January 2002

Print and Go

Here is the entire ezine for you to print and take with you. Simply print this entire web page by using your "File/print" command. All of this month's articles are included and there is plenty of room in the margins for notes

Website Technique

Pop Up Boxes by Tom Antion

Whether you love or hate pop up boxes, they can be used judiciously on your website to serve you. A pop up box is a small window that opens up generally when you enter or leave a webpage. The box is actually a mini webpage usually used to promote something.

Many people hate pop up boxes. This is primarily because when they were invented (probably by the pornography people) they were used, and still are, to harass and catch you in a continuous loop that only the most savvy web surfers know how to get out of.

In general the people that hate pop up boxes the most are techie types and academic types. Fortunately for most of us, this is a very tiny segment of the potential market for our products and services, so I just sacrifice them. Many in that market don't spend any money anyway so it's no great loss. 

I don't want you to get worried and scared off by some technogeek that vehemently warns you against pop up boxes. You might hear them say, "I won't do business with anyone who uses pop up boxes on their website." I say, "Big deal." I know one guy who has 260,000 technogeek subscribers to his newsletter and he can't make any money because they don't buy anything anyway. Most of them know how to steal just about anything they want, so don't fret about losing these people.

Now let's talk about the phrase "judicious use." Judicious use does NOT mean A. multiple pop up boxes on the same page of your website, B. pop up boxes you can't get out of, or C. continuously recurring pop up boxes as people travel through your site.

Judicious DOES mean using pop up boxes sparingly and in a manner not irritating to your average website visitor.

SIZE AND SHAPE
Pop up boxes are normally smaller than the original page and can be any variety of sizes that suits you. Most are rectangles a little bit taller than they are wide. Some are shaped like banner ads which are much wider than they are tall. The one I use at http://www.public-speaking.org  is 350 pixels wide by 350 pixels high. (take a good look the first time because it won't pop up for you for another 30 days) see cookies below.

You can either lock the size of the box or allow the viewer to change the size to suit their viewing preferences.

ATTRIBUTES
Pop up boxes can have title bars at the top, tool bars, scroll bars and just about any other attribute that a normal browser window would have. Remember they are just mini webpages being shown in a browser. You can control these attributes by putting the appropriate yes or no answers in the code for the pop up box.

HOW DO POP UP BOXES POP UP?
Heck I don't know. All I know is that they have coding that is put in the background of your webpage that "knows" when it's supposed to pop up. It's all automatic once it's installed on your pages. A little later I'll show you the coding I use at http://www.public-speaking.org  to tell the box when to pop up.

ENTRY POP UPS
An entry pop up is a pop up box that pops ups when someone first enters a web page. This is the type I use at http://www.public-speaking.org  to alert people to sign up for my free speaking ezine http://www.antion.com/ezinesubscribe.htm  .

This pop up box is ready to spring into action on any of the 160 pages at that site. If you first land on the home page, you get a pop up box. If you first land on any of the 150 article pages you get a pop up. When you go to your second page on the site the pop up coding recognizes you and doesn't pop up again for you for 30 days. (see cookies below)

When I first started using pop ups, I had one that would pop up each time you entered the home page. This was very annoying to me and to my visitors so I scrapped it for the one I have now that is a little smarter and judicious.

Entry pop ups can be used for all sorts of things. Like promoting your ezine, leading someone to a specific area of your site, testing headlines (see below).

EXIT POP UPS
Exit pop ups occur when someone leaves a web page. You may want to use an exit pop up when you don't want to distract your visitor from reading the page they are on. They can be set to display any time a person leaves the page or more judiciously like I use them.

You can see an example of an exit pop up I use by visiting http://www.antion.com/click.htm  . This is the sales letter promoting my ebook "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Speakers." This pop up is set to display if you leave the page in any fashion "other than" clicking on the order link. 

If you click the order link, you are already convinced that you want to buy the book, so I don't want to distract you from completing the purchase. If you click on the order link, the pop up never displays. It just waits to do it's duty on someone not as courteous as you :)

If you attempt to leave the page, then the pop up displays and offers you a free sample and the entire Table of Contents. Since you weren't quite convinced by reading the sales page, I want to take another shot at you with the free samples.

You can use exit pop ups like I do above or you could use them to promote other products and services of yours. A good exit strategy is to use associate links (links where you get a commission if the visitor clicks through to someone else's site and buys something). This is a really good idea because the visitor was leaving your page anyway so you may as well take a shot at making some money on them even if it's only a commission from someone else.

I make a couple thousand dollars a month on commissions from other people which take no effort on my part once the affiliate links are installed on my site.

TESTING HEADLINES
Another good way to use either entry or exit pop ups is to test headlines. Let's say you wrote 4 headlines to get people to visit a certain sales page on your site and you couldn't decide which one was the best (you shouldn't be deciding these things anyway because what your visitors think is more important than what you think). You put all four headlines in the pop up box and link them to the same sales page. All you have to do is track the number of times each link was clicked on and you have a pretty good real world test of which one your visitor liked best.

WHEN TO AVOID POP UPS
You may want to forget about using pop ups on pages that you are really depending upon to get high search engine rankings. The coding necessary to make the pop up can be an inhibitor to search engine spiders. 

I primarily use pop ups on sites I've created for directories where keyword placement is not so critical and on sales letter pages where I'm driving the traffic by using my ezine. I don't really try to optimize sales pages for search engines although you could.

If you don't care about search engine positioning, then use your pop ups wherever you feel they will do the most good.

How to get out of pop up loops.


