I loved this video from the design agency Jess3 on stats of the internet.

The amount of spam, botnets, malicious code was eye opening. Mostly these are marketers at work.

I like everybody else hate spam, I wonder how successful/profitable spam is relative to a legit business. Clearly very given the huge amount of servers / efforts required to produce it.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

It’s 4am and can’t sleep, head full from 2 days of packed content and networking at Marty Rozmanith’s Wordpress Direct University figured I’d share some of what’s going through my head on a personal level, and a few take away tips, but mostly the former, so consider yourself warned.

First up, it’s 4am.  I’m sitting crosslegged in the sofa at the Hostel,  with a hint of the cool san diego breeze coming rhouhg the 4 giant windows. The fun gaslamp district is a ghosttown, contrast this to 9pm-1:30pm when it feels like Mardi-Gras.  The ONLY reason it stops at 2amish is city mandated that EVERTHING close round 2amish.  I’m pretty sure that even the clubs at the hotel  (e.g. the Hard Rock Hotel ) are subject to this curfew.  Of course that just means the party moves to the rooms. I’m actually greatful for the silence as I can get quite hypersenstive to

To be honest conferences are a giant pain in the ass,

doesn’t matter how good the last one was, it’s hard for me to get out of the house, they almost always happen at the worst times.

First  I have to drive which if you’re familiar at all with Los Angeles is generally more like synchronized braking.   I structure my life so I don’ t have to drive as I’m convinced that next to TV that driving is the biggest time sink.     Google maps with traffic does it’s best and recently got better by showing intown traffic, It typically takes about 45 minutes to even get to the freeway and that is plenty of time for the roadsystem to turn into a sea of life sucking red lights that mean your trip time may be doubled and your time sleeping halved.

Being the ace strategician, Generally between last minute preps and road dred, aim for 7pm and manage to put out of the house round 2am…

Of course once I’ve left the habit trail   it’s easy to get commited and enjoy. Smooth Driving is very meditative, all sorts of thoughts percolate up  that you don’t normally get to see.

Second, as is typical for most conferences I go to, I usually get about 8-12 hours of sleep spread across 3-4 nights, AND I have to use an alarm clock. WTF is this internet lifestyle?!?  I don’t wear a watch, don’t have any clocks in my room other than those embedded into the device.  For the most part I operate outside of time by design, as freedom is important to me and it’s just how I operate best.  e.g. if the team is cracking or ideastorm, I work all night I do, if I have to sleep 15 hours I do.

Conferences are like mini job, you have to conform to a schedule,  have to sit in the chair, pay attention (else why did you come), and get to and from lunch/break on time else miss something.  WPDirect starts at 9am! Damn those east coaster boston peeps didn’t they see the sign “entering california?!”     But to augment caffiene,  Marty has been the opening speaker both days and has a deeply knowledgeable brain and a gift for conveying complex information and is almost registers -10% hype and bullshit meter.  Which makes it totally worth it.

What I like about these conferences that are organized around a real product/service is you get to put a face on the company in this case WordpressDirect and see the culture behind it.   It’s easy when everything is through the web to imagine that these companies are giant vending machines with unlimited robots, with impersonal email with various tracking tickets to forget that behind that, every reply is answered by a real living person.  n Companies like really everybody can fit into a single van.  Briefly if you’re not familiar with them, Wordpress Direct is a way to quickly build keyword optimized blogs they host and they start at free. They are decent sized and have over 30K users.

Back to the story, I work out of my home, and between automation and outsourcing, most of my team I’ve never met live, and some I don’t even know what they look like.  We have great communication and reort Skype and Basecamp is MORE THAN AWESOME but it’s not the same flavor of seeing people light up, and the banter that happens when you least expect it.   Basically at times I miss the live part.

One of the other consequences of this internet, even if you sandbox your work and personal identities as I do is that the lines between life and work blur.  I’m always working, I’m also always on what others consider vacation. Just things are chopped up, an hour of 100% fun in the middle of the day, an hour of work when you should be sleeping.   Like right now some major projects some brand new some months in and near completion are in critical phases with many unknowns, so I have to constantly guide it here and there and do things only I can do else I become the bottleneck.   This is actually a great problem to have when your team is delivering christmas every day, it’s hard NOT to open your presents even if they are wrapped in email instead of wrapping paper, when they are asking you whether you want to get metaphorically a Million Dollars more in your business or a Year off, it’s impossible not to want to answer the questions, even if that means you are giving up sleep that will make it harder to pay attention tomorrow.

