A lovely video about something we’re all guilty of at times – from Royal Academy of Art graduate John Kelly

I’ve been having a bit of a Twitter week. I got myself a Twitter name ages ago,  but that was just to stop someone else using my name and pretending to be me to push out spammy affiliate links. So until a few days ago I managed to just about ignore Twitter, deciding it’s would be both a distraction and a fairly pointless time waster.  Then a few days ago online business genius Ken McCarthy sent out an email saying: “Never say never… For the longest time, I thought Twitter was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of. Now all I can say is… “Would you like to read the news of my surrender on Twitter or on my blog?”  Here’s a link to Ken’s blog post.

After reading that post I spent a couple of hours reading more and more about how people are using Twitter to achieve business success.

But in the end I thought “Forget it. I don’t want to read 50 tweets or more a day from people telling me what they watched on TV or had for lunch, or pushing affiliate links for crappy get traffic schemes.

Then next day something happened to stir my interest in a big way.

Megan Henshall, a good friend of mine in England, runs a photo studio in a small village in the Lake District, and she wrote to tell me that this week she’s used Twitter marketing to get 4 bookings for portrait sittings.

FOUR BOOKINGS IN A WEEK  —- WOW!

And it’s not like she’s built up a long term relationship with these people – she’s only been using Twitter for about 5 or 6 weeks, and only “really got what it’s all about” in the past 9 or 10 days.

Four bookings for a photography studio. I find that amazing. Plus her studio regularly pulls in over a thousand pounds a shoot so we’re talking very good money here.

So how is she using Twitter for local marketing in such a small out of the way place?

Well I’ve asked her to write me a piece for my newsletter and this blog, telling you exactly how to use Twitter for local business.

So I hope to get it to you soon.

Though she’s not actually said yes yet, so maybe you could visit her Twitter page and bug her to write it for me

By the way, I’ve made a few Tweets now. So follow me… or whatever you call it when you read someones Tweets

You’ll find me at http://twitter.com/phil_wiley I promise I’m not going to post rubbish like “I ate a boiled egg and a slice of toast for breakfast”

Well, maybe a bit of rubbish. But I’ll try and make it amusing rubbish

]]> http://philwiley.com/workathome/twitter-offline-marketing/feed/ 0 http://philwiley.com/product-reviews/simple-six-figure-member-sites/ http://philwiley.com/product-reviews/simple-six-figure-member-sites/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:05:11 +0000 phil http://philwiley.com/?p=796

You know I like to keep things simple online.

Nothing complex. Which is probably why I build mini sites and write all my own easy-to-read content

Most likely I’m just sticking close to my personality. Simple and laid back.

I like simple web sites. Simple ways of making money. A laid back life.

But I still get by

Having said that, I don’t make anywhere near as much from one site as Paul Evans, who pulls in over $25k a month from one simple little member site in a niche I didn’t even know existed.

Paul doesn’t hold anything back on that page. He reveals his simple member site method, shows you exactly what the niche is, tells you how much he charges and even how many members he’s got.

Not only that, he also shows you his formula for success.

Here it is:

a)  Adwords for traffic.

b)  Build a list with a landing page.

c)  Hit people with the member site offer ($9.95 a month)

d)  Provide good value.

And this one site in a tiny niche has 2665 members paying Paul $9.95 a month, which brings in a very tasty $26,516 monthly. I’ve done the math for you – it adds up to $318k a year.

Now let’s go way, way, over the top and say that he spends half of that on advertising and other costs (which I happen to know is a massive exaggeration) that still leaves him with a big $150,000 in profits.

And that’s for a small site which takes hardly any time to run.

You’re not going to believe the niche when you see it.

Anyhow, Paul’s now teaching his simple member site success formula, and it’s genius.

It’s simple, and it works in almost any niche.

He’s written down his process, he’s shot videos, he’s documented every step, and it’s almost embarrassingly easy.

That a,b,c,d formula I gave you above is too simplistic of course.

You need the rest filling in. How to do it all, what tweaks and twists you need to add.

In fact Paul is now building these simple member sites following a new and improved formula because he found he was making a number of mistakes along the way.

