You may have received an email from me last week where I asked if you would take part in a quick survey — I wanted your opinion on what you think is the most important thing I could be working on.

It was a fairly “self-serving” email so I was delighted that 239 business owners took part – (if you did… thank you.)

Anyway, here’s a quick video where I walk though the results — (or if you want to cut to the chase, beneath the video I’ve written about the results too.)

As shown in the video above, here are how the 239 votes were spread across the 12 product ideas…

1. Lead Page Generator Software – 14.8% (35 votes)
2. Social Media Primer – 14.4% (34 votes)
3. Content Planning Software – 14.0% (33 votes)
4. Headline Generator Software – 8.5% (20 votes)
5. The Ultimate Experts Marketing System – 8.1% (19 votes)
6. Shrink Wrap Your Brain 2011 Edition – 7.6% (18 votes)
7. WordPress Website Theme For Experts – 6.8% (16 votes)
8. The £35,000 Sales Letter – 5.5% (13 votes)
9. Ultimate Business Blogging 2011 Edition – 5.1% (12 votes)
10. Ed’s Little Black Book Of Power Tools & Online Services – 4.7% (11 votes)
11. Video Marketing Primer – 6.4% (15 votes)
12. E-Mail Marketing Dynamite Video Series – 4.2% (10 votes)

As the stats show, there’s a marked gap between the top three ideas and the others, with their only being a single vote separating the Lead Page Generator Software, Social Media Primer training programme and Content Planning Software.

This survey has told me that I need to launch all three of the winning ideas in close succession.

If you took part in this survey – thank you for your time and giving me your opinion — it was very much appreciated.

If you have any questions about this survey, or even questions on how to run surveys like this for your own business, feel free to leave a comment or question below and I’ll endeavour to respond in between product development!

Have a great week,
Ed.

I’m in the middle of launching a new programme, and I’m using a technique called Product Launch Formula (PLF) developed by an American chap called Jeff Walker.

The last time I used PLF to launch a small DVD training product, I made just under £8,000 — of almost pure profit — in just 48 hours. And that was by sending a single email to all my email subscribers. So, obviously I’ve no hesitation endorsing this.

I just found out Jeff’s just released a video which explains how PLF works, and how one of his client’s used it with even more staggering results.

If you sell anything online, or are interested in Internet Marketing, PLF could be a revelation for you, just like it was for me.

Click here to watch the video.

** NOTE: You need to enter your name and email address in the form on that page to watch the videos. **

WARNING: The video is very American in terms of language.  E.g. I didn’t know what ‘Food Stamps’ were – apparently it’s a form of social benefit in America? Also the word “niche” – which I pronounce “neesh” he pronounces “nitch” and “Herbs” are “erbs”!!

However, the videos worth watching because it explains the underlying principles of Product Launch Formula – very powerful… (I understand even Apple used it to launch their iPhone.)

Finally, you’re welcome to use the commenting facility below if you have any questions about this and I’ll endeavour to answer it a.s.a.p.

All my best,

Ed Rivis, author of E-Mail Marketing Dynamite and Massive Traffic.

P.S. if anyone ends up buying PLF as a result of my recommendations here, I get paid commission.  However, I only ever promote stuff I personally use and think is brilliant, and also given that this website features a tonne of free info which I never charge for, and that I freely give away paperback books for just p&p and tonnes of valuable resources without charing… so… I’m probably entitled to a few occassional JV promotions.

Do you ever dream of becoming a published author?

Apparently many people do, but very few ever achieve it. I think that’s one of the main reasons why authors are so revered and lauded in our society… to many people it seems like an unreachable goal.

In fact many times over the last few years — and especially since I became an author — I’ve heard a lot of people say “I could never write a book… I just don’t have enough time/money/knowledge”.

The thing is, having just spent less than 7 days in total writing my new book, I now know that whatever excuse someone gives me for not writing a book is just that…. an excuse!

So, if you want to become a published author, here’s the good news…

* You do not need any money to write and publish a book – it can be self-funding.

