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Nov.  2002
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Butt Camp Schedule

Butt Camp CD

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TeleSeminar Kit

Publicity Book

Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing

Free Great Speaking Ezine

Kick Start Cart

The Speaker Shop

Free Shopping Cart System E-book

Antion & Associates
tom@antion.com
301-459-0738

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 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
Shopping Systems

The best thing I can do here is to direct you to
http://www.public-speaking.org/ebook.htm where I have a free ebook for you to download called How to Pick A Shopping System That Makes You Money. It's in PDF format and will give you the complete scoop on shopping systems.

Note: Those of you that already have the paid version of http://www.kickstartcart.com can now get a FREE three-hour orientation tape that takes you from the simple set up to advanced selling techniques.

Traffic Generation Technique
Reprint/Resale Rights

One way to create traffic to your site is to write an informative ebook that you will give away. This ebook must have value and it should not simply be a big sales pitch. You can see an example of one at http://www.public-speaking.org/ebook.htm Right click on the link and download the book, "How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You Money."

As you look through the beginning of the book, you will see that I have noted that unlimited resale and distribution rights are included with the book. That means as soon as you download it you can sell it and keep all the money or give it away.

The reason I do this is because the book promotes my shopping system http://www.KickStartCart.com  and you can do the same thing.

Make sure the book has links in it going the various products and services you offer. This could create a massive amount of traffic to your site or it could create just a little depending on how valuable people think it is.

Product Development Technique
Mentor Programs


As usual I almost always do something myself before I try to teach it to someone else and this topic is no exception. I started my mentor program back in January so I now have 10 months experience to tell you about. And yes, even though this is not a physical product, it is a product.

What are the benefits to you?

  • Mentor programs are a way to help more people in a cost effective manner, my consulting fee is nothing to sneeze at. This allows me to attract more participants to the program because it�s a bigger bang for the buck

  • It's an additional Revenue Stream for your business.

  • You can multiply yourself. When you are on the phone with many people your knowledge is being sold at a cheaper rate, but in more volume. Similar to doing a speech with potential customers in the crowd.

  • You create better results for people because you are with them over time This in turn will create an ever expanding group of people who will promote you more enthusiastically and credibly because they actually got good results.

  • A mentor program provides a group of people under your control for back end product sales � They are a more qualified and ready group for back end product sales and recommendations. (You better be darn careful not to recommend something that is junk or you will lose their loyalty.)


Benefits for Mentees

  • Access to a credible source that really cares about their success.
    Help with the hundreds of decisions that face them.

  • Networking. -- Many mentees are making deals with other mentees because they have a complimentary idea.

  • Synergy � Part of the program to this point is that I talk to mentees while other mentees are listening. A tremendous number of ideas are presented in any one session. When I�m talking to Joe, Dan is listening. When I talking to Dan, Joan is listening, etc.

  • Discounts � on things they were probably going to purchase from me anyway.

  • Freebies

Income Potential

  • Pricing -- Corporate mentoring can command a higher price from $4500 per year to $15,000 a month or more. Small business mentoring can be $2500. Individual mentoring can be $1000 or more a year. All these figures are just made up but they are generally representative of the relative amounts you can get depending on your market. Your notoriety, the service you're offering and many others factors will determine how much you can charge.

  • Pre-requisite Sales -- My mentees must have about $300.00 worth of learning materials before they are allowed into the program. This helps to insure their success and keeps them from being lost and wasting time with simple ideas they could easily learn on their own.

  • Back end Products � Mentees are prime candidates to purchase other products and services from you and to recommend your products and services to others.


How to Get Mentees

  • Recruitment � Try to get the "right" kind of mentees.
    Here is my overriding principle- Your mentor program will help quality people get better and achieve more. It is unlikely you will take non-quality people and turn them around. (I�m not doing any kind of judging of people here. I just know that certain types of people have little chance of success in my program.)

