I asked him some pointed questions to focus him on the things that matter and directed him to another friend who knows his industry very well and might be able to give him some pointers.

Then I recommended he have a laugh. Something we can all use more of.

The future of social media… (click on the image to start the video)

If you’re wondering what the next decade is going to bring for Internet marketing, consider this:

At the end of the last decade…

* Dotcom stocks were heading straight up in one of the biggest orgies of manic stock buying the world has ever seen

* Banner ads were selling at massive (and irrational) premiums

* Pay-per-click advertising (then offered by just one company, GoTo.com) was considered an oddity

* Yahoo was the 800 pound gorilla in Internet media

What a difference ten years can make

Today:

* The NASDAQ still hasn’t come even close to recovering its Year 2000 heights

* Banner ads are sanely priced

* Yahoo appears totally hopeless

* Pay-per-click advertising (mainly in the form of Google AdWords) has taken over the world

Crazy times

I was there ten years ago.

Actually, I was there seventeen years ago (1993) when I started making my first tentative experiments online. I had the once-in-a-lifetime thrill of witnessing and participating in the birth of a new medium.

But all was not sunny in Internet Land.

By 1998, I reached a point of total bafflement at what was going on in San Francisco and Silicon Valley in the Internet industry I helped pioneer.

People I knew to be hopeless idiots and in some cases outright scammers were being helped by New York investment banks like Goldman Sachs to loot billions of dollars from the stock market by selling shares in companies so loony that they defied belief.

That year, the fall of 1998, I voted with my feet, said “bye” to the Bay Area digerati crowd (who thought I was nuts) and moved back east to the sleepy, beautiful and then low-priced Hudson Valley to wait for the inevitable.

A year and a few months later, New Year’s Eve 1999, I watched in amazement as Internet shares that were already insanely priced went straight up.

Then it all fell apart

By the end of 2000, Internet companies were vanishing in droves.

Companies valued at hundreds of dollars per share were selling for pennies…if they were still in business at all. And as the months progressed, the implosion became more and more severe.

When I went back to San Francisco in 2003 after having been away for nearly five years, it was like a neutron bomb had hit the place. The buildings were still standing, but the people – and the companies – were gone.

In the middle of the wreckage, I did something that a lot of people thought was crazy. In 2001, I started working on a new Internet marketing training. In 2002, I launched it.

It was called the System Seminar.

The turn around

I created the System Seminar with a simple premise…

In spite of the crash of bogus Internet companies, the Internet itself was as solid as a rock – and it was going to grow, this time for real.

How could I be so sure?

For the same reason, I was willing to risk substantial time, money, energy and my reputation for sanity by putting on the first web marketing conference ever (November 1994, San Francisco.)

This time around though, things were going to be different.

The big change

The big change – and we built it right into the very first System Seminar – was that Internet advertising was going to be based on careful calculations of ROI (return on investment.)

In a way, this was nothing new. Old school direct marketers have been tracking the profitability of their ad buys for decades.

But this was a brand new concept to many on the Internet.

It’s hard to believe now, ten years after the fact, but it’s true. Before the System Seminar, only a handful of scrappy Internet entrepreneurs were tracking anything besides “hits” and the cost of banner ads.

I’m not going to take credit for the massive sea change that’s taken place in the last ten years

But I will take credit for being the first to put it on the line to teach this approach as the only one that makes sense for Internet marketers when nearly everyone else was still talking about “branding” and “mindshare.”

The big change – Part Two

In 2002 (2001 actually if you count our early beta trainings), the System Seminar was the only place on earth where you could learn an integrated approach to Internet marketing…

…One that combined smart online media buying and careful results tracking with “old school” smarts like direct response copywriting and list management.

From the very beginning, our focus was on pay-per-click. We even mentioned Google AdWords at our first seminar, even though it had only just launched and no one really understood how it worked yet.

Fast forward a few years and two of the attendees at that first System seminar (both then total PPC “newbies”) wrote what have become the two definitive books on the subject (See Perry Marshall’s “Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords” and Howie Jacobson’s “Google AdWords for Dummies.”)

Thanks to its PPC revenues, some say that Google is poised to take over the earth.

Not so fast Google

Here’s what absolutely won’t change in the coming decade:

* The Internet will continue to be a central part of hundreds of millions of people’s lives. If anything, it will become even more central as the Internet solidifies its position as the “central switching station” for all media: text, audio, video, buying, selling, communicating, chatting, gossiping etc.)

* Consumers will continue to seek VALUE in their purchases and if my crystal ball is working, they will be even more militant about getting value for their money in the years to come.

* Advertisers – the ones who are going to survive that is – are going to become even more sophisticated about tracking their results and making sure they get the best possible value for their money.

What this is going to look like is smart Internet marketers diversifying away from Google AdWords.

AdWords will continue to be an important part of the mix, but anyone who is not taking energetic, aggressive steps to free themselves from dependence on Google for their traffic is going to have cause for regret.

Strategy for System 2010

I’ve been writing ad copy since I was in high school and started paying the rent with my efforts back in the mid 1980s.

I am a serious student of the game.

Copywriting is the switch that turns raw traffic into money.

I don’t know how to state it forcefully enough but here goes: Traffic is worthless without masterful conversion and conversion is just a fancy word for ad copy, so in a very real way the whole game of Internet marketing boils down to copywriting.

In all the noise about Twitter, Facebook and other “mindshare building tools” a lot of internet marketers have lost sight of what matters in Internet marketing.

To bring us all back to reality in 2010, I’m bringing in two Big Guns of the copywriting world to System 2010 – both multi-decade veterans who write real ad copy for real companies selling real products to real people. Both master teachers…

But don’t take my word for it. They’re both published authors with their books continuously in print: Bob Bly from the US and Drayton Bird from the UK. Google them.