* You do not need much time – which seems to be the biggest block people have in their minds, (and in this article I’m about to smash it to smithereens!)

* And I’m confident you already know enough to fill more than one book. (I’ll bet just about any business owner on this planet — or at least someone who has been in business for a few years) knows enough to write ten books or more, not just one!

In this article I’m going to reveal how I wrote E-Mail Marketing Dynamite in less than 7 days (of consolidated effort) — and that includes the time it took to arrange for it to be published.

However before I give you that though, let me give you some background on how I got into all this.

Way back in 2003, one of my former mentors advised me to write a book. At the time it sounded like so much work, I did what most people do when they’re assigned what they believe will be a mammoth task… I procrastinated like hell!

Eventually though I did finally sit down and start writing my book… but I did it as a series of e-mails, one a week for 24 weeks – and I did it in a way that I got paid to write them.

As soon as I wrote the first e-mail (chapter), I made the whole course available on a subscription basis, using a combination of PayPal.co.uk and a UK-based automatic e-mail delivery service. (These days I’d recommend AWeber, which is a low monthly subscription, and completely free for the first 30 days).

Even though I’d only written the first chapter, I instantly got subscribers by promoting it to my own e-mail subscribers, and by other business people recommending it (by sending emails to their customers, who then came to my site and subscribed.)

The result of that was I started getting weekly income on a recurring or continuity basis — it also meant I was really motivated to get it done each week… knowing I had people paying to receive the next week’s instalment.

So every week for 24 weeks I typed out the next chapter and paste it into the e-mail service’s autoresponder, which automatically sent out the next email in sequence. I didn’t have to do anything else other then type – delivery was automatic, and this seemed like a great way to write a book.

At the end of those 24 weeks I had 24 e-mails, all of which simply had to be pasted together, expanded and illustrated where relevant and turned into a book.

Simple… or at least it should have been. It was a full three years from me writing the first of those 24 e-mails to me finally publishing them all in book format. Lots of reasons but mainly a lack of focus, and also because I spent so long writing the 24 e-mails (24 weeks to be exact), I lost momentum. (A big factor that my new technique eliminates — I’ll get to that in a moment.)

Still, the book was huge for me, and as well as being a powerful marketing positioning tool and sales-lead generator, it’s had loads of extra side-effects which I never foresaw. (For example my book was the reason I ended up being filmed at Pinewood Studios a few months ago!)

Anyway, my point is it does not have to take you three years — or even 24 weeks — to write a book.

Like I say, the book I just finished (and which will be available for purchase soon) took just 7 days of consolidated effort, using the following approach. (By consolidated effort I mean if you cut out the gaps and just add up the time I spent on it — it was equivalent to no more than 8 hours a day for 5 days, or 40 hours in total. I know it was actually a lot less than even that but I want to keep this realistic, so let’s say it took me 40 hours.)

So, follow these steps and you too can become a published author in less time than most people spent writing a small brochure or report!

Here they are…

STEP 1: MIND-MAP

First of all ‘mind map’ the main points you want your book to contain.

I’m quite a ‘visual’ person and find this is a really easy way to play around with the overall document structure – to add, edit or remove sections until it contains all the points I want to cover, and in the right order.

Then for each each Chapter I’ll add an extra level of detail which ultimately become sub-headings.

So, for mind mapping I use MindManager, which is a fantastic piece of software I use, not just for mapping out books but also for planning all of my other video and audio programmes, ‘to do lists’, and lots more. I thoroughly recommend you give mind-mapping a go if you aren’t already doing it.

Here’s a sample screen shot of what Mind Manager would looks like while you plan your book…

The only downside with Mind Manager is that it’s quite expensive – in consideration that there are now loads of totally free alternatives.

If you Google the phrase ‘mind map’ you’ll get links to free mind mapping software like Freemind, or my current favourite free one which also has a iPod Touch version… Mindmeister.)

Okay so when you’ve done your mind mapping, which shouldn’t take any more than a few hours if you know your subject well enough (I’m sure you do) then the next step is…

STEP 2: HIT RECORD!

