I was quite surprised last night to see an advert for Inside Track’s property seminars. Although I knew that they advertised a lot in the national press it was the first time I had seen the TV ad.

This was at about 5pm last night (Tuesday) on Five US, the new channel from, unsurprisingly, Five. Even though it is just a cable channel featuring American sitcoms such as “Joey”, it’s unlikely that 30 second ads come cheap…

Looks like things are on the up and up for Inside Track and Jim Moore, who set up the company in 2001.

Last April he was featured in the Sunday Times’ Rich List with an estimated fortune of £78m (yes, seventy eight million pounds).

Here’s what the Sunday Times said about him:

“Moore set up Inside Track in 2001 to advise on buy-to-let properties. Ahead of a possible sale or float of the Surrey firm and its related company, Instant Access Properties, he and his family trusts have a stake worth £78m”

There is more about Inside Track on the site:

Inside Track Property Investment and Jim Moore

Sunday morning’s presentation was given by John Taylor on the subject of testing and tracking.

John presented a lot of information over the 90 minutes or so he spoke.

His basic idea was to create content based sites – sites containing unique information based around three specific keywords.

You let the site run for a few weeks, gathering traffic by the normal methods, and then check your stats.

If you are receiving a lot of traffic, you can test different methods of monitising your site i.e. 1,000 hits with AdSense on the site and then 1,000 promoting an affiliate program.

The aim is to see which method earns you the most money and then stick with that method.

John also suggested using a rotator program to show 3 different webpages to visitors so that you can find the best converting page and concentrate on that.

The basic message was – Analyse Everything about your site or you will never know which content makes the most money.

John’s book, “Testing and Tracking” is available with several special bonuses at the following website:

http://www.Test-and-Track.co.uk

After Mike Filsaime’s presentation in the afternoon there was a break until a special event later on in the evening.

This was quite fortunate as England were playing in a Euro 2008 qualifier so I got chance to grab a beer and watch it in the bar. Turns out it was a very one-sided match but it was nice to sit down without a pen and notepad (I had taken over 25 pages of notes by this point – and I’m still referring back to them 2 months later).

Come around 8pm all of the attendees and the speakers met back in the bar for the evening’s event. This was a very clever idea – internet marketing “speed dating”.

Basically, we were split into small groups of around 8, each group with their own table.

Then, each speaker would spend 15 minutes at a table, during which time the attendees could grill him about anything they liked. One by one we got to spend plenty of time chatting to Robert Puddy, John Taylor, Joe Robson, Martin Avis and Mike Filsaime.

Chatting to Joe Robson was particularly interesting as he is a copy writing expert and was giving us a lot of pointers about how to go about structuring sales copy. Brilliant stuff.

Sadly, Joel Comm had left by then as he had took time out of a holiday to present at the seminar – his family was in the room during his presentation.

This “speed dating” session lasted for a good 2 hours and then the vast majority of people stayed in the bar for the rest of the night. I finally retired at gone 2am although there were plenty of people still up – including Mike Filsaime!

Saturday morning (2nd Sep 2006) saw Joel Comm talk about “Cracking the AdSense Code“.

Joel has recently written a book called “The AdSense Code” which became a New York Times Best Seller.

As you can probably gather, Joel Comm is an AdSense espert and his session was based upon his experience of building a large, regular passive income from Google AdSense.

Joel’s background on the internet goes all the way back to 1995 when he created WorldVillage.com.

In 1996 he started ClassicGames.com which is now part of Yahoo Games (Joel is the model for an avatar on the site).

He started with AdSense in June 2003 when it was first launched. Back in the early days he was making anything up to $7 a day.

By early 2004 he still wasn’t making a great deal and promised himself that he would give it a couple more months and if there wasn’t a marked improvement in his earnings, he was going to quit.

By April 2004 he was earning $80+ a day and since then he has been experimenting by moving the code and changing the type of ads. These days he can boast an AdSense income if some $600-$800 a day from his content sites.

Joel covered the AdSense basics such as the different tactics you can use; Black Hat, Grey Hat and White Hat.

The conclusion he reached was that you should only use “White Hat” techniques for AdSense content sites as this is the only way to build long term profits. AdSense publishing is not a get rich quick scheme, it is a business which needs building up over time to create a regular passive income.

He also went through the benefits of quality content and how to get of it, the Top 10 mistakes made by AdSense publishers and also 5 strategies to use to increase AdSense income.

I had stopped using AdSense on one site as I was barely making any money at all from it.

After this particular talk I went home and re-added Google AdSense adverts to the site but this time I used the tips and techniques that Joel had given us.

After 1 and 1/2 months I have seen a huge improvement in earnings – just from changing a couple of things about placement of the ads and ad types.

My earnings/impressions ratio has increased by a massive 137%.

You can find Joel’s eBook: “What Google Never Told You About Making Money With AdSense” at the following website:

http://www.AdSenseSecretsRevealed.co.uk

On Saturday afternoon the presentation was given by Mike Filsaime.

Mike is the man behind the massive launch at the beginning of this year – Butterfly Marketing.

His 90+ minutes session was dedicated to describing some of his advanced marketing secrets including using TCF Marketing to increase profits.

What does TCF mean? Well, that’s Traffic, Conversion and Frequency.

Mike’s a very astute marketer and that came across whilst he was talking to the room. One of the first things he said was that if you have a product, make sure you bring it to the market first – don’t get beaten.

It makes sense because when you release a new product or service then at that point it is technically the worst it will ever be. You can improve it as you go along, once you have already made sales. If you hold off forever, it will take longer and longer to get your product to the market and by that time, someone will have beaten you to it.

Another excellent point I noted; do what you do best but outsource everything else. If website building is something you are good at, do it but for everything else, get someone else’s input.

Third, work on just one project at a time. Mike showed an example of how if you work on more than one project you hold back the others. The lesson learnt was that you should wait until your first project is done, then start another. If you have ideas in the meantime, note them down and come back to them later.

Another top tip – make everything in your business as automated as possible. “Email will destroy your business”; i.e. use a helpdesk when you have a lot of customers or prospects to support.

There was a whole load more information which he passed on, lots of great and useful techniques.

To show this wasn’t all just “talk”, Mike proceeded to show us some real-life examples of the power of his marketing techniques. Past students such as Michael Cheney and Jim Daniels were quoted, both of whom had earnt huge amounts of money by following Mike’s Butterfly Marketing methods.

This was a great presentation and I look forward to seeing Mike Filsaime speak again in the near future.

Shortly after the seminar I purchased Mike’s latest product, the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript:

http://www.ButterflyMarketingManuscript.co.ukA full review will follow…