How do you get down from an elephant?

You don’t, you get down from a goose.

Let’s go back to our simple basics:

• Most people run on semi-automatic. Meaning they are letting their subconscious do the work for them. They only answer the telephone when it rings. These are the factory workers, the cubicle hourly workers, the warehouse and set-wage people who contribute a fixed part of their wages to the Government every week, on an increasing scale the more they make. This is about 97% of the world’s population.
• Of the remaining 3%, most are in incredible action to get things done. They either run corporations or start them and sell them to others who do, then starting another. Most of these are self-employed or own the company and work either on dividends or in as many low- or non-taxable ways as there can be invented. Politicians and government leaders are in this bunch (and their staffers are in that first group.)
• And there is a micro-fraction of the whole – about 3% of 3% who really run the world’s wealth. Or they are independent otherwise in the extreme and create the inventions you use all the time. They may work for salaries, but they don’t necessarily depend on these. More often, they are independently wealthy, or have other support systems which allow them an independence from day-to-day necessities of living.

Most of your buyers are in that 97%. And that’s where all your taxes come from as well.

And since those 97% run on the subconscious patterns (mostly), they are relatively easy to offer goods based on “wants” and “needs”, and to get purchases. Meaning they work all week so that marketers can take their money at the end of it. Or, as in credit cards, they set it up for these people stay in hock until they die. And then go after their relatives for that debt.

The 3% think they are running the show – however, they are also running on mostly semi-automatic. They are simply in action instead of stuck in a rut of expecting things to be handed to them when they work long and hard enough. While these few are the task-masters of the world. They also don’t have a clue on what is actually going on.

That 3% of 3% do actually understand the systems, or at least the bulk of them. And they can concentrate on exactly what they have to operate to get the other 99.9% (+/-) to do what they want, more or less. They think they have the tiger by the tail. But they only succeed to the degree they stick to the system they have and that system is mostly complete. Bill Gates, Warren Bufffet, Sam Walton, all these guys. They concentrate on a system that works.

So selling to any of these bunches is quite simple. Know how the subconscious works and pander to it. Offer systems to that 3% who are in action. But use those same psychology-buttons to get them to buy. Even that .09% will settle to some degree based on your offerings. In most cases, they make or control such vast sums it doesn’t matter if they waste some of it here and there. Plenty more where that came from.

And the write-ups on the systems to market and sell goods to people exist widely on the Internet. Even available as free downloads. Again, you only have to concentrate your attention on finding them, proving them, and using them.

What they will buy:

• 97% will buy stuff. Material things which temporarily satiate their desires. As instant a gratification as possible.
• 3% will buy into systems to control or run other peoples’ lives – especially the ones that make that stuff.
• .09% will buy the copyrights, trademarks, and patents to those systems and license them. Plus buy that company itself.

There is only one rule: You can’t sell something they don’t actually think they need or want. And if you work to deceive them into momentarily thinking they need something when their subconscious says they actually don’t, you’ll wind up paying them more in return than the sale was worth. Almost all of their thoughts are semi-automatic, and their wants and needs are pretty much pre-ordained. (Just reverse engineer my anti-scam checklist and you’ll find them.) This rule holds top to bottom. No real exceptions.

- – - -

There is a very, very small minority – about 3% of 3% of 3% – or .0027% who are actually immune to the whole system.  They don’t actually need or want stuff. Because these are an enlightened few who don’t work either reactively or pro-actively. They operate intuitively.  And while the wealth they accumulate (and they are usually very wealthy if they put any attention on it at all) comes through the “normal channels of industry and commerce”, you’ll find that they don’t work very hard to make it show up.

These extreme minority few don’t actually work at all. They intuitively know what actions they have to take, but it’s a game to them. They have fun at every single thing they do. Life is unending joy.

And the rest of these guys above would pay just about anything to know and understand and be able to simply do those actions for themselves.

But there’s a trick to this.

Money can’t buy it. And there’s no way to market it or sell it.

You can only earn it.

And these rare few don’t even consider that it’s their job to package this system up and tell people about it, or offer it on any market. Sure, some write books, some make DVD’s or CD’s, or lecture, or hold seminars. But they do this for fun.

They know that only a very, very, tiny handful of people out there are ready to get what they are offering. Because that is how many people are actually ready for it.

To the rest – they are selling a system. And when you study the above, you know exactly what they will do with whatever you offer through your marketing. You’ll know who your clients are, and who your consumers are, and who to sell out to when you intuit you want to do something else.

But they also know that only a handful (as in: you can count on one hand) will actually get what they are saying and put it to actual use in their lives.

So: “To those who have ears, let them hear…”

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Somebody ought to give these guys a clue: put a sock in it so the rest of us don’t have to listen to your hysterical death moans.

While on the Internet the other day (my chief form of both livelihood and information), I was visiting right-of-center Real Clear Politics – who I adopted during the last three years of campaigning because they were the only ones who averaged all the polls.

I was astonished to find, after Tax Day, how many disparate and desperate opinion (not factual) pieces their were about what had happened. It went from twisted support to knife-twisted-in-back denial. Even commentary on commentary where Keith Obermann had used reportedly sexual innuendo to describe it.

Who cares? No, really – WHO CARES?!?

There is a reason that the NY Times is estimating a 30%+ loss in advertising revenue for the next year. There is a reason for the “Big City” newspapers going under at a record pace. There is a reason that people who watch the Network news are fewer and fewer by double-digit percentages. There was even a rumor that one of the two people who watch MSNBC and CNBC (they take turns) – actually fell asleep…

Relevance.

The mainstream media can’t get used to the fact that it’s dying. A very slow and painful death (at least for the rest of us.)

It’s not that people don’t care. They don’t care for the slant, the diatribes, the couched phrases, the unabashed support of certain liberal senators.

People don’t care who is the anchor for the evening news or what sex they are – they don’t watch it anyway. (Except for the reviewers and those employed by NBC, CBS, and ABC. But these are the mourners, not the rest of the passer-bys outside the cemetery on the sidewalk.)

People do care about what is going on and what is really happening. And they know that there is more than two sides to every story – and that anyone who thinks they are some sort of expert officiator is full of more manure than any herd out there. (And they are thinking about taxing farmers for cow gas – what about newscaster and politician gas?!?)

While the mainstream media is dying off, why are local papers (and local banks for that matter) doing just fine and even – gasp – expanding in this economy?

Relevance.

What’s on the local newspaper front page? What happened locally that day. What’s on page 3 or page 5? National and World News. Oh, there is a blurb which runs at the bottom if something important is happening. But covering the election – it’s how the local voter turnout went.

Some used to say that there were bubbles on each coast (probably connected by a very long tube) where all the “really important” stuff happened. And we in the middle were lucky enough just to capture bits and pieces and overviews of it – that we should feel honored that there were three news agencies who would digest it all and present it in half-hour segments each night at dinner.

Let’s get something straight. They’re nuts.

I watch TV for the weather and get my news from the Internet. And this means that I try to avoid the National News, since they don’t carry local weather. My family likes to catch the sports as well. But that’s it.

And our TV has to be propped up when any “Network News” is on, because they are so slanted, the TV would fall off the stand if it weren’t supported.

Impartial? Look, my dogs are impartial – as long as I feed them something they can eat and they have a dry spot to lie in. My cows are impartial – as long as they have plenty of pasture or hay and water (and I keep the dogs from chasing them). Try treating a “news person” that way.

