It was a rush job because she was announcing her candidacy around 48 hours after she contacted me, and the site had to be fully up and running by then. (I was sworn to secrecy until the announcement)

Anyway, I raced into town and took the photo’s of her against the outside wall of Sexie Coffie (my favourite local café) which provided a perfect backdrop. It took 10 minutes max, then we went inside and discussed the site over a coffee.

I built it with WordPress on Sunday (using a great premium theme) on one of my own domains because of the secrecy angle, and transferred it to her launch site on Monday morning,  just making it in time for the big announcement. Phew!

Still not quite finished, of course. I need to integrate Facebook into it, and set up the blog and add content to it, plus give her a few lessons on how to post to it. And I guess I need to add a mobile theme too, because I’ve just seen it on an iPhone and because of the header image size it sucks.

At the time of writing it’s just one static page, with an incoming Twitter feed, and links along the top to her Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter pages.

But I’m quite happy with it. And more importantly so is the client.

Quite a few people living in my part of the world read this. If you’re one of them please click on Margaret’s Facebook Like icon. Assuming you side with her politics, of course. Do it even if you don’t live here, she’s a lovely lady

# # #

I’d like to take a moment to say a quick thanks here to my old mate, Bill Burdin, who helped me out with advice on a code fix on the site.

For those of you with long memories, Bill was behind some of the great early site building tools and content generators. And has been a good friend ever since. These days he runs a very successful business concentrating on site building, and social media, for big and small businesses in Canberra (the capital of Australia)

# # #

Last issue I wrote about the importance of getting into creating your own products, to provide you with a steadier flow of dollars than the ups and downs of affiliate marketing or relying on the position of your sites in the search engines. Lot’s of you trusted me enough to grab the less than $20 Product Creation Video Course, so thank you.

Anyway, the special offer for the  ”4 Hour Product 2012 Edition” was supposed to be closing last Friday, but because I wanted to mention it here again in case you didn’t read the previous issue, I managed to talk Robert into keeping it open until Wednesday. So that’s tomorrow. Or today depending on what time you see this email.

So act now if you didn’t get it last week. Note: this closes 28th Feb 2012

The current price is just $17. A bargain by anyone’s standards.

# # #

Talking about Content Creation

When you’re trying to earn a crust online you can’t wait for inspiration to slam you between the shoulder blades before you start pounding away on your keyboard.

If you’re a novelist perhaps you’ve got an excuse, but even then you’ve got to get the words out every single day, or the novel will never leave the critic free zone inside your head.

(Slightly of-topic side note… Back in the days when I wrote novels I used to get up at 4am without fail, and write until my daughter Kate woke up at 6 or so. Not that I ever finished
one. Kate was a very expensive daughter because of having Phenylketonuria (PKU), so money worries always seemed to get in the way and I’d have to quit the novel I was working on and write for magazines instead, to bring in some quick extra cash. And, to be truthful, my long but unfinished novels were never very good. Far too weird said one publisher.

Ok, let’s get back to reality. If you’re a novelist you’re probably not reading this, you’re too busy trying to find a publisher, or working out how to format your work for Kindle.

So back to the here and now.

When you’re writing blog posts, or web site content, you need to bash it out. Get it out there. Out of your head I mean.

And the best way, if you find yourself slacking, is to set a deadline. Having a fixed deadline, something you can’t break, really, really works.

Promise yourself (and write it down, plus ideally tell someone) that by 4pm, or whatever, you will have a new, long post on your blog, or you will have done 10 new tweets plus 3 big posts on your Facebook business page. Just work solidly on whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.

— Sidenote —

If you have trouble sticking to the task here are a couple of tools that might help:

if you use the Google Chrome browser try the StayFocusd Extension (that’s Focused without the E, not a typo on my part).

It works by blocking access to sites for a length of time you choose. So if you’re keep popping into Facebook while you are supposed to be churning words out for something else, you can block it for the length of time you choose and you can’t change it.

Something I find handier is the iPad app, Repeat Timer Pro. It’s just a few dollars on the app store. Basically you can set a timer for, say, 30 mins, another to give yourself a 10 minute break, then it will run the 30 minute countdown again.

—End Sidenote—

Back to giving yourself a deadline.

Deadlines REALLY work.

If you’ve GOT to have something done by a certain time or there’ll be huge consequences, you nearly always get it done on time.

Back in my newspaper days we lived with deadlines. Sometimes several a day. And the next morning’s paper wouldn’t have come out if we’d all sat around waiting for inspiration.

We had schedules to keep. Page 22, for instance, might have to be ready for 2pm. Features for the weekend edition might need to be with the features editor by Tuesday lunchtime. And there’d be hell to pay because you’d be holding up the work of a whole chain of people if you didn’t meet that deadline. Lots of shouting happened.

It’s true that we newspaper folk frequently south out the pub for ‘inspiration’ but that was just an excuse. Two hours in the pub at lunchtime (meeting contacts) just meant you had to stay maybe an hour longer at work in the evening. Why not two hours? Well the beer always seemed to make the words flow faster

The very best way to get work completed is to know in advance what you want to achieve that day, the next day, and the day after, and then just buckle down and do it. Personally I can’t work at all unless I give myself deadlines. Perhaps you’re the same. Lots of people are, sometimes without knowing it.

If you’ve got to write a blog post on a certain topic then think about it in advance while you’re doing other likes like having a shower, or out doing the grocery shopping. By the time you sit down to write you should know roughly want you want to say, and then just bash it out.

