Unemployed and Optimistic I heard a good interview on public radio Sunday morning -- a follow-up with a woman who lost her job as a teacher last year and was living on unemployment the first time they talked to her. She had been discouraged and angry at the government. Now, she was in good spirits and optimistic. What happened? She got off her couch, turned off the TV, and went back to work! "It was really depressing sitting around all day with nothing to do," she said. "I liked collecting the check every two weeks, but the rest of the time it was boring." So she started applying for jobs -- any jobs. And, lo and behold, she started getting them! At one point, she was working six part-time jobs at once. "I was working as a waitress and bartender and office cleaner and sales clerk. I accepted every job I could fit into my schedule. Before long, I was making more money than I was getting from the government. That made me happy. Knowing I could do it alone." Several weeks later, she was offered a full-time job by one of her part-time employers. It was a good job, with better benefits than the teaching job she had lost, so she took it. "I've learned what it means to be self-reliant," she said. "I will never accept an unemployment check again. I don't want to be dependent ever again. I know I can find work and make money. I'm going to do it on my own." In today's issue of ETR, Edwin Huertas tells us how he helped a family friend supercharge her business with just a few simple search engine optimization strategies. And I talk about: - Wealthy: Eating pizza naked
- Healthy: A new drug that cures all, and it's free!
- Wise: How to cash in on the naked pizza craze
---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended ---------------------------------------------------- This Could Be the Game-Changer You're Looking For! Say you could access 4.5 BILLION potential customers… Get just .001 percent of them to buy, and you're a multi-millionaire. Internet expert Mike Koenigs has the secret to connecting with this huge pool of prospects. Once $350,000 in debt, he now heads up a multi-million-dollar company. He's created over 300 websites and more than 40 products. He knows the secret to getting access. Unprecedented access to three-quarters of the world's population. Access that most marketers would sell their soul to have. Access that your business can immediately tap into. Mike will tell all at ETR's 2009 Bootcamp. But if you don't want to wait… you can "meet up" with him during a special Pre-Bootcamp "Hot Seat" Session Wednesday, September 23. MaryEllen Tribby will be grilling Mike… and you have a chance to listen in. Most marketers would pay dearly for this kind of insider information. But it won't cost you a penny. Reserve your spot by signing up for our "Hot Seat" hotlist right now. P.S. You'll get access to two more of the country's leading experts in building wealth. There's no obligation and absolutely no charge. Reserve your spot now. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." Thomas Jefferson Search Engine Optimization Is Easy
By Edwin Huertas About a year and a half ago, a family friend started a business selling women's active wear. She had no website -- and no plans to create one. She sold her goods by driving door to door, visiting every gym she could find. She was doing okay. But the time and effort -- not to mention gas -- she was putting into it was crazy. Her products were great, and the people who purchased them were always happy to buy from her again. But her only follow-up with them was by phone. She worked out of her tiny two-bedroom house. And because she couldn't afford to have someone else handle order fulfillment, there were so many boxes piled up that you could hardly walk through the house without tripping over one. I thought to myself ... "If she had some way to reach her customers WITHOUT running all over town, she could seriously improve her sales." I offered to help her set up a website and bring her business to the Internet. And because she had limited funds, the main business-building strategy I recommended was to drive free traffic to her site using search engine optimization (SEO). (Actually, even if you have a big budget, free traffic is always best in my book.) She finally agreed. And BAM! She is now selling about $10K per month on her website. She has even picked up a few wholesale accounts from big-name national gyms. And that doesn't include the phone orders she is still taking. Needless to say ... she no longer drives anywhere to make sales. People find HER on the Web, quickly and easily. If you have a brick-and-mortar business you want to take online -- or if you want to start an Internet business from scratch -- here's how I helped my friend ... I developed a VERY simple shopping cart for her website, using www.OSCommerce.com as her e-commerce platform. OsCommerce is free software that you can easily install to run your own online store. It is used on over 1 million websites, so it's been tested thoroughly by many Web professionals. (Just perform a search for "Powered by OSCommerce" and you'll see.) Then I taught her how to enter in her products. And I taught her how to input product descriptions using targeted keywords for SEO. (I just taught her the basics.) And before long, her website began getting free SEO traffic. In fact, she started getting it quicker than even I expected. Let me show you what I mean. (I've got her permission to do this, of course.) 
