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I have been anxiously awaiting this day since I first heard about it. Today Marlon Sander’s released his Promo Dashboard.

Well about 8am this morning the awaited email hit my email box and before 9am I was a proud owner of Promo Dashboard. (And it was much less than I expected) Spent the next hour plus just going through it quickly.

Needless to say I have not been disappointed in it. Like all of Marlon’s dashboards it has an easy step by step interface but here is the thing -

Whether or not you are brand new or have been doing this for a while you will find tips and ways to improve your response.

First after going through it I don’t find any step missing and great tips from Marlon on the marketing process. If you are brand new this will save you tons of time and frustration in getting your marketing funnel set up.

If you have been having some success this will show you ways to improve your process. That includes

• Targeting your market (probably the most important step)
• Creating your offer
• Then he goes through all of the various technical items like - creating your squeeze page, setting up your autoresponder,and getting your pages online
• Last but certainly not least and the part I will be using the most is the promotion section and ways to improve your promotion

This like all of Marlon’s products I own and have reviewed gets my highest recommendation and at the price it is an absolute no-brainer.

Get Promo Dashboard

Your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: email promotion, list building, Marlon Sanders, promo dashboard, promting, squeeze page

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Sometimes I swear that Marlon Sander’s is watching what I am doing . Here is a new article he just released. It fits in so well with the series we have been doing here that I had to add it.

STOP OVERCOMPLICATING: The only 3 things you gotta do and how to get ‘em done in a few weekends.

By Marlon Sanders

Marketing 101 is to get a list of people and sell something to ‘em.

That’s about as basic as it gets.

Step one: Get people on your list

Step two: Send emails

Step three: Sell something

There, now you have the “magical formula’ for making money online. How does it feel?

Of course, as with all things, the devil is in the details. For example, one fly in the ointment is people don’t have a target market.

I solved that with pushbuttontargetmarket.com so I won’t waste time on here.

Another fly in the ointment is having a product to sell. You START by selling affiliate products or PLR. But you create your own product in ONE WEEKEND if you’re halfway
ambitious.

Santos works for me. He’s writing an ebook THIS weekend for his niche (a gaming membership site).

Beyond those two sticking points, the next BIG question is: “So how do I get those people ON my list to begin with?”

The answer is: Offer them something free that they really want.

The more they want it, the higher your conversion rate on your squeeze page, that is the page that gets ‘em to give you their name and email.

There is no “magic formula” for the write freebie to give. Some target audiences might like videos, or audios, or cd’s or podcasts.

In the past, there was an import company called Mellinger that build a multi-million dollar business running classified ads in dozens of magazines offering a free sample import. And they taught you how to run an import/export business.

Their freebie was a free sample import.

If you’re offering a free report, audio or video, the KEY is simply the title you give it.

It’s no more complicated than that.

They have to REALLY want whatever the secret you’re offering is. If they really wanna know about it, they’ll opt in. If they don’t, they won’t.

The format of audio, video, ebook or whatever is secondary to the topic and the secret being offered.

Your actual name squeeze page can be ultra simple. Eben proved that with doubleyourdating.com. Or you can be a tad fancier.

Here’s a page Jonathan Mizel (inventor of the Name Squeeze as evidenced by his trademark on the term) used to use as his example of a fancier name squeeze:

http://www.slotmachinesmastery.com/get.php

See the red circle around the box? You should know how to add something like that to your pages or make sure whoever you use as your graphic designer does.

Should you use a name squeeze page?

How do you come up with a great title for your freebie?

Look at the things that grab YOUR attention. That’s a good start. Look at magazine article titles, subject lines of emails, and so forth.

When something grabs your attention, ask yourself “why?” Why did that grab your attention?

So step one is:

1. Find something your target market really wants to have, see or know.

2. Offer it to them in exchange for joining your list.

It’s no more complicated than that.

Now you have people on your list. Step two: Send emails that continue value and on occasion sell something.

There are advanced methods, secrets and little tricks for name squeeze pages, follow up emails and all that.

But you START with the basics.

Target your group of people. Get ‘em on your list. Send ‘em emails.

Listen, in ONE WEEKEND you can write an ebook. 50 pages. You can do that in one weekend.

