Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Internet Marketing in the 2010s -- Videos Disrupt the Value Equation
With video getting easier for anyone to do online, ebooks are becoming less and less valuable in the minds of your potential customers. This decrease in perceived value will continue throughout the new decade.

You can't charge the same price for a downloadable ebook as you can charge for that exact same information in a nicely packaged, physically shipped, video DVD. And with it becoming increasingly easy for any marketer to produce nicely packaged, physically shipped, video DVDs, those who stick strictly with PDF ebooks will get left in the dust.

The more technologically advanced way that information is packaged, the higher customers perceive its value. That means that as video becomes more common online, the more that people expect that valuable information will be packaged in that way.

Does that mean that ebooks are dead? By no means. They will still serve a valuable purpose as supporting materials. You will still be able to increase the value of your video product by including bonuses in written form:

• Transcripts of your video
• Fact sheets
• Step-by-step process blueprints
• Cheat sheets
• Tip sheets
• Resource lists

They will also serve a valuable purpose as low-end door-openers to introduce yourself to potential customers and get them into the sales funnel for your higher-end products. Ebooks won't go away. They simply won't be the core of selling information online.

The days of getting $97 for an ebook are fast disappearing though. (Although you still might be able to get $97 for the same information in a set of DVDs with assorted bonuses.)

It will become important as the decade progresses to master creating products in forms that customers perceive as requiring higher technological skill. As I said before, these skills are increasingly available to marketers, so there's not reason not to learn them.

If you're currently feeling a little behind the curve of Internet product creation, I suggest you check out Jim Edwards' "The Net Reporter" training site. Jim is at the forefront of teaching marketers how to create all of the product types that have the highest perceived values. And you'll get training not just on product creation, but on all aspects of promoting your products, too. TNR is the one business expense I would never cut unless I was closing my business forever.

Whether you're already comfortable with creating products in forms that have higher perceived value or looking to learn, it will be important to move your product creation into those higher perceived forms.
Jeff

Labels: Jim Edwards, marketing, predictions, The Net Reporter, video

Internet Marketing in the 2010s -- Creating Your Own Community
What does it take to succeed in business online? A lot of people start their own business because they don't want to have some boss making their decisions for them. They don't want to deal with irritating co-workers. They want to be left alone.

If you went into business online because you hoped it would insulate you from people, you've probably already reached that fork in the road where you needed to make a decision. You had to decide either to continue your isolation and fail in your business, or open up to others in order to succeed.

Even if you run a sole proprietorship, business is never a solitary task. You have to interact with people. You need to learn what your potential customers really want, what needs they have, what buttons lead them to buy.

You have to work with others to get your business moving forward. Looking back on my career both in Fortune 100 and in self-employment, I can't see a single major step in my career that didn't involve help from someone else.

Working with others is an integral part even of a one-person business. I almost closed my business three years ago when I grew too frustrated with being totally isolated. It wasn't until I started partnering with other business owners and bouncing ideas back and forth between us that I had the social engagement I needed to be able to work alone.

The beauty of this is that this need to connect can benefit your business. People want connections, especially as life in general gets more disconnected. You can capitalize on that need by finding ways to build your target customers into a community.

You can find ways to help people through a membership site. Build a community around your area of expertise. They will get the connection they need. And you will get recurring, monthly income instead of one-time sales.

Not sure how to start a membership site? Become part of Jim Edwards' "The Net Reporter" training site and you'll find both community for you and a wealth of training in his Vault on how to set up a profitable membership site.

Or check out Jim Cockrum's "My Silent Team" training site. It has great training on a lot of different marketing strategies and is a great community of marketers in which to kick around ideas and get lots of new ones.

Look for ways to build community into your business. It will benefit both your customers and you.

And make sure you get your needs for community filled. It will make you a happier, healthier, and more successful business owner.
Jeff

Labels: Jim Cockrum, Jim Edwards, marketing, membership sites, My Silent Team, predictions, The Net Reporter

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Jim Edwards
I don't think I included Jim Edwards in my original "Good Guys of Internet Marketing" series four years ago. That was a foolish omission.

Granted, at that time all I knew about Jim was that he gave out a lot of excellent free content, but I don't know whether I had bought anything from him yet. I ravenously consumed all the tips and strategies that he offered for free and pretty much took for granted all that he was giving.

Basically, even with all the great tips I got from him, I had no idea what all he had to offer.

