As many of you are aware, Josh Spaulding released his latest product a couple of weeks ago -- Info Product Success Forula (IPSF). I have worked with Josh to secure a discount for my readers (you get 20% off of the retail price) and I am offering a killer bonus in addition to the discount on Info Product Success Formula.  To complete the picture, I thought that you might appreciate an unbiased Info Product Success Forula review.

Here is the problem -- I am not sure I am a credible reviewer.

There are lots of issues here. The deal is, I really think this is a great prduct. As a lot of you are aware, Josh has been one of my mentors for almost 2 years now, and we have collaborated on several projects together. I am a moderator in his coaching forum. I consulted with him on the ISPF project, reviewd and commented on the draft version and consulted with Josh during the development of IPSF. So, I am invested in this product -- and I think it is great.

On top of that, I consider Josh a friend, and (as you know very well) I get paid if you buy the product through my link. My entire business is built around integrity and service to people -- so I want to be completely transparent about this review.

In the end it's all no big deal because of Josh's money-back guarantee -- but I want to be straight up with you and make sure that you don't feel that you are getting hosed.   See, in this business, your perception can be more important than the truth (especially on trust issues) -- but that is another blog post.

Information Product Success Formula is a New Product

Josh had a lot of very successful information products about things like Article Marketing, AdSense sites, eMail Marketing and SEO (to name a few). Some of his reports are free and some are not. One of the first questions that people asked me is whether or not IPSF is just a rehash of some other product (like the $5 Formula). So, let's put that one to rest -- this is not a rehash of those products.

In fact, those products have made Josh many tens of thousands of dollars and are still making him money as you you read this. Info Product Success Formula documents the strategy behind those products and what you can do to to copy Josh's approach in any niche.

IPSF Works In Any Niche For Any Info Marketer

One of the key things about IPSF is that it is a general approach that applies to any niche. Josh had had lots of success in the information marketing niche, but is also making money in other niches with the same approach. Not only that, but Josh has two "tracks" that he describes in IPSF. There is a track for people that are trying to be authorities or "famous" in their niche. These people usually have a passion about a topic, and love to spend a lot of time working in a particular area that they love.

There is a second track for people that just want to get into a niche. Let's say that you want to set up a presence in the consumer debt reduction niche. You are not all that into that topic (boring!), but your research indicates that you can make some money selling reports to people about how to get out of debt. You can use Info Product Success Formula to set up and information business in that niche -- and then leave it.

What is covered in Info Product Success Formula?

Info Product Success Formula is a 45 page PDF file comprised of seven main chapters (not including the introduction and closing remarks. There is very little (like none) fluff, and the book is nicely formatted for easy reading as a print-out or on the screen.

Josh starts with an introduction of the formula that he has personally used to make money online. That introduction is followed by a description of the two paths -- path one and path two. As described above, path one is for people who want to be authorities in their niche.

I think of it as the deep and narrow path. Path two is for a quicker approach suitable for people that want to be in lots of niches. I think of path two as shallow and broad. As Josh mentions in the eBook, you can mix and match the two paths to diversify your business.

After that, Josh describes how he creates certain reports for lead capture and uses other reports for sale as products. He also talks about the importance of the One Time Offer (the OTO.) In fact, when you buy Information Product Success Formula, you can see Josh's OTO strategy in action (he offers a killer discount on one of his related products when you buy IPSF).

Once all that is up and running, Josh talks about the importance of the prospect and customer list that you will create, and how to manage it. As usual, Josh is relationship focused here, and emphasizes the importance of delivering value in your emails to customers.

The Bottom Line About Information Product Success Forumla

So here is my honest recommendation. If you are interested in having an information marketing business like Josh, this is the report for you. I have securecd you a 20% discount and included bonuses that will help you execute Josh's plan. If you are not completely satisfied with Josh's product, you can request a no-questions asked refund for 60 days. Fair warning here -- the refund rates on Josh's products are very low, and I preduct that you will love it.

Get Information Product Success Formula Today

You must make sure that affiliate ID "masonworld" shows at the bottom of the payment screen to get your bonus.

Then file a ticket and attach your receipt at

http://www.masonworld.com/support

Best regards,
Mark

I really like Thai food and Mexican food.  This is a story about both.

I look to some people to learn about internet marketing, and I look to others to learn about internet business.  It's not that internet marketing gurus are not good at teaching internet business and vice versa, it's just that everyone is great at something, and it makes sense to learn from the best people in every area.