As you can see, she's been getting a lot of free traffic from the search engines. And 99.9 percent of her traffic is for the "targeted" keywords she's used on her site: 
Here are some of the tips I gave her to get that traffic: 1. Make sure the name you enter for each product on your site includes some of your keywords. If, for example, my friend enters a pair of low-cut workout pants, she might name them something like "Sexy Women's Workout Pants." 2. When you write a description for each product, insert keywords close to the beginning of the copy.
3. If a product comes in different colors, enter each one individually. This creates more website pages, because each product has its own page in the system. (And for SEO, the more pages a site has, the better.) The trick is to make sure you have different product names and descriptions. They can be close, but not using the exact verbiage. Search engine optimization is the main technique I used to help my friend get free traffic -- but not the only one. Another technique that worked really well for her was to build outside links to her website. In particular, I showed her how to find forums and blogs related to her niche. And I taught her how to post her opinions, ideas, and comments on those sites -- and link her postings to her website. Even if a site doesn't "officially" allow you to include your link, you can usually find a way to sneak it in. For example, here's a comment she posted on a website dedicated to health and fitness: "I was working out one day and my fat thighs were tearing at the seam, so I thought it was time to buy new gear. I found a great place (www.bellamiasportswear.com), and they had some of the hottest outfits I've seen in a while." Not only did she get her link in, she did it as a third-party recommendation. And that kind of testimonial is probably the best advertising there is. By the way, it's important to post useful content on these websites. Don't just "hit and run" with your site address. Join the conversation. Throughout the learning process, my friend absorbed the tidbits of information I gave her. Even though she had known NOTHING about the Internet, she merely followed my simple instructions and kept plugging away. Eventually, she felt ready to manage the website on her own. And she did great. Now, she's gearing up to open two websites in different (but related) markets: one for men's workout wear and one for nutritional supplements. And to think ... before I stepped in, she had never realized how easy it is to make a fortune on the Web. She had the right attitude. She was willing to learn a boatload of new skills. She pushed forward even though she was unsure. And she was well rewarded as a result. You can do it too. If you're not interested in learning the technical skills, not a problem. There are many freelancers out there who can do just about anything you need for a very reasonable fee. (Because they work from home, they don't mind charging less than you might expect.) Bottom line: You really can't afford to sit back and watch others make their fortunes simply because you don't dare take that first step. Like any other business, marketing your product or service online takes a little time to set up. But the financial and personal freedom you'll enjoy makes it worth it. The time is NOW folks! P.S. There are many resources out there that can help you -- and you should take full advantage of them, if you can. I know of one, for example, that is tailor-made for those who want to start their own online business. No previous experience necessary. Find out more about it here. ----------------------------------------------Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- The "Obvious" Marketing Strategy... that Almost Every Start-Up Forgets - Your favorite restaurant almost certainly does it. So do McDonalds and Starbucks down the street. But I'll bet your new online business is missing out on this. If so, you're probably losing thousands every time you sell something. Read more to find out what "it" is… --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More wealth, health, and wisdom from Masterson ... In 2006, Jeff Leach and Randy Crochet decided to open a business selling healthy pizzas. Jeff, an archeologist, was an amateur expert in natural health. He knew how bad processed foods are and convinced Randy, a mortgage broker, that they could make a nice living selling a healthy pizza pie. They spent 18 months and $750,000 researching and testing their product. Then, last year, they opened their first store in New Orleans. Their pizza had a crust made of 12 whole grains, low-fat mozzarella, and a tomato sauce with no additives. Why they needed to spend $750,000 to come up with that recipe, I can't say. Had they been reading Dr. Al Sears or Total Health Breakthroughs, they could have saved themselves a lot of money. They called it the World's Healthiest Pizza. And printed on the pizza box cover was a mini "dissertation" (written by Jeff) about how food is processed in the lower intestines. A local marketing guy, Robbie Vitrano, saw their product and convinced them to change the name to Naked Pizza, rewrite their box copy, and advertise on the Net. Their pizza was tasty -- really tasty, according to some local Internet ratings. And the new marketing pitch seemed to click. Their sales were growing and their reputation was spreading. Then they took another step. They applied for funding from the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan, and got the financial help they needed to franchise Naked Pizza nationwide. Leach hopes to see 1,000 locations or more across the country. It could happen. These guys wasted a lot of money "researching" their recipe. Still, even with the low-fat mozzarella, it isn't all that healthy. But what they did really well was find a new way to sell an extremely popular product. And they did so without raising the price or sacrificing quality. In fact, they improved it. Everybody eats pizza. If you can give people what they want anyway -- cheaply and with a significant advantage (in this case, less guilt) -- you have a product that can catch on. If you wish you had thought of the healthy pizza idea yourself, don't sweat it. If you think about it, you can probably come up with your own "spin-off" idea that should work just as well as pizza. Just keep these points in mind: - Retail is a very difficult business.
