‘Yeah, right’

‘I’m sure it is if you have a six figure list!’

Sound familiar? 

Some big name, IM guru is banging on about how he makes $3000 from one email but all you feel is frustration, one hundred thousand subscribers……….it might as well be one hundred million!……… I’m never going to achieve it.

It wasn’t that I doubted the effectiveness of email marketing, after all I’ve bought enough products over the years through promotional emails myself to know that it works, my empty bank account confirmed that!

I could also understand the numbers; one hundred thousand subscribers, a 30% click through rate and a 1% conversion rate equals a $3000 profit (at an undemanding $10 commission per sale).

No, my problem was that a list of this magnitude seemed so totally beyond my reach and so, I assumed, was the possibility of making worthwhile profits from email marketing.

Anyway, not being the sort of person who gives in to their negative thoughts I followed the advice I received from established marketers I respected and began to build my own list.

I put email sign up boxes on my blog, on the sales and download pages for my eBook and braced myself for the rush!

My first subscriber signed up late May 2008, number two signed up about two weeks later! I began to wonder whether I’d live long enough to spend my email marketing profits!

Since then my list has grown steadily, it is a rare day that I fail to add any new subscribers and most days I add seven or eight new names

And my results?

To date I have added just under two thousand subscribers in total to my lists.

My first affiliate sale occurred on September 1st 2008 and since then I have made 75 sales earning total commissions of $4464.00   (these figures do not include sales of my eBook Prints Make Profits)

My conclusions?

You DON’T need a six figure list to make worthwhile money from email marketing.

You DON’T need to be an email marketing expert, I’m learning as I go.

The only tool you do need to build your own list  is an autoresponder.

I chose Aweber (again on the advice of trusted marketers) their service is easy to understand (very important for me!) they boast the best email delivery rate in the industry, they provide video tutorials to help you set up your lists and messages and they offer a 30 day trial with a money back guarantee.

If you’re serious about this business you need the best autoresponder (don’t be tempted by the cheapest, remember, your subscriber list is your most precious asset) so check out Aweber.

I hope my experience provides a little inspiration and encouragement. Remember, even six figure lists start with one subscriber.

In my next post I will share the email mini-course I’m writing for twitmasterclass.com and show you the steps I take to set up my autoresponder to deliver it automatically.

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

eBay gets a bad press these days, if its not being publicly pilloried for allowing the sales of fake goods or dangerous items it’s being criticised by its own users for the fees it charges or the restrictions it imposes on digital downloads.

A few months back I decided to explore some of the many other online auction platforms that compete with eBay to see if I could save some money on my listing and final value fees. I won’t bore you with the details of my research other than to share the conclusion with you……when it comes to buying and selling collectibles eBay beats them all hands down!

And the reason for this?

In a word……TRAFFIC!

Yes, eBay is head and shoulders above the rest because it attracts way more traffic than any of its competitors.

Don’t get me wrong, extreme caution is required if you are in the market for a designer handbag or memory stick (I should have ’smelt a rat’ when I bought a memory stick for my sons PSP that was $60 in the shops for the bargain price of $15…..it only lasted for a week) eBay is full of counterfeit goods so BUYER BEWARE!

But when it comes to selling my vintage prints I wouldn’t waste my time listing them anywhere else.

Which brings me neatly to Prints Make Profits my step by step guide to rescuing vintage prints from old books and selling them for incredible profits on eBay. It is now one year old and to celebrate I have added new material and updated it, I have had the sales page professionally rewritten and redesigned and I have slashed the price temporarily to $9.97! (for a 47 page eBook, stuffed with bang up to date ideas and examples this is a SERIOUS bargain.)

I have a couple of tips for those of you who are creating your own eBooks.

You will have seen those great looking signatures at the bottom of sales pages and blog posts (check mine out here). They are proven to increase buyer trust and consequently improve sales (tests confirm that blue signatures are the most effective).  If you’d like to create your own signature, visit mylivesignature.com and the best thing is it doesn’t cost a cent!

My second tip is about finding professional help with your project.

When it comes to the ‘techy’ side of internet marketing I am a complete disaster. Having invested in professional sales copy,  new graphics and created my smart new signature I needed somebody with coding skills to pull it all together and build my new sales page. 

