| I sent a memo to a client last week, telling him about a clever advertising campaign that one of his competitors is using. I had inside info that the competitor is making a lot of money with it. My client's response was to tell me what is wrong with what his competitor is doing. And then to explain why his program is "much better." I was stunned. Instead of being happy to get information about a new marketing technique he could profit from, my client was using his considerable intellectual energy to eighty-six it. Why? * Sometimes, we ridicule ideas because we are overwhelmed with work and don't want to contemplate taking on something new. This is a bad habit to develop. If you allow your mental inbox to get "full," you will start rejecting ideas that could be very, very good. There is a better way to deal with idea overload. Be thankful for every idea you are given, but don't feel compelled to take any action on it immediately. Just schedule some time during your week for reviewing new ideas, and get to them then. I have a nice little system for doing this that I'll show you in a future issue of ETR (if you remind me). The point is, you should never reject a new marketing idea because you are overwhelmed with existing ideas. Take it in. Check it out when you have time. Don't even consider taking action unless you get really excited about it. But I don't think my client was suffering from idea overload. What else could it have been? * Sometimes, we refuse to accept ideas because we don't trust the source. This may have been the case with my client. He had told me several times that he didn't trust the competitor I was telling him about. If that were the reason, he was foolish. Good ideas can come from bad places. In fact, most "bad" business practices have at their center a perfectly good -- and usually very powerful -- insight. Rather than scoff at the idea, break it down into its component parts and try to see if you can save or reinvent some of them. * Sometimes, we dismiss ideas simply because we don't understand them. This -- however stupid it sounds -- is actually the best excuse I can think of for rejecting new marketing ideas. Some innovations are complicated. And if they are making lots of money, you have to get on board. But you don't have to be one of the first companies out there every single time. I can't tell you how many Internet tricks I've seen come and go over the past 10 years. My rule is to wait until you can see that they are real. Then jump in, learn them, and outsell the competition. But my client didn't have that problem. He understood the technique I was talking about. The real problem he had was a very simple one. The problem was his ego. He didn't want to believe that someone he disrespected could come up with a marketing idea that was more effective than the one he was using. So rather than think, "Gee, this could work for me!" he figures out umpteen reasons why it's probably not working or will soon fail to work or wouldn't work for him anyway. Life is rich with opportunities -- chances to be smarter, happier, richer, and more successful. Sometimes, they appear fully formed and stare you in the eyes until you recognize them. More often, they arrive in puffs and whiffs -- in the form of ephemeral suggestions and remarks. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you'll recognize them. But noticing them is not enough. You have to keep your mind open too, and block out your instinct to come up with a list of good and rational reasons why you shouldn't seize the day. ---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended ---------------------------------------------------- Those Who Get In Before the Masses Could See Big Returns... Natural resources expert Dr. Russell McDougal has two "aces" in his pocket. And they could mean bigger gains for his readers than most expert investors see in a decade. Ace #1: Bloomberg reports that "gold may reach $2,000 an ounce by 2010." And Barron's speculated that the price could hit "$8,000 an ounce." Dr. McDougal has pinpointed a unique niche that could allow you to make money as the price of gold skyrockets. And you don't have to buy a single ounce of gold. Ace #2: Dr. McDougal has developed a powerful "Windfall Strategy" that, time and again, has produced huge results. At one point, he generated a staggering 9,323% gain in his personal account ... a return that would transform $10,000 into $942,300! It was no fluke. He's turned $6,302 into a whopping $167,462. And his recent recommendations have risen 58%... 130%... and 241%. Some in just weeks, and all within a few months. With these aces in YOUR pocket, you have the opportunity to "cash in" -- big time! -- on the coming gold-buying mania. Get all the details here. But you must act quickly. Once panic buying sets in, it may be too late. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals." David Ogilvy Keyword Due Diligence
