blackhatontherocks
09-21-2008, 02:13 PM
Hi Folks,
I thought it's about time to give anyone just starting out or already halfway into it's muse a few pieces of advice that will help you avoid making the common mistakes that I see happening all the time.
So, in no particular order:
a) Take Tim's stuff literally or it won't work.
I've seen so many muse pages that basically do about 30-60% of what he says works and then you wonder why your pages bomb in the market even if you manage to get a foot in the door. That's just unneccessary.
Action: If you're putting in the time to make an actual muse, take the time to go and RE-READ the chapter covering how to create a basic sales page, properties of good muses and most importantly, the price point. If you don't follow the ideas laid out here, you're chances of making this work drop from 50% to 5% in an instant. For example, even though it's only in one short sentence in the book, the line "write a [..]Testimonial Rich site" is something often overlooked, yet extremly neccessary.
b) Don't assume you need to know more to be successfull
If you really would do so, the audiomixologist and other successfull muses wouldn't exist. Take the principle behind it, do the market research to find a market where people are actually buying, and offer something more valuable than what's offered already. Pay someone better than you to do the sales copy and graphics-design of the page if you don't know anything about it, cause that's about 90% of what sells a product. And the other 10% is pricing.
Action: Spend the most of your time on researching the market and product idea. Use google's own keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
for basic keyword research.
As a rule of thumb, a 100-500k searches per month keyword will yield between 50 and 250 hits per day for your website on decent ads within the first 3 spots in google advertising. Aim for at least .5 % ctr and 1% conversion and price accordingly. Especially the ctr varies tremendously, but 1% conversion for paid traffic can be achieved for right about any Product with compelling copy, page design and product appeal.
c) Don't assume Tim's spreading missinformation If it just doesn't work for you
Make sure you get this: You're making mistakes now, you're going to make different mistakes later.
Take responsibility and don't beat yourself up about it, it's part of the process - but also don't go assigning blame to others.
He sure as hell makes things sound easy to motivate you to get going, but in fact they are if you're not lazy at the product and marketing research phase. Going through with the wrong product or service will always cause trouble.
Aside from one or two things Tim couldn't have known when he wrote the book, everything he says is accurate in terms of what muses can do and how easily they can be developed - if you choose the right muse to begin with, and this is HUGE.
The only figure I really never come across in real life is a 60% buyers rate from newsletter-signups, but I'd advice you to ignore that and just go with a direct sales pages in the beginning, anyway.
Action: Whenever you get frustrated, just drop it. It doesn't help you to assign blame or get angry at whatever you're doing or whoever you think lied to you. Whenever in doubt, again, reread the relevant pages, or use us for input.
d) Adwords has changed - Tim's book hasn't. Not his fault.
Actually, I've made another thread about this very topic. Check it out over here: http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?p=15787#post15787
e) If you want to get a better IM Education, get the right one
Seriously. There are some sources of IM knowledge online that you can use to make some profits immediatly. And there is a huge pile of crap waiting for you to come by and eat you, your wallet and bank account alive.
As soon as you start going down that road of learning more, you will most likely come across things you thought were good that later turn out to be just recaps of what you already know. Learn to Deal with that.
If you really want to get more information on Internet Marketing before starting out, here's places you can get it.
Top Notch Free Resources
www.thirtydaychallenge.com
This is by far the most complete beginners course that you can put to use almost immediatly. It's very step by step, and that's great, but there's also a lot of rambling if you're going through it and already know a little about internet marketing. In this case, I recommend you jump to 2. + 3. immediatly and then skim over 30dc afterwords to find missing gems - or skim over it now and stick with what you like. There's also been someone doing transcripts of the videos on his blog most of the time, at least that was the case last year - haven't checked for this one, but if there is, it's sure to be on the dashboard or in the forum's stickys.
http://www.searchmarketingvideos.com/gaw/
Very good basic introduction into google adwords inner workings. I strongly recommend only ONE major thing to be done differently as in the process outlined, and that is detailed in my adwords post - the rest is top notch.
http://www.quityourdayjob.com/
It's from the same guy that did the above video. As a matter of fact, I myself BOUGHT the affiliate marketing ebook he advertised for about 50$'s (splitted half using my own clickbank link) about 10 months ago, and now he's giving it away for free. There's also another adwords ebook and even more free stuff, all very good, the only things giving more detail are full 2000-dollar courses nobody wants to buy as a beginner.
The quality of the free resources on the site are really mind-boggling, and single-handeldy blow away even full 800$ courses like the pay per click formula (I've worked with both and palmer's ebook really is way better which is a shame considering the price).
http://stse2.stompernet.net/
I list this last because it's basically not free - you need to actually pay shipping and handling which is about 10 dollars if you're in the US - woo, yeah, that's a LOT of money - especially for a 499$ programm... not.
Seriously, this is ridiculous for the package. The guys behind this also have a 800 Dollar A MONTH IM training programm you have to pay for a YEAR in advance in order to get in, and it's not even open to the public right now. The course here can be get and kept for free after you've payed the s&h free. It's a pure SEO course. A great one. But they are also great marketers, so don't get totally psyched from the video(s) and think you will be rich instantly.
SEO takes time and work, but this is about as good as it gets in cheap resources. Even if you have to pay 30$ in s&h + customs (like I would, living in europe and all that) it's still well worth it IF you really want to learn seo.
After you've got the basics down, throw in the free videos by Frank Kern, to be found at
www.masscontrolgiveaway.com
www.masscontrolsite.com
The videos on the giveaway are worth a ton, and the stuff on the site's blog is also pretty compelling. Don't go about watching those as a type of marketing course, just throw in one once in a while.
I'll ad more resources later as I come across them.
Thanks for stopping by, and keep heading for your goals.
