Letter from Phil…383  -  Aug 26th, 2009

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I was going to write about something else this week. Well a few things. A long, multi-subject, rambling affair

But guess what? I’ve just realized that today is the 12th anniversary of this newsletter. The first one was written and published (and read by very few people) on the 26th August 1997.

Which means – according to the very clever calculator that’s built into the new Windows 7 – I’ve been writing it for 4,383 days. And yes, before you hit me with the jokes, I know I’m a very slow typist

So today is just about newsletters.

Writing the newsletter, or ezine if you will, has been fun most of the time. And it’s also  been very profitable, letting me earn a great income with just a few hours work a week. So I’ve been living the 4-hour work week long before the term was coined by author Timothy Ferriss.

Some issues of the newsletter have me a lot of money (US$63,000 commissions in one day from one email  is my record) and some issues have made me next to nothing.

It’s hit and miss. Like me And probably I still haven’t quite got the formula right…though that’s the wrong word. Personally  I don’t use a ‘formula’ and don’t plan it in advance. I just sit down and write when I’ve got something to say.

And I always try to make it a mix of entertaining and learning. Interesting is the word I usually use.

Most people who publish (what they call newsletters or ezines) just send out very short and hypey sales pitches. They get a lot of unsubscribes and are constantly battling to get more ‘newbies’ to sign up. In fact, one well-known marketer I know makes a lot of money but he gets so many unsubs every time he sends a mailing, that he has to employ two people full time to get him new subscribers.

So actually there are very few ‘proper’ newsletters in this online business/internet marketing niche. Newsletters with quality, interesting content instead of hype filled promo’s.

The ones that immediately spring to mind are those written by (in first name alphabetical order)

Allan Gardyne
Andy Williams
Harvey Segal
Marlon Sanders
Martin Avis
Michael Campbell
Paul Myers.

I’ve know I’ve missed a few, but they’re the ones I read the moment they arrive in my inbox.

Anyway, it seems appropriate that today is the launch of a new product by one of the people I’ve just listed as my favorites.

Especially as it’s all about writing newsletters

It’s called ‘Newsletter Success Formula‘

It’s from the ever prolific Martin Avis, and in 3 hours of video based tutorials he teaches you everything that he’s taken
over 8 years to learn.

There are three main sections.

Ezines for fun, fame and fortune where Martin talks about how he writes his newsletters.

His way is not the only way, of course. But he’s found a way that works very well for him. And anyone who has tried it has had great success as well. So it’s about how he makes very good money from writing a simple newsletter.

He then goes on to teach you how to write articles the right way. And when you get down to the nitty gritty making money online comes down very heavily to writing. You’ll learn just how to structure an article (you can also substitute the words ‘blog post’ for article), but more importantly you’ll learn how to write so that people want to read them.

Plus he shows you how to easily create products. “Without the tears” to use his words.

I rarely manage to sit through three hours of videos, which is what this is. But today I did And even though I’ve been doing this for 12 years I’ve had a learning day.

There’s a very common saying among online marketers, and that’s “the money is in the list”.

But really it’s what you do with that list that counts. Martin shows you quite a few good ways to grow your list, and then
how to capitalize on it, by making sure that the people on your list look forward to receiving your newsletters.

He shows you how to attract subscribers, then how to communicate with those subscribers in a way that makes them want to buy whatever you promote to them.

Quote:

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How to turn subscribers into readers

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How to communicate with readers

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How to turn readers into buyers

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How to build loyalty

Each step is quite easy to learn, but very few newsletter publishers get much beyond #1.

Martin says (and I agree) that writing a newsletter (even if you’re not a skilled writer) is truly the easiest way to make a living online.

All you need are a simple text editor and an autoresponder and you could be started tomorrow.

And very quickly turn a few hours work each week into a full-time income.

Writing your own newsletter can be a full time income, but it doesn’t have to be a full time job. Many people write newsletters to supplement their day jobs. In fact, with just 2-3 hours a week you could very soon make more money than the day job pulls in – then you’ll have the ultimate freedom – the ability to choose.

It’s what happened with me. One week my newsletter made me over $13k in affiliate commissions at a time when my day job only paid around $1k a week. But I stuck at the job for a while longer until I was consistently doubling my monthly income. All from a few hours work on a Saturday morning

If I can do it (with little brain-power and hardly any education) so can you. It takes quite a lot of effort at first, but it gets easier as you go along. And it’s never too late to make your start.