Not straight onto your blog, or website of course, in case something goes wrong before you save it and it all gets lost. Write it on paper with a pen. Or in a file on your computer
and make sure it’s backed up in the case hard drive dies. Personally I do all my writing in Evernote these days, and constantly keep syncing it to make sure nothing will get lost.

Whatever you do don’t publish it to your blog the second you’ve finished getting it out of your head. Unless you’re a certified writing genius you’re bound to want to make
changes before people get to read it.

Take a break. Go for a walk. Get a coffee, or read a magazine or something, and then come back to it.

I can guarantee that on a second read through, you’ll make changes that improve the flow of the piece you’ve written. And you’ll find errors, and probably not just typo’s and
grammatical mistakes.

I found several grammatical and spelling mistakes in this newsletter when I was adding it to my blog, after already mailing it out to thousands of people. I should have proof read it better. At least give you self a chance of correcting it before it’s seen by the public or whoever your audience is.

The reason for the errors is that a) I wrote it late at night when I was over-tired, and b) I didn’t follow my usual procedure which is to print it out and go through it paragraph by paragraph.

What I really like to do is give it some time, by printing it out out and taking it with me into
town where I have a coffee and read the papers, then have another (double espresso if you’re asking) and this time go through my printout making corrections and cutting out words or whole sentences that just aren’t necessary and add nothing to the piece.

Sometimes, when you do this, you will realise that something you write near the end
of the piece really belongs at the beginning. And often you’ll cut out huge chunks that serve no real purpose.

Ok. That’s the end of this week’s content piece. Hope you found at least one useful tip in it.

# # #

This proves I’m brain-dead

After buying Premise 2.0 a few weeks ago I was looking for a WordPress theme for a new site I’m going to use Premise with (to read about Premise see issue 393 on the blog) It’s from the same team that produces the Studio Press themes and (naturally) they say their themes and Premise are a perfect match, so I thought I’d check them out. It makes sense that they would be, but my primary concern was something that had the right look, plus good code behind it.

I knew the code of the StudioPress themes would be good because they all run on top of their highly regarded, automatically updating, Genesis framework (for WordPress). What I hadn’t realised is that all their themes are actually child themes of Genesis.

While scrolling through all the child themes available for $24 a time (after you’ve bought the Genesis framework which is $55) and thinking that quite a lot of them looked really good and I might buy the package deal offering all the themes, I suddenly realised that maybe 5 or 6 years ago I bought a theme package from the same company.

A search through my old emails found my login info for their support forum, and after a bit of digging around, I found that I was grandfathered in and had access to the framework and all the child themes.

It made me very happy, and also feeling very stupid at the same time for spending lots of money on other themes over the years.

I built the political launch site I talked about higher up, with Genesis using the Focus child theme.

As you can see if you go to the Studio Press site and click on the green ‘see all our themes’ image, I’ve changed  the look quite a bit. But it was a doddle. Very easy to
modify to suit your needs.

No sales pitch for the themes here, though if you are in the market for a top-notch WordPress theme they have a great reputation for both their design and underlying functionality. Importantly they’re also simple and straightforward to modify to get the
exact look you want.

I guess that was a bit of a sales pitch after all.

Anyway, they’re very good.

# # #

Had to laugh at something in an email from Conde Nast Traveller magazine. They’re running a travel photo contest, so (as always) I checked the small print to see what usage rights they claim over the submitted entries. And right at the bottom, in small print, it said: “In the event the winner is a resident of Canada, winner will be required to correctly answer
a time-limited arithmetical skill testing question”

Is there something about Canadians I don’t know?

ok, that’s it for today.

phil

Well so much for getting a newsletter out every week. This one’s been 11 days.

I’ve got an excuse though. I’m one of those two finger typists and I sliced one of them open with a carving knife while I was cutting up some fillet steak for the cat. (not his usual food, but after buying it I’d accidentally left it in my car for a day, in the Australian summer heat, when I brought the other groceries into the house)

Have you ever tried 2-finger typing using your middle finger? Slow is not the word for it, especially when there’s a great big bandage in the way.

Now on to the important stuff, words are at a premium today rather than rambling on the way I usually do.

I was chatting with one of my ‘big name’ Internet marketing friends the other day about the current state of Internet marketing and affiliate programs, and we concluded by agreeing that it’s really necessary to be the merchant now – in any niche – which means
e-commerce stores, and creating digital products. Especially creating your own digital products, so that you’re the merchant rather than the struggling affiliate.

We came to this conclusion because affiliate marketing is getting harder and harder. It has been for a few years now, especially selling internet marketing products to internet marketers.

People just aren’t buying IM products as much as they used to. A lot of this is down to the rubbish that’s been peddled over the past few years, all the one-click for success type programs, and fake promises of fake riches.

But there are ‘huge’ and ever increasing sales happening away from the IM niche. I’m not going to talk niches here because there are an unlimited number of them, and my typing finger isn’t up to it (before you ask why I’m not using Dragon or another dictation program, it’s because they never understand my half northern England/half Australian accent. Plus I somehow think a lot quicker when I’m writing than talking)

So to achieve major success, and not just the pocket money that you probably make from affiliate programs, or running ads, you’ve ‘got’ to become a product creator.

Easier said than done of course.

