Here is a free email consultation I did over the last few day for Sully.  He has a lot of good stuff going on, differents irons in the proverbial fire and was just sort of looking for some feedback on where might be a better direction to focus his primary efforts and online business building energies.  I emailed him back a short overview of some of the ways I would approach his particular markets and where I might focus a bit differently.  I removed the links to his specific sites, as I am always uncomfortable giving people’s specific information out on mine – although he seems like a very nice guy and didn’t seem to mind.  Sully and I have subsquently discussed doing a project together as well on the basis of some of the things we covered in an email following this one.

  I do believe that this is a good " consultation" for lack of a better word to post, because it seems to address some of very same issues a lot of people ( including myself) struggle with on a daily basis – finding the time, energy and acumen to do EVERYTHING we want to do online.  I have the ability to outsource some of my workload, but lots don’t – and it can get overwhelming quickly.  ( as it does for me. )  I recently wrote something for a directory submission that I don’t think the problem with achieving tremendous success is related to A LACK of really good ideas – rather, it has more to do with HAVING SO MANY that your efforts become diluted and your results suffer as a consequence.It’s like a relationship – you can think it’s a good idea to juggle 10 girlfriends simultaneously, and somewhere in Hollywood heaven it might appear like this is a pretty attractive route to go. But in reality – you end up simply having 10 bad relationships. It’s far more profitable, fun and rewarding to have one REALLY good one at a time.

Or at most – two or three…;-)

Anyway – here are Sully’s questions below and my responses immeditately thereafter at the bottom of the post.  If any of these are areas you are struggling with as well, I hope this helps your efforts as well.  I would like to apologize in advance for the annoying {product removed} and {xyz} references when addressing the specific name of his product and the software whose user experience it enhances – I obviously don’t want to compromise any of his future efforts – and while not a huge deal, I think erring on the side of caution is always a better approach.

Hi Ian,
>
> This sounds great!  I don’t mind if you identify me in the
> testimonial, that’s up to you.  Right now I’ll give you a quick
> overview of what the different aspects of my business are.
>
> 1.) Lead Generation: I have an account with CPAEmpire.com as well as
> Azoogle.com  I post ads in Craigslist under the "small business"
> category, and "services – financial" category.  The category I choose
> depends on what I’m selling.  In the past I’ve had very slight results
> with a few cash advance offers.  I get decent traffic to each offer,
> usually around 200-300 clicks, but very few of them convert.  I’ve
> been using CPAEmpire.com, and what I do is search for an offer that
> seems to be pretty easy to convert, such as college comparisons.
>
> 2.) Web Design:  I do small projects for web design.  Usually a family
> friend or someone needs a site and I’ll help them out with it. Since I
> can’t charge too much for this kind of work and its very tedious and
> time consuming, I try to keep away from this.
>
> 3.) SEO/Link Building -  I’m working on getting more SEO/Link Building
> business.  Right now my site {Link Removed for Privacy}is almost
> up.  I am looking to focus on this since I can outsource the link
> building to my siblings.  I would like to advertise this business on
> Craigslist among other places.  I know a thing or two about SEO, I’m
> no expert at it, but I’m sure I can get a page ranked higher than it
> was before for its targeted keywords.
>
> 4.)  Early in 2007 I wrote a marketing guide about how to use
> [product-removed.com to advertise products.  {Link Removed}
> Since, then {product-removed} has kind of went downhill in its SEO capability.
> The guide is still useful for other advice, but I would say it is
> outdated ever since [product-removed} started falling off of Google rankings.
>
> 5.) PPC -  I have sold Clickbank products and Pherlure with PPC ads,
> and made a little cash.  Here is an example of a landing page I used
> for Pherlure {Link Removed – Pictures of Hot Women Here:-)   I
> would make about 50% or more profit from my ad expenditure with this
> landing page.  I stopped all of my PPC campaigns after my business was
> getting too disorganized.
>
> 6.) WSO (Warrior Special Offer) – I have sold products at
> http://www.warriorforum.com  This is usually a pretty quick way to
> make a few bucks.  I’ve sold a PLR guide on the PlayStation 3, my
> {xxx} marketing book was a big hit when it first came out.  Since
> then I haven’t used it much.
>
> I have so many info products on my computer that it would probably
> take a lifetime to go through them.  There are lots of ideas that I
> try to implement and of course some work out and others don’t.  Income
> fluctuates from month to month, on a really good month I might make
> XXXXk from all of the above, most months are YYYk.  Well that’s the
> jist of my business, if you have any questions or need clarification
> let me know.  Thanks a lot for your help Ian !

