January 2002

Case Study
Robert Middleton

I've been a marketing consultant to independent professionals for several years. I had a web site for a few years before I took Tom's Butt Camp and I actually did web site design. I was successful in my business but trying to learn more about how to make money online. The Butt Camp was inspirational more than anything else. Tom showed me what could be done and I left knowing I could do it. As soon as I came back from Butt Camp I implemented everything on the action plan I created. I listed in more search engines, I optimized my keywords, I improved my online copy, and not long after, I finished writing my online manual on marketing and launched it on the web. It was a success instantly and in the 10 months since it came out, I've done about 100K in business online.

I also learned to be flexible. I only wanted to offer the manual online. But from the first day, people asked me for a hard copy. Now I offer the hard copy for a few dollars more and those are about 50% of my sales. I also packaged the online manual with my previous tape set and continue to sell a lot of those higher-priced packages. It's hard to keep the hard copy manuals and tape sets in stock.

My promotion has largely focused on my eZine (which now goes out to 17,000 people weekly) but I've also tested a lot of advertising ideas with some success, such as ads in other eZines. What I haven't found the time for is creating all the doorway pages that Tom suggested to get more visitors from search engines. I only have one web site, not several. It seems I was lucky however. I found a keyword that really worked for me. With this keyword I'm #1 in Yahoo, #3 in Google and #1 in MetaCrawler and have stayed there for months. I'm on the first page in more than 10 search engines. I've had some success with pay-per click search engines as well.

I've placed a lot of articles online so that I'm linked from many pages and people find me all over the net. Not only do I make a lot of sales online, I get clients from all over the country. So this was my busiest year ever.

I always keep an eye out for what Tom is doing. He's a master of ACTION! He's created several online products while I'm really still on my first one. However, I did take a page out of his book and did a different kind of promotion for my latest TeleClass and filled it with over 50 people in a couple of weeks - only by email promotion. I'm working on new products and will have a new online book to sell in a few months.

I think to make the ideas from the Butt Camp work you need to be very hands-on with your web site and email marketing. You need to do something on your web site every single day. You have to learn how to do it and make it happen. If you are a complete technophobe, you're going to have problems. If you can't write, you're going to have bigger problems. But if you're willing to do the work and follow Tom's direction, your web site becomes much like a rigged slot machine. You pull the handle (send out your eZine), and money automatically flows into your bank account! Once you learn the ins and outs, it is an amazingly easy way to make money. I figure that in 5 years I'll easily be making 500K or more per year by the Internet alone (as a one-person business).

In closing, the Butt Camp was a pivotal training program for me. It gave me a literal kick in the butt and got me into action and making money right away. I'd recommend it to anyone who's serious about marketing online.

Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

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Practical Action Plans for Marketing Your Expertise

Make sure to check out the "InfoGuru Marketing Manual,"
the most comprehensive collection of how-to marketing
action plans for professional service businesses available:
http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html 

mailto:robmid@actionplan.com 

378 Cambridge Avenue, Suite B
Palo Alto, CA 94306
650-321-4449
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Upcoming case studies

• Patricia Fripp

• Michael Stahl

• Rob Dale

• Caroline Corser

• Jeffrey Mayer

• Bill Brooks

If you would like your case study used, attend Butt Camp, apply what you learned and tell us what happened to your business. mailto:tom@antion.com 

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