He reveals it all here

It’s one of the most revealing sales pages I’ve ever seen.

Paul tells you much of what he does (though he keeps the exact details back for the member area of course), plus there’s zero hype. And he’s not going to hit you with any upsells or downsells or monthly fees either.

When you think how much his method and formula can earn you, the low cost of learning it all is a pleasant bargain.

It’s the kind of thing he could have bloated onto a bunch of DVD’s and charged a grand for. But he didn’t

As a big fan of the SEO optimized Thesis theme for Wordpress, I use it on most of my blogs.

And the newly released 1.6 upgrade is a great new version of Thesis.

In my opinion (and that of many big name bloggers) blogs built with the Thesis theme definitely do better in the search engines than blogs using other themes. But for me its biggest attraction is that it’s so simple to change the layout and the look of your blog.

Do you want to stop it looking like a blog? A few simple clicks in the admin area and you can make it look like a site built with Dreamweaver or XsitePro and the only way people will know it’s a blog is by looking at the source code.

Do you want to make it look like a salesletter page? Takes 30 seconds if that.

This is definitely the easiest and smartest blog theme I’ve ever used.

One site I haven’t used it on is philwiley.com, because I’ve got lots of pages on that blog and Thesis didn’t handle drop down page menus.

Until now that is.

Last week the latest version of Thesis was released and along with a great new interface for customizing the look and colors of your blog, it now offers drop down page menus.

So as soon as I could I installed it on philwiley.com. Which means you’re seeing it in action now

It took me perhaps 5 minutes to change from the old look of the blog. Still might fiddle with the look a bit, by adding a background image instead of the dark gray background, but to add the header image, the border around the body, and a few other things was really simple and fast.

Using an ordinary Wordpress theme this would taken my ages. But with Thesis it hardly  takes anytime because changing the look is mainly point and click.

Want 1, 2, or 3 columns? It’s a simple as checking a box.

Want to change the header image or the background? Well there’s no delving into the CSS which is the way you have to do it with an ordinary Wordpress theme – with Thesis you just drop the new code you want into a box in the admin area. It’s so simple that even I can do it without making mistakes, and I’m about as far from being a technie as you can imagine. My brain just doesn’t work that way

Anyway, here’s a short video from Chris Pearson (the genius developer) showing you how simple it is to make fast changes to the look, and the colors, of your blog.

http://philwiley.com/recommends/Thesis/

Don’t judge the theme just by looking at philwiley.com. Check out all the custom looks in the site showcase on the Thesis site. Many pro bloggers are using it, including people from Google, because they know it’s the best theme to use for getting high search engine positions.

Thesis is not a free theme, but it’s well worth the investment – especially seeing all future upgrades are included in the deal.  It’s SEO capabilities and it’s ease of use are awesome. Highly recommended for serious bloggers.

Lots of people have emailed me this past week asking about the fires, and checking that I survived and got though them without the house burning down.

Yes both the house and I survived. But only just

The fires burnt the bushes at the end of the garden, and the house was full of smoke for almost a week. One night, when the fires were at their worst, I stayed up all night to keep spraying the house with water, and putting out the small fires made by flying ash and embers. Then I had to stay alert for most of the next day too, just to make sure that the situation didn’t get too dangerous. People who have lived here over 60 years have said they’ve never known anything like it before, and never been so frightened.

In the end I even profited from the situation, getting hired for a day by a Sunday newspaper I used to freelance for. Not that I could do much work because the road into town was blocked by huge boulders, and fallen burning trees which had crashed down the steep slopes and the cliffs onto the road.

Here’s a pic I took for the paper, looking down towards the town. It’s a bit hard to see them, but in the bottom right corner of the photograph there are the first of the houses down in the town, and the fire is dangerously close to them.

Here’s a larger copy of the photograph. It’s quite beautiful really, for something so dangerous. A bit like some women I used to know

Anyway, it’s all over now. It rained heavily a couple of nights ago and seems to have killed the last of the small fires which were still smoking. So back to work.

phil

Mt Archer, the mountain I live on is on fire, and I’ve just spent most of the night awake, spraying the outside of my Oregon Pine house with water to keep it cool and damp, and dousing the flying embers which kept landing on the roof and veranda’s.