Especially now with Martin’s newsletter course. And right now, for the few days of the launch period, there’s a discount code for $50 off. So make use of it.

Just enter the coupon code saveme50 in the box provided and after you click on the button underneath, the price will drop for you.

Right that’s it.

Now I’m off to celebrate my 12th anniversary as a newsletter writer by opening my best bottle of champagne. A $250 Dom Perignon I’ve been saving a special occasion

Until next time

Phil

ps. don’t forget to use the coupon to get your discount.

Here it is again:  saveme50    Enter it here

First of all a big thanks to everyone who completed the short survey’s in the last two newsletters, and posted comments on the ‘your valued opinion post’ The survey answers and comments you left on the blog have been a big help. Thanks   And I’ll now be able to concentrate a bit more on the subjects that the survey results show you want to read about.

One of the highest checked boxes was for more help with  keyword research, and another was how to get more traffic. In my mind the two are very interlinked.

If you’re a regular reader of my newsletter I need your opinion please.

Read this short piece, then take a moment to share your thoughts.

I’m conducting an experiment with my newsletter this week.

And that’s keeping this issue short. A number of readers have complained that in these days of email overload my newsletter is often far too long, so they put it aside until later but hardly ever get back to it.

My answer is that’s because I’ve got a lot to say, but publish infrequently so I’ve got to cram it in

So what do you think? Would you prefer shorter, but frequent newsletters – inevitably meaning that some of them would just be product promos to pay the time and costs involved with writing and publishing it?

Or perhaps you like the long, and infrequent ones, that just spring into your mailbox at odd intervals?

Can you let me know here, by posting a comment.

And / Or it’d be great if you could take 2 minutes to tick your answers to my 4 questions in a short survey I’ve loaded on Survey Monkey

I’m staying with a friend in Windermere, in England’s beautiful Lake District, in a house full of rampaging children, plus Ruby the teenage cook who’ll probably take over from celebrity chef Nigella Lawson one day if her cooking and looks are anything to go by and a new (today) Labradoodle puppy called Boo. The puppy (who bit my big toe making everyone laugh) is insisting on hiding behind my legs and the children keep jumping on me, and the whole place is a cacophony of noise.

According to dictionary dot com a good use of the word cacophany is: “a cacophony of hoots, cackles, and wails.”

And that just about sums up the mayhem here

Here’s a video of Ruby teaching you how to bake a delicious lemon drizzle cake. You should try it. It’s yummy You’ll find the recipe on her (neglected) blog at rubybakes.com

Hours before I left Australia, to attend a series of workshops in England, a Flip Mino HD arrived in the mail, as a gift from Joel Peterson the creator of The Mini Site Formula

In case you’re one of the few people who don’t know, the Flip is a tiny little high definition video camera, that just slips inside your pocket or purse.

Anyway I’ve just been using it for the first time, and once I’d got over the small size of the screen, I totally love it:)

The quality of the videos, when I played them full screen on my laptop, amazed me. Can’t wait to see them on a big HD TV.

Just been watching Yaro Starek’s video/slideshow on my laptop where he shows himself living the ‘dream lifestyle’ earning big sums while traveling the world on long vacations.

The Yaro slideshow is just a fun thing really,but watch it for the two unique case studies on people starting on that lifestyle path themselves by doing well with sites on  acne treatments and magic tricks.

I’m doing the dream lifestyle thing myself right now. Instead of sitting in my home office in Australia I’m in Francine’s Cafe in Windermere in the English Lake District, logging on by using a pay-as-you-go wireless USB dongle.

Last week I was updating some sites from a hotel in Bangkok in Thailand, this coming weekend I’ll be online from Rob Puddy’s traffic workshop in Bristol, the week after I’ll be logging on from Frank Garon and Dr Mike’s seminar/workshop in London. The week after who knows where? Paris, Barcelona, or Barnsley

Ok, I just did some thinking about outside the box ‘marketing’ for Francine’s Cafe I don’t know the people who run it so it was just an experiment on my part.

The cafe is on one of the most tourist packed streets in England, it’s always busy, especially on holiday weekends like this one. But equally there are a huge number of cafes, bars, and restaurants to cater to the large numbers of visitors.

