Fast forward to the present: AdWords has revolutionized Internet marketing, formed the basis of thousands of successful businesses, and turned a small, profitless business (Google) into one of the biggest corporations on earth.

When the first comprehensive history of Internet marketing is written, Perry Marshall will be credited as the first person to put a flag in the ground and declare that not only was Google AdWords important, it was far more important than the then current state-of-the-art which at the time was Overture, formerly GoTo.com.

That was quite an huge mental leap back then and it took some deep thinking and courage of conviction to take that stand.

With an accomplishment like that…

What do you do for an encore?

Well, Perry has done plenty. Since first appearing on the scene, he’s continuously pushed the envelope on Internet marketing techniques, identified new trends and uncovered authentic Internet marketing talent.

Now Perry and Thomas Maloche have come out with the definitive book on Facebook advertising: The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising

I have to confess to being a Facebook skeptic. The things I’ve heard about Facebook as an advertising and marketing medium have just not been all that compelling. But as usual, Perry has dug deep – just the way he did with AdWords all those years ago – and come up with a treasure trove of actionable insights.

In my case, thanks to this new book, I realized that Facebook would be a fantastic lead generator for some businesses I own that are normally very difficult to buy leads for economically.

Key takeaway: Facebook is not for everyone. For some some businesses it can’t do much to help at all. But for others it can help mightily.

How can you tell if Facebook advertising is right for your business?

Perry’s created a simple quiz that will help you quickly assess if learning more about Facebook, and the intricasies of how to use it the right way, is worth your effort.

Click here for the quiz: http://isfbforme.com/

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. We did an in depth interview with Perry and Tom for this month’s System Club.

P.P.S. I’ll be on the road a few day so it may take a while for me to approve comments to this post. If you post something legitimate and it doesn’t appear, that’s why. Patience.

Keep it simple folks

I never cease to be amazed, and annoyed, by how complicated most software is to learn.

I just don’t get it.

Why should any software be any more complicated than using an ATM machine? No one needs a manual or tutorial to get cash from an unfamiliar ATM machine even though you’re handling some pretty serious data – cash!

Yet just about any software program, and even many websites, require training to use.

OK, end of rant on that point other than to say that providing functions and features doesn’t mean squat if people can’t figure them out and actually use them (Are you listening Microsoft?)

The hazards of giving

Actually,this article is only peripherally about software programs, it’s really about the “software” of charitable giving.

When there is a disaster locally, or even halfway around the world, the natural inclination of many people is to help in some way.

That’s a good thing. That impulse is why the human race still exists.

However, how to help effectively is not so easy. Here are two things that in my opinion either don’t help at all or help a lot less than you’d hope.

First, here’s something that does not help…Packing up stuff from your basement, attic, and closets (mostly clothes) and dropping them off at an emergency collection center.

Here’s the reality of that. During emergencies there is almost always a shortage of storage space and manpower, not to mention the ability to deal with extraneous matters.

In every case I’ve seen, un-asked for bundles of clothes, T-shirts, teddy bears, and other “feel good” donations actually cause more problems than they solve. They take up space, they take up manpower to sort and they take up the mental bandwidth of people who already have too much on their plate.

Donated clothes often end up molding away somewhere and are ultimately taken away by people who are in the business of packaging random clothing donations in bulk and exporting them to the Third World where they are sold by the bale. Probably not what the donor intended and definitely not what the group in need needed.

What about cash?

Cash is better because the people on the ground can use it to buy what they actually need, assuming of course what they need is available for sale which is a big assumption.

But there’s a problem with cash, especially when you give it to what I call the mega-charities.

Without starting a long diatribe, because if I start I may never stop, I invite you to Google and see what groups like the Red Cross did with the donations they received after 9/11 and after the New Orleans levee failures and Gulf Coast storm damage.

I guarantee you will be shocked.

I also guarantee you will be shocked at the salaries of the executive directors of some of the mega-charities, the percentage of the money they receive that goes to “overhead”, and the percentage of the money they receive that goes to “promotion.”

Add that to the fact that most of these groups reserve the right to take money you give for Cause A and redirect to Cause B and you have a situation where when you give a $1, you’re lucky if thirty to as little as 5 cents is actually spent the way you hope.

The mega-charities have well oiled promotion machines, put political people on their boards, and for the most part get a free pass from the news media (except for when they get caught red-handed doing “funny” things with donations…which usually happens a few months after every high profile disaster they’re involved in and is only reported in the back of the newspaper.)