In one hour you can write 10 bullets and ask a designer like Design Guru Ryan to create a name squeeze page for you. That would be http://www.designgururyan.com/

Excellent graphic designer who knows how to create a nice name squeeze page for ya.

In one weekend you can create a few Camtasia videos people get as a freebie when they join from your name squeeze page.

You can EVEN do like Eben does on doubleyourdating.com and answer all the bullets on the next PAGE. If you notice, Eben NEVER sends a freebie. Your freebies are all delivered on the next page after you join his list.

STOP OVER COMPLICATING.

Get a stupid name squeeze page DONE! Get a freebie you offer in exchange for a name and email. Get it DONE!

Write your ebook in ONE WEEKEND. 50 pages. THREE PAGES per hour. Ten hours in a day. That is 30 pages per day. 60 pages in two days.

DONE! Finished. Get on with it. If it needs editing, send it off to an Elancer.

Don’t got a target market. Pushbuttontargetmarket.com. Can’t do graphics. Hire Guru Ryan NOW and then get Design Dashboard and get some SKILLS going for yourself.

It’s a GREAT product. I just had Santos watch some of the vids. Heck, I watched the vids. Great stuff. Yeah, Adobe has a new version of Elements. So one or two things changed on the videos. But really, you CAN figure it out.

It isn’t complicated.

You draw boxes. You insert photos. You add a border or shadow. You create a gradient. You add a pattern.

Understand layers.

Understand how to use the canvass.

Understand how to lock layers and view layers.

Know how to add a stroke on text or graphics.

Know how to add a background image or color to a table.

SIMPLE, SIMPLE stuff.

That’s about all things we do in Photoshop and Dreamweaver. You could learn them in a few hours if you set your MIND to it. We use like 3% of the total abilities of Photoshop.

It’s EASY to learn.

Dreamweaver. Insert tables. Center. Add background image. Insert picture. Insert graphics.

That’s your html editor or Dreamweaver basics.

Now, Photoshop. Layers, gradients, patterns. Saving for the web.

Basic, basic, basic stuff.

Let me ask you a question: Can you think of ONE STUPID THING your target audience or market REALLY wants to have, see or know?

Can you think of ONE THING?

If you can, write 10 bullet points on it.

Open html editor.

Insert table.

Center.

Type headline. Select font. Choose dark blue as color.

Type bullet points.

Go to aweber, automateyourwebsite.com or Get Response. Create form. Copy html. Paste in code in html editor.

Name squeeze. DONE! See doubleyourdating.com for example.

Now, you have a list in Aweber, Getresponse or automateyourwebsite.com.

Send emails.

Sign up for affiliate products at Commission Junction or Clickbank. Send emails. Sell.

Here are some other basic things you can do AFTER you’ve done those above. Don’t sweat them until you’ve done the above.

Do live streaming broadcasts for your folks. Or videos using Camtasia. Or regular videos and compile with flvproducer.com

Do a blog in Wordpress. Hire an elancer to set up your blog or do it yourself.

Make posts. (Click on write. Write. Then save. Tough stuff!)

Set up Twitter. Tell list about Twitter. You can set it up in TEN minutes or less.

Make more blog posts.

Write article of 300 words. Submit using articlemarketer.com, submityourarticle.com or isnare. In the resource box of the article (the bio box), offer your freebie and send them to your name squeeze page.

Write press release. Submit using prweb.com. This takes a few days to study how to write a press release.

Hint: Search “how to write a press release” on Google.

Buy pay per click words on Google. Track your name squeeze results using their built-in conversion tracking tool. Buying clicks takes more time to learn.

You’ll spend about a month learning how to do ppc.

Set up your affiliate program using affiliatedashboard.com.

These are the BASICS.

This is how you make money in this business if you’re curious and really don’t “get it.”

STOP OVER COMPLICATING.

STOP IT!

Get the basics done. Like starting NOW.

Hit me with your feedback at:

http://www.marlonsnews.com/

Do you agree? Do you think I’m full of it? Hit me with YOUR comments.

