I am shocked: Internet millionaire Corey Rudl died in a car crash today!

I know, I haven't written anything into this blog for months but what I've just read really shocked me. According to the L.A. Times, Corey Rudl, Internet pioneer and multi-millionaire died in a car crash with a Porsche this morning. Although I am from Germany, I soon found out the original article from today's issue of the L.A. Times. This is the direct link where you can read more about it:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-speedway3jun03,1,3324057.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

I am in a state of shock. Corey Rudl's website was the first one about Internet marketing I've ever visited and the reason that I became an Internet marketer, too. To know that he has gone is very sad. He was only 34 years old (1 year younger than me) and he had just married. Many of his colleagues and associates were at his wedding party.

His death will leave a big hole in the Internet marketing community and reminds us how precious life is. It can end any time. Live your life before it is too late!

My prayers go to his family, especially his widow and his parents.


Detlev

You should not buy the hyped up Underachiever Mastery Course...

Here's why:

They have been creating the same hype and marketing tactics John Reese has used to promote his Traffic Secrets course. And I already thought that he charged a steep price for it. Now Frank Kern and Ed Dales Underachiever Mastery Course valued at $1497 is trying to top this with affiliates who are trying to shout out loud "Buy from me and I'll throw in another $11,589 (or any other sum of several thousands of $$$) of bonuses". No wonder because his affiliates will earn about $700 per sale.

Oh, boy... With that kind of money you could already hire 2 people to write 2 ebooks for you.

I've read in another newsletter I received today that it is total nonsense to create 21 DVDs for this course. Even the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica is available on 1 CD/DVD so why can't they put their course on 1 DVD? If they were using flash for their videos, it would be absolutely no problem. Everything would fit onto 1 DVD.... But what would happen then?

It would minimize the perceived value of the package. The more CDs/DVDs you'll get, the more they can charge for it. 1 DVD would probably not sell for more than $497. That would leave $1000 on the table.

Why should I buy the package? They have revealed everything already even before the course was available.

For those of you who haven't taken a look at their pre-selling tools...


The following steps are required to become an underachiever:

1.) Find a hungry target marget (preferably one that has some money to spend) which is irrationably passionate about what they are doing e.g. breeding tropical fish.

2.) Find out what it is that they need to know. Do this by setting up a so called Fly-Catcher page which is nothing more than a form where they can enter their personal details and their most burning question(s).

3.) Make a list of all the questions which have been asked.

4.) Go to Elance.com and hire someone to (ghost)write an ebook for you and give him the sheet with questions. Let him find the answers to the questions you got from your Fly-Catcher page. Find someone who has some good feedback and who doesn't charge too much.

5.) Register a domain name related to the subject e.g. tropicalfishtips.com to stay with that example.

6.) Get web hosting for your domain name.

7.) Write a salesletter for your finished ebook and add a payment processor link (Paypal, Clickbank)

8.) Pay the writer his fees and let him sign a document that you will have exclusive copyrights to the finished product.

9.) Upload the salesletter and product to your web server.

10.) Find the best keywords for your product by using WordTracker or the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool.

10.) Send traffic to your site using Google Adwords.

11.) Test different headlines/prices if the number of sales is too low

Instead of creating ebooks, you can hire people to create some advanced products for you like
how-to videos and audio interviews in order to have some multimedia products. These have a higher perceived value so you can make more money per sale than by selling a "simple" ebook. That's the whole topic of this "advanced version" of the Underachiever Mastery Course.

And I can say all this even though I did not get a copy of their course. Not for the first part of their course, nor for this hyped one. I agree that these tactics are great and you can make a lot of money from it. But $1497 is by far too much. For a complete marketing "newbie", it can be a jumpstart but for anyone who has been in this arena for a while, he/she knows what needs to be done as common sense.

It all depends on taking action! You can buy this course and get a lot of education but it is all in vain if you don't do anything with it. Create different products, try to sell them and if it doesn't work after refining everything, reasearch the next market.

What can they still show me?

Are they trying to show me how I can create an account with Elance.com or Rentacoder.com? I don't need any videos for that...

Why I didn't write any blog entries in the last few weeks...

Hi. I just want to update you on what I have been into in the last few weeks. I really have been too busy with my own projects and...

You probably already know that I am also having some local clients here in Germany for whom I do SEO and some web design. A doctor from Switzerland came across my German Internet marketing site and hired me to do several projects for him. One you can see here: http://www.anaesthesieprodukte.com/ which is, as you can see, a site for medical equipment. But that is not all.