The other piece of the puzzle: traffic

Great copywriting, as important as it is, is not enough.

You need the second part of the equation: traffic.

I’m a big fan of SEO, article marketing, JVs, viral marketing and all the other “free” ways you can drive traffic on the Internet. Over the years, we’ve offered scores of trainings and master classes on these subjects.

But none of these methods can hold a candle to the simple, reliable method of simply buying the traffic you need.

If you want to maximize your potential on the Internet, buying traffic is where it’s at.

Here’s why:

Buying traffic lets you turn on the traffic you need right now, not weeks and month from now.

If you’re already a traffic buyer you already know that Internet traffic is the Eighth Wonder of the world.

You can buy a little, test it, amplify what works and turn off what doesn’t.

It takes skill, know-how and paying attention, but knowing how to buy Internet traffic comes as close to money-on-demand as anything on earth.

Why it’s so hard to get good information about traffic buying

Two facts:

1. There are no “old” traffic buyers. Not yet, anyway.

Most of the traffic sources that matter today (like pay-per-click) weren’t even around ten years ago.

2. People who are good at traffic buying generally don’t teach.

Traffic buying is a demanding and lucrative specialty. Taking time away from the main event to teach it to others is not something most traffic buyers ever think of doing, let alone are willing to make the serious effort to do.

That’s where the System Seminar has a major leg up over every other Internet marketing training.

Just as people like Perry Marshall and Howie Jacobson were motivated by their experience as System Seminar students to document and share what they learned about AdWords, the new generation of System-inspired Internet marketers is ready and willing to do the same with what they’ve learned about the nut and bolts of buying traffic today…in 2009, soon to be 2010.

Our System 2010 traffic faculty

For the first time ever, we’ll have traffic buyers on this year’s System faculty who have spent (and continue to spend) and track millions of dollars of their own money on Internet ad buys: Greg Davis, who specializes in high volume mass appeal consumer offers and Ben Moskel who specializes in a highly competitive niche where traffic costs are at a premium.

Both are real-world experts in uncovering new traffic sources, testing them, and figuring out how to make them pay. Their knowledge is not theoretical – and you won’t find it in any book or course. It’s based on the market as it is right now.

To round out our faculty, Google-certified Timothy Seward of ROI Revolution who guides the purchase of tens of millions of dollars a year in traffic for over seventy companies, will share his perspective on what’s working today, where things are headed, and what it takes to maximize the profits of an Internet business.

Steal this seminar

If you’re reading this before January 1, 2010, you have the chance to get all this cutting-edge knowledge at a bargain basement price.

Every year, we make the System Seminar available to people who can make an early decision to get a bargain price.

If you’re an Internet marketer and you’re already buying traffic for your business, System 2010 will be some of the best time and money you’ve ever spent.

If you’re looking to make the leap into Internet traffic buying, System 2010 will:

a) show you what’s really involved (no sugar coating),
b) cut months if not years off your learning curve, and
c) help you get where you want to go faster without making expensive mistakes.

The fact is one wrong move in traffic buying can easily cost you several multiples of the price of System Seminar 2010. (You may even be making an expensive traffic buying mistake right now and not even realize it.)

Our traffic buying faculty has already made most of the big, dumb, expensive mistakes so you don’t have to.

Even more important, they’ve dug up traffic sources and refined tracking methods that are practically guaranteed to improve your bottom line.

Early Bird Registration Deadline: December 31, 2009

How much for this hard won, can’t-be-found-anywhere-else knowledge?

For the multi-decade experience of two master direct response copywriters with hundreds of campaigns each under their belts…

For the rough and tumble know-how of two master multi-million dollar traffic buyers…

For the insights of one of the sharpest Internet campaign advisors in the business, certified by Google…

And for the insight of yours truly, the guy who’s been at this now for seventeen years, consistently finding you the right people at the right time for your next right move?

Check it out.

You may be pleasantly surprised at how affordable all this is when you’re an early bird.

But do it by midnight December 31, 2009.

Details:

http://www.TheSystemSeminar.com

Ken

P.S. Happy New Year!

I was once interviewed my someone (a serious marketer) who before he started the recording asked if it was OK if he mentioned John Caples.

“Of course!” I replied. “Why do you ask?”

His answer was one of those things that initially shocked but did not surprise me…”Because half of the Internet marketing ‘experts’ I interview these days won’t let me mention anything that they can’t earn a commission from.”

That, sadly, sums up the state-of-affairs in much of what is called Internet marketing “education” today.

It’s a jungle out there. Choose your advisors wisely. Some have a vested interest in you not knowing what’s going on.

Be all you can be. Read.

Whether you’re the rawest new beginner or a seasoned pro with years under your belt, there are two things you need to know about Internet marketing:

1. Internet marketing is direct marketing
2. There is a gold mine of information on the subject contained in the many excellent books real marketing experts have written over the years

I know of no better way to accelerate your progress while at the same time improving your BS detector than to read – and continuously read – the books I call the Classics.

The secret, “they” hope you never find out

I try to spend at least 15 to 20 minutes every day going over one or more of these books.

It may not seem like much time, but it adds up.

Just 20 minutes a day is over two hours a week which is over 100 hours a year. That’s a brain changing (and life changing) chunk of time. I’ve been doing it for over twenty years myself.

As I’ve told all my students since Day One and repeat at every System Seminar: “Soak your brains in these books.They will change your life.”

You can do this – and why you should

This list could be much longer, but ten is plenty. In fact, any one of these books has the power to be life changing for you.

No matter what your budget of time and/or money, you can afford this “program.” In fact, I’d say nobody, no matter how much they already know, can afford not to do it.

