A client of mine: direct to garment printers , enjoyed #1 ranking for the search terms direct to garment printing, direct to garment printers & a range of other important search terms, which brought literally hundreds of enquiries over the period of about 18 month - and then, oops, client forgot to renew the domain….

They got it back, but in the meantime they lost their rankings - so its now my job to work on getting them back.

Just a quick example to people of how important it is not to forget to renew your domain names!

If you’re a sign writer in North Wales, then you can now submit your business free, to the brand North Wales Signs Directory.

It’s a brand new directory, but it will soon be found on page one of Google for a range of north wales related search terms in the signs market.

There are a number of ways we can gain speedy google indexing of new websites - obviously that isn’t to say that these websites will necessarily be straight up to the top of Google, that depends on a number of factor including competition - but you’ve “gotto be in it to win it” as they say, so getting your website onto google fast is a very good first step.

The Best Accountants in Manchester is a website I’ve literally just created, as a Manchester accountancy directory. I know it doesn’t look very nice - it’s just a very basic template site so the design isn’t up to much - but i’ll create a proper website design & more useful pages as soon as it’s indexed.

Cannock Accountants is another one, similar idea. Again its an accountancy directy focusing on accountants in the Cannock, Staffordshire area. Only put up a few hours ago - so it will be interesting to see how long that takes to get into the big G.

Accountants City of London same thing but focussing on accountants in London. Again, only put up a matter of hours ago, so we’ll see what happens.

Plasterers Bury North Manchester I set up about a week ago as a bit of a test. It got indexed within a few days.

Obviously what I will be doing once the above sites are indexed, is I’ll then work on gaining page one ranking for the relevant search terms - and when I’ve done that I’ll spruce up the design, add more pages of useful content, and I’ll give free listings & offer a paid ad spot. If you have any use of any of these sites though, for instance if you’re a designer & you’re about to design a website for a London accountancy firm - or if you’re a plasterer in Bury & you want to 301 re-direct the site to your own, or move your website onto this domain - then just drop me an email.

The website above has been created, just a week or so ago - and is now on page one of Google for plasterers in Bury, and other related terms.

This is just an example of what I or other Manchester SEO Consultants can do for local businesses.

By the way - if you’re a splatterer, ahem - I mean plasterer in the Bury / Lancashire / North Manchester area - then drop me an email, you can have the bury plasterers site for a song. (not literally, I don’t mean I’ll give it you free if you sing to me).

Plastering is a real skill, I couldn’t do it well I could actually but it would all look like artex (having said that I can’t do any forms of DIY! Well I tell a lie, I can - but my version of DIY is destroy it yourself….. ) but anyway what I’m getting at, is that search engine optimisation is also a skill. If I want a plasterer then I’ll  speak to  good one, and hire them to come chuck stuff at my walls & skim it off nicely - and if you need to be found on page one of Google in the Manchester area - speak to me

Is your website an incredible 24/7/365 marketing machine which just keeps churning out the sales / leads / enquiries?

If the answer to this is “NO” - or “I SODDING WISH!!!!” then keep reading….

When I speak to small business owners, and then I look into their google analytics stats, their traffic, page views per visit, search engine positions, PPC spend & so on - most of the time the missing peice of the puzzle is the exact same thing for pretty much all of the business owners I speak to who tell me they’re not happy with the performance of their website as a marketing tool.

The missing peice of the puzzle - is email list building & marketing.

The problem is, that most people hugely over estimate when working out what their conversion rates will be from web visit to sale, or to enquiry.

Most people expect conversion rates to be in the region of 2-3%, and assume that if they’re getting 100 visits per day, for example, they should get a few sales or enquiries per day - but the the reality is that conversions are usually WAAAY lower than this.

In fact, the best cross - industry average I’ve been able to find - is 0.25% - which means 400 visitors are required for one conversion!

The majority of small business websites, in every day businesses, in every day industries, do not get enough targeted traffic to be able to make very mych impact with a conversion rate this low.

What’s more - is that many businesses are are losing money hand over fist, and don’t even realise it.

