The hysteria around the launch of Mike Filsaime’s latest product “Launch Tree” (no affiliate link for reasons that will become apparent later) shows no sign of abating.

It’s being promoted by every man and his dog and I’m just wondering how many of them have actually used the product. I mean, if they all have a complimentary review copy there will be nobody left to sell to.

And for a product that retails at a paltry $77 some of the bonuses on offer are huge.

Then again, being a Mike Filsaime product, you can guarantee there’s an aggressive upsell, downsell, sidesell, backsell, upsidedown sell - the works. The front end commission is just the icing on the cake.

Personally speaking, I can’t promote the latest craze just because of the commissions on offer. If I have a copy, have used it and find that it’s worth recommending, all well and good. But I’m not going to throw traffic at an untried programme that I haven’t seen.

I much prefer to recommend evergreen products that have stood the test of time and will not be superseded by the next “great thing”. One of these is XSitePro.

If you are serious about internet marketing you really should buy XSitePro web design software . This is a very powerful WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builder, but it is so much more than that.

Since I bought version 1 over 3 years ago the software has been through many upgrades and XSitePro 2 is a must-have if you want to build clean, Google friendly websites. It includes headers, templates, affiliate link and Adsense management, siloing . . . well, you can check XsitePro out yourself.

I can build a decent site from scratch in 2 or 3 hours. If you just want to build a single authority site, then it might not be for you. But for getting your affiliate sites or landing pages up there in double quick time it has no equal.

In a recent forum post a marketer was asking the best way to go from scratch to $100,000 in a year.

Nothing like thinking small. Let’s go for a cool million instead.

Are you ready?

Okay. Here’s how to become an internet marketing millionaire in six easy steps:

1. Make $1,000 in a month and write a book called “How To Make $1,000 In One Month”.

2. Sell 75 copies at $27 each and then write a book called “How to Make $2,000 In One Month”.

3. Sell 107 copies at $47 each and then write a book called “How To Make $5,000 in One Month”.

4. Sell 207 copies at $97 each and then write a book and video course called “How To Make $20,000 In One Month”.

5. Sell 214 copies at $397 each plus a forced continuity newsletter. Write a book, video course and mentoring programme called “How To Make A Million Dollars In One Year”.

6. Sell 501 copies at $1,997.

Congratulations! You are now a millionaire.

P.S.  Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea how to do Step 1

Another interesting thread on the Warrior Forum about the importance of having a USP (Unique Selling Position/Proposition) for your product or business.

This is one of the kind of discussions that often get overlooked but it is vital to your success.

Some of the posts by Matthew Maiden and John McCabe were particularly interesting

That’s why it’s important to establish your USP ( Unique Selling Position ) and know exactly what it is and it helps you target your market.

McDonalds already has a head start on the branding ( Golden Arches ) and with the little playgrounds being put on sites you would have a hard time competing for the “family friendly” angle.

Burger King decides that their USP is to ” Have it Your Way ” which not only implies that they are the only burger chain that lets you custom build your burger, even though they will all let you do that, but now if any other chain tries to make that claim they will come off as a copycat.

Claude Hopkins ( Scientific Advertising ) did this very thing with copy that he wrote about how a brewery made its beer describing everything that went into brewing to bottling. What he described was the basic procedure that every brewer did in making beer. The difference was that he was the first to use this info and had now claimed and owned it.

So basically what Dan is talking about is finding your USP.

Why should I buy your ebook about article writing over every other ebook about article writing out there?

Understanding your USP is a very powerful tool to selling anything.

Matt

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Matt, I saw a video where Kennedy was talking about this. From what he said, the question could (should?) be:

Why should I buy your ebook about article writing over every other ebook about article writing, every ebook about other traffic strategies or even over buying nothing at all?

You could also add why I should buy your ebook over an audio course, video set, home study course or coaching program on the same subject.

If you can find something truly unique about what you offer, you remove your product from the commodity pool. Getting out of that pool means making direct price comparisons becomes difficult and you can likely sell for a premium price.

