HTML Email Experiment Results

You may have heard of Marlon Sanders, a very well known and long established Internet marketer. Marlon specializes in teaching others how to succeed in Internet marketing using his proven formulas. I’ve purchased a number of Marlon’s products and have found them to be high quality and full of good information.

I mention the above because as a result of having purchased from him, I’m on Marlon’s mailing list. Every week or so I get an email from him containing marketing tips, promos for his latest products, etc. Until recently, these emails were in plain text. A couple of weeks ago, the email arrived in HTML format.

Being a savvy marketer, Marlon is always trying new things and this latest experiment with HTML email was just that: an experiment. To be frank, the email was very poorly done. Marlon asked for feedback and boy, did he get it! When I skimmed the comments on his blog, they were almost universally negative.

Being a smart marketer, Marlon took the feedback to heart and this week send out another HTML email with a new and different format. To say that it is a major improvement is an understatement! This time, the layout is clean, easy to read, and uses pictures in such a way that they add to the content instead of just looking fancy.

I took several lessons out of this experiment and wanted to share them with you. First, don’t be afraid to try something new. Granted, HTML email isn’t all that new, but if you haven’t used it before, it’s new to you! Plain text is fine up to a point, but if you need to provide a picture to better explain what you’re writing about, HTML is the only way to do it. For that reason, it pays to learn how to use HTML email.

The second lesson is to ask for opinions from your readers and customers. If you don’t ask, most people will never give you their opinion. If they hate what you’re doing, they’ll just move on and you’ll never know why. Even if they love what you’re doing, unless they have an opportunity to say so, they generally won’t. So, if you want to know what your customers are thinking, ask them!

The third lesson is that HTML email has to be done right. Marlon’s first try was poor because he tried to get too cute with it, putting a background image on it and using a font that looked like it was typewritten, among other things. HTML email is a primary example of the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Keep the graphics to a minimum. Use them primarily to enhance the content. If you have any doubt about whether a graphic belongs in the email, leave it out. Keep the font easy on the eyes. Use a font that is large enough and very readable. There’s a reason why Arial and Times Roman are the default fonts!

Finally, Marlon noted that sales of the featured products were higher for the original HTML attempt than previous emails. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues with this week’s effort. It could very well have been a coincidence, so it will take a few more emails in the new format to determine its effect on sales. Who knows? The crappy HTML format may prove to be a sales winner for some unknown reason. I’ll be interested to see how that plays out.

If you’d like to get on Marlon’s mailing list, here’s a free ebook he offers that has a lot of great tips for marketers:

The Best of Marlon Sanders

Marlon’s mailing list is a weekly source of excellent marketing information and well worth the read. He’s got his own unique style that’s fun to read as well as informative.

John The Geek

Online Task and Time Management Tool Debuts

I’ve written before about the Action Machine, a productivity application that brings the tried and true “time boxing” technique into the 21st century. I was one of the early users of the Action Machine and have found it to be an excellent tool for task and time management.

The latest version of the Action Machine has been relabeled as the Action Enforcer and is being sold by Dennis Becker of Earn1KaDay fame. Dennis is known as The Five Buck Guy for his now famous 5 Bucks A Day system. The Action Enforcer is ideally suited to the 5 Bucks A Day system as it helps the user focus on a single task for a given period of time by reducing distractions. In addition, the time boxing strategy at the heart of the Action Enforcer compels the user to plan a set of tasks, prioritize them and work through them one at a time.

As you can tell, I’m a fan of the Action Enforcer. As I said earlier, I own the desktop version (currently available for Windows only). Despite its many virtues, the desktop version has a couple of drawbacks. First, it’s only available for Windows platforms, so Mac users couldn’t take advantage of it. It also doesn’t work very well on netbooks due to resource constraints in those mini-machines.

Well, the good news is that both of those issues have been addressed! The Action Enforcer is now available in an online version so any machine that can run a browser can get the benefits of the Action Enforcer’s time boxing techniques. Even better, the online version is free! Check it out here:

http://johnthegeek.us/proaction

Download the user’s guide from the site and read it over, then give the online Action Enforcer a test drive. I think you’ll be as impressed with this tool as I am. The online version does have a few limitations compared to the desktop version, but is still a very powerful time and task management tool that will make you more productive.