Meanwhile, there are small, highly effective, locally based grassroots help groups that are all but starved of meaningful assistance. Yet somehow these folks, without the oak paneled offices and high six-figure director salaries, find a way to do the heavy lifting of helping folks in grave need after disasters.

It’s time to dis-intermediate the world of giving

People give to the mega-charities because mega-charities have an overwhelming advantage over small, grassroots groups when it comes to getting media attention.

What, if anything, can be done about this?

Well, if the music industry could be dis-intermediated and the stock brokerage industry could be dis-intermediated and just about every industry you can think of these days can be dis-intermediated, then why not charitable giving?

The word “dis-intermediate” means to remove intermediaries, also known as middlemen. The middleman business is a great business – especially for middlemen –  but it doesn’t serve the consumer or, in this case, people in need.

The question is how do you cut the mega-charity middlemen out of the supply chain? Or at least reduce their cut to a reasonable amount and redirect resources to where they are truly needed with a minimum of waste.

The Internet to the rescue again

When you spend time in relief efforts as I have, you always find two things:  a shortage of actionable information and a shortage of the things people actually need where and when they are needed.

For example, after the recent catastrophic flooding in the Catskills, folks who lost everything showed up needing crowbars, hammers, face masks, work gloves and other basic tools to remove the waterlogged sheetrock from their houses so they could begin the process of rebuilding before mold set in.

What they got, initially at least, were bales and bales of T-shirts.

Maybe this kind of thing was unavoidable in the pre-Internet era, but it’s absolutely crazy today.

A simple system for your examination

This month we created a simple website to help address this problem.

Users can go to the site, select the region they want to help, drill down to the town and/or organization they want to help, and read the EXACT items that a specific group on the ground needs right now today.

On the backend, relief groups can easily add to their list of needs, delete items after they have been provided, change the number of a given item that’s needed, and even –  because this does happen due to inefficiencies in the current way of doing things – list their surpluses. (Sometimes a group that has plenty of food will be sent pallets of macaroni, for example, while another group 10 miles away is facing an acute food shortage.)

Each group gets its own account which gives them their own page on the site where they can list their contact info and update their current needs. There is a provision for adding media, like video and audio, to the page as well.

These pages have multiple functions:

1. The group can use its page to help keep their own records straight. An online system beats scraps of paper and memory.

2. If a group doesn’t have a website, and many still don’t, they can use their page to communicate their needs to their volunteers, donors, and their local news media.

3. If a group does have a website, but lacks the in-house sophistication to post the details of their ever-changing needs, they can use the system and link to it from their homepage.

The first phase of this operation is to reach out to local organizations, get them listed, and train them on how to manage their public needs list. We’ve designed the software so that the training process can be accomplished over the telephone in five minutes or less.

The second phase is to promote the website. So far, we’ve seen that people with influence, whether in the media or through their roles in various community organizations, instantly see the value of a simple, common sense-based information clearinghouse like this and are all too happy to spread the word.

If you’re involved in relief activities, or know someone who is, they might find this model worthy of study.

You can check it out here (and if you’re inclined to help any of these groups, all the better):

Click here to see the system in action: http://www.Rebuild123.org

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. This site is just 15 days old and we expect to be listing many more organizations and regions as the days go on. Information on how to have your group listed is at the bottom of the home page. This site is focusing on New York State, though we do plan to add info about Vermont and Massachusetts as well since these regions are so close to each other,

Jim Rohn had an absolute genius for simplifying life and success. Barely a day goes by when I don’t think about one of his aphorisms.

If you know his work, you know what I’m talking about.

If you don’t know his work, by all means check it out.

Here’s a good place to start:

Jim Rohn remembered in death

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

If you know direct marketing, you’re in demand.

I realize that few people who read this blog are looking for a job, but one of the indications of how relatively rare direct marketing know-how is these days is the difficulty agencies and clients are having filling direct marketing positions. 25% say finding good candidates is “very difficult.” 60% call it “difficult.”

What’s the problem?

Institutions like Sears, Columbia House, Time-Life Books and others which used to train newcomers and create direct marketing experts just don’t exist any more. It’s true that there are more academic direct marketing programs than ever, but as we all know, the gap between school learning and the real world is huge.

So who is taking up the slack? And where are all the good direct marketers going?

To answer the second questions first, they’re starting their own businesses. After all, what staff direct marketing job is going to pay $250,000; $500,000; or more a year to anyone at less than a CEO level? I can answer that question for you right now: the number is zero.