Think about it - if you make £50 Net profit per sale, and your average CPC is £0.50, with the above conversion rate you’re spending £200 to make £50 - not good business!

(By the way - do you know what your conversion rates are? It astounds me how many people use PPC marketing without using conversion tracking. Get conversion tracking on all your PPC campaigns - and if you can’t, then assume a very low conversion rate, and do your figures from that, or you could end up wasting a lot of cash with PPC)

Yes, we can work on trying to increase conversion rates, and we can work on getting more traffic - but as I said earlier, for most small businesses, the missing peice of the puzzle is list building & marketing.

There’s not a lot in marketing which is certain, but this is - if you’re not utilising email list building & marketing as part of your website marketing, you’re leaving a pile of cash on the table.

What’s List Marketing - is it Spam??

Email list building & marketing is not Spam - Spam is when peope send out unsolicited emails, list building & marketing is where you give people an incentive to join your list - to give you their permission to send them emails.

So they opt in to your email list - they want to receive your email, because you give them some incentive to do so, so for wehatever the reason, they want your emails, and you now have the ability to email them, to start building a relationship with them.

It’s far easier to get people to opt in to a list from first visit than it is to get them to buy from first visit.

In my guide “The Ultimate Marketing Machine” I tell you exactly how to set up & run email list building & marketing. I’ll just copy the first part of the guide below, to download the guide FREE just enter your details below. What’s more, it comes with re-sell rights, so you can re-sell the guide (whether or not you originally got it here free).

Once 100 people have downloaded the guide free - I will start charging for it - at which point
you will also be able to re-sell it, even though you got it free.

Here we go:

1: The difference between catching fish with a rod & using
a net.

In order for you to really understand the power of list building &
marketing imagine a guy stood on a boat with a fishing rod as apposed
to a guy who lays down fishing nets.

Who do you think will catch more fish??

Also who do you suppose will be catchingpassive fish, in that he won’t have to be stood there twiddling his thumbs in order to catch the fish?

Of course the net fisherman is the one who catches the most fish, and he catchespassive fish, in that he doesn’t need to be stood watching the nets, he can cast his nets, then go have a snooze, come back & reap the rewards.

If a website is trying to gain sales & enquiries purely from the first visit then this is exactly the same as rod fishing! The chances are far more slim that a fish will take the bait on a hook, as apposed to the chance that the fish will swim into a large net and the chances are far more slim that a visitor will buy on the first visit as apposed to the chances that they will join your list & then buy from you in the future.

A more accurate analogy.

Once you catch fish in a net, you have the fish so the above analogy isn’t 100% accurate. It would be more accurate then to see list marketing as catching your fish in a net, and then having the opportunity to catch your fish one at a time from the net which is far easier than trying to catch them in the open sea.

So, basically a website without list building & marketing is dependant on visitors buying from the first visit, which is similar to hoping that in the wide open sea a fish will come take your bait.

Whereas a website which does use list building & marketing, is far more likely to gain list
signups, and you then have the ability to communicate with your list, which is the same as catching lots of fish in a net & then fishing from this net rather than in the open ocean.

WHY?
There are a few reasons list building & marketing is so important.

Firstly, standard sales conversion rates from visit to sale are TINY! In fact the area that most website marketers fall down is that they have far higher expectations of their website’s potential conversion rates than is practical to expect to achieve. On average, sales conversion is somewhere in the region of 0.25% - which means that youneed
400 visits to make one sale!!!!

OK it’s difficult working with averages, and you may achieve more than 0.25, or you may achieve far less, it depends on the market, your product, your pricing, how good your sales copy is & so on but I believe it’s better to hope high but expect low, so you don’t end up over spending on marketing, so I always take 0.25% as an average conversion rate if there are no conversion stats to show me the actual conversion rate.
As I wrote in a recent blog post : is PPC marketing destroying your business? , it is very difficult to afford to use paid marketing methods when you’re achieving a conversion rate like this. If you’re paying $0.30 per click, for example, it’s going to cost you $120 on average to make one sale, if your conversion rate is 0.25% - and if you make $30 profit per sale, then you can see how this wouldn’t work?