I’ve done it just once, when I wrote my hit ebook Mini Site Profits, which made me more than I’d earned in the last 10 years of my well paid day job. (Why I’ve never repeated it isn’t a mystery. The book put me in touch with a lot of smart people who took me in another direction, plus Google Adense arrived on the scene, and the days of mass site building arrived)

But now the circle has turned and I’m itching to move back into product creation. This is why I just picked up a bargain, on the Warrior Forum, for the “4 Hour Product 2012 Edition”

I really like it, and so do a lot of other people. It’s easy to see why. It’s because there’s no fluff in it, and no hype or exaggeration, just lots of solid content from someone who is doing exactly what he preaches.Apparently this is the 2nd edition of the ’4 Hour Product’ I missed the previous one because of being out of action for so long. Unlike the year old version this one is video based, with quite a lot of the techniques and methodology updated to what-works-now.

Robert, the product creator, says that this new version provides everything that the 2011 edition had but also focuses on creating products faster, and getting traffic faster, so you’re getting sales faster.

One thing I like about it is that Robert has packed in information on how to create a quick and easy product, then shows you how to take that single product and build on it it. Turning it into a number of products for the same target market. So once someone has purchased from you, and they’re in your funnel, you can keep selling ‘your’ products to them rather than hitting them with affiliate offers. This makes sense, because if someone has bought from you once (and you’ve delivered a good product) you’ve already got their trust, so the sale will be a lot easier than sending them off to another merchant.

So the create multiple products for one target market has a sound and simple strategy behind it, and what would have been a one-time customer now has the option to buy from
you again and again and again, essentially becoming a “fan” for life.

I don’t want to waffle on too much here, so I’ve just cut about 8 paragraphs from my ‘review’ of it, and I’m going to show you what other people have been saying about it.

It’s the first Warrior WSO I’ve seen with zero negative comments. So to save you from having to read through 5 pages of comments and find the price has increased when
you click through to buy, here are three that convinced me.

Quote 1

Quote 2

Quote 3

Ok, back to my words again.

Normally I stay totally away from video products because of my slow Internet connection, but knowing these were short, to-the-point ones, I decided to go for it.

You get a ‘lot’ of product for the low cost. There are 5 videos in Module 1, 6 videos in module 2, 4 videos in Module 3, and 3 videos in Module 4. They range from 7 minutes to
22 minutes in length, so they’re short info packed ones with no fluff, and they aren’t going to bore you. Two downloadable mindmaps are also included for reference while watching the videos.

If you’re already a product creator, or been in this game a long time, you’ll definitely want the upsell because it delves into the more advanced methods and tactics. For me the upsell was the best part.

1. Premise lives up to its promise

2. Why you need to improve your content

3. Dumb subscriber abuse

4. A quick mention of something you dont seem to like

I hope you find at least one thing interesting, or useful here. Let me know by commenting. You’ll also get yourself a do-follow link.

ok, let’s get on with it.

1. Premise lives up to its promise

Ever since I started writing this ezine/newsletter many years ago, I’ve been buying stuff to test. Some of it I end up using or learning from, but a lot of it gets pushed away into a folder on my hard drive and never sees the light of day again.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I picked up Premise 2, the all singing, all dancing, sparklingly new version of Premise (for WordPress)

Until last week, Premise (which is from the well known Copyblogger team) had but one purpose in life, and that was to build landing pages that could be used for promo’s, or getting optin’s, or everything else that you could use a landing page for.

Premise 2 does everything the old version did, but now it’s also full-blown WordPress membership site software, like Wishlist and Memberwing, and (at the moment) it’s far cheaper than both.

Something else too – not only can you easily build WordPress based member sites, if you’re just selling a report or ebook or video you can dispense with the member site setup and just protect and securely sell the product you’re selling. So it’s great for selling plr products, or content you’re created, or got resell rights for.

In my case it’s going to replace the hard-to-use Rapid Action Profits, with it’s multiple paid addons, which is far too complicated for a technical simpleton like me. Plus replace Memberwing which has an annual license/upgrade fee and doesn’t do as much as this brand new software.

Here’s exactly what it offers you:

• Lets you build rock-solid membership sites with WordPress
• Automatically drip member content out over time
• It also lets you securely sell ebooks, software, and other digital downloads without setting up a member site.
• Take recurring payments with automated access management
• Easily build check-out pages for PayPal
• Importantly Premise 2 works with any WordPress theme
• You can build multiple types of landing pages
• Lets you create private forum areas with vBulletin (other forum software being added)
• You can quickly set up password-protected content libraries
• You can use Premise 2 on an unlimited number of sites, and it comes with unlimited updates. So no annual upgrade fees or anything.

Right now it’s in launch sales mode. Meaning right now Premise 2 is heavily discounted. They haven’t given a cutoff date for the launch sale, so it could end tomorrow for all I know. And I certainly wouldn’t place a bet on the low price lasting much longer.

It’s got me quite excited And seeing it’s all point and click, and tick boxes stuff, it’s very easy to use. So if you’re a technical simpleton too, or you just want to do things quicker and easier and cheaper, jump in fast.

2. Improve your content.

Collectively and probably individually) the techies at Google are much cleverer than any Internet marketer I know, and that includes me. It ‘definitely’ includes me

Google hire lots of really smart engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians with multiple degrees and PhD’s, and then they give them unlimited resources and support. They also work on growing their already big brains by continually bringing speakers and lecturers in to give talks like “Your Brain At Work – Optimizing (Internal) Data Processing“

You can watch lots of other ‘training’ videos via the above link.
There’s some fascinating stuff.

