I’m back from Bob Puddy’s Bristol event and feeling exhausted – it really takes it out of you when you are up ’til late each night then waking up first thing to get to the first presentation.

From 5 o’clock on Thursday evening until late last night it was pretty much a non-stop marathon of drinking, laughing, networking and learning. 

Bob again managed to attract a good range of marketers from the newcomer to the very experienced and it was great to see everyone in the bar each night, speakers and attendees.

Having access to all the speakers in an informal atmosphere was a welcome change – the last seminar I went to was disappointing when the speakers didn’t venture into the bar in the evenings. I got the feeling that the vast majority of them left the venue (a hotel in Heathrow) 1 hour after finishing their pitch on the stage.

Not in Bristol…

I witnessed one speaker buying trays full of shots then distributing them amongst all the attendees in the smoking area. The other speakers were a permanent fixture at the bar each evening and very approachable. I get the feeling that Bob makes sure he books people that he knows enjoy a drink or two!

Anyway, it’s becoming common to see the same core group of UK marketers at each of these seminars and it’s always good for gossip hunting!

In fact, from the insider gossip I heard, it is obvious that the vast majority of internet marketers are psychopaths. There’s no other explanation. 

“Cage Fighting” springs to mind! (Anyone at Bristol will know what I mean by that…)

A full review will follow in due time, just give me a few days to recover from the overdose of Cobra.

Photo above is a quick shot I did of my notes using my mobile phone.

I’ve a load of notes to go over now, I always find it’s very important to get cracking with the new ideas and techniques asap, whilst you are still enthused…

Word to the wise: Be there next year, you won’t regret it

Just over a week left until the LFMpire event starts so if you were sitting on the fence about attending, it is time to make a decision.

For more background info, see the previous post:

Robert Puddy’s LFMpire Seminar, Bristol, May 2009

My advice would be to just do it – clear your diary, book the ticket, book the hotel, jump on a train and get down to Bristol.

Come and join us on the Thursday night in the hotel bar and get involved.

What you’ll find when you get to the bar are 80+ UK based internet marketers eager to network, looking to find new business contacts and excitedly talking about the business (often giving away their best tips too, once they’ve had a couple of drinks).

At the last seminar organised by Robert Puddy (the Britpack Live Seminar in Coventry) the bar was packed each night and attendees saw the results of deals done at that seminar for months afterwards.

These events are focused on helping you in your business. They are a different kettle of fish to the numerous ‘pitchfest’ seminars where the idea is to get you in a seat from 9 ’til 6 over 3 days and show you a procession of different sales pitches.

The first ‘Puddy’ event I went to yielded over 40 pages of notes that I still refer to now. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that it added 5 figures to my profits that year. All for a small investment of a couple of hundred dollars for the ticket and then beer money and hotel costs. A small price to pay for some excellent knowledge.

Sincerely, I can’t really recommend these events enough. Before I attended my first one I was very apprehensive about the idea of attending seminars. However, I took a chance and travelled to Birmingham in 2006 and it was a superb three days.

I now have lots of contacts in the industry and meet up monthly with several other marketers in a mastermind. I’m not promising you’ll have the same experience as me but I’m willing to bet you’ll have a great time if you attend.

8 days to make up your mind:

[Link removed – site no longer live]

And if you do decide to attend, make sure you come and find me at the bar. I’ll buy you your first drink and introduce you to some very successful marketers. And who knows where that could lead you…

Spam email hasn’t been a problem for me now for almost 3 years because I signed up with the marvelous SpamArrest back in 2006.

My inbox is always immaculately clean because the one truth about spammers is that they never use a real email address. Consequently they cannot receive the challenge email that they are auto-sent by SpamArrest and they cannot complete the whitelisting procedure.

So all spam stays in the ‘Unverified’ folder where I can occasionally check to see if any proper email has slipped through.

It was yesterday when I found what I think is the best email subject line ever used by a spammer:

“We are too lazy to change subjects every day, please buy our viagra”

Brilliant.

Not so brilliant is the news that one particularly dodgy internet marketing ‘opportunity’ has been re-released just a year after it was last unleashed on the public.

Let me ask you a question or two. If you…

• Released a product which was largely described as ‘crap’ by its buyers
• Released a product which was so falsely described in the sales video that it prompted over 200 posts full of complaints on the most popular internet marketing forum around
• Released a product with a 60 day 100% money back guarantee which you wouldn’t honour
• Told complaining customers to ‘GET A LIFE’
• Provided customers with websites and products they were supposed to sell but could end up in trouble if they did so
• Had your staff sign up to an internet forum under a variety of different usernames in order to try and argue on your behalf against your complaining customers
• Blatantly lied in emails to your customers – and were undeniably found to be doing so
• Threatended complaining customers with legal action for publishing their poor experience of purchasing from you
• Had a raft of complaints written about you and your company on RipOffReport.com because of one product

… what would you do with that product?

Let me guess – you’d either look at the sales process, the product itself and your existing customer support infrastructure and make drastic changes or you’d stop selling the product completely and try and make good with your tarnished reputation.

Personally I’d do the second – stop selling the product immediately and then try and make amends with all the customers I’d pissed off.

What I wouldn’t do, and what I imagine most reasonable human beings would not do, is re-release the same product with the same name exactly as it was the previous year with the same sales video and price.

Guess what this idiot did?

Robert Puddy has now confirmed that he will be holding a special 3 day workshop/seminar in Bristol in May.

The seminar will run from Friday the 8th until Sunday the 10th May in a hotel close to the University of West England in Bristol.