Sitting there facing the window, drinking coffee and eating my chocolate croissant and watching streams of people pour past, I noticed that every few minutes a couple of family stopped to look at the menu by the entrance. But no one came in, and although I’m told that it’s often busy, right then it was almost empty.

What’s going to bring them in I wondered? Is it a poorly written menu putting them off? Are the prices too high? Are people just checking all the cafes before making their minds up where to eat?

Then I thought about how we’d do it online. Testimonials. Happy customers. Social Proof.

So next time someone stopped to look at the menu I stood up and walked outside (I’d already paid my bill) and personally recommended the place as I left.

Guess what? They thanked me and went in

Now how to scale that? Could the cafe give a local friendly looking person free coffee to keep walking outside and luring customers in with a testimonial?

Or is that too sneaky?

I’m sure it would work though

What’s certain is that when there’s so much choice these cafes shouldn’t just rely on people walking in off the street, they need to ‘lure’ them in. And there are plenty of things they could be doing and plenty of things that we (I mean YOU) as a marketing savvy person could be doing to help them get more business. So if you’re not quite making enough online you could always think local and work out how you can help the businesses in your area get more customers. Then sell yourself and your ideas to them, and help get them more customers. For a fee of course.

Remember me telling you about my brother Ric entering the online entrepreneurial field by writing and selling a gardening book, High Density Gardening?

Crappy salesletter which I’m going to help him rewrite when we get together in the next couple of weeks, but brilliantly authoritative veggie and herb gardening book, and if you’re at all interested in growing your own food in these recession hit times, you should definitely buy it

Just don’t read the salesletter too closely because it’s not converting well, meaning it might stop you buying a good product, so just have a quick glance then scroll down to the buy button (unless you’re a salesletter writing expert in which case you might be able to offer him a few tips via the email link at the bottom of the page)

Well that was a rather rambling intro to saying that product creation must run in the family because Rics teenage son, Andrew, has just released an Xbox Live game that’s immediately making sales.

Within a few hours he’d made 16 sales with zero publicity and the figures just kept climbing. By day two he was up to 29 sales and he’d more than doubled that by day four.

If you’re not an Xbox user you probably haven’t heard of Xbox Live (I hadn’t) it’s where you play games online for a small subscription fee, and people (with the knowledge and skills) can upload their own creations for sale.

Not sure how old Andrew is, about 18 I think, though he looks about 12 ( I just said that to wind him up, the way uncles do ) and he’s been a gamer for years, but this is the very first game he’s created after teaching himself how to program.

It’s a simple word game – a version of Sudoko, and he wrote it in just a few days over Easter.

The twist is that the puzzle is already completed, you just have to fit the pieces together! You have 9 different puzzles and three difficulty settings to choose from, so either pass the time with an easy puzzle or challenge yourself with a difficulty one.

He’s called it JigDoku, and get this – there’s already over 900 references to it in Google (most of them referring to his game) in just a week or so.

Andrew says “I’ve worked out that if I can just get 5 sales a day that will amount to $250 USD a month which sounds good seeing it hardly took anytime to program. And I haven’t done anything to promote it yet so it could make more.”

Been a smart kid he’s done some research of course, and says that most people on the Xbox Live developers forum, are reporting that their games that have been up for a while are getting around 10 downloads a day which only earns them $17. But $17 a day a game in passive income is nothing to complain about for a student.

And one person he knows makes “about 800 a week from a game”

Andrew’s now written another Xbox Live game, which has to go through a review process before being allowed to go on sale.

“This new game isn’t anything brilliant or good for that matter. It was something I threw together in a few hours to see how many trials this sort of game can get. I say game but its not really a game, more like an application.”

Now imagine if he finds that this one makes money too. Providing he can come up with enough new ideas he can get a lot of games up quickly and pay for his education.

I can see this teenager never needing to worry about having to get a job.

Most of us aren’t programmers. I couldn’t even program my cat to beg for food, never mind learn how to set the timer on the hard drive recorder connected to my TV, and you’re probably not a programmer either.

But think about it. You could do JUST the same with product creation. Pump out a series of short reports. Build a ‘buyers’ list. Create a high end product and sell it to that list. And say goodbye to your job.

Related: http://philwiley.com/resources/product-creation/

On Thursday I’m getting the train to Bristol to Rob Puddy’s get more traffic workshop. Should be fun, and if you’re in
England it’s still not too late to book yourself a ticket and get down there for 3 days of fun and learning. There are only a few seats left and there are some great speakers plus networking opportunities.