Also, at Google, these big brained people are given massive amounts of freedom, encouraging them to share ideas with colleagues and maybe team up on projects. By getting these really clever people to informally interact they keep learning and evolving and working out new ways to do things like wipe out rubbish content from their search results.

What does all this mean for us? It means we’re not going to beat them.

Although I’ve more than dabbled in what used to be called blackhat (and perhaps still is) for years now I’ve been playing the game the search engines demand.

So Instead of trying to beat them with short term things like

• sites stuffed with crappy auto written content
• tricks and cloaked keyword rich pages that auto redirect
• low-quality articles grabbed from article depositories and probably used by 100′s of other people
• adding thousands of links from sources like forum profiles.

and half a dozen other things, you should simply give them what they want. Which is good quality content that people happily devour, and then tell their friends about on Facebook and Twitter, and Google + and all those other places where people share their thoughts.

Let’s look at my travelfoodandwine.com site as an example of how adding better quality content can add $ to your pocket.

I’ve had the domain for years (though never talked about it here until recently) and it used to be filled with junk articles and low quality content. Then the place I was hosting it went bust and the site got wiped. Next I filled it with low quality articles from various article directories. This worked for a while, and in fact if you scroll back far enough through the posts you’ll start finding quite a few added over several years with auto blogging tools.

But now it’s all decent quality writing and other content that’s not been used elsewhere, and is a notch up from the type you’ll find being offered on article directories. Some of it is several notches up and would happily grace the pages of printed magazines and newspapers.

Every day I get several queries from people about writing a guest post , but after I send them a reply telling them we’re after quality writing 95% of them never contact me again.

Here’s the email I send to people who contact us (though if their initial contact is badly written, full of spelling errors, and talking about SEO, or how many dofollow links they want to put in the article I just ignore them).

——–

“We’re looking for posts 700 words minimum, preferably longer, that are well written, have not been published elsewhere, and are of a higher quality than the type found on article directories, or just written for SEO purposes. And they also need some personality rather than reading like something out of a travel brochure.

Photo’s should be 630px max wide and screen/email resolution, but if you can’t supply them that’s fine because we can source them elsewhere.

It’s the quality of the writing, and the subject matter that’s important. Perhaps a few touchs of humour. Keep it light-hearted anyway. And no sales pitches. Don’t make it like something you’d read in a travel brochure that’s trying to get you to book a certain package deal.

We look forward to seeing something from you, or hearing your ideas.”

———

By improving the quality of the content, and by using guest bloggers, the site has seen a massive increase in visitor numbers, and the figures are rising every week.

Quite a few of the recent posts have also had extra content added with Curation Soft, and that’s obviously helped a lot too.

As an ex magazine and newspaper journalist I’m a big believer in good quality content. It doesn’t necessarily have to be brilliantly written, or a hundred percent grammatically ‘correct’ but it’s got to be interesting and written in a ‘voice’ or style that connects with your reader.

The journalist’s and sub editors on some of the UK’s biggest selling newspapers (and I’m talking about them rather than USA papers because I’m more familiar with the British ones) are equally excellent on both The Times and The Sun. They’re both published by the same company, News Limited, but the tone and style of the writing, and the type of headline used, is completely different. They are written to appeal to their target audience. And both do a great job of connecting with that audience or readership.

You’ve got to do exactly the same when writing for your online audience.

* Who is your target market?

* Who buys what you are selling?

* Men or women? People with young children? Fans of a particular sport? People with a certain hobby?

You’ve got to profile them. You’ve got to know exactly who your typical reader is. And when you’re creating your content you do it just for them. Give them what they want to read or view or listen to.

If you struggle to write for a certain niche readership a quick tip is to find a photograph of the type of person who buys the product you’re selling/promoting, and print it out and tape it to the edge of your screen while you’re writing.

If you’ve got an affiliate site selling a certain type of motorbike helmet print out a photo of a someone wearing one. Become friends with that person inside your head, have a chat with them, get to know them, and when you’re writing your web content write just to them, no one else.

This is explained a bit simplistically, but try it and you’ll see a lot more success.

I’m going to be writing a lot about content creation over the coming months. Stay tuned.

3. Dumb subscriber abuse

A few days ago I logged into Facebook (a once a week thing at most. Usually I just look at Facebook using Flipboard on the iPad) and I had about 30 new friend requests.

After saying yes to most, an angry msg arrived from one of my new ‘friends’

“I did not ask to be your friend and do not want you on my Facebook. Please unfriend me. Get off my Facebook”

Normally this wouldn’t rate a mention here, but a few minutes later (just after I’d unfriended them) the same person sent me an angry email “I don’t think it is funny that you won’t let people unsubscribe from your idiot emails. Please take me off your list and get off of my Facebook page”

Then yesterday an email arrived from someone else “Why the (censored) are you sending me emails you (censored censored) I’ve never heard of you. Remove me from your (censored) lists before I (censored) report you.”

Apart from the expletives, if they’d subscribed while I’ve been off ill I could understand them having forgotten me. But they only signed up last week and it’s double-optin

Talking of forgetting me, the open rate for the two newsletters I’ve mailed out has been terrible. So I guess most people ‘have’ forgotten me, which is understandable after so long out of the game.

So it would be great if you could help spread the word that I’m alive and in action again. Give me and my philwiley.com site a social mention or two, and I’ll love you for ever. If you’re reading this on my blog at least click the facebook like icon. Please.