  • Put notice on your website http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/mentorprogram.htm

  • Put notice in your Ezine

  • Tell people about it in person

  • Tell them about it on the phone

  • Use affiliates to recruit for you (You must be careful that they don't recruit people that have little chance of success)


Payment

I originally started out letting people pay monthly. I found that this did not work because people were spending their last nickel to join and thinking they were going to be rich at the end of the month. They didn't have realistic expectations and they didn't have the money to build their sales system.

Now people pay for six months or one year in advance with no refunds. I have found that this makes for a much more committed mentee who is infinitely more likely to get good results. I feel like I'm doing them a favor by pre-qualifying them because it does neither one of us any good if they don't get results. Sure I get some short term cash flow, but the long term effects of people telling others that they didn't get results (even though it wasn't my fault) will hurt my program.

Occasionally I will cut deals, but I make the people write all the checks in advance and I tell them I'm going to deposit them no matter what happens. I try to avoid making these deals because the accounting is a hassle and IN GENERAL I get a lesser quality mentee who is more likely to drop out. But if I think a person is really serious, I'll make exceptions.


Communication with mentees

  • Mostly email announcements

  • Sometimes it�s easier to call with an answer to one of their questions than to type it.

  • The only mail I use is to mail them a tape of any sessions they may have missed.


Here's what my mentees get

  • Welcome Email and teleconference schedule

  • Initial two hours of phone consulting spread out over two or four calls

  • Unlimited email access to me for questions

  • Two TeleConferences a month (this may increase to three or four as program grows.

  • Discounts 25% off all products and services.

  • Freebies � Teleseminars, Books, PDF files,

  • Private membership site (this e-magazine you are reading)

  • Discussion board http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/forums


Scheduling:

Theory- If I booked myself solid on the phone and I only told someone what I know from the past, yes that would be helpful to them, but think of this. If I didn�t leave anytime to work on my own system and learn new things, my value to the mentees would DECREASE over time. So I must leave time to both rest my mind and to learn new things.

On my mentee and consulting calls I try to book one call mid morning and one call mid afternoon Monday through Thursday. This gives me the rest of the time to work on my own things and room to fit in urgent situations for my clients and mentees. Since much of my speaking is on the weekend, I leave Fridays open to work on my stuff, rest my mind a little or to travel.

I alternate mentee teleconferences from 1:00 PM Eastern time to 8:00 Eastern time. They are usually on Wednesdays, but that is not carved in stone. One time I had to reschedule the call because I had to fly that day.

During the 90 minute call, I do a topic for about 30 minutes and then I interview individual mentees for the rest of the time. The topics aren't in any order. I just pick something that I think they need to know about.

Right now, here are the fees for my program.

$1500.00 six months plus pre-requisites
$2500.00 year
$3000.00 per month unlimited phone consulting

If you would like to join visit http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/mentorprogram.htm

 

Email Technique
Bounce Management

Many list management companies provide you with an option that allows you to choose how many times they will try to deliver to an email addresses if the email you are sending bounces.

When I first started sending an ezine I set my option to three attempts to deliver before the address would be automatically removed. You generally don't want to remove someone from your list after only one failed attempt to deliver them email. There could be any number of reasons why a particular good email doesn't get delivered. The server may be down or there could have been a brief glitch in the Internet connection. Also, the recipient may be on vacation and incoming emails exceeded the capacity of their inbox. You wouldn't want to delete the good address because of a temporary condition.

About a year ago the free email accounts at Hotmail and Yahoo were experiencing a greater amount of difficulty than usual. My list management company alerted me to expect a high number of bounced emails from those companies and suggested that I raise the number of bounces allowed before they automatically removed the address from my list. This worked for a while until . . . .

 . . . places like Hotmail and Yahoo started calling you a spammer if you sent too many emails to their systems that bounced. So now I've come full circle and have my settings back to three bounces before automatic deletion.