By Bob Bly Before you optimize your website or buy pay-per-click (PPC) traffic, you should perform "keyword due diligence." That means you must check to see that Internet users are actually searching for information on your product by using the same keywords you assumed they would use. When I tell this to people, they often pooh-pooh it. "It's not necessary for us to do keyword research," they tell me. "We know our industry. We know our products. And we know what words our customers would search on." To which I say: Oh, really? With the Internet, there is no need to guess whether you're using the right keywords. There are software tools that can tell you exactly how many searches were performed on them. Often, the keywords used most are not the ones you picked. In addition, small variations in keywords can make a big difference in results. Let's say I want to optimize a website for people looking to buy aquariums. It seems obvious that I should optimize the home page copy for the keyword "aquarium," right? And when I use spacky.com to check, sure enough there were 823,000 searches on "aquarium" on Google this month. But there were 11.1 million searches on Google this month on "aquariums." This tells me that I should optimize the home page copy for "aquariums" and not "aquarium." I would never have known that had I not done my due diligence. My favorite keyword due diligence tool is spacky.com. It's free. And when you enter a keyword, it shows the monthly search volume for that term on Google, Overture/Yahoo, and Microsoft Network. In addition, spacky.com displays a long list of related terms and their search volumes, so you can choose the keywords that are searched most frequently. I can think of at least three online marketing activities that can benefit from keyword research. The first, as already noted, is search engine optimization. Each page on your website should be optimized for at least one keyword related to what you're selling. The second is pay-per-click advertising. Even a good PPC ad will generate mediocre results if you bid on the wrong keywords. The third is determining the feasibility of new products. Example: You decide to write and sell an e-book on how to set up an aquarium. You think fish-keeping is a very popular hobby, but you aren't sure. But even if you were sure that fish-keeping is popular, that doesn't mean the book will sell. Remember, we are not selling in bookstores. We are selling on the Internet. And for a product to be successful online, potential buyers must be searching the Internet for information related to it. My rule of thumb is that the keyword must have at least 100,000 searches a month on Google to be successful online. "Aquariums" with 11.1 million and "aquarium" with 823,000 both pass with flying colors. There's another way to do keyword due diligence. It's to spy on your competitors and see what keywords they're using to optimize their websites. (Don't worry. It's perfectly legal.) You can see what keywords your competitors are using by reading the source codes on their websites. "Source code" is the programming language used to build a website. And in optimized websites, the source codes for the pages include keyword lists called meta tags. The most important meta tags to check are the title tag, description tag, and keywords tag. To find the keywords in a competitor's meta tags, go to his home page. Click "view" and then choose "source." A window will appear displaying the page's source code with the meta tags clearly labeled as title, description, and keywords. The keywords appear between symbols like these: In minutes, you will know all the keywords your competitor has optimized his site for. You can then use spacky.com or another keyword research and discovery tool like wordtracker.com. P.S. Using keyword research to optimize your website and pay-per-click ad campaigns is just one of the tactics I teach in my Internet Cash Generator program. It's full of the same techniques I used to generate $16,000 a month -- just six months after starting my first online venture. Go here to learn more about this complete guide to starting and running your own Internet business. [Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now: www.bly.com/reports.] ----------------------------------------------Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- "This year I claimed $134,408 on my income tax return -- all from copywriting!" - What do a retired engineer, a ballroom dance instructor, and a grocery store clerk have in common? They made more money than they ever had within months of finding out they could write sales letters. And they did it while working less than they ever had before. Hear their amazing stories here... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who Pays Attention to Big Business? New York and Washington, That's Who!
By Michael Masterson
A recent study found that 2008's media coverage of the financial crisis was all about big government and big business. Small-business issues merited just 5 percent of the total. Newspapers and magazines and television experts were almost entirely focused on the auto industry, bank bailouts, and stimulus plans. And most of the research and reporting was done in New York or Washington. Very little of it was done out here where most of us live and work. This is a sort of conspiracy of silence. Big government isn't interested in small business. Why? Because entrepreneurs don't have enough lobbyists in Washington. And because the media has no idea of how important small business is to economic growth. Mom-and-pop businesses are going bankrupt by the thousands, but you'll almost never hear about it because nobody in New York or Washington cares. But screw them. It doesn't matter. We are the blood and bone of business in America. We will renew ourselves and we will get strong again. "How do you get out of a rut?" a good friend asked me. "Regain passion for your work? Get yourself up for each day?" "Have you thought about this?" he continued. "It happens to me often. It makes me miserable. I feel useless, because I tend to piss away the day. The only way I can get back into it is to get on a good roll with a new project. But sometimes it takes too long for that to happen." What can you say to that? It sucks! You wake up tired and unmotivated. You dread work. Everything seems more interesting than what you have to do. The feeling can pass in a few hours or it can last for days -- even weeks. For some it lasts months... years... a