And yet, with the right training, the right marketing and the right effort, such annual incomes are by no means unusual among System Seminar grads. In fact, sometimes I get a little envious of today’s direct marketing savvy Internet entrepreneur. They can achieve in a matter of a few years, and relatively bloodlessly, what use to take us paper and ink marketers many years of brutal trial-and-error.

How powerful is direct marketing? A fresh study by the DMA in the UK says that in that country direct marketing contributes to $90 billion a year in sales. (The UK’s consumer market is about 1/10 the size of the US market.)

For years, I’ve told everyone who’d listen: “Get yourself an education in street smart direct marketing. There is simply no better preparation for succeeding in your own business.”

Direct marketing is not the only thing you need to learn to start and run your own business, but I think the argument can be made that it is the single most important skill.

Direct marketing know-how shows you how to: generate leads, close sales, develop campaigns, deal with customer service, budget your advertising, get the most from your advertising, test ideas, make sure your business is on track, develop new revenue streams, pick promising markets. The list goes on and on.

That’s why at the System Seminar, we’ve always put traditional direct marketing front and center at all of our trainings.

For example, the System is the only Internet marketing seminar that had Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert and John Carlton as speakers. When Gary Bencivenga, the most successful direct mail copywriter of the last twenty years, celebrated his retirement, and chose to give only one interview: it was for members of the prestigious System Club, the alumni group of System Seminar grads.

I’m often amazed at how little today’s typical Internet “gurus,” even some of the biggest names, know about direct marketing. This is a big problem because teaching Internet marketing without knowing direct marketing inside and out is like teaching basketball without showing people how to dribble, pass and shoot.

This may be why so many people find themselves on what I call the “guru merry-go-round,” going from one hyper-expensive program to another, but never getting any traction.

Personally, I can’t stand to watch it which is why I decline 19 of 20 invitations I get to speak at guru events or promote the latest “me to” program which is usually just another get-rich-quick scheme. People are asking for bread but too often they’re sold stones.

And it’s entirely unnecessary. Direct marketing is not rocket science. It’s common sense writ large. But to teach direct marketing, you have to know direct marketing and that’s where today’s new generation of gurus falls down.

It’s such an irony. The market is practically screaming for the skill, folks are laying out tons of money to learn it, and yet…

I run into people every day who’ve been to all the seminars and yet don’t have even the A-B-Cs of direct marketing under their belt.

That’s why I make sure that every System training makes direct marketing principles its central focus. We keep up with new developments in the industry and our annual conference is the #1 place to catch up with what’s new in the field, but I make sure that no one involved with our events, not the faculty and not the students, ever loses sight of the fact that we are direct marketers first and foremost.

And I believe that’s the single most important factor contributing to why our students have such a high success rate.

If you haven’t experienced a System training, here’s a new way you can do that that’s more convenient and affordable than anything we’ve done before:

Click the link for details: http://www.SystemIntensive.com

Ken

Hard to tell, but with Apple’s track record, the iPhone bears close watching.

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Gary Halbert passed away.

Who was Gary Halbert?

Because there are so many people who read this letter who are relatively new to marketing, I thought I’d answer the question in this e-mail.

First, Gary was one of the top copywriters of the last fifty years and should be ranked among the very best who ever practiced the craft.

This may sound like hyperbole, but I assure you, it’s not. For clarity, simplicity and selling power, he was second to none.

Second, Gary was a direct marketing practitioner of a very high order.

He not only wrote brilliantly effective ad copy, but he was also inspired when it came to devising ways to put his ad copy in front of prospects using direct mail and space ads.

Third – and perhaps most important for us – Gary was a master teacher.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he did more to introduce small business owners and what I call “bootstrap entrepreneurs” to the wonders of direct marketing than any other person.

Before Gary, direct marketing – the basis of direct mail and Internet marketing – was a closed shop.

The only ways to learn the art was to apprentice yourself for many years to the ad agency world or to test your mettle directly against the brutally unforgiving world of direct mail.

Gary took the latter route and after many years of painful trial and error, hit a major home run with Halberts, a mega-successful mail order company that sold genealogy materials.

If Halberts had been Gary’s only accomplishment, he would have earned a place in the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame, but he did something even more important and challenging…

He distilled his highly sophisticated and hard earned knowledge into simple, easy-to-understand principles that everyone could profit from.

