Tag: internet marketing

  • 16 bottles of marketing juice

    16 bottles of marketing juice

    With everything that’s been going on, it seems that I haven’t really taken notice of what’s in our fridge.

    Let me explain…

    One of the awesome things about moving to the countryside was we got a milkman.

    I know, I know, it’s kinda sentimental but I really like it.

    The very first day we moved in Russ, that’s his name, rang on the doorbell, introduced himself and asked if we’d like any milk.

    Not only does he bring milk to your door, but he also brings juice, cakes and a few other edible snacks.

    Now we’ve not tried the edible snacks, and I could never figure out the right quantity of milk, so all we get is the fresh juice.

    Well, as I mentioned, I’ve been kinda busy. I just go to the fridge, open it, take out what I want without really registering what’s in it, and then close it again.

    Imagine my surprise when I opened it and discovered the entire bottom shelf was filled with sixteen glass bottles of juice.

    I mean WTF?!

    You see Russ was still delivering the samew quantities we’d ordered when we had a couple of months with a lot of friends staying.

    And since we haven’t had friends up for a little while, there was no way we’d ever be able to drink that quantity.

    So I stopped it.

    But in the weeks when we were getting enough juice for eight people, Russ was making money from us for something we weren’t using.

    And that’s the same with most subscription models.

    Take Apple Music, rough estimates put the number of people who’ve forgotten to cancel it at 6 million.

    When six million people who’ve forgotten to cancel are paying you $9.99, that’s a lot of extra cash in the bank. In fact, it’s nearly 50% of everybody paying for their service!

    Just something to get you thinking 😉

    Michael

  • K.I.S.S. (an example)

    K.I.S.S. (an example)

    You’ll know the problem I’ve been having with Porcelanosa. Thank you for all your support sharing my tweets, this seems to be the only way to get them to respond seriously.

    You can still share them here if you like, they’re coming back to site at 10am this morning.

    Going through everything with the kitchen fitters, one of the biggest problems is they’ve tried to be too damn clever.

    And it just doesn’t work.

    Yup, the principle sounds good.

    Yup, the design looks good (if it was all one colour, didn’t have chips, and was actually made properly).

    But… if the functionality is bad, then it’s a bad design. Full stop.

    It’s one of the reasons that I always tell people to stop over-complicating things in their marketing.

    Marketing isn’t rocket science.

    Heck, marketing is pretty damn simple.

    It works like this:

    1) Build an audience
    2) Interact with your audience regularly on a personal level
    3) Sell things to your audience

    Much as the gurus will try and tell you, there’s no wizardry behind any of it. It’s direct response marketing pure and simple.

    Yes, you can learn nice tips and tricks, you can get better at copywriting, you can buy fancy website plugins or software.

    But the bottom line is, they’re all additions. You don’t NEED them to make money online.

    All you need is an email newsletter, an optin form, traffic and some honesty.

    Which is exactly what I teach in my Business Ignition. It’s closed to new members at the moment, but you can put your name on the waiting list here and be the first to know when there are some spaces.

    Michael

  • Goodness gracious, great balls of spam

    Goodness gracious, great balls of spam

    Over the weekend Oleg Kheifets posted on his Facebook asking for suggestions about which autoresponder software to use.

    There were all sorts of replies from Mailchimp to Aweber, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit and all the others you know about.

    I was the only person who said…

    Why the heck would you want to spend an insane amount of money every month on an autoresponder service who can shut you down whenever they feel like it.

    Oh, and if they do shut you down and you’ve not been taking regular backups of your leads, you won’t be able to get them either.

    Now I’m never going to do something an autoresponder company doesn’t like. I’ve never been shut down by one, and we’ve always mailed fully spam compliant emails.

    But… the idea of another company being able to totally destroy my business in seconds is rather uncomfortable.

    If you’re in internet marketing and have a mailing list, then you run an email business.

    When your email list disappears so does your business.

    Personally I use software called MailWizz, which you can get here.

    It costs a whopping… $54.

    That’s a one-off fee!

    Install it on your own server and connect it to Amazon SES.

    It will take you just a few hours to install and get up and running, your delivery will be excellent, the software is awesome, and it will cost a fraction of the price of an autoresponder service.

    Oh, and if you’re worried about Amazon SES costs, it’s about $150 to send nearly 1 million emails.

    So it’s pretty darn cheap 😉

    Anyhoo, my recommendation is you use this software.

    Do with that what you will!