Script from Public-Speaking.org

To view the script I use at http://www.public-speaking.org view the page in Internet Explorer or Netscape and click on "view" then "source" or "Page source" You can copy the script if you like and have your webmaster adapt it for your site and install it.

They're not actually difficult to install once you are taught how or if you know a little bit about the HTML language that is behind the scenes at your website.

The script will start with:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--begin

var cookie="publicspeaking";

and end with 

// end -->
</SCRIPT>


Cookies

Cookies are tiny text files that are set and read by a website. In the case of a the above pop up the cookie is set so that the pop up box doesn't pop up over and over again for the same person. The one I use keeps the pop up box from popping up for 30 days after it first pops up for the same visitor.

Pop ups are very, very valuable to you when used properly. I highly suggest you learn more about them and implement them on your website. An extremely inexpensive ebook on this topic by Jonathan Mizel can be found at http://www.amazingpopups.com/power 

Upcoming web techniques

• Pop Under Boxes

• Recommend this site forms

• Discussion Boards

• Ask the expert

• Shopping Systems

• Third Party Applications

• How to make your website sell

• How to get free and cool content

• Web customer service

Traffic Generation Technique
Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

One of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your site is by the use of "pay-per-click" search engines. With a pay-per-click search engine you bid on keywords that apply to your type of business. 

For instance: In my business I sell lots of educational materials to people interested in public speaking. Some of them want to simply get better at speaking to get promoted at work and some want to learn how to become a professional speaker. I have chosen two keyword phrases to focus on although there are many that could apply. 

1. Public Speaking

2. Presentation Skills

I bid on the keyword phrases "public speaking" and phrase "presentation skills." Bidding means that I offer to pay the search engine a certain amount of money when someone searches for one of my keyword phrases and then clicks on the link that goes to my site. Thus I pay when they click, or pay-per-click.

Bids can go as low as a penny and as high as the sky. It depends on the popularity of the keywords. At the time of this writing, on http://www.overture.com (formerly GoTo.com) I pay 36 cents to be number one on the keyword phrase "public speaking."  On http://www.findwhat.com I pay only 25 cents. On some other pay-per-clicks I only pay 3 or 4 cents.

Some more popular keyword phrases could be several dollars per click. This is too rich for my blood. I find that I can get lots of good traffic that's looking for my products and services for less than 50 cents each and in many cases much less.

Testing
A really good way to use pay-per-click search engines is to test your sales process. Too many people kill themselves and spend months getting high rankings in the regular search engines only to find out that the traffic they get don't buy anything because the sales process on their website is no good. Using pay-per-clicks for a small amount of money and a short period of time you can see if the visitors you get are buying anything or calling you for more info. If they are, then great. You can now roll out a program to pour lots of traffic to the site. However, if they are not buying or calling you have just saved yourself a lot of time and money driving lots of traffic to your site for nothing. You can spend your efforts fixing up the sales process and then testing again.

Bid Management
One of the mistakes I make (because I'm terrible at counting beans) is overbidding for no reason. Sometimes the persons bidding beneath you may drop out of the bidding altogether. If you pay close attention to your bids, you may be able to drop the amount you bid and still stay number one.

If you really get into the pay-per-click game you might want to consider a bid organizing tool or company that keeps track of all your keywords and associated bids on different pay-per-click search engines. Here are some of the companies that help you with this.

http://managebid.com/ 

http://search-engine-bidtool.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/
clickthru.cgi?id=antion 

http://www.positionguardian.com/ 

Premium Listings
On some pay-per-click search engines if you bid high enough to get into one of the top positions, you also get preferred links on other sites that the search engine has made deals with. In the Overture pay-per-click search engine if I keep my bid high enough to get into one of the top three positions then I get a premium listing on America Online, Lycos, AltaVista, Netscape, Hotbot and Cnet, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Ask Jeeves, CompuServe, EarthLink and many more other search engines. Overture has just made a deal with Yahoo which will really increase the value of a premium listing.

Semi Scams
There are over 150 pay-per-click search engines. Only a few are very successful and get lots of searches. For a complete listing of these search engines visit http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

You might think it would be a good idea to sign up with all of them since you only have to pay when someone clicks. It's not quite that simple. In most you have to put up a $25.00 or $50.00 deposit. For the bulk of the small unpopular pay-per-click search engines you would be putting up the deposit and it would most likely be years before you would get enough clicks to use up the deposit. The search engine might go out of business in the mean time and you would lose your deposit. I'm not saying this is intentionally a scam, but your money should not be used to finance some rinky dink start up search engine that is probably going to sell your information and get you spammed to death anyway. I would just stick with the big ones and test carefully.

The main one I use is http://www.overture.com (formerly goto.com). This provides me with lots of traffic.

I also use http://www.findwhat.com, http://www.bay9.com http://www.kanoodle.com and http://www.7search.com I don't really pay too much attention to any of these, but they do get some traffic.

More tips
Write your site descriptions in an effort to get people NOT to click. Since you are paying for the traffic, you want to make sure that the person clicking is realy, really interested in what you have to offer.

Also, send them directly to the page advertising your product or service. Don't make them search around and get frustrated. Remember, once they click, you pay so get them the info they want quickly.

Search Term Tools
Some of the pay-per-clicks give you a free tools to help you pick keywords and determine their popularity. These tools are very important and will be covered in a future article on keyword selection.

Future Topics for this section

• Trade links -- it's great for you in several ways

• Write one articles and get at least five uses and maybe 50 uses

• Off line ways to drive traffic

• Online ways to drive traffic

• When NOT to drive traffic

This all boils down to the fact that if you have written a book or even articles/reports, you already have the basics of a good audio script. Now I'll bet there are script writers out there that would consider this blasphemy, but too bad. I've got the results and sales to prove my point. I have virtually zero returns too, so don't worry about hiring a high priced professional to write your script.