I load my favourite audio recording software and hit the record button – then simply walk (and talk) through every single point and bullet-point on the mind map.

To do this you’ll obviously need audio recording software. Microsoft Windows has recording software built in, but in my experience it’s not good enough.

I use Sony Sound Forge software for creating MP3 recording – the basic version is inexpensive (and this afternoon you could download and start using their free trial version), or you could use Audacity audio recording software if you prefer – which is completely free.

Personally I love Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio (shown in the screenshot above.) It’s another fantastic piece of software which I highly recommend.

You’ll also need a microphone to do the recording.

Now I’ve got some fancy mics in my office, but for this job I just use a relatively inexpensive Logitech headset. That leaves my hands free to operate the keyboard and mouse during recording – which is important because you’ll want to scroll around your mind map while you’re talking.

Also — and this is really important if you want to create a book super-fast… is to not worry about getting the audio word perfect. If you say something wrong just keep recording — and correct the mistake by restating what you just said.

Mistakes can be easily fixed ‘post production’ – in the next step…

STEP 3: GET IT TRANSCRIBED

At this point you pass the buck!

Send your audio file off to be transcribed and typed up into a Microsoft Word document. You can find transcriber on Elance who charge as little as $50 per hour of audio.

I use a service called MailBigFile to send transcriber the MP3 audio recording that Sony Sound Forge produces.

Also it depends on how fast you talk, but for me, one hour of audio comes back at between 20-22 pages of A4 text at 12 point Times New Roman. Three hours of narrative produces enough pages for a decent size book.

STEP 4: CHOOSE A TITLE AND GET THE COVER DESIGNED

Come up with a catchy title. If you’re not sure what to choose then browse Amazon for inspiration – check out the list of best-selling books in your category to see what type of titles sell best.

When you’ve got a great title, write a subtitle that explains more about what the book contains, in plain English — and that really homes in on the main benefits or takeaway value someone will get from reading your book. (Review your mind-map to decide what the best bits are, then work them into your subtitle.)

Once you’ve got a title you can outsource the cover design. There are loads of book cover designers out there, only a quick Google search away. Also try sites like Elance and 99Designs.

Choosing a title and outsourcing the cover is fun. However that doesn’t take long, and at this point all you’ve got is a probably fairly rough transcription of an audio recording that’s not good enough to print as a book, yet.

What you need to turn that rough stone of a transcription into a highly polished diamond is…

STEP 5: ROLL OUT THE SECRET WEAPON!

My ‘secret weapon’ is the single most important factor that helped me become a two-times published author in less than 7 days.

All will be revealed next week, in Part 2 of ‘How to Become a Published Author in Less Than 7 days.”

Have a great weekend,
Ed.

Hope you had a great Easter weekend. I’m away at the moment (visiting family down South) but of course with email my business can be 100% mobile, so it’s not a problem keeping in touch.

While I’m away I’ve noticed an updated version of one of the most impressive Internet marketing courses I ever invested in is back on the market… Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula (PLF).

Rather than me explain what it is, click here to get an explanation straight from the horse’s mouth.

Jeff’s giving away 70 minutes of free video training as a preview of the full course — and knowing Jeff, the quality and depth of information in that video will be *immense*.

If you have ANY interest in making money online, even as an *extra* income in addition to your main business, then PLF has just about everything you need to know.

It’s also reveals the key tactics I use to run my own online business – if you watch the following video you’ll recognise at least a handful of techniques I deployed in the run up to launch my mentoring programme last week (and which is nearly full as a result!)

If you’re curious, click here to check it out.

Watch those videos while they’re online, because whether or not you invest in his full programme, these will give you a solid grounding in one of the most effective marketing strategies ever devised.

Enjoy!

-Ed.

P.S. This is an affiliate offer. If you watch the video and then decide to invest in PLF I get paid a commission which is nice. Of course if you watch the video and don’t buy then I don’t get any commission – and that’s fine too!