Right, that’s it for today. If you haven’t already bought Premise, and you’re a WordPress user, here’s the link again If you’re using a mishmash of tools to get the job done you’ll find that this one replaces them all.

phil

It’s a look inside the heads of nine successful bloggers including Leo Babauta of Zen Habits fame, Brian Clark from Copyblogger, Darren Rowse from Problogger, and Gretchen Rubin the author of The Happiness Project and a Psychology Today magazine expert.

Blogwise is inspiring and had me scribbling lots of notes in the margins of the copy I printed out. And I should imagine it’s going to do the same for you too.

The added bonus is good. It’s a pdf covering 21 common productivity problems bloggers face, with some quick answers from the interviewed bloggers to get you on the right track.

Well it’s obviously worked for me because here’s the second Letter from Phil in a week instead of the one a year I’ve managed for the past couple of years.

It will probably boost the amount of work that you can do in a week too. Recommended.

# # #

More on Curation Soft.

It’s hard to admit this publicly, but in the past week I’ve made a grand total of 5 sales of this excellent tool. And 1 of those came from someone reading my online review ‘before’ I mailed out the newsletter last week

481 of you clicked the link in my email to read the review.

328 people have clicked my affiliate link on the blog (though some of those would have been before I mailed the newsletter)

This tells me one of 6 things.

# you’re not interested in content curation, though obviously interested enough to click-through to the review.

# the curationsoft sales page doesn’t convert (and I’ve got no way of measuring this, but I doubt that’s the case because I believe it’s selling very well)

# you believe content curation is unethical or wrong (but then surely you wouldn’t be one of the people clicking the link)

# you (in the broader sense of you, I probably don’t mean you in particular) changed the Clickbank affiliate link to your own.

# you’re too broke to invest in it / you thought it was too expensive.

# adding content to your site is not a sexy enough subject and I’d be better off writing hyped up promo’s and sending you to sites that sending you promo’s that promise to bring you automated, instant riches.

So which reason is it?

Can you please do me a favour and post a comment about it on the  CurationSoft review on my blog, or on this newsletter post. If you tell me that you changed the aff link to your own before buying, use a fictitious name and email address so I don’t get mad at you J

By the way, this week’s stats on the site talked about in my review have risen again this week. They’re already higher than last weeks record high, and look like they’re going to fly past it. This is probably due to 2 new articles being added to the site. One of them connected to a topic in the news, and both of them complete with CurationSoft added tweets and paragraphs from other on-topic sites.

Quite a few people have emailed and asked me to give the URL of the site the stats are from, but the answer is no. For one thing it will warp the stats, and more importantly it will increase the competition.

# # #

Un-boring snippets from a boring book

A few weeks ago, with the thoughts of getting back to action in my head, I lay in bed reading a book about making $100k in 100 days. A thin, printed book picked up in the library, about the methods used by the Aussie entrepreneur Mal Emery.

Even though it was only 60 something pages long, after falling asleep a few times, lost interest in it. Not saying it was boring, but the targeted readers were people operating local businesses like hairdressers, small deli’s, etc.

But I do want to share a couple of snippets with you, one’s you should pay attention to.

“I would rather be a WEALTHY MODELLER, than a BROKE ORIGINAL THINKER.”

In other words copy what works, what’s been proven to work. If someone is making decent $ from something that doesn’t need a particularly difficult skill-set, so can you.

Find out what’s selling, work out why it’s selling, and how it’s selling. Copy the ideas, add a twist, modify and try to improve on the sales and marketing techniques they’re using.

Another is

“The most stunningly successful entrepreneurs seem to share one special quality – they are profoundly stubborn! Put another way, they are persistent and they take action – and then they are more persistent and they take more action!”

It’s true, you’ve got to slog your guts out. And keep doing it. Keep trying things, tweaking things until they work. And then doing it all over again.

Believe in yourself, and stop watching TV so much and put some work hours in instead. And that doesn’t just mean being on your computer or iPad reading newsletters like this

It means creating. Doing. Perfecting. Marketing. Selling. Then repeating the cycle. It means keep taking action until your eyes burn.

# # #

Kitchens, Amazon, and Pinterest.

Last week ago our ilve electric/gas cooker / range made a loud bang, did something nasty to the house electrical system, and blew up my computer. Well it was time for a new computer anyway, so I didn’t get too worked up about. And seeing that (after previous disasters) I’ve got everything important backed up on 3 separate external hard-drives, including an encrypted one I keep in bubble wrap in my car in case the house burns down, I didn’t get too worked up about it. (I can’t back up to the cloud because of my awful and limited Internet connection)

So the next morning I went out and bought a speedy new laptop (it would have been nice for the stove to have waited for Intel to release their new top end processors, but I didn’t really fancy getting by with just my iPad for a few months, and you wouldn’t have liked it either because my newsletters would have been packed with errors from the iPad’s terrible autocorrect)

Anyway, this computer stuff hasn’t really got anything to do with what I started out to write. We’re supposed to be talking ranges/stoves/cookers here.

A week after the big bang (we got by on bbq’s and eating out until then) I forked out $155 for a man from an appliance repair place to come and fix it. Except he couldn’t. After 15 minutes with his head in the innards he said “you need a new fan mate. It won’t cost much”

Turns out not much was $830, on top of the money I’d already paid. So yesterday, after thinking about it for days, we went out to buy a replacement range instead, and were shocked to find that we’d been boiling our eggs on an $8500 model (It was already in the house when we moved here) and that price is without the $3k plus extractor chimney hanging above it.

