Marlon Sanders has released the latest issue of ‘Marketing Minute’. The featured article is titled “Night Time Cash Plan Whips The Blues”. [Article]


Marlon Sanders’ latest article:

Night Time Cash Plan Whips The Blues

Some people nowadays are singin’ the Hard Times Blues.

And understandably so.

With all the negative news on TV, it’s enough to make you go bonkers.

So that’s why I’m going “old school” again in today’s ezine issue with my “Night Time Cash Plan” to whip those hard times blues.

Nothing wrong with blues music. If you want to hear great blues music, go to BB Kings in Memphis.

But it’s one thing to listen to ’em and another to sing’em. This issue is about making sure you’re on the listening side not the living side.

When I got started in this business, I was eating minute thirty second microwaved corn dogs and $1.98 burger, coke fries specials.

So if you have a computer and desire, you don’t need a fortune to get started.

Let’s say you’re selling a $50 product. Not so hard for even a new person to do.

If you sell one a day, that is $350 a week or $1400 a month. That’s several car payments or a mortgage payment (or part of it).

If you get 1% of the people who come to your web site to buy, you need 100 visitors a day.

With no further ado, here is my night time cash plan:

Step one: Create your totally awesome freebie

Whatever you’re going to sell, you gotta lead with a an awesome freebie that gets people to join your email list.

What you’re going to do is get people on your list, then send out emails selling different things.

Step one is to exercise that brainpower of yours and come up with a free report or idea that will get 15% or 20% of people to join your email list.

This can be a teleseminar, webinar, report, audio, transcript, newsletter, video or ebook.

The KEY is to have a smoking hot, drop dead, no doubt about it hot title.

That’s the big secret.

Step two: Create your ad

Let’s say we realize that people who use computers a LOT like online marketers do get tendinitis in their elbows.

We write our ad for our freebie:

Attention grabber: How I Solved My Elbow Tendinitis

“Free report reveals how I got rid of my knee pain using safe, inexpensive injections that cause your joints to heal naturally.”

I might also try an attention grabber like:

“New Treatment Causes Elbow Pain To Disappear”

Side note: This is actual true. I have a knee problem and I just found out about this treatment. It also works for tendinitis in elbows that heavy computer users get.

http://www.getprolo.com/

I could find an ebook on Clickbank or contact experts in this and interview them over the phone to create the ebook to sell as well as the front-end free report.

Step two: Create ads to merchandise your freebie

Once you get that hot freebie, you need banner and text ads to merchandise it.

For the banner ads, you can just search Google for “banner ad design.” You’ll find plenty of people who can do it for you.

Or, if you have Design Dashboard, you can do it yourself.

Your banner needs:

1. A hot headline
2. Text that explains the freebie
3. A call to action

You can see one of my banner ads here:

http://www.marlonsanders.com/elephant.gif

Step three: Promote your freebie

a. Buy solo ezine ads

These are a low-cost way to test your freebie. 8 or 9 out of 10 won’t work out. But the one that
does will be a cash cow.

You keep running that ad once a month or once every few weeks for the next year.

b. Create a video offering your freebie and upload.

Create a video that explains the problem your freebie report solves then gives a URL where it can be obtained. Upload the video to video sharing sites like Youtube.

The BIG secret here is to use a service that will automatically submit to all the sites for you.

Doing it manually is a waste of time.

The good services cost nothing to use and will give you stats on how many times your video is viewed.

The one I use is at:

http://www.tubemogul.com

c. Write articles and submit to the article sites

Offer your freebie in the resource box (author’s bio) at the end of the article.

You need to write and upload 3 or 4 articles a day to get results. It’s work but it does work.

You can use articlemarketer.com to submit your articles.

d. Buy text ads

Google Adwords is one game but they aren’t particularly newbie friendly. For some reason, they like to make it really complicated to give them money.

It almost seems like Google feels it’s above ad dollars from small businesses anymore and they want to make it so complicated, only big businesses can advertise with them.

I remember in the old days the reason everyone started advertising with Google was because Overture was difficult run ads with. They made it hard.

And Google wanted your money and actually made it easy to run ads.

Well, that was the old days.

Fortunately, there are SOME places you can spend your money without having to become a certified expert.

Please spread this article around and let all your friends know Google isn’t the only game in town anymore. And there are lots of companies that WANT the small business ad dollar and are willing to make it easy to advertise with them.

— http://www.facebook.com/ads

Facebook actually wants your money, they have tons of inventory and it’s easy to run ads with them. Go figure.

— http://www.adbrite.com

The good news about Adbrite is they have massive inventory and it’s easy to run ads with them.

— http://www.cubics.com

A service where you can advertise on many social networks at once.