But is that a fair comparison? Well, how do the news people treat me? “This political party is horrible; that political party is saving the day.” The government did this nonsense thing today, but when the business do the same nonsense thing yesterday, they covered it as some horrible sin against humanity. Some politicians and candidates are held up on pedestals, some others are held up to thinly veiled scorn.

Do I need real facts that I can judge for myself? Yes. Do I need to put up with noise and pandering and slanted diatribes couched as “fair, impartial journalism”? Hell, no.

So around this house the TV goes off except for the morning and evening weather. We get the local “big city” paper on Sunday. I have one favorite comic strip, my brother-in-law likes the want ads, my mother likes the opinion section and the recipes (only one of which soothes the stomach – guess which…)

What’s entertainment? Nothing on TV. What’s the commercials for their “hot, new shows” — people dying, getting killed, being investigated after being killed, investigations into killings that happened years ago, specials on people who are trying to save the planet (which is being killed….) And so on. Ad nauseum.

Or there are “reality shows”. Nope. People on remote islands and deserts doing stupid antics and trying to act like the TV cameras aren’t there. Do you see any camera in a trailer park seeing people raise their kids while they hold down two jobs and their grandmother makes sure the kids’ homework gets done? Nope. We see millionaire bachelors fooling around with 20 or more women and deciding to “marry” one of them. Yeah, that’s real. Or game shows where 20 or so girls with amplified bosoms and barely dressed holding briefcases so a bald guy can tease a person into saying and doing really stupid things to “win” something in those empty cases. That’s real high-brow.

How about comedy. Go ahead – find some. Most of the half-decent comedy reruns used to fill afternoon slots and now has been replaced by “Judge Jerky” and “Judge Korky” and ‘Law & Order” reruns from five years ago.

OK, there is one show we watch when we can get it – a game show where the host is actually polite and funny at times and people do nothing but win money if they can guess the words right. Nobody dies, no one gets investigated, no one’s in prison. No sex, no violence, nobody dies (some of the jokes fall flat, but that’s no crime…)

Sure, there’s plenty of all that on the Internet as well, you could say. But there is also a lot of everything else as well – tons more. And the choice itself is relevance.

And yes, we used to watch Fox News and the Discovery Channel and even CSPAN – until some boobs decided to take it off the big dish – and we tried the small dish for awhile and got tired of paying for 20-30 channels of stuff we didn’t want for the 2 or 3 we did.

It’s cheaper to just watch what we want – local news and local weather – then turn it off the rest of the time.

Why, oh why do I have to listen and watch what some cock-eyed TV or newspaper executive – someone who has probably never had to change his own flat tire, or grow his own vegetables, or raise chickens for the eggs and stew them when they got too old – much less rescue a healthy calf that was born in an unseasonal blizzard, and raising them to a good weight only to sell them off at auction a year later.

No, most of these guys grew up in some suburb and then moved into a condo or apartment where they don’t even have a yard – working in another high-rise across town (so to speak) where they listened to other people in suits who spoke from “on high” about what advertisers thought people wanted to hear on those magic boxes in their living rooms.

And the “down their nose” attitude toward the rest of the country is infectious and spreads like the plague up and down the halls of those palatial boardrooms and studios.

Does anybody really care that Keith Obermann pouted until he got a door with a window in it for his new office? Hell, no.

- – - -

Here’s a reality show I’d like to see: get all those newscasters and TV personalities and line them up in front of a series of “pre-owned” cars. No, get some real used ones. You know, the ones where nobody cares to wax them any more because it would point out the rust spots worse.

Make sure they are dressed up in their usual suits and blouses and whatnot. Give them all a wireless mic so they think they know what they are doing. Then tell them it’s a contest and they have to change that flat tire on the car behind them, get it started and drive it to the filling station 5 miles away. Good luck.

I’m often talking out loud to my Senator or the President or one of these news anchors as I’m on the third day of fixing a section of fence the rain took out last fall and the wind dropped a couple of trees on during the winter. Do any of these guys look like they could even start a chain-saw, much less run one for a few hours? How about splicing barbed-wire? Know how to herd cattle just on your lonesome and two half-trained dogs without spooking them or losing any calves? Do they know what to do with a steer who’s got bloated up from eating too much wet clover in the spring?

I’ll swap them for their job almost any day – for awhile, anyway. I could do what they do with no problem. Write some stories and read them off in front of a robot camera. Nothing to it. Really. But it would be harder on me, because I know they wouldn’t take care of my herd and I’d be way behind when I got back because they wouldn’t know how to get the equipment ready for this season’s planting.

AND – they’d get all the good food, while I would have to make do with a bunch of stuff shipped in from thousands of miles away and was about as fresh as the bottom of my boots. (Would smell nicer, though…)

- – - -

Yes, I’m the same Dr. Robert C. Worstell who has a PhD and 7 other degrees. So don’t get all snooty with me. I’ve written, edited, and published around 4 dozen books and keep up with (more or less) another two dozen blogs – that I personally post to, not some scriptwriter down a long hall somewhere. I’ve given speeches, podcasts, videos – been there, done that.

But I also know how to drive a dual-axle 10-speed transmission, a John Deere tractor with a couple less (and two of those are reverse) – and which cover crops will bring back soil fertility in a worn-out flood plain.

And I know better than to take a tour bus into the middle of a corn field in Iowa in order to “get a story” about a combine and corn harvest, only to get stuck in soft ground (not even mud.)

Oh, come on. Same folks who got a corn picker and a combine mixed up last year (“reporting” some tragic accident from the year before). Heard the same story all day, about 5 or 6 times – somewhere in there it was corrected, at least by dinner. This was on national news – not the local channel. They’d have more sense.

- – - -

Do I know about big cities? Sure – I lived in L.A. for over 20 years. Right downtown Hollywood – not in those suburbs. So I’ve seen the crime, and the pimps, and ho’s, and “bruthah’s”, and the rich and famous as well. Porn peddled on the street corners and dirt almost everywhere (except when there is a premiere where they sweep it up and hose it down and put some red carpets over it.) The bums are back the next day, just as soon as the crews take down the velvet ropes.

Which do I prefer? Guess. Where did I make more money? Guess. Does money buy happiness or accurate news reporting? Don’t even have to flip a coin on that one.

So these news guys and gals should take a hint or two:

1. Get a real job, get a real life.
2. Go do something nice for someone for a change. Quit talking everything and everyone down because your ‘spozed to’.
3. Get a real yard and plant a real garden. Raise some tomatoes and lettuce, maybe some sweet corn.
4. Meanwhile, put a sock in it and j-u-s-t – s-h-u-t – u-p, would you?

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Burt mentioned the “7 Laws” almost as an after thought, with reference to “Hermetic teachings.” Curious, with the Internet always on, I checked this out and found it to be an old, public domain book, which I already had in my own files.

The interest here is that this has everything to do with Marketing as it is practiced , and will open up new ideas for you as you study it.

I am not going to delve into this in detail, just mention a few illustrations. (And unfortunately, this is running to nearly a couple of thousand words, which is horrible blog etiquette – so you might want to print off this page and save it for reading with your favorite beverage while relaxed on an easy chair or couch…)

I. Principle of Mentalism

This is not a new concept, but it perhaps didn’t even start with Hermes Trimestigus (or Thoth). It’s found in the Huna teachings, which Max Freedom Long said were even older than Egyptian.

The idea, while stated as “All is MIND” are easily explained to be, as Earl Nightingale, “We become what we think about.” He attributed that idea to Napoleon Hill. In Huna it is, “The world is what you think it is.”

Here you see Ryes and Trout’s “Positioning” concept. By inviting your viewers to think about your product in a certain way, you also invite them to create that item in their world. The more they create it, the greater possibility for it to exist, i.e., they will buy it or some version of it sooner or later.