John

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John, this is what is not talked about when it comes to “niche marketing”.

I’m almost getting sick of hearing it. Kind of like going to open houses and hearing more talk about the Granite counter tops.

But when you really understand the concept of targeting and what a niche is, you can make a leap in your ability to sell.

When you combine your USP with a niche within a market you can be in any competitive group and really eliminate the competition.

If I sell shoes and I see a benefit like comfort I can see if I can claim this benefit and use this as a USP “the most comfortable shoes”. Then I can target a market of customers who walk a lot like nurses and police officers just to name a couple.

By using the name of the group in my advertising I can target nurses in one campaign like a Nursing Magazine and then turn around and do some other ads in a Police Beat Magazine and target police officers with the same USP.

Target marketing with my USP cuts down my competition and as you pointed out John, there are ways to eliminate them all together.

When you know how to do this, you don’t have to be afraid of jumping into big markets. Just go in and start breaking them down into more manageable pieces.

Matt

You can follow the thread at the Warrior Forum

One thing I have noticed over the last month is that posts of a more philosophical nature and without popular keywords result in a slump in traffic.

If I put keywords like ‘youtube’, ‘videos’, ‘credit cards’ or even ‘Wordpress’ I am guaranteed a lot more traffic.

I understand the basics of using search engine optimization with blogging but I find it restrictive if I think all the time about getting popular keywords in my title and the body of my post.

If  I write natural English and avoid keyword stuffing I know Google’s latent semantic indexing algorithms will be happy but I won’t get so many readers if the title isn’t ‘optimized’.

The answer is, I suppose, to build up a following with good writing and SEO and then once you have the readership reduce the SEO element in your writing back to something you feel happier with.

Anyway, just for the hell of it, tomorrow I’ll make a post with those four keywords, throw in a couple of Paris Hiltons and Britney Spears, then sit back and watch the traffic roll in.

Oh dear, sometimes I feel so stupid.

I wanted to upgrade this blog from WordPress 2.3 to 2.7 and because I had installed the original version using Fantastico I was very wary about changing things. All the explanations about upgrading seemed a bit beyond my non-techie mind. I tried finding a decent video but no luck.

Anyway, last night, I was installing a new blog in my webhosting panel and guess what I saw?

“Two Strange Worlds is using Wordpress 2.3. Upgrade now to Version 2.7″.

And there was a button for a one-click upgrade which saved your old database as well.

One minute later I was updated, no problem.

It reminded of the book “Acres of Diamonds” about a man who sold his farm to travel the world looking for diamonds and when he came back many years later there was a massive diamond mine on his old farm.

Lesson learned.

Check out what you have under your nose before you look elsewhere.

I posted yesterday’s thoughts on the Warrior Forum and got a very interesting reply from a fellow Warrior, tomw, who is a 20 year veteran of the advertising industry in the UK.

He basically poses two questions to internet marketers

1. How much do you want to earn?

2. Do you want to do it the hard way or the easy way?

Keep reading →

It took me a while to start a list and then I stopped because of two things.

1. It wasn’t really a niche I was interested in

2. I didn’t feel I was qualified to dole out advice

But later, I thought about it more deeply and I think there was a third and, perhaps more important, factor.

I didn’t want the responsibility.

Having a list is a lot like being married. You are developing a long-term relationship and you are constantly being evaluated and/or judged. The main difference I saw between marriage and a list is that a list is like serial polygamy. Trying to be married to thousands of different people is a balancing act that will drive you insane, if you let it.

Now, I am comfortable with the idea of listbuilding because I have discovered a niche I know a lot about and I am not going to tear myself apart trying to please people. I know where I stand and if people are not happy with me they can always unsubscribe.

So what makes/made you hesitate about building a list?

One of the tricks recommended for gaining attention on forums is to write a headline with powerful words like ’sex’ or ‘Paris Hilton’ in it to gain attention, even if it has nothing to do with the body of the post.