The following Thursday or Friday I’m heading for London for Frank Garon and Dr Mike’s listbuilding seminar/workshop

List building is something that’s vitally important for Internet success, and it’s something I constantly neglect. So I’m going their to LEARN not to play.

If you decide to come along (to either or both of these workshops) introduce yourself to me and we’ll have a chat. Maybe I can help you out with a spot of advice or a quick free coaching session over a cup of coffee.

Anyhow, the following Friday I’m on the train back to London again for the famous London Lunch, an informal gathering of 30 or so internet marketers of all skill levels where they/we get together for anything up to 8 or 9 hours of food, drink, talking.

Should be fun. All of it.

And that’s what working online is all about.

Fun, freedom, and more in the bank than you know what to do with

My younger brother Richard has just written his first book. It’s called High Density Gardening, and it’s all about no-dig, deep-bed backyard vegetable growing. If you’ve ever thought of growing fruit and vegetables in your back yard this is a perfect book. Even if you only have a couple of square feet to spare.

As far as I recall, gardening is a subject I’ve never written about before. That’s because it doesn’t fit in with the general theme of this newsletter, and also because gardening is something I have little interest in.

Perhaps that’s because gardening is so easy here in the sub-tropics. As easy as throwing a half eaten tomato, or just about
anything else with seeds, off the balcony into the garden and then a few months later going down and picking the crop.

Anyway, if you’re a gardener in less hospitable climes than mine, I’d like to recommend it to you. It’s well written, and gardeners are enthusiastic about it.

Well known Internet marketer and gardening enthusiast, Martin Avis, says:

"I sat down to read and was immediately absorbed. Your writing
style is very personable and down to earth, (pardon the pun), and I
was hooked from page one.

I learned a lot from your book – things that I knew but hadn’t really
understood and things that I didn’t already know. I even learned a
whole new way of laying out a vegetable patch that I’d not even
suspected before – but will put into action on my plots right away.
The only problem with your ‘High Density Gardening‘ was that once
I started reading I couldn’t stop – and lost several hour’s gardening
time this afternoon! Still, with what I’ve learned, it will have been time
very well invested."
Martin Avis.

By the way, Ric is looking for affiliates, so if you have a well trafficked gardening site (or you use SpeedPPC ) you can get in touch with him at highdensitygardening  AT googlemail DOT com

Letter from Phil…362  -  Feb 14th 2008

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Sitting down to write to you, I’ve just realized it’s Valentines Day.
So I hope you’re spending it with someone you love

Je suis desja d’amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentiné.

(Charles d’Orléans, Rondeau VI, lines 1–2)

Those words are the beginning of the earliest surviving valentine, which is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his
"valentined" wife.

At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.

So if you want to be romantic, and surely you do, pen those beautiful words onto a nice card and hand it over with a dozen red roses

And if you want to know what it means in English here’s the translation by my brilliant, Harvard educated, neighbor, Dr Susan Yates a specialist
in historical French literature.

"I’m driven mad by love
my sweet valentine"

At least I think it was a translation. She might just have been whispering sweet nothings to me

(BTW Orleans, the birthplace of Joan of Arc, is a lovely little town in the Loire Valley in France, with a wonderfully bright and musical carousel in the square, and trams running down the main street. I was there for a few days a couple of years ago, and loved the whole area. If you’re ever in France it’s well worth a visit).

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It’s been disasterville here since I got back from my Europe and Thailand trip two weeks ago.

No phone, no internet, both my desktop computers are dead (they’d been unplugged the whole time I’d been away so it wasn’t an electricity surge), non stop rain, and wind so strong that trees are being uprooted everywhere.

At times the mountain road has been impassable because of landslides, and fallen trees, and where it’s normally dry there are waterfalls everywhere.

The whole area has been declared a disaster area, but the big disaster for me has been no internet.

Once I’d got the phone working, which took four days, I called my wireless internet provider.

"It must be the antenna because it’s not receiving our signal," they said. "And we’re busy so it’s going to take two or three weeks before we can
come and look at it."

No good to me of course. So I had to sign up with a new provider – and my very last option- because I’m tried everything else (DSL doesn’t work here).

So I’m now on the $115 a month Next G network, which uses the cell phone system, and has a tiny 3 gig monthly upload/download limit, and a whopping $150 a gig excess.

