How To Back Up Your PC Drivers NOW (You Better…)

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | June 17, 2009

crashed harddriveI put a new hard drive in one of my computers yesterday, and it made me remember 2 resources that I highly recommend you remember and use:

Driver Magician: This awesome little program automatically finds all the drivers being used on your PC that aren’t included in the Windows installation disk, and saves them all to one directory/folder, which you can then burn to a CD.

When your computer hard drive crashes some day, that CD with all the drivers can be worth it’s weight in gold. After installing Windows on your new hard drive, just insert that Driver CD, and ALL of your hardware drivers are found on it. At the very least it saves time, and sometimes it saves a lot more than that. Download it now.  It is a Shareware program that is free to use for 15 days, and while you can buy it, frankly, you only need it for one day.

The Next Problem: Are you sure you have the product keys for every Microsoft product you own? Windows? Microsoft Office, and everything else? Download http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder it’s a simple little program that looks through your computer and gives you all the registration codes for your Microsoft products in a text file. Save that file somewhere OTHER than your main computer hard drive.

When your hard drive fails, that text file may be the only help you can get to reinistall Windows products. Just to be clear: This is not some Warez/Crack/Key Generator.  It doesn’t let you steal microsoft software illegally. It just finds the product keys for Microsoft products you already have installed, product keys that you may have lost which would cause you a lot of trouble if your hard drive failed.

Do it now.  Better to be safe than sorry.

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Newbies Want Quantity, Pros Want Quality

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | May 19, 2009

People trying to create information/training products often ask things like “How long should my ebook be?”

That reminds me of:

Q: How long should your legs be?
A: Long enough to touch the ground

There is no right or wrong answer, but here’s a generalization depending on who you’re marketing to:

Newbies often don’t appreciate the value of information. No matter what they’re sold, if they don’t get a LOT of it, some will feel they were shorted and it could affect your refund rate.

The more experienced tend to appreciate specific, valuable info without the fluff.

(I personally despise enormous font size with enormous margins double-spaced to use up more pages. It’s harder to read, harder to take in, and it turns me off.)

It’s kind of like restaurant portion size: In the U.S., it’s widely known that many restaurants give oversized portions, the customers overeat, it’s bad for them, and it makes them feel like crap when they’re done.

But the alternative is to reduce portion size, which causes some patrons to feel like they paid too much for what they got which could hurt repeat business (even though what they ate was exactly what they should eat for a meal and they left with a full stomach, just not feeling sick).

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Avoiding Copyright Infringement On Work-For-Hire

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | May 8, 2009

It seems like a good idea… Hire someone to do some work for you. Whether it’s creating website designs, having website content or graphics created, having someone write an ebook or articles for you, it’s a way to get more done in less time by leveraging the work of others.

The problem: How do you know the person you’ve hired didn’t steal or plagiarize the work they’re passing off to you as their own?

2nd Problem: If you pay someone to create a website for you, and they just go out and copy a competitor’s site, complete with graphics and text, you are the one responsible.

What to do:

1) Have anyone who does work for you sign a written statement that they did the work themselves and that they didn’t plagiarize or steal the content. That can deter some people, but if you’re hiring people from other countries to do work cheaply, they may not care.

2) Grab snippets of text they’ve written, put it in quotations, and run Google searches on the exact phrases. (Not entire paragraphs, but sentences, or 1/2 sentences, etc.)

…You may quickly find a website(s) with that exact content on it, in which case yours is plagiarized, or at best, was created with PLR (Private Label Rights) content that is not unique. If you discover this, inform the person you hired that it is not acceptable, and either cancel the job or have them do it right.

When it comes to graphics, it’s not quite as easy to determine, but do your due diligence.

The problem is even worse if you’re having a product created for others to re-sell. In that case, you have to be even more careful, because not only do you open yourself to copyright infringement lawsuits, but you open up those you’ve sold the product rights to as well.

