Internet Marketing Junkie

Gathering and Structuring Review Part 1

Joe Mudd — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:26:15 +0000

IM Writing Tips – Gathering and Structuring by Tiffany Dow.

Tiffany Dow is an expert at creating content for eBooks and reports as well as for email autoresponders and blogs. She spent years ghost writing for the “gurus” and she perfected her craft.

She now works for herself writing PLR content for sale and teaching others to do it.

Tiffany’s Newest Product

She has just released the first volume of her new series of Internet Marketing Writing Tips eBooks. This book deals with Gathering and Structuring.

I’ve always found her work to be very high quality. Unlike the gurus she used to work for, she seems to be a normal, real person intent on helping her customers.

Tiffany writes a lot. She posts several articles on her blog daily, many include videos. She has a lot of private label rights products for sale and a steady stream of info products. I don’t know how she gets all that done.

Products that show you how she gets so much writing done are worth a multi-part review.

So lets get started.

Some Basics

I’m on Tiffany’s list. I learned about her new Gathering and Structuring eBook from an email she sent.

I bought this eBook with my very own money. No freebies from the author in exchange for a good review here. And yes, those are affiliate links.

With that out of the way, lets dig in by looking at the sales page for Gathering and Structuring.

What’s Gathering and Structuring Anyway?

From the sales page Tiffany says:

Before you can even START to write, you have to know how to gather ideas and then structure them into an organized fashion.

It’s not easy to figure out what to write about. Writers block is real. I’ve tried staring at my computer screen, hoping ideas would jump out. That’s never worked for me, how about for you?

Well Tiffany Dow knows how to make that happen.

The Promise

Tiffany promises to teach you how to make ideas jump out of your computer. And how to take those ideas and shape them into an article with information that people will search for. And probably buy if you sell PLR to them.

She’s going to show you 4 different methods she uses for:

Gathering and structuring ideas for articles
Gathering and structuring ideas for eBooks and reports
Gathering and structuring ideas for blog posts
Gathering and structuring ideas for email autoresponders

What’s In The Course?

From her site:

In depth keyword tutoring on applying them to your content for IDEA gathering. This is different from someone teaching you where to use them or how to pick profitable ones. I’m specifically teaching you how they can help you gather ideas.

How to write different slants about the exact same topics.

Two ways I structure my articles once I have my ideas gathered.

Three methods I use to gather ideas for blog posts (and structure them) – whether or not you’re the premiere expert in a niche.

Gathering and structuring ideas for reports (and I cover opt in reports as well as reports for affiliate promotions in the digital and physical markets).

Gathering and structuring ideas for email autoresponders based on passion and real life experience compared to emailing using a profit pulling technique and structure.

PLUS…a ton of real examples so that you can see the method in action rather than just hear someone teach the technique.

There are also 13 bonus items. She took her methods to create 13 templates in both doc and txt formats. These templates can be used to fill in the blanks when you write, saving you more time.

The tools you need to use these methods are all free tools.

The Guarantee

There is no money back guarantee offer on the website. That’s a bit strange, because guarantees are a standard copywriting item. Nearly all info product authors provide a guarantee. This didn’t bother me, because I’ve bought Tiffany Dow’s products before and I know the quality of the work she does.

And… she’s selling this through the Clickbank Marketplace. I’m pretty sure Clickbank gives a guarantee on everything sold in their marketplace (60 days?).

So that’s probably not an issue here.

Stay Tuned For Part 2

In my next review post on this IM Writing Tips Course I’ll go over how Tiffany does Gathering and Structuring for keyword articles.

Dr. Glenn Livingston

Joe Mudd — Mon, 16 May 2011 05:43:33 +0000

Dr. Glenn Livingston is a scientific marketing expert. He's worked for some of the largest companies on the planet.

This is another of my Gurus You Don’t Know series.

Dr. Glenn Livingston is a psychologist and a true marketing guru. Yet, you may have never heard of him.

Dr. Livingston seldom promotes those big product launches – you know, the ones that fill your email box everyday.

Who Is Dr. Glenn Livingston?

Dr. Livingston holds a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology. Prior to 2001, Dr. Glenn Livingston ran a large clinical practice in Syosset, NY, specializing in work with couples and adolescents.

He’s been a marketing psychologist for more than 22 years. He’s worked for some of the biggest companies in the world. These include:

A T & T
American Express
Bausch & Lomb
Burger King
Colgate-Palmolive
Exxon
Ford Motor Company
General Mills
Kodak
M & M/Mar
Master Card
Sara Lee
Nextel
And many more…

He’s a super ninja expert on PPC advertising. He knows Adwords like few people do. He also started his own advertising agency, Rocket Clicks, to help small business owners use PPC ads to grow their business.