Again and again when I’ve tried to explain a direct marketing principle to a “newbie”, I find myself remembering something Gary said. In fact, I seriously doubt I’d be where I am today had I not had the benefit of his insights when I was getting started.

In 2003, we were very fortunate to have Gary as a speaker at our System Seminar in San Francisco. (Fortunately, we videotaped the presentation and I hope to have it up for free viewing in a week or so.)

At the System, Gary said something that I never heard before and I’ve never heard anyone say since, but it’s easily one of the most important things a marketer can keep in mind…

It’s one of those golden principles that can make the difference between success and failure…

It’s one of those gems of wisdom that appears totally obvious AFTER someone has articulated it…

Here’s what he said – and he said it in relation to writing ad copy:

“A sale is a very fragile thing.”

When you read Gary’s copy (or when he read it to you), you’d quickly realize – if you were perceptive – that Gary never left anything to chance. His copy, which seemed so simple and spontaneous, was as thorough and as well thought out as any NASA space launch.

One of the things Gary recommended to new writers was to take a piece of successful ad copy and write it out by hand.

Track down some Halbert copy – you can find it at www.thegaryhalbertletter.com – and start writing…

There’s no better tribute you can pay to one of our greatest writers and educators.

P.S. We’re started an archive of free Gary Halbert videos here. Click here for instant access.

Sell nothing, talk to nobody, provide no customer service…

In short: do nothing…and watch the big bucks roll in.

This fantasy – pushed aggressively by an ever-growning army of Internet pitchmen – has probably caused would-be Internet marketers to lose more money (not to mention time and sleep) than the national debt.

Let’s make 2007 the year we all get over it.
Yes, you can make some money collecting traffic and passing it on to others (AdSense, affiliate programs, whatever) to “close” it for you.

It’s a legitimate way to generate revenue, but here’s the key: it’s not a business!

I tried to explain this to folks way back in 1994.

(Maybe you’ve seen the video where I first talked about this.

If not, just go to Google Video and enter the keyword “marketing.” It usually comes us as #2. It’s called the First Internet Marketing Conference.)

Bottom line: In my book, it ain’t a business unless you own the most valuable asset there is on earth: a big list of customers with money in their pockets who are happy to spend it with you.

Any activity that does not result in generating a customer list and a positive relationship with the people on it just doesn’t cut it – for me at least.

Customers are the source…they’re the gold…they’re what makes the world go ’round and if you want to…last as a
business…and maximize your lifetime income…the key is to get as close to your customers as you possibly can.

Maybe someday this idea will become common in Internet marketing circles.

And maybe someday pigs will fly, but for those who “get” what I’m saying, consider this…

On the average, for every 100 people who come to your site, 98 leave without doing anything.

They don’t buy, they don’t opt-in, they don’t download anything.

They’re gone – and you don’t know who they are, why they came to you in the first place and why they turned away from your offer – even your snazzy, free, no obligation one.

Think of all the effort and expense it takes to get someone to your site…

Are you really happy knowing that the overwhelming majority of visitors leave your site without taking even the first step toward becoming a customer?

If you’re sane, you shouldn’t be.

If we ran real stores with monthly rent and utility bills and staff and inventories, we’d care a lot more about this.

But because it’s the Internet and everything is free (what a joke that is), we don’t care as much.

Big mistake.

Big expensive mistake.

Big expensive mistake that keeps us running ’round and ’round on the hamster wheel expending lots of energy, but
gathering little green.

So what’s the answer?

This year I came across a guy who has one of the most intriguing solutions to this problem I’ve ever seen.

Once you get over the shock of how much sense it makes and “why didn’t anyone think of this before” I think you’re going to find what he’s doing very exciting.

As in a tenfold increase in revenue…from the same amount of visitors. Those are his results and lots of the people he’s taught his method to are enjoying similar gains.

Check it out:

http://www.unlockyourbiz.com

Enjoy!

Ken

P.S. It’s a new year. Anything’s possible.

One thing I do at the end of each year is get rid of as much old stuff – books, clothes, outmoded ideas – as I can so I make room for new stuff to come in.

Try it. It’s simple, but it works.

This year throw out the outdated way you look at your customers…and this is one of the best places I know to start:

http://www.unlockyourbiz.com

“You should spend more time on how to sell physical products online. It’s a great opportunity for people.”

Mike knew what he was talking about.

He took his family’s business forms business from $700 a month to over $1 million a year in online sales in less than 18 months.