Right now, it’s 7am, the wind has died down and it looks like the worst of it has passed us and is now heading towards the town below the mountains, so I’m taking some time out to write this

Have a look at this pic I took in the night,of the fire raging below a neighbours house. It’s just the same view from  my house but the smoke was thicker around mine so this pic is better. Because I used a very wide angle lens the flames look quite distant, but the reality is that fires were raging everywhere – a small fire was raging through a gully less than 50 yards away and bushes in the garden burst into flames.

The whole mountain is on fire. It’s just been on the national news. One house has been destroyed, people lower down the mountain have been evacuated,and it’s been a highly dangerous night.

It’s been quite scary, though the mountain is still swarming with fire crew and they tell me they’ll be here until it’s over.

Here’s a brief news story on the fires, and a photo

Is it possible to quit your job in ninety days? Tony Shepherd, the author of this free report (value $97) did it in 97 days.

I met up with Tony in England recently, and talked with him on camera on the very subject this free blueprint is about – how to quickly make enough money online to be able quit your job (if you chose to) or pay of your debts.

The video is for my forthcoming product launch at oneweekcash.com

Licensed to Quit……. Your Job

The book written to show you how you can create a bridge – a “way in” – to Internet Marketing, fast!

guest review by Megan Henshall

What do I know about Internet Marketing?

Well actually, quite a bit more than I did a few days ago.

When I sat down to read Licensed to Quit, by Tony Shepherd and Sara Brown, I hadn’t a clue about how to create a product, how to create a system, how to get the all important traffic and build a mailing list.

In fact I was so green I didn’t even know what PLR* stood for! I had to Google it!! As far as Internet Marketing goes, I was what you could call a “virtual virgin”

I’m a girl – well, a woman actually – and all the recent talk about the feminisation of the web may be true, but before reading this book, I was really struggling to get my head around all this stuff.

Any feminists reading this are probably going to hate me – tough. I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses and I have to say mine follow the general female trend – talk too techie and I’ll glaze over. (Phil says I just talk too much, period!)

But guess what? This book made sense. Ok so I had to read it a couple of times – but I bet you will too if you’re a newbie like me.

Don’t get me wrong, Licensed to Quit is not all about earning enough money to buy a house within 24 hours!

What it does show you is how to start your own Internet business by creating a really simple income system to get some bread and butter money coming in fast whilst you get yourself established, thus enabling you to give up full time employment a heck of a lot quicker.

Sara and Tony have been successful, full time Internet Marketers for several years now. They’ll both tell you that a lot of time and effort went into achieving this.

However, a couple of months ago, they decided to trial a system they’d put together based upon their vast experience.

The result was Licensed to Quit which describes their really flexible, adaptable method of generating an income whilst only working with products you’re interested in.

So it doesn’t matter if you’re interested in e-books, audio, video, software…whatever, the system lends itself regardless.

The book is split into two parts.

Part one explains their thinking behind the method – why they did it, how they did it and includes real life examples and results showing their actual income figures.

Part two shows you how to do it for yourself!!

Sara and Tony, without frying your brain with too much techie talk, will show you

* How you can create unique products in a matter of hours

* The single most important thing for online success – and where to get it

* The secret of their “self funding” system

* How each time used, the system will generate more red hot traffic for next time

* How they generate around a $1,000 each time they give away a free product

* Why limiting the number of products they sold brought them higher profits

* How they ended up owning unique, high quality, in demand products outright for free

* How to get ongoing viral traffic for no extra effort or cost, for as long as you like

* Why most people are ready to buy from you before they’ve even seen the price

* And of course how to ensure you get a constant flow of cash into your Paypal account

Like I said at the start – it’s no “get rich quick scheme”, and you are going to have to put some work in.

But if like me, you’re just starting out and don’t already have “lists” coming out of your behind – just a regular person wanting to make a go out of earning money online but the penny hasn’t quite dropped yet, Licensed to Quit could be just the thing that finally flicks your switch so the light bulb comes on at long last!