The most successful marketers I know are invariably the most serious readers – and the very best ones never stop.

My Top Ten Reading List

1. My Life in Advertising – Claude Hopkins
2. Tested Advertising Methods – John Caples (Fourth edition or earlier)
3. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling – Frank Bettger
4. Scientific Advertising – Claude Hopkins
5. How to Write a Good Advertisement – Victor Schwab
6. My First Sixty Years in Advertising – Maxwell Sackheim
7. Secrets of Successful Direct Mail – Richard Benson
8. Breakthrough Advertising – Eugene Schwartz
9. The Robert Collier Letter Book – Robert Collier
10. Common Sense Direct and Digital Marketing – Drayton Bird

While some of these books are hard to find, many are readily available in low cost editions.

Reading just one will make your year. Making them a part of your day will change your life.

The real secret of marketing success

Successful marketing comes from developing a way of thinking.

It’s not a the result of a bag of tricks and it’s certainly won’t come from a “coaching” program sold out of high pressure telephone boiler room.

Success is largely a do-it-yourself process.

It helps a lot if you have someone close to you who can show you the ropes. I didn’t. So I read.

By reading, I gradually found the real experts who knew what they were talking about.

I’m not saying I never went down a wrong path or was never fooled by a personable con artist. I have been. Plenty of times. But because of these books, even in the worst of times, I’ve always had a reliable rudder which has kept me on course.

Be all you can be. Read.

Best,

Ken

P.S. Our annual System Seminar is rooted in the direct marketing classics.

This year, we’ll be meeting April 9 through 11 and as has been true for the last five years our meeting will be in Chicago.

I picked Chicago as our annual “headquarters” because the Chicago area has the biggest concentration of direct marketers in the world. More even than New York.

It’s the place Claude Hopkins and Maxwell Sackheim, the guys who practically invented direct marketing, cut their teeth.

You can read all about this year’s faculty and the subjects we’ll be covering here: Click here for more information

That’s the one word that came up over and over again in the largest, open-ended survey of Internet marketers we’ve ever conducted.

We didn’t expect it.

Heck, we weren’t even looking for a “Word of the Year”, but it came up so often – in nearly one out of every five responses! – that we had to pay attention.

Unexpected, but maybe not so surprising

2009 was the year that every Internet marketer had to start “Tweeting” and “Facebooking” and learning 99 different Twitter and Facebook management tools.

I’m exaggerating, but only just barely. I read a blog post recently by an otherwise intelligent person who revealed her fifteen favorite Twitter management tools.

And she uses all of them.

This may be a good thing if you’re a professional Twitter consultant (yes, there are such things), but what about the rest of us?

For many years, I only needed two tools to make money on the Internet: FTP and an auto-responder.

Now, supposedly, it takes fifteen tools just to properly manage a Twitter account.

This can’t be good for focus – or for making money.

“Is social media dangerous to your wealth?”

I almost wrote an article with this title (still might) because social media has clearly become a problem for a lot of marketers.

So many folks have become so busy “building their brand” and “generating a buzz”, they’ve lost track that we’re in the business of selling.

That ugly four letter word: S-E-L-L.

Marketers don’t seem to want to use it any more.

It seems so crass, so…twentieth century.

Well, if selling is old fashioned, then call me a relic because the last time I checked, I can’t deposit brand or buzz in my bank account. I can only deposit dollars and dollars are generated by sales.

What to focus on

If you want to make money, here is my #1 piece of advice.

It hasn’t changed in twenty years.

I doubt it will change in the next twenty.

Focus on markets

For my purposes – and please read this definition closely because a lot of people screw it up:

A market is: “A collection of people who are already buying something, like what you plan to sell, who you can reach economically and with existing media.”

Every word in that definition matters and I hope you read it again s-l-o-w-l-y and give weight to every word.

There’s a fortune to be had it getting it right…and a fortune to lose in getting it wrong.

Learning a million and one groovy marketing techniques without having a market to sell into is like collecting and studying sex manuals without having a partner. Interesting, but not likely to produce much meaningful action.

So, if you don’t have a market, get one now and start doing something with it.

What to do with a market

Post relevant comments to forums and blogs…talk to people in the market…write articles that solve problems…create relevant reports…give your best material away in exchange for e-mail addresses…recommend good affiliate offers to your subscribers…source and/or develop your own products and offer them…track your results…get rid of stuff that doesn’t work and repeat things that do.

In other words, get cracking.

Less study and more action.

How do you build a list of prospects?

One bloody name at a time and the sooner you get started the better. Whining about how hard it is not going to make it happen any faster.

My mind boggles at the number of new “Internet marketers” I’ve met in recent months who twitter like rock stars – but have not collected a single e-mail address.

Focus on “traffic + conversion”

Eight years ago, when I came out of retirement to start teaching Internet marketing again, I was frustrated by all the looney marketing advice being dispensed back then that had seemingly fatally scrambled the brains of many of my students.

In exasperation, I blurted out:

“Forget all that garbage. There are only two things you should be focusing on: traffic and conversion. If you’re doing anything else, you are wasting your time. Traffic plus conversion equals profits!”

It seems so obvious now, but if you Google all the Internet marketing “how to” advice from back in 2002, you won’t find this anywhere. Heck, you’ll barely find it now – unless you’re at a System Seminar.

Some things never change

Here’s the weird thing: most Internet marketers still don’t focus on traffic + conversion.

But we do – every year – year in and year out. Relentlessly.

And that simple fact may be the reason we have more successful students than any twenty “gurus” combined.

It’s also why so many people who start with us as raw beginners – Perry Marshall, Lloyd Irvin, Howie Jacobson, Kim Dushinski, Ben Moskel, and many others – not only end up teaching on our faculty, but on the faculties of marketing seminars and conferences around the country (and world.)