“You’re looking at the Rolls Royce of cookers, “said the salesman when he saw us gawking at it “The oil might need changing sometimes, but it’ll keep going for ever.”

Well I quite like the idea of having an old Rolls Royce, so he talked himself out of a sale and I’ve ordered the new fan instead.

And all this brings me, in a long, rambling, and roundabout way, to saying that I did a search on Amazon (and if I lived in the US that’s where I would have looked to start with) and it seems that expensive ranges like mine have potential as a lucrative subject for an affiliate site. An updated version of mine is US$6500, 2 grand cheaper than I’d be paying here.

But what shocked me most of all is that I haven’t got the Rolls Royce after all. Type the word Ranges into the Appliance Department on Amazon and then sort from high price to low, and you’ll find one on sale for a whopping $46,000 with 23 more selling for over $20k each.

A lot of the ultra-expensive ones link from Amazon to external stores, and before you clever clogs tell me that Amazon doesn’t give commissions on goods sold on external sites, I know about that. However, follow some of the Amazon links to those external stores and you’ll see that several of them have affiliate programs of their own.

The one selling my ilve, Ajmadison has an affiliate program, though it only pays 3% which is around $200.

Katom Restaurant Supply, which is selling some ovens for $20k+ pays 6% commission, so sell one of their Wells WVOC models and you’re looking at a tasty $1200 in your pocket (their aff program is run through shareasale).

Instawares, which sells $19k + cookers has an affiliate program with Linkshare. And Shortorder.com with some $15k prices are also though Linkshare.

The appliancesconnection.com store, which sells $15k ranges, run their aff program through Commission Junction. And of course there are quite a few high end models $10-$15k sold directly from Amazon.

And the list goes on. Much better than earning a commission on a $20 toaster J

Thinking about this, expensive kitchen equipment like this could also be worth promoting on Pinterest.

Take a look. Lots of women, and it’s predominantly women, post photos of their dream kitchen’s and the stuff in them. So once you’re an affiliate of a company either direct link using your aff link, or save some of their product photo’s to your own affiliate promo site and then link from Pinterest to the page on your site promoting that particular product.
(not sure what value the search engine’s give to a link from Pinterest, but it can’t hurt)

Personally, if I was going to promote kitchen equipment on Pinterest (which I’m not) I’d go the mini site option, getting the women to click through to my site. The main reason is because Pinterest uses a service called Skimlinks to change affiliate links to their own.

This link change happens almost immediately, but there is a way around it. You can edit the link to change it back to your own aff link, as long as you do so before your Pin has been reppined.

BTW the few pins I’ve made about travel have already started driving traffic to my main travel site, TravelFoodandWine.com. Early days yet, so I’m not sure how much traffic it’s going to send, but clicks from Pinterest are already showing in the stats after several of my travel pins were repinned.

In case you didn’t get to see last week’s issue here’s my Pinterest board, or whatever they call it.

# # #

Blood and Boobs

And now for the bit you’ve been looking for

I read an interesting story in The Times this week, about photos of crushed heads and deep flesh wounds being less offensive than photos of breastfeeding.

On Facebook that is. It seems they’ve come firmly down on the side of violence over nudity. A leaked document called ‘Abuse Standards Violation’ reveals what photographs users can post.

“Deep flesh wounds are OK to show. Crushed heads, limbs, etc, are ok as long as no insides are showing.”

But nudity is banned, including pixelated nudity plus “mothers breastfeeding without clothes”, and “people using the bathroom”

The bit that made me laugh though, said that photographs of ‘snot’ are ok, but not earwax.

A strange world indeed.

Here’s my Facebook page, which I’ll probably get a bit more active on as energy permits. Guaranteed, no snot pictures.

# # #

Ok, that’s it.

And if you want to copy me and get more done, and faster, and also get to sleep 12 hour nights, get that Blogwise book I talked about at the top. For the next few days it’s 25% off making it a real bargain

# Getting back in action.

# Feeling the urge to create.

# Feeling the desire to help you with your online business challenges.

I’d write “getting back in the saddle” but that seems to have sexual connotations, so I’d better not breathe a word on that subject here.

Most of all I want to have some fun, and making money out of nothing IS fun. So I’d like to take you along for the ride. Definitely no sexual connotations there, and if you think there is you’ve got a dirtier mind than me.

Note: This section is all about me, rather than about YOU.

Normally when you’re writing stuff get the word ‘you’ in it lots of times. People (you) connect with it much better.

But bear with me. I’m just explaining where things are at, and what I’ll be doing this year to help you achieve your dreams.

Right, back to me.

I’ve been away too long, and although I’m still ill, I figure I’m never going to get better than I am now, so I’m going to work smart, not hard. I still need lots of sleep, living in the Land of Nod for 12 to 15 hours out of every 24, but in theory that still leaves plenty of time for other things.

Sidenote: This fits into the almost unbelievable category. A great-aunt, and briefly my father, actually lived in The Land of Nod.

It’s a tiny one street village in Yorkshire, just down the road from Holme on Spalding Moor. Which is also an interestingly named place. I used to stay in The Land of Nod when I was a small child, and even then the name made me laugh out loud. Look the village up on Wikipedia if you don’t believe me.

Anyway back to now.

This is issue 391. Letter from Phil 390 was published way back in March last year. But it proved a false start, and I’ve been in hospital 3 times since then. However, I’m now better than at any time in the past 2 to 3 years and on a lower dose of mind numbing medication.