This doctor is, as it happens to be, also into Internet marketing and wants me to create some sites for him. Nothing special you would say. But he wants me to create sites for infoproducts in the German language which IS something new. Not too many people are selling digital information products here so it is a kind of experimental ground. Until now, the site which you can see here: http://www.innovation-verstehen.de/ did not sell one copy of the ebook written by his father-in-law.

And that even though I tried everything to let the salesletter be as convincing as it can be. I have been putting all my Internet marketing knowledge into the salesletter. But it doesn't work so far. One thing you can notice is that there are no testimonials so far.

We're still in the testing phase. So the next step will be to use some different headlines for the salesletter. We'll see how that goes. Traffic comes from Google Adwords and so far the site has had about 140 visitors. Not really a success if you consider that I had to be paid by this doctor, too. Perhaps it's a topic that not too many people are interested in. After all, "innovation" is something that is used in the "real world" and would they buy digital products? It seems to be a misfit.

I'll set up some split-testing campaigns for the new headlines today. Then we'll see if something changes. My guess is that the topic is not interesting enough for a German audience. I will try something similar with an ebook I have written in German. But this one is about online marketing. That should do better - at least I hope so.... See the salesletter here:

http://www.powerwebmarketing.de/

See you.

Santa is back - with a bigger bag and 9 top Internet marketing CDs added!

It seems that the problems with SantaDealTime.com have disappeared. The deal is back and even better than before. In fact, it is already worth investing in it just because of the bonuses that come with it. John has changed the main entry page and it's much easier to see what's included because he has removed all the product pictures from the deal page. Instead, you can now find pictures of the bonuses, CDs with the following:

1.) 2 Turbo CDs by John Delavera, $177

This is a complete set of video tutorials about online basics. Here are some of the contents:

Autoresponder Basics 1 - 12MB
Autoresponder Basics 2 - 23MB
How To Create High Quality EXE eBooks
Introduction To The Features Of Activ eBook Compiler - 5.5 MB
How To Structure An EXE eBook - 5 MB
3 Different Ways You Can Password Protect EXE eBooks - 5 MB
How To Use The Start Up Features Of Activ eBook Compiler - 3 MB
Advanced EXE eBook Password Security - 5 MB
How To Customize Your eBook About Me page - 2 MB
How To Add The Search And Table Of Contents Function To Your eBook - 3 MB

+ many dozens more!

2.) Andrew Fox's Secret Internet Marketing Lab Videos - 1 CD, $197

Find out how Andrew consistently churned out a six-figure income from affiliate programs. After testing traffic generation and followup emails for 3,5 years, he has a success rate of 98% for every campaign he starts. During this time, he made more than $800,000 in profits!

3.) Andrew Fox (again) together with Lee Benson - 2 Marketing Quickies CDs, $147

The tricks that can be used to improve your conversion rates, coupon tricks that will increase your bottom line, business models that can earn up to $2,500/hour, 4 proven, super-effective salesletter templates, how to build a list of 30,000 qualified email prospects in 45 days, magic and irresistable pop-ups and much more.

4.) 4 CDs of Mini Site Mastery by Paul Barrs, $97

The "voice of Internet marketing" has created a set of 4 CDs with highly educational audio material on the topic of building sites for under $50 and profiting 24 hours a day from. Find out why these kind of sites generate more income than the big content sites and how you can follow his footsteps.

But the rest is still there, too. Dozens of products by the top marketers worth $11,573.21.

It's here:
SantaDealTime Package

You should at least have a look at it. I highly recommend it.

Detlev

No, this is not a marketing trick...

Bad things happen even to Santa... If you were visiting SantaDealTime.com recently you've probably seen that this Turbo Offer has been frozen due to technical problems. If you got that offer then feel lucky! As a JV partner I am going to be informed by John about the future of Santa's Big Bag. I'll let you know asap when the offer will be continued.

Meanwhile, all of you that ordered: You will not notice anything since I know that you're downloading all day long;)

I know it for a fact because that's what I did yesterday, too, and I couldn't even get it finished... Seems that I need to spend another day on it. But if you've ordered your package already, you'll have time until March 2005 to download everything. That's almost around the time when Santa Clause meets the Easter Bunny... ;-)

Cheers,

Detlev

Santa Deal Time - Your chance to partner with me and make $100/sale!

I mentioned it already in my previous post and you probably received some emails about it already: Santa Deal Time by my good friend John Delavera. On his website there are more than 60 indivdual products (probably even more by Dec. 6th) offered for a one time price of just $497. These are not reprint rights products which can even be sold on Ebay.

