.  Or if it was profitable at all.

Here’s to Your Success,

Tim

Most people want to be successful, but few plan to be. Very few people take the time to plan anything. You’ve probably heard that most people take more time to plan their vacations than they do to plan their lives. Well, it’s true.

The most important thing you can do right now for your business is sit down and develop a marketing plan. Most business owners fail or they just move along because they don’t have a plan or goal for their business.

I want you to decide right now to make a detailed plan of what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. It’s the old saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

A plan is a detailed specific road of how you’re going to reach the targets you set out and the date that you want to reach them by. An example is that you can set sales goals. Decide how many of your products or services your going to sell next week, next month. You should set these goals in net profit instead of gross profit because that is the money you’re making.

Develop a strategy for making those numbers. Decide how you’re going to advertise. How are you going to get referrals? How are you going to get people to buy more often? How are you going to get people to spend more?

This will give you a good start.

Here’s to Your Success,

Tim

Defying President Bush and the leaders of both parties the US House rejected a $700 billion economic rescue plan in a revolt that rocked the US Capitol, sent markets plunging and left top lawmakers groping for a resolution.

So by the time that bell sounded again on the NY Stock Exchange $1.2 trillion had vanished from the United States stock market. The broad market, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, plunged almost 9 percent, its third-biggest decline since World War II. The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 778 points, or 7 percent, to 10,365.

However, please recognize that the defeat of this massive bailout is actually something Ron Paul was highly in favor of. If the bill had passed, it would have provided short term relief that would have blown up from $700 billion initially allocated to trillions of dollars and the further dilution of the dollar could truly have been catastrophic as it would have continued to accelerate the massive decline of the dollar.

So, despite the record stock market losses please understand and realize that this is a GOOD SIGN. Like many medical therapies sometimes you just get worse before you get better and this is a classic example.

The REAL danger here, and believe you me it is a danger, is to become afraid. Once you step into the powerful emotion of fear and you put your intention on what you don’t want the consequence is you activate powerful natural forces that tend to provide you with whatever thoughts you are attaching strong emotions to. This is clearly something you want to avoid doing, so stop being afraid of the economy.

It is important for you and your family to CANCEL any negative thoughts about this. I simply yell “Cancel!” and imagine a large red diagonal line going through any image I don’t want. The more you and others do that, the more likely we will all reap the benefits of this postive focus and intention.

Hang in there and CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON WHAT YOU WANT, and the real key is to attach as much emotion to what you want. Simply wishing or thinking about it is not sufficient. You have to attach strong emotions to what you want.

If you need more reasons why you should be happy about this just watch Ron Paul’s videos and he will give you all the details as why this “bad news” is actually really great news in disguise.

Although a little outside the scope of my normal bogging, the economy is on all of our minds and definitely affects businesses, online and off. That’s why I decided to reprint this article from Dr. Mercola’s Newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

It shows me once again it’s a real shame we have to pick between two idiots, when we could have someone like Ron Paul in the White House.

God Help Us,

Tim

Well, I finished with the 30 Day Challenge, and I’m really impressed (but flat wore me out)!

I got a new business started, an affiliate business. Not exactly what I was planning on, but Ed didn’t have us create a product this year. That kind of bummed me out because I was planning on having my own product when we got done. He’s always had you create a product in the past.

This year he focused on traffic. Mostly Web 2.0 stuff, and it worked like a champ. Within 10 days of getting my site up, I had four out of ten spots on the first page of Google for my main keyword. I also had two spots on the second page. In 10 days, with a brand new url! I thought that was pretty cool.

Now the plan is to test the affiliate program, and if it does well create my own product in the same niche.

It blew me away to see what I got accomplished in 30 days. I learned a bunch of new concepts, how to use a bunch of new software, researched and decided on a niche, created the entire business, and got it up and running with free traffic flowing to it, all in 30 days (31 actually).

The entire course is fantastic. Ed and Dan had taught it in the past and once again did a wonderful job teaching. But I was really impressed with Guru Bob (Rob Sommerville). I’m not sure if he taught in the past or not, it was the first time I saw him teach. But, I was really impressed.