I only ever promote affiliate programmes that I’ve personally tried and tested. Considering I run my business using core tactics of Product Launch Formula I think I’d be doing you a great disservice if I didn’t let you know about it.

Watch the videos because even if you have no intention of investing in the full programme because you’ll get a World-class explanation of one of the most powerfully effective marketing techniques, which I understand even Apple recently used to launch one of their most successful ever products!! (Yes, it’s _that_ good!)

Don’t miss it! Here’s the final link.

I thought I’d share the statistics for my recent newsletter launch. If you’re planning on launching any type of monthly subscription programme this could be interesting for you.

19.9% of my email list clicked a link in the email I sent out announcing the newsletter, and ended up on the newsletter subscription landing page.

(That’s a lot lower than usual — probably because this launch wasn’t a ’24 hour special’ like my other launches. Ongoing promotion of my newsletter will ensure a lot more people on my email list are made aware of the newsletter.)

20.6% of those people who saw my web marketing newsletter sales letter web page ‘converted’ and became subscribers*.

*Regards subscriber conversions: At the moment none of my subscribers have paid anything, because the first issue’s given away free as a trial issue.
If my newsletter’s good enough then hopefully I’ll retain a high percentage of those subscribers over the coming months. It’s my job to make sure the newsletter remains to a very high standard. (I intend to!)

So the next page that appeared after someone had just entered their credit card details and subscribed saw an upsell page offering my £997 flagship home-study programme for £397.

(And for the cynics out there — that really is a genuine one time only offer… you can’t buy it any other way yet — and when it launches it’ll be £497 for 24 hours and £997 thereafter.)

So 6.25% of the people who saw the £397 one time only upsell offer responded and bought it.

The people who didn’t buy it were then offered a £97 downsell and 13.5% of the people who saw that downsell bought it.

Finally everyone ended up on the final page which thanked them for subscribing.

In a nutshell, the results of this launch were exciting. It means I can give away the first issue of my newsletter totally free — and let the upsells and downsells pay for them. (In technical terms it makes the offer ‘self liquidating’.)

I win by getting more newsletter subscribers, and my subscribers win by (a) getting a free newsletter and (b) the opportunity to buy products at massive discounts.

Some more comments and observations…

• I’ve had a few people unsubscribe, but my customer services team haven’t reported any negative feedback. (By negative I mean ‘unconstructive’ or ‘nasty’ feedback.) The reasons have been either because they “can’t afford it at the moment”, or they “found it too technical/basic”. Obviously it’s impossible to create a newsletter that suits everyone at all skill levels. The purpose of the free trial is to allow people to find out and decide for themselves.
• The majority of people who subscribed still are — and feedback I’ve had from many of them is that they “love it and are looking forward to the March 2009 issue”.
• After checking my records I can see that most of the people who didn’t subscribe and instead emailed or left ‘negatively unconstructive’ blog comments about my launch… have never actually bought anything from me before. Hmmm.

Whatever business you’re in — chances are you could also benefit from launching either a free or paid (‘premium content’) programme like a newsletter, members only or loyalty club programme using this type of approach (or a variation of it.)

In a future issue of Web Profits Monthly I’ll be publishing a special report with more detail on exactly how I did this launch. It was quite technical to setup — but now I’ve done it I can share all that with you.

Ed.

In less than two weeks the February issue of Web Profits Monthly will only be available as an expensive back issue.

Don’t miss this opportunity to get the inauguration issue for free and get the inside track on how to use the web to boost the sales and profits of your small or medium size UK business.

*** CLICK HERE to register for your free issue and 30 day trial subscription today. ***

I sometimes wonder how many of the programmes and tools I sell are actually used as intended.

So I’m over the moon when I find out someone is not just actually using one of my products, but has actually taken it a step further.

Cindy King very kindly reviewed my Blog Planner writing tool, and in the process explains how she uses it to strategically plan her creative writing and content creation, for not one but two blogs.

Check out Cindy’s article — there are some great tips and ideas if you ever suffer from writer’s block, or want to strategize how and WHY you create content for your blogs, articles and information products.