Sometimes it’s not heaven living in paradise.

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Long Tail success the fast way

[NOTE: After going through this package in detail I've decided that Long Tail Cash is the best affiliate marketing course you can get right now]

When I finally got my email flowing in, there were a couple from Dave Tropeano asking me if I’d like to review his new course on Long Tail marketing.

Seeing that much of my profit comes from exploiting long tail keywords phrases I couldn’t wait to see it, but unfortunately when I got to the download area I found that the course was mostly video based – and with my very strict 3 gig a month limit I was reluctant to download everything.

So I got the first video, which I think was around 18 megs, and then contacted my trusty reviewer Megan and asked her to watch them for me and get a report to me as soon as she could.

But I needn’t have bothered asking her.

After reading the supplied pdf’s and then watching that first video I decided that I had to learn from the rest, so I took a few deep breaths and then used up several days of my download limit in one hit.

Was it worth it?

Well I’ve got to say that I loved it.

And after sitting through the lot in one hit I’ve decided that Long Tail Cash is the best affiliate marketing course you can get right now.

It’s brilliant stuff, made simple by a master marketer.

In Dave’s words "It’s a basic plan for people to follow, by marketing vendors, makes and model numbers…"

I’ve been doing this for a long time, mainly using SEO and building networks of linking mini sites, but Dave’s course mainly focuses on doing it the fast way with pay per click, though he also talks about using traditional  search engine optimization to get your targeted traffic.

If you own any of the PPC software tools out there, like the excellent Speed PPC, this course will compliment them perfectly and help you get your head around what you should be doing to improve your profits.

The are 13 videos in all, with the first one (which is around half an hour long) providing you with an overview of the Long Tail strategy, and the techniques he uses. I found myself getting quite exciting while watching it and things like "Why haven’t I tried this" and "Wow, I’ve got to to that" kept jumping into my head. It took me ages to watch it because I kept pausing it to make notes about what I should be doing

And that was only the first video.

The other dozen go into greater step-by-step detail. You’re taught everything: all the way from finding the things you should be promoting, to finding the long tail keywords and developing your keyword lists, to creating the landing pages/mini sites (the included script does much of it for you)

There’s a lot more stuff too, including how to quickly put up WordPress sites that don’t look like blogs, but just like ordinary html type sites. And even good advice on quick ways to write articles optimized using latent semantic indexing techniques.

It’s all good stuff. Very good.

Dave could really have cashed in here by packaging everything onto DVD’s and making it one of those high priced products, and as he’s not pushing anything on the backend so I’m surprised he’s letting it out at such a low cost.

Personally I’d pay the $77 asking price just for the fantastic supplied plugin which allows you to create landing pages optimized to provide on target presell content to the visitor. When you use the plugin, whatever the visitor searches for this script will generate a landing page matching their query. This also means you will get a good quality score from Google.

Right now you can get the free Platinum upgrade for the cost of the basic edition by going to Long Tail Cash affiliate marketing course.

———————-

And what did reviewer Megan think of it, from a complete newbie point of view?

"The videos are really well put together, dead clear on the screen.

He explains everything really really well and goes into a lot of detail and as he’s doing so, points out everything on the screen to make it easy to follow. Thing is though, he talks fast so if this is all new to you, you get lost really easily – ‘cos of the speed thing.

Also, it is not suitable for an absolute beginner. Like I said, I hadn’t read the accompanying book before watching some of the videos, but even so, a degree of knowledge is assumed.

Like – don’t laugh – that you’ve got your own FTP thingymajigger and that you know how to use it!!

He also uses a lot of words and phrases that I guess you’d know and understand, but they just went over my head. I’ve never even looked at buying Pay Per Click ads before.

However, he seems really really thorough, and although I haven’t watched every video, it looks like he’s broken his whole system/method down into these individually themed tutorials. It’s really detailed and step-by-step guidance.

He’s also provided lots of template type things, eg landing pages, and shows you how to customize them eg highlights the bits of code you’d need to replace, and tells you where to go get your own from and then what to do with it.

Basically, I think the videos would be a huge help to anyone already doing what he does but haven’t quite got it together yet."

Here’s the link to the Long Tail Cash course again. If you do any affiliate marketing you’d be daft not to get it.

Ok, that’s it for today.

phil