In addition to the “workshop” portion of the event there will also be an optional VIP dinner on the Thursday night. This dinner will provide attendees with an opportunity to network with several expert internet marketers in a relaxed atmosphere.

Robert held a similar dinner at his Coventry seminar in 2007 and it was a massive hit.

From what I can gather the whole weekend will be dedicated to showing attendees how to drive traffic to their websites and also how to create successful membership sites.

In his own words Robert promises that he and his team will:

“…give you everything we can to help you drive hordes of traffic to any site you create…”

Speakers confirmed so far are Robert, Paulie Sabol, Donna Fox and Soren Jordansen.

Special room rates are available in the hotel with a bed and breakfast price from £55 per night.

Also, Robert is offering a special discount for those who act on this early – just $197 a ticket for the entire 3-day workshop.

I attended Robert’s seminars in 2006 and 2007 and they were superb networking events as well as excellent learning experiences. Unfortunately Robert did not run a UK seminar last year so I am very much looking forward to this event.

This event is highly recommended and you can find out more at:

[Link removed – site no longer live]

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about attending an internet marketing seminar and not sure whether to go or not, my advice would be to just do it.

Seriously – this is going to be an excellent learning experience PLUS you will meet people who can help you advance your business. And it’s likely you’ll meet them in the hotel bar whilst enjoying a beer. Robert always makes a point of asking every attendee and speaker to gather in the hotel bar after each day’s presentations. It means that the whole weekend turns into a non-stop networking event where lots of business deals and joint venture deals are formed.

Before I went to my first seminar I was nervous and apprehensive but as soon as I got there I knew it was going to be superb. Now I never miss these events.

Do yourself and your business a favour and seriously consider the great opportunity Robert is offering here:

[Link removed – site no longer live]

ADDITION 30/03/09: Robert has just posted a new video explaining the benefits of attending this event:

 

I got a great offer yesterday via an affiliate promotion by a real scumbag marketer.

Why do I stay on his list when I don’t like or trust him?

Easy – he shows me what is crap.

If he promotes it then 9 out of 10 times it’s junk.

On this one occasion though, I liked what he promoted and bought it.

Of course, I didn’t buy through his link. I went straight to the sales page on purpose through a different browser so I knew he wouldn’t get any credit.

The offer is for a DVD from the two PPC experts who released PPC Classroom and it’s basically a “pay the postage and you can have all these goodies (but you’ll be enrolled on our forced continuity monthly membership)”

So for $10 ($7 if you are in the US/Canada) I get the DVD mailed to me and I also get full access to PPC Classroom (which used to sell for a lot more than $10 in its own right) and I also get 30 days trial to this special new membership they have.

To be quite honest I didn’t read much about the new membership site as I was more interested in the DVD.

They’ve got 30 days to convince me to stay a member which is what they are aiming for I guess.

The sales process was a long one with the compulsory 3 OTOs (that’s “One Time Offers” for the uninitiated) and as I was going through them all and clicking “No Thanks” on each page I had one thought in my mind;

“How is the little guy supposed to compete with this?“

These marketers – and I’ll give them a free plug here – Anik Singal and Amit Mehta – have really put some work into this offer and it looks great.

The graphics are superb, the sales pages are inviting to read and great to look at, and everything flows smoothly from initial sales page through all the various steps to finally end up at the “thank you” page.

No glitches or errors, payment was accepted immediately and I was eventually led to a confirmation page asking me to check my email.

I checked my inbox and my account for PPCClassroom.com was already activated and the details sitting in a new message – all done within a couple of minutes of the order going through.

Faultless.

So how is a one man operation, working out of a spare bedroom in the family home, supposed to compete with this kind of professionalism?

If you’ve been around the information business for even a small amount of time, you’ll know that this business is always touted as a simple way to make money but I imagine that a LOT of work went into this new promotion. Work that a one-man-band-in-a-spare-room just couldn’t get done in a reasonable amount of time.

OK, you say, maybe they couldn’t make such an elaborate offer but anyone can write an ebook and sell it on.

Of course they can. Just download OpenOffice.org, write your ebook and export to PDF.

Simple.

But even if you create that ebook, and write a wonderful sales page, and price it at a paltry $7 – are you going to be able to compete?

Anik and Amit will have lots of JV partners with big customer lists full of proven buyers.

And these JV partners aren’t just getting commission on the $7/$10 – they’ll be getting commission on each and every OTO (3, count them!) PLUS they’ll be getting commission on the monthly recurring charges – $97 per month.

In short, no big marketer is going to promote your ebook for $7 a time when they can push their list through an affiliate link to an offer like Anik and Amit have created and potentially get 100s of dollars per sale.

At the same time, why would anybody buy your little ebook when they can get access to a proven system for just a few dollars?

It seems that it is getting harder and harder for the little guy to compete with these marketers who, although they say that the business can be run from home, have large offices as well as interns, paid members of staff and teams of programmers in Eastern Europe.

I guess the only way to consider competing is to change niches.

Go elsewhere, away from the “make money online” niche.

Or I suppose you could try and target potential customers who are brand new to internet marketing. You could make them outlandish promises of instant wealth if they just buy your Clickbank product.

That method must work as I see lots of marketers doing it over and over.

Either way, it’ll be tough to target people who are a little more aware of the industry unless you have some real meat to your offer – like the one made at PPCClassroom.com.

I’m betting on the big guys – and it really doesn’t surprise me that there is such a huge failure rate in info publishing.

It would be nice to be proved wrong though.