-Ed.

Fellow blogger Richard Lee linked to a very thought provoking and quite controversial video from 45n5.com which claims there’s no such thing as passive income.

I don;t agree with it entirely, (I explain why below), but it did make me reconsider my use of the phrase ‘passive income’ when I talk about creating and selling information products.

I’m actually referring to scalable income.

Creating and selling information products allows you to add an extra stream of income which is totally scalable — in other words not dependent on the number of employees or hours in the day.

If you run a service company, and only ‘sell time’ at the moment, I seriously recommend you check out information products — they’re a great way of adding easily scalable income. (I spent more than a decade (1996 – 2006) selling my own and my employee’s time… I only wish I’d started selling products sooner).

However, here’s the critical point. Income earned from information products is very unlikely to be 100% passive.

To be truly passive would require you to be totally removed from the ongoing marketing, fulfillment, support and financial administration/accounting of each product sale.

Of course all of those activities can be totally delegated or ousourced, but — personally — I’d still want to oversee the operation, even if just to review ongoing performance.

(Which is why in Stats Faceslap! I show how to delegate the weekly collation of stats into a dashboard — but I still recommend it’s the business owner/manager who reviews those stats each week.)

My final comment about the ‘passive income is a myth’ video is that I DO think passive income exists, and although it’s not as easy as many people make out, it’s a worth heading towards that as a goal as much as possible.

Sidenote: The other thing about this video — it confirmed how ‘hard line opinion’ (aka controversy) creates a lot of web site traffic!

Look at that post and see how many people left comments. This site gets something like 30,000 visitors a month, and I’ve no doubt that controversial posts like this one bring a lot of that traffic.

The only quasi-controversial subject I talk about on this blog is that I advise most small business owners to more or less forget about search engine optimisation (or at least not make it their only focus after launching a new site).

(Not exactly controversial, but still quite unusual for someone involved in web marketing.)

What’s your controversy?

-Ed.

P.S. To everyone who bought Stats Faceslap! yesterday – the 2 disc DVD set will be shipping next week. You should also have been given automatic access to the online resources area with bonus video and extra downloads — if you didn’t get that, open a new support ticket at my customer support web site and I’ll make sure you get access to that.

A slight hiccup yesterday meant my “12pm launch” actually turned into a “1pm launch”, so the 24 hour special on Stats Faceslap! ends an hour later at 1pm today.

But that still means there’s less than 4 hours left.

If you want to get dead serious about making your site and online marketing work hard for your business, get it before 1pm today, while it’s £36.05 (instead of £103.00), and discover powerful ways of tracking and optimising every aspect of your online marketing.

Click here to read more.

-Ed.

At 12pm tomorrow (BST, which is GMT+1) my new Stats Faceslap! home-study programme launches on a special offer.

For 24 hours only — until 12pm Thursday — it’ll be available for £36.05 instead of £103.00.

It’s a comprehensive two disc DVD programme that shows how to measure and track online activity, including any type of sales or response that affects bottom-line performance.

Disc one contains a detailed overview to more than 26 critical marketing statistics any site owner should be tracking diligently, every week.

It also features a step by step guide to setting up a system that integrates ALL statistics together into a single weekly dashboard — even those made by phone, fax, postal or face to face — but all as a result of an initial visit.

Offline sales statistics are commonly overlooked by many small business with websites that pass judgements on their web sites effectiveness without the full picture.

Sometimes the feeling is “I’m sure our site helps our business…” when in fact it’s actually doing diddly squat for it.

The system I reveal shows the full extent of how a website’s helping a business grow… and sometimes the truth may at first feel like a slap in the face (hence the name of the programme.)

The second DVD then goes into a lot more detail, including more advanced topics like how to actually use statistics to run test campaigns that continually allow anyone to find the best ways of increasing traffic, build lists of hot prospects, generate enquiries and most important of all… increase sales.

Don’t miss tomorrow’s special if you want 65% discount on my most important programme yet.

-Ed.