When you’re using the fishing rod method, in that you don’t have list building & marketing implemented into your website, then any form of marketing is going to yield very small amounts, so if you’re paying for marketing services such as SEO, then it’s going to be very difficult to make a return even if you’re doing all of the marketing yourself, you could end up earning very very little per hour when you work out time in vs. money out.

This is why list building & list marketing is so important!

As long as you follow the following instructions, especially when it comes to creating an
incentive for people to join your list your conversion rate from visit to new sign up is likely to be substantially higher than you could possibly ever achieve as a straight sales conversion rate.

It’s not uncommon to see list signup conversions of 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% or even higher!

To read more - just enter your name & email below to download the guide, free.

If you’re a beginner surfer, or even intermediate (or like me, you should be an intermediate level surfer for the length of time you’ve been doing it, but you still feel pretty much like a beginner) then your surf fitness will be playing a very large part on the progression of your surfing.

If you’re lucky enough to live close to the sea, and you can get out in the water a few times per week - then you don’t really need a surf fitness program, the very best surf fitness training is surfing itself (9 x British longboarding champ & surf judge Lee Ryan told me that).

But what if, like me & many others, you can only get into the surf every so often?

I live in the north west of the UK, near Manchester - so the closest surf to me is at least a couple of hours away in Anglesey and it’s rarely pumping. Devon & Cornwall is the most likely place in the UK to get swell, at least 4 - 5 hours drive if not a lot more (depending on the state of the M6 & M5 ) but even that can be hit & miss  - as I found out about 6 years ago when a surfing trip to Croyde / Saunton / Woolacombe turned into skimboarding at Saunton Sands while we waited for anything vaguely resembling swell, and which ultimately lead to me braking my arm in 3 places & being out of the water all together for 8 months!!

OK there is the North East too, but that’s just as far to drive  - and there are a number of surf breaks in Scotland but that’s even further to drive.

If you live close to the beach, you can go out & get some paddle practice in while it’s flat, and you can practice popping up & cross stepping when it’s small (or whatever, depending on whether you’re longboarding or shortboarding), getting better & stronger, for when it’s really pumping.

But if you’re not fortunate enough to live close to the sea, then you need a surf fitness program which you can put into practice on dry land, to ensure that you can progress with your surfing without regular trips to the beach.

Forget general workouts, if you want to get better at surfing then ditch your standard fitness routine, and replace it with a training routine specially designed for improving surfing fitness.

So we’ve established the point of having a specially developed surf training fitness program - there really is a very good point if you’re not close enough to the sea to train for surfing by getting in the water & surfing.

But what about the training program itself?

I have looked into other surfing fitness sites which give suggested workouts for surfers, but I have never seen something as comprehensive as the training regime Clayton Beatty has put together to create the Total Surfing Fitness program.

Total Surfing Fitness is split into three four week training programs / levels. Each level  increasing in intensity, with the advice that you move onto the next level if you feel you are up to increasing intensity.

The training routine is designed to be done 2-3 times per week with a rest day in between workouts, and workouts should last around 45 minutes. It is recommended that cardio training is also done on the alternate days, also 2-3 times per week. There is a “killer cardio” guide included in the program which advises on better & less boring ways to get cardio exercise in.

There is an A workout  & a B workout for each level, so for instance your weekly routine may look something like :

Monday: Surfing fitness workout A

Tuesday: Cardio

Wednesday: Surfing fitness workout B

Thursday: Cardio

Friday: Surfing fitness workout A

Saturday: Cardio (or surfing)

Sunday: Rest

The workouts start off with “dynamic warmup” - which is 8 reps (or 8 reps per side where applicable) of specifically designed exercises.

The main workouts consists of  “supersets” which means performing 3 exercises consecutively with little or no rest in between, and then having a 1-2 minute rest.

The workouts then end with a stretching sequence, with stretches specially designed for stretching the muscle groups you’ve been focusing on, to ensure quick recovery & minimise chances of injury.

What are the exercises?

