The other part of this experiment that’s important to understand is that no one could even order the product until about 70 minutes into the actual video. And even at 70 minutes, they didn’t know what they were ordering, that wasn’t showcased until the video was actually over.

I did a promotion for about two weeks and emailed about it every day. I let people know the reasons why they should watch the video, but more importantly was the video itself. The video used a very specific format when teaching.

A good portion of my business is that I’m a speaker. I speak from stages, literally all over the world. I’m probably one of the highest paid speakers because I sell products and services from the stage. In fact, we generate millions of dollars every year selling products and services in front of live audiences.

Well, I can only speak to a certain number of people per year. When I do a presentation in front of an audience I’m limited, whether there’s 100 people in the room or as many as 7,000, it’s only those people there that can watch my presentation.

The previous year, I had used a complete stage presentation as a promotion. I took the video, converted it to a format for the web and I did a promotion on it. We generated about $347,000 from this video of people watching me on stage live, in person, full motion video over the course of 72 hours.

That brings us back to this particular promotion. I didn’t have time to record a video of me speaking anywhere, but I took the same PowerPoint presentation I would do when I normally speak from the stage, with the only difference being I recorded my voice. Therefore, the only thing they had to look at throughout the entire 90 minutes was a PowerPoint, while hearing my voice. This PowerPoint was the key to making the whole thing work.

Let’s start with the results. We generated over a quarter of a million dollars with this video. That’s extremely important, because we generated it in over two weeks with nothing but a PowerPoint video.

I was able to give them VALUE, ENGAGE the audience and TEACH them all at the same time. If you keep these three things in mind in all of your marketing strategy, it’ll be easier for people to buy from you. This is one of the keys to my success, not only as a speaker but as an Internet marketer, as well.

I’d like to challenge you to try a longer PowerPoint sales letter if you haven’t done one, and if you have, and didn’t have the results, go back through and watch it from your client’s point of view – did you give them value for giving you 90 minutes of their time, did you engage them enough to keep interest piqued and did you teach them something that made them want more? These are all key to winning the sales you are looking for.

For the longest time, it was just email or IM (instant message). Then social networks came into play — first with MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn and then everyone jumped on the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon, and there are tons of new forms of social media popping up every day.

In fact, you are probably using social networks I’ve never even heard of. So there’s more information coming at you that has to be filtered out. As a marketer, you have to change the way you market because you have less time to get your message across to people.

Think about this for a moment.

A person comes to your website and they see a curiosity type of headline like, “Discover the Seven Secret Methods To Build Your Business Like You Never Have Before. Please Read On Because This Will Be The Most Important Letter You’ve Ever Read.”

What does that headline say to the customer looking for something on your website? Nothing!

So, why are they going to stay? They have to check their Facebook messages. They need to check their Twitter account and see if someone is talking about them. They have to do all these other things, so why would they stay on that website based upon that headline? The answer is, they aren’t going to. You need to be more direct in what you’re marketing message actually is.

When you look at a headline and the first few paragraphs in the top portion of your sales letter, you have to look to see what it is you’re saying to the customer. You need to tell them why they need your product or service in that first few seconds.

This is different than what you’ve heard me and others talk about before, and the reason is marketing has changed. All that noise means we have to be more direct.

Journalists spend most of their time on the lead in of their story, meaning, that brief description of what it is they’re talking about; the first one to two sentences of their story.

Marketers have been trained to put the most important information at the bottom. We’ve learned that you build up to the most important information, so it’s like a pyramid with the least amount of information at the top and the most important at the bottom.

I’m suggesting the reverse, which is to say turn it upside down and put the most important information at the top and the least important at the bottom. If your most important information is at the bottom, a person comes to your website, sees a bunch of bogus stuff at the top that isn’t important to them, and what happens? They leave. They didn’t even get to the most important part of your message. They may not have even figured out what your product or service is or does.

Take the time to sit down and figure out how you can make your marketing message more direct at the front of your sales process instead of making people wait to find out exactly what your product or service does. Tell them up front, and I guarantee you’ll increase sales.

Drop me a line at support@ArmandMorin.com and let me know how it worked out for you.

It seems that everyone on the Internet is talking about how magazines are dead. That’s probably somewhat true for offline print magazines. They’re all going to die at some point. Newspapers will fade away for the most part, and they’re going to try and charge people to access their online content and information.

In fact, I believe they’re greedy in that respect. Companies like The Wall Street Journal or New York Times are going to start charging people to access their news. People aren’t going to buy it.

People on the Internet are used to receiving free information; therefore, these companies are looking at things from an entirely wrong standpoint. What they should be doing is trying to amass subscribers in a big way and then charge for premium content.

One model would be part of the magazine should be free and then charge for premium, more niched content inside the magazine.

The other model they could use is to not charge anyone at all for their content and make the money from the ads on it. They’re simply not tech savvy enough to understand the dynamics or economy on the Internet in reference to making money.

What’s the solution to this?

After looking it over for many years, here are a couple of the best ways I’ve found to make money with magazines. I started a newsletter called InternetMarketingNewsletter.com. It’s an online newsletter — a 30-40 page PDF magazine.