I’m not alone in this.  One of my favorite speaker (and hella funny Texan) Keith Baxter is in the middle of the major “Epic Traffic” launch. I guess the point I was making is that most the successful people I meet have intense freedom, but there are times when they work their asses 16hours a day for weeks on end and end up far more burnt out than you see in a normal job because there are no boundaries placed there and so much drive.

But for even all that. What I at least gain in these conferences is totally worth the sacrifices.  It’s counter intuitive, but honestly I think that for all the thousands of dollars of material I’ve bought, I get more far mroe from going to these conferences even when I have no idea what I’m going to get out of it.   For one there is a force feeding of content, be honest how often have you bought a product and it just sat there on the shelf. In a conference in a locked room it’s a bit like drinking from a firehose.  Second there is a dialog, you can ask critical questions directly, especially after. Thired you have to breath the same air .

After a year, I kinda feel like most infotraining is a perpetual industry to milk and sort of a hidden trick question, the only way to succeed is to counterintuitively stop learning especially from infobook. To be sure there are several awesome courses and you have to get your start somewhere, but I believe most pale in raw impact as some of these  live conferences -even the pitchfests-, and this one classifies technically as one, as every speaker is pushing something, but generally every presentation was the equivalent of a $397 course or more so value is being delivered every hour, so times say 5 presentations per day x 2 days = 10 presentations * 400 == $4K of training value alone. Often the way that these speakers are coordinated on complimentary areas, some of that you’d never voluntarily buy as you don’t think you need it, or worse you don’t even know it exists so wouldn’t ever find it.

Conferences are a bit of a secret society, the door admission price is the secret passphrase. I’ve met some who know this and have spent $2k on product they have no intent of using just to get access to right people in the right place, because major deals happen here.   Especially at smaller events like this, where else can you talk to the CEO and major gurus at length? share a beer with them, get candid answers?

Everytime I go I learn things that aren’t taught anyplace else, and probably won’t ever be.  Again live conferences are a sort of graduation from conventional do it yourself training.  Advanced levels are unlocked.  Rightfully shouldn’t in some cases as they are either super powerful and likely to be abused, and some are super complicated and so far beyond that it would take a year or so of training to be able to fully understand the impact, or that if everybody did it would completely fail.  Others are gems that are dropped in various conversations, either things you’re generally not supposed to know, or “common knowledge” they just don’t ever think to teach, things you didn’t know you REALLY need to know, like perhaps everything you are doing (that everybody else is doing) is either wrong or a poor use of time.

Damn the sun is coming up, I’m getting super sleepy  and the Day3 (which I was VERY kindly comped on…again the power of attending these sorts of things) is starting in a 3  hours, so hopefully I’ll continue this later, so much to talk about, so much has happened.

Troy.

Somedays it pays to procrastinate!

I had been interested in the WordpressDirectUniversity event Marty is putting together since first hearing about it from one of my favorite semi-gurus Keith Baxter.  The event has many of my best bang for the buck gurus speaking:

• Ed Dale,
• Matt Trainer
• Keith Baxter
• Amish Shah,
• Marty Rozmanith,
• The Author of the go-giver to do a Keynote!

Anyway, Marty has just done slashed his door price from a fully justifiable $700 to $70, for 2 days (3 days if your VIP or Affiliate Pilot member).  That got me to go, even though I really don’t have the time with several major projects near launch.

Here’s why, Ed Dale, Keith and Marty are highly skilled in the wordpress arts in getting low cost traffic and converting that into cash.  Though a tad dry in presentation at times, seriously eye opening stuff with how they use plugins, domaining, to create very low risk sites, and even fun ones, where wordpress does everything from chop, slice, grate, talk, dance, write it’s own content etc., prior I thought Wordpress was just a blog.

Also the author of the go giver book (which was highly influential to Magic Bullet and Frank Kern) is speaking.

He recently came up with a new version of the book which goes into more detail, I’ll bet he’ll be talking about that

Meet Marty Rozmanith

Marty is the host of the event, and runs a 7 figure business, understands CPA etc.

I met Marty at Mass Control 2.0, he stood out in stark contrast in a sea of pitches by not really pitching anything.   He’s very genuine and we come from similar backgrounds in product design, and even CAD.  He won bonus points for mentioning interface design and in particular Jared Spool, like this story on cockpit interface design.

Anyway after the extremely full weekend, I promptly forgot about him.   That is until Keith pointed him out again.