(On the Internet, they may download it first and then later get an actual CD. If you are prepared, you will make low-cost downloads of individual MP3’s available as part of your initial promotion.)

II. The Principle of Correspondence

Goldman is fond of repeating this one, “As above, so below; as below, so above.”

An easy application is that when you plan a marketing campaign for the long-tail niche, it has the same elements as one you would plan for a large “big-head” campaign (taking over one of the few bestseller spots in the NYT or B&N or Amazon, for instance.)

So you would test-market your new product in a small area and carefully analyze each part of it for effectiveness in converting customers to clients, leads to sales, viewers to buyers.

Internally, you will also pick your best execs and project managers in this way. As they treat their immediate staffers, so will they treat their accounts.

You’ll also see in this the Golden Rule and also the Law of Attraction.

III. The Principle of Vibration

Essentially, everything has vibration, motion, movement. Nothing stays at rest.

This is obvious on any marketing plan – you have to “re-charge” it at intervals with new material. And with social media, you can see how some items “go viral” while others are ignored. Everything has a pattern of motion it follows (or introduces).

Copywriting is in this league. Study the greats such as Shakespeare and people who followed him such as Louis L’Amour. You’ll see that while they have scene shifts and cliff-hangers, the story is moved along with a certain pace – ever quickening, dragging the unsuspecting audience along. Star Wars and other hits are of this type. “Boring” films (compare John Wayne’s hits with his “B” movie duds) don’t keep a regular, quickening cadence. Music is another element in this. John Williams’ scores were key to the Star Wars’ series success – as is the continuing use of a common theme in all the Star Trek ensemble of  movies and TV series.

Your copy-writing can be staccato, such as the famous VW ads (“Ugly.” “Still Ugly.”) or they can run on for a solid text of pages like the Robert Collier ads.

There is a vibration to all promotion. When these are sympathetic to the vibration of the viewer (or listener), you have increased want and sales.

IV. The Principle of Polarity

The universe isn’t simply hot or cold, but a wide variation of temperatures in between. Every extreme has its opposite, but is actually a description of a working scale of every position in between.

There is no Perfect or Good ad. Some are very bad. And your best promotion is not one which is the glossiest or academically perfect. The old “Clio’s” were a study in this. Like the Academy Awards, it was some sort of inbred purity at work with the judges. Their track record was that every PR agency which won a Clio was out of business the next year. Because they were works of art which didn’t sell products.

Huna has this principle, “Effectiveness is the measure of truth.” So it is definitely with promotion and advertising. Consider the independent movie, “Blair Witch Project”. On a per-dollar expense in marketing and production, this was an outrageous success. But the film, “Rocky Horror Picture Show” has attained a cult status and substantial returning revenues to small independent movie houses which show it to midnight viewings on a regular basis. “Deep Throat”, for all it’s porn, was a promotional success.

All these were not high-dollar epics. And you’ll see many other independent and low-budget entrees which never make their costs back. While on the other hand, there have been huge investments by major studios which never returned costs.

Box office popularity is perhaps the best measure of quality – what are the sales. But then often a “flop” by major studio standards will set the stage for a later success, achieving name recognition that can be later parlayed into a profitable production.

Of course, your released campaigns fit into this, as you develop a series of spots which keep a regular appearance in front of your potential viewers. This of course combines several of the above principles.

V. The Principle of Rhythm

Now you can appreciate the pluses and minuses of rhythm to promotion and advertising. Everything swings and cycles between extremes. Our two last presidents are of this mold. Both extremists and polarizing.

This is not a common use in marketing, as it is apparently not well known. The Star Trek franchise has been worked to be a regular presence in front of it’s viewers. So it is working from the “is there, isn’t there” type of polarity. (And one of its most famous original shows had a comment on racism, where two surviving people off a planet were constantly trying to kill off the other – one was black on the right, white on the left; the other reversed. Both considered the other their enemy just because they were differently colored.)

Some savvy Internet marketers have realized the natural phenomenon and licensed affiliate sales people to take up the negative positions to their positive spiel. Like this site, where I can find people coming to find all about “Burt Goldman scam” when I don’t consider or write about that being a fact. (And, with any luck, I’ll be approved for affiliate sales of his products shortly…) The more they promote Burt, the more people come to my site to find out if (or how) it’s an actual scam.

Polarity and Rhythm. Don’t be stingy with affiliate accounts – set them lose to pick up all the reverse-polarity marketing campaigns you can’t do yourself.

And you’ll also see rhythm show up in the copyrighting on a blog – as well a longer ad campaign with several short releases (again, see the VW campaign by example.)

VI. The Principle of Cause and Effect

“Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law…”

Most of marketing has the consumer as the unwilling/willing effect to the Marketer’s Cause. Arrogant marketers are reminded of this fact (as well as arrogant politicians) when the customer quits buying their products (or votes for the opposition.) More common on television (especially cable) where people vote with their remotes.

Most people (around 95-97%) simply go with the flow around them, and this is what Marketing is based on – appeal to the subconscious mind which runs their lives with routine. This is the factory worker, the warehouse operator, the sales associate on the sales floor, the cubicle denizen in white-collar jobs, the government-job “worker”, the union member. Their bosses call the shots, and are often just another cog themselves.

Independent entrepreneurs and company founders are those who remain at Cause most of the time. These are the Doers, not those who are stuck on the receiving end, hoping that their pensions and “social security” will still be there when they retire.

Marketers market, consumers consume.

VII. The Principle of Gender

Having nothing to do with sex, the action of giving (Male) and receiving (Female) are necessary to every marketing approach. While the marketer gives in order to receive, the customer receives in order to give.

A key use of this is where successful marketers give value before the person is asked to buy anything. Because they give something away, the potential customer wants to reciprocate. This is one indicator of a scammer, since they will give something of very cheap value and then hit up for something very pricey (also of dubious value). Traditionally-accepted marketing practice is always to give away something fairly valuable, but always also give a final value in excess of whatever someone pays. This then turns one-time consumers into returning clients, as they “always get a good deal.”

This is also the point of turning your clients into Affiliate sales points. Receivers now turn into Givers. They can say that they honestly got a good deal when they contact other people they know – and are rewarded with a small stipend for the referral.

“One-shot wonders” in the music industry violate this right, left, and center.

- – - -

So this overlong treatise is just a shallow over view of what can be gained by studying the Mystic classics. The term “mystic” has the meaning of both initiate (learner) and also teacher.

It is expected that as you master your own studies of life and living, you’ll “pay it forward in advance” to help others. The reasoning behind this is found in the 7 principles above.

And the interplay and interaction you’ll find as you go along this line can be fascinating in the extreme.

For more information, check out the Kybalion as you can find it online, as well as my Mystic Marketing book. Don’t say you weren’t warned…

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• A scammer simply wants the most amount of money for the least amount of effort. They deal in one-off’s and want you only for a sale – which to them is only a numbers-game. They just want your money. They don’t care about you.
  
  
• An honest and valuable service-provider is interested in your welfare and wants you as a continuing client. These guys don’t really care about the gimmicks and know that even if you only buy from them once, your honest recommendation will bring more people to them who they can honestly help.
  

Now, I wrote the basics of copywriting over at my book-blog at Online Sunshine Plan.

And there’s far more to it in the Online Sunshine Plan book, available at Lulu.com

But I haven’t laid out anywhere what goes into a sales page and the difference that makes it a scam – so here goes:

Key point:

They are using your emotions, feelings, and attitudes to get what they want.