I was a corporate trainer for seven years so I’m pretty tough to impress when it comes to teaching. But Rob definitely impressed me by being well prepared and speaking to his audience on their level. That’s tough to do when the material is second nature to you. He’s a natural. Kudos to Guru Bob!

The course is still available online and will be all year. I’d highly recommend it. If you’re brand new and want to start a business of your own, you can’t beat it. You can have your own business up and running in 30 days… For Free.

If you have some experience or even if you’re a seasoned veteran, there’s more advanced material for you too. It’s well worth taking the course just to see some of the new software they came up with and how they’re using it.

Great job guys.

Now that I’m back in business, I’ll start posting the Jeff Johnson videos again. I need a refresher on creating a product. Looks like I’m still going to need to do that :-(

Talk soon.

Here’s to your success,

Tim

Been working my butt off on the 30 Day Challenge. I was planning on letting you follow along by blogging about my progress every day, but as you can see I’ve been too busy to write at all.

The training’s been great though. I’m learning a ton, and I’m gaining a bunch of cool new tools. It’s not too late to sign up. You’d have some catching up to do, but actually you don’t have to work on it live. You can be a couple of weeks behind. It doesn’t really matter. Ed’s going to leave the lessons up.

So sign up today for the Thirty Day Challenge.

Here’s to Your Online Success,

Tim

P.S. Besides the technical skills Ed will gives, you’ll also need the right mindset to become successful. Check out this Free Course by Dr. Robert Anthony for that.

Ed just announced that he’ll be giving away a bunch of prizes, including a free vehicle, tonight on the 30 Day Challenge Kickoff Show. See post below to if you’re not sure what the 30 Day Challenge is.

The kickoff show starts at 8 pm Eastern. You’d be crazy to miss it. You’d also be crazy to miss the 30 Day Challenge. Where else are you going to be mentored by someone the caliber of Ed Dale for free. The guys a genius.

See you there,

Tim

How would you like to start your own Internet business and have it making money within 30 days? How would you like to be mentored by one of the sharpest marketers in the world for FREE?

Once a year Ed Dale, “gives back” by taking a group of people and walking them step-by-step through the process. He calls it the 30 Day Challenge. He actually gives out prizes to anyone that makes it (Great prizes in past years).

Ed is a genius and he’s always on the cutting edge of Internet marketing. The opportunity to work with him is priceless.

I’ll be taking the course myself this year. I’ve been marketing online full-time for a little over three years now, but I’ve never had a product of my own. It’s time to change that. Join me on the 30 Day Challenge!

There’s a kick-off call on Thursday night, and the Challenge starts on Friday. Get the details when you sign-up.

Here’s to Your Online Success,

Tim

What’s one thing all the super successful marketers on the Internet have in common? They all have their own product to sell.

I recently attended a seminar in Detroit put on by Jeff Johnson, one of the sharpest businessmen (online or offline) that I’ve ever met. In that seminar he walked us step-by-step through the process he went through creating one of his latest information products. You can easily follow the same process to create your own.

I’ve been posting a series of videos from the seminar. Below are videos 7 and 8 (videos 1 through 6 are in prior posts).

7 How to Quickly and Easily Create Your Very Own InfoProduct

8 How to Quickly and Easily Create Your Very Own InfoProduct

Enjoy,

Tim

P.S. Jeff gives away a ton of free training on his Underground Training Lab site.

John released Traffic Secrets 2.0 today, and I can’t wait to get my copy. If it’s anything like Traffic Secrets, I’ll make my money back in the first week.

He had a couple of surprises in the salesletter, like free updates for life and Lifetime access to his Private Coaching and Mastermind Community. Also, if you don’t own the original Traffic Secrets course, he’s going to throw that in too. Unbelievable.

He’s a great teacher and real genius at generating traffic. I expect it to be a great course, but if not he’s got a 45 day guarantee so there’s really no risk in checking it out.

Grab Your Copy Today.

Here’s to Your Success,

Tim