Jason van Orden is one of my favorite internet business guys.  One thing I will never forget is a tale that Jason tells about a friend of his that ended up on the wrong end of an investment joint venture.  The guy had a successful business, but after the deal went bad, he no longer owned the business.  In fact, he was forced out.  He lost everything over night.

Well, not everything.  As it happens, the guy had his email list.  He was able to contact his loyal customers, explain the situation, offer value to them (as he always had in the past), and rebuild his business quickly.  When people say "the money is in the list," I think they have it wrong.  The value is in the list.

What About Thai Food

Well, I was eating Thai food the other day and was talking to Ann, the owner (I cannot even say her Thai name - it is beautiful, but I am a native Texan with limited language skills).  Anyway, she had recently tried to sell the restaurant.  When this happened (months earlier) I was sad because I had been eating there for years and the new owners were just terrible.

In fact, the new owners were so bad that they ran off all of the old customers (10 years worth of loyal customers) in a matter of weeks.  On top of that, they apparently did not pay Ann for the restaurant and walked away from the deal after selling a lot of the tables, chairs and kitchen supplies.  Ann was left with a gutted restaurant and few customers.  When I was in there, the place was a ghost town.

What Ann needed was an email list.  If she had been asking for emails for the last ten years, she would have thousands of loyal customers on her list.  Just a simple monthly coupon is all a restaurant needs to maintain a list and drive foot traffic.  Using Aweber, this costs about $20/month.  You don't even need a web site (although I recommend one). 

Ann could have simply sent an email to her list explaining about the Grand Re-Opening and how happy she was to have the resturaunt back. She would have been flooded with customers (me among them). But she did not do any of that list building, so now she has to start all over again building a new customer base.  Ten years of work gone!  It's a very sad story.  Are you like Ann?  Do you have a site without an opt-in?

Then, There Is Mexican Food

I also like Mexican food, and I eat at my favorite neighborhood place as often as I can.  I know the owner there too (Kevin).  Every time I eat there, Kevin catches me up on the progress they are making on their new location.  The new place will be much nicer and will bring more traffic to the business because of a better location.  They are moving in August, and I am a little bummed because it will be further from my house.  Not too far, but definately farther.

I love this particular place, and I like the owners.  So, I asked Kevin when the Grand Opening would be.  I want to eat there on the first day -- to be part of his success.  He said -- we are not sure yet, but we will notify the mailing list as soon as we know!

I am already on the list.  I love it.  I get coupons and drink specials from him about twice a month.  It's just enough to remind me that he is there -- or to offer me free queso with my fajitas or what ever.  See the difference -- Ann just about lost her business and Kevin is able to move his.  All because of email marketing.

Two Lessons For You

Lesson 1:  You better have opt-ins on all of your sites.

Lesson 2: You can probably sell Aweber to people like Ann.  They need you, and you can help them.

I don't really do this because I have a day job -- but you could.  How?  Simple.  Create a page on your site describing how email marketing can help offline business.  Offer consulting, setup, and whatever else you are comfortable with.  Create a 1 page flier with the same information.  A business card would be nice too.

Then, go eat (I am reall good at the eating part).

You to waiter: This place is great!  Is the manager around?  I'd like to compliment him on your service today.

Waiter: I'll be right back!

You to Manager: I just want to tell you that I love this restaurant, and we had great service from Jimmy.

Manager: Thanks, we appreciate your business.

You: Do you guys have a mailing list that I can sign up on so I can remember to come back here.  This was great.

Manager: No, I am sorry.  We don't do email.

You: You're kidding.  You could really get your numbers up with some email marketing.  If you ever want to consider it, give me a call.  I do that sort of thing for a living.  Customers love it.  Here is my card.

Manager: Thanks.  I'll think about it.

You get the idea.

One last thing.  If you want to know what to do with your list after you start it, I recommend Josh Spaulding's email marketing guide called New Age Email Marketing.  It is excellent.

Have a great day,

Mark

Yesterday, Internet Marketing Coach Josh Spaulding posted about the 10 Fastest Ways to Lose Credibility as an internet marketer.  I loved item #2.  Here is what Josh had to say:

Today I followed some guy on Twitter and he had an auto DM sent out to new followers promoting a Twitter Ebook about getting “Thousands” of twitter followers. This guy had 300 followers… come on guy, you might as well say “I have no credibility, why are you even following me?”