95% of the average humankind person operates mostly on subconscious reactions. If they can get you to “think” about something,  especially in thinking with your feelings, they can get you to react in their favor.

Will Rogers was talking about modern advertising and sales pages when he said they are just, “getting people to buy things they don’t want with money they don’t have.”

Here’s the rough layout of most sales pages:

• Headline
• Greeting
• Bullet Points
• Exciting transition paragraph
• More Bullet Points
• An exciting testimonial or two or three about your book
• More Bullet Points
• An incredible guarantee
• A free bonus if they buy your book today
• An easy way to buy your product
• Your close
• A P.S.

Go ahead, open up a new tab or a new window and see if this isn’t true. Check out some sales pages. The majority of them follow this exact scene. Some are longer than others. Some have found that “interactive” videos help make the sale these days.

The headlines, bullet points, and testimonials – all the copywriting, actually – are all about “features” which again are always based in the key points which people use to get sales (and I quote from my Cialdini and Levenson Scam-free pages):

Cialdini:

1. Reciprocation

2. Commitment and consistency

3. Social proof

4. Liking

5. Authority

6. Scarcity

Levenson:

- The need or want for security.
- The need or want for approval.
- The need or want for control, or to escape control.

These are all the buttons which are being used to get you to act on their offers.

When you look at these pages, they are all telling you how great you will feel, how people will look up to you, how everyone around you has one, how such-and-such celebrity or professor recommends it, etc. etc.

The difference between a really good deal and a scam

There are some things to look for, and some to look out for.

First, most people are wising up to this. They look for social recommendations – just like people always have. What’s the word of mouth on this product? Reviews, listings on the complaint boards, etc.  Now this can also be booby-trapped if that product or service has an affiliate sales network. For many products, if you look up the company product, followed by “scam” or “fraud” then you’ll find a nice sales page disguised as an honest review of the product. And the links are affiliate links. So the page author can make some money if you sign up through them.

Get on some discussion boards and check these out. Again, there are people who exist in life just to be critical of others, no matter how good they or their products are. And some websites only act as consumer complaint sites, but actually are shaking down the people who are mentioned on their sites (RipOff Reports – Wikipedia article). However, the bulk of them are straight. A rough rule of thumb is if they are 50% or better with actual good reports, then they aren’t scamming.

(The most pathetic sites I’d ever seen were where scammers were actually offering Internet Coaching to unsuspecting people. Once they educated people how to research on the Internet, they found out they were getting scammed and then posted to their new blogs how bad that company had ripped them off. Then they went to the complaint boards and really let loose. Idiot scammers.)

Second, they will actually offer you a trial version for nothing, except maybe postage.  Now, beware of this like the devil. You can easily (as I have, with a company called Bid-Fuel) who will send you a mostly useless CD and then in fine print tell you that they are going to be billing you monthly for access to their site (which is also useless). And then they sell your name and number to other sales floors who will then sell you some over-priced online training from a service provider.  But you will keep getting phone calls, as they sell your name over and over and over and over. (Use my stop telemarketer recipe to get them to quit if this has happened to you.)

A decent company won’t ask you for your phone number and will actually tell them that they aren’t going to use your credit card or give your name to anyone else. (Why do people need your phone number unless they are going to call you, anyway?)

But again, you can Google their “free offer” and see if others have found it useful.

The key differences between valid businesses and scammers

Key points for valid businesses:

They have overwhelming favorable comments and you can try their free product with no strings attached.

Key points for scammers:

They are overwhelmingly criticized and at best will give you a discounted intro which you then have to cancel.

Otherwise, they both use essentially the same sales pages.

Here’s a PLR article I found which gives more on how this whole sales page system works:

1. The header/graphic block
HEL-LO!! The opening graphic should grab your visitor by the eyeballs and plunge him or her into your site. Its primary purpose is to get your visitor to read your opening headline.

2. The testimonial / credentials block
Who is this guy and what is he offering? This block promises BIG BENEFITS – enough to keep your visitor reading. Make this as powerful as you can, but a word of caution – you’re going to have to justify that claim later.

3. The informational block
Tell your visitor what problem you’re solved for them.

4. The product introduction block
Here is where you point out (in general terms) how your product can cure their problems.

5. The benefits block
In this block, you build on the benefits that your product brings, this time, item-by-item. Bullets are useful here.

6. The call to action block
Here’s where you first ask for the sale. And here’s where you give a time deadline (plus a reason for the deadline). Make sure there is an easy method of ordering, even at this early stage. If not earlier, here’s a simple form or link which takes them to a sales page.

7. The guarantee block
Here’s where you place it your guarantee. If you use Clickbank, they have ample guarantees you can quote. It reinforces the visitor’s growing need to buy and reassures them.

8. The bonuses block
Now throw in some great bonuses you’re going to give them. Also include the actual value of what you’d pay to get these separately.

9. The action summary block
Here’s where you ask for the sale – clearly and without hesitation. This is really what you want to ask from the beginning.  But the earlier blocks enable this one to work. Make sure your customer knows the price and you tell her what is expected now. Make sure there’s no doubt what their next action should be.

10. The postscript block
Like any good sales letter you should add a postscript. Your visitors will be sure to read two things: the heading and the postscript. This is where you should shine. It’s your last chance to give a light shove to anyone still teetering on the edge.

So it’s no real difference to the sales format, but you can tell the subtle differences – something which should keep you away from scammers for the most part.

You also have to know that the testimonial portion can be faked easily. I’ve seen testimonials which were made up out of whole cloth and sounded very convincing. The other point: a lot of these companies have about 1 in 100,000 who actually are outrageous successes. These are the guys who appear on the video’s and infomercials with the rave success stories. What the don’t tell you is that about 10,000 people actually “make money” with that product. Meaning 99,000 people were scammed and lost money. And these are actual statistics I got from people who have worked for those scammers.

You’ve got a wire-thin road to follow at first. But once you get the hang of how to find out what’s real and what’s fake, you’ll be astonished – at least I was – when you see that 97% of what’s out there in Internet Marketing is bunk.

And here’s some recent Internet Sales Fraud links:

Avoiding Internet Sales Fraud
But consumers have also suffered because of online scams that go to great lengths to take advantage of people who do internet shopping for a bargain. How can you protect yourself from being the victim of an Internet sales fraud? …

Curbstoning – A Form of Auto Sales Fraud
The internet is a new way for curbstoners to pawn off their vehicles. It can be quick for sellers to conceal each their identity and location from buyers and govt organizations that test to maintain an eye on them. …

Steps to avoid internet sales fraud
Among all types of purchasing, Internet purchasing is most fastest process. But if a buyer is not careful, then he or she can easily get cheated. Several steps which a person can be keep in mind while doing online purchasing are as …

The SuperChallenge for Scott Klein CEO of SuperMedia. « Dallas SEO …
The director of internet is gone, as he is no longer listed as a director (Briggs Ferguson of Citysearch). Now there seems to be no expertise at the senior management level for internet search either. …. This is a credit nightmare and shows that they could give a care less about preventing sales fraud and future accounts receivable issues. They offer credit to anyone that has a phone number under the majority of headings with hungry commissioned sales …

Fighting Internet Auction Fraud
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and National White Collar Crime Center (NWC3), has launched its 2007 figures to fight against computer crime complaints received and referred to the police. …

Turkish PM rules out IMF stand-by deal
DIS Technology Holdings Bhd (DIST) (0063), listed on Bursa Malaysia’s ACE Market, could see net loss widen to RM82.6 million from RM555,000 due to misstatements arising from an alleged sales fraud. It said the estimated higher net loss …

Internet Scams: Don’t be a Victim by Mark Thompson
Vehicle Sales Fraud. If you place an advert online to sell a car, boat or motorcycle you will probably receive one of these scam attempts. You will receive an email from abroad saying that they would like to buy your vehicle and arrange …

How to Get Rich
…what a scam is.This video goes over these three steps in more detail.http://robertworstell.com/scam/how-to-get-rich/ Work from home and make money online in Internet Marketing. Become an Online Millionaire. Visit http://onlinemillionaireplan.com …

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While 97% of all you see out there in Internet Marketing is scam-laden bunk, so are 97% of their customers.