The Event is  at the Hard Rock Cafe, and everytime I’ve gone to San Diego it’s been awesome for my business and connections and just fun! it’s right near the ocean, and in the heart of the cool gaslamp district.

For all that it’s not going to be that expensive.  There is a San Diego hostel that charges like $30/night, plus parking can be free if your willing to walk 6-10 blocks. Meaning you can get multithousands of dollars in training for less than $300 + whatever it costs to get you there and back.  Plus who knows who you might meet while there! It’s exactly what you don’t know you don’t know that makes these events so important to go.

Anyway I don’t get compensated for this in anyway, just I think it’s an awesome sounding event, and I think you should go,if you can make it.

http://www.affiliatepilot.com/go-giver

If your interested in getting it, several of the guru’s are putting out bonuses that would add to the value. I’ve seen many online but here are a few of my favorites.

The “Magic Bullet System” BONUS List

John Cow (only 25 bonuses)

1. Private, closed door “CPA Money Fast-Track” teleseminar with Amish Shaw
2. Private, CPA Money Mastermind Think-Tank
3. LIFETIME ACCESS to PPC Kahuna (worth several thousand dollars)

I suspect that the fast-track seminar will cover the material already in the 8 weeks of training. I’ve gotten alot out of the masterminds that I’m in.

Get that Magic Bullet System with John Cow’s Bonuses here

Jeff Johnson’s Bonus

“I just got off the phone with Amish and I’ll definitley be adding my own twists to his magic bullet system software as part of my bonus. The funny thing about the software is that it’s really as much an SEO tool as it is a PPC tool.”

Jeff clearly knows SEO and affiliate sales, but he’s a bit hard to follow and hasn’t announced his bonus in details. But you can find out what it will be when it’s revealed here on Jeff Johnsons Underground Affiliate site.

Post a comment if you have a bonus you think I should be checking out.

Also check out the 7 Sneaky Tactics used in Frank Kern in the $1,498,500+ “Magic Bullet System” Launch

I’m going to cover some of the sneaky tatics used in this well executed Amish, Classic Kern Mass Control.

If you want to get the best training for marketing, just watch what the gurus are doing as they are using the latest tactics on you is what they are using. Frequently selling you what they did as next years course (1 year stale…). As a great plus, studying the material is free! even if you have to supply your own manual, but really given the amount of crap that most IM training consists of, it’s kinda like supply your own manual anyway.

Here are some I’ve noticed from this very well run campaign.

1) The sales process is getting more sneaky indirect: The first launch video was actually Frank Kern’s “State of The Internet Address” (278 comments) Amish and CPA was introduced almost like an offhand comment. No link mentioned, but priming the pump, because people are smart enough to be able to type a couple words into a web search (e.g. searching Amish CPA brings up his webpage 2nd hit)

2) Go Offline I actually got an hour DVD from Amish and Frank. I’ve actually gotten 4 mailings from Frank in my physical mail the last 3 months! All things are multi-k prices. Honestly I enjoyed a real DVD as I was unplugged from the PC + all the distractions that happens when I’m watching web video.

3) Go long but spaced out. All said and done I think I’ve seen about 3hours of video! across the various 6 launch videos each about 20 minutes. Contrast this to how much time you spend reading a sales letter if you read at all.

4) Train instead of Sell Each of the launch videos was talking and training in a highly replicateable fashion. Meaning anybody who watches the first 2 videos could clone the campaigns they showed. But they can’t clone the results for a few sneaky reasons they don’t cover. Two things they don’t cover is that they get a low cost per click based on getting so much traffic by leveraging all the tricks they know on the content network + banner ads. That the doubling of the profits was from the tool pruning and reallocating adverstising dollars. MORE money is made by pruning than by be getting more words.

5) Throwing away the Sales Page Note that they are skipping the sales page in favor of the adrenaline pumped infomercial…that’s what it is! The only thing it’s missing is the phone number to call now. The copy is littered with lots of hot buttons “get’s results, does it for you, delivers on a silver platter”. as any good tool pitch should do. I expect to see more of that in the future.

6) the product isn’t the point. This shows how the industry is changing. Like the game of monopoly as many people are trying to get a single roof over their head people in the game 5-8 years have teams of 10-20 and $250K tools looking to build their own networks.

