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October 21, 2002 Yes, You Can Still Earn Large Profits from Information Products ( http://www.infoproductcreator.com) jeff@infoproductcreator.com Subscribe via Email by Clicking Here Subscribe via Web: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html
Update from Jeff... Hello all, welcome back - I can't believe it's been two weeks since the last newsletter. I've been busier than some of the squirrels I've been watching collecting acorns for winter. First off, just wanted to let everyone know that you can now access some of the more recent back issues of this newsletter online - you can find them here: ----> http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html This week, I decided to write about something that most internet marketers will not tell you about - or at least not for free anyway. I get asked all the time, how do I generate more traffic and convert more visitors into sales from my web page. Instead of talking about theory, because there's too much of that already available on the internet, I've decided to pull out the top traffic and sales generating information from my logs. You'll find this in today's feature article titled "Exposed! Actual Traffic Generation Results Unveiled" In today's "Usable News" you'll find the departure of a major internet marketing force and an update on Mark Joyner's latest project as well as a top internet survey research website. Until next time... Jeff jeff@infoproductcreator.com
FEATURE ARTICLE Copyright 2002 - Jeff Smith Exposed! Actual Traffic Generation Results Unveiled Need more people clicking on your website? Need more of your visitors buying, not just clicking? To many people, generating consistent, high-volume, targeted traffic to their website is as much of a mystery as the ancient Egyptian pyramids. You are not alone, we've all gone through the learning process. For most of us, it's painful learning, but here's the good part... Like most people, you are concerned with both "how much" traffic and "how responsive" is your traffic. Getting above the magic 1% conversion rate for your web page is the goal, but you can get considerably higher by targeting your traffic. I continually get asked what the best method or methods are for generating that quality traffic to your website. My response is always to outline a series of techniques rather than any one magic bullet. The fact is, for any given tool (ezine, discussion group, search engines, partner web sites - only a very small subset (often far less than 5%) are even seeing your message. Seems depressing doesn't it? Not really, you simply have to go where your customers are. You need to compound your effort across multiple techniques - significantly improving the chances that internet speed readers will see your message. To illustrate - here is a summary of exactly where traffic to my site http://www.infoproductcreator.com came from in the successful month of September. ==> Discussion Groups: 20% One of the most effective ways of targeting quality traffic is to become an active participant to high quality, high traffic, highly relevant discussion groups in you target market. Use compelling subjects, offer experienced advice rather than advice, take a contrary stand, and include a compelling one line benefit in your signature. ==> Ezine Advertising 15% September was a relatively light month of advertising for me. I ran only two ads in September, one in a small <5,000 subscriber zine, the other as an ad swap in a fairly well known ezine with 35,000 subscribers. Both ads proved profitable, not to mention resulting in close to a hundred new newsletter subscribers. ==> Affiliates 15% This is the third month operating my own affiliate program where I pay out up to 55% to anyone who refers someone to my website and makes a purchase. Affiliate details are listed here.. http://www.infoproductcreator.com/affiliateinfo.html 15% is quite light, though I can attribute close to 25% of Septembers sales to affiliates. This clearly demonstrates the power of building strong, focused and relevant affiliate teams ==> Search engines 10% Primarily from Google, Yahoo and MSN - roughly 95% of search engine generated traffic came from Google and Yahoo. Very targeted listings under 5 keyword areas using Pay-Per-Click (Overture.com) and focus on keyword optimization within my main site. Yahoo traffic was obtained from free listing, creating rich content on site and linking to highly relevant, high traffic partner sites. ==> My Own Ezine 15% I produce a bi-weekly ezine titled Information Product Profit Secrets ( http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html) and a 7-part free Ecourse ( http://www.infoproductcreator.com/minicoursenew.html) which both draw in subscribers from directories, ezine ad swaps, and endorsements from joint venture partners as well as the occasional pay per lead program. As your list grows, you can expect to see considerable traffic drawn to your website directly from your own ezine. ==> Testimonials 2% Not a huge quantity of traffic generated using this technique - but it's completely free and tends to continue over months and even years. If you can get 10-15 quality testimonials for products related to your target market, you will notice traffic resulting which will convert to a few sales each month - for 15-20 minutes of your time. Often you can get a testimonial for giving one, another advantage of this approach. ==> Other: The remaining 22% of traffic came from a variety of sources including: word of mouth referral, offline marketing, people stumbling upon the site, repeat visitors, etc... September traffic was moderate, so far October is shaping up to be a HUGE month. Stay tuned, we'll talk about what is working for us in October in a November edition of this newsletter.