I'VE WRITTEN NOTHING, SO WHAT DO I DO?
Maybe you've never written anything in your life. Maybe you are a lousy writer and hate writing. Not to worry. There are plenty of other ways to get content into a salable fashion on audio tape.

You can:

• Hire a college student. To take information you supply and turn it into a script. Many English and journalism major would be happy for some part time work on a project like this. It would also be good for their resumes.

• Record random thoughts on your topic. You can keep a tape or digital recorder with you or even keep a simple note pad handy. (It's very, very important to get the thoughts recorded as soon as you get them. Trying to recall all of them later is virtually impossible) If you are using a recorder, get someone to transcribe the tapes, then use your college student or anyone you can find that's good with words to edit and complete the script. 

• Do a speech. Record it and have it transcribed and edited. Then take the transcription and re-record a tape in a studio setting.

• Do a speech. Record it. Edit it and sell it without going through the transcription and re-recording process.

• Use an Interview format. This is a great way to get a tape product done really fast. In this case you create a list of questions on your topic. You get someone else to ask you the questions and you answer them. It's pretty much like a recorded radio interview. If you both want to get a product, simply switch roles with you asking the questions and your partner answering. (keep in mind that you can sell your partner's tape and give them permission to sell yours. This way you get two products instead of one.)

• Do a telephone seminar and record it. You can record directly off the telephone with simple phone line adapters. Sometimes the conference call company you are using will do the taping for you. Then all you have to do is duplicate it if it's good enough or edit and duplicate if it needs fixed up a little bit.

So get going. Don't wait and waste time like I did. I lost at least a year of sales on this tape album simply because I felt like I couldn't write a script. Well you can get a script down on paper pretty easily and you can get a tape done even if you can't get the script done. Just use one of the other methods. Just do it!

In future issues we'll discuss really cheap but gorgeous packaging for your tapes, CDs and other products.

Other upcoming topics

• CD Production

• Product packaging

• Email courses

• Ebooks

• TeleSeminars

• Consulting

• Video Tapes

• Webcasts

• Radio Shows

• Videoconferencing from home

• Streaming audio courses

• Streaming video courses

Email Technique
How to Create Plain Text Email

Email is one of most prolific money makers for savvy Internet marketers. Using plain text is the easiest way to create email and it can be read by the most number of people. You still have to know some of the tricks of the trade to be sure your email looks good.

HTML email is the kind of email that looks like a web page. It's advantage is that it does get a higher response rate when seen by the same number of people as a similar plain text email. The problem is that it is much harder to get the same number of people to see it, which will be the subject of a future article.

For this discussion we will concentrate on plain text email designed to be sent to a distribution or subscriber list in the form of an E-zine (electronic magazine), or electronic newsletter. 

NO FANCY WORD PROCESSORS
Some people create their plain text  electronic newsletter using Microsoft Word and mail it out in that format. The problem is you can't be sure how it will come out. If the recipients don't have Word, they won't be able to read it unless they have the Word Reader from Microsoft. 

If you simply paste a Word document into the body of an email, they'll be able to read it, but you don't know how their email reader will interpret the hidden codes that are contained in advanced word processors. For instance, when I first started publishing "Great Speaking" E-zine I created it in WordPerfect. Later on I found that every time I put an apostrophe symbol in the E-zine WordPerfect turned it into some Greek letter and made my entire document look weird. 

SUPERTRICK
If you must create your E-zine in a word processor, here's a way to clean up many of the hidden codes that will make your zine look bad. Simply copy your entire E-zine (after editing) and paste it into Notepad. Then copy it out of notepad and paste it into the email program or list management company for distribution. This sanitizes the document to a certain extent. NOTE: The same trick can be used when copying text off the web.

A better way in my humble opinion is to use a text based word processor. I use http://www.textpad.com to create "Great Speaking" E-zine.

Formatting
Even though your E-zine is plain text, you can still add some formatting elements to make it easier to read and to emphasize key points. You can also make up graphic elements that make it more interesting visually. 

Dividers:
Below are ASCII divider bars. What does ASCII mean? Who cares? It just has something to do with plain text (remember we don't want to become techies; we just want to make money). Heavier weight bars will get more attention and make more of a separation between articles than the first example below which is a simple thin line. 

--------------------------------------------------------------

¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸ø

:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:.

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.

*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.^.*.

@@@@@@@@@88888888%%%%%%::%:::::::::::.:..:.. . . .

############################################

=======================================

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

********************************************

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Experiment to come up with your own custom divider bars.

All Caps
Although using all capital letters is considered offensive by most Internet users (it indicates that you are shouting), it CAN be used effectively to add emphasis in your E-zine. See, I just used it on the word "can" to emphasize that sometimes it is alright to use capital letters. I also use it for the titles of each article.

"Quotation Marks"
Since you might have some trouble with trying to italicize something in a plain text document, you could simply use quotation marks to add emphasis. Of course, you will use them for actual quotations too.

White Space
Not leaving enough white space (blank lines) between paragraphs and sections of your E-zine is a major mistake. I get E-zines all the time that might have good content, but because they appear so hard to read, I usually end up deleting them. 

Blank Spaces
I'm not talking about "blank lines" as above, but rather blank spaces between the left margin of your E-zine and the beginning of your text. It's not a good idea to try to use tabs in an E-zine. You just never know how the recipient's email reader will interpret them. You can indent text by using your space bar before typing it in. Trying to indent several lines of text could be an exercise in frustration. Even if you get them to line up on your system, you can't be sure they will also be lined up for your subscriber.