- But fast-food restaurants often beat the odds.
- Healthful foods are becoming more popular.
- Cheap is always better than expensive, especially today.
- A single-item restaurant is the easiest to manage.
Many years ago on SNL, Steve Martin did a bit about a new drug he was taking. "It's fantastic!" he said. "Everybody should be taking it!" "What is it called?" someone asked him. "Pla-cee-bo," was his reply. In 2003, Merck introduced a new drug called MK-869. It was designed to have a feel-good effect by tinkering with the nervous system. Early trials were very positive. Company executives and investors were excited.
Then Phase II testing began. The drug was tested against a control group taking a placebo. Many test subjects taking MK-869 reported reductions in anxiety. But nearly the same number of people in the placebo group had the same positive response. Further testing confirmed that there was no difference between the experimental drug and a placebo. MK-869 was shelved.
The case of MK-869 is far from unique. In recent years, more drugs than ever before are being pulled from clinical trials because they can't outperform placebos. Even billion-dollar moneymakers like Prozac are failing the test.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Drug developers are saying that it's not that the meds are ineffective -- it's that the placebo effect is getting stronger. And because it is getting stronger, they believe they should be able to sell their drugs even though they can't beat sugar pills.
They are spending millions of dollars trying to convince the FDA that their ridiculous theory is valid.
There are two lessons to be drawn from this:
1. Big Pharma is not interested in the effectiveness of its drugs. It's interested in having the "right" to sell them.
2. Placebos do work. They don't work all the time. But they often work at the same rate as expensive drugs. Why is this? Probably because they trigger the brain to activate the body's own therapeutic mechanisms.
That is why it is so important to treat illness holistically -- with a mind-body approach. And why, if you have a choice, it is always better to try natural remedies before taking drugs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I can't wait to implement your ideas." "I'm going through my own financial challenges currently. I made a decision to dedicate my life to studying wealth. I had been browsing through a national book chain's section on wealth for the last two weeks looking for some resources. "I'm on step one in your book Automatic Wealth, and just had to put the book down to send you a quick e-mail to say that we've come to the same conclusions about wealth. I can't wait to implement your ideas."
Eric P. Martin ---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- Luxury Vacations "on the House" – Okay, so you still have to pay for the flight… but you could stay at a beachfront mansion in Maui – that usually rents for $1,500+ a week… for $0. That's right. Zero, zip, nada, FREE! Stay a week. A month. Or a year (or more). Ka-Ching Editor Matthew Adams can show you how... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a website's visibility -- and, thus, the amount of "organic" (free) traffic it gets -- by making it search engine friendly. SEO techniques include choosing targeted keywords, arranging for inbound links from other relevant websites, and making sure the site's content contains plenty of useful information. Example (as used by Edwin Huertas today): "Because she had limited funds, the main business-building strategy I recommended was to drive free traffic to her site using search engine optimization (SEO)." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today's issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com | 
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