In one post on this blog (Advertising Offline to Drive Traffic to a Website) I moaned that an advert in the Exchange and Mart didn’t perform for me.

However, this past week I received some advice from an expert in driving sales from classified advertising, Tim Lowe.

He said that I could publish the advice so here it is:

“Hi Ben

I saw you were doing this and wondered how it would turn out.

For what it is worth I have, occasionally, made out OK with Exchange & Mart but not for a couple of years.

The major nationals are my favourites.

Just picking up on your comments about visitor numbers, I wouldn’t dismiss 50 or so visitors as not enough to do well. My experience, with a good offer, has been sometimes over 20% conversion ‘visitors to sales’ so it is possible to make a decent profit from small numbers of visits. In fact if I get 300 – 400 visitors each week in total I can make a nice living.

Of course, the key is a good ad and sales letter – what may pass muster with SEO traffic, just through weight of numbers, may not do well with offline ads.

A key point that you may not have noticed is the need for hard copy follow ups. I have always offered people a few links to order an “information pack” in the post, which is essentially just the website in printed format. This is surprisingly popular as people dislike reading screens for very long and it also gives people a hard copy which they seem to like, maybe to read in bed or on the train. Whatever the reaons, I know that this brings in a huge amount of extra sales. Just recently I have been having trouble with the data capture service that I use and have not been able to send out these follow up packs, sales are literally half the normal volume as a result.

I do feel for the people that you describe who all tried selling the same products with the same sales letter. There is no question that having what looks like a unique offer will always outsell a “me too” product. Common sense tells us that 3 people selling the same thing with the same advertising will only get one third of the potential sales each. One of the things that I have been teaching people at workhops is how to make yourself stand out from the crowd with unique offers and approaches to selling similar products. It is essential to give potential customers reasons to choose your offer over other people’s, otherwise you cannot expect to sell much at all, but this is such a simple point that it is often overlooked.

I hope this is helpful, if so then please feel free to publish it.

Kind regards

Tim Lowe”

Some interesting and helpful advice there – thanks for taking the time to email me!

First of all, I want to remind you about this week’s “Weekend Super Deal” from David Allen.

David has packaged together a load of high-quality information products and is offering Private Label Rights on all of them. This means that you can edit them in any way you like to form your own products. Perfect if you are struggling for something to sell.

Check it out here:

http://www.WeekendSuperDeal.com/latestdeal.php

And don’t forget, the doors close on Sunday so be quick and grab it now whilst it’s still available!

Out-tasking – it works!

A few weeks ago a friend came to me asking for help in setting up a website for his wife’s new business.

I’m pretty good with HTML so I didn’t think it would be a problem but what I found was that I am no designer. I was always pretty poor in art class at school and nothing has changed.

Anyway, the project stalled for a few weeks whilst I tried to sort out a good design which matched my friend’s requirements.

Eventually I admitted defeat and decided to out-task the job.

So, I went over to RentACoder.com and submitted a “bid request”.

What this means is that I posted a listing which described my requirements (design and building of a 12 page html website) and then this was listed on the site where web design experts could compete for the work.

As it happens I got 26 bids on my work – in the first 24 hours. After that I think my job dropped down the list and so didn’t receive any more bids.

The lowest bid that was submitted was $50 and the highest $650!

I got bids from the UK, US, Romania, Pakistan, Egypt, India, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

Now, what you will find when you start to deal with sites like RAC is that people will just bid on your work without reading your requirements. They simply bid on every job they see to try and snare one or two people – almost like spamming.

What I found is that if you include a little bit of text in the description box of your bid request, you can suss out who actually read your request properly and who didn’t.

Obviously, anyone who didn’t should not be considered for the task because they may not be suited.

Here’s the text I used to stop the “spammers”:

“Please ensure that you add the keyphrase ‘BUTTERFLY’ in all messages you send to me.”

Now, as was looking through the bid requests I simply ignored any which did not mention that specific word in the message.

Straight away, then and there, I knew if that bidder understood the job I needed doing.

I can’t take credit for that little trick as it is something Mike Filsaime mentioned somewhere but it is a technique that I always use.

As for the site, it was done and finished in a little over 5 days. Brilliant work by the coder and my friend was happy.

Out-tasking works and I highly recommend you use it whenever you get stuck or whenever a project requires some work that is outside of your skill-base.