This planet, and all cultures on it, runs on 9%-97% subconscious/unconscious reaction-only.  And that is what passes for “popular”. Sorry I even had to finally find this out. This doesn’t mean anyone has to get pessimistic about how the place is run, just that any forward progress has it’s work cut out for it.

Because most of what passes for “progress” is just old stuff re-hashed. Like anything, anything out of Washington in general or your local politician’s mouth specifically. Because they were elected based on popularity.

Our last few presidents have proved this over and over and over. They have about 6-7 months of sustained popularity and after that, they are attacked for so much as getting into a secure limo to ride somewhere.

And Congress by polls is the most popular when it does nothing and just sits there – and local Congress people can come home to get re-elected, saying that they used all their power to stop the other side from doing anything and still got most of our tax money to come back to the state and it’s people.

So? What kind of result is that? We pay them to do nothing and make sure nothing gets done?

It just struck me today when I was critiquing a marketing company, going back to what’s hit my lines as some sort of scam. When I looked over their operation, it was all that type of stuff. All scammy, hit them where their emotions sit. Get them to spend money.

These guys were all about money as the key point to their touted “success”. But the actual self-help products they were pushing were disguised. Most of these at their base were actually there to help people improve their lives. But what were they pushing? More and better: wealth, success, personal-esteem, health, money, approval, personal power, better control over your life. Things. Stuff. Junk. Tricks.  Not a mention of peace of mind, personal freedom, unlimited happiness. It was all “how to get more money”, “how to attracts (blank) into y0ur life”, “do nothing and get everything”.

If you’re familiar with the Scam Free book, what do you see? They are pushing feelings and basic desires. They are using the same buttons scammers use. All the good which is found in the materials and services they sell is hidden under a bunch of typically-crass and overworked, hackneyed tripe which came out years ago from Madison Avenue Psychology Studies.

And these guys say they “really get” social media marketing. Yawn. Look over their sales pages. They are simply the same classic “feel good” pages with all the elements any successful sales page has. And success in this instance is “clicks through and buys” or “clicks through and goes on a mailing list so they can buy later.” They measure their success by how many dupes they’ve managed to keep on their mailing lists.

What do I do with most mailing lists? Opt-out. Why? Because they are sending me really stupid offers and so think I am really stupid.

I just don’t need more stupid people on my lines – or condescending ones. Especially those who are only “selling” something. Much less stuff I don’t need.  Because you know you are going to get scammed.

Look, while this might be effective, it really only works on about 3 percent of those you sign up. That’s where your money is coming from. And these people are really, actually either consumers or customers. They simply consume everything you sell them, or are creatures of habit (custom) and just keep coming back for more, regardless. (And they probably work in factory, cubicle, or union/government jobs where they have to make very damned few decisions in life – so being able to buy anything on their own is an esteem bump.)

The whole world is extremely long-tail – more than we realize – so it’s split up into billions or more niches which are interactive with each other. So now we can each “sell” to our niche-customers/consumers and make our own pile of money, can’t we?

Barf.

I don’t know about you, but I buy once I’ve checked out the quality for myself and then what my friends, family, and associates  have to say about it. And online, this is the social networks we belong to. So Heflin, among others, say to just limit yourself to those social networks you can really participate in – meaning the ones you like to participate in because they’ll actually give you something you want in return.

And leave the bulk of them behind.

Literally 1 in a million will really be giving out dependably good products and incredible value with every offer. The rest are really just wanting your money on an irregular or regular basis to keep their own coffers and pockets lined.  To the vast bulk of companies out there – you are nothing but a number which can be replaced with another number. This even extends to jobs and employers these days. Been there, done that.

Value and cherish the people you find, or who find you, that you can really, really trust and give you more than you could ever expect to repay. And be that person yourself: give more than others expect and make each product you give far above the value expected or received in return.

There are so very many authors who cover this point that it’s just not funny. But then, I’ve narrowed the authors I study down to those who are consistent bestsellers, most of whom died last century or more.

So I’m picky. For good reason.

Be picky.

And help others get picky.

That’s our real road out of this mess we are surrounded with.

- – - -

Internet Marketing Links of possible interest:

Learn How To Excel In Your Business Using Social Media and Web 2.0-Free Seminar

…with top internet marketing experts for the advantage of all. Each marketing expert is sure to give … See all stories on this topic

‘Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?’ by Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins’ latest blog post is titled “Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?”. [Shawn Collins' Blog] Shawn Collins’ latest blog post: Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites? Shawn Says, “Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites? presentation from Affiliate Summit West 2007, which took place January 21-23, 2007 in Las Vegas, NV”. Search…

Internet Marketing Ideas | SnadBox: Search Engine Optimization …

…Internet Marketing Ideas – http://www.internetmarketingideas.info/

Marketing an Online Business In 2010 | Legitimate Home Based Business

…Marketing an online business is a very important thing that you have to do if you are involved in a affiliate marketing business or if you have an internet. Legitimate Home Based Business – http://www.onlinemoneymakin.com/blog/

‘Keyword Research Tools And Best Practices’ by Sean Rasmussen

…Most internet marketers start developing a list of keywords by thinking. They think about their business, think about the products or services they are offering, and then think about how ordinary consumers might search to find these items.” Keyword Research Tools And Best Practices… Sean Rasmussen’s Blog

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

Ok, I admit it – I’ve been addicted to search engines. I thought these had something to do with “getting traffic”, “getting conversions” and “making online sales”. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

If’ I’d only been reading my own stuff.

I did a book last year on online marketing, called Online Sunshine Plan – and another on scams called Get Your Self Scam Free. And I should have taken these to heart and seen their cross. Even though there are mentions in each about the other. Of course, looking up my old stuff, I was predicting SEO problems over two years ago. And another about how social media are taking over, leaving search engines in the dust.

Now, it’s a given that you are going to be talking about search engines when you are figuring out how to design sites and so on. And while a 700 pound gorilla in the room deserves respect, it doesn’t mean you scrape and bow down and kiss feet, etc.

I wrote about how search engines are basically scams because they survive by selling advertising, which is a scam. That has proved out in the last year as I found out you can get better search engine standings by 1) putting adsense ads on your site, and 2) buying PPC ads. Both help your “organic” results.

Which means Google simply skews the playing field to suit itself.

And anyone in SEO can tell you that they have a perfect job that doesn’t quit, since it’s a constantly moving target. Recent research has shown that even inside Google, no one person knows all the algorithms on how the searches are done.

My last advice on this is to write good content and label it so that people can find it. Not search engines, but people.

Two things prompt this – First, as outlined above, search engines are playing catch up to social media – and are trying to become social media engines themselves (look at Googles’ Buzz and the aquisitions both Google and Yahoo have made, meanwhile Facebook is poised to take over the whole scene – if they don’t implode, anyway).