So, the question now is: what will you do with the extra hour or two you’ll have each day?

John The Geek

Does Anyone Here Understand Credibility?

I completely understand the concept of making lemonade when life hands you lemons. More power to those who are creative enough to do that rather than sitting around whining about their problems. I saw an interesting example of that today that illustrates a couple of different types of creativity.

I got an email from a marketer to whose list I subscribe. This guy is pretty well known and I assume pretty successful. The email basically said he’d done something really dumb and he wanted to share the experience for the benefit of his readers.

He provided a link to a PDF which contained the tale of how he’d fallen for a fairly cleverly designed phishing email despite his sophistication and experience on the Internet. His bank caught the situation and returned his money and all turned out okay aside from this guy feeling like the complete idiot that he’d made of himself.

The final paragraph says basically “Hey, I’m telling you this out of the goodness of my heart despite being terminally embarassed. There are no links in this document, nothing being sold, and feel free to pass it around to everyone you think might benefit.”

What a guy, right? We can all relate to doing something dumb and wanting to help others avoid the same fate. So, I’m thinking here’s a guy who’s generating some good will by admitting his human foibles and warning others so they’ll be more careful than he was.

Then I read the PS. Seems he’s got himself fixed up with a way to handle this problem if it ever occurs again, and oh, by the way, I might just want to read about it and see if it’s something I can use, too. I just click this link right here.

The link is pretty obviously an affiliate link, albeit cloaked. Being the curious sort that I am, I copy the URL into my browser and go visit. Imagine my surprise! My altruistic friend just happens to be a business associate (read affiliate) of the outfit which will provide identity theft protection should I be interested in same.

So, now we’ve gone from “no links here and nothing for sale” to “I just happen to have a solution to the problem I’m trying to convince you that you have.” Sort of like those “free” CDs that you only have to pay shipping for (which means they’re NOT FREE) and oh-by-the-way you’ll be charged $29.95 a month for the whiz-bang monthly membership that goes with it unless you happen to remember to cancel it, assuming you can correctly guess the current population of New York City plus or minus 5 people, or whatever other arcane cancellation criteria they’ve devised.

Now, let’s get something clear here. I am in no way against affiliate marketing. I do it myself and it’s a perfectly legitimate way to run a business.

What’s not legitimate is telling my reader that there are no links when there clearly is one, and that there’s nothing for sale when the opposite is true. Let’s call it what it is: lying.

Call it a fib, call it an evasion of the truth, call it whatever you want, it’s still a lie. The thing that I don’t understand is: why lie when it’s so obvious that you’re lying?

Personally, I make a point not to lie if for no other reason than my memory’s not that good any more! I’ve known people who were expert liars. They would have been totally embarrassed to have made it that easy to catch them in a lie. I mean, if you’re going to make lying part of your profession, at least do it on a professional level!

Seriously, do these guys even know they’re lying? Obviously, they don’t care, at least not enough to even make the effort to lie well.

I don’t know about you, but when I encounter something like this, it immediately blows that marketer’s credibility right out of the water. It’s just as likely that his little phishing story is made-up BS than not. And, if that story’s made up, what about the rest of what he’s telling/selling me?

Trust is a very difficult thing to build. It’s way easier to lose. This guy has lost my trust, and for what? A few bucks in commissions? Well, he won’t be making even those few bucks off of me, nor will he be making anything else from me again. Sleep well, dude.

John The Geek

Viral Inviters: Still a Bad Idea

I was happy to see the top story in this week’s edition of the Windows Secrets newsletter pointing out the dangers of viral inviters. I have to wonder what took so long, but better late than never.

Some of you may recall that almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post in this blog on that very subject. I thought viral inviters were a bad idea at that time and I still do.

I know people aren’t going to stop using viral inviters. I’m just hoping that they’ll at least give it a moment’s thought before giving up the user IDs and passwords to their email and other accounts. It’s already way too easy for the bad guys. We just need to exercise a bit of common sense before doing something with such a potentially large downside.