Now, I am all for getting attention, but I personally feel that this kind of strategy is counter-productive.

There was a story in the Turkish Daily News yesterday with the title Sex Ban To Save Boron

Basically, to prove to the European Union that one of Turkey’s biggest exports, boron, is not an impotence-causing toxin, Eti Mining Department is doing tests on a couple of hundred workers (half of whom have had no direct exposure to boron).

They will take blood, urine and sperm samples. To make sure the sperm is of high quality the workers have been asked to refrain from having sex for three days.  As it seems the workers are volunteers this hardly seems to constitute a ban.

After reading the story, I felt a little disappointed that the content didn’t really match the headline (hey, I was expecting something really juicy, weren’t you?).

I have the same kind of feeling when internet marketers use misleading headlines just to get you to click. I think it is a cheap trick and it makes me think twice about reading anything they write in the future.

Just had a thought.

I wonder if they aren’t allowed to pee for three days as well to make sure their urine is high quality.

P.S. Don’t forget if you want to learn how to make your own internet marketing product from the King of ‘How To’, Kevin Riley, check this out

Product Creation Lab Private Workshop

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for people starting out in Internet Marketing is making their own product. What to make, how to do the research, setting up the sales funnel, product delivery - all the seemingly endless to do list involved in product creation.

Well, last November and December, I was one of a group of people on the Warrior Forum who joined Kevin Riley’s Product Creation Lab Private Workshop. It wasn’t just newbies who signed up. There were a load of experienced marketers who wanted to study with the King of ‘How To’.

If you don’t know Kevin you’re missing out on one of the best product creators on the net.

Apart from his famous Recipes series he covers all kinds of things from video marketing and video making to a complete home study course  From Hobby To Your Own Profitable Home-Based How-To Business Empire

Kevin is a great teacher and he always explains things in bite-size chunks using worksheets, screenshots and videos so every single step is very clear. He also provides fantastic customer support so buying from him is a no-risk experience.

And now Kevin has just opened the doors for you to get his fantastic Product Creation Lab Private Workshop.

What you will see shortly will shock you. It’s few and far between that you’ll see such a comprehensive, step-by-step, cover-all-the-bases product … at such a low price. Kevin is known for over-delivering, but this is ridiculous.

Go see for yourself right now:

Product Creation Labs

But, don’t linger too long. He’s only offering that super price for the first 100 packages. You don’t want to miss out on that.

I have been following an interesting discussion on the latest doomsday event.

Apparently, during the winter solstice in 2012, because of a rare alignment of the earth, sun and a black hole, there will be some apocalyptic event that will destroy the planet, or result in a Noah-like flooding or even devastate the world economy (oops! that was 2008).

And who is to blame?

Well, it seems that this time it’s not Nostradamus’ fault - it’s those bloody Mayans who carelessly designed a calendar which ends on the 21st December, 2012. Or does it? Some spoilsports are pointing out that actually, that is just a reset date and the calendar will just start again.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the Y2012 bandwagon is really gaining momentum and it could be even bigger than the Y2K fiasco. So, how can we, as marketers, cash in on this?

Here are a few suggestions on monetizing 2012

1. Web designers can charge a premium for building sites guaranteed to survive Y2012.

2. Nostradamus’ works are in the public domain. Find the numbers, 2, 0, 1, 2 somewhere in the text to prove he foretold the event and sell his predictions as an ebook. Don’t forget to sell a hard copy on Amazon and offer a DVD upsell.

3.  Sell survival equipment. Guns, army rations and clothing are the usual stuff. Given the flooding predictions, kayaks might sell well, too.

4. Study a few esoteric religions and become a 2012 expert. With TV appearances and book sales you could easily become a millionaire.

5. Here’s the biggy. If you want loads of money and regular sex, start a 2012 sect. But hurry up, you only have 3 years, 330 days and 5 minutes till the end of the world.