Cheers,
BlackHatontheRocks
I thought it's about time to give anyone just starting out or already halfway into it's muse a few pieces of advice that will help you avoid making the common mistakes that I see happening all the time.
So, in no particular order:
a) Take Tim's stuff literally or it won't work.
I've seen so many muse pages that basically do about 30-60% of what he says works and then you wonder why your pages bomb in the market even if you manage to get a foot in the door. That's just unneccessary.
Action: If you're putting in the time to make an actual muse, take the time to go and RE-READ the chapter covering how to create a basic sales page, properties of good muses and most importantly, the price point. If you don't follow the ideas laid out here, you're chances of making this work drop from 50% to 5% in an instant. For example, even though it's only in one short sentence in the book, the line "write a [..]Testimonial Rich site" is something often overlooked, yet extremly neccessary.
b) Don't assume you need to know more to be successfull
If you really would do so, the audiomixologist and other successfull muses wouldn't exist. Take the principle behind it, do the market research to find a market where people are actually buying, and offer something more valuable than what's offered already. Pay someone better than you to do the sales copy and graphics-design of the page if you don't know anything about it, cause that's about 90% of what sells a product. And the other 10% is pricing.
Action: Spend the most of your time on researching the market and product idea. Use google's own keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
for basic keyword research.
As a rule of thumb, a 100-500k searches per month keyword will yield between 50 and 250 hits per day for your website on decent ads within the first 3 spots in google advertising. Aim for at least .5 % ctr and 1% conversion and price accordingly. Especially the ctr varies tremendously, but 1% conversion for paid traffic can be achieved for right about any Product with compelling copy, page design and product appeal.
c) Don't assume Tim's spreading missinformation If it just doesn't work for you
Make sure you get this: You're making mistakes now, you're going to make different mistakes later.
Take responsibility and don't beat yourself up about it, it's part of the process - but also don't go assigning blame to others.
He sure as hell makes things sound easy to motivate you to get going, but in fact they are if you're not lazy at the product and marketing research phase. Going through with the wrong product or service will always cause trouble.
Aside from one or two things Tim couldn't have known when he wrote the book, everything he says is accurate in terms of what muses can do and how easily they can be developed - if you choose the right muse to begin with, and this is HUGE.
The only figure I really never come across in real life is a 60% buyers rate from newsletter-signups, but I'd advice you to ignore that and just go with a direct sales pages in the beginning, anyway.
Action: Whenever you get frustrated, just drop it. It doesn't help you to assign blame or get angry at whatever you're doing or whoever you think lied to you. Whenever in doubt, again, reread the relevant pages, or use us for input.
d) Adwords has changed - Tim's book hasn't. Not his fault.
Actually, I've made another thread about this very topic. Check it out over here: http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?p=15787#post15787
e) If you want to get a better IM Education, get the right one
Seriously. There are some sources of IM knowledge online that you can use to make some profits immediatly. And there is a huge pile of crap waiting for you to come by and eat you, your wallet and bank account alive.
As soon as you start going down that road of learning more, you will most likely come across things you thought were good that later turn out to be just recaps of what you already know. Learn to Deal with that.
If you really want to get more information on Internet Marketing before starting out, here's places you can get it.
Top Notch Free Resources
www.thirtydaychallenge.com
This is by far the most complete beginners course that you can put to use almost immediatly. It's very step by step, and that's great, but there's also a lot of rambling if you're going through it and already know a little about internet marketing. In this case, I recommend you jump to 2. + 3. immediatly and then skim over 30dc afterwords to find missing gems - or skim over it now and stick with what you like. There's also been someone doing transcripts of the videos on his blog most of the time, at least that was the case last year - haven't checked for this one, but if there is, it's sure to be on the dashboard or in the forum's stickys.
http://www.searchmarketingvideos.com/gaw/
Very good basic introduction into google adwords inner workings. I strongly recommend only ONE major thing to be done differently as in the process outlined, and that is detailed in my adwords post - the rest is top notch.
http://www.quityourdayjob.com/
It's from the same guy that did the above video. As a matter of fact, I myself BOUGHT the affiliate marketing ebook he advertised for about 50$'s (splitted half using my own clickbank link) about 10 months ago, and now he's giving it away for free. There's also another adwords ebook and even more free stuff, all very good, the only things giving more detail are full 2000-dollar courses nobody wants to buy as a beginner.
The quality of the free resources on the site are really mind-boggling, and single-handeldy blow away even full 800$ courses like the pay per click formula (I've worked with both and palmer's ebook really is way better which is a shame considering the price).
http://stse2.stompernet.net/
I list this last because it's basically not free - you need to actually pay shipping and handling which is about 10 dollars if you're in the US - woo, yeah, that's a LOT of money - especially for a 499$ programm... not.
Seriously, this is ridiculous for the package. The guys behind this also have a 800 Dollar A MONTH IM training programm you have to pay for a YEAR in advance in order to get in, and it's not even open to the public right now. The course here can be get and kept for free after you've payed the s&h free. It's a pure SEO course. A great one. But they are also great marketers, so don't get totally psyched from the video(s) and think you will be rich instantly.
SEO takes time and work, but this is about as good as it gets in cheap resources. Even if you have to pay 30$ in s&h + customs (like I would, living in europe and all that) it's still well worth it IF you really want to learn seo.
After you've got the basics down, throw in the free videos by Frank Kern, to be found at
www.masscontrolgiveaway.com
www.masscontrolsite.com
The videos on the giveaway are worth a ton, and the stuff on the site's blog is also pretty compelling. Don't go about watching those as a type of marketing course, just throw in one once in a while.
I'll ad more resources later as I come across them.
Thanks for stopping by, and keep heading for your goals.
Cheers,
BlackHatontheRocks