Best wishes,

Marlon

———————————————————–
Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Info Product Dashboard.”
If you want to create your own info products, go to:
Info Product Dashboard

Seems like some of the rants I have had lately. Please leave your commnets and let me knwo what you think.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Dashsboard, build list, Design Dashboard, giveaway, Info Product Dashboard, Marlon Sanders, squeeze page

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Well we have done an overview of the total system now it is time to get into details. We did cover mind set earlier at least to the extent that it will be covered here.

Picking your niche I referred you to a whole set of blog posts at Amplification Marketing News on niche research. No point in duplicating that series here.

Getting organized has also been covered. If you haven’t picked up Free Mind and gotten Bob Jenkin’s course you should do that now. It will keep you on track.

Now we get into the offer. There are 5 parts of this and we will cover 3 of the 5 here. The other 2 are already covered in an excellent manner by my good friend Soren Jordansen and quite truthfully there is not much I could add to what he already has available. those will be linkable from the list below.

• Who is your target?
• Why should they subscribe?
• Create a squeeze page
• Create a follow up series of emails
• Set up the tracking

The hardest part is understanding exactly who your target is. You want to attract the person who just needs more and more of what your topic is.

Okay lets look at a golfer for this example. I personally chase the little white ball around (can’t call what I do golf). However, that does not mean that I am not always looking for information and products that will allow me to improve to where it could be called golf.

What would I be interested in?

• A way to read greens better (gotta stop those 3 putts)
• A way to hit the ball straight (get a way for me to do that and you will make some money
• How to increase the distance I get when I drive (mine is pathetic)

These are just a few things that not only duffers like me would like to know how to improve but even good golfers would.

Now if this is the person you want to target what can you offer that will make me just have to have it.

Okay here is where you start to put your offer together. You can create any of the following reports.

• 5 Ways To Never Misread A Green Again
• 3 Easy Steps To Straighten Your Drive
• Add 20% More Distance To Your Drive In 20 Minutes

Now if this is a topic you love (you did follow the niche research didn’t you?) you can easily create a report like that. You can use Open Office and write the report and make it into a pdf for a free way to create this.

Or if you aren’t comfortable with how to format a report like this properly there are software programs that will walk you through a fill in the blank in order to create the report for you. One of the better ones I have used is Special Report Generator.

Now you are not limited to just reports. In this case maybe you have a new golf ball that will get me 20% more distance. You can offer to send me one. Would I sign up for that? You betcha.

See the item you offer can be a report, a physical object, a piece of software but the main thing is it MUST be something that your target customer just must have.

Now you need to create a squeeze page (a way for people to get on your mailing list with the offer they JUST MUST HAVE.) that Soren has covered and then a follow up email series that will allow you to continue to build the relationship.

You will need some type of list management software and for me the only choice is AWeber. They are one if not the best for delivery and they have great tutorials to walk you through the technical aspects.

Finally as you are setting up these pages you will want to include tracking. Google Analytics has some great tools that will allow you to do this and there are quite a few tutorials there to show you how to set it up. Leter you may want to use more robust services and we will cover those when we get to tracking.

Make sure that you are using different signup forms for each squeeze page that you use. This way you can track the results from each and see which works and which don’t. You also need to track the results from your follow up series. One of the reasons I recommend AWeber is that they can track all of your results from your follow up series and you can create and track the signups from each subscribe form you create.

Tracking is very important and needs to be set up from the beginning. You will always want to work on improving your offer as you go along and if you don’t have the tracking installed you won’t know what is working.

Technorati Tags: aweber, bob jenkins, list mangement, offer, SorenJordansen, squeeze page, target

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Now that you have an offer and know the customer that you are looking to attract it is time for traffic. Notice how most people focus on this first before they have ever created a system.

On that note my good friend Soren Jordansen has a great post today on How to put up your squeeze page and monetize the process. If you are still working on this take the time to see the various ways he shows you to monetize this process.

Now to traffic.

The fastest way to generate traffic is probably pay per click. Not always the best but you can set up an AdWords campaign and generate traffic in 15 minutes to your site.

This costs money and the learning curve can be a bit steep but if you do it properly this can be a very good traffic source.

Other paid methods would be buying ads, buying credits in good traffic exchanges or credits in credit based safelists.

You can also earn traffic. This way you swap your time for your money. If you are in the make money niche these can be very effective. They would include good traffic exchanges and credit based safelists.