So, all being well, and taking it slowly at first, I’m going to build up to my past productivity. Though the way I feel that might take a few months. Who knows though? Each day is different. Sometimes my head has been encased in a sack of cement and I can’t lift it from the pillow and other times I can leap out of bed like a 5 year old on Christmas Day.

I’ve done a lot of thinking while I’ve been away. Lots of reading and absorbing books and magazines and websites. I’ve read extensively about business, and psychology and marketing and selling and growing your income. I’ve kept up with the latest trends, lying in bed for days on end glued to my iPad, studying what’s working online right now and is likely to work long-term.

And, although much has changed in the ‘internet marketing’ niche while I’ve been away (much of it for the better, the general demise of really high ticket, overpriced products, and the Clickbank crackdown on hype and lies for instance) people are still buying solutions to problems, tools and advice that give them shortcuts to achieving a goal, and lots of other things.

So I’m not out of touch. In fact, watching from the sidelines, and following the action from a distance has helped me know what’s important, and where to refocus. And I’m going to pass on everything I know to you. Unlike a lot of people in this game I’m not desperate for money, so I’m not going to be hitting with you promo emails every 5 minutes. There’ll be some of course. But not enough to annoy you.

See, I ended this on the You note, because it’s YOU that’s important. I know I’ve said this once already, but it’s worth repeating. So think about the ‘you’ thing when you’re writing your own promo’s, creating content for your websites, participating in online discussions. Be nice to people, and, in general, they’ll be nice back to you. Connect with people and if your copy is targeted enough they’ll buy from you.

Ok, onto other things.

# # #

Today’s Home Business Tip

You’ve got to learn to throw out ‘perfection’ because you’re never going to reach it. Instead work on getting something out there. Get it out there where people can see it, read it, use it. You can keep working on it, adding to it, changing bits, renewing it, freshening it, and developing it. Making mistakes and learning from those mistakes, and improving your content or your product is all part of the game.

Sometimes it’s hard to grasp this, and you just want everything to be perfect, but try to get your head around the fact that it’s never going to be. Things change. What you think is perfect right now might not seem perfect to others or to yourself in 3 months’ time. But don’t worry about it. Get it out there. Get it seen. Get it used. Get people buying from you.

# # #

Interesting Pinteresting

Like many of you I’ve been getting into Pinterest lately. Though in my case, seeing I’ve only just got back online, I only started pinning things this week. And it’s an experiment really, rather than something that’s lured me in and won’t let me go.

Pinterest essentially is online “scrapbooking” without the scissors and glue. I guess that description makes it sound terribly boring to most men and more than a few women, but as you must surely know it’s rapidly turning into the social site of the season, getting an enormous amount of traffic and users. Mainly women who post pictures of shoes and dresses, things they want to buy, and places they want to go. And there’s LOT’S of wedding stuff, so if that’s your online niche you definitely need to be there.

One friend, Laura  a great graphic designer who visited me from the UK a few weeks ago on her way to collecting an award for Australia’s Best Personal Website of 2011, on behalf of the Aussie agency she’s working for, is obviously obsessed with getting married (only teasing you Laura) Check out the winning site here. It’s done on WordPress.

Lots of pictures of cats on Pinterest too. Have you ever noticed how many cat photos there are online? They seem to be everywhere. Not that I’m complaining, but while I’ve been on Pinterest this week my own cat, a vicious creature who keeps the snakes away, keeps trying to type on the laptop. I think he’s try to turn on the webcam and pull funny faces so I’ll pin the photo for him.

But cats aren’t the main users. The demographics for the USA (using the most commonly quoted figures) show that 80% of users are women, and 55% of these are aged between 25 to 44. Though in the UK, from a much smaller user base, it’s a more even match with the figures I’ve seen quoting men actually coming out ahead, with 56% male and 44% female. This however is from a relatively small UK user base of just 200,000.

Anyhow, after spending a bit of time on the site I can see why it’s such a hit. It’s addictive. So if you can leverage great visual content it’s somewhere to get your stuff seen.

Seeing it’s reached a user base of around 13 million users in just 10 short months I think you need to be there.

I’ve pinned the best article I’ve found about leveraging its user base for your own gain, to my Pinterest page, on the Marketing& PR board (it’s the pin with the big P Pinterest logo)

Obviously I’ve done that to get you to sign up and follow me. It says invite only, but take no notice of that. Simply enter your email address and in a day or two they’ll send you details of how to open your account. Well I think that’s how it works. If it doesn’t email me and I’ll send you an invite.

Meanwhile the stuff I’m adding to Pinterest is going to help you know me better. Well for better or worse. And seeing I’ve managed to add pawn (not the chess kind, but the ‘pawn’ I can’t spell out here because my newsletter will end up in your spam folder) plus getting my leg stuck down a French toilet, into my first few pins, it will probably be for the worse.

I guess I’m not using it the way most people seem to be, because I’m adding quite long descriptions to most of my pins. On one of them I wrote a 20 line caption. Maybe it’s the record for longest Pinterest picture description. Let me know if you see a longer one

# # #

 My New Secret Weapon

Well it’s not really new, only to me. Though it is newish. And it’s definitely not secret, but it is a powerful weapon that adds a special something to your websites…quality, hand-picked (by you) content. My daughter, Kate, has been using it on a website and seen a very significant, and growing, targeted traffic increase.