Megan

Martin Avis’s Keyword LSI Spy software review

guest review by Megan Henshall

Keyword LSI Spy is Latent Semantic Indexing keyword software, designed to help get your articles and web pages ranked higher in the search engines

If you and I had been starting out in all this only a couple of years ago, things may have been a little easier for us – when it comes to writing that is!

Back then, so long as you included some basic but relevant keywords, you didn’t need to worry too much about the quality of what you were writing.

The result would be a pretty crude piece of copy but the search engines would pick it up regardless.

Phil used this example when he was explaining it to me -

Example – “holiday let in Ambleside”

“Looking for a holiday let in Ambleside? Well you’ve come to the right
place because this site is all about holiday let in Ambleside.

In fact we’ve got the best holiday let in Ambleside that you could possibly hope for, so when you come here on vacation you should stay with us.

To get details of our holiday let in Ambleside phone: 043534563463636

Thank you for visiting our holiday let in Ambleside web site.”

Nowadays, Google would pick up a piece of writing like this and spit it right out – recognizing it for exactly what it is! Utter tosh….

So how does it work now?

Well, have you heard of Latent Semantic Indexing?

No, I hadn’t either until the other day.

I was reading something about keywords on one of the forums when it cropped up. I was going to ask Phil what it was but then received an email from him telling me about it anyway.

********************

Latent Semantic Indexing is what the search engines (or at least google) are using now and it is an incredibly sophisticated, modern attempt at ensuring high quality indexing.

Or in laymen’s terms, they use it to rank only the best and most relevant posts/articles/pages etc.

So, whilst the blurb about “holiday let Ambleside” wouldn’t get a look in as it stands, if it also contained latent semantic words and phrases like

“English Lake District”, “family and children”, “walking holidays”, “lake”, “national park”, “self-catering”, “holiday cottages” etc or “rains all the time” (only joking, although it does feel like it sometimes!)
it would have a much better chance of being ranked by a search engine and placed before your potential customers eyes – even with the actual keywords, “holiday let Ambleside” included only once or twice!

Why? Because the way LSI works is a bit like humans do – it scans all documents and recognizes where clusterings of related words and terms appear.

So, as well as looking for the main keywords, LSI looks for other words and phrases relating to the same topic and knows when it’s found something stuffed with content rich copy.

It’s so clever that even if your document doesn’t contain the actual keyword, but does include lots of latent semantic words the search engine knows are associated with your niche, it will still pick it up.

Pretty cool hey?

So, what we need to do is work out a way to find out what all these lovely, latent semantic words relating to our niches are and then get them in our copy!!

And that’s why Phil emailed me.

********************

There’s this very clever English chap called Martin Avis who has just created a piece of software which does the job for us…..which is just as well because I wouldn’t have a clue where to start!

It’s called Keyword LSI Spy and it’s utterly fabulous – even I can see how marvelous it’s going to be as I start to develop my own business online.

Keyword LSI Spy has been tried out for the past few weeks by a lucky few, all of whom have had incredible results.

I’ve played around with it for the first time tonight, and although I quickly realized it’s capable of things that I’ve yet to waken up to, it’s value to somebody just starting out is as great as that to any seasoned Internet marketer.

All you do is pop in your keyword and within seconds heaps of information on what the top ranked sites in that niche are up to is returned.

From this you can learn things like

Phrases and word combinations top ranked sites in your niche are using on their web pages and in their articles

What keywords and phrases you should be using

The optimum number of words you should have on your page to get ranked for your specific niche

The optimum keyword density pages and articles in your niche should have

Whether the keyword is in the URL

A list of all the keyword meta tags the top ranked sites are using

Thankfully, Martin has ensured that all the above is returned in an easy to understand format.

In fact he has made sure Keyword LSI Spy even provides you with lists of LSI words and Meta Keywords you can copy and paste into your own programs. What a nice man!

Starting out in Internet marketing is tough enough – we need all the help we can get.

Just think of the advantage you’l have over anyone without access to this kind info!

Something tells me Keyword LSI Spy is going to make my first forays into writing for the Internet a lot less overwhelming than I first thought.

Letter from Phil…383  -  Aug 26th, 2009

_________________________________________

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:

-
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 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