Hey -- that sounds like it could be me.  After all, I have about 300 followers (392 as of this writing).  So, naturally, I wanted to immediately turn around and write a post called "How To Get Massive Twitter Followers" just for fun.  We'll let Josh weigh in and determine how it impacts my credibility.

Disclaimer: I am not a Twitter Guru and I do not even play one on TV.  No small birds were harmed while researching this post.  Your mileage may vary.  Not valid in Nevada.  Professional driver on closed course.  You get the idea.

A Twitter Viral Marketing Experiment

Now Twitter is a viral system - as you get more followers then you have more chance of getting their followers to follow you as if they reply to you on something then that shows up in their message area for people to see when they are on his/her page.

The first thing I did today in my quest to write about Getting Twitter Followers is that I signed up for this new viral twitter follower experiment called TweeterGetter by Gary McCaffrey.  This is the single most revolutionary piece of Internet Marketing software ever released.  This software is up for the Nobel Software Prize, and will probably win.  Lives have been saved by this code.  In fact, if you sign up under me today, you may actually have seven million followers before you are done reading this post.

OK, that is not true, but this is a cool idea.  Basically, it works like a pyramid scheme.  You follow 6 people on a list and then your name goes to the top of the list, and the next person bumps you to #2, etc, until you fall off.  Pretty clever.

The problem I see with this is that these followers are not all that targeted.  I still think it is cool, and I want you to try it with me.  I'll report my results here in 30 days.  The copy on the signup page claims a possible 15,000 followers.  We'll see.  I'll let you know.

Some Legitimate Tips For Getting Followers

OK -- here are some more legitimate (less spammy) tips for getting Twitter followers.

Now, I told you that I'm no expert, but I really think that building up a hoard of followers is actually easier than you'd think.  Just like in email marketing,  once you have a follower, you then need to make sure you treat them right to make them loyal (a subject that is covered well in the New Age Email Marketing Report.

Laying the foundation

If you have a brand spanking new Twitter account, I recommend you make several  tweets, make them about anything, say hi and introduce yourself, then talk about your day or something, then maybe throw in a couple of cool YouTube videos for people to watch. At this point just make them a bit interesting as they are just fodder to make sure people think you are really posting and not just some spam robot signing up followers, make the posts over about two days as well.

Use Find People

Then go to 'Find people' at the top and 'Suggested users' - there you will find about 20+ users you can follow straight away, and hopefully some of them will automatically follow you back. Once you've followed some of those people then reply to a couple of posts from them, now you have a page with your posts, the replies you made, you are following people and should have some followers yourself - you are now an active part of the community and can go forth and get more followers!

Quick tip - the way people automatically follow you back is to use a service like Tweet Later which allows you (for free) to integrate it with your Twitter account and have a custom thank you message sent to every person who follows you as well as it automatically following them back. Saves a lot of time at first when you just want as many followers as possible!

So you have everything ready now, time to get some people following you! Let's look at the different methods you can employ:

Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood

If you have any friends you think may be on Twitter, or clients etc - then use the 'Find people' function and you can search by name, username, email address etc to find people and start to follow them.

Do Your Keyword Research

If you go to 'search' at the bottom of the screen, then you can search for a keyword related to your niche and it will bring up all the tweets with that keyword in.

That is a goldmine of people to follow! They are talking about the topic you want them to be interested in, so as long as it is not a negative tweet about the niche then start following these people! They might not all follow you back, but then you can use the next technique to try and get them to follow you.

Interaction Is The Key To Satisfaction

If you reply to someone's tweet then you show up in their 'replies' inbox if they are not following you. So this can be used to try and get people who you are following but they are not following you back, to follow you. If you spot a tweet from them you think you can make a friendly and intelligent reply to, maybe help them out with something they are asking etc, then you might make a friend and get a follower!

Do not spam. Remember to always add to the conversation.

Utilizing Your Web Site

Another great way to get targeted followers is to get people who come to your website or blog to add you to Twitter.

The best way is to ask them in a post (or every post, use it as a p.s. under your name!) or you can find various 'Follow me' icons round the net that you can link straight up to your profile so people can click through and see if they want to follow you.

Follow The Gurus

What better way to get targeted followers than to go seeking people in your niche who are the 'celebrities' of your niche, the big companies or names. If they really are at the top of your niche then you can bet that they are on Twitter, and you can bet they have put some effort into getting followers too!

You can click on the number of followers someone has and it will bring up a list of all their followers, then you can go through and start following away!   Some will follow you back.