Over the years, Jim has turned into my most valued mentor. I've talked with other marketers that he has mentored and discovered a curious fact about his approach.

With other marketing teachers, the marketers with whom I've discussed them could always trace our knowledge of them back to some product or other. We would hear of the product, feel that the product was worth buying, be pleased with it, and then grow to be fans of these marketers through the followup information they provided.

Yet, when I talk to people about Jim, none of them can remember what the first product they bought from him was. His free content was spread over the Internet so widely that we all got to know him from that. He was simply everywhere.

He built his credibility through free content. We became aware of his paid products gradually, as he sprinkled information about them into his free articles. Buying from him was not a leap of faith, as it was with other marketing teachers; it was a matter of, "If Jim's free content is this good, his paid content has got to be even better!"

It definitely was. Right now, I'm a charter member of his The Net Reporter training site, and the strategies he teaches there are well beyond anything I've ever seen any other teacher share.

I've seen paid training sites whose material wasn't even as good as Jim's free materials. And the strategies he shares on The Net Reporter are simply amazing.

He takes us step-by-step through strategies that most other marketers -- even big-name marketers -- haven't discovered yet. If you carry out what Jim teaches, there's no way NOT to succeed!

As I've said before, the only way I'd ever cancel my membership at The Net Reporter is if I decided to close my business forever. It is the one and only business expense that I would never cut.

I've described his free content (syndicated across the web as well as on his free IGottaTellYou blog) and on The Net Reporter because they are the clearest examples of why I consider him a Good Guy of Internet Marketing. These are not the only examples of his work, though.

His Mini-Site Creator is an excellent and easy-to-use site building tool for building just about any kind of site you want in a way that helps it bring in profits. His book, "Turn Words into Traffic," is a blueprint into how to achieve the kind of success that Jim has achieved through creating free content.

And he has another, personal growth, membership site of which I have been a member for the past year. That site has proved priceless in helping me overcome obstacles and increase my effectiveness. I can't give you a name or link for it right now. It's currently under wraps until Jim is ready to open it to the general public.

I'll be sure to let you know, though, when that happens. It's the best personal growth course I've ever seen. That seems to be the pattern, though, with any market in which he offers training.

As I did with the marketers I've identified previously in this series, I encourage you to check out Jim's products that I've mentioned, or anything else connected with Jim. He's one teacher I am convinced you can't go wrong with.
Jeff

Labels: Good guys of Internet marketing, Jim Edwards

Paving Materials for Your Success
I just finished watching a webinar in Jim Edwards' The Net Reporter site. I can't tell you the exact topic because members have a confidentiality agreement not to reveal the topics he covers.

Suffice it to say, though, that this topic was a very detailed breakdown of a very profitable process. He broke down all the steps brilliantly and in great detail. There's no way that anyone who followed those steps could avoid succeeding.

The webinar struck me as having a lot of "tough love" in it, though. Jim didn't sugar coat things. The process is brilliant, but it's not some "push a button and wait for money to fall in your lap" hype. It will take a lot of work.

Something struck me, though, as he laid out this process and the effort required in it. There are no shortcuts to excellence. There are no shortcuts to the kind of success that Jim has demonstrated is possible. The road to success is paved with hard work and determination, but those paving materials are something we all have available to us.
Jeff


P.S. If you've gotten tired of all the hypesters who sell you on pixie dust instead of real, honest answers on how to make your Internet business succeed, I know of no better place to look than at Jim's The Net Reporter training site. I'm proud to call Jim my mentor and consider his site the one Internet marketing tool or training that I absolutely would never give up, unless I was closing my business forever. I encourage you to check it out.

Labels: Jim Edwards, mindset, successful business, The Net Reporter

The Pain Now is Part of the Joy Later
Applying a line from the movie Jerry Maguire yesterday to online marketing brought to mind a line from another favorite movie of mine.

The movie is Shadowlands. It follows the rather unconventional romance of elderly Oxford professor and popular Christan author C.S. Lewis and young American divorcee Joy Gresham. In the story, Lewis is a lifelong bachelor, with a well-settled and routine life.

He grants a meeting with Gresham, a fan of his writing, during her brief visit to England. They establish a casual friendship that grows when she later moved herself and her son to England.

When an immigration issue threatens to end her stay in England, Lewis suggests a marriage of convenience to enable her to stay. Married in name only, she continues to live in London and he at Oxford.