I won’t go into the exercise & explain them, as I’m not a certified fitness trainer (Clayton Beatty who designd this training course, is) but there are a wide range of exercises, many of which are completely free exercises which involve no weights or equipment.

Some of the exercises do require a towel, an exercise ball (you know them big rubber balls), a set of dumbbells, and a chin-up bar - or something to do chin-ups with.  If you don’t have dumbbells - they’re cheap to get hold of, but you could always improvise. I would strongly advise that you get hold of an exercise ball, some of the exercises which include the ball are really good ones & I can’t think of any way to improvise to replace the need for a ball. You can probably find something to do chin-ups on at home - but if not, it’s not really essential, I wouldn’t have thought it would be the end of the world if you had to replace any chin-up exercises with a different exercise. Just drop Clayton an email from the link in the members section if you have a problem with any particular exercise, or jump on to the members forum.

Where can I do the workouts?

The surf fitness workouts are designed so that they can be performed without even leaving the house. The only thing you’ll need is a chin-up bar, or something you can use for chinups (and as I said earlier I don’t think it would matter that much if you had to replace the chin-up exercises with another one if you have nothing to use to do chin-ups on) - other than that you could do this in your kitchen, garage, garden - wherever. Of course there’s nothing stopping you from doing this in the gym if you’d prefer.

What’s in the members area?

There is lots of great stuff in the members area. First there are the links to each level TSF level 1, TSF level 2 & TSF level 3.  The section for each level contains the PDF manual for that level, and video instructions to show you how to do it. The video’s are really good, I’ve started off just doing it while watching, so I can make sure I’m doing it all right, it’s not quite as fast while I’m watching at the same time, but that’s probably a good thing when just starting off.

There is the link to the killer cardio section, with a PDF which contains the killer cardio workouts.  The killer cardio workouts work with any cardio activity, whether it’s running, cycling, rowing, hitting a punchbag, swimming, and it helps you to turn your favourite cardio workout into a more effective workout. What like about the killer cardio sessions is that it makes more interesting & more intense workouts of what can become boring activities.

There’s a link to the flexibility & mobility section, a link to the foam roller section with PDF’s & video’s which explain how to use foam rollers for self massage after surfing sessions or workouts. There’s the advanced core & balance section, pre-surf warm ups section, killer body weight workouts (which focus on workouts which you can do if all you have available is your own body weight, great for training while travelling) , the power playground section with interesting workouts that can be done at your local playground (great if you have kids), and bonus workouts section which contains a number of different workout manuals.

Plus on the members homepage there is a “what’s new” section so you can check out any new developments, new resources & so on.

Anyway - I certainly believe after just starting to use the total surfing fitness program, that it’s going to help me to become a much better surfer - and it’s going to make my time in the water far more enjoyable.

Click below to watch Clayton’s video in which he explains more about the program

I’m not talking about general fitness, I’m talking specifically about “surfing fitness”

This is a distinction that you need to understand if you’re a beginner surfer (or like me you’ve been pretty much a beginner for years) and you want to get better & enjoy the sport more.

Being generally fit is great, and  you need to be generally fit to put up with the amount of effort you have to put in when surfing - but getting more fit & healthy in general doesn’t mean you’ll get any better at surfing.

You could train to be a champion sprinter, it wouldn’t help you a great deal with surfing. You could train to be a formula 1 driver, you wouldn’t have the right kind of fitness to help you to become a better surfer.

I’m not that unfit, I can run 10k without too much of a problem, I have lost some weight over the past 6 months, I still have some weight to lose, but I’m generally not too worried about my weight & fitness level.

But if you’ve recently started to get into surfing, or if you’re like me & you’ve been into surfing for quite a while but you’re still not able to enjoy it anywhere near as much as you’d like to, due to not being as good as you’d like to be & you find it difficult to improve due to not being able to go surfing on a regular enough basis - then you may want to read this, as I’ve just discovered something which will help people like us!

I’ve been working on getting fit, for quite a while. I’m in my early 30’s, and in my late teens I was very fit, but like many people my metabolism started to change & my activity level dropped through my 2o’s, and I gradually started to put on weight, and get less & less fit. Learning to drive didn’t help, as I suddenly forgot that I had legs, and a bike, and a skateboard ;-), and just began driving everywhere instead.