Bullets
I use these plain text characters whenever I want to make a bullet:
=> (the "equal symbol" and the "greater than" symbol typed next to each other). Most of the time I don't even attempt to indent the second line of text. If I do, I use the same number of indent spaces for each line that is underneath a bullet. 

Weird Line Wrapping
Sometimes I get things that have a long line, and then one word on the next line, and then another long line:

Here's a sample from Great Speaking E-zine to show you what I'm talking about:

WORDS THAT SELL by Tom Antion

The title of this article is the same as a famous 
book by Richard Bayan that is used by marketing 
professionals around the world. As I was looking 
through it the other day I realized that The same 
kinds of words could be used in presentations to 
get the same kinds of effects.

In the sample above the E-zine was sent with the words wrapping naturally at whatever the senders margins were set at. Below is the same text with line breaks (hard returns) inserted at the end of each line.

WORDS THAT SELL by Tom Antion

The title of this article is the same as a
famous book by Richard Bayan that is used by
marketing professionals around the world. As I was looking through it the other day I
realized that the same kinds of words could
be used in presentations to get the same
kinds of effects.

The text just above is much more readable and professional looking. I was only able to use line lengths of a little over 40 characters because this column is narrow, but you should shoot for a line length of about 60 to 65 characters to get a nice look that lines up beautifully down the left side of anyone's email reader.

In the old days you had to count approximately 60 to 65 characters, including the spaces between words and put a hard return (hit the enter key on your keyboard). You can go a little more than that, but I try to keep it in that range or less. After you were done editing your newsletter, and you knew that you were not going to change things anymore, you went to the end of each line and put a "hard return" by hitting the enter key. That key forces a definite end to the line. Almost any email program that reads your newsletter will keep it looking nice in a straight line down the left side of the page, instead of getting one long line with one word on the next line. If you put a hard return at the end of about 60 to 65 characters, you'll get rid of the formatting problem.

The "hard return" trick is still viable if you don't have any of the new programs that do it for you. There are now several ways to get out of this "pain-in-the-neck" necessity for good formatting. The two ways I know of are as follows: Use inexpensive programs like Textpad at http://www.textpad.com  , or Note Tab Pro http://www.notetab.com/  . These programs are handy because they have full editing features like a good word processor, but they can also be set to put in an actual "hard return" at any number of characters you choose.

Don't think you can just set the margins of your word processor to wrap at 65 characters. Trust me, it doesn't work that way. I have read that it might be possible if you set your settings a certain way, but you are much safer if you put a hard return at the end of each line. If you don't, there will be a pretty good chance that strange formatting will happen depending on the way the recipient's email program is set (which you have no control over).

THE LIST MANAGEMENT OPTION
The other way is to use an advanced list management company, such as http://www.postmastergeneral.com/?affiliate=antion  .They have an automatic feature that can be set for 60 or 72 characters. All I have to do is paste my newsletter into Postmastergeneral's website and click on "autoformat" to put the hard returns in automatically. This is a tremendous time saver.

You might say, "well Tom, why would you want to bother with Text Pad if your list management company does the formatting for you anyway?" My answer is that there are lots of other individual emails you will be composing and sending that must look nice, so having Text Pad around is really handy and it's really cheap anyway..

Link Tips & Tricks
Another cool (and profitable) thing to include when creating a newsletter are links, also known as "hyperlinks." What you need to know is that when someone receives your email newsletter, the link you put in may OR MAY NOT be clickable. Many email programs will recognize the link so all the person has to do is click on it. Some people (AOL included) will have to cut and paste the link into their browser window and hit go, or press enter to go to the link. 

Here's how to format the link so that most email readers will recognize it and turn it into a link.

http://www.antion.com  You must put the "http://" at the beginning and you must put a space at the end of the link for it to work. Don't hit the return key. Make sure you use the "space bar" to add a space at the end. If you use that format, you will have the greatest chance that someone will simply be able to click on your link instead of being forced to cut and paste it.

Email Link
If you're going to put an email address in your E-zine, this is the format:
Mailto:tom@antion.com  You must use the "mailto:" format and don't put any spaces in the entire string. Again you must put a space at the end to help the recipient's email reader recognize the fact that it is a link. In this case, when the email link is clicked on, it fires up the persons default email program and the email address is already in the "to:" line of the email. All they have to do is type their message and hit "send." Go ahead and try it on my link in this paragraph. Even if you are not hooked to the Internet as you read this, your default email program should fire up when you click.

Special Note about AOL:
AOL is always a concern because their proprietary system can be troublesome sometimes. We do need to address AOL though because it has close to 40 million subscribers who we sure don't want to miss. The reputation of AOL is that many of the people using their system are not very Internet savvy, i.e., they are newbies. In some instances you may want to give extra instructions for these people.

For instance: Some AOL people would see the mailto:tom@antion.com and try to cut and past the entire thing into their email program. They don't know they only needed to cut and past the email address. So, they dutifully put the entire thing including "mailto:" in the "to" area of their email program and try to send the email. Well it just doesn't work like that. The "mailto:" is only designed to make an automatic system recognize the fact that this link is an email. You can't actually send an email with the "mailto: term in the address.

If you have quite a few AOL members on your list, you might have to put a note next to the link that says something like this: "AOL users just copy the email address -- not the 'mailto' into the 'to' line of your email program."