When she undergoes a bout with cancer, however, Lewis realizes that his feelings for his longtime friend are much deeper than he had allowed himself to realize previously.

He takes Gresham and her son into his home to care for her better. During a remission in her cancer, Lewis and Gresham take a trip. They talk of their joy in this special time together, but Lewis quickly turns somber in wondering how much longer they have together.

Gresham immediately rebukes him. She says, "The joy now is part of the pain to come. The pain then is part of the joy now."

The quote has always stuck with me as sort of deep and inscrutable. But as I have viewed the economic distress all around now, that quote has become more meaningful to me.

Joy and sorrow are not incompatible. They are the two sides of the coin of our lives. Each one is part of the other. Joy is not joy with sorrow to contrast with it. And sorrow is generally the soil from which grows our greatest joys.

Approached properly, the pain now is a necessary step toward the joy of future success. Don't believe me? One of my favorite marketing mentors, Jim Edwards, has done a whole video on this in his "The Net Reporter" training site. The video is called, "Do I Have to Go Broke Before I Get Rich?"

In the video, Jim shows how common it is that successful business owners experienced hitting bottom before they started their rise toward success. He experienced that himself. And he lays out what those who rebounded to achieve success did differently than did those who hit bottom and stayed there.

The site is a paid training site, so you I can't give you a link directly to the video. You can do two things with this post. If you want, you can simply take heart that you have the capacity to turn any pain now into future joy.

Or you can check out Jim's The Net Reporter site, search among his huge library of excellent business training materials, and see his very timely video for yourself. And once you're in The Net Reporter, mine the riches of profit-generating information in there.

How good is the material in it? The Net Reporter is the absolute last expense I would cancel. And I would cancel it only if I planned to quit doing Internet marketing forever. I think you'll enjoy it.

Jeff

Labels: Jim Edwards, mindset, The Net Reporter

Let Your Pain Push You or Your Pleasure Pull You
There's a saying that you can "let your pain push you or your pleasure pull you" to your desired goal.

What it means is this:

You have only two choices when it comes to achieving your goals. One choice is to strive for those goals because you're so fed up with the pain that comes from your present situation. That's letting your pain push you.

Or you can pursue those goals by having the pleasure you envision yourself enjoying from those goals lead you there. That's letting your pleasure push you.

Obviously, the second is more enjoyable than the first.

Unfortunately, most of us are not used to that second way because we're usually so focused on our dislike of where we're at.

That's OK.

If you need to let your pain push you, do it.

Think of it as pushing off from the side of a swimming pool. By pushing away, you get momentum going. Once you have some momentum, moving forward becomes easier.

Jim Edwards once did an entire teleseminar on "Why Do So Many People Have to Hit Bottom Before They Start Moving Up?" If you're a member of his The Net Reporter site, look in the archives for it. It's a classic! (And if you're not a member of his site, what are you waiting for? Jim consistently gives incredible helps on all aspects of building your business.)

Sometimes you need to push away from what you don't want simply to get yourself unstuck.

Go ahead and let your negative feelings drive you. Let them give you that initial momentum. Slowly you'll find your confidence has grown enough to enable you to find that current of pleasure that can pull you along to your goal.

Jeff


P.S. I mentioned The Net Reporter earlier as a source for a great audio on building momentum by pushing away from what you don't want. There's also a lot more in the site about changing your mindset to a success mindset.

Don't underestimate how important your mindset is to your success. You don't get a successful mindset by becoming successful. It doesn't work that way. Developing a successful mindset is an important first step toward achieving that success.

If you haven't worked on changing your mindset, give that a high priority right now. I personally recommend you dig into the resources on mindset that Jim Edwards has on his The Net Reporter site. Not only does it focus on mindset, but on every other step of building a successful business as well.

But if you're on a tighter budget, check out BANABU instead. It's highly affordable and highly recommended as one of the best—and most down-to-earth—resources on changing your mindset to make you more successful.

Labels: BANABU, Jim Edwards, mindset, motivation, The Net Reporter

Two New Reviews on the Site
I just posted two new reviews on some pretty comprehensive Internet marketing resources on my site. They are:

• Jim Edwards' "The Net Reporter" Internet marketing strategies site
• Jim Cockrum's "My Silent Team" strategies site for both eBay and website selling

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
Jeff

Labels: internet marketing tools, Jim Cockrum, Jim Edwards, marketing, My Silent Team, online business, reviews, successful business, The Net Reporter