Don’t get me wrong, I never got ridiculously unfit or dangerously overweight - but I certainly wasn’t (and still I’m not) in peak condition. I’ve carried around a few stone of extra weight, and I’ve still got a stone or two I’d like to lose.

Getting into surfing in my mid 20’s gave me a focus, something to get fit for - which is a great thing, but what has been frustrating is that as my fitness levels have increased & my weight has dropped, it’s made very little difference in the water.

Recently, I spoke to my friend & client 9 x British longboarding champion, surfing coach, highly accredited ASP & ISA judge, & author of A Shortcut to Longboarding, Lee Ryan, and he reminded me that when he’d given me some one to one surfing coaching a few years previously he had told me that standard fitness training & weight training will make little or no difference to your fitness for surfing.

It makes sense when you think about it - the muscle groups that you use when surfing are completely different muscle groups than you would use with standard exercises such as running & cycling, and even rowing - and when you’re surfing you’re using these muscle groups in completely different ways.

Consider all of the different steps to surfing, even just lying prone on your board & lifting your head up uses back & neck muscles in a different way than you would train for as a part of any normal exercise routine. Then there’s paddling, which is a different stroke from swimming, and uses various different muscles in a way which is difficult to train on land. Popping up to your feet is a maneuver which requires intense & very fast action from many different muscle groups all at the same time - an action which you’ll need to perform over & over again while out in the water.  Staying balanced on your board requires a mixture of core strength & balance, and different turns & maneuvers require the flexibility & strength of a wide range of muscle groups. I think most of us underestimate just how much physical exertion is required to surf.

Is it any wonder that most of us who can’t get in the water very often, struggle to get any better, and find it common to take long times to recover from surf sessions, and very easy to sustain injuries? (as I’m writing this I’m in agony with my right shoulder from surfing over  a week ago, and the pain in my ankle has just gone enough for me to now walk without a limp!).

Lee told me that he & other pro surfers mainly trained in the water. For instance on flat days he would go out on long paddle practice sessions, even sometimes trawling mackerel feathers behind the board to catch his lunch while he’s at it. And, that the very best form of fitness session for surfing, is surfing itself.

I don’t think anyone would argue that there is any possible better practice & fitness routine for surfing than actually getting out there & surfing - but what about people like me who can’t get in the water very often?

There are lots of people like us who live hundreds of miles away from any surf break, and who can’t get to the water on a regular basis, who find it frustrating that they never really improve on their surfing due to the fact that there is very little land practice they can do which will help them to increase their fitness for surfing.

Many people who get frustrated by not being able to improve as they can’t practise enough, probably don’t even realise that it’s down to fitness for surfing, but I’m adamant that it is in most cases. You need to be fit & strong & flexible in all the key area’s to enable you to be able to get in the water & pull off all of the fundamental elements of surfing with ease, so that you can get onto practising more advanced stuff & having fun.  If you struggle to get out back, struggle to get to your feet, struggle to catch waves - then it’s due to surf fitness, and you’ll find it very difficult to improve until you do something about this.

And I reckon I’ve just found the answer!!

Last week I was in Bude for a week & got out in the water every day, I struggled with my paddling stroke, I struggled catching waves, I found popping up onto the board a real difficulty & kept reverting to sticking my knee down first (which REALLY does my head in!) and after the first session I had done something to my right shoulder which made it even more difficult to pop up.  I still enjoyed it, but I was pretty frustrated & had the feeling that I would never get any better at surfing until we one day are able to move down to Cornwall, which we will do one day but probably won’t be for a while.

But then this week, I discovered something which I think may well have the ability to change this, a specifically designed surfing fitness, surfing exercise program.