Having built my list of Twitter followers to 2,000+ (if you’d like to find out how and copy my methods pop your details into the boxes at the end of this post for a free copy of my Twitter eBook) so I thought I would Tweet my requirements and I was delighted to receive a direct message from a guy with the right skills in Argentina who did a great job for $30.00! 

I’m still looking for a memorable title for my Twitter eBook, by the way, that doesn’t include the words ‘Twitter’ or ‘Tweet’ which are both registered trademarks…….any suggestions?

I’d like to finish this post with a link to Dan Thompson’s latest blog post. Dan runs d9 hosting with Paula Brett and as well as being extremely knowledgeable he is also very approachable and helpful.

A few weeks ago my son suffered a hard drive failure on his laptop, this resulted in the total loss of all of his files, photos in fact everything stored on his computer. This experience started me thinking about taking steps to protect myself from a similar disaster, the problem was I had no idea how to do this.

Well, coincidentally, Dan suffered a similar fate and decided to post a step by step guide to protecting yourself in the event of a hard drive failure and you can read it here.

I took Dan’s advice, invested in an external hard drive (those of you in the UK should check out Argos for great prices) and can now sleep soundly knowing I have a back up of my entire system, this really is essential for us online entrepreneurs!

I hope you have found a useful tip or two in this post and look forward to your questions and comments.

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

It has been a few weeks since I posted to my blog so I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been up to and at the same time give you an insight into the direction my online business is taking.

I have written a new eBook which is an easy to follow guide to using Twitter to boost your business (whatever business that may be).

I have given a free copy to my subscribers and the feedback has been very positive;

If you would like a copy, you don’t have to buy one, simply pop your details into the boxes at the bottom of this post and I will send you the link.

You will notice that my Twitter eBook has no title. I originally planned to use the word  ’Twitter’ in the title but have learned that ‘Twitter’ has been registered as a trademark.

I am now thinking about the word ‘Tweet’ as an alternative and have emailed Twitter and ClickBank for their confirmation that this is OK. I await their replies.

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I  have updated and improved ‘Prints Make Profits’ my step by step guide to selling vintage prints on eBay.

I discovered eBay 4 years ago and having cleared my house of clutter I looked around for a profitable niche that I could build a sustainable business around. I stumbled upon the vintage print niche quite by accident and after many hours of research I realised that it is possible to make substantial profits by buying old books (I show you where), removing the prints/plates (I show you how) and offering them to hungry collectors on eBay.

This ebook contains all of my techniques and experience from the last 4 years, I continue to make good, regular profits with these methods and you can too.

Check it out at; http://www.printsmakeprofits.com

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Last week I received my free copy of Butterfly Marketing 2.0, I ordered it through John Thornhill’s link which means I get free access to ‘Butterfly Marketing Secrets’  John’s video guide to setting up a Butterfly Marketing website, plus (and this is the best bit!) John has agreed to promote the finished site to his entire customer base of over 50,000!

I know from personal experience how valuable John’s promotion is so if you are also a lucky recipient of ‘Butterfly Marketing 2.0′ do yourself a huge favour and click this link NOW for John’s free report;

http://www.bmsecrets.com/free/?thankyou-page=55

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As part of my long term business plan I have spent a lot of time recently looking for reliable, competent people to do the tasks that I either don’t have the time for or lack the skills to do myself.

Writing effective sales copy and coding web pages are two examples, I’m also keen to outsource traffic generation.

I have discovered a great blog at; http://www.jonasblog.com/ which is full of invaluable advice on the subject of outsourcing, go check it out for yourself if you are at this stage with your own online business.

As always I really value your comments and questions so don’t be shy!

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

Following my post of March 10th I received several emails requesting guidance on the ‘add signature’ plug in.

I have created a short video to take you step by step through the installation and set up of this free plug in.

In the short time since I installed the plug in my blog list sign ups have increased by 50%!

Please leave a comment if you would like any further help with this.

Thanks are due to my 14 year old son, Michael, for his help in uploading this my first YouTube video!!

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

A huge thank you to all of you who took the time to express your support by commenting on my ‘I’ve been duped’ post and by sending personal messages by email. I felt rather downhearted after discovering I’d been ‘taken for a ride’ as you could tell from my post, my mood soon lifted, however, when I read your messages of encouragement.