LOW VOLUME
If you have the time and I don't see how you could with a high volume list like mine, you could go over the bounced emails to see if there is some obvious reason they bounced. Someone could have accidentally submitted an address and put .cam instead of .com or something simple like that. If you can save a few subscribers by noticing things like that and fixing them, that's great. It's just pretty tedious and probably not worth your time.

Copywriting Technique
Why You Should Use Guarantees
by Tom Antion

Ok, last month I told you why I hate guarantees. This month I'll tell you why you should use guarantees most of the time.

  • For people who are on the borderline of ordering, the guarantee frequently pushes them into the order column because their risk is reduced.

  • When the risk is reduced to zero, your prospect is hard pressed to find a reason NOT to buy. NOTE: A guarantee probably won't overcome other things you may be doing to make the prospect mistrust you like poor quality, homemade looking website, outrageous claims, etc.

  • Guarantees give people a logical reason to buy. They figure they can always return the item if they don't like it.

  • Guarantees give people an "excuse" to buy in case they have to justify the purchase to someone else. "Honey, this fluorescent garden hose will look great in our yard at night and if it doesn't it's guaranteed, so we can always return it."

  • Guarantees reduce people's fear of ordering.

  • If you have a good product, guarantees will give you many more sales than you would have without the guarantee. With good products, the increased sales will far outweigh the number of returns.

  • On unique products you can generally charge more than the standard markup for your product category because of the guarantee. This will give you more profit per sale.

  • In reality, most people don't return things even if they are junk. This is less true for expensive products.

  • Most people are honest and won't rip you off.

  • Many people simply forget about your guarantee, so make it as long as you want when you tell them about it.

Next issue I'll show you different ways to craft a strong guarantee.

I just completed a two hour audiotape seminar on this topic called
Copywriting 901: The Fast Track to Writing Words that Sell. It is awesome and could make you a thousand times it's cost by learning the above technique and all the other techniques I put on the tape.

Click here to order

Search Engine Tips
Keyword Placement Part VII
META Tags

 

Use META Tags
The next topic in behind-the-scenes page design involves using META Tags. META Tags are being used less and less, and you certainly shouldn�t depend on them to get high rankings. There are many places on a web page that keywords could and should be placed. However, you should know how to use them as long as search engines are still using them.

If you want to see some samples of META Tags, open your browser (either Internet Explorer or Netscape) and click on �view.� Then click on �source� in Internet Explorer, �page source� in Netscape. A new window will pop up and you can look at all the behind-the-scenes HTML programming of just about any webpage. You can also see the META Tags of other webpages if they have them.


Note: The <TITLE> Tag should be the first thing after the <HEAD> Area of the page and then comes the �description� META Tag and then the �keyword� META Tag.

Here's an example of what the META Tags look like:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Customer service training</TITLE>
<META name=�description� content=�Customized customer service training at your location by the person that �wrote the book� on customer retention�>
<META name=�keywords� content=�customer service speaker, training, trainer, client retention�>

Making web pages is pretty easy to do now and you generally don't have to know much about HTML. However, you do have to go a little bit behind the scenes to learn about META Tags.

Description META Tags
META Tags are a place where you can put a description of your webpage and your keywords. Not all search engines use these descriptions and keywords, but some do. On the search engines that use these META Tags, when your site comes up in search results, it will have the description that you wrote, which is really nice because that means you can control what�s being said about your site and entice people to click on your link.

You should do your best to write descriptions that are compelling. It would be a shame to come up as number one in a search but have no one click on your site because your description was so poor. Try to give them a good reason to click. Search the web to see descriptions of other sites. Try to evaluate the techniques they use to entice you to click on their link. Incorporate the same techniques when writing the descriptions to entice people to click on your link.

The above is an excerpt from "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Speakers" http://www.antion.com/click.htm
 

Send me your suggestions for future Search Engine related articles for this section. mailto:tom@antion.com  

Cool Software and Gadgets

Software
No new software to report this month.