A surfer called Clayton Beatty (who also happens to be a Certified Fitness Trainer with a BSc Human Movement Degree from the University of Western Australia) specialize in functional fitness training programs for extreme sport athletes - and has put together a surfing fitness online course, called Total Surfing Fitness

If you go to the total surfing fitness website you’ll see he makes some pretty bold claims, such as: “Triple your wave count in 30 days or less using the “new science” of surf specific functional training”

This is a pretty bold statement - but after subscribing & starting to watch the videos & go through the first module - I wouldn’t at all be surprised if I do get triple the waves after putting this training program into use for a month or so.

I wasn’t really expecting much, I’ve seen stuff that makes claims like this before - but sheesh, he’s put some real effort in here, as soon as you get into the members area & see all of the video’s & training session guides in each module, you realise that this is a really well put together program.

And as I’ve started to get into the exercises, I can see now that they really are starting to work the muscles that we use when surfing.

In fact I’d say that just the module 1 warm up session video alone will make a real difference!

The total surfing fitness program is a training routine which is aimed at those of us who want to get fit specifically for surfing. Yes, it includes a lot of cardio, and muscle training that will also help to lose weight & increase general health & fitness - however this is a specifically put together training schedule for surfers.

Surfing is an athletic sport, we probably put in more effort in a surf session than a long jumper, sprinter or triple jumper would put in during a performance  - so when you consider that, it’s no wonder we never get any better if we only do it every so often & don’t have a specific training program.

If you decided to get into any other athletic sport,  would you expect to become good at it by doing it every so often with no specific training program?

It’s the same in any sport, anyone who wants to get better must adopt a specially designed training program for that sport.

Take formula 1 for example. fitness experts put together very specific training routines for f1 drivers to ensure that they possess the right kind of fitness in the right area’s to enable them to handle the f1 cars & all of the stress that puts on their bodies while they’re out there racing.

It’s the same in pretty much any sport (apart from darts, which I’m lead to believe is a sport where the pro’s have specially formulated workouts which involve lifting up a pint of beer )

Do you think any F1 driver became professional with just good “general fitness”?

OK fair enough most of us aren’t bothered about becoming good enough at surfing to become a professional sponsored surfer, but still - you have to reach a certain level in surfing just to be able to enjoy it. If every session consists of frustration followed by weeks of pain & immobility, you’re not likely to continue to enjoy surfing for long.

I’m going to really put myself into the Total Surfing Fitness program for the next few months, and see what happens. I’ll report here how I notice my general fitness levels improving, and how I’m finding it - and then next time I’m fortunate enough to be able to get out in the water I’ll let you know if I notice a difference, and if I catch triple the waves!

If anyone has tried or is already using the total surfing fitness program - please reply & let me know how you’re finding it.

He claims that his new product “Mobile Monopoly”, tells people the exact system he uses to make this money using a very clever system of marketing via mobile phones.

Anyone tried it / purchased it reading this - please reply & let us know, is it for real, or is it hyped up bollox??

Personally, it sounds like yet another very well planned & launched product that will make a lot of money for it’s creator - but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will deliver upon all of it’s promises - and it does make some pretty bold claims. I’ll hold my judgement as I’ve not bought it & I’ve not got time to try it at the moment - so I’m being lazy by asking anyone reading this to let me know what you think, if you’ve bought it.

___________________________________

Download my list marketing guide “The Ultimate Marketing Machine”

With Resale Rights Included!

Free for the first 100 downloads only! Get it free today!

___________________________________

I have to say, mobile marketing is something that is definitely about to be a big thing - and some of the things he says are very true, for instance that 1.8 billion people are on the web, yet 5 billion people own a cell phone / mobile phone - and that everyone markets to the web but very few people currently market to mobile so there is literally no competition.

But then my cynical reply to this is that although 5 billion people own a cell phone, how many of them actually browse the internet on their phones - and the answer to that has got to be far less than the number of people who browse the web from a PC / laptop. Still, I’m not denying that mobile marketing has a real future. Even if only a tenth of the number of people who browse online browse via mobile, it’s still got to be a decent market, given that currently probably less than 1% of businesses make an effort to market to mobile.

Google have recently bought into mobile marketing by purchasing Admob - and Google know what they’re doing, so I really do believe that at some point mobile marketing will become very important.

