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MAY 6, 2003
• How To Make Yourself A Guru In 7 Steps, Pt. 2 Of 2
• 5 Fast, Free Ways To Make Doing Biz Online Easier
Loyal Reader, can I confess something to you?
I've been recommending a certain "marketing plan blueprint" type
of product HARD these past two weeks. It really IS great ... but
you might notice that all traces of it are removed from this
issue, and will continue to be.
Like I said, the concept AND the product are both fabulous. Yes, I do
use it. Yes, I still think it's just as useful as I did when I first
started recommending it. Yes, yes, yes!
This *isn't* one of those
deals where you'll hear an "admission of guilt" to endorsing a
product I knew (or didn't take the time to review or use and see)
wasn't worth a steaming pile of cow fertilizer. :-{
The ONLY thing that's changed is my opinion of the "author."
Yes, he's one smart cookie. Yes, he came up with a brilliant idea
for a product. Yes, I DEFINITELY wish I'd thought of it first!
(He's making a lot of money over there. I myself sent *17 sales*
his way within 72 hours of his launch ... with a small subscriber
list.)
What HAS changed is my opinion of how he's treated me.
I've written him several times in the past few weeks, even before
his official launch, and always got short, snippy answers. That's
cool -- I understand people are busy.
But check THIS out.
As I said, I've been recommending his product like crazy. More
than I've recommended ANYTHING in a VERY long time. So on 4/25,
in the spirit of increasing sales (for BOTH of us), I sent him
this message, verbatim:
SUBJ: <snip>, can you please...
... make your site load faster? It takes AGES to load,
and that can really put a damper on sales. Even though
it's selling really well right now, I'm sure you could
get more if you broke up your tables to make the first
section load faster.
If you're not sure how, I could do it in about 5 minutes
for you. Can you please let me know when you do it, or
if you'd like ME to? :-)
I didn't hear anything from him -- at all -- about this, until
5/5 ... when he sent a MASS MAILING to all of his contributors
-- NOT a *personal reply* to me -- that said:
Sales were down to about 2 per <snip>, then I put new
'quick loading' pages up (that my friend <snip> <snip>
helped me create) and it made 3 sales in <snip>.
We lost a lot of prospects using 28.8k and 56k modems
with the older 'slow loading' pages.
Huh?!
No frickin' kidding, Sherlock.
I guess he evidently doesn't remember that his "friend" Harmony
Major is the one who urged him to do this just 10 days before
his "personal revelation" slash "light-bulb moment", wherein he
decided to **break up his tables to make his site load faster.**
(Yep, Loyal Reader. That's EXACTLY what he did. I checked.)
Coincidence?
Hmph.
And I'm basing that opinion not only on what happened this time,
but on ALL of my past dealings with him. I'll explain that, but
first, trust me ... I'm not crying because I didn't get "credit"
for the "idea." (To me it wasn't even an "idea" -- just good ol'
fashioned webmaster common sense.)
I'm miffed because:
- This isn't the first time, by far, that I haven't gotten a response from this author.
- He makes me feel "unimportant," perhaps because I'm not a paying customer (in which case, I suppose he doesn't count his additional **17 sales** from my list as "pay") ... or most likely, because I'm not the esteemed marketing mogul, Mark Joyner. (More on that below.)
- Busy or not, he could've thanked me for the heads up on his molasses-slow site. Or at least wrote to tell me that yes, he'd considered decreasing his site's load time, was in fact working on it as we speak, and would indeed give me -- an affiliate who'd already made OVER A DOZEN SALES FOR HIM -- the courtesy of letting me know when the problem was fixed...
So I could promote *HIS* PRODUCT some more!
"Thanked her," you might say?
Heck yeah. Unlike many, I still believe in courtesy -- online or anywhere else. And why shouldn't I?? I did, after all, suggest something that could have (and obviously DID, based on his immediately improved results/sales, increase his profit in minutes).
Now, I DO know that, with spam filters running rampant, people
not getting (or responding to) your messages is becoming more
common. But c'mon ...