Gadgets

http://www.computergear.com/rolcal.html Roll up calculator

http://www.spylife.com/tmachine.html Pocket size lie detector

http://www.spylife.com/alcotest.html Keychain breathalyzer

http://www.spylife.com/faces.html Face composite sketching software in case you see a sniper

http://www.beachcomber.com/Gadget/Cool/hokeysp.html The coolest bike accessory I've seen in a long time

http://www.beachcomber.com/Gadget/Electron/shake.html Can't get up in the morning? This gadget will shake you awake.

http://www.greatbigstuff.com Lots of cool props

Useful Websites

 

http://www.dell.com Build your computer to suit and then lease it.

http://www.davesite.com/ Beginner tutorials

http://www.atomz.com Put a "search our site" box on your site for free. I use it at http://www.public-speaking.org

http://www.jpegwizard.com Make your photos more suited to the web.

http://www.coolarchive.com/logogen.cfm Make your own logo and banners in seconds.

http://www.award-it.com Free website award submission. Watch out! You could get awarded lots of spam email from worthless award sites.

http://www.linkpopularity.com Find how many sites are linking to you in three major search engines.

http://affiliateprogramsthatsuck.com/ Check this site before you join an affiliate program

Computer / Automation Technique
Email Extraction
More techniques

When you get serious about Internet and permission based email marketing you will run into many situations where you will want to create a nice, clean list of email addresses that are scattered about in a file and lumped in with lots of other text. You would want this list of email addresses so you can easily use them in one of your bulk mail software programs or to upload to your list management company.

For instance, you might have a bunch of email addresses that you exported from a database program that looks like this:

"[name]","[email]"
"Gary","tummytuck@xyz.com"
"David","facelift@abc.com"
"Wendell","boobjob@hottermail.com"
"Marlyn","hairtransplant@yahole.com"
"Maxine","lipo@artificiallyskinny.com"
"Carolyn","rhinoplasty@hair.net"

After using an email extractor program you would end up with a list like this:

tummytuck@xyz.com
facelift@abc.com
boobjob@hottermail.com
hairtransplant@yahole.com
lipo@artificiallyskinny.com
rhinoplasty@hair.net

Can you imagine how long it would take you to clean this list up by hand? What if you had a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand addresses?

Email extractors do this within seconds or maybe as much a couple minutes or so for a long list.

I got the one I use from http://go.to/eextractor It cost $24.99. If you have a smart kid working in your office you can probably find one for free that will probably work just fine.

I have lots of lists and sublists and legitimate sources for email addresses and this tool saves me hours and hours of work to use those addresses.

Warning: Some of these tools are designed to be used by spammers to grab email addresses off of websites, newsgroups, etc. I do not condone the use of these tools for that purpose.



More automation techniques:

This section will be an ongoing effort to keep you from grabbing your mouse which slows you down, and is bad for your wrist.

  • In Internet explore simply type "my documents" or "my computer" in the address line and hit enter and you will be taken directly to the respective area of your computer.

  • Also in Internet explorer simply type "go" or "find" and then a search term and you will be taken to a set of search engine results based on your search terms.

Miscellaneous Stuff You Need to Know

  • Mike at http://www.soundpages.com is a great guy and I just bought an Edirol computer recording system from him. It's great and easy to install and I can do studio quality work right at my desktop. Tell him I sent you.

  • Make sure your shopping system has a setting that alerts the visitor to call, fax or email in case a problem arises with your connection to your credit card processor. You don't want to miss a sale because something out of your control fails.

  • Make it a regular habit to check to see if your websites are functioning. You can do it yourself or you can have an assistant do a random or a regular check daily.

  • When considering an Inkjet printer check out the ink consumption and cost of ink. Many of these printers have an enormous cost per page.

  • You can purchase the Copywriting Combo which includes 2002 instantly usable headlines at http://www.professionalspeaker.com/catalog.htm Scroll down to "e-books."