Dr. Livingstone give out a lot of free cheat sheets, mp3′s, and videos here.

April Coupons at Namecheap

Joe Mudd — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 14:42:19 +0000

Save money at Namecheap with these coupons codes.

For your money saving pleasure, here are coupon deals for April at Namecheap:

Coupon code ELEPHANTS will give you a discount new com/net/org/us/biz domain purchases.
Coupon code VPSX gives you 10% off your first month of VPS web hosting.
Coupon code HOSTU gives you 10% off your first month shared/business/reseller hosting.
If you’d like discounted transfers to Namecheap use coupon code SWITCH2NC. The price is $4.99.

Save at Namecheap.

Does Finding Ideas For Articles Make Your Brain Explode?

Joe Mudd — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:47:16 +0000

Tiffany Dow's tips for Gathering and Structuring your writing ideas.

Do you have a blog? Do you use article marketing?. How about that free report or ebook you need to write – having a tough time putting it together?

Do you know:

How many articles to write, and how often on your blog.
How to write those articles.
How to get a keyword list, and more importantly, how to turn it into articles.

It’s funny that we’re often taught the two ideas separately -
either someone points out how they do keyword research, or they
discuss the way they wrote a high converting article.

But merging the two together can be tricky (even for those who
consider themselves good writers). There are so many things that go
into a good article marketing formula, such as:

Proper keyword usage from a search bot angle.
How to present an article slant that your target audience is most likely to read.
How to research the best article content to fill in your word count.
The best way to let the information you’ve researched flow to the reader.

The Ghost Writer To The Guru’s Wants To Help

Tiffany Dow is the former ghostwriter to the gurus (guys like John
Reese, Rich Schefren, Ewen Chia and Travis Sago to name a few) and
she just launched a really affordable (around $17) guide that
teaches the entire idea gathering and content structuring for
articles.

Since article marketing is such an integral part of our online
business (for backlinks, for expertise branding, and for traffic),
it’s really important that you know how to do more than just take a
keyword and slap some sentences together.

This is especially vital in light of the new Google “Farmer Update”, to weed out poor content and reward good content. Take a
look and see if this is something you need to work on.

I know it’s not some “get rich quick” strategy like most people are
hawking, but creating quality content is an essential online business
skill. It will ultimately result in more sales for you!

Learn IM Writing Skills.

Poke The Box by Seth Godin

Joe Mudd — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:26:45 +0000

Super star author Seth Godin has a new book out, called Poke The Box. I just finished it, or rather Seth just finished reading it to me… I got the audio version.

First, about that audio version. It’s recorded on a MP3-CD. I guess I didn’t notice that, and I never heard of it anyway. It doesn’t work with my car CD player. I had to bring it back in and put it on my iPod. A bit troublesome, but it finally made it where Seth could read to me while I drove… a great way to learn by the way.

What the Book Is About

The idea of the book boils down to – Do Something.

Take action. Move forward. The world doesn’t have room for standing still anymore. You have to innovate. Take initiative.

Godin tells about his uncle, a PhD from MIT no less, that built a buzzer box for his child. It was just a box with a couple of buttons, lights and buzzers. The baby learns that poking a button causes a light to come on. Poking another makes something else happen, and poking both buttons gives an even different response. The curious child will Poke the Box to see what happens.

We must be like that child, poking our box and seeing what happens. Make changes. Do stuff.

The Seven Imperatives

Godin lists 7 imperatives for success in business, and life.

Be aware – of markets, opportunities and of yourself.
Be educated – understand what’s around you.
Be connected – to engage and be trusted.
Be consistant – so folks know what to expect.
Build an asset – you need something to sell.
Be productive – so you can have a good price.
Have the guts and passion to ship – the do something part.

Godin claims you can knock it out of the park on the first six and still fail. The seventh imperative is the most important.

Kaisan

What Mr. Godin talks about in much of this book is really what the huge corporation I work for calls Kaisan.

Kaisan means continuous improvement. You must always seek ways to change things, even when they seem to be going well.

This is hard. It’s so tempting to just sit back and enjoy it when things are working. But people are watching. When you succeed they’ll copy what you’re doing. Then they’ll do it better. You’ll get left behind.

So you have to beat them to the punch. Experiment. Poke the Box.