Second, the whole point of marketing has never, ever depended on search engines – it’s always and forever depended on word of mouth. What your neighbors, spouse, friends, and associates talk about is what really determines your buying habits. That, and your actual budget.

Advertizing has been much bally-hooed, but just look at the results of their industry award “Clio” to see their actual results. It’s a scam and always has been. All their psychological studies don’t change this.

When you throw out credit cards, advertizing, and search engine PPC campaigns, what do you have?

Social media, your friends – all the old standbys.

This came to me when I was studying my own analytics and trying to get Google to tell me what actually was going on. Google Webmaster tools won’t show you all the incoming links to your site. Nor will their Blog search. Even though they are there. Because they have this thing called supplementary results. And there are ways to find out how many pages of your site Google actually has indexed and how many of these are in their “supplementary index”.

Problem is, this isn’t accurate either. I’ve got more people finding and going to my pages than Google has listed. And this is where I started seeing my own stupidity.

A website isn’t there to get traffic, it isn’t there to get high SERPs. It’s there to provide service. You are there to give great service and to help others with solutions to their common problems. The better you do this, the better you get paid.

But the service you provide has to be something you are fascinated with, utterly captivated by. Because you have to keep this up. Going the scammer route of searching for “long tail niches which have products which people will buy” is a scammer’s paradise. The bulk (at least 97%) of what is being sold as Internet Marketing is pure scam bunks. Rubbish. Trash. Ripoff.

So just leave it all alone. They are just telling you the “latest and greatest” and they are just making money off your ignorance.

What I realized looking over my actual logs is that I wasn’t applying my own metaphysical principles to my life online. While it was true that about 60-70 percent of my traffic was coming from search engines, what it also said that my spikes were completely independent of search engines – and didn’t show up because of them. In every single case, someone put a link direct to one of my pages and their readers came to see what was happening. In no case did they use the search engines (well, maybe to begin with a teensy bit…)

And that’s the point. Be social and find your community. Contribute to that community and there’s your site traffic. Continue to give valuable solutions that you can be repaid for and there’s your economy.

The bottom line to search engines appears to be getting remote, one-way links back to your site. Again, this is where people find your stuff good enough to link back to. This is community. Sure, you can work this a bit by publishing articles and leaving comments on sites where you can post your website link – or social media like Scribd and YouTube and Flickr where you can leave a link to your site. And Identi.ca for those shorturl links. But that doesn’t mean other people will find your stuff valuable just because you link it. (I found one scammer company who has had most of their back-links go to the supplemental index simply because they were scamming the social engines to get those back-links.)

This is all in finding who is linking back to you and seeing how you can help that community. Yes, you use Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools to find incoming links – as best they will actually show you. At least they’ll give you the ones they consider valuable and you can go from there.

But the real rule for getting links, traffic, and everything else: “You have to give before you can get.”

You have to give links in order to get them. You have to give great value before you are going to get paid for it. (Look at some of the top blogs out there – how much they link to their own stuff compared to how much they link outward to others is balanced heavily on the outward side – like 12-1 or better.)

And as I transition from blogging about scams and cults and self-help over to grass fed beef and cartoon parodies, I’m writing my last self-help book ["Freedom Is - (period.)"] and after I get a ton of promotion out on this, I’m retiring to simply getting my own artwork posted and going along. And offer all my older books, plus posters and t-shirts, etc. with cartoons on them – plus collections of cartoons.

But making fun with people and their attitudes should be a lot more interesting than all the scams in the world.

And that’s what this universe is all about – enjoying the dance, not figuring out how to get to the otherside of the room through the crowd and music.

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

One of the more interesting situations happened to me. I’m actually reversing what I know about SEO to actually hide a site from the Search Engines in order to make it much harder to find.

Of course, this is dead easy.

The reason I’m doing this is to simply have the time to get all this stuff on SEO and online marketing out of my head, down on a blog-site and  ready for othere  to use. It’s another step away from all that scamming reporting I’ve been doing lately – and several steps closer to simply being able to follow my own bliss of comics.

With this recent work, I’m finding it’s great to simply write and publish without having to constantly worry about search engines penalizing you for too much content too fast.

This new site is the Online Sunshine Plan – but you can only find it by direct link. But I keep it out of the search engines to keep it private.

And I’ll be so happy when that’s done. Or closer to my native happiness, anyway.

Practically, this is a nice test of whether search engines are even needed with all this social media around. And whether that site shows up on Google even though they don’t index it.

Great experiment. Visit if you like. You’ll find some neat stuff there, especially how to create a membership area without all the major hype most of them have…

- – - -

Oh: almost forgot (again…)

Happy Birthday to meeeee.

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

Another rainy day on the farm – perfect for sorting through all sorts of things. For me, it’s getting back to all this stuff I’ve accumulated on Internet Marketing.

I’m just now getting through Charles Heflin’s SEO2020.com, where he has a great deal of courses in all shapes and conditions. But they mostly follow what he has been uncovering for years. Some changes you can tell. And other stuff he’s not gotten around to yet – if ever. But the basics are there.

Internet Marketing Pyramid

Now, there is a bit of a pyramid to all this SEO stuff. And I’m sure this is controversial, but I’m looking at it from the broad view. This is looking backwards to see where I’ve gotten the data that works and who came up with that stuff first.

Top tier is Charles’ Heflin and his ThemeZoom buddies. Follow him, get a Google Alert going on him – this way you can keep up with stuff.

Somewhere between top and second tier is the 30 Day Challenge guys. When you hold a webinar series and 50,000 people attend, you have to be doing something right. If you did 30DC and then studied Heflin’s stuff – this would be a simple approach which would really set you up to succeed. Ed Dale doesn’t particularly cover Heflin’s stuff, but he gets you set up very well on using the Internet and making money doing it. Another subscription you should sign up for (it’s free.)

2nd tier is Michael Campbell and his buddy Dr. Andy Williams. Both of these guys have been around as long and deal with making income from Affiliate sales, much as Heflin does. But while some of their stuff is original early on, and that they have their own tangential approach to things, they have a sizable Heflin/ThemeZoom influence. And I follow Campbell and Williams through their email newsletters – though I’d probably be better off with RSS feeds.

3rd tier is Jack Humphrey’s and his associates. I don’t really like anything that is ego-based. When someone says it’s “based on so-and-so’s success”, I tend to be skeptical. And Humphrey’s stuff is that way. It’s all about Jack. The other point is that while I’ve done his 16-step program with Sam Clark (twice), I found it haphazardly organized and presented. After that 16-day program, you are supposed to sign up for his (formerly known as) Authority Site Center and do his 60-day program. But you can find that pdf file online in various places – and it’s no better organized. It’s really a blind shopping list of things to do, not “here’s what to do and why it’s in this sequence and how come”.

After all, I’m a farmer, engineer, and philosopher – so things that work are appreciated and when you study them to find out why they work, you appreciate them even more. When someone obfuscates (hides) the reasons things work (or don’t really know) then you suspect either 1) they got their secrets from someone else, or 2) their “secret stuff” doesn’t work or is a gimmick.

Jack also has the scene of reinventing himself every few years. First it was ContentDesk (the idea that Content is King, which is still true) and this was in the heady days of Article Marketing. Then it was Authority Site Center, based on the idea that authority sites get better search engine positions and so more traffic (also true). Now it’s BlogCentral or something – all based on local search (the current rising star). So I’ve reluctantly started following him, as he keeps coming across my trail with data I’m trying to find. He’s just changing too much for me – seems inconsistent. Nice guy, though. I’m just not into personality cults for my data. So you don’t see any link to him or his cronies.