Run a contest (namecheap.com style)

Do you have a new product or something else you can give away some copies of for free?  Then run a contest! Announce it to your followers a few days before it happens, which also gets put into the public timeline so hopefully you'll gain the attention of new people - who will then follow you.

Use Some Cool Tools

When you go to 'Find people' then you can get some basic suggestions of who to follow there - but lets face it, they are just pushing the most popular people on you, people who'll never actually read your tweets! If you use the sites below then you can get more useful suggestions:

• Twubble - looks at your current followers and suggests other people you may want to follow who have similar friends/interests as you.
• Twitter Grader - grades everyone and if you follow @grader then you can get friend suggestions based on your posts and followers.
• Mr Tweet - again suggests people to follow

Use The Twitter Directories

That's right, sites have been popping up all over the web giving you different features to help with the twitterverse.  Just Tweet It andTwellow are cool examples.  The latter allows you to search through people's bios on Twitter, which Twitter themselves don't give you the ability to do!

Bottom Line -- Be Part Of The Community.

Of couse, the bottom line is that you need to participate and be part of the community.  That is the best way to get Twitter Followers.

Just remember, I am not a Twitter expert, but I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below.

Thanks,
Mark

Internet Marketing Fortune Cookie #14

Choosing An Autoresponder

It's way past Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.

Hear the cookie speak:

Write an old friend. Your words bring joy.

Obviously, the cookie was referring to email marketing. Everyone always says that the money is in the list, but people usually don't say much about how to get your list service up and running, or what service providers to choose.

Part of the problem is that email marketing services, also known as autoresponder services, are a dime a dozen. There are an abundance of providers and products available and each one is pitched as the next best thing.  There are even some free ones that you can install on your own host.

Worse, most people reviewing and promoting autoresponders are affiliates and they have a bias that comes with their commission. This includes me. I use Aweber and I love them.  So, if you hear me recommending Aweber, you should also know that I get paid if you buy their service through my link, and that I have never used another service.

Bottom line:  comparing autoresponder products can be a time consuming process.

Here’s my quick thoughts on how to pick the right email marketing service for your internet marketing business.

Decide if you want a full service software package with a number of features or simple, straight forward email marketing?  Some products come with autoresponders, shopping cart software, and product delivery tools.  1ShoppingCart is an example.  I have never used their autoresponder, but when I hear people talking about it, the things I hear people say are never good.  My recommendation is stay away from fully integrated services for autoresponders.

Do you want HTML templates or are you going to send your email messages in text format? There are benefits to both. Graphics and embedded links are great for creating captivating and converting messages however many people have their HTML turned off.  I recommend making sure your autoresponder supports HTML email and had good free templates that you can use.

Make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Much of the jargon on a particular product’s website can be vague. Here’s what you want to look for:

- How many messages can you send each month?
- Can you send personal messages to individual members on your list?
- Is there a size or length limit to your messages?
- How many subscribers or contacts can you have on your list?
- Do they offer technical support 24/7?
- Do they at least have telephone support during regular business hours or is it all email/ticket based?
- How long have they been in business? (Having your email provider go out of business can leave you high and dry)
- Do they offer a free trial?
- Do you have to commit to a year contract or can you go month by month?
- Do they provide room for you, and your list, to grow?

Many email marketing products offer tiered programs. Each tier offers you a certain number of subscribers and a limit to the number of messages you can send each month. However, some email providers allow you to build customized plans to meet the needs of your specific business. This is a great way to get exactly what you need.

Email marketing is a critical component for any internet based businesses marketing strategy. Finding the right email provider can save you valuable time, help you market and represent your business in a professional manner, and result in a bigger bottom line. It pays to do your research, try a few programs, and don’t settle for the marketing product of the moment. Your business is too important.

Again, my personal recommendation is Aweber.  But, I get paid if you take my recommendation and I have never used any other service (I am thrilled with them) -- so know that.

As the cookie says, Write an old friend. Your words bring joy.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

It's Free Stuff Friday again, and time for the Friday Freebie.

The Money Is Still In The List

Well, you know I believe that (I have certainly said it enough).

This week I am offering a free report on email marketing by Ryan Ambrose.

In this report, Ryan covers some of the basics.  So, if you are just thinking about starting a list, this is not a bad place to get started with the basics.

Enjoy.

Check it out. You'll like it.

Join My Mailing List And Get Free Stuff

As always, opt in to my list to get access to all the free stuff (opt-in box in the right hand sidebar). As soon as you opt-in and confirm you subscription, you'll receive instructions on how to log into the members area.

Thanks,

Mark