This doesn’t mean you are trying for home runs all the time. You seek small improvements. Make a little change. Test. See how it goes, or as my Japanese trainers say, “Wait awhile and see how things will turn out.”

Perhaps we should call the author Godin San.

As Godin points out, many of your experiments will fail, maybe most. Experiment anyway. You never know until you try.

Poking the Internet Marketing Box

I know I’m guilty of this, and I think a lot of newbie Internet Marketers are as well, we think too much. We want to learn every tactic. We study until our eyes bleed. But we become frozen, afraid of the doing. Afraid of failure.

But failure is just part of the learning process. Yep, it’s a really hard part. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing it wouldn’t they?

As Poke the Box points out, we need to do the failing and learn from it. Yeah it hurts a bit, but rising above that fear is the way to greatness.

Get Poke the Box and read it (or let the author read it to you like I did).

The A to Z Guide to the Internet: E

Joe Mudd — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:35:58 +0000

E-business

An e-business is defined as any business that is drawing a majority of its income from selling their products or service in an online format.

There are many advantages to running an e-business, as opposed to a traditional business.

The start up costs for doing business online are relatively low compared to opening up a store.
All you need is an internet connection and a website. There can also be added costs for advertising and setting up a merchant account so you can accept payments.
You can do business directly from your home, and with certain suppliers, you don’t even have to have inventory.
Another advantage to doing business online, as opposed to locally, is that you can sell to the entire world instead of just your local community.

E-business can also be used to refer to any business practices that are handled electronically (such as supply chain management, order tracking and processing, and payroll).

E-book

This is a book that can be downloaded and read on a computer. Most e-books are saved in Adobe Acrobat and require Adobe Acrobat reader (a free program) to be accessed.

E-books (sometimes spelled ebooks) are quickly becoming the newest way to receive information online. There are many free e-books available on the web, and there are also e-books available for purchase.

When you purchase an e-book, you can download it directly to your computer.

E-mail (electronic mail)-

E-mail is mail that is electronically sent to your computer. E-mail (sometimes spelled email) is delivered instantly. This feature is one of the main reasons people seek to gain Internet access. E-mail is completely free to use, and allows you to communicate worldwide.

To use e-mail, you need a computer, an online connection, an e-mail account and an e-mail program. The e-mail account can be obtained through your ISP, or from one of several free e-mail services online.
These free e-mail services include:

G-mail (www.gmail.com) – provided by Google
Yahoo Mail (www.yahoomail.com) – provided by Yahoo
Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) – a service of MSN
Fast Mail (www.fastmail.fm)
AIM (www.aim.com) – an AOL e-mail service, independent of the AOL ISP
Inbox (www.inbox.com)

Since an e-mail address is the main form of communication online, it is recommended that you choose a memorable e-mail name. Too many numbers and misspellings will make it difficult for others to contact you. Many people use more than one e-mail address to separate their business and personal e-mails.

E-mail Marketing Campaigns

This is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail to communicate commercial and fundraising messages. These focus on gathering e-mail addresses of web visitors. These addresses are added to a potential customer mailing list, and the list receives updates on the site, free e-courses, and special offers.

Autoresponders are an essential part of e-mail marketing campaigns.

Emoticons

One of the biggest problems with communicating over the Internet is the inability to show emotion. Emoticons have filled that gap by providing ways to use text to describe feelings.

The name “emoticon” comes from a combination “emotion” and “icon.”

Simply put, they are symbols that are used in chat rooms, message boards, e-mail messages and IM messages to display emotions.

Emoticons are normally used at the end of a sentence in order to convey the feeling associated with that sentence. For example, when a person makes a statement in jest, the “winking” emoticon can be used afterward to imply sarcasm.

Originally, emoticons only made sense if you turned your head to the side. Today many IM programs, chat rooms and message boards employ animated “smilies” to imply emotion. These smilies are normally unique to the platform they are being used on.

Here are several of the most common emoticons:

: ) — Smile
: O – Surprise
: ( – Frown
: P – Tongue stuck out
; ) – Winking
> : ( – Mad

Examples of graphical smilies can be seen at http://www.world-of-smilies.com/.

Alice Seba

Joe Mudd — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:15:55 +0000

This article is another in the series I’m calling “Gurus You Don’t Know.”

You’ve heard of all the big rock star Internet Marketers… people like Jeff Walker, Frank Kern, Ed Dale, Andy Jenkins and many others.

Well there are many others out there quietly making a living online. They’ve learned to make money from home, or where ever their computer happens to be when they decide to work. They don’t get all the hype the “guru” set does, but they don’t dish out as much hype either.