But this is great, Amish can be relaxed about the pitch, as he is not scarcity minded…he doesn’t need the sale and people can pick up that. Amish and Jay’s real reason is they are trying to launch a CPA company. That way can give away all this stuff as in the long term they make way more money off the CPA company and obviously if the are able to do what they give away in the videos are doing better than 98% of the affiliates out there. This is a sneaky tactic, Frank calls “Low Self Esteem Success Chance” meaning in this case if the campaign was doing $500 a day, most people would be perfectly happy getting 10% of that, which seems ‘doable’.

7) Always Do the Unexpected. If you say you get 5 things, give them 1-2 extra. If you say that the official start time is noon, create an early bird list, and then email the evening before claiming to “test the servers”.

8)ASSEMBLE + TWEAK rather than CREATE which not a tactic for marketing, it’s a somewhat non-obvious tactic that isn’t used by most. great it largely leverages things that already exist, reducing the risk. A common failure I see is people either creating 90%+ everything from scratch in a vain attempt trying to be original, or creating nothing (PLR junk). This is a common problem people think they need to create so much website, database, products, when most everything has been done to some degree already. What exists is the best to start with for split testing as it takes a lot of work just to exist and be found.

So tomorrow morning Amish’s so called “Magic Bullet System” launches at noon. *insert drum roll*.

If you’ve been following along I’m sure many of you are excited by all the buzz and hype. Stop that! (for at least next 2 minutes). Before you shell out $5K ask yourself if it’s going to be another “hope lottery” ticket sitting on your shelf like some of those $2k courses you bought last year that you never implemented. Even if this system is better and does automate much of the grunt work, as magic as this system might be it doesn’t press the buttons for you, it doesn’t magically find your offers, it doesn’t come with an increased credit limit, it doesn’t guarantee acceptance into the various CPA networks or Media Buy. It doesn’t delivery money onto your bankaccount (though that would rock).

They released the final launch video Released today on the magic bullet system site, they finally announced the price of $2997 or 4 pay of $797 ($3188) and 2 two bonus modules taking it up from 6 to 8 weeks of training. Note I say more like $5K as you will still hosting, PPC budget, and if you get into media buys at least $1K to realistically get started.

They also reveal the real reason why they are doing this, as Amish and Jay have a new CPA network they are looking to get the most people onto, and they give free entry into that as they know many solo affiliate operators won’t be able to get into the door of the CPA networks.

It’s brillinat, they are getting paid over a milllion dollars to help train their CPA army in the exact strategies they want. To put it into perspective this launch if all 500 copies are sold is $1,498,500 (about half I’m sure go to affiliates), Amish and Jay show that they have occasional $100K days, and that’s just one of them. The CPA network doesn’t have the risk, and they get paid, plus they have other related tracking services that I’m sure people will need. Like I’m sure that this amazing software they are offering is not something you install on your own servers..who’s paying for it and how long?

When it comes to the offer, they are doing the classic Frank Kern style External Threat of 91K potential people on the opt-in going to buy it,…I call bullshit here. I bet they are referring to the number of people who opted in to see the first + second video, not including duplicates. This doesn’t mean that 91K people all have $3K and are sitting outside the front door fogging up the glass.

I’d wager that the ‘cut in line list’ is more like 2-4K. I’m betting since they are using a scarcity of 500 slots seems good that they will sell out within an under 3 hours, since everybody is promoting it, and unlike the info products out there, this was actually does automate most of the steps most people don’t like to do.

There no questions asked 100% refund without a timeframe. Not that most people even if unhappy would return it.

Click here to see the Best Bonuses I’ve found (not mine!) for The Magic Bullet System

Also check out the 7 Sneaky Tactics used in Frank Kern in the $1,498,500+ “Magic Bullet System” Launch

PREFACE: The following should not be construed as legal advice, and I strongly encourage you to get your own legal council to review these new FTC regulations’s impact in your business.

Imagine tooling around the home office, then getting a polite knock on the door and being handed 7 pounds of paperwork by an apologetic clerk, that basically say:

About what 7 pounds of FTC paperwork looks like...plus they deliver direct to your doorstep!

“Dear You.

YOU ARE SCREWED.

Sincerely,

the FTC.”

That’s what it’s really like according to Frank Kern in his very candid story on the matter., Get this…despite doing nothing particularly wrong! It doesn’t matter…the FTC is not prone to backing down.