Everything that’s taught at the System Seminar has to pass through the “traffic + conversion” BS detector.

If it doesn’t help you to get more traffic or help you convert your traffic better, we don’t waste your time or ours with it.

A special message for beginners

I consider a “beginner” anyone who isn’t making his full time living from Internet marketing, hasn’t cracked $100,000 a year in online sales, and/or can’t see the path to $1,000,000 a year in sales.

I know a lot of people don’t like to consider themselves “beginners”, but Internet marketing, the way we teach it at the System, is a reality-based business.

Know-how has zero value unless it’s being employed.

Yes, we’d love to see you at System 2010, but I’m even more interested in seeing you have a complete grasp of the foundation of our business.

The reality of Internet marketing

Internet marketing is a lot like plumbing. It’s 95% grit and 5% glamour. (The glamour is the part where you go to the bank.)

Too many beginners have been sold the idea that there is some special “magic” in Internet marketing that lets Internet marketers defy the laws of economic reality.

Sorry. It doesn’t work this way.

Internet marketing is a profession. It requires comprehensive knowledge as a foundation and then relentless action.

In my experience 99.9% of the people who think they “know” Internet marketing have holes in their basic knowledge big enough to drive several trucks through.

The proof of this is their incomes – or the lack thereof.

Hang in there

I’m not saying this as a put down. I’m saying it because it’s the reality I see.

Keep in mind I’ve been marketing online since 1993 – and before that I’ve been using direct marketing to make my living since 1984.

I have no way to prove this, but I think I’ve trained more successful Internet marketers than any living person.

I didn’t accomplish this by chasing fads or selling smoke. My “secret” has been that I insist on drilling the fundamentals.

The good news is this is a learnable business.

Further good news is the fact that the vast majority of people marketing on the Internet refuse to treat the business as a business.

That’s why every year we have new success stories to report.

Because most market places, crowded as they are, are full of dilettantes, which is a fancy word for “wannabes” – folks who like to play at it, but fade when serious people like System grads show up.

If Internet marketing has been a “dream” for you, here’s what I recommend for you in 2010…

FOCUS

If you’re a beginner…

Focus on firming up your fundamentals.

Make 2010 the year you’re going to treat Internet marketing like a business (95% grit and 5% glory.)

We’ve got a course to help. It’s both comprehensive and cost effective – and you can apply 100% of the cost to a System Seminar tuition.

It’s called System Smart Beginners. Click here for more information about it

If you’re a pro…

There’s only one Internet marketing training I know that focuses on traffic + conversion.

There’s a reason pros like Perry Marshall and Lloyd Irvin never miss a System whether they happen to be on the faculty of not in a given year.

This year, because of the extreme business challenges so many are facing these days, we’re drilling down even deeper than normal.

On the conversion side, we’re bringing in the truly big guns: Bob Bly and Drayton Bird. (If you don’t recognize the names, Google them.)

On the traffic side, we’ve got Timothy Seward (Google certified and advisor to numerous multi-million dollar a year online businesses); Ben Moskel, a seven figure a year affiliate marketer, and Greg Davis, a seven figure a year, CPA marketer.

All three have bought (or advised on the buying of) millions of dollars worth of Internet traffic – and tracked the results…selling real products to real people in real markets.

If you’re a pro, you should seriously consider joining us in Chicago this April 9 through 11, 2010 in Chicago.

If you already know you’re going to join us, registering before the end of this year will save you considerable money on your tuition. ‘

(Super “early bird” tuition discount deadline: December 31, 2009)

Click on this link for more information about: The System Seminar

Best wishes for the coming new year,

Ken

P.S. Focus.

What are you going to focus on in 2010.

If you’re an Internet marketer, I hope it’s traffic + conversion.

That’s what we focus on every year, this year more than ever at System 2010.

Click on this link for more information about: The System Seminar

These quotes might be particularly useful to Internet marketers and marketers of all kinds. I’ve added commentary to each one to help

Be original

“Don’t borrow someone else’s plan. Develop your own plan and it will lead you to unique places.”

My comment: This is why I don’t sell or promote so-called “businesses in a box.” Even if they work, and they rarely do, they practically guarantee mediocrity.

Be prepared to work

“Economic disaster comes from a philosophy of doing less and wanting more.”

My comment: The gurus who sell push-button, auto-pilot, lay-in-your-hammock plans are misguiding their students in a very profound way.

Think

“The best place to solve a problem is on paper.”

My comment: Money is not made with expensive tools. It’s made with the thinking behind the tools and for that, paper and pencil are the most sophisticated problem solving tools there are.

Truth matters

“It only takes one lie to taint your entire testimony.”

My comment: Too many of the “gurus” confuse lying with marketing. Don’t follow them. They’re all headed off a cliff. They just don’t know it yet.

How to sell

“To succeed in sales. simply talk to lots of people.”

My comment: This is what makes direct marketing and Internet marketing so miraculous. It leverages the number of people you can reach massively. The more you tell, the more you sell.

Success 101

“Learn to hide your need and show your skill.”

My comment: Too many beginners get this one completely backward. Developing skills and making your skill available is the best way to take care of your needs. Don’t be a beggar.

More Success 101

“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges; wish for more wisdom.”

My comment: I can’t add anything to add to the clarity of this advice.

Reality check

“You must get good at one of two things; sowing in the spring or begging in the fall.”

My comment: In the end, it’s all about what you do, or don’t do.

Wisdom in three words

“Plant, don’t chant.”

My comment: I love this one. Action is the ultimate prayer. It’s the ultimate affirmation.