They’re good folks to learn from.

Our First Guru You Don’t Know

Alice Seba

To kick things off I’d like to introduce you to Alice Seba.

Alice has been making money online since 2002, a very long time in Internet years.

She had just given birth to her first child. Like most people that want to work online, she wanted to stay home with her baby, but still needed an income.

Alice had a love of writing. She took this ability to the Internet and started a full-time business.

Alice’s Online Empire

Alice Seba started on the Internet by using her writing skills. It’s no surprise that most of her online business ventures focus on providing content for Internet marketers. PLR products are one of her specialties.

You can find her work here:

All Private Label Content

At All Private Label Content Alice offers PLR content in a couple of ways.

There are three monthly memberships

All Marketing Content
All Mom Content
All Health Content

You can also purchase individual article bundles when you just need some quick content.

APLC also offers 30 autoresponder bundles on a number of topics and also individual PLR reports.

Learn more about All Private Label Content

DIYplr

Seba’s latest business is DIYplr.

DIYplr provides step-by-step PLR products. These include detailed instructions including photos and screenshots.

If you need content offering step-by-step DIY information these packs will save you a lot of time.

The topic list is heavy on the business and Internet marketing niches, but there are packs in several others as well.

Find out more about DIYplr.

All Custom Content

Writing content for ebooks, autoresponders and even blog posts is time intensive. Using PLR material helps save content creation time greatly. But you still need to make changes to PLR material to make them unique and to fit them to your customer needs.

Seba has help for you here too.

Her All Custom Content service will write your totally original content for you. This can even include research and transcription services.

Check out All Custom Content here.

Free Monetize Your Knowledge Course

Learn to monetize your website free.

You can learn about Internet Marketing from Alice Seba in a couple of places.

She offers a free course called Monetize Your Knowledge.

The course starts with three initial lessons that help you discover the useful knowledge you have, how to package it, and how to get others to provide knowledge for you.

Then she provides 8 modules each detailing a method of monetizing that knowledge.

It’s a very detailed course and well worth the price of your email address.

Contentrix Blog

Alice Seba's Contentrix blog

Alice also operates the Contentrix blog. Here she provides many content marketing tips.

They just started a 30-day Email Challenge with a months worth of lessons and exercises designed to teach you to start and grow your email list. It’s great stuff and free.

Visit the Contentrix blog.

More Gurus You Don’t Know To Follow

That’s the first look at a guru you don’t know. There will be a lot more to follow. Come back often and subscribe to the RSS to read about more.

Do you know an under the radar guru? Share your knowledge in the comments below.

PLR Membership Site Coaching Course

Joe Mudd — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:02:36 +0000

Melissa Ingold at Special Reports Club has released a new Coaching PLR package dealing with Membership Sites.

This is a huge package of premium quality PLR.

What’s in the Package

This is set up as a 4 week course but you do NOT have to set up this up as a 4 week coaching program if you don’t want to. You’re more than welcome to package all 4 lessons and checklists together into one product and sell it that way.

This 4 week coaching program has been developed for intermediate level business owners. So we’re talking about people who already run an online business.

So with that said, here’s what’s inside this package:

4 weekly lessons with assignments (total of 47 pages of content & 14,454 words)
Checklist to accompany each lesson
Pre-written sales letter
Professionally designed mini site template for your sales letter
4 banners/buttons to advertise your 4-week coaching program
Professional ecovers to represent each weekly lesson
PSD files to give you the ability to edit all the graphics
Pre-written squeeze page
Professional designed template for your squeeze page
Giveaway Report to entice people to opt-in to your mailing list
5 autoresponder emails to follow-up with your leads and encourage them to sign up for your 4 week coaching program

High Quality Writing

Here is a sample of the material:

Lesson One: Finding Your Ideal Membership Site Model

Running a membership site is one of the most proven ways to cement yourself firmly near the center of your niche and create a steady, repeating stream of income. You can support and bolster your Membership Site with your other marketing efforts, and vice versa. A Membership Site makes a wonderful core around which to revolve your business.

The key to succeeding is very simple, as any of the top Membership Site owners will readily admit: It’s all in the research and planning stage. Skimp on that, and you’re playing Russian roulette with your dreams and goals.

This lesson will help you systematically brainstorm, research and plan your idea Membership Site model.

(The word “model” can apply to two areas — the type of Membership Site you decide to set up, and the technical format in which you decide to install it. Next lesson we’ll talk about the latter but, for now, let’s settle on the type of Membership Site you want to work with.)