I agree with those of you who suggested I should ‘name and shame’ the guilty party and in doing so protect others from falling victim to a similar scam.

The man in question is Errol Spence of 4 Garners way, Harpole, NN7 4DB, UK

This man advertises on the Sitepoint.com marketplace under the user name ‘Kuzmo’.

I have advised Tony Laidig of these details and he has passed them on to the appropriate authorities.

Tony explained to me that over a year ago he sold a limited number of master resell rights to his ‘Public Domain Survival Kit’  these rights came with explicit instructions that the products could not be edited in any fashion. Tony acknowledges that offering these rights was a stupid mistake that he has learned an important lesson from.

I do think that this episode highlights the problems with products sold under master resell rights . It is impossible for the authors of the original works to police the internet to ensure that their licence terms are adhered to and this presents a great opportunity for dishonest marketers to profit.

Despite my experience I remain convinced that outsourcing is the quickest way to scale my online business. 

I  created 1 eBook which I began selling in May 2008, I have built a list of loyal subscribers on the back of this eBook and the income I have earned since has proven to me that this business model works.

The challenge now is to add multiple  products and  build multiple lists and to achieve this quickly I need to employ others.

I have spent many hours in the last few weeks searching for tools I can use to protect myself from the scam merchants, tools like copyscape.com which provides a very effective way to search the web for duplicate copies of particular webpages.  This tool, however, can only find duplicate content that has actually been published to the internet, it will not identify a plagiarised eBook that is in PDF format.

I am open to your suggestions and as always I value your comments.

Blog Facelift

I hope you like the changes I have made to my blog during the last week.

Thanks are due to Steve at Planet Divinity for the customised header/footer and RSS button. Steve provides a great product at a competitive price and really looks after his customers.

I have also installed a Wordpress plugin that allows me to have a customised signature after every post, as you can see I have used it to increase subscriber sign ups by offering an alternative way to sign up for those who don’t want to miss any of my posts. Click here for the plugin (it’s free!).

I have had Google Adsense ads on my blog for the last 12 months earning me an average of 30 cents per click. I have been looking for alternatives as this never amounts to more than a few dollars per month. Last week I received an email recommending a new service from ClickBank that displays ads for ClickBank products and I decided I had nothing to lose by giving it a trial.

ClickBank hop ads differ from Adsense in three important ways;

You choose the keywords that control which ads are displayed whereas Google spiders your web pages  to match its ads to your content.

You can edit the title of the box containing the ads whereas Adsense ads are always identified as ‘ads by Google’

The most important difference is that you are paid the ClickBank commission (up to 75% of the eBook sale price) for any purchases made when your ads are clicked, as opposed to being paid a few cents for every click.

Time will tell whether this change is worthwhile and I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve discovered Twitter!

Twitter is a social networking phenomenon!

Millions of people across the globe are using it to stay in touch with their family and friends. Twitter works by asking the simple question ‘what are you doing?’  your answer or ‘tweet’ (which cannot exceed 140 characters) is available for all of your followers to see.

You may well ask (as I did) ‘how can this help me make money?’

The key to using Twitter to benefit our businesses is to build a substantial list of followers and to tweet regularly.

Once we have built a relationship with our followers we can direct them to our websites and products by including links in our tweets.

‘This sounds really clever, Stuart, but how do I get people to follow me and can it really benefit my business?’

I too was sceptical at first but by following a simple strategy I have built a list of over 900 followers in the last week, during this time my blog traffic jumped to ten times its average level with a corresponding increase in new subscriber sign ups and Adsense clicks.

Do follow me at http://www.Twitter.com/stuart_turnbull  

My Twitter strategy will be featured here on my blog, so be sure to pop your details into the boxes at the end of this post.  

Do you need help?

As a new internet marketer I’m sure you, like me, have a constant stream of questions that you need answers to. If you have  ever wondered where to turn for expert advice and guidance then I heartily recommend the Warrior Forum.

Because the Warrior Forum has so many  members (118,000 at time of writing) you can be sure that any thread you post will be read and responded to by dozens of experienced and expert marketers in a very short space of time.

I have met some really helpful people on the Warrior Forum that I correspond with regularly and best of all it doesn’t cost a penny!