Sully -

Here are my initial thoughts per your current projects:

1) What I have found works best on Craigslist for me, and per my longer term
business goals – I would simply drive everyone to a page whose primary
purpose is to give something away in exchange for their opting – in, ie I
will focus on affiliate programs that have good solid products, in
conjunction with good lead generation tools, freebies, etc – and simply use
these as an enticement to get the name. If I’m selling a credit repair
book, for example – I drive them to a page that simply shows the image of
the free ebook they are about to get – get the name – and redirect the
"thank you " page right to the merchant – hence I now have their email -
they have the free ebook from merchant – and are now on merchants sales with
my cookie. This is obviously pretty standard stuff, but my conversion rate
has skyrocketed here per my ability to "follow up" with each respective lead
from CL visa vi my sequence or single broadcasts ( ie – I have about 800
credit repair leads straight from CL that I will send a post thanksgiving -
"Santa says fix your credit for christmas" kind of incentive – of which had
I done a simple "one and done" offer from CL ad – I would be losing all of
that potential revenue. For you – you might also want to consider making
your affilaite choices similarly – and essentially just giving away a lot of
free stuff to these lists – (i.e – and choosing affiliates which give you
this flexibility out of the gate)driving each sequence in the email back to
a page that has contextual ads and the affilaite offer, in combination with
the freebie you are offering them per this pie piece of the email sequence.
Again – this takes the problem of low converting CL "leads" ( which is just
a euphamism on CL for people more than happy to click on your ad) and drives
them into a sales funnel – from which you should be able to monetize at
least a third of them either through selling the CL product they initially
clicked for ( lower percentage) or simply clicking through on your other
smaller contextual offers on page.

By the way – even using the above squeeze page approach – I do convert a
fair amount ( low percentage but enough to make it worthwhile) of the
opt-in’s immediately into affiliate sales – straight up from the opt in
re-direct to merchant ( as I was telling someone on phone today – I’ve had a
bunch not even OPEN the free ebook ( or email ) I sent as the enticement to
opt in – but rather purchased the product immediately from merchant.

2) I would kill the webdesign for family and friends..:-)

3) Offer a white paper on link building – if this is where you want to
focus, very simply pre-sell it with statiscal research on directory
submissions and search engine rankings and how the two will combine to
faciliatate a huge growth in income opportunity for existing web
business’s – we know it does – and there are plenty of testimonials that you
would cull ( don’t even have to be about YOUR service..:-) that simply
pre-sell the direct relationship between lots of incoming links and better
SEO, with it’s natural bloodbrother – more money in sales, product
recognition, services, etc. I think you could probably do well testing this
both ways – 1) straight up directory submission service ad – vs 2) a free
link building guide and see which one of the two converts better – my guess
from my own experience, is you will get more ( eventual) eyeballs from the
free download. Of course you could offer this everywhere – make it a viral
giveway – ie – "10 biggest mistakes that you are making with your directory
submissions" sort of thing – we know that people will grab this from forums,
blogs, etc – I would put somethign like that in the sidebar of your site as
well and just pre-sell the hell out of your services through educating
people about the very real benefits of directory submissions. Obviously you
could incentivize this a million ways from Sunday, too – you would have to
figure out how that would conform best with your business. As far as doing
it on CL goes – in my experience you simply have to do these things on a
magnitude of scale proportionate to your goals – if you are selling
nationwide – you post accordingly.