4th tier and below – all these knuckle heads with their semi-rabid followers who buy up everything they put out. My clue to these guys was in a survey Sam Clark did at the beginning of his 16-step program – where 80% of those who had signed up had bought some major services or packages about Internet Marketing in the last year, and were intending to buy more. The worst scenes I’ve ever had to deal with were Internet Marketers marketing Internet Marketing to Internet Marketers. Like the settlers circling their own wagons endlessly with no Indians even attacking. (Are we there, yet?)

What you really need to know

Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you this by the end of these studies. I got into studying marketing after I wrote a bunch of books which just sat there. Now I had already been trained as a graphic artist, so had a thorough grounding in what that corporation thought was marketing. Of course, they had built this up with their own clientele and through the days before and after desktop publishing appeared. And mixed in with this was their own way to build a sales silo to extract maximal income from clients they had lured there. All top-down and inbred.

Getting out onto the Internet was a relief, but was a bit like Tom Hank’s castaway character – lots of ocean all around after you get off that island. And the “experts” out there are really little more than sharks most of the time. Essentially, they all want you to buy into their plan somehow, someway. They all want a piece of you. And they’ll keep circling until they get it…

The funny thing is that when you try to use most of their methods, the vast bulk of the fish just swim right away from your hook. So you have to learn how to fish completely different than what you are being told or shown. Most all of the data which is and has been being used is dated by the time you get around to using it.

My approach is to then find the underlying explanations for those method which will consistently work. Marketing is based on the principles of finding or creating a market for goods or services you can provide – to clients/customers/consumers who really need that set of goods or services and are willing to exchange something with you in order to acquire (or use for a limited time) those goods or services. That also includes giving advice to people on how to use or acquire your own goods or services.

The bottom of the shopping cart

This is what you need to get first – how the whole system works – the basics. This is the durable goods which will stand up and hold their shape no matter what you put on top.

At this layer, you are getting in your basics of

• what your passion is,
• what your business model consists of,
• what niche fits those two,
• market research for that niche,
• getting a product that niche wants,
• setting up a way to sell and deliver the product(s) those niche clients want.

It’s really that simple. But you can see there are a lot of steps to it.

Shopping cart Fluff filler and the top items

You then, and only then, can start your promotion. You’re still marketing, but now you know who you are trying to reach and how, with what – and for how much.

What you next need is to let people know you exist and why they really need that better mouse trap. Mouse traps need to be promoted, or the world can never find a beaten path to get to your door.

And here is where social media comes in, as well as conventional marketing. PPC is another leg to this stool. And to begin with, you’ll need to rank on search engines – but we’ll need to do some SEO at the outset in order to build a site they can come to and buy from. And search engines are the be-all and end-all. They are just another stepping stone (albeit a big one.)

Series shopping beyond dropping

Update: This data is now available a book – Online Sunshine Plan.

And all this is simply an explanation of what I’ve found that others use – a review of sorts – plus all sorts of little knick-knacks and PLR sets so you can get inspired and start cranking out your own site.

The idea of this is to create a basic site and then set up ways various niches can find and use this stuff for themselves. Internet Marketing for Farmers, Internet Marketing for Boomers, Internet Marketing for Newbies. Lots of versions of this with the same idea – helping people who don’t have a clue how to get set up and operating in no time at all (or it should seem like that.)

It’s not a course in “how to make money online” or “get rich through online marketing” – it’s a course in how to figure everything out for yourself so you can get on with your life and what you really want to do.

That’s one of the hard lessons I had to learn over the last year – if you are only trying to learn how to “make money”, you’ll surround yourself with people who want to “make money” off of your hard work. You really want to help people improve their lives. And that is why you have to put a price on stuff so they can buy it – because they wouldn’t think it was valuable enough to put to use in their lives otherwise.

-o0o-

OK – list complete (at least the broad strokes – I’m sure I’ll find something on the dessert aisle…)

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

More small business marketing insight. Got this great list from my autoresponder service, GetResponse. Great service, great product, great advice. Perfect for your own marketing mix…

I’ve categorized them (and commented) in order to make them more useful – aligning to an Online Millionaire Plan.

• If you don’t have a newsletter yet, start one. People always want to learn more about their topic of interest. GetResponse is a great web-based email marketing software for publishing newsletters and hosting your mailing lists.
• Add a subscription form to every page of your website.
• Make it quick and easy for your visitors to sign up. A first name and email address is all you need initially.
• Be sure to state your privacy policy in your subscription box. Or add a link to a separate privacy policy page right next to your subscription form.
• Be clear, persuasive and honest as to what your subscribers will receive and why your visitor will gain by subscribing.
• Tell them how often they can expect to receive your newsletter or other emails. Do not inundate them.
• Link to a sample issue before they sign up, so they have an example of what you provide your subscribers.
• Archive your past newsletters and make them available on your website. (Bonus: This also produces additional organic search traffic!)
• Don’t be afraid to link to other websites or recommend other good newsletters. Your subscribers will love it and the recommended sites / newsletters may even return the favor and recommend your newsletter!
• Joint venture with other newsletter publishers and mention each other’s publications.
• Create an ebook and offer it free as an incentive to subscribe.
• Create an informative PDF report on your business topic. Only a few pages of useful content are needed for a report.
• Start with your immediate contact list and generate buzz to draw visitors to your site and subscribers to your newsletter.
• Offer a product discount for purchasers who subscribe to your newsletter.
• Give away useful software or web-based tools to subscribers. If you’re not a programmer, hire one through RentACoder or Elance
• Conduct a webinar (a web-based seminar) for which your visitors must register. On the registration form, get permission to send them future mailings.
• Mention your newsletter during your webinar and provide a subscription link. This will give those who haven’t opted-in an additional chance to do so.
• Ask your subscribers to tell their friends about your newsletter.
• Add a link or button on your website and newsletter taking them to a “Tell-A-Friend” form, where they can invite 3-5 of their friends.
• Allow others to reprint your newsletter as long as the content and links aren’t modified and your bio box is intact.
• Add a “Subscribe” button, or a link to the subscription page, in every issue. Then, if your newsletter gets forwarded, the new recipient can sign up.
• Optimize your website for search engine rankings. If you think SEO means “search engine optimism” instead of “search engine optimization”, check out SEObook.com by Aaron Wall.
• If your newsletter or campaign is newsworth, submit a publicity release at services such as PRWeb or BusinessWire. You might get a surge of new subscribers, as well as a number of inbound links.
• Make your email marketing campaign “newsy”. Run a controversial survey and turn the results into a story. Then let the world know about it and get free exposure.
• Include Opt-In information on Customer Satisfaction Surveys. Ask permission to communicate valuable info via email newsletters and promotions.
• Create a squeeze page designed solely to capture new subscribers.
• Find hundreds or even thousands of relevant keywords with services like Wordtracker, and then promote your squeeze page using PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, MSN adCenter, and more.
• Track the effectiveness of your advertising and test changes with services like HyperTracker. Keep the best – scrap the rest. Always keep testing.
• Spice up your squeeze page with a pre-recorded audio message to tell your visitors why they should subscribe. Record it yourself or write a script and hire a voice talent to do it.
• Add video to your squeeze page. Not only can you speak to your prospective subscribers, but even point where the subscription form is located on your webpage!
• Incorporate social proof through testimonials on your squeeze page (written, audio, or even video!)
• Remind double opt-in subscribers to watch their email for your confirmation link and ask them to be sure to click it to confirm.
• Start a free blog with WordPress or Blogger. It’s another way to communicate with your visitors and nicely complements your email marketing and list building.
• Add your newsletter subscription form to every page of your blog.
• Research similar websites and newsletters with Google Blog Search or Technorati. Post relevant, helpful comments with a trackback to your blog or squeeze page.
• Keep your blog readers notified of new posts when they sign up for updates. This has a 3-prong benefit: build your email list, maintain relationships with your readers, and get more traffic to your blog.
• Use a responsible co-registration list-building service like GetSubscribers
• Perform a cross-registration campaign with other newsletter owners by adding a link/banner to the other newsletter on the confirmation page. Subscribers won’t see it until after they’ve joined your list.
• Advertise in ezines and other newsletters. Use a directory like Ezine-Dir to find newsletters reaching your target audience.
• Submit your newsletter to ezine and newsletter directories.
• Promote your newsletter / promotional emails in industry directories and websites.
• Sponsor other people’s contests and get exposure for your newsletter. Give away freebies that don’t cost you money.
• Submit articles to Article Directories like GoArticles, SubmitYourArticle or EzineArticles. Include a bio box at the bottom with a link to your website or the email address to be added instantly (if you are using an autoresponder).
• Visit discussion boards, forums, Yahoo! Answers and similar sites to provide helpful answers, while including a link to your newsletter subscription page in your sigfile.
• Add your newsletter sign-up link to your email signature.
• Promote sign-ups in Confirmation and Transaction emails.
• Include an opt-in link on customers’ credit card receipts.
• Add an opt-in message to Warranty and Product Registration Cards.
• Use sign-up message on all Invoices.
• Network at trade shows and conventions. When exchanging business cards, ask permission to send them your newsletter / report. If they say “no”, write an “X” on the back of their card. Otherwise, add them to your list.
• Hand out sign-up forms promoting your newsletter when speaking to groups or at seminars.
• Include newsletter subscriptions in Trade Show Lead Generation form. Ask booth visitors for permission to send your monthly newsletter to them. (see 50 above)
• Make it easy for your audience to subscribe by including a link to your newsletter subscription page on the footer of your PowerPoint or webinar presentations.
• Look for ways to collect email addresses if you are a brick & mortar business.
• Display opt-in forms at the Cash Register to receive weekly discounts, etc.
• Advertise email promotions on Product Shipping Boxes, Packing Slips and Direct Mail Cards, with links to your site.
• Offer customers a VIP or loyalty program for signing up for your list.
• Request employees use an email signature such as “Subscribe to the Company X Email Newsletter”.
• Call Center and Sales Employees can ask customers and prospects if they’d like to receive newsletters or promotional emails and get their information by phone.
• Encourage email subscriptions by printing on Direct Mail, Catalogs, and all Print Ads.
• If you have a physical mailing list from your offline business, send a postcard to your customers, offering a special for opting-in to your email newsletter.
• Study each offline advertising piece with the thought of integrating a list building component into it.
• Collect email address at each point of contact with customers and prospects.
• Get more traffic to your website. Even if your opt-in percentage doesn’t change, this will automatically result in more subscribers.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