Yes, it costs money to use an out-tasker but in the end it saves a lot of time…

The Brit Pack Live Seminar, October

I recently spent 3 days down in Coventry to attend Robert Puddy’s internet marketing seminar.

What a great weekend!

Over the 3 days, Bob packed in 9 expert speakers, a load of ‘hot seat’ sessions and several ‘Ask the Expert’ free-for-alls.

The speakers were excellent even though I must admit that I hadn’t heard of half of them prior to the seminar. Just goes to show that some of the real big guns stay in the background.

There were only about 70 attendees and it made for a superb networking event with everybody coming down to the hotel bar each day after the presentations.

Unfortunately, I completely missed the Sunday morning presentations due to a ridiculously late Saturday night ‘networking’ session.

A large group of us were still propping the bar up at 6.30am Sunday morning.

Again I have to say that you really should consider attending next year. Everybody was raving about the weekend and I came away motivated and raring to go.

The next one is next October so I will be mentioning it nearer the time.

I’ve already booked my ticket.

Global Pension Plan

Some time ago I mentioned this particular “program” in a newsletter as it had been creating quite a stir.

In response to several requests, I wrote my personal thoughts on this so-called reverse pension plan on the main BizOppsUK site. You can read that report here:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/global_pension_plan.php

Apparently the plan has now finished recruiting new members – it claims to have the 100,000 members it needs and so it can now, in theory, pay out the vast fortunes it has been promising to members.

I’m still very sceptical but I suppose we will have to wait and see what happens.

My guess is that the people behind this scheme will continue to provide excuses as to why no-one has been paid until one day the site goes offline and never reappears.

The blog has been very busy with people posting their opinions on this one. In fact, as I write, it is easily the most commented-on post on the BizOppsBlog by far with 49 comments.

You can read all the comments here:

Global Pension Plan – Do Your Due Diligence

Feel free to provide your opinion on this one. With 100k members (or maybe even more), a lot of people have a huge interest in what happens.

The Lazy Lay Profit System

I have been receiving a lot of enquiries about this one over the past few weeks.

Back in April I wrote a blog post about this one when Streetwise were sending out sales letters offering it.

The Lazy Lay Quick Cash System from Streetwise Publications

It’d be very interesting to hear your thoughts on this one if you have bought it. I know that a lot of readers of this newsletter are horse racing fans.

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

Don’t forget to check out the Weekend Super Deal – it’s a bargain not to be missed!

http://www.WeekendSuperDeal.com/latestdeal.php

Have a great weekend!

Thanks,

Ben

This blog has been a little quiet over the last couple of weeks because I was gearing up to, and then attending, the UK “Brit Pack Live” event in Coventry.

Robert Puddy and Pat Lovell organised and hosted this 3 day internet marketing seminar at a very nice hotel in Meriden, near Coventry.

And it’s fair to say that I had a very, very good time.

In fact, although I really shouldn’t say this, I got more from the drinking and chatting each day after the presentations than I did from the presentations themselves! That isn’t to say that the speakers weren’t top-class, they were, but I met a whole load of extremely positive people and fellow marketers from the UK and further afield.

The only negative point was the train home afterwards. Stuck on a very slow moving Virgin train to Preston with the hangover from hell isn’t my idea of a relaxing Sunday.

It was my own fault, I was with a load of people in the hotel bar until half 6 Sunday morning.

We got carried away with the conversation and didn’t realise what time it was. I completely missed the 11 o’clock checkout and the first two presentations on the Sunday but I’ve ordered the DVDs to catch up.

Robert and Pat got a standing ovation at the end of the event and a huge take-up for next year’s event – everyone was in agreement that the event was an outstanding success.

I highly recommend that you attend next year, it’s a brilliant learning experience and a whole lot of fun.

Stay tuned for a full review…

To keep you going, here’s a review from the 2006 Focus 4 the Future seminar, last year’s equivalent to this one:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/focus_4_the_future.php

In August of last year I made what I thought was quite a brave decision and bought a ticket for Robert Puddy’s Birmingham seminar.

Why did I think it was brave?

Well, for a number of reasons:

(a) I didn’t know who was going to be speaking

(b) I didn’t know anyone else who was going to be there

(c) I didn’t really know much about Robert Puddy and

(d) I didn’t have any real longing to attend a seminar

Looking back it was a pretty silly decision to buy a ticket!