The FTC’s tossing some major changes down the pipe for internet marketers, especially those blogging and using testimonials. You should prepare to be transparent about basically everything you are doing. Like how good your products are for *average users* when you use testimonials, and when you are getting paid for promotion. If you don’t, the FTC is not kind, there is rarely polite warnings, and they can seize your business (or ALL your businesses) with all it’s assets (and they don’t give it back). It’s happened to Frank Kern and to Perry Belcher, and it can happen to you if you don’t play by their rules.

Read these links from major news and major gurus with high priced legal council, also read the comments many are insightful. Seriously get a qualified legal advisor. Also understand that if you are providing real value these can be a serious win for you!

Straight from the FTC’s mouth

Here’s the official documentation from the FTC you should understand (these links thanks to ZenGlen)

• http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
• http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf

On page 60+ there are specific examples.

Page 22-23 refer to the part Frank talked about regarding use of testimonials.

Also this is another one.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,560501,00.html

The Guru’s Comments

Frank Kern’s very clear take, and many great comments
John Reese  take

My take, is …the FTC’s rules are somewhat amorphous as to what average use is, especially if you understand test taking and statistics.

• An average reader never reads more than 10% of a book, your failure as an author?
• Is a case study of yourself or a client considered a testimonial or something else.?
• With split testing is that a fact or an opinion?

Good questions to ask your legal council skilled in FTC.   I’ll be asking mine shortly.

I’m Coming Clean…

As a part of that, I’m Following ProfitMoffat’s excellent lead, about the nature of this blog.

Assume if you ever buy anything off this or my other websites, or anything I ever talk about, I get paid! Directly ( Sometimes 50% or more! ) and/or indirectly (as in getting leads, traffic, more happiness etc). Occasionally I review products and services without compensation because they are necessary to be in business (so had to have them, think you would benefit from using them), and I genuinely like using them, or genuinely dislike using them, but assume the former.

And when I make that money, I spend it:  Typically on a steady supply of guinness + hot water for showers and black tea, and fun stuff, often with a geek bent, like eventually a space trip on Virgin Galactic.  Of course I also use the money in conventional ways, rent, to pay bills, with a significant bill each month  building better tools for myself and yall.

I hope that’s all cool with ya’ll, if not please discontinue reading my blog or using the links on this site.

Also while getting out in the open, while I may look like one in the videos, I am not a lawyer or doctor, license carrying engineer, psychologist, or carrying any sort of credentials. The writings on this website are my personal opinions and while they work for me,  may horribly fail for you. By following the advice on this blog you accept the related risk. Consider yourself warned.

If you ever have a problem with the content or myself, please contact me (by twitter or commenting on this blog),  I always aim to treat people fair and square.

What this means for you

This is GOOD news.  Just like how the Wild West isn’t so wild anymore and you have no fear of being scalped by indians, the internet is starting to get settled.  It does feel like a loss of freedom and opportunity as the rules and regulations on the net will be just like the real world (business licenses etc), there are still massive opportunities not possible anywhere else.

Just like being able to walk aobut without fear of being robbed or murdered are a good thing these rules are towards a better world if you are a consumer or a merchant.  Since we are all consumers,  As a consumer you will certainly benefit from more honesty and transparency in marketing.

As a merchant, if you survived the google slap, you know  providing solid value you will soon have less competition and should have nothing to fear from the FTC…that is if you know the rules and follow them.   If you aren’t providing solid value then you wouldn’t last that long anyway …one way or another, eventually you will have an honest competitor who will at the end of the day take better care of the community.  The choice is yours, so  rock on!

Troy.

Done in the style of Bye-Bye Ms American Pie.
Funny video on how marketing has changed from Madison Ave to the digital revolution we are taking part of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CqRcCHk_Pc&feature=player_embedded

If you are new to setting up businesses (even an internet affiliate business with no products of your own, no list of your own). A business plan is a great way to crystalize both to yourself the goals for your business. Even selecting an product to be an affiliate for, It’s very common to just skip this step of market evaluation, competition analysis and then find that you’ve spent hours on a project that couldn’t possible work financially…and that’s really what it’s about!

There are several different ways you can go about generating business plans, from paying somebody $2-$10K to do it (recommend hitting elance for this sort of thing). If you are interested in doing it yourself here are 3 softwares to help:
1) Free
http://download.cnet.com/Biz-Plan/3000-2064_4-10030446.html
2) $14
http://www.amazon.com/JIAN-BizPlan-Builder-8-0-Interactive/dp/B00005KJJ2 $14

(buyer beware, read the comments)

3) $130
http://www.jian.com/software/business-plan/sample-small-business-plan.html