Or you can include an extra HTML markup that will allow AOL users to click your links. This is done as follows:

<A HREF=" http://www.yourwebsite.com/ ">AOL Users Click Here</A>

One other method is to use a "Smart" Email distribution program that recognizes an AOL address and makes a clickable link automatically. We will cover this in a future issue.

Remember if you do this, you will sacrifice some of the nice looks of your document because you'll have to put every link in twice just to satisfy AOL folks.

Use the tips in this article and you'll look like a pro whenever you send out your ezine.

Upcoming topics for this section:

• Email strategy

• HTML email

• Smart Email

• Plain Text Email 

• Link tricks

• List management companies

• Getting subscribers fast

• Getting content fast

• How to make money with your zine

• How to gain clout with your zine

• How to maximize the signups on your website

Copywriting Technique

Swipe Files by Tom Antion

&

Why Some Ads Fail Miserably 
While Others Succeed Wonderfully
by David Garfinkel

Swipe Files

Swipe file is a copywriting slang term for files that you keep where you "swiped" ads and advertising copy that you thought were great. 

I keep all kinds of things in my swipe file like direct mail letters, ads from newspapers and magazines, advertorials (ads that look like editorials), websites, emails, postcards and anything even remotely related to my selling efforts. I even keep things that aren't remotely related to what I sell because with a little switcheroo the same concept that sells vacuum cleaners may be used to sell videos. 

I'm looking at my swipe file right now and I see another speaker friend of mine using a picture of himself with General Norman Schwarzkopf. So how does this help me? Well it reminds me to grab celebrity photo opportunities when I know I'm on the program with a big name person. 

I look further into my swipe file and I see a book cover that has back cover copy that reads, "This handy, easy-to-use reference is your gateway to  . . . " and then it lists the benefits of that book. I can easily use the same beginning and put my own ending to create advertising copy for my book, "This handy, easy-to-use reference is your gateway to grabbing the riches you deserve off the Internet" or something like that.

Don't feel bad about using a swipe file. You are not really stealing. You would be stealing if you used the advertising copy word for word for the exact same type of product, but I know you won't do that.

So start collecting advertising copy in your own swipe file. When it comes time to write copy to sell your products, you'll have lots of stuff to get your own creative juices flowing.

Just get yourself a box, bag, or whatever and keep it near the place you normally go through your mail. Anything that you used to throw away as junk might have some good examples of sales letters, inserts or lots of other things that have advertising copy on them. Rip them open quick. See if they qualify to be in your file and throw them in for later use.

You might start another file on your computer for good copy or techniques you find on the web. You can save entire webpages to your hard drive by opening the page in your browser and then clicking "file" and then "save as." Make yourself a swipe folder and you'll always have some good web copy to look at when it comes time to create your own sales piece.

If you need some help putting a sales letter together visit http://www.instantsalesletters.com/al/af.cgi?3556  

Why Some Ads Fail Miserably 
While Others Succeed Wonderfully
by David Garfinkel

The voice on the other end of the phone was tense and impatient. It was a new prospect calling. After we introduced ourselves, he got right to the point: "Our advertising isn't working and we need some help."

Who I was talking to doesn't matter very much, because it could have been almost any of my prospects before they start working with me. That's because, statistically, most advertising doesn't work - if by "work" you mean, bring in new business. Think about your own ads. Even if they already generate leads or create sales for you, don't you have the sneakin' suspicion they could be working a lot better?

Here are two reasons why most ads don't work at all - or if they work, why they deliver far less business than they could:

1. Most ads don't get the attention of your prospects. This is pretty basic. It is physically impossible for prospects to contact you unless they know about you, and if you're counting on them to find out about you from your advertising, then step one is for your ad to get your prospects' attention. Unfortunately, some ads actually do get attention, but…

2. These ads get the attention of your prospect in the wrong way. For an ad to generate a qualified lead or create an immediate sale, it must start off on the right foot. That "right foot" sets the right tone and invites a qualified prospect to call you. I just saw an ad in Newsweek that still has me wondering what it's about and why someone spent tens of thousands of dollars on it. (Bet it wasn't their own money.) 

The ad shows a boy on a bicycle flying through the air, out in the wilderness. The headline, in a semicircle, says, "They will always fall before they fly." Since I'm not a kid and I'm not a parent, it doesn't do much for me. 

But wait - even if I were a parent or a kid, I still don't think this ad is going to sell me on anything that would make the advertiser any money. If I were a kid, the only thing this ad could sell me on is taking these kind of risks to annoy my parents. And if I were a parent, the only thing I can imagine this ad would sell me on is making sure my kid never rides his mountain bike in hilly terrain - since, obviously, the kid in the picture is on a collision course with certain death.

I've got to hand it to this ad in one department - it's interesting. It got my attention. But that's as far as it got.

The Headline's The Thing

Let's get off this negative track and look at some ads that I am certain are making money. These are not from a glossy national magazine, but small ads from today's local newspaper. (By the way, small ads that run in the newspaper are usually paid for by the person who wrote them. And these ads get to the point and are likely to be profitable. Hmmm… I wonder if I'm noticing a trend here… )

All I'm going to show you are the headlines of these ads. But I promise you, the headlines are all you need to see. Tell me if you can guess what each ad is about, and who its target market is:

1. Lose 3-5 Pounds Per Week With The System Proven By Over 90,000 Successful Patients

2. Up To 40% Savings On Heating And Cooling Costs With A (Brand Name) Foam Roof

3. Men And Women - Remove Unwanted Hair Today!

Now, I know what you're thinking. Not very clever. Not very hip. In fact, those headlines are downright boring!

Hmmm. I have two things to say about that. First, if you have tried everything under the sun to lose 40 pounds and you are frustrated to the point of tears, then headline number 1 isn't that boring to you. (And I would say the same regarding people in the target market for headlines 2 and 3.)