As it happens, just a week before I was due to get the train to Birmingham I was seriously considering refunding my ticket and staying home.

However, come the Thursday evening I left work, went straight to the train station and caught the train down to Birmingham.

I’d decided to ‘bite the bullet’ and give it a go…

And what a great decision it was!

The three days flew by and I had a great time meeting lots of like-minded online entrepreneurs and listening to presentations by a handful of extremely successful marketers.

It was a real eye-opener…

And over the last year, the little nuggets of information that the speakers shared have really paid off for me:

Just one thing speaker number 2 said has ensured that all my new websites are indexed by Google within a couple of days.

A little snippet of information from speaker number 3 increased my AdSense earnings by 137%!

Speaker number 4 told the attendees something that I started using as soon as I got home. I reckon it has made me at least 5 figures over the last 12 months.

And that’s not all. I met several other “low key” marketers who were attending, not speaking. A few weeks after getting back, one got in contact and we did a JV.

It was by far the best and easiest JV I have done and netted me $1,200 from just one email.

This was only possible because we met over a beer and got talking.

The point of all this is:

Attending that inexpensive seminar has increased my earnings, increased my email list FIVE-fold and also allowed me to meet a bunch of other marketers with whom I can JV.

It was a superb weekend and so as soon as I heard that Robert was running another, I got my ticket.

The seminar is being held in Coventry this year, from:

Friday 5th October to Sunday 7th October

Obviously, I can’t promise that you’ll come away a millionaire but I highly recommend that you attend as these seminars are excellent in content and also in networking opportunities.

They aren’t massive 1,000+ attendee events, they are small 50-100 strong get-togethers where everybody is able to mingle and network and get face-to-face time with the speakers.

To find out more, go here:

[link no longer active]

And if you have any questions, let me know and I will do my best to get some answers directly from Robert.

I realise that you may be wary of attending seminars, and I was in the same position last year. However, the opportunities that open up when you turn off the PC, get on a train and get out there meeting people really are well worth the time and effort.

Hope are having a nice week and looking forward to the weekend.

First thing I want to say is that I cannot go forward with the Trader Day meet that I mentioned in an email a couple of weeks ago.

Unfortunately the interest was low and I don’t think it will be worth your time to attend.

If I can get more interest in a meet then I will sort it out but for the moment I am afraid it is “on hold”

So, apologies for that…

Pat Adams Retirement Seminar:

Got a letter from someone who had been reading an article on BizOppsUK.com and this person wanted to correct me on a few things I have said there.

Can I just say that I am always happy to correct anything that I place on the site so if you do see an error, please let me know!

Back to Mr Adams, I have posted the comment on the blog so if you have had similar experiences to the mystery writer, please let me know:

Some Controversy About Pat Adams Retirement Seminar Package

Big, big opportunity:

Back in April I went to the Entrepreneur Weekend seminar in Birmingham and met lots of property investors and internet business owners.

It was really, really good and well worth the time and money to attend.

You can read more about the seminar here:

Entrepreneur Weekend Seminar – Birmingham – April 2007

As you will see, it is a work in progress or a “whip” as they used to say in the pizza factory I worked in when I was a student.

I’m half way through the Sunday write-up so please check back in a week or so and I should be further along.

Anyway, at this particular event were two young internet entrepreneurs called Paul and Andy. Their presentation was about “domaining” i.e. buying and selling domain names for profit.

As is pretty typical of me, when I find something I am really interested in it kind of takes over my life and I do a whole load of research.

This is a booming market so make sure to read the blog post I wrote detailing what I have found about domaining as a business:

Could This Be The Next Big Money Maker?

John Cummuta:

Finally, there’s a new review on the site here:

Transforming Debt Into Wealth by John Cummuta

Have a great weekend.

Thanks,

Ben

UPDATE:

Shortly after I sent out the above email, I got another email about the Pat Adams subject:

“This may sound uncanny, but since I mentioned to you about Pat Adams not sending me all the software etc and my website being taken down, he emailed me yesterday and said he will be sending me the software and will get my website put up online again. If this happens, then I have to take back what I said, but it has gone on over a long period of time that I have been waiting for the promised software. Having seen your article about this on your site, I will be interested to see if any of the others who attended his retirement day have had the same problems as me….keep up the good work.”

Interesting…