And he did it with just his basic System Seminar training and no special help from us.

He was right, of course.

Many System grads chose to apply what they learned at the System not to selling information, but to selling hard goods.

And lots of them did very, very well.

When something happens naturally, it’s always a good idea to pay attention – and pay attention I did.

Here’s what I learned…

I went on an intensive search to find folks who were:

a) successful at selling physical products online and

b) willing and able to talk about it.

Surprisingly, this was not an easy thing to do.

Most people who are good at selling physical products online don’t see any reason to slow down long enough to teach what they know to others. Also, many of them go into selling *physical* products specifically because they’re NOT speakers, or writers or teachers.

They’re just guys who sell stuff and make money. Simple.

A big breakthrough came for me when I met Andy Jenkins. Andy not only ran several successful online stores, he captured everything he learned about the process in a book.

“Andy, you realize there’s $10,000 worth of information in that book, don’t you?” (I think at the time he was selling it for $49.)

It was a super book and the reason I know is that is that it helped launch so many online physical products success stories.

One day Andy suggested I meet his friend Robin Cowie. Robin is an expert on one of the most important aspects of selling physical products online: product sourcing.

Unlike info marketing, where most entrepreneurs create their own material or license it from colleagues, folks who sell physical products live or die on the quality of their product sourcing.

If you’re good at sourcing, it means you can find high quality, high demand goods from reliable vendors at excellent prices.

This is one skill physical products marketers must have. All the traffic and fancy marketing in the world won’t help you one bit if you can’t find a steady supply of product. But sourcing product ain’t easy.

First of all it’s very labor intensive… Long hours searching directories, contacting suppliers, deciphering terms, and then testing.

And I don’t mean testing ads. I mean testing whether your supplier is reliable!

This is a huge challenge in the physical products business. Probably less than 1 out of 10 suppliers is worth doing business with.

A few years back, one of Robin’s colleagues had a brainstorm…why not find and catalog all the reliable, net entrepreneur-friendly product suppliers there are in each product category and make all the information available in a single guide.

It was a simple idea, but very powerful.

In a short time, thousands of online merchants were using the resource and even eBay was looking to Robin’s company for advice and training for its own merchants. Fast foward to the present…

No matter what you’re selling, whether it’s information, advice, services or physical products, it pays to think about selling physical products. Let me give you one example of why:

An attendee at last year’s System Seminar, a veteran online marketer who provides Internet services to dentists, stood up at the end of the conference and said: “Robin Cowie just added a million dollars in annual sales to my company – minimum.

We have a relationship with thousands of dentists and it never occured to me howit easy it could be to source physical products to sell them. I didn’t know that there are company’s that make selling physical products as easy as selling eBooks. We can just send them payment and they handle all the warehousing and shipping for us. Virtual and hands-off.

This is going to be a gold mine for us.”

No matter what you sell, there may be a line of physical products you can add to your business to increase your overall sales. If you’re already in the business of selling physical products, Robin’s sourcing resources are invaluable.

But as good as Robin’s service has been, it just got ridiculously better. He’s just come out with a service called One Source that when I saw it literally made the hair stand up on the back of my head!

It’s an insanely advanced product research service at an insanely low price.

Frankly, I don’t get it.

But I know that Robin knows what he’s doing.

Maybe he’s decided he doesn’t need to make all the money in the world.

Mayeb he’s decided to become a humanitarian.

I don’t know, but if you’re in Internet marketing, you really should check this out without delay before he wises up and jacks up the price substantially.

Click here for Robin’s video about One Source

Enjoy!

Ken

* time-proven
* works like crazy in the right markets
* for all practical purposes – a secret
to Internet marketers who are not part
of the insiders group…

It’s called Pay-Per-Lead marketing.

http://www.ppladsystem.com/

If you’ve been around the Internet world for any length of time, you may also know it as CPA or cost-per-action. It’s the same thing. Just a different name.

How big is the potential here?

I had one colleague in the 1990s who made so much from these kinds of deals that he was able to retire in 2000 before he hit the age of 35.

Done. Finished. Living off interest and doing what he loved.

Yes, there’s that much money in this particular pie.

But before I get into the specifics of how these deals work, I want to tell you a little about the trailblazer who is bringing this little known, but highly lucrative area of Internet marketing to light.

Meet Mike Mograbi

This year I had the pleasure of getting to know Mike Mograbi.