lifetime. It is unproductive -- and completely unnecessary. Dr. Srikumar Rao, a marketing executive I met several weeks ago, told me about his experience with the dilemma my friend described. Dr. Rao tried various popular motivational techniques, but none of them worked. Because of his formal education in philosophy and religion, he turned to ancient spiritual texts for an answer. "I found some peace almost immediately when I started reading," he said. "But the thoughts were vague in my head. I wasn't sure how to apply them to the real-life problems I was facing." So he set about adapting those teachings, converting them into practical techniques. As he made progress, he began sharing his techniques with others. He's taught his course at Columbia and Berkeley, for example, and to companies like Google. "It's been very gratifying to see my solutions work for people in so many different fields of work," he told me. I'm happy to say that Dr. Rao is now on the ETR board of advisors. And he will be sharing his techniques with ETR readers. You'll read his first essay in tomorrow's issue. This is a fat country. And that means Americans are prone to a long list of fat-related health problems. Heart disease and high blood pressure are two of the big ones. Dr. Al Sears, my personal physician, has helped me lose more than 25 pounds of fat, reduce my blood pressure, and strengthen my heart with an amazingly easy "eating program" he has developed over several years. It's based on relatively large quantities of high-quality protein (wild salmon, grass-fed beef, and organic eggs, cheese, milk, beans, and nuts). How does it work? By exceeding your body's daily protein requirement, you boost your metabolism. As a result, you stop storing fat and start burning it. For an active person like me, Dr. Sears recommends 1 gram of protein per day per pound of lean body mass (LBM). Lean body mass is the weight of your body minus the fat. (There are several simple ways you can measure your own LBM. I'll explain how to do it in a future issue.). So a 180-pound man with 15 percent body fat would have an LBM of 153 pounds. And he should be eating 153 grams of protein a day. To give you an idea of what that means, an egg has 7 grams of protein, 6 ounces of fish has 42 grams, and a cup of cashew nuts has 21 grams. I crave protein, so this is easy for me. I eat eggs every morning for breakfast and all sorts of high-quality protein throughout the day. My snacks are high-protein. And my dinners are a combination of proteins and organic vegetables. One big benefit you will notice right away: By eating more protein and less starchy carbs, your appetite will decrease dramatically. Try it. Let me know how it works for you. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Latest News Have you signed up for our sister publication, Total Health Breakthroughs, yet? As an ETR reader, you'll get it free for six months. Check out Melanie Segala's latest piece to see what THB is all about. She writes about the one supplement you should be taking right now to boost energy and immunity, protect your heart, and more. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Now I get it." "I'm writing to thank Michael Masterson for his recent article on the importance of working with a mentor. I run a successful and fast-growing medical education company. After reading Michael's article, I realized that I know a person who has grown two companies in the medical field to about $90 million of annual revenue each. "Duh! "So I approached this person and asked him to mentor me. I offered to pay him, and he -- thankfully -- accepted. I say thankfully, because it makes the relationship more fair and secure, and I will make much better use of it. "So thank you for reminding me of something I knew but never did. It goes to show that we need mentoring not only to learn new things but to be reminded of things we've forgotten or never made use of. Now I get it -- I will never start a new venture without seeking out a mentor first." Jack Krasuski ---------------------------------------------- Highly Recommended --------------------------------------------------- Internet Marketing Genius Turned Chicken Farmer - When you do business online -- and do it well -- you have the freedom to spend most of your time doing whatever you want to do. One Internet marketing genius we know helped build a $275 million Internet empire. And he used his newfound freedom to raise chickens on his own organic farm. You may think this guy is crazy. But surely you'll want to know how he made his money. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Words That Work: Eighty-six "Eighty-six" is diner slang for taking an item off the menu or canceling an order. It's also used by bars and restaurants when they refuse to serve an unruly or drunk customer. By extension, it can mean rejecting, discarding, or getting rid of anything or anyone (especially gangster style). No telling where the term really originated. Some sources say it was a rhyme for "nix." Others say it came from Article 86 of the New York Liquor Code. Perhaps the best story points to Chumley's, a prohibition era bar in Greenwich Village. The place had a back door that exited at 86 Bedford Street -- and when the bar got raided, everyone made a dash for it. ("Quick! Eighty-six it!") Example (as used by Michael Masterson today): "Instead of being happy to get information about a new marketing technique he could profit from, my client was using his considerable intellectual energy to eighty-six it." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today's issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com | 
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