More wisdom in ten

“Start with wherever you are and with whatever you’ve got.”

My comment: The seed of greatness lies in this simple advice.

Yes!

“Be a student, not a follower.”

My comment: The System Seminar has students, not followers. That’s why our students are exponentially more successful than the attendees of other programs.

Obvious

“Success is the study of the obvious. Everyone should take Obvious 101 and Obvious 201 in school.”

My comment: There are no secrets. There are just people who pay attention and people who don’t.

Time

“Time is the best kept secret of the rich.”

My comment: Time is the only raw material we have for building wealth. Waste it or fail to leverage it and you’re throwing away your fortune.

Too busy? Why?

“Don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what?”

My comment: Every busy person would profit from reading this one daily. Every day.

It works

“There are no new fundamentals.”

My comment: In sports, in art, in business, a handful of deep principles do all the heavy lifting. They’re not necessarily sexy ideas – except to the wise.

Read!

“Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book.”

My comment: To fail to take advantage of the miraculous world of books is the most expensive failing imaginable.

Reality check

“Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.”

My comment: Talk less, do more. A scary number of people get this one wrong.

Econ 101

“Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living; profits make you a fortune.”

My comment: The best explanation of how the world of money works I’ve ever heard.

Deep

“We all have two choices: We can make a living or we can design a life.”

My comment: What are we working for? To live. To live to work is a tragedy, a common tragedy.

I’m here to help. I’m with the government

“Beware of those who seek to take care of you lest your caretakers become your jailers.”

My comment: The less you have to do with “government programs,” the happier you’ll be.

Search

“If you wish to find, you must search. Rarely does a good idea interrupt you.”

My comment: Real learning and progress is an intensely active process.

Ignorance is not bliss for long

“What do don’t know will hurt you.”

My comment: The average person revels in being ignorant. Don’t join them.

How to be more

“Don’t join an easy crowd; you won’t grow.”

My comment: The System Seminar attracts a friendly crowd, but it’s not an “easy” one. Another reason why our students accumulate wealth while others accumulate closets full of books and tapes.

The power of a good idea

“If you share a good idea long enough, it will eventually fall on good people.”

My comment: It takes time to sell any idea no matter how good. Don’t give up too soon. You will find people who get it, but only if you stick with it.

Two kinds of learning

“Some people have learned to earn well but they haven’t learned to live well.”

My comment: You’ll be happiest when you learn both – and it is a learning. There’s nothing automatic about either.

Reality check

“Leaders must not be naive. I used to say, “Liars shouldn’t lie.” What a sad waste of words that is! I found out liars are supposed to lie. That’s why we call them liars — they lie! What else would you expect them to do?”

My comment: Give everyone the benefit of the doubt at first, but test people’s honesty in small ways before you put a big trust in them. Lying is common, but don’t tolerate it. People who lie about small things will surely lie about large ones too. Get them out of your life fast – and don’t wonder why.

Simple

“The twin killers of success are impatience and greed.”

My comment: When a guru tells you that you can make big money without time and effort, you can assume he’s lying. Focus on the value you create and success will take care of itself.

These quotes come from a wonderful book called “The Treasury of Quotes” by Jim Rohn.

Everything in Internet marketing seems to come wrapped in a ton of hype and BS and few appear able or willing to strip things down to their basics. And believe me, it’s no easier for me.

Finding a straight, concise answer about anything in Internet marketing is ridiculously hard whether you’ve been at it for 16 years or 16 minutes.

Twitter is a perfect example of this.

First, the news media made it look ridiculous.

Then, the Internet “gurus” piled on with claims that it’s really the most powerful marketing tool that’s ever been created – but only if you know the “right” way (their way) to use it…which they’ll be glad to teach you for an unreasonable fee.

Everything a serious-minded person needs to know about Twitter

1. Twitter’s popular and it’s been adopted by every major media outlet. A percentage of your customers use it. These facts alone signal that anyone who has anything to promote needs to use it.

2. Twitter is dead easy to use, both for publishers and consumers of information.

3. Twitter’s just another channel with its strengths and weaknesses. It contains no inherent magic. If there is “magic” in it, it comes from using it intelligently.

4. Twitter is not something to build a business on. Yes, it’s easy to “game” the system to generate large numbers of “followers” but, like 99% of the things taught by the Internet marketing fad pimps, this approach is a total waste of time.

5. Twitter is a truly great research tool and a great keeping-in-touch-with-those-who-want-to-hear-from-you-tool.

How to think about Twitter

1. Twitter is a web publishing platform. It’s a free way for people to set up their own easy-to-use web sites. It’s a stripped down version of a blog. (Some people accurately call Twitter a micro-blog.)

2. Twitter limits posts (”tweets”) to 140 characters – about the length of a headline or classified ad. You can say and do a lot in 140 characters. Ask any poet or copywriter. Get over it. Being limited to 140 characters is not an issue.

3. One of the key Twitter skills is to learn how to shrink a long address into a short one so you have more room to get your message across. Here’s the tool I use for that:
http://twtr.us/twtr.html

How to use Twitter

1. As a publisher, the most important thing to keep in mind about Twitter is to have a clear purpose and consistent public face for each of your Twitter channels (assuming you need more than one.)

For example, if your topic is investing in gold or ski resorts in the Alps, stick to the point. Don’t start ranting about completely unrelated issues, personal or global.

A little “personality” from time to time is fine, but too many off-point posts and too many fragmentary (and incomprehensible) posts of half a conversation are going to confuse and put off busy, serious-minded people (the kind of people who buy and get things done.)

2. A lot of people use Twitter for “personality” marketing. In other words, their posts are chock full of off-topic reports and obscure shout outs to god-only-knows-who.