While his name may not ring a bell for some, everyone knows the publication he launched in 2006:

Internet Marketing News Watch (IMNW)

What a great service IMNW is for people trying to keep up with the ever-changing world of Internet marketing.

If you don’t know Internet Marketing News Watch, google it and take a look.

It’s a news site that’s updated constantly (as in hourly) with news from the Internet marketing and high tech industries. There’s nothing like it in the world and visiting IMNW has become a daily ritual for thousands of marketers including me.

What some people may not know about Mike is that he’s based overseas – in Beruit, Lebanon.

If you followed the international news this year, you know what that means.

If not, here’s a conversation you could have had with him in July…

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

You: Hey Mike. How’s business?

Mike: Great! The site keeps growing by leaps and bounds and people really seem to like it.

You: How’s the family?

Mike: Well, at the moment my country is caught in the crossfire of a shoot out between Israel and Hezzbollah.

I drove my family across to Jordan to keep them from getting killed. We considered ourselves very lucky to have arrived in one piece. There are folks who weren’t as lucky.

Otherwise, we’re all fine. How about with you?

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

While we were all grilling hamburgers in the backyard this summer, this was, in fact, how Mike spent his summer
vacation.

And here’s the amazing part…

Through all of this, Mike’s business didn’t skip a beat.

And unless you knew Mike personally, you’d never know any of this was going on in his life.

Talk about grace under pressure!

As we go through 2007 and beyond, we might all remember Mike’s summer vacation next time we think we’re facing “adversity.”

If bombs aren’t falling on your city, things are probably not as bad as you think they are

And if you’re Mike-like, you could find a way to deal with it if they were.

Anyway, if all Mike did was start Internet Marketing News Watch and keep it running during a shooting war that would be a huge contribution to our industry.

But he’s done a lot more – and that’s what this letter is about…

This savvy, gutsy businessman – he has an MBA from the American University in Beruit – has cracked the code on the Pay-Per-Lead business and made it comprehensible – and easy – for the rest of us to join the party.

OK. What the heck is Pay-Per-Lead?

First, Pay-Per-Lead what’s known as a monetization method.

Most of us have pretty straightforward businesses.
We get traffic (paid and free), we convert visitors to prospects and then we convert prospects to buyers.

That’s one form of monetization.

People who sell banner ads, monetize their traffic by selling impressions and that’s called Cost-Per-Impression or CPI.

People who are playing the AdSense game are in the Cost-Per-Click business, or CPC.

Affiliate marketers monetize their traffic by sending visitors to merchant sites and they get paid when their leads turn into sales. Cost-Per-Sale. CPS.

Pay-Per-Lead occupies the sweet spot between affiliate marketing and AdSense.

You get paid – and paid shocking well – not for sales, but simply to get someone to fill out a form!

How big can these check be?

How does $8.00 *per lead* sound?

How does $18.75 – per lead – grab you?

Would you say “no” to $60 per lead?

These are actual industry examples of deals that are currently available right now.

It doesn’t matter whether your visitors buy anything or not. If they fill out a form, you get paid. Period.

You might be wondering how on earth can this be?

How can an advertiser afford to pay commissions when there there is no sale?

It’s simple.

The advertisers has done his math.

He knows to the penny what a completed form – a lead – is worth to him and not only is he glad to pay up, he’s anxious to find you and get you generating leads for him because the more qualified leads he gets, the more money he knows
he’ll make.

If have traffic, you might be sitting – right now – on the equivalent of a gold mine.

It’s not uncommon for marketers who “get” Pay-Per-Lead to quickly ad 50%, 100% or even more to their incomes – without adding a single new traffic source.

How many Pay-Per-Lead programs are there?

Hundreds – and they’re in practically every niche you can imagine.

If this is so great, you might be asking, what’s the catch and why haven’t you heard about this before?

Well, Pay-Per-Lead deals have been around practically since the beginning of Internet marketing. There’s no mystery there.

But to actually play this game used to require a ton of research and personal contacts.

There was no guide book.

Pay-Per-Lead really was – and still is – largely an insiders game.

But like I said at the beginning of all this, Mike’s applied that razor sharp, grace-under-pressure
mind of his to open this new world up to you.

How’s that for a new year’s present?

Check it out.

By the way, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you see how affordable he’s made it.

Two big thumbs way up on this one:

http://www.ppladsystem.com

Ken

P.S. 2007 can be your best year ever. Why not?

Best wishes for health, happiness and success for you and all your loved ones in 2007 and beyond.