No, these are products their respective owners are selling every day. Most of the products are in the $67 to $97 range and some of them are even valued at $197. Included in the package are for example Adrian Ling's RSS Made Easy, CB Mall, my AffiliateTurbo, Resale Rights to Jason Mangrum's "Instant Marketing Miracle" (never offered before...), How to profit from RSS feeds by Dr. Mani, Easy Article Manager by John Taylor, Ebook Basics package by Eva Almeida (with resale rights!) , Zoom to Super Success by Richard Quek (includes a report on SEO by yours truly...), Solo Ad packages worth $297 , 12 months access to Paul Barr's Home Business Success membership site $179, Order Button Triggers by Michael Nicholas and many, many more products.

Check out the package here:

SantaDealTime Package


And if you like what you see and you want to promote this goodie then you can sign up for the affiliate program here:

SantaDealTime Affiliate Signup Page

The order link will go live on Dec. 6th and the package sale will end Dec. 26th. This should be enough time to earn some additional "pocket money" ;-). If you remember the MarketingDealTime this summer then you know what a big success that was.

I expect this one to be even more successful because the sale lasts even longer (3 weeks instead of just 1). Your affiliate link will be activated Dec. 4th. In other words, from this Saturday on, you can start building anticipation for the package...

To our SUCCESS - I hope, I can welcome you in my team!

Re-design of my website successful - RSS feeds in place!

Yesterday, I spent the whole day re-designing my website so I could have my content syndicated. I have set up different feeds for each individual topic within the "Internet marketing arena". I am now offering feeds for ebook marketing, search engine marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing etc. Take a look at it and let me know what you think of it:

http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/

Personally, I think the site has moved a big step forward. I will try to add new content to the channels almost daily - only the best of the best articles will appear there. I have another feed with my own articles as well but I need to update the design for the article pages. The great thing about the new design is that it automatically adjusts the resolution. So the look will stay the same whether you are viewing the site in 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 (my favorite) pixels or even more.

My next step is to promote the feeds on all of the popular RSS search engines. The more people view those articles, the more income I can make from the site. Not only do my Google Adsense ads make money but I am also trying to monetize some affiliate programs I am promoting there. Of course, only products which I have personally tested will be appearing there. I don't want to recommend inferior products. That could seriously damage my reputation. So you will only find high quality products there.

Apart from that, I am taking part in the SantaDealTime which has been put together by John Delavera. I have contributed my AffiliateTurbo software and because of my active participation, I am allowed to find partners who can promote the deal as well. You can make $100 per sale. I will make a posting later this day with the exact details how you can joint venture with me.

'Til then!

RSS feeds for my Internetmarketing-success.com site

Blogging is not the only thing that can help you to get ranked highly in the search engines. Another way is to have your own syndicated content. Let me explain. In case that you're not familiar with RSS, yet, it's an easy way to have your own content spread all over the Internet. I don't mean adding content written by others to your own web pages. No, I mean having your articles appear on hundreds or even thousands of website (which means a lot of backlinks for your site as well). This can be accomplished with RSS.

Here's how it works:

Basically, you create your content just as usual. You create one index page for your articles and on that index page, you have links leading to your different articles. In order to have others publish your articles on their web sites, you need to create what is called a RSS feed. RSS is written in a language very similar to HTML but it can do a bit more. It's called XML (extended markup language). This XML feed needs to follow a certain format. You can either hand code this by using a template or you can use a piece of software to put it into the correct format.

I am using a piece of software called FeedForAll to do this for me. This way, I don't have to mess up with the XML code myself. For RSS feeds, the minimum requirements that are needed in order to be read by RSS Readers are the following:

1.) A title for the feed

2.) A short description what your feed is all about

3.) A link to your XML file (RSS feed) on your server

And then you need the items - in this case your articles or your content which you want to syndicate. They need the same type of things:

a.) A title (for your article),

b.) A description (so people know what your article is about)

c.) A link to the article itself (which is written in regular HTML format).

Optionally, you can also add pictures to your feed.

You can enter these pieces of information into the software and when you're done, it will create a RSS feed for you by the push of a button. The format will be like "web-design-articles.xml". The last thing you'll need to do is to upload this xml file to your server. A good place would be the directory where you have the overview page for your articles in.

Then all you need to do to have your content syndicated would be to promote your feed to the dozens of RSS search engines and directories and you will see a very large increase in your daily traffic. I'm in the process of implementing RSS on my Internetmarketing-success.com site now.

I think, until Wednesday, I will have everything in place. The design will change a bit as well in order to make this happen. But it will be well worth it. I'm sure about that. RSS is the next wave of content delivery and if you're ignoring it, you'll get left behind...