How do you get down from an elephant?

You don’t, you get down from a goose.

Let’s go back to our simple basics:

• Most people run on semi-automatic. Meaning they are letting their subconscious do the work for them. They only answer the telephone when it rings. These are the factory workers, the cubicle hourly workers, the warehouse and set-wage people who contribute a fixed part of their wages to the Government every week, on an increasing scale the more they make. This is about 97% of the world’s population.
• Of the remaining 3%, most are in incredible action to get things done. They either run corporations or start them and sell them to others who do, then starting another. Most of these are self-employed or own the company and work either on dividends or in as many low- or non-taxable ways as there can be invented. Politicians and government leaders are in this bunch (and their staffers are in that first group.)
• And there is a micro-fraction of the whole – about 3% of 3% who really run the world’s wealth. Or they are independent otherwise in the extreme and create the inventions you use all the time. They may work for salaries, but they don’t necessarily depend on these. More often, they are independently wealthy, or have other support systems which allow them an independence from day-to-day necessities of living.

Most of your buyers are in that 97%. And that’s where all your taxes come from as well.

And since those 97% run on the subconscious patterns (mostly), they are relatively easy to offer goods based on “wants” and “needs”, and to get purchases. Meaning they work all week so that marketers can take their money at the end of it. Or, as in credit cards, they set it up for these people stay in hock until they die. And then go after their relatives for that debt.

The 3% think they are running the show – however, they are also running on mostly semi-automatic. They are simply in action instead of stuck in a rut of expecting things to be handed to them when they work long and hard enough. While these few are the task-masters of the world. They also don’t have a clue on what is actually going on.

That 3% of 3% do actually understand the systems, or at least the bulk of them. And they can concentrate on exactly what they have to operate to get the other 99.9% (+/-) to do what they want, more or less. They think they have the tiger by the tail. But they only succeed to the degree they stick to the system they have and that system is mostly complete. Bill Gates, Warren Bufffet, Sam Walton, all these guys. They concentrate on a system that works.

So selling to any of these bunches is quite simple. Know how the subconscious works and pander to it. Offer systems to that 3% who are in action. But use those same psychology-buttons to get them to buy. Even that .09% will settle to some degree based on your offerings. In most cases, they make or control such vast sums it doesn’t matter if they waste some of it here and there. Plenty more where that came from.

And the write-ups on the systems to market and sell goods to people exist widely on the Internet. Even available as free downloads. Again, you only have to concentrate your attention on finding them, proving them, and using them.

What they will buy:

• 97% will buy stuff. Material things which temporarily satiate their desires. As instant a gratification as possible.
• 3% will buy into systems to control or run other peoples’ lives – especially the ones that make that stuff.
• .09% will buy the copyrights, trademarks, and patents to those systems and license them. Plus buy that company itself.

There is only one rule: You can’t sell something they don’t actually think they need or want. And if you work to deceive them into momentarily thinking they need something when their subconscious says they actually don’t, you’ll wind up paying them more in return than the sale was worth. Almost all of their thoughts are semi-automatic, and their wants and needs are pretty much pre-ordained. (Just reverse engineer my anti-scam checklist and you’ll find them.) This rule holds top to bottom. No real exceptions.

- – - -

There is a very, very small minority – about 3% of 3% of 3% – or .0027% who are actually immune to the whole system.  They don’t actually need or want stuff. Because these are an enlightened few who don’t work either reactively or pro-actively. They operate intuitively.  And while the wealth they accumulate (and they are usually very wealthy if they put any attention on it at all) comes through the “normal channels of industry and commerce”, you’ll find that they don’t work very hard to make it show up.

These extreme minority few don’t actually work at all. They intuitively know what actions they have to take, but it’s a game to them. They have fun at every single thing they do. Life is unending joy.

And the rest of these guys above would pay just about anything to know and understand and be able to simply do those actions for themselves.

But there’s a trick to this.

Money can’t buy it. And there’s no way to market it or sell it.

You can only earn it.

And these rare few don’t even consider that it’s their job to package this system up and tell people about it, or offer it on any market. Sure, some write books, some make DVD’s or CD’s, or lecture, or hold seminars. But they do this for fun.

They know that only a very, very, tiny handful of people out there are ready to get what they are offering. Because that is how many people are actually ready for it.

To the rest – they are selling a system. And when you study the above, you know exactly what they will do with whatever you offer through your marketing. You’ll know who your clients are, and who your consumers are, and who to sell out to when you intuit you want to do something else.

But they also know that only a handful (as in: you can count on one hand) will actually get what they are saying and put it to actual use in their lives.

So: “To those who have ears, let them hear…”

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”