You’ll see from the graph below that the traffic numbers have grown rapidly. It’s not up to date though, so I’ll get a new image up at the end of the week showing the latest results, rather than only up to week 3. Weeks 4 and 5 saw a slight dip in visitors, but this week, with a day to go, looks like being a record high. And the site hasn’t been touched for a few weeks.

Update: here’s the latest traffic stats graph showing up to the end of week 7 (late Feb)

The site hasn’t been added to since week 4, which I thought accounted for the slip in visitors in weeks 5 and 6. But I guess I was wrong. If this keeps up it’s going to be a very profitable site.

Ok, that’s it for today, I hope you found at least one thing interesting it. But, fingers crossed, there’ll be another newsletter next week.

Right, it’s 33c here today, so now I’m packing a bag and heading across to the island to spend the weekend swimming from that lovely beach you can see on my Pinterest page.

phil

Well the good news is I’m getting better all the time. My drug clouded brain is less fuzzy, my body feels fairly normal, and I’m full of renewed enthusiasm.

The equally good news is that I’ve just been given the go-ahead to start working again, though only part-time. Very part-time.

The medics in charge of my health have to fill in a monthly report
for my medical insurance. Last week they put me down as still
being “totally incapacitated” (which makes me think of evening’s
spent in hotel bars at Internet marketing conferences ) but I
said I felt up to part time work, so the doc added a note saying
I could work at “light computer related duties for up to 30 minutes
a day” then ominously added “if capable”

Actually he was right. That was days ago, and I’ve only just felt
capable because I’ve been so sleepy.

Sleeping 10 to 12 hour nights plus a 2 to 4 hour sleep in the day
isn’t exactly an ideal way of living. But I’ve got to put up with it
for now. In theory that still leaves plenty of time to fit in 30 mins
of work, in practice I haven’t managed it until just now.

Anyway, here I am.

___________________________________________

While off ill I’ve been keeping up with everything that’s going on
by reading lots of newsletters/ezines, visiting forums, plus talking
(via email) to some of my mates who work full-time online.

And I gather than the ‘Internet Marketing’ niche is in dire straights.
Mainly because people are fed up of being ripped off by people
putting out crap products with very over-hyped (and even lying)
salesletters.

I’ll write more on this next issue, which could be days, or
weeks away. Depends on my health.
___________________________________________

Now I’m going to hit you straightaway with a promo.

I hadn’t intended to do this, because I don’t want you to include
me in the list of ezines you unsubscribe to because all they do
is send out endless sales pitches without offering any decent
advice, or something that helps you in some way.

But  because it’s so very, very good and useful (and it’s not got
one of those hyped up lying, false promises sales letters which I hate,
I wanted to give you the opportunity to check it out.

It’s Profits Theme, a totally amazing WordPress theme which
lets you create member sites, put up fancy sales pages, change
the entire look of the site in seconds, and lots more.

I know how good it is because I bought it weeks ago. As I said
above, even though I’ve not been working I’ve kept up on
everything that’s been going on for the past year plus, so that
I didn’t get left behind. This included spending some time on
some internet marketing type forums, just reading not participating.

Anyway a few weeks ago I was on the Warrior Forum and people
were talking about this amazing theme being offered as a WSO
(warrior special offer). It got rave reviews and sold like crazy,
and it looked really good.

I was tempted to buy it, but didn’t because I’d already got a couple
of more expensive themes that seemed similar, but then my
daughter Kate called me and said she was thinking of putting up
a member site for people with Phenylketonuria (something she
was born with) and could I help her set it up.

So, seeing I’d now got an excuse to buy, I grabbed the theme just
before the WSO closed. They stopped it early so that customer
support didn’t get overwhelmed if people needed help.

I’ve no idea if anyone did need help. I certainly didn’t. It’s so simple.
And it’s got everything.

To think of it as just a WordPress theme is an understatement.

Just doing point and click stuff to select options you can create
protected, multi-level membership sites, where you can drip-feed
content if you want, set up product launch pages, one-time-offer pages,
sales pages, squeeze pages, legal pages, thank you pages, and more.

If you don’t want to get into creating member sites, it’s also excellent
for use as a normal blog (you can change the entire look and feel of
your blog in seconds) , and it’s brilliant for setting up sites to sell
your own products from.

And with it’s one click integration of Paypal and Clickbank, and a few
other sales checkout options, plus integration with your autoresponder,
it’s equally great for quickly getting plr products revamped and up on sale.

Anyway, to cut my usual rambling short, they must have realised
that most people don’t have problems with it (indeed, just the
opposite) and it’s now been put back on sale

I rate it as a ‘must buy’ because even if you don’t need it right now
it’s such a bargain because of all the features. And you get free
updates. So even if you let the download sit unused for months
it’s going to be there when you need it. And you’ll kick yourself
if the price goes up and you miss out.

http://philwiley.com/likes/profitstheme

ok, that’s it for today. If you’d like to ask questions, or talk about
todays letter, please  post a comment

And now I’m off to sleep again.

phil

_________________________________________

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. Though early on when I was still a wage slave, one quick ezine – which took around 40 minutes to write – made me just over $13,000, which was the equivalent of around three months wages) 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:

-
How to turn subscribers into readers

-
How to communicate with readers

-
How to turn readers into buyers

-
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 for a special occasion

Until next time

Phil

ps. the coupon code has expired, but don’t let that put you off. When you look at the money you can make from just one issue of one ezine, this course costs next to nothing
Get Newsletter Success Formula 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.

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

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