If you think you’re a fabulously fascinating person and the world can’t get enough of the minutia of your everyday life, have at it, but I don’t recommend it.

3. What I do recommend is making sure that every post (or “tweet”) counts.

Somehow the mistaken idea has spread that Twitter is supposed to be a stream-of-consciousness medium, that whatever is on your mind at any given moment is fair game for a Twitter post. This is not communicating, this is a form of verbal diarrhea.

4. Craft your Twitter posts. Think about them.

Ask yourself: “Is what I’m about to post useful, interesting, on-topic, and in character?”

In other words, run your “tweets” through a filter, the same way you connect your mouth to your brain when you’re speaking.

I’m not saying that each and every post has to be a home run or that you have to agonize over every one, but unless someone is wildly in love with you, be aware random, off-topic, minutia gets old really fast.

How to get readers

The purpose of writing is to have readers.

There are two ways to get readers (called “followers” in Twitter):

1) tell everyone you know about your channel and send them to it (do this consistently) and

2) reach out on Twitter.

If you already have a large circle (you’re a celebrity, you have a big mailing list and/or you have a lot of traffic to your web site), it’s easy to build a big Twitter following fast. Just let people know about it (repeatedly) and don’t publish crap.

If you don’t have any of these things, you’ve got to do it the old fashioned way by reaching out to relevant folks.

Note the word “relevant.” One of the scams currently taught by the Internet marketing “gurus” is to randomly follow thousands of Twitter users. The idea being that some of them will reflexively follow you back and thus you will develop a large “following” and appear to be popular. Not a good idea.

Here’s a better idea: Follow people and info sources that you’re genuinely interested in.

How to reach out on Twitter – and how not to

It’s easy to find Twitter users who might like to be readers of your Twitter channel.

Click on the “find people” link on Twitter and enter keywords that are likely to turn up people and organizations that are in sync with what your Twitter channel is about.

For example, as a hobby (which also makes money), I run a jazz video web site.

After I let my list and site visitors know I have a Twitter channel, I went to the “find people” page and entered logical keywords for my niche: jazz, jazz club, jazz fest, jazz fan etc.

Then whenever I have some spare time, I “follow” another 100 channels in this category. Some will follow me, some won’t. I really don’t care. I only follow channels I’m genuinely interested in or people I’m very certain would find what I’m doing interesting.

One point: I don’t suddenly follow 1,000 or 10,000 channels overnight.

Why?

Two reasons: 1) because that’s not how normal people use Twitter and 2) Twitter doesn’t like it.

You may say – as many Internet marketing “gurus” do – who cares what Twitter likes? Well, there are two reasons:

First, you’re a guest on their service. Why not be a good guest instead of a greedy slob?

Second, you’re a guest on their service which means they can throw you off any time they want for violating their terms of service agreement.

Given how much totally bogus crap has been written about Twitter “how to” – much of which has become “common knowledge” – I recommend reading Twitter’s short, clear and very reasonable Terms of Service agreement.

You can read Twitter’s Terms of Service Agreement here

Summing up

Twitter is, in spite of all the hype and misinformation, definitely worth your time and attention.

It’s a great way to keep up with news on a wide variety of topics, to see what people are thinking and talking about, and to serve your readers.

The key is that writing for Twitter is like writing for any other medium.

Is what you are writing about interesting, useful, and/or entertaining? If it is, you can carve it on a rock and it will work. If it’s not, then neither Twitter nor anything else is going to help you.

Is your Twitter channel focused and consistent so people know what they’re going to get when they sign up for it and then get what they expect when they do?

It’s not rocket science and it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s just Twitter and my hats off to the creators for stumbling on this thing and making it available to the world. It’s a net contribution.

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. This year’s System Seminar will be in Chicago, April 9, 10 and 11.

For more info: The System Seminar

P.P.S. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can do that here: Follow Ken on Twitter

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It doesn't really look like this…it's 1,000 times better

There’s always one day that stands out from all the rest. I think this Sunday was the day.

If you wonder why I live in Tivoli, NY in the summer and fall, this picture is my answer.

How did you spend your summer vacation?

What I thought was going to be “kick back and relax” summer turned into a travel and study marathon:

Vancouver, New York City, Maryland, London, Manchester…over 10,000 miles traveled and at long last…home.

Who benefits?

You do.

Here’s some freebies to get your fall season off to a strong start:

1. Free Google AdWords course

Three-time System faculty member Timoth Seward is giving away a complete basic training in Google AdWords.

http://www.smartbeginners.com/adwords/

2. Remembering Ken Giddens

Ken Giddens passed away four years ago this month and he is still sorely missed.

He was one of the bona fide pioneers of our industry and an inspired and generous teacher. For those who knew him, and those who didn’t…

Lessons and recollections from his friends and colleagues: http://thesystemseminar.com/kengiddens/audio.html

This was Ken’s first seminar talk. It was at the System Seminar in 2004.

Videos from System Seminar TV.com

Ken McCarthy, Greg Davis and Lloyd Irvin at Lloyd’s private gym

If you stick with anything long enough, life takes all kinds of fascinating twists and turns.

I was planning on a “kick back”, hang loose summer, but when you’re in the Internet marketing world you have to be prepared for pleasant surprises.

A couple of months ago Lloyd Irvin sent me a long text.

Lloyd is twice world champion in Brazilian Jujitsu and twice US champion in Judo and Russian Sambo. He’s also a heck of an entrepreneur and has interests in a number of areas including publishing, Internet marketing, and real estate. With a small, highly effective team he’s built a very successful business.

I’m proud to say that the System helped get Lloyd off on the right foot on the Internet, a fact he graciously shares with everyone who asks. In turn, he’s been an inspiration to me – and when Lloyd talks, I listen.