I’m sure someone reading this is about to buy it or has already - so please, drop me a reply  & let me know, is mobile monopoly for real - or is it a pipe dream?

By the way, notice I refrain from using the word “scam” - to ask is it a scam, is to ask is it an illegal way to con money off people, and although many people will review this using the title “is mobile monopoly a scam” in order to get maximum traffic, I know it isn’t a scam.  If it were a scam, clickbank wouldn’t be allowing it to be marketed, and the refund rates would be so high that clickbank would boot it off. So I’m not insinuating that it’s a scam or a con, BUT that’s not to say that it’s any good!

The guy makes some pretty amazing claims - so really what I’m after finding out are has he got a bit carried away with the sales pitch, or is it really as incredible as he’s making it out?

His Aweber stats & clickbank stats are very impressive, that’s for sure. BUT we have no way of knowing exactly what these stats came from, it could be from selling this program!

So, anyone who’s experienced it - I’m not asking you to tell us exactly what the system is, but if you could just let me know if you’re happy with it & if you believe that it’s worth the $77 price tag?

Thanks

Kev

It’s no secret & it’s so flipping easy it’s untrue - so I wanted to tell anyone who wants to know this but isn’t keen on paying some apparent web marketing guru hundreds & hundreds to find out.

___________________________________

Download my list marketing guide “The Ultimate Marketing Machine”

With Resale Rights Included!

Free for the first 100 downloads only! Get it free today!

___________________________________

My guide “The ultimate Marketing Machine” shows you how to do this, step by step - and at the moment it’s still free (until 100 people have downloaded it), but here is a breif outline of this “secret”

Simple:

1:Get an email marketing provider

2:Put a form on your website

3:Give people an incentive to join your list

4:Send emails to your list

Email provider: I recommend Aweber, it’s a dollar or so for the first month if I remember correctly, and then $19 per month after that, so it’s next to nothnig. (you can use them whether you’re in the UK, US, Aus, doesn’t matter).

Form: You can do this with Aweber, it’s easy - you just follow the step by step instructions.

Give people an incentive to join your list: People need an incentive to join your list. For instance you can give a free report, you can offer to send people information, news, special offers. Whatever the case may be. For example my friend & client Lee Ryan, 9 times UK Chamption longboarder & international pro surf coach, who wrote probably the best ever book on longboard surfing called a shortcut to longboarding,  gives away 2 free chapters of his ebook, plus news & info about the ebook, about new features - new video’s & gudes. Some businesses offer free information via a series of emails, or some just offer to lt their clients know about special offers & promotions.

Send emails to your list: You can do this as one off broadcasts, for example if you have a special offer you can send this to your database - or, you can set timed autoresponders. This is where email marketing is so powerful, you can set times auto emails to be sent to subscribers on day 1, day 3, day 7  - whatever. What I learned from experience a few years ago - is that generally speaking, you should send more emails & more often than you may think you should! I found that if I was only sending on email a month, I would get complaints - as people forgot who I was & didn’t feel they had any relationship with me, so they didn’t feel I had a right to mail them & they didn’t want to read. So then, someone convinced me (a UK web copywriter called Alan Forrest Smith) that I need to to email the list more often & get to know them more - and he told me NOT to be all polite & corporate in my mails, but instead to be me, and to write how I speak… I did this - and all of a sudden things changed, and I started making money from every email I sent! What’s more, if I ever didn’t send an email for a gew days, I would have members emailing or even phoning me, and moaning because they’d not heard from me and they looked forward to my emails!! This amazed me!!

So - get an account with Aweber, get a form on your site, start building a list,  create a good reason for people to want to join, then send emails to your list & don’t be afraid to do it more often than may feel comfortable. Don’t send one a day…. but after the first welcome email, and one a few days later, one a week for example would usually not be over the top, and depending on your list & whether you can justify it, you may find you can email even more often & do well from it.