At the end of the lesson, there will be a short assignment. Put the assignment to work for you, and you’ll be a firm step closer to making your dream a reality.

Step One: Brainstorming Your Ideal Membership Model

Before you can decide what format is going to work best, you need to know what types of membership sites are out there. We’ll quickly review a list of seven of the most common models.

Here they are, ranked roughly in order of difficulty, with the simplest model first:

1. Subscription Newsletter

Yes, this ranks as a Membership Site, providing it is an entity in its own right, and not just something you mail. The big difference is that your member needs to visit your site or a download page to access or download their monthly newsletter. In exchange for their monthly fee, through your downloads you grant them private access to your high value insider tips, information or instruction not normally found on the net.

Advantages: Minimal interaction — all you have to do is focus on providing the content and ensure it packs enough heat to make your members thank

You can find many more samples at the website.

Who Should Get This PLR Course?

Membership sites are hot. They provide continuing income rather than one-time purchases.

If you deal with any business that needs a continuing relationship with customers this Membership Site Coaching PLR is a good fit or you.

Get the full details on the package.

The Next Monster Product Launch

Joe Mudd — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:42:41 +0000

Get ready to have your email inbox explode over the next few weeks. Tim Godfrey and Steven Clayton are releasing their next big product, called The Blueprint Project – Black Edition.

Godfrey and Clayton are the guys that brought you Commission Blueprint and Niche Blueprint.

Commission Blueprint taught how to find products on Clickbank to promote. Then they showed how to develop website and use Adwords to promote the sites.

Niche Blueprint went into niche selection and setting up an e-commerce site. It included membership in a site to find dropshippers for your niche products. So this course taught how to research, setup and market an online store that sells real physical products and uses dropshippers so you don’t have to carry inventory or ship products yourself.

They did a very thorough job in both courses. It was high quality training.

I’m not sure what this new covers, but the sales copy sounds a lot like that used for the Niche Blueprint products.

Here’s a sample of the copy on the prelaunch page:

This amazing video reveals a unique system that
allows anyone, no matter what their level of
experience to generate as much as $3000 each day
selling *weird* stuff like train horns, pet
supplies and sewing machines…

…WITHOUT having to stock any products

…WITHOUT needing to know anything about the markets!

Be warned though…

This is TRULY bizarre – but well worth watching
because this proven system could allow you to:

- Build online assets that you can sell for
thousands, even millions of dollars.

- Generate income fast – no experience, time or
technical ability needed.

- Take just 60 days to create a SIX-Figure Income

Some pretty bold claims.

You can read the copy and sign up for the video now.

The A to Z Guide to the Internet: D

Joe Mudd — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 12:27:04 +0000

del.icio.us

del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) is referred to as a social book marking site. It is for storing and sharing web bookmarks with other users.

The service is completely free and relatively new. del.icio.us first came online in late 2003.

Everything that is posted on del.icio.us is viewable by the public, although you can choose to make specific bookmarks private. Bookmarks are publicly viewable for a purpose. Many people use del.icio.us to publish links to their personal or business blogs.

You can use the del.icio.us interface to keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music etc. You can also share your favorites with anyone who has an e-mail address.

del.icio.us also has a search function that allows you to explore what others are book marking, and find other websites that are related to your interests.

Domain Name

This is the address or URL of a particular website. For example www.Google.com is the domain name for the Google search engine. The domain name is the text name that covers up the numeric IP address of a computer that is hooked up to the Internet.

Domain names make the World Wide Web more user friendly. Instead of having to remember a string of numbers, we can remember the name of the website.

Registering a domain name for an online venture can cost as little as $8. Website domain names are registered to prevent people from using the same name for their website.

There are several different companies that allow you to register a website and many of these companies offer hosting packages as well.

Download

The act of transferring file or files from one computer to another using the Internet.

There are a few basic methods of downloading from the Internet. You can download directly from a website or an ftp site.

You can also download from e-mail attachments (although it is highly recommended that you do not download e-mail attachments from unknown sources).

Downloading is one of the most highly used functions of the Internet. Many programs, files and documents are available for downloading from the Internet.

Double Opt-In

A technique used in opt-in or permission based marketing. It ensures that a potential customer actually wants to receive the marketing materials and is a way to prevent unwanted spam.

The basic process is as follows:

A potential customer requests information from a website and is asked to confirm that they want the information to come to their e-mail address.
The potential customer then receives a confirmation e-mail in their inbox. This e-mail requires them to click on a verification link to receive further information.
Once the potential customer receives verification, they will receive the future messages from the mailing list, e-course or autoresponder series.