So when Lloyd sent me a long text raving about the breakthrough work of his colleague Greg Davis, I decided to waste no time, get on a plane and get myself to Maryland to see first hand what had gotten him so excited.

Long story, short version

Greg’s one of those guys who’s been working diligently for years on cracking the Internet marketing code. You know the routine…endless experiments. Some of them bomb. Some work, but not well enough to get excited about. Two steps forward and sometimes three steps back.

But he stuck with it and along the way he accumulated experience and KNOWLEDGE.

Greg was one of the early pioneers who bought clicks from GoTo when you could get keywords for a penny because no one else was smart enough to recognize their value.

Bit by bit, things started to click for him (pardon the double pun) and he watched his income grow until he got to the point that keeping his 9 to 5 job was not only no longer necessary, it was absurd.

Then through a combination of his own deep study and a few critical insights from Perry Marshall, Glenn Livingston, and Gauher Chaudhry plus mentoring from Lloyd (not-so-coincidentally all these guys have been System faculty members), Greg made a truly big breakthrough.

How big?

Wealth beyond your wildest dreams

Greg’s numbers are so big that I hesitate to say because a lot of people are going to have trouble wrapping their minds around them.

Let’s just say Greg nets in a week what a lot of people would be very happy to make in a good year – and he does it with bare bones overhead. And most importantly, it’s based on a formula that works over and over again. As long as there’s an Internet and people are spending money on it, this system will work.

Though you may be aware of some of the elements (PPC, CPA, affiliate marketing, tracking and testing conversion), I guarantee you’ve never seen this system before.

To help me keep up with all the info that Greg was willing to share with me, I brought System grad Ben Moskel who does over $1,000,000 a year in affiliate sales generated by pay-per-click.  The whole weekend we visited with Greg and Lloyd, Ben never put his pen down.  I swear at times I thought it was going to start smoking he was writing so long and hard.

The Internet marketing brain trust: Where killer Internet marketing ideas are born. If past is prologue, months, even years from now, the hot air “gurus” will be trying to peddle the leftover scraps from this weekend for thousands of dollars a pop.  If you were part of the System, you’d be getting it whole while it’s still fresh.  Left to right: Lloyd Irvin, Ken McCarthy, Greg Davis, Chris Chico, Ben Moskel

Chris Chico, another very savvy Internet marketer, was also invited to sit on in this very private two day session. Here’s a picture of the five of us together at the end of the weekend. We were visiting Lloyd’s training facility in Camp Springs, Maryland  just around the corner from Andrews Air Force base, right outside of Washington DC.

When he’s not running his chain of martial arts schools, publishing, training entrepreneurs, dealing in real estate, starting and growing Internet businesses, Lloyd trains UFC fighters.  It’s been a mystery to me how this one guy gets so much done. Then I met his team.  Sharp, smart and tight. If Lloyd ever gives a seminar on how to build and manage a world class team, all I can say is “Go!” I’ll be sitting in the front row.

OK, how does Greg make all this money?

I know what you’re thinking…”Glad you had a great time in Maryland Ken, but get to the money. The money.”

There are three levels to what Greg does:

Level One: Good, solid, old school affiliate marketing, the kind that can get anyone who applies themselves to the $500 to $5,000 a month level.

Level Two: Greg is a master of the tools, strategies, tricks and techniques of affiliate marketing.  No one knows everything – and Greg was wide open to learn from everyone at our private meeting – but when it comes to high level, deep KNOWLEDGE of how to shake the affiliate money tree, he’s got it – and that’s what got him to $500 to $5,000 a day.

Level Three: This is where Greg is at now. Again, for the reason I gave earlier, I’m not going to even talk about his current numbers, other than to say they make Level Two look sad and forlorn.

His years of effort, study and testing paid off and gave Greg a profound insight that “flipped” regular affiliate marketing upside down and turned it on its head.

Bottom line: A whole lot of what you’ve heard about the “right” way to do affiliate marketing is backwards. Yeah, it will work and it will make pretty good money, but if you want rock star money, crazy money that makes even Internet gurus gasp, you’ve got to enter into what I can only call Planet Greg, an alternate – and very profitable – universe.

And I’ll tell you straight up, most people are not ready for it.

They don’t have the necessary foundation of experience and knowledge to be able to execute what Greg is doing, let alone understand it.

Besides that, after looking at Greg’s system for two solid days, my advice to him was to put a padlock on it. No amount of money he could ever make teaching would ever compensate him for letting the cat out of the bag.

He asked me for my honest advice and that’s what I told him.

But the door is not closed…

Greg can definitely help you if you’re at the beginning of your affiliate marketing path (seeking to make $500 to $5,000 a month) or if you’re a pro who wants to leverage your current know-how into a lot more revenue ($500 to $5,000 a day.)

I can tell you from working with him for two days, he’s a masterful and generous teacher. It would be great to have someone like him inside the System circle teaching.

So, I took a shot and asked him if he’d like to come to London and present at our upcoming UK Intensive.

Think about how significant this is. I created the UK Intensive specifically to highlight UK Internet marketing wizards, but Greg is so extraordinary I decided to throw out my playbook out and ask him, a Yank, to teach.

After thinking about it a bit, he said “sure” so I’m happy to report that the first live public training given by Greg Davis in advanced affiliate marketing (traffic + conversion) will in London this September at the System UK Intensive. Will there be another? Who knows? I know the fact that this event is in London was a big hook for Greg and his wife.

The last I checked registrations are already a hair over 2/3 sold out and as you know, I’ve barely even advertised the thing. As the date gets closer and I get on the job, we’re be closing the doors on this one pretty quick.