Each month I have eight or nine people writing monthly columns for me. I include my own column in it, and we distribute it to about 131,000 people.

Think about this. I literally have an online magazine that goes to 131,000 people. But, I’m using a different model, in that I’m using it to gather a list first, and second, after they subscribe to my magazine I’m making an offer for them to subscribe to one of my membership sites.

The other method I think is huge when you have a PDF magazine that people can download and print is the advertising model. How much could I charge people to advertise in a publication that’s going to 131,000 people every single month?

I could charge a significant amount based upon standard magazine rates. Even if I charged half the standard rate with that same subscription base, I would still make a fortune each month. I could charge $1,000 to $2,000 an ad without question because it’s a targeted market I’m going after.

So whether you decide to use the magazine to build a list you can offer products and services to or use it to build income from advertising, online magazines are a great way to make money online.

So, don’t believe the hype, magazines are not dead. In fact, the online ones are here to stay.

The vast majority of people in the marketplace have no clue as far as how to build a list. Most people think to build a list means to put an opt-in page up.

Don’t get me wrong, an opt-in page is great. I have an opt-in page on most of my websites, but there is a problem with an opt-in page.

When a person goes to an opt-in page, we usually try to bribe them by giving them an mp3, free report or access to a video. We do this in an attempt to capture their name and email address, and that’s how they’re subscribing to our list.

But no matter what we tell them, all people are hearing is they are getting a bribe — they are getting a report or mp3, whatever it may be. Basically they only hear you say you will email them one time.

Doesn’t matter that you tell them you’re going to send additional emails to them. They are still only hearing you’re going to email them ONE TIME, that’s it. If you email them more than once what happens? They usually get upset and mad.

Let’s change the dynamics of this and do what I call a role-reversal.

What’s that? It’s where we switch positions on them for a moment. Imagine a person going to a website and at the top of the site it says free monthly newsletter or free monthly magazine.

What is it they’re giving you their name and email address for? To receive a free monthly newsletter, right? How many times is that person expecting you to email them? Every month.

If you don’t email them something “Twilight Zone” strange happens. There’s a feeling of entitlement the moment a person subscribes to your magazine. While it was free, the moment they give you their name and email address, they are now a subscriber and in their minds feel they are owed that magazine every month.

So, if your magazine is due to go out on May 15, for example, and you don’t send it out on that date, you’ll starting getting emails from people and they’re going to want to know where their magazine is.

Basically, what they’re saying is you didn’t send me an email this month with a 30-40 page PDF that allows me to look at all the offers that are in your magazine.

It’s a strange scenario, but that’s exactly what happens. I have it happen to me every single month. People are contacting us and asking for their magazine. We don’t promise to send it on a specific day. It’s usually near the end of the month.

Yes, we have other offers and ads in it. Most of the time, it’s my products we are advertising.

I use it to get in front of people every single month, and I make sales from it. In fact, I can attribute for the last year, about $1.8 million dollars just from that one magazine.

Let me just clarify. I didn’t have $1.8 million in ad revenue in the magazine, I use that list and market other products and services to the people on that list. So, having an online magazine not only gets you great exposure; it also builds a list that expects to hear from you often.

Don’t you want a list that wants to hear from you instead one that gets upset if you email them? Having an online magazine is a great way to get exposure and to turn those subscribers to customers.

I always tell them what’s on my mind at the time and then try to answer their questions. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is the answer really isn’t about what’s new. It’s kind of about what’s old.

It’s “what aren’t you doing right” to begin with.

I market products and services on the Internet quite frequently. I’ve made millions of dollars doing it, but there’s honestly only three ways to really make more money on the Internet.

1. Get more traffic to your website.

If you have a website right now, one way to increase the amount of income you earn is to get more traffic coming to that website. If you get more traffic, no matter what your conversion, you’re going to get more people to buy. That’s easy enough to understand.

2. Increase your conversion.

Increasing conversions means you need to get more people to buy.

For example, if you had 100 people coming to your website, and you had 2% conversion, which means two out of 100 would buy, then you’d have a 2% conversion. For most people, that’s a good number, but what if you had five people buy? Then you’d have a 5% conversion. You could make one tweak on your website, get more people to buy and instantly make more money.

Those are the two primary things that people focus in on.

1) Ways to get more traffic to your website
2) Ways to get more people to buy

They are usually tricks like pop ups, popovers, ways to interrupt people when they’re on your site in order to get them to pay attention to your marketing messages.

I have to tell you, there are some amazing tools out there that will help you do this, but sometimes I run across a site that has every single one of these tools on it at the same time. How ridiculous is that? In this case, you’re just pissing off the customer or the prospect when they come to your website. You don’t want to do that.

The third way though, I think, is a way most people don’t even think about. In fact, It’s what I call the mystery element.

3. Have a great product.

It seems strange that I would say the mystery element is to have a great product, but it’s true.

Most people don’t really think about how great their product is. You see, we can put all these tricks in place, we can get more traffic, we can figure out ways to use all kinds of tactics to get more people to buy from us, but at the end of the day it’s still the same product. If the product is crap, people are not going to buy and if they do, you’re going to get refunds.