The second thing is I want to say is, yes, and it's also pretty boring to stand in line at the bank waiting to make a large deposit into your business checking account. But you know what? Once you've gotten past that boredom barrier, it's actually sort of nice. You know?

And here's some interesting news: A good headline on your ad will get you 90% of the way from the agony of defeat to the ecstasy of advertising success - so you can deal with weighty issues like the boredom barrier and what to do with all that money.

David Garfinkel is a successful results oriented copywriter and the author of Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich, which shows you exactly how to adapt proven money-making headlines to your business. For more information about the book, and to purchase a copy, visit http://www.adheadlines.com  .

Upcoming articles for this section

• The ethical copycat technique

• Creating Urgency

• Creating Scarcity

• Guarantees

• The Reason Why technique

• Sub Heads

Search Engine Tips
Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

In this issue we'll discuss submitting to search engines. First you must understand that there is a difference between search engines and directories. 

DIRECTORIES vs SEARCH ENGINES
Directories have real people who review your site to decide whether 1. the site is good enough to be in the directory, 2. where it belongs in the directory and 3. how it should be described when someone is searching for your topic. Search engines have electronic spiders that index your page. Humans working for search engines rarely see your pages unless you try to pull some dirty tricks and they decide to ban you. We will cover in a future issue the strategies you should use for directories because they are significantly different than the strategies you use for search engines.

Another big issue that you should understand is that many search facilities are pushing toward paid submissions rather than free. This is basically because their free submission model is causing them to go broke. In the past advertisers were throwing money at the large search engines to post banner ads and such. Now the advertisers are watching their money much more closely and the engines are hurting for revenue so they are coming to the website owners to help them get profitable.

This is good and bad. It's good in that much of the riff raff is not submitting as wildly as they were before which will reduce the glut of worthless pages the engines have to wade through to get good results for their searchers. The bad part is that it may cost you a few bucks to get your pages indexed in a reasonable amount of time. If you are a serious emarketer this should not dissuade you from forging ahead. There are still plenty of free submissions available as I'll describe below, but be prepared to make financial decisions when it comes to submission in the future and if you use the free submission areas of each search engine, be prepared to wait a LONG time to get your site indexed.

SUBMITTING TO SEARCH ENGINES
Some search engines allow you to submit every page of your website if you want to and some search engine only want top level pages. A top level page would be your home page or your site index.

A site index is a page to which all your other pages are linked. It's like an index in a book in that you can find all the places you want to go just by visiting this page. An example of a site index would be http://www.public-speaking.org/public-speaking-articles.htm This "site" is full of public speaking articles. This "site index page" has all the article subpages linked to it. Some index pages have every single page in the website linked to one page.

When you are submitting only the home page or site index the search engine's spider supposedly takes care of the searching all your links and indexing your subpages.

Also keep in mind that search engines are making deals with each other. In many cases they are sharing their indexes and directory listings. It's hard to keep up. I highly recommend the paid service at http://www.searchengine-news.com to keep up with the latest, most in-depth discussion of search engine happenings. Be advised, some of their stuff is very technical.

HOW TO SUBMIT
It is very simple to submit your home page or site index. All you do is copy your URL and paste it into the search engine's submission form. For instance if your home page was http://www.speak4money.com , you would simply copy the entire thing from the http to the end of the .com and paste it in the submission form. If you were submitting the site index page above you would submit from the http to the end of the .htm .

If you are submitting any page in your website like http://www.antion.com/teleseminars.htm it would be the same thing. Copy from the http to the end of the .htm or whatever the last thing in your URL is.

Some of the engines want you to submit your email address too. Just submit whatever info they want and be sure to look at the rest of the form. Some of the engines automatically sign you up for email announcements unless you "uncheck" the signup boxes.

Here is a breakdown of the major search engines and their  Submission areas:

Google (free) (free) http://www.google.com/addurl.html Submit only your home page or site index.

Alta Vista (free) http://addurl.altavista.com/sites/addurl/newurl Add up to five pages at a time with their crazy system designed to make it as hard as possible to submit lots of pages. You have to read code letters that are randomly generated in a really weird font so that no automated submission service can dump lots of pages into Alta Vista. You've got to physically visit the submit page to add pages.

Alta Vista (paid) http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/express_incl A page will get in fast and they have a bunch of other benefits. Pick your pages carefully cause it costs $39.00 for the first page and $29.00 for pages 2-10 and $19.00 for pages 11-500. PLUS you have to renew after six months or they delete your pages.

Direct Hit (free) http://directhit.com/util/addurl.html Direct Hit supplies results to many other partner search sites. Just submit your home page or index page.

Northern Light (free) http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html Just submit your home page or index page.

Lycos (free) http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html You can submit each individual page that you want indexed.

AlltheWeb (free) http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php Just submit your home page or index page.

Inktomi Web Search (free) http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp (free submission via Hot Bot) Inktomi also powers AOL, MSN and a host of other search facilities.

Inktomi Web Search (paid)  http://www.positiontech.com/ $39.00 for first URL and $25.00 each for URLs 2-1000. This is for 12 months.

Just submitting doesn't mean you will rank high
Submitting your pages to the search engines is only part of the process of getting ranked high when someone searches. You must learn to optimize your pages so they have a chance of getting ranked high on the keywords you have selected as being the most important for your products and services. 

No automated submissions
Don't waste your time or money on automated submission services or programs. You'll see ads all the time that read like this, "We'll submit your site to 3,027 search engines for $29.95." DON'T DO THIS!!!