I’d like to know your thoughts on this subject. Please leave a comment.

John The Geek

Royalties: The Key To Ongoing Income

We’ve all heard about royalties, usually in the context of musicians, songwriters, and authors. The basic concept of royalties is that you create something, then every time a copy of it gets sold, you get part of the price that was paid for it.

As an example, let’s say you write a book. You get it published and it goes to book stores all over the country. The book sells for $15. To keep things simple, your royalty is $1 per book. So, every time somebody sells one of your books you get a dollar. Sound good so far?

“But, wait!” I hear you say “That means I’d have to write a book in order to get royalties! I can’t write a book. I don’t have the time or talent for that!”

Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but that’s not the issue here. The problem is that your definition of “royalties” is too narrow. Royalties don’t have to be for a book or a song. They can be for pretty much anything that gets bought and sold. You just have to figure out how to get a piece of the action, so to speak.

More importantly, you need to know how to make that happen on a recurring basis so that you’re not limited by the amount of time you have or the number of promotions you can send in a day. That’s the beauty of royalties!

Royalties mean passive income. That’s income that you’re not trading your time for. Ideally, it’s recurring income that you receive while you’re working on something else. You don’t think Stephen King’s royalties from his last book stop when he starts writing a new one, do you? Of course not!

Christopher Westra has been making his living from royalties for years now. He has created a course called “Royalties University” that will teach you step-by-step how to create royalties in your life. You’ll receive one lesson each week plus bonuses as time goes on.

I’ve known Christopher for a couple of years now and I’ve purchased many of his products. They’ve always been top-notch and “Royalties University” is no exception. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re looking to create streams of income that don’t require your attention 24/7.

John The Geek

Web Site Traffic Magnet

Web site traffic and how to get more of it is a hot topic for Internet entrepreneurs. The problem is that the discussion tends to begin and end with the number of visitors.

Traffic to your web site is less than half the battle. These days getting people to your site isn’t nearly the whole problem. Once they’re there, you need a way to keep them there, or better yet, keep them coming back!

Offering your visitors something of value is the best way to get and keep them as regular visitors. What’s the most valuable commodity on the Internet? Information!

That’s what the Internet is all about, folks…providing information.

The challenge has never been that there isn’t enough information. It’s finding the information you want quickly and easily.

Someone once described the Internet as a huge library with the books scattered all over the floor! Sure, there are search engines and repositories, but you have to use a number of them to find everything you’re looking for. Now you can provide your web site visitors a way of searching not only for information, but information in multiple formats…all from a single window!

Check out the widget below. It’s called Page Magnetizer and it’s a way of giving your web site visitors a kick-butt concentrated source of information. Enter a search keyword in the box at the top. Notice how the related search links below change instantly.

Page Magnetizer immediately returns the relevant references from all the major information resources for text, video, audio, and more. In one area less than 500 pixels square, you have access to targeted research on any keyword you can think of!

Play with it a while and see what it’s capable of. I think you’ll be amazed. I certainly am.

There are hundreds of potential uses for this little gem. It’s just launched so the price is currently as low as it will ever be. If you want one for your site, click the link at the bottom of the widget and grab yours before the price goes up.

It’s All About Focus

I read an interesting article the other day which claims in its title that “Hard Work Is Dead”. The author goes on to make his case by saying there are many more distractions today than before and those distractions cause people to be less productive than ever.

While I can relate to the difficulty of ignoring the various distractions, I disagree with the idea that it’s any different now than it always has been. There have always been people who are constantly busy, raising great clouds of figurative dust, who never seem to get anything accomplished.

The problem isn’t that there are more distractions. My 20-something nieces and nephew can watch TV, check their email, instant message, talk on the phone and do what seems like a dozen other things simultaneously. They’ve grown up multi-tasking.

If I want to get something done right, I have to concentrate on it. I can’t do several things at once and do any of them proper justice. My nieces aren’t smarter than I am, they’re just used to doing things that way.