I was thinking about this the other day. You can spray air freshener on dog crap, but at the end of the day it’s still dog crap. So, what you need to do is increase the value of your product.

Ultimately, if you want to make more money from your website, you have to do ALL three things. You have to increase traffic. You have to increase your conversions. And you absolutely have to have a great product.

My grandfather passed away a couple of years ago. He was a carpenter and always worked on other people’s homes. He fixed them up and installed siding and roofs. I worked with him a lot when I was a kid growing up.

My grandfather was one of those people who had his own home, but would just kind of do things halfway on it to get by. He fixed everyone else’s house, but at his own house, he would only do what he absolutely had to do.

For example, my dad asked him to come over because we needed some steps on the front of our house. He came over and built us some temporary steps. He explained that they were good enough for now. Those steps were installed when I was probably five or six years old, and they were there until the day I left home when I was 18. I guess that was “good enough for now.”

The point I’m trying to make here is that a lot of people are like that with their own products… “that’s good enough for now.” “Just put it up. I can fix it later,” but later never comes.

Therefore, they’re putting up a half-ass product that really isn’t good. There are three things you should ask yourself about your products.

1. Is your product the best you can possibly create?

Think of the product you have — how can you make it better? Not for you, but for the consumer using the product. How can you make that product better?

The ideal customer service situation is you should have no customer service. You know that’s not going to happen, but that’s the idea and the objective. If you have a great product, you will eliminate a lot of your customer service.

2. What makes your product unique?

What is it about your product that’s different than every other product on the market? What makes you different than all of your competitors?

Sometimes, when you really think about it, there’s absolutely no difference whatsoever between your product and your competitor’s, except maybe that you have a different look and feel on your website.

You may say the information a little differently, but that’s not enough; you have to have something that the other guy doesn’t. You have to give the customer a unique product in order to make it stand out from the rest of the crap people offer in the marketplace.

3. Will your product change with the times?

Will you have to modify the product in the future? Did you create that product just because of a trend that’s happening in the marketplace, or did you create a product that is evergreen, one that never has to change?

That’s the ideal type of product, a product that never has to change.

For example, a weight loss product, for the most part, doesn’t really have to change, unless what you’re teaching people is blatantly wrong or could possibly hurt a person.

If you create evergreen products, you don’t have to keep going back and redoing your product because of changes that occur in the marketplace. Constantly having to update your products is a pain in the butt.

Do it right the first time, so that you never have to worry about fixing it later, and never settle for your products being “good enough for now.” Create the best products you can, make them unique and evergreen. Creating products that fit these criteria is the first step to long-term success in your business.

It details why I believe people can’t simply seem to succeed online. Like I said, “It’s Not Your Fault”. In it, I describe the various scenarios which are happening today. The good, the bad and the ugly. In the end you’ll see the reason why and it’s really quite obvious. Do yourself a favor and download today.

Seriously, this report is a real eye opener.

Here’s The Link Download It Now – Click Here To Download

The days of a one page sales letters or even a one page video sales letters as far as advertising on Google Adwords is basically done. Sure you may get away with it for a time, but for the most part you’re going to need more content and I believe they want use to be more mainstream with more content.

As many of you know I do a training seminar called Armand Morin LIVE where I go into great detail of various advertising methods. Bing, Facebook and yes Google as well. I just updated one of my presentations and shortend it for Internet viewing because it can get quite long. I felt it would be appropriate considering the interest in the last post.

The video below is a 40 minute training on what Google wants. The key here is that the majority of the video is me reading Google’s own rules with my interpretation. Is it perfect? NO, but I wanted to get something up quick so people have an understanding of what is going on.

Here’s the video… Enjoy!

Watch the video and see exactly what I mean.

Here’s a screenshot of part of the email my affiliate received from Google.

I understand that Google may not like this product. Although I’m only teaching people how to use image ads on the content network the right way. It’s not about the product. It’s about the idea of “BRIDGE” page or what they are deeming a bridge page.

If you are selling your products on Clickbank… then under this guide, you are using a BRIDGE page which Google will suspend you for. If you use PayPal… then you are using a BRIDGE page which Google will suspend you for. If you are using Google Checkout… then you are using a BRIDGE page which Google will suspend you for.

Do you see how crazy this is? I was contacted by two people in the past 48 hours both promoting different products. One was using Clickbank. The other was promoting the product above.

What is the solution? It’s a bit difficult, but I have an idea. We’ll wait and see what Google’s response is to our question. I’ll keep everyone updated.

UPDATE: AM Kahn a known Google expert and friend of mine recently posted a two very important posts. One dealing with what Google wants as far as landing pages. I totally agree with what he states here, in fact, I’ve been teaching this exact method for 2 years in my Armand Morin LIVE event.

Google Quality Score Demystified
Advice From Google On How To Create Content

UPDATE #2 – Andy Beard just posted an piece of amazing research regarding Google’s advertising spending and rules. I urge you to check it out.
Google Adwords – Mid to Long Tail – Google Doesn’t Care?