You can also generate traffic through article marketing and blogging. All of these take time but the last two especially can bring ongoing traffic for one time effort.

Finally you can borrow traffic.

The best way is by having an affiliate program. With my affiliate programs lots of people send me traffic and in turn I pay them a percentage of any sales they generate. Having your own product makes this a great way to get additional traffic to your offer.

You can also do swaps with others in your market place. If you read Soren’s article above you can use your thank you page to promote my list for your new signups and in return I would promote your list to my sign ups. This can be a very effective way to get extra traffic and be a win - win for both parties.

That covers the basics on traffic. We will be going in more detail on a lot of these topics once we have covered the full plan for building your business.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: free traffic, paid traffic, squeeze page, traffic, traffic generation

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Okay we are back on track after a week end away and a big thank you to Charles for his guest blog post yesterday. Time to get back on track with building a real business.

It is a necessity that you have decided and done your niche research at this point. You could have skipped the mind set and the organization sections (although I strongly recommend against that) but you need to have the research on what you are going to promote.

The first question you need to answer is who is your ideal customer. This is important and I can’t tell you how many people can’t answer this question and then wonder why they don’t make money.

If you can’t draw a picture of your ideal customer how can you possibly build a system to attract them? Luck? Maybe, but I really doubt it.

The second step is to figure out what that ideal customer would want enough to give you a chance to build a relationship. If you don’t have a clear picture of step one you are not very likely to get this one right. Even with that picture you won’t get it right all the time. (Yes we have a fix for when that happens we are building a system here not shooting in the dark.)

Depending on the area of interest this item may be a book, an e-course, a video series, a piece of software or even a free sample of some type.

Ever go through a Sam’s Warehouse store and not have the chance to try various products. My son would go for the variety to have lunch when he was younger and never complain unlike when he went shopping other places.

How many of you that have tried those have bought something that wasn’t on your list because you enjoyed it? Me!

Offline they have the product right there to purchase and taste but online you need a mechanism to deliver the sample. You aren’t there to ask them how they liked it so it is best to set it up to get permission to continue the conversation after they have “tasted” it by creating a squeeze page.

Now you need to create that follow up and automate it with your autoresponder. My personal preference is AWeber because in my opinion they are simply the best.

There is one more step while we are preparing this and that is to set up some type of tracking system to see how well each piece is working. That is how we will know if we got the bait right, or if it is something else that is breaking down in our system.

This part will never be totally built but will always be under construction. It will always need to be improved.

It is much easier to improve it when you build the structure properly first.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: ebook, ecourse, offer, optin, software, squeeze page

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There are three things a successful affiliate marketer needs to do.

First, you need to find a quality product. This can be relatively easy because there are quite a few quality products around. The problem comes when you get into the second part of the equation.

The second thing you need is for the good product to have a good sales letter. If the copy is poor, no matter how great the product, you won’t make many sales.

The third thing you need to do is develop your own list. Capturing e-mail addresses before people get to the actual sales letter is crucial. This allows you to follow up impre than once and increase your conversions. You can even make other related promotions to this list.

Getting started with all three of these things can be very difficult for most people. Most people just find a quality product, they like and ignore the sales letter or don’t do the follow up necessary to maximize their profit. This makes it extremely hard for you to create an ongoing business.

Jon Hostler has created a new program that will allow you to solve all three problems. He finds quality products with poorly written sales letters and creates a whole system to allow you to have a good sales funnel.

You get a professionally written squeeze page, an updated sales letter for the product, and the follow up e-mail series, all written by Jon himself with professional graphics and video.

Renegade Affiliates Monthly

Jon is a good copywriter who gets paid big dollars for his copy, but he’s going to allow you to leverage this through his new membership site for pennies on the dollar.

Each month you will get a video squeeze page for the product of the month. You will receive a 10 e-mail series, ready to upload to your auto responder. Finally, you will receive a new sales letter for the product so that your customer will never see the poor sales letter.

You get all of the pieces and all you need to do is drive traffic to your site.

Renegade Affiliates Monthly

The only problem is that this is limited to just 400 sets so if you want a virtual business in a box you need to check this out today. I did.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: affiliate, affiliate marketing, copy, john hostler, sales letter, squeeze page

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