This isn't what happened here.
*I* think I'm just not important or "popular" (?!) enough to get
the same level of respect from him that "big name gurus" do. :-/
At least in HIS eyes.
And why do I say THAT? (Okay, back to the Mark Joyner thing.)
He seems to be into "name dropping". With almost every message
he sent me in the past, there was some reference to, or quote
from, Mark Joyner, intended to influence people to contribute
to his project because good ol' Mark recommended his product.
I swear, I've seen Mark's name all OVER this author's site and
e-mail messages, and in my opinion, it's overkill. It's almost
like HE feels like his product won't stand on its own. And it
most certainly WOULD, if he'd let it.
Now, of course I understand the concept of building credibility
by "borrowing" someone else's. (We're talking endorsements here,
and stuff like in #6 of today's article that can make you popular
fast.) But if you're too gung ho about using others' credibility
and reputations to boost your own, it can actually start working
against you.
I'll leave things on that note.
And I'm no longer saying do OR don't buy his product. You're a smart
cookie too, Loyal Reader. So I'll leave that decision to you.
I just felt it necessary to tell you what was going on, so you
wouldn't beat me over the head if something similar happened to
you somewhere down the line.
The lesson in all this?
When people recommend products and services to you, unless
they explicitly say so, they ARE NOT endorsing the product
author *OR* the site owner!
Of course, people wouldn't recommend a product by someone they
know to be a scamster or other decidedly unsavory online villain.
But, just like with anything else ... as affiliates and even as
JV partners ... you just never know.
Caveat emptor for REAL! :-/
(Let the buyer beware.)
There are TONS of other products out there to recommend. Though
it might take a while to find one that fills such a need in the
marketplace, I'm willing to take that "risk."
But if I don't like both you *AND* your product ... you can bet
you won't find my name behind it.
Period.
Respectfully,
P.S. Speaking of not answering mail, one reader wrote me the
other day, saying that I never sent her the download info for the
free book I promised you guys for completing the survey for me.
I did!
I responded with the promised download to every single person who
sent the survey back to me. If you didn't get it, write me again,
and I'll resend. (Darn spam filters!) :-(
P.P.S. Sorry for the length of the rant. On to the edjumacation!
:-P
How To Make Yourself A Marketing Guru In 7 Simple Steps
==========================================
Ready to get yourself and your online business more publicity
than you can handle? More "celebrity status" equals more sales,
and more sales equals more profit than you can shake a stick at.
Discover exactly how to build your online credibility and clout
and become an Internet marketing force to be reckoned with ...
in only seven simple steps.
** Miss the first half of this article? Get it all
** by autoresponder, by clicking HERE.
4. Start Working Your Way Into the Public Eye
Here's where it starts getting easier. Post to discussion forums
related to your niche, and keep writing and submitting articles.
Not only are these easy ways to make yourself known, all they
cost is your time. It doesn't very take long at all for your
credibility and publicity to soar as a result of posting to
forums and getting your articles published in prestigious ezines.
TIP: Even if the ezines aren't very well-known, if you
constantly have articles running in several smaller ezines,
as people continue to see you, you'll soon become more
popular, and your work will become a hot commodity.
5. Give Your Publicity and Credibility a Final, Powerful Boost
Now that you've established yourself as an expert of a tightly-focused niche, you can really start pushing for PUBLICITY. Are
you ready for success? Now is the time to approach high-profile
marketers in your industry and collaborate. This shouldn't be
very hard at all ... so long as you HAVEN'T skipped any steps!
Recommend each other's ezines on your respective websites, offer
well-established marketers a high commission to resell your
products (if you have any at this point), or ask them to work
with you to complete a new product.
You can even combine all of these ideas and do them all at once
to really come out with a bang. But the absolute FASTEST way to
boost publicity and name recognition for free is to co-author a
product with an already "high-profile" marketer.