The Warrior Forum also represents a huge marketplace for our internet marketing products through the Warrior Special Offer (WSO) facility. Once you have posted 30 times you can advertise for a $20.00 fee which I feel is great value to reach such a substantial number of like minded people.

Thank you for reading my posts and for your continued support. 

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

I’m afraid I’m writing this blog post from a rather uncomfortable position. I feel such a fool and I owe you all an apology.

At the start of the year I outsourced the creation of a new eBook about using the public domain to create information products, I had received lots of emails from buyers of my eBook Prints Make Profits about the use of public domain material and I felt that there was a good synergy between the two.

Whilst waiting for the eBook to be written I bought a domain name, set up hosting and began writing some sales copy.

I received the completed eBook a couple of weeks ago and was delighted to pay the writers fee as it appeared to be a very professional piece of work.

I decided to make the eBook available to you all for free prior to placing it on the ClickBank marketplace so I uploaded the PDF to my web space and sent a broadcast email.

I was very pleased with the response, lots of you took the time to pass on your thanks and feedback by email.

I was horrified, however, when I received an email yesterday pointing out that my ‘new’ eBook was identical (right down to the images used) to Tony Laidig’s eBook ‘The public Domain advantage’.

You can imagine how I felt; I was mortified to think that I had broken the law by distributing copyright protected material. I felt embarrassed that I had misled you, my valued subscribers and I was angry that I had been duped into paying hundreds of dollars for ‘exclusive rights to a unique eBook’ that didn’t exist.

I immediately disabled the link to the PDF, I have sent a message explaining the situation to Tony Laidig and I have expressed my feelings to the person who sold the ebook to me.

I decided to write this post because I value honesty above all else and I felt that I would be doing you a disservice if I was not completely open and honest with you, my readers.

I have learned an important and expensive lesson;

It is an unfortunate fact of life that not everybody we choose to do business with is as honest and trustworthy as ourselves. This fact is true in the offline world and it is even more pertinent in the online world where the lack of face to face contact does give the unscrupulous operator a distinct advantage.

Remember the old adage – BUYER BEWARE……it is up to us to satisfy ourselves that our seller is genuine and the various pieces of information provided are true and accurate BEFORE we enter into any transaction.

I sincerely hope that we can all benefit from my experience by being that little bit more cautious and wary in our business dealings and if that is the case then I will have received full value for my money after all.

I would appreciate your comments and thoughts.

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

As this is my first blog post of the New Year I wish you all a peaceful and prosperous 2009.

I have spent the last week or two reviewing my progress over the last 12 months and focusing on my plans and aspirations for the next 12 months.

I have created a very brief video to share my progress with you and hopefully provide a little inspiration and help towards your own internet marketing ambitions.

Click here to watch my short 2 minute 49 second video.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to John Thornhill for the success I have enjoyed over the last 12 months. If I hadn’t joined his Coaching Program this time last year then none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t be looking forward as I am now secure in the knowledge that I need never work for somebody else again.

If you have similar aspirations of your own then I urge you to check out John Thornhill’s Marketing Masterclass but don’t hang around, places are strictly limited and I expect them to be filled very quickly, be sure to watch John’s video to see how a factory worker found success on the internet. This is probably the only opportunity you will get to join this program in 2009.

As always your comments and feedback are very welcome

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

I have copied below an email I received from Auctiva.com re. eBay.com’s latest changes:

We just wanted to remind you of three important eBay policy changes that will begin to be enforced in early 2009.

1.  As you’ll recall, eBay started enforcing maximum shipping and handling charges on books, DVD’s and Movies, Music, and Video Games in October of 2008. Sellers were given until January 2009 to update their item descriptions to make sure that the first domestic shipping option is below eBay’s policy maximum. More details: http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/MaxShipping/ and http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/OtherFAQ/#1
2. eBay gave sellers a grace period for removing paper payment options such as checks and money orders from item descriptions. Enforcement begins in January 2009. For a refresher on this eBay policy, see this link: http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/OtherFAQ/#3
3. Sellers will need to specify handling time and a return policy in their listings. Enforcement begins in mid-March 2009. More details: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200810071337332.html

eBay has made numerous changes during 2008 and we expect there will be more in 2009. Our staff has been working hard to keep Auctiva in synch with eBay’s changes and we will continue to do so in 2009.