  • I use this book all the time  "The 2002 edition of the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks."
    The biggest and best "little" book ever. Over 150 pages of undocumented secrets for Windows 95, 98, Me and XP, plus tricks and tweaks for applications, the Internet, Easter eggs and more. Most of these tricks are new and many have never been published before - anywhere.
    Order it online now and pay no shipping, handling or postage. Only $19.95 at http://www.EditorEric.com/sales/lbbct.html .

  • You can search for images/pictures, etc at Google based on keywords.
     

Case Study
Tom Antion
(Your faithful publisher)

OK. It's October 31st and I got so busy this month that I forgot to arrange a case study. So, I thought I'd tell you a little about what I've been doing to keep learning the newest and most profitable Internet marketing techniques and give you a little idea of significant events on my 2002 calendar the past year.

January 19th -- I did a Butt Camp in Vancouver, BC Canada. Dealing with product shipping across the border was a real hassle and UPS totally screwed things up and we're still fighting about it in November. They have now lost all my International and domestic shipping business and most of the UPS people I've had to deal with are pencil pushing idiots.

January 28th -- I conducted my first TeleConference for my new mentor program http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/mentorprogram.htm

February 7th -- Butt Camp in Hawaii before the Western Workshop of the National Speakers Association. Almost a total waste of time. Businesspeople in Hawaii are a different breed and just don't get it. I also made the BIG MISTAKE of using a fax broadcast service. I got nothing but Irate calls.

February 28th -- Butt Camp in Atlanta before the Eastern Workshop was a big success as are most ButtCamps.

April 20th -- Butt Camp in DC

April 26th -- Had lunch with Yanik Silver an extremely bright Internet marketer. We always kick around great ideas.

April 27th -- Did a survival skills workshop for NSA DC

May 30th -- Conducted a 2 hour TeleSeminar with storytelling expert Doug Stevenson

May 31st -- Did a beginner speaker TeleSeminar "Top Ten Ways to Make Money Speaking"

June -- Cancelled out of my first speaking engagement in over 2100 performances because of improprieties in the commission system. I donated all my commissions to the five speakers who sold the least at the event. Each speaker got nearly $700.00.

July 12th -- Did ButtCamp in Orlando before the NSA convention. It was the biggest one ever with about 55 participants including an entire row of past NSA presidents.

July 12th -- Totally destroyed two laptops within five minutes when a bad power supply zapped the mother board of my brand new Sony and then zapped the mother board of my back up Sony. Had to borrow a laptop from an attendee and then go to Office Depot to buy another one for two presentations at NSA

July 15 -- Had a standing room only crowd at Mega Monday at NSA. I gave away $60,000.00 in prizes during my session and shot money into the crowd with a giant leaf blower.

July 16 -- I did the sales trainer's PEG at NSA

August 27 & 28 -- Did two TeleSeminars and can't remember the topics.

September 13th -- Visited Alcatraz prison and most people said I should probably live there. Also my host took me on a ride on a cable car in San Francisco and tried to kill me hahahaha

September 14th -- Spoke at Northern Cal. NSA

September 15th -- Largest NSA chapter fundraiser ever. Chapter earned over $2800.00 above the cost of bringing me in.

September 12th -- Spoke at South Florida NSA for the fourth time.

Septermber 13th -- Did a fundraising ButtCamp for the chapter.

October 19th -- Spoke at Virginia Speakers Assn.

October 20th -- Did a fundraising ButtCamp for the chapter.

That's not much of a schedule. So what did I do the rest of the time?

  • A few corporate speaking engagements

  • Tons of phone consulting

  • Created and refined many new products

  • Developed my one-page website technique

  • Still working on a deal to create a new small business Internet marketing program for a major player in training that must go unnamed at this point in the deal.

  • Landed a deal with an Internationally known author to adapt the Click book for the legal market

  • Worked on a deal that fell through on creating a version of Click for the medical market.