4) I would actually do something similar with your {product -removed} ebook – you could
either "re-launch" it with a whole new set of "rules" and tips to
circumvent and transcend the deletrious effects of the "xyz Slap" – you
could probably add a chapter or two, change a little bit of the content and
re-offer it and do quite well, as lots of people are stuck using {xyz} as
they don’t know any better, there is a HUGE market there still – come to
think of it – You could probably give it away on CL as well as a free primer
and put three or four topical and relevant affilaite links that are
complimentary to {xyz} marketing, ie – autoresponder, nichebot keyword
tool, etc……Offer it as a – "this product was selling last year and it’s
my Christmas gift to you"….sort of thing, even on CL – that would probably
work as lots of these people are freebie seekers. Or you could give it away
as an incentive when people sign up for directory submissions – OR even
better – if your siblings are willing to do web design – sell it on
Craigslist for 97 bucks ( add some content and an audio or something ) and
offer 1 free {xyz} built with ebook – which will take your sister or brother
one hour – you pay them half ( or much less if it was my sisters..:-) and
pocket the difference. I’m a big believer in giving stuff away, just
because it is the best enticement for people to come back and spend money
with you later – plus, even if not – the law of large numbers takes hold and
you really can’t lose if you’ve got affiliate links in the offer, as long as
they are relevant, well intentioned and genuinely helpful, people will
naturally utilize these services and you make a passive income on the back
of this alone. ( I would also bundle in other ebooks if you have them – I’m
not sure what you meant by "have lots of ebooks on my hardrive" – wasnt’
sure if you meant your OWN stuff, or that which has been written by others -
but if you have your own stale stuff -bundle it and repackage it as one big
offer. I don’t know if you looked at Clickbank for your {xyz} product -
but if you can write, and like to create products – which it appears you
do – this is simply the best way to make some quick cash.

( Plus – I would raise the price beyond 17 bucks either way – add some
audio, and interview with you about things not in the book, etc – 60 minutes
of audio raises the perceived value a ton, has minute incremental cost and
you could sell that same ebook for 47 instead)

5)Lastly – If you are making a straight 50% and up profit on your PPC ads
for that particular market, you need to continue to run those ads! Rather
than pulling it down, I would simply expand on that one component of your
businss as long as it’s making you a profit – I would actually try to both
add more keywords, as well as try to drive down the CPC if you can with more
targetted landing page – maybe add some longer tail keywords into the mix
and – to be totally honest with you – if that particular landing page is a
big part of the conversion success ( I thought about buying myself..;-) I
would simply write 20 articles using low competition keywords on that very
topic and send them directly to that page through the resource box – (i.e -
the bum marketing approach which has worked well for me for these sorts of
offers, even still today) which should make you a nice passive income for
months to come. What I would really do – actually – is build a series of
sites on this sort of topic ( one that has good converting products and
reasonably affordable keywords that convert on the PPC side) so in essense -
i would build three or four sites that are derivations of this niche – each
would be a wordpress blog for example, with an optin in on every page for
some sort of freebee – I would drive the PPC traffic to the most segmented
site relative to the keyword ( or you can use a silo page plugin or simple
static html site in similar fashion) which becomes very relevant from a PPC
standpoint and drives your costs dramatically lower, plus gets very good
natural traffic as well – and all converts on the main product which you
already know sells well from your PPC efforts.

( If it was an ebook – I would simply make my own for the whole network of
sites – throw it up on Clickbank, etc)

One more thing – and this doesnt’ take any exceptionally sharp mind to
observe, but we are guilty unfortunately of the same mistake…Pick one
thing, and do it well! If I could tell you how many half baked, quarter
done projects I have cluttering my desktop and my mental landscape – like
you, it’s a lot – and holds us all back..:-)

Anyway – hope this was some help – if anything doesn’t make sense, let me
know!

Thanks and best..:-)

Ian