What you'll get in return is 3,017 pieces of spam email from all the worthless search engines they submitted you to that only want to get your domain and email so they can endlessly spam you. The 10 or so search engines that you really want to get in will most likely dump the entire submission because they hated automated submitter companies.

For Search Engine Resources click here

Future topics for this section

• How to beat Search directories like Yahoo

• Using side door / gateway pages to grab lots of traffic

• Side Doors: How to make pages that get high rankings

• Search engine ranking software

• Why you should have lots of links

• Site Popularity: Writing descriptions that make people click on your site

• How to keep up with search engine changes

• The inside scoop on paid top ten placement services

• How to be sure your web designer knows what he/she is doing

Cool Software and Gadgets

Software

http://webposition.com/ Web Position Gold. This is the software Tom uses to keep track of his Search Engine rankings and also to help him create pages that will get high rankings.

http://www.surfsecret.com/ Search the web without anyone knowing where you've been. SurfSecret deletes the teltale trail of websites you've visited that even an unsophisticated snooper could find on your computer.

http://tucows.erols.com/preview/194114.html Email remover. Look at your email on the server before you waste time downloading a bunch of junk.

http://tucows.erols.com/preview/194090.html Speaking Email Deluxe. Will read your email to you.

http://www.instantsalesletters.com/al/af.cgi?3556 Generate sales copy immediately for any of your products or services. You must write good copy to get people to pull their wallets out. This software does it for you.

http://www.12ghosts.com/ghosts/shredder.htm Make computer files completely unreadable after deletion so that even the most advanced person can't restore them or even know that they ever existed.

Gadgets

e-pen
wireless digital pen keeps a copy of your notes and drawings in a computer for file reference. Works like a regular pen, but it also sends your notes to your computer through a receiver clipped to the top of the paper. E-mail, save or fax. Works on a standard photo lithium battery 
http://www.e-pen.com 

cardscan 600c
Scans business cards in full color and graphics. Can be handheld. Compatible with pda's, and various contact programs. Will print to paper address books.
http://www.cardscan.com 

Wearable internet appliance
Head mounted eyepiece with handheld gadget for entering data. Belt mounted central unit.
http://www.xybernaut.com 

super mini optical mouse
2 1/2 inches long, 1in wide. specifically designed for mobile computing. 3ft cord. replaces hard to use laptop mouse.
http://www.atek.com 

quickpad pro
1 1/2lb laptop about the size of a sheet of paper. full 86 key keyboard and 16 line monochrome LCD. runs on 4AA batteries. Applications are built into flash memory. 
http://www.quickpad.com 

radio frequency identification
Tiny tags with built in radio transmitters are put on items for easy retrieval. To locate items click a button on either a palm, a cell phone, or other device that's been interfaced with the system.
http://rfidinc.com 

eBeam System3
Works with your own white board. Captures images from the white board to send, print, or share on your computer.
http://www.e-beam.com 

Useful Websites

http://www.link-spy.com/ Keep track of your reciprocal link agreements.

http://www.freetranslation.com/ Translate those foreign emails you get.

http://world.altavista.com/ Another language translator.

http://www.smartmoneyuniversity.com/ Learn how to invest all this Internet money you are going to make.

http://www.dotcomscoop.com If you ever plan on being a big dot com then this site will tell you the inside scoop on what companies are doing right and what they are doing wrong. .  . They pull no punches at this site.

http://www.yil.com/guru Misc webstuff by a Yahoo expert.

http://slashdot.org/ (News for Nerds Only)

http://netmarketingmasters.com/antion.html Don Crowther gathers the best of the best Internet marketers who record their best secrets of making money on the web.

Computer / Automation Technique
ShortKeys
More techniques

There is a downloadable software on the market that has saved me an enormous amount of time and energy. This software is called ShortKeys. ShortKeys allows me to simply type in a few pre-selected keys and have text, up to 3000 keystrokes, pop up without my having to type what I need every time. ShortKeys can be used in any Windows based program. For any of you who are constantly typing in your e-mail address, phone number, URL, or any number of items that are included in all of your correspondence, you must read on.

When you are dealing with repetitive keystrokes and phrases, ShortKeys is a miracle time saver. 

Consider yourself composing an e-mail that is going to have several references to a particular website or a specific URL, or any other phrase, for that matter. With the ShortKeys program running, once you have your pre-programmed phrases in place, you will only have to type in the code you assign to that phrase, which is much quicker than having to take the time to type in some of those horribly long URL addresses. 

You can also used ShortKeys for entire paragraphs or multiple paragraphs, for use when responding to common customer questions as an alternative to using your signature file function as we covered last month. Not only does this save you time but it also saves you the aggravation of retyping the same exact phrase over and over again. 

The reason ShortKeys is handy to have in addition to using your signature file function is that the signature file function only works when you are writing emails. ShortKeys allows you to pop in text, URLs, phone numbers and all kinds of repetitive text anywhere, anytime.

When you are not using the ShortKeys program for e-mail composition and only for single letters, they can still be very helpful. You can program any phrase, reference, or number into this software. When you need to type in a phone number, or any other reference material you use frequently, all you have to do is type the pre-programmed code and it does it for you. 

Programming these phrases is really very simple. You type in the text you want to appear and then assign a code to that phrase. For instance: If I want to type the URL of one of my sites "The Advanced Public Speaking Institute," I simply type "P" and then "1" and I get http://www.public-speaking.org  .