I don’t care where you live. If you’re in Internet marketing and you’ve got a chance to spend some time with this guy: take it.

This development has been so sudden, we haven’t had time to include Greg in the description of the course, but here’s how to get all the info about the rest of the program.

http://www.systemintensive.com/uk

Best,

Ken

Ken McCarthy and Lloyd Irvin

P.S. The thing I’ve always admired about martial arts (real martial arts) is that it’s the ultimate No BS discipline. You can’t fake your way into it. You can’t rip off someone else’s work and present it as your own. You’ve got to personally stand and deliver and you can’t coast on last year’s or even last week’s accomplishments.

Lloyd just turned 40 this year. I’m going to be 50 in September, but I can still take him (in my dreams!) LOL

But seriously, the greatest satisfaction from teaching Internet marketing (real teaching, not “guru” prancing and posturing) is all the System grads who go out and do amazing stuff with what they learn and the many like Lloyd, who are gracious enough to turn around and give back.

That’s why there’s 1001 “dog and pony” Internet seminars and a million and one “flash in the pan” gurus, but only one System Seminar.

You see, we actually TRAIN our students to accomplish great things and many do and with this formula our circle and knowledge base just gets bigger and bigger, year after year.

You know the difference

If you’ve been to a System Seminar, you know what I mean. If you haven’t been and you’re in Internet marketing for real, you’ve really been depriving yourself.

The UK Intensive in London, England this September 26 & 27th is a great opportunity for you to get involved with real world,  high level Internet marketing, the kind that;s only dreamed about by most Internet marketers.  We’re limiting the group to just 79 attendees to keep it manageable and well more the half of the seats have already been claimed.

Participants at the UK Intensive will not only get the live training, they’ll also get the complete recordings of last year’s UK Intensive featuring direct marketing legend Drayton Bird (we’re still working to digest all the wisdom he shared with us last year) Plus they’ll also get the complete DVDs of System 2009 in Chicago (which alone sell for over $1,495.00 US.)

I want smart people at this event. If you’re smart, join us. We’d love to have you add to the power of our Master Mind.

Details:

http://www.systemintensive.com/uk

Yes, it really looks like this

Jaw dropping scenery; fantastic food; clean, fresh air so cool you don’t need an air conditioner in the summer…and one of the biggest collections of super-savvy Internet marketing pros on earth.

But as much as I like the scenery and the fact the weather’s so nice, I really came to spend time with the Internet folks who live here…

Why Vancouver rocks

Vancouver is such a rich source of Internet know-how that I brought a group of my best students here for a very small, very private invitation-only meeting so that they could experience them first hand.

One Day One, James Martell joined us. For my money, James is the best educator on earth on how to create high quality content for the web. And he just gets better and better.

James showed us how he combines blogging with article marketing and forums to create “magnet” sites that attract masses of high quality traffic.

Most impressive of all, he showed us how he recruits top quality writers to work for him for extremely reasonable fees.

The real SEO secret

On Day Two, the legendary Michael Campbell joined us.

There are two kinds of people in the SEO world: 1) Internet marketers who don’t know Michael’s work and 2)  Internet marketers who keep Michael as their “secret weapon.”

Michael’s been involved in Internet marketing at a high level since 1994 and before that he worked in publishing and advertising. If there’s a sharper guy in our field, I haven’t met him yet. A huge portion of what I know that works in SEO originated with him. Honest SEO experts will tell you the same thing.

Entrepreneurs and educators

In addition to building their own low overhead/high profit small businesses, James and Michael are superb educators. It’s a big part of the reason why Vancouver is chock full of super Internet marketers today. The city is so rich in talent it could very well be the #1 city on earth for entrepreneurial Internet marketing smarts.

One city that gives Vancouver a run for its money is London. It’s another place where you find deeply experienced, highly knowledgeable Internet marketers who share what they know without hype.

If you missed Vancouver…

I’m going to be in London in late September working with some of my favorite Internet marketers there:

• Ben Jesson and Karl Blanks of Conversion Rate Experts, one of the only Google-certified consulting groups in Europe, and
• Mark Attwood, a former RAF pilot, who used the Internet to grow his business to over eight million pounds a year (that’s over $10 million US) in a few short years.

Unlike the Vancouver meeting which was private and by invitation only, the upcoming London event is open to the public (however, attendance is limited to 79 participants.)

In my ideal world, I’d rearrange the earth to put Vancouver, London, and New York (where I live) right next to each other, but when I want to hang out with top Internet talent I’m happy to jump on a plane and get myself there.

Big Internet marketing secret: Smart Internet marketers go where the talent is…

Here’s how you can get involved with the London meeting:

http://www.systemintensive.com/uk

He was kind enough to get up early one Saturday morning and drive in the pouring rain in his junk filled Mustang to speak at a conference I organized in San Francisco. (By all appearances, this may well have been the very first serious gathering focused on discussing the practicalities of web-based business.)

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

Marc has created and sold TWO billion dollar plus companies and is working on his third – and opening a venture capital fund.

If you don’t know who Marc is, it’s simple.

Without him, there’d be no web as we know it.

Years back, a lot of people thought (and said out loud) that Marc had gotten “lucky” with Netscape.

These people obviously never spent time with him.

This is one whip smart dude and he’s proven it over and over since his so-called “dumb luck” breakthrough in the early 90s.

I’m guessing Marc is about 38 a now.

If you want to know what’s going on in the Internet business and in tech in general, give this hour long interview your full attention.

As Marc jokes, he’s often wrong, but rarely in doubt. The thing is he gets the big things right often enough that he’s very worth listening to.

Enjoy – this is a good one. (And if you have a lot of time and stamina you can follow that by watching the original 1994 seminar.)

November, 1994. San Francisco