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Another Internet Marketing Secret?

 

 

Newsletter 12

 

Blog - http://www.tony-shepherd.com  


Hi

Welcome to this month's newsletter.

I had a small mental nuclear explosion last week. 

I think it was part of my ongoing mid life crisis as I plough
relentlessly into my forties, but this was quite a good explosion
as blasts go. 

A few things happened actually but the one I’d like to tell you
about was that I cracked the secret to making money.

Now I’ve been a full time internet marketer for years and I’ve
known for a while that secrets are like religions – you think
there’s only one but they actually come in weird and wonderful
varieties, and the one you found first might not actually be the
right one for you.

Bit deep for a Wednesday morning eh?

So as I don my orange robe and polish my finger cymbals you should
prepare yourself to hear yet another of the secrets I’ve discovered
about Internet Marketing.

Ready?

Internet Marketing needs to be tailor made for you if it’s going to
work for you. 

It needs to be moulded to every contour of your butt and fit snugly
around your shoulders if you’re going to do better than just earn a
few hundred dollars a month.

You need to squeeze it and squash it to fit YOU and nobody else.

Which is a really long winded way of saying you need to forget the
gurus, the experts and the bullshitters and concentrate on finding
what works for you, and you alone.

Here’s what I did last month and how I’m a couple of thou richer by
doing it.

I scribble notes on everything I can find. My ideas book is always
bulging at the seams and my desk is piled high with post-it notes
and scraps of paper each containing ideas – some good, some not.

But I often forget to carry paper and pen with me, which is a HUGE
mistake because as a Dad to two small children I often find myself
in the situation of waiting….

At the Doctor’s, outside playgroup, outside shops and Lord knows
where else. I seem to sit in the car a lot waiting. 

And this is where I get some of my best ideas.

So I end up furiously scribbling notes onto the back of some
business card or taxi ad that is somewhere in the car until I run
out of space or more often, that my idea floats away because I
can’t write fast enough to keep up with my brain. 

(I’d like to say I’m a genius but I’m actually just a very slow
writer)

So my secret was to sit down and think of a way in which I could
work to my strengths and weaknesses to make the most profit out of
my waiting situations.

How could I turn these scribbled notes and ideas into money?

What I did was to buy a digital dictaphone – a tiny little
dictation machine that now goes everywhere with me.

And I took one of my ideas – for an ebook in a niche I know well –
and started to dictate it into the machine.

I didn’t worry too much about mistakes, or incorrect grammar – I
just dictated the whole book – chapter by chapter into the machine
each time I was sitting around doing nothing.

I’d prompt myself to get back into the flow by listening to the
last two minutes I’d recorded then just plough in.

It took just over 2 weeks of different waiting situations but at
the end of it I had a very rough, but more or less finished ebook.

I hadn’t done this at any other time except when I was sitting
around….waiting. I’d dig out my little silver machine – smaller
than a mobile phone – and start speaking.

The end result was very messy but I found a ghostwriter who agreed
to tidy it up, check the grammar, change a few things and another
two weeks later I had a finished product. Cost me $250.

Easiest ebook I’ve ever written.

I put together a sales page and let my niche audience know it was
available and made a couple of thousand dollars from it. 

The initial launch is now over but It’ll become another ‘trickle’
in my income stream for years to come.

Which started the thinking process…

Sara Brown and I are investigating Dragon naturally Speaking as a
method of writing. 

It’s voice to text software and I seriously think it could
radically change how we do things here. That’s for future
newsletters though – we’ll let you know how it works out.

But the point was that I found a system – a method – a SECRET –
that fits in beautifully with how I work. And if you can do the
same you’re going to make a profit because it frees both your mind
and your time to work more effectively.

I know I’ve been a bit silly calling this a ‘secret’ and so on, but
I’ll defend myself by saying that I regard a secret in internet
marketing terms, to mean anything that increases my income. So my
dictation machine is one of my IM secrets.

I might be a typical bloke when it comes to my own feelings and
‘inner self’ in that if I can get my hands on a pie and a pint then
all is well with the world, and I have no need to express my inner
feelings like girlies do. In fact half the time I’m not even aware
I have any inner feelings – unless it’s trapped wind.

But when it comes to Internet Marketing let me tell you I’m almost
the Dalai Lama. 

I can analyse every aspect of my business in the smallest detail if
it means a few extra quid in my Paypal account.

And that’s what you need to do too.

Look at the bits of your IM life (and your life in general) that
annoy you and think about how you could make it easier.

If you can’t work at home because of the kids, the TV, the wife or
whatever then get an office. If you can’t afford an office get
mobile broadband and work from a coffee shop.

If you can’t write get voice recognition software.

If you have no ideas for products then look at other people’s ideas
and write your own version of them (be sensible about copyright)

If you don’t know how to do website graphics, simple websites,
membership scripts, article submission or whatever part of your
business you HATE then dump it on someone else or find a gadget
that does it for you.

Investing in outsourcing or buying gadgetry costs money I know, but
in terms of profit in my experience it’s well worth it.

My Dictaphone cost about $120 – but it brought me 15 or 20 times
that amount because I absolutely definitely know that the project
would never have happened without it.

I’m the ultimate bum marketer – I don’t like spending money when I
can do something myself but in the end it comes down to things
being cost effective.

It took me a long time to realise this, but it’s a genuine IM
profit secret. Free up your mind, have a glass of wine and think
about how you can do things differently in your business. Come at
it from another angle – see what happens.

Free up some time – it works.

Best of luck.


Wishing you health and wealth

 

Tony Shepherd