There are many horror stories about these types of issues. -Be careful.

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How To Earn $36/Hour Selling Hugs

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | May 7, 2009

People are always asking how they can charge money for things that others are giving away for free… The video below is your answer: Sell The Deluxe Version.

Want to start a simple business that requires no skills, no training, and virtually no startup cost? Get started in the rewarding field of professional hug-giving. Why give away what you can charge for? Initial tests averaged $36 an hour.

Added benefit: It’s hilarious. (Note: Does contain some profanity)

This video is funny, but the take-away is: Add value, create a deluxe version, charge more than your competitors, and promote the bejeezus out of it. -And try to have fun along the way.

Topics: Funny, Marketing, Video | 3 Comments » Trackback URL

Tips For Avoiding A Scam, Ripoff, Misleading Offer

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | May 1, 2009

As the economy sours and times get tougher, scams and “shady offers” will definitely be on the increase. When it comes to finding out if something is legitimate, the Internet is your best friend.

I can recognize most scams on sight, but even I did a double-take earlier this week when I received an official-looking mailer that had misleading information about property taxes and… you guessed it… asking for payment to lower those taxes. (There was even a penalty fee for not returning payment by a cutoff date.)

How To Find Out If It’s A Scam In About 10 Seconds

Usually, that’s all it takes. In the above example, the company name turned up the entire scanned-in letter, with comments from others about how misleading it was.

Don’t get scammed, check it out!

-Tim Gross

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Taking The One-Time-Offer Burger Analogy Even Farther

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | April 20, 2009

Michel Fortin wrote a very good blog post denouncing the “churn and burn tactics of aggressive one-time upsells. Read his article first, then I’ll expand on his analogy (including tainted meat, bad-tasting burger, and more.)

Here’s Michael’s real-world analogy of one-time offers:

“A burger? Sure, that’s $3.00.” (You hand over a $20 bill.) The server, holding your burger in one hand and your $20 in the other, continues:

“Now that you’ve given me $20, how about fries with that? No? How about an apple pie? No? Then how about an extra burger for only half off, and you better decide now because this is the only time I’m making you this special offer!”

Remember, you’re hungry. You paid for the burger. You see the server holding both your change and your burger, almost taunting you. Naturally, you’re getting annoyed by now. Just when you think you’re finally getting your food, the server quips:

“OK then, I know you’re hungry, but before I give you your burger and your change back, may I interest you in our burger-of-the-month club?”

From personal experience, I can take Michel’s analogy even farther:

And the same jackass soon after the sale:

…And this all from an apparently respected Internet marketer. I did get a refund after a brief argument, and will not be doing business with him in the future.

And that brings me to two points:

  1. Is the upsell(s) relevant?
  2. Attitude/Likeability Is Everything

1) I previously documented the 6 upsells for the Bedazzler. At least they were all relevant to the initial purchase. If you’d just ordered a Bedazzler, you dang-well might want extra rhinestones, pre-printed patters, iron-on extras, and all the rest.

But with some of these Internet marketing one time offers, the upsells are unrelated, or inappropriate in that they damage the enthusiasm for the initial sale.

Trying to upsell fries after a burger purchase is one thing. Trying to upsell a bicycle to ride home on and a pre-paid cell phone that you can use to call in your next burger order in advance is another.

2) In adherence to “reason why” advertising, you can have legitimate reasons to offer a one-time upsell, and it can be done in a friendly way that minimizes customer annoyance. It’s a fine art, and frankly a lot of people can’t do it. That’s what leaves customers feeling used and abused.

Topics: Marketing, Oops (Bad Move) | Add A Comment » Trackback URL

Download This Free “Need To Know” Marketing Training Ebook

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | April 15, 2009

Paul Myers has released a free ebook called “Need To Know” that I strongly urge you to download and read from start to finish. It’s a full 112 pages of valuable info that both beginning and experienced online marketers alike will benefit from.