All that said, they have the same problem everyone else does when it comes to being truly productive. Being productive isn’t about how many things you’re doing. It’s about the things you’re getting done and their relative importance.

Getting a whole bunch of things done doesn’t mean much if they’re not things that are important to your ultimate goal or vision. That’s where priorities come in.

The secret to being productive is to make a list of the things you need to get done, then prioritize them! That’s it. No magic, no esoteric rituals, no smoke and mirrors. Just make a list and decide which things on the list are the most important.

So, how do you decide which are the most important items? Again, no rocket science involved. The most important items are the ones that will get you closer to where you want to be. In other words, the items that move you toward your goal are the most important.

You can usually determine quickly which is the one most important thing you have to get done on any given day. Then, work down the list from there and decide the second most important, third most important and so on.

The reason you do that is so that you don’t have to repeat the exercise every time you get the top item done. Spend 15 minutes or so at the start of each day making your list and prioritizing it. Then, work on the number one item until it’s done, or until you’re not able to make progress on it any more for whatever reason.

The key is to focus on that top item and don’t do anything else less important until it’s done. When it’s done, cross it off the list and move on to the second item. Don’t do anything less important until that’s done. And so on down the list.

If you can focus on the most important items on your list, at the end of the day you’ll have accomplished (or at least made progress on) one or more of the most important things you needed to get done to reach your goal. Make this a habit and you will be very pleasantly surprised at the progress you’ll make toward your goals.

None of this is new, but it’s surprising how few people actually do it. It’s easier to let your life be driven by whatever’s going on around you. In the computer biz we call that “interrupt-driven.” In other words, you’re giving up control of your life to everybody else connected with you in any way.

I’m just as guilty of this as anyone, so I understand the problem. It simply takes the discipline to keep bringing your focus back to the most important task whenever it’s pulled in another direction. And the understanding that it’s not “their” fault if you’re not accomplishing your goals. If they’re distracting you it’s because you’re allowing it.

The question is: how important is it to you to reach the goals you’ve set? I can tell you from experience, if it’s not important enough to teach yourself to focus, you’ll never get there.

Take a few minutes and identify the things that have become habits in your life. Then, decide whether they’re helping or hindering you on your path to your goals. Get rid of the ones that aren’t contributing toward your progress and prioritize the ones that are. Focus on the latter and you’ll make amazing progress!

John The Geek

Living On Purpose Is the Key to Success

You may have heard the term “living on purpose.” We all know from when we were kids that if you did something “on purpose” it means you intended to do it, as opposed to something that happened “by accident” or “I didn’t mean to.”

I’ve been in Internet marketing for almost two years and I’ve recently realized that I haven’t been marketing “on purpose.” That isn’t to say that I became a marketer accidentally. Obviously, I intended to become a marketer! What’s been accidental has been the result I’ve achieved.

Let me explain. When you set out to do something, it doesn’t really matter what it is, you’ll get a result. The question is: is it the result you wanted when you started out?

The statistics are pretty depressing: something well over 90% of all startup businesses fail within the first few years. The length of time it takes for the business to fail is often a function of how long the owner can continue to pour money into it without making a profit!

So, why does such a large percentage fail? Because they have no clear vision of what they want and how the business will help them achieve their goal. In other words, there’s no overarching purpose to the business.

Ask any Internet marketer, or any business owner for that matter, why they’re in business and virtually all of them will say “To make money.” There’s usually a pretty important reason why they want to make money, but no clear plan for how that’s going to happen.

Your life has a purpose and your business needs to fit with that purpose. If you don’t know what your life’s purpose is, obviously, that can’t happen except by accident.

So, how do you discover your life’s purpose? By examining your life and identifying what turns you on and makes your heart sing. You were put here on this Earth to be joyful so by definition anything that brings you joy is part of your purpose.

It doesn’t matter what brings you joy. The important thing is to recognize and acknowledge it. Once you’ve done that, you can focus on finding ways to do those things as often as possible. Ideally, you can do it for a living. Imagine that, having fun “working!”

Look around you and notice that the happiest people you know are the ones doing what they love to do. You may think that you can’t make a living doing what you love to do, but the fact is that you very likely can. Once you know and embrace your purpose, anything is possible!