Sometimes the ShortKeys program can be a bit of a pain in the neck. If you are going to be typing in individual references that include any of your codes, the ShortKeys program kicks in anyway and types the entire pre-programmed string that you told it to. For example, if you are sending an e-mail to jane@fr1.com, and you have a code in ShortKeys for "r1", this could create a problem because as soon as ShortKeys sees the "r" and then the "1" next to it, it throws in all your preprogrammed text. 

There are several ways around this. If you think about it beforehand, you can hit the space bar after the "r" and then hit the backspace key before you type in the "1". Or it is very simple to disable specific ShortKeys. All you need to do is maximize the ShortKeys program, highlight the annoying programmed short key and click on the light bulb. 

You will need to remember which ones to turn off before you start on any other project. Another way to stop ShortKeys is simply to close the program. In that case, you will not be able to reference any ShortKeys you might find useful as your work progresses. 

You can find this software as a free download (ShortKeys Lite) at www.download.com, or go directly to the ShortKeys site at www.shortkeys.com. The free download version gives you up to 35 ShortKeys. If you find that you need more than this, you can buy the unlimited version for $19.95 from the ShortKeys website. 

In short, the ShortKeys ability to make your life easier all depends on the amount of repetition in your daily work routine. If you find yourself typing your telephone number, website, or a number of any additional repetitive phrases, more than you'd like to, then ShortKeys is for you. 

More techniques:

• In Internet Explorer all you have to type in the domain name and hold the control key down while hitting enter. If the website is a dot com, then Internet Explorer puts in the http://www and the .com for you. Go ahead and try it. Type in antion then hold the control key and hit enter.

• To send an email in Outlook and AOL or to send an Instant Message in AOL hold the control key and hit enter.

• Want your windows calculator handy without going through a bunch of menus to get it? Click "Start" then click "Run" Type in "Calc" Then click "OK" Your calculator will come right up and will be waiting for you in the "start" "run" menu the next time you need it (as long as you don't use the "run" menu for something else in the mean time.

Miscellaneous Stuff You Need to Know

Viruses

• Don't forward virus warnings! I've been getting tons of these and then the guilty party sends another email apologizing for being gullible. QUIT FORWARDING STUFF! I said this last issue, but it needs said again. You will just look like an IDIOT.

Precautions to take to reduce the risk of viruses:

• Install antivirus software 

• Update the antivirus software regularly

• Install  firewalls (see below)

• Delete e-mail and attachments from unknown senders and be careful about opening attachments in general

• Regularly update operating systems and applications, 

• Stay informed on the latest threats http://www.mcafee.com http://smallbiz.symantec.com/ 

Internet Fraud and Security

• Don't put your passwords on a piece of paper and tape them to your monitor unless you have your own foolproof encryption and deciphering method.

• Watch out for orders that use a free email address. They might be OK, but this is one of the many indicators of potential fraud. I would try to call the customer to verify. If you get a bogus number and a free email account, I wouldn't ship.

• You probably need a firewall if you have high speed cable modem or DSL service. The reason is that you are connected to the Internet full time and your computer is more susceptible to hacking because of this. You could be liable to your customers if someone easily got into your computer and stole all your stored credit card numbers, especially if you don't even have  this basic level of protection. Some good ones are Black Ice Defender, Zone Alarm. Get a free security audit at http://www.securityspace.com/ 

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 

• The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), found that 74% of small businesses in Canada say e-mail is their most important communication technology. -- Folks email is here to stay so you better get busy and learn how to use it properly.

• Marketing agency Brann Worldwide, reported that 92% of US consumers feel positively toward companies that ask their permission before sending them information. This applies to any medium. 81% of their survey respondents said they would be willing to respond to companies if permission was asked beforehand. -- Forget those broadcast faxes and spam emails. Get the permission FIRST!

• An annual joint survey is conducted by SpectraCom Inc. and Circle 1. In 2001 they found that 25% of kids in the US (82% of the kids were between 8 and 12 years old) spend 10 or more hours online per week which is up from 19% for the previous five years. 60% of them have asked mom and dad to buy them something they've found online. This is up from just 40% in 1998.-- Millions of those kids will be in the consumer market themselves in a few short years. Some already are through their parents. Will you have a mature and system well rated in the search facilities when they start buying?

• Nielsen//NetRatings is reporting that at-home broadband internet users in the US grew 90% in one year. The number of users went from 11.2 million in November 2000 to 21.3 million in November 2001. This represents approximately 20% of the total Internet users in the US -- This means that before too long you'll have an easier time selling large audio and video downloads as products which will virtually eliminate your cost of goods sold.

• The Los Angeles Times reported on December 13, that Internet Radio is not doing well. Only 8% of Americans listen five minutes or more per day.-- Don't waste your time or money trying to broadcast on the Internet for a living. 

• IDC , found that the value of online orders increased by 46% in 2001. -- Bundle your products to get your individual tickets higher and use smart shopping systems like http://www.kickstartcart.com to upsell for you.

• According to a Winterberry Group study permission-based commercial e-mail makes up about 10% of the 300 billion messages sent in 2001; that number is expected to reach 25% of 600 billion messages by 2005. The same study predicted that the email marketing industry will grow from $910 million in 2001 to $3.5 billion in 2005. -- If you want your piece of the action you better get busy learning how to market with email.

• Computer Associates International came out with it's top ten virus list. The Badtrans.B Internet Worm topped the list. The company states that virus writing sophistication has increased significantly. Click here to see a list of precautions.

You will have to print out the following reference pages separately. They are included in each issue, so there is no need to print them out every time. Do, however, check them frequently because I will put new additions to these pages at the top of each page until the next issue comes out.

Recommended Learning Tools

Search Engine Resources

Suppliers

Back to January 2002 Index page