— http://www.marchex.com

They make it easy to give them money.

http://www.adknowledge.com/

Haven’t used the service but I plan on testing it.

http://www.zango.com

Zango is controversial because it’s adware. Meaning that people download games or things like that to their computer, agreeing in the terms of service to have ads served.

From an advertiser’s standpoint, the clicks are cheap and highly targeted.

I wouldn’t include Zango in the list. But you know what? With Google being so difficult to advertise with, the small advertiser has no choice but to seek out places that allow you to run ads without an enormous hassle.

Those are just the starting point.

http://www.ampkeywords.com/

This service looks promising and even gives you a bonus starting advertising credit.

A few more:

http://www.bidvertiser.com

http://www.adster.com

Spread this article around on blogs, forums, by email, to your list.

Let others like us know that there are other places you can advertise other than Google. Places that WANT our money and make it easy for us to spend it.

e. Forums

One of the BEST places for the newbie to run banner ads is online forums.

They’re highly targeted and usually within your budget.

The downside is you will need to spend a few bucks to get that banner ad created.

For my example of the elbow pain report, I’d advertise in forums where people who use computers a TON go.

f. Blogs

Blogs that reach your target audience are a wonderful place to buy targeted ads.

g. High traffic web sites

You can often buy ads on web sites you know your target audience goes to.

h. Banner ads

The DIRTY LAUNDRY about banner advertising is this:

Name brand web sites want to charge you $10 or $15 for every 1,000 impressions if you try to get the impressions directly from them. But no one knows they only sell 30% of their impressions at that price.

It’s a FACT.

They’re addicted like crack to being able to say they get $12 per 1,000 for impressions.

The rest of their impressions, they can’t sell at those ridiculous rates because only companies that don’t track sales can afford those rates.

So they sell off 70% of their inventory for $1.00 to $1.20 per thousand impressions to banner ad networks. Problem is, these banner networks won’t sell to the small guy.

They want you to spend $5,000 or $10,000 minimum to test them.

The people who are “in the know” and have money NEVER buy banner ads directly on brand name web sites.

They go to the big Ad Networks like tribalfusion.com, advertising.com, valueclickmedia.com and buy the same impressions for a fraction of the price.

If these brand name web sites had half a brain, they’d create self-serve banner advertising at $2, $3 and $4 for small business people and cut out the ad networks. Getting $12 cpm (cost per 1,000 impressions) is all an illusion anyway because they don’t get that for 70% of their inventory.

Having said that, banner advertising is huge. Just huge. The volume of banner impressions available absolutely DWARFS the volume you can get from Google Adwords.

The bad news is a lot of the banner advertising companies don’t get it.

Google Adwords was built on the backs of SMALL businesses who advertised with them just as Ebay was built on the backs of the small guy or gal wanting to make a living on Ebay.

IMHO both companies have forgotten their roots.

And unfortunately, the banner ad companies, in general, don’t get it either. They don’t get that the MONEY is made from the small businesses (guys and gals like us), NOT the big companies.

The good news is that there ARE places you can buy banners ads:

— http://www.adbrite.com
— http://www.facebook.com/ads
— http://www.myspace.com
— http://www.adready.com

I’m on the lookout for high quality banner impressions that don’t require $5,000 or $10,000 to place your ad. If you know of any, post to my blog please at marlonsnews.com.

The idea is that you TEST your banners on these other networks. And when you get banners that work, then you buy advertising at the more expensive places because you know you’ll make money.

The SECRET is to negotiate a 24-hour out clause so that if you aren’t making money, you bail out without spending your $5,000 or $10,000.

You ONLY spend the 5 or 10 g’s if you’re making money.

Step four: Track your results using tracking id’s

The URL in the video needs to be a tracking link, so you can track the sales that come from the video.

If you use a service like Clickbank, Commission Junction or cost per action networks, you can pass through a code (usually called a SID (sub ID) or something like that.

This tracking code lets you track not just clicks but also sales back to the actual video you uploaded or ad you ran.

This is critical. You must be able to track results back to the exact ads you buy or marketing you do.

Step five: Make new offers to your list

Once people have joined your list, sign up at Clickbank.com, CommissionJunction.com and other affiliate networks.

Promote offers frequently to your list.

Make sure you only promote quality products and not junk, or you’ll lose the trust of your list.

Use the “full arsenal” I teach in Promo Dashboard to sell these affiliate offers.

Step six: Check your mail daily and go to the bank frequently.

If you promote lots of offers to your list, you’ll be getting lots of checks.

Marlon Sanders

Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Info Product Dashboard.” If you want to create your own info products, go to: http://www.productdashboard.com/.

Marlon’s Marketing Minute

*IMNewswatch would like to thank Marlon Sanders for granting permission to reprint the latest article.

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