If you're partnered with someone who's already made a name for
themselves in your market, people will automatically think of
YOU as the "next big thing" ... by association. (This works best
and is LONGER-LASTING when you partner with someone to actually
co-author a product, rather just endorsing each other's products
to your subscribers.)
6. Don't Be Afraid to Milk the "High-Income Market"
People always come to me asking if their products are priced too
high. Sometimes it's truly laughable -- their products could be
UNDER $30! No price can be "too high" as long as the quality of
your product is in sync with its price. And the higher your
prices, the more people who'll sit up and take notice of you.
High prices aren't very common in Internet marketing -- though
I've watched the "sell your product for peanuts" trend diminish
over the past couple of years, thank goodness.
Even so, most marketers still:
- Try to "over deliver," by offering ridiculously low prices to gain immediate profit or a large customer base to "back-end" to, and are convinced that quantity = quality.
*NOT!* I'd rather have a 25-page special report telling me ONLY what I need to know to master a topic ... than a 500-page overstuffed "manual" (that probably STILL comes up short in at least one area) ANY day. Who has time to read all THAT crap ... and actually *APPLY it* after they wade through it??
Or...
- Are afraid to meet price resistance -- whether real or imagined -- by charging over a certain price that they've got set in their OWN minds as "expensive." Over delivering is great, so long as you're not shortchanging yourself in the process.
TIP: The next time you get the "high price jitters," remember
that there are MILLIONS of Internet users in the high-income
bracket.
Don't build up a base of "cheapskate" customers and
try to force an expensive product on them later on. Instead,
START OUT with customers who are willing to invest "big money"
into top-quality products that will save them time and effort.
On the same token, you can't expect first-time buyers to
invest $500 in you up front! It's a tricky business, this
pricing thing.
In this case, it's smart to have several pricing levels for a
product, to "create" entry-level, mid-level, and "expensive"
pricing options, so customers still have something "low-cost"
to choose from, while also seeing that you're not into pricing
ALL of your products for little to nothing.
Whew! This needs to be broken down into yet ANOTHER article
if I hope to ever fully explain it all. We'll save that one
for another week. :-)
7. Finished? Now Do It Again!
Making yourself a "guru" really isn't a hard job. Knowing your
niche inside and out and making YOURSELF known is pretty much
all there is to it.
Think about it -- who do most online marketers consider to be
"gurus" or experts in YOUR field?
HINT: "Gurus" are nothing more than VERY widely-known
EXPERTS in a certain field of expertise.
NO PUBLICITY & *NAME RECOGNITION* = NO GURU STATUS.
So get out there and make yourself "a guru." I'm behind you 100%!
[ © 2000-2003 by Harmony Major ]
5 Fast, Free Ways To Make Doing Biz Online EASIER
==========================================
I'm pretty lazy, and running my e-business is no exception.
I like to make things as SIMPLE as possible, to require as little
WORK as possible. The five free resources revealed next week's
issue (May 13) will save you some time and money in running your
e-business.
Stay put!
See you then. :-)
==========================================
ALL CONTENT IN THIS PUBLICATION copyright © 2000-2003 by Harmony
Major, all rights reserved.
I disclaim any liability for the use of any information contained
herein. I also claim no responsibility for the legality or the
accuracy of advertisements or articles included here, including
those reprinted by permission.
All articles ** may be reprinted freely ** so long as copyright
notice is left intact, article remains unedited (within reason),
** and ** the following resource box/bio is appended to the end
of the article:
---
Article by Harmony Major. Subscribe to her *FREE* ezine for high-
value, low-cost ways to drive traffic and targeted leads to your
site, and make a profit online while avoiding frivolous spending.
BONUS: Also get "10 Quick & Easy Ways to Increase the Profits of
ANY Website Overnight!" Go to: http://ExpertOnEbiz.com/get/a.html
---
Harmony Major
401-E Woods of North Bend Dr.
Raleigh, NC 27609-3975
http://YahooSecrets.com
http://ExpertOnEbiz.com
http://HarmonyMajor.com (Coming June 2003!)
http://WebsiteMarketingForCheapskates.com
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