Knowing your purpose gives you focus, and focus is critical to success. Talk to anyone who is successful at anything and you’ll find that they are totally focused on what they do. That’s why they succeed while others all around them are failing.

If you’re struggling and/or not getting the results you want, I highly recommend taking some time to identify your life’s purpose. I’ve recently completed a 12-week course called “What’s My Purpose?”. It has helped me to discover my life’s true purpose and given me the focus around which to build my life and my business. If you’re ready for the life you want and deserve, you can get all the details here:

http://whatsmypurpose.com/johnsawyer

John The Geek

Earn 1K A Day Online?

If you sign up for my marketing mailing list, the first recommendation I make is to spend just under 8 bucks and grab a copy of Dennis “The Five Buck Guy” Becker’s “5 Bucks A Day, Jr.” report. I call it “the best 8 bucks you’ll ever spend online” because it contains exactly the advice every Internet marketer needs, at least those like me who spend their first year “chasing the shiny things” and never following anything through to completion.

Since purchasing my copy of “5 Bucks A Day, Jr.” I’ve gotten to know Dennis as a straight-shooting guy who is sincerely interested in helping other marketers be successful. A few months ago I joined his membership site entitled “Earn 1K A Day”.

The focus of “Earn 1K A Day” is providing resources to help you reach your first $1,000 day. The forum is outstanding and loaded with successful and future successful marketers all sharing their questions and answers with one goal in mind: to help those willing to make the effort to succeed.

The forum is just one part of “Earn 1K A Day”. Another benefit of membership is the amazing collection of reports, software, courses, and PLR/MRR products included in the $39.95 monthly membership dues. You simply read the reviews of the available products, choose the ones you want and download them. Some are for personal use only, and others can be resold. The obvious benefits are that A) you get expert opinions on what the products do so you know what you’re getting before you download them, and B) you’re not laying out additional money to get them!

I’d be willing to bet a whole lot of money that you’re spending way more than 40 bucks a month on products to try out, most of which you won’t like or use. Then, you have to go through the hassle of asking for a refund, or end up eating the cost.

In addition to the included products, there are many member-exclusive deals offered on recommended products every month. These are typically products offered by other members and are of the highest quality. Because you’re a “Earn 1K A Day” member, you’ll pay a lot less than the general public pays for them plus you’ll have direct access to the author and other users to get your questions answered.

I think by now you can tell that I’m really excited about my membership in “Earn 1K A Day”. I’ve joined a lot of sites and bought a ton of products in my marketing efforts and I’ve dropped most of them. “Earn 1K A Day” is one membership I’ll keep because it’s worth way more than what it costs me every month.

Check out “Earn 1K A Day” for 60 days. If you don’t agree with me that it’s a worthwhile investment, Dennis will happily refund your money. I’m betting he won’t have to.

John The Geek

Douglas Goodey – The 20 Million Dollar Man

Imagine that you were a very successful businessman rolling along toward a leisurely retirement with a net worth in the millions. Pretty nice scenario, isn’t it?

Then, one day you wake up to find yourself at age 65 over $4 million in debt! What would you do?

Many would have given up after such a crushing reversal of fortunes. One man who found himself in exactly that situation did something about it. They call him The 20 Million Dollar Man. His name is Douglas Goodey.

How did Douglas Goodey get the nickname The 20 Million Dollar Man? Over the 10 years between ages 65 and 75, he went from $4 million in debt to making over $20 million!

I don’t know what your personal situation is, but here’s why this story speaks to me. I’m not $4 million in debt, thank goodness, but sometimes it feels like that much. I’ll be 60 years of age in a couple of months and right now retirement isn’t an option.

I’m working hard at building up my Internet marketing business to the point where it can eventually replace my full time job income. Knowing that Douglas Goodey came from a much worse situation than mine and turned it around to that degree gives me the confidence that I can do the same for my own situation.

Download Douglas’ free report “15 Secrets That Made Me Millions” by visiting his web site: http://www.20milliondollarman.com.

John The Geek