Damon Zahariades - "How To Create Your Own Niche Market" Special Interview Excerpt I bet you were like me and always approached your business by making sure you clearly identified your niche target market first? Well, Damon shares with us today another powerful technique for positioning your infoproducts - he describes how you can create your own niche markets. In fact, he tells us how to create several niche markets for the same information product. If you missed the last few powerful interview segments with Yanik Silver, Marc Goldman, and Willie Crawford then you can find them in our new online newsletter archive available at: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html Now, for this week's interview excerpt! Jeff [Question] I think the underlying point to raised here is just be open to finding new ideas. I think most people get busy with the everyday activities of life, they get caught looking for that blockbuster title or blockbuster product that will eat up the market, when, in fact, you look at the method used by many industry TOP GUNS, it's to release many products in niche markets, focused on in-demand titles such as those you have given us as examples. That's what leads to the big money in this industry. Damon [Answer] Yes, absolutely, and to be quite honest Jeff, I've come up with some real dogs of ideas, and that's going to happen. But I would encourage everyone to take a small stack of index cards with them wherever they go, because, like I said, there comes a point where these ideas are going to hit you when you are driving, hit you when you are eating, when you're blow drying you're hair - always write them down. Jeff [Question] Keep a journal in every room - right Damon? Damon [Answer] I even have one in my bathroom. It's come in handy in only one occasion. Jeff [Question] I won't ask what topics come up in there... Damon [Answer] hey're all how to products!! Jeff [Question] Seriously though, many information product developers highlight the importance of identifying niche markets, I would like to hear your opinion of how important identifying a niche market is and maybe just some tips on how our listeners can hone down, or identify the right niche market for them. Damon [Answer] First of all, with Special Report Bible ( http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/damon.html things were a little different for me and my product and here is the reason why. It's important to identify a niche market, obviously it is critical. But I want to encourage your listeners to think outside the box. I'll give you an example using my Special Report Bible. When you think of people who want to create their own information products the natural inclination of most people is to think, OK, this niche market is people that want to write. And that is true, that is a niche market. But some other opportunities for me, and I hope your listeners can extrapolate this to their own product, is that you have a group of folks out there that want to accelerate the process by which they gain credibility within a group of customers. Can they create a special report that they can give prospects, that will increase their credibility. The answer is Yes, they can. Let's take software programmers. Can software programmers create a 20-page special report showing their users how to make money using their software. How to do things that are not in the user manual. Or as a third example, take stay-at-home Mom's. Can stay-at-home Mom's go out onto the internet, research things throughout the day, for which they can package into a 10-page Special Report day after day. They can do it all day long and allot of them do and are making allot of great money doing it. So, identifying a niche market is obviously critical. But again, think outside the box. Where can you derive new streams of income. Jeff [Question] Interesting Damon. What you are suggesting is almost a reverse engineering - take an idea you have and try to determine additional niche markets that product may apply to. Damon [Answer] hey're all how to products!! Absolutely. You know Dan Kennedy, a long time ago came up with the idea, and this is a good example. He would write one information product, market it to a very select group of people, for example dentists, he would show dentists how to market their products until he nailed that niche market. He would then take the same information product and market it to doctors or another tightly selected group of prospects. He wouldn't change the information in his products that much, he would just enter new markets and different niches by thinking outside the box. Editor's Note: Finally, the First Practical, Results-Oriented Techniques on Finding High-Profit Infoproduct Topics the Very First Time - Guaranteed! ** WZ.com Closing Their Doors? It was a sad moment this last week when I received an update from respected online business folks Jim and Audri Lanford. Their announcement, sent out to affiliates listed economic factors, changes in market conditions, and financial considerations. It seems they have in mind the auctioning off of their substantial portfolio of sites, newsletters and products. More on this in the coming weeks. ** Mark Joyner Let's the Cat out of the Bag Two newsletter issues ago, I wrote you about the new, yet mysterious internet project Mark Joyner was announcing. At the time I was very skeptical. What about now? A little less so, as one of the key elements of his monthly membership product is an open forum with market experts including the very famous and very knowledgeable marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson. While it's going to take a little more meat to convince me to part with $79 per month, you can get access for one month to "test drive" the product - and that's a pretty low-risk method of getting first hand knowledge about something that will be all over the net in the next few weeks. My advice is that if you have a few pressing questions you would like to get personal input from the Guerilla Marketer himself (via a message board), then sign up for the trial - get your answers and judge for yourself if the service is worth what they are asking. Here's the link: ===> http://www.infoproductcreator.com/gmbomb/ ** 67% of US consumers OK with targeted email campaigns In a recent survey reported at NUA Internet Surveys, http://www.nua.ie/surveys/ it was found that well over 60% of the US population is that well positioned and executed email marketing campaigns can win over consumers. In excess of 50% suggested a good email campaign would influence their buying decisions. The full article is available here: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905358457&rel=tr ue http://www.nua.ie/surveys/ A super rich source of market research on a variety of internet, network, and e-commerce topics. Excellent source for research or content for your ezine. http://ezinearticles.com One of the better databases of ezine articles. Search for a complete selection of articles on almost any topic or submit your own article to ezines for more publicity. Have a super and successful week! As always... Be sure to contact me if you have any comments or feedback - You Can Mail Me Here Jeff Smith http://www.infoprod uctcreator.com ATTENTION: There is only one way that you could be receiving this ezine, that is you, or someone using your email address, subscribed. There is no other way of being added to this list. We do not make this list, or your address, available to ANY other companies or individuals. We value your privacy. Although we work hard to make sure that all of the information in the Profit Secrets newsletter is accurately and genuine as possible, neither the publisher, nor the editor assume any responsibility for the accuracy or otherwise of the information presented. By reading this information, the Information Product Profit Secrets reader assumes all responsibility for an inaccuracies or other risks associated with the information within this newsletter. Jeff Smith Editor Information Product Profit Secrets webmaster@inf oproductcreator.com http://www.infoprod uctcreator.com |