  • Reviewed hundreds of Internet marketing ezines and websites to glean the best techniques.

  • Took a Teleseminar from Alex Mandosian on conversion strategies.

  • Bought a new fancy sound card to do more audio editing on the computer.

  • Try to find time to evaluate the hundreds of joint venture deals I'm offered.

  • Started searching for a retreat center or "Bed and ButtCamp" hahaha to live in and have weekend guests who want to study Internet marketing.

  • Leased my first computer from Dell and I love it and I love the concept.

  • Upgraded to Windows XP Professional and I love it because I can run it really hard for days at a time and it virtually never crashes.

  • Got a tremendous number of new mentees who are making good progress and learning a ton.

  • Continue to work on and refine my own sales process.

  • Will be on the cover of Sharing Ideas speaking news magazine in December.

  • Also booked as the headliner of the September 2003 Magnificant Marketing Seminar in Beverly Hills, CA

  • Booked as a featured speaker at the Mark Victor Hansen Mega Book Marketing University in March, 2003

  • Started working a set of Magic tapes for speakers, but did not have time to finish it.

  • Got http://www.professionalspeaker.com up and running with Bill Brooks and Jim Cathcart just before the NSA convention. We now have a streaming, video, audio and ebook membership site.

  • Bought nearly 300 domain names this year.

  • Got married and had three kids . . .  hahaha NOT!

  • Did a bulk email to an opt in list for $1500.00 and DID NOT GET ONE RESPONSE . . . .NOT ONE!

  • Slowed down on the purchase of opt in subscribers and cleaned out about 15,000 bad addresses from Great Speaking list.

  • Have a new TipZine at http://www.professionalspeaker.com run by Will Brooks who is doing a wonderful job running it and running the site.

  • Was featured on NSA's Voices of Experience CD

  • Sold over 1000 ebooks in the past couple months

  • Hired an assistant from India who is back in India for six weeks to pick his bride.

  • Took the guarantee off the "Wake 'em Up Video Professional Speaking System" because I got tired of tire kickers and worthless slugs wasting my time and then returning the product. Sales are just as good.

  • Haven't visited the http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/forums for a long time.

  • I'm discontinuing the free email at http://www.greatspeaking.com because of poor service from the provider.

  • Spend about $5000.00 a month on pay-per-click search engines.

Plus lots more that I just can't think of right now. I'm really smokin and will promise to bring you big things in 2003.

Tom

TRENDS

  • Beyond Interactive found that 69% of men prefer news or compelling information in the subject line of a permission based email and 64% of women preferred a discount offer.

  • CustomerRespect did a study of the Fortune 100 websites and found that 45% of them forced customers to opt out from unsolicited email (Don't you try this. They have enough money to buy themselves out of any trouble. Also noted was that 83% do not have autoresponders letting a customer know their correspondence has been received and 37% did not respond to general inquiries. As a small business person you should be able to really shine and help customers much better than the big boys and girls are.

  • ILogos Research found that 91% of Fortune 500 companies are recruiting employees on their company website up from less than 33 % in 1998. If you need a job to finance your Internet start up, you now know where to look.

  • Outlook 11 has a new feature that will not download unwanted spam beacons when viewing an html email in preview mode. Spam beacons tell the sender that they have landed on a good email address. How much this cuts down on spam and damages legitimate email remains to be seen.

  • The UK is experimenting with Cell Phone antennas being hidden in lamp posts to increase the coverage. Health advocates are up in arms citing health dangers from the microwave radiation.

  • In a related case in my home state of MD a case was thrown out that alleged a man got cancer from his cell phone.

  • http://www.adsx.com/faq/verichipfaq.html You can now legally have a chip implanted in yourself which carries scannable information about you.

  • READ THIS GREAT ARTICLE ABOUT EMAIL -- http://internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=7992

 

End of this issue

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 November 2002 Index page