    Michael

  • How NOT to sell [from the Warrior Forum]

    How NOT to sell [from the Warrior Forum]

    I was checking out some posts in the Warrior Forum this morning, it’s the first time I’ve been there in years, and I couldn’t believe the comments under a post at the top of the primary Internet Marketing Discussion.

    The post went…

    Hi Guys,

    I have a small question, based on your experience which is better to get the best conversions.

    Exit intent PopUp or the Normal PopUp that appears when you open the website?

    There were a few replies, but the following one pretty much summed everything up that people were saying…

    These days I gravitate toward exit intent popups.

    They are less aggressive than hard exit pops.

    In the future? Hard exit pops might get penalized by Google, and other authoritative presences that have the ability to mark your website as malicious.

    It could be considered malicious JavaScript.

    Just my humble two cents.

    Another point… I would literally NOT send an email to my subscribers with a hard exit pop. It’s too aggressive lol.

    Would you send content with a hard exit pop to your dad? Mom? Wife? Husband? Children? Grand parent?

    If not; then don’t send it to your awesome audience.

    I mean this guy literally doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about.

    And therein lies the problem with forums.

    You have a bunch of people giving advice, and selling products, to a bunch of other people as if they’re an authority on the subject.

    The truth is… most of them aren’t selling anything themselves but are happy to give advice to others on how to make sales.

    No wonder it takes people so friggin long to succeed online!

    Let’s look at the response to the question, which incidentally is a good and reasonable question to be asking.

    The first two lines are fair enough, they’re talking about what they’re doing. No complaints there.

    But then we get this bombshell…

    In the future? Hard exit pops might get penalized by Google, and other authoritative presences that have the ability to mark your website as malicious.

    WTF?!

    Seriously dude, you’re trying to predict what Google are going to do?

    Anyhoo, if you want to do that fair enough, the big issue is that you’re telling someone they shouldn’t do something, which works pretty darn well, because “at some point in the future” you may get penalized for it by one company.

    Now there’s a lot of problems there:

    1) You’re not currently penalised.
    2) They may not be relying on SEO traffic (wouldn’t if they followed my advice)
    3) If marketers considered what “may” be penalised in the future, we’d all be broke!

    Then we get:

    It could be considered malicious JavaScript.

    I literally have no words. If it’s not malicious javascript, it won’t be considered malicious!

    I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been to a website with a pop-up and had a malicious site warning because of it. This information is just flat-out wrong.

    They then finish with anonther bombshell of:

    Another point… I would literally NOT send an email to my subscribers with a hard exit pop. It’s too aggressive lol.

    Would you send content with a hard exit pop to your dad? Mom? Wife? Husband? Children? Grand parent?

    If not; then don’t send it to your awesome audience.

    You wouldn’t eh?

    That’s why you’re probably not making any money.

    Would I send my family to content with a hard exit pop?

    Absofrigginlutely!

    Why wouldn’t I if the content is good? They all have brains, if they don’t want to opt-in to the free offer then they won’t.

    Everything in this reply shows that the person who wrote it has no idea how to make money online with direct marketing.

    Also notice how there’s no evidence that he’s split-test the two options and sold less using exit-pops. That’s because he’s not tested it, he’s simply repeating something he read from someone else that posted.

    Here’s my advice:

    1) Use exit-pops or exit-intent pops. Why? They work.
    2) Assume what you read by people in forums is wrong unless they back it up with evidence of testing.
    3) Always test yourself, whatever anybody else says (including me)

    Over and out.

    Michael

  • Ooops!

    Ooops!

    From time to time we all struggle with inspiration.

    When you’re writing one or more emails every day, it can be hard to find something to write about.

    I get that.

    What do we do in those difficult times?

    We look around at newspapers, gossip websites and try and find inspiration.

    But if we’re really struggling then most of us will eventually resort to a swipe file.

    And there’s nothing wrong with using a swipe file for inspiration.

    Unless you do this…

    Logitravel is a major German travel company.

    Clearly someone in their marketing department was struggling with inspiration and decided to use a swipe file.

    But they forgot to change the subject line.

    Whooops!

    This is a prime example of someone not doing what you must do before you schedule any email…

    Send yourself a test!

    Never skip this step however quickly you are trying to get the email out. It only takes a few seconds, and prevents you from looking stoopid.

    Michael

    P.S. Heading back to writing this months Business Ignition. I’m pretty damn excited by what’s inside it 😉