Generally speaking when a member has read over 7 of your emails, they are very warm clients and are extremely likely to buy from you or to buy a recommended product,  or to listen to you when you give them a referral, after 7 (or some people say it’s 9 emails) you’re no longer a stranger. This doesn’t mean 7 emails you’ve sent - it means 7 they have read, so you’ll need to make sure your incentive is strong enough to ensure people read them, and work on your subject headers - and make yor emails as interesting & valuable as you can.

So there you go - if you’re not utilising email marketing at the moment - and you want to make more money with your website -  try this.

I would recommend you download my guide “The Ultimate Marketing Machine” which tells you step by step how to do this, and how to ensure that people join your lists, and that you profit from it.

Thanks

Kev

It’s important for me to state that I’m NOT in any way shape or form, a financial advisor - so do not take this post as financial advice…..

If you’re thinking about investing on the stock market, you have a few grand to invest & you’re wondering which are the best stocks to buy - then read this, it may make you a lot of money!

If you’re considering buying stocks - have a look at putting your money into something which has recently being out performing most stocks, and which is probably the safest investment you could ever make.

I’m talking about investing in gold.

In 2003, an independent investor in the US who’d been investing since 1986, was advised by the author of Buying Gold Safely, Doug “The digger” Eberhardt, to invest in gold. The  investor was skeptical but looked into it & found that there was real merit to what Doug was advising, so he went ahead and started buying gold when it was worth around $400 per ounce. Knowing that only 7 years on, gold is now worth around $1300 per ounce - he’s obviously very glad he took this advice!

Many people will look at this with envy & believe that it’s too late right now - but the experts say it’s not too late, and that it will never be.

About a year ago, investment & economics expert Peter Schiff when being interviewed on the Fox business network, talked about gold being the best possible thing to buy as an investment - he noted that he’d realised this years ago - which was why he started investing in gold, which has lead to him & his clients making a LOT of money.

He explained that the reason for this is not that the value of gold is increasing - it’s about the dollar (and most other currencies) losing it’s value, and that gold is a measure of the value of currencies.

This is a really important point….

Gold is gaining monetary value as the dollar drops in value.

The dollar used to be backed by gold, so the value of gold & the value of the dollar were the same - when this relationship was severed, inflation began increasing the difference in value between the dollar & gold.

Put it this way, if you owned gold back when the relationship between gold & the dollar was scrapped, you would be very rich!!

A $20 double eagle 1 oz gold coin was worth $20…..  If you had 44 of these coins, which would have been worth $880, they would now have a value of FAR more than the $880 monetary value of the coins.

In fact, they would be worth around $50,000 !!!

The difference between $880 and fifty thousand dollars, is the difference that inflation has made - the dollar has continued to drop in value in comparison to Gold.

Peter Schiff says that this is going to keep happening & that thanks to the state of the economy, the dollar cannot recover & is soon to plummet, and he said this 12 months ago! So far, everything he has said was correct. He said gold would increase in value to over $1000 per ounce within 12 months - we was correct, it’s now at around $1440 per ounce at the time of writing. He also said that within roughly another year, by 2011 it would increase to over $2000 per ounce, and that not long after this it would rise to…. over $5000 per ounce!

When pushed by the TV interviewer for a date he said maybe 2012, and although he didn’t commit to that, even if it takes a lot longer than that, this is still an amazing gain.

Just think about it - if you invested money with a 7% compound interest, it would take 10 years to double your money, and if what this expert (and other experts, this isn’t the only person saying this) is correct - you could double your money in gold in the next year!

Given that so far the price of gold has risen above his estimations, I can’t wait to see what happens with the price of gold!

While there are stocks you could buy that may make you more money, you’re going to have to buy pretty volatile & therefore risky stocks to hope to increase your investment that quickly.

Once again - don’t take this post as financial advise, but also bear in mind, as Doug “The digger” Eberhardt talks about in Buy Gold Safely the chances are that if you ask your  financial advisor what are the best stocks to buy, or what is the best way to invest - he or she will not advise you towards investing in gold, and the same advis0rs that were responsible for people not investing in gold 10 years ago (meaning many people who bought stocks which lost around 20% in value over the past ten years, would have instead increased their investment by around 400%) will more than likely still be giving the same kind of advice now.