Paul is one of the few fellow online marketing experts that I listen to without reservation… He provides very valuable info and you never have to worry whether he’s going to “pull a fast one” or do something squirrely.

Download and read it now.

Note: You do need to subscribe to his (free) newsletter to get the ebook. You should do that because:

1) It’s one of the most valuable free marketing newsletters, period.
2) You can trust him with your subscription… Again, no funny stuff.
3) You can always unsubscribe immediately after downloading the ebook
if you really want to (but really, that’d be kinda dumb.)

I’m going to say the same thing about Paul that people always say about me: “He should be charging money for this stuff!” …So make sure you download it now while it’s still free.

To your success, Tim Gross

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So, Uh, Don’t Copy The YouTube Business Model…

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | April 15, 2009

It currently costs Google $711 million a year to operate YouTube, and it only brings in $240 million in ad revenue… Which means it’s costing Google $471 million dollars this year to run YouTube.

Ouch.

So the good news is the number of user-generated videos that are uploaded to YouTube is increasing exponentially.

The bad news is that the more widely used YouTube becomes, the more Google will lose.

Why? Because the vast majority of user-uploaded videos are uninteresting, lame, useless, and not worth anything. For every YouTube video that is able to bring in ad revenue, there are almost an infinite number (and rapidly expanding) that don’t, and those costs will only increase.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to YouTube in the future. Eyeballs aren’t enough; At some point you have to make money.

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Writing Your Sales Page For Affiliates, NOT Customers

By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | April 3, 2009

Here’s a couple of questions for you:

  1. If you wanted to impress your new girlfriend/boyfriend, how would you act?
  2. If you wanted to impress your new girlfriend/boyfriend’s parents, would you act in the exact same way?

Here’s a more relevant example:

  1. If you wanted to write the best sales letter you could you’d write one way
  2. If you wanted to get your press release about your product covered by the media, you’d write a different way.

Why?

Because if you’re trying to get a press release published, you really need to write it for the media to find it credible, relevant, and non-promotional/hypey.  Because if the media doesn’t run with your story, your potential customers will never hear about it from your press release anyway.

Writing Your Sales Page For Affiliates

Here’s why this matters if you’re trying to get affiliate sales.

If your business plan is to make the bulk of your product sales through affiliates, in essence you’re writing your sales letter for the affiliates more than for your potential customers. (huh?)

Here’s 2 scenarios (with very simplified numbers to make a point)

Ad #1 converts at 2% and potential affiliates are impressed with it when they look over your sales process as they decide to promote you. 100 Affiliates sign up and each sends you 100 visitors
(100×100 = 10,000 x 2% = 200 sales)

Ad #2 converts at 4% (yea!) but potential affiliates are turned off by your sales process for some reason (boo!). Only 10 Affiliates sign up and each sends you 100 visitors
(10×100=1,000 x 4% = 40 sales)

The truth is, affiliates would have made more money promoting Ad #2; their own snap judgment about it was wrong. But unless you’re well-know in your niche and have the ability to explain yourself and convince affiliates, that doesn’t matter.

This is especially true in Affiliate Network/Marketplaces, where you’re just “one more offer” out of many that affiliates can promote. These decisions are made very quickly as affiliates scan through potential offers:

-Hmmm, pays out well, let me click through to the sales letter:

Look, I’m not saying this is easy to figure out, and to make it harder, different affiliates like and dislike different things. Solution: I’ve actually contacted big affiliates before I set up a new product to ask them their personal preferences on things before I even set it up. Why not try to make them happy? (Example: Do you like a big initial commission or smaller, recurring commissions?)

In Summary: If you hope to do a large portion of your sales through affiliates (which is smart, because you don’t have to risk $$ up-front for advertising costs), potential affiliates are essentially the gate-keepers.

Keep that in mind as you create your offers.

Topics: Copywriting, Marketing | 6 Comments » Trackback URL

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