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If you haven’t already do check out Auctiva.com I use their services in my eBay vintage prints business and enjoy features such as listing scheduler, supersize pictures, listing templates etc. all completely FREE.

(NB the changes above only relate to eBay.com. Check your own site to make sure you stay up to date.)

A very peaceful and prosperous New Year to all!

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

Just a short blog post this week, what with preparations for Christmas and a bout of flu it’s been a tough week!

I did, however, make time to snap up the resale rights to John Thornhill’s best ever seller ‘Auction Profit Streams’. Here is a link to John’s video in case you missed his emails.

In a nutshell John has decided to sell 50 reseller packages to Auction Profit Streams which include the rights to sell the eBook plus all the tools required to sell it.

If you considered taking the plunge yourself but were put off by the price tag ($297) my advice to you is don’t hesitate if you ever get a similar opportunity in the future.

A one off payment of $297 for an ongoing, automated income stream which is also geared to building a mailing list is an absolute bargain and I’m delighted I was one of the lucky 50 (it sold out within hours!).

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A quick message of thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in my FREE forex trading guide, I have posted it to everyone who emailed their address, if you provided your address but haven’t received your copy yet let me know. To those of you who want a copy but haven’t provided their address yet, leave me a comment and I’ll email you.

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To all my UK based readers I must mention a website I discovered recently, software4students.co.uk

This is the cheapest supplier of genuine, brand new Microsoft software around, I’ve just saved nearly £250.00 on MS Expression Web (a html editor for creating web pages).

If you are in the market for software do check it out (this is not an affiliate link).

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I’ll sign off this blog post by wishing all of my readers a peaceful and happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

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If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog

Back in July I began creating an information product from scratch, I recorded the process in small, easy to follow steps and these videos are available free to anybody who pops their details into the boxes at the top of this screen.

There are 24 videos in total, most last 2 or 3 minutes and the longest is around 5 minutes, they are delivered by email in sequence over a 60 day period (1 video every 2 or 3 days). I cover many techniques including; choosing a profitable niche, buying a domain, setting up hosting, writing the eBook, creating a sales page, uploading to the web, setting it all up to sell through ClickBank and finally how to promote and drive free traffic to the sales page. (these same methods have enabled me to set up an ongoing income stream that takes no work whatsoever to maintain).

If you were a subscriber back in July you will remember my ’special offer’ which was a FREE copy of the information product on completion. Well I’m delighted to announce that day has finally arrived!

Firstly, I must offer my apologies, I’m afraid the project took a lot longer than expected, my initial plan was to write about a stock market trading strategy I had used successfully, but the global financial crisis intervened and my strategy was not as effective in the turbulent markets that followed. I was not prepared to offer my readers a product that I no longer had 100% faith in so I was forced to change direction with the product half created.

I have now completed a product that I can be proud of and am ready to give it free to any reader who would like a copy. Because I plan to sell this product as a printed guide on eBay I don’t want to upload a PDF version to the web that anybody can download and copy, so to achieve a controlled distribution to my readers I will only send it to those who submit a comment to this blog post. (I will correspond privately by email to obtain your address). Please use your comment to give me feedback on my blog content.

This is not a competition, there is a printed, bound copy of my currency trading guide for every reader who wants one. (Please note that I am NOT giving away resale rights to my guide, it is for your personal use only).

I do believe that the value to you in this project is twofold; you will receive a free copy of my currency trading guide which teaches you how to make regular profits on the forex market.

You also have a video guide to creating and marketing your own product, material like this is not usually available for free (I paid several hundred dollars to learn these methods).

I want to end this weeks post with a reminder that Prints Make Profits (my step by step guide to rescuing vintage prints from old books and selling them for incredible profits on eBay) is going up in price on December 1st.

Any reader who fancies earning a great second income for an hours work per day on eBay should grab it now while the price is $17.00, pop over to the website to read the buyer testimonials HERE. ($17.00 is an absolute steal, I completed 2 vintage print auctions last night, one made a profit of $29.00 and the other $59.00, both figures are AFTER deduction of ALL costs and these results are not unusual). 

Thanks for reading and have a peaceful weekend.

If you have found this post useful, pop your details in the boxes and I will email whenever I update my blog