Back On The IM Horse

Back on the IM Horse

I completed my October cycle challenge – 1,000 kms from Rockhampton to Gold Coast – in the last week of October. I had grand ideas of getting back on the Internet Marketing horse pretty sharply.

 

I did write last time that I was going to change things up a bit and spend less time blogging about investing (once a week instead of every day I make trades). Well I have done that as you will see if you go and look at the Investing blogs menu item above. I did one blog last week and two this week. Next one will be next week.

I did spend an afternoon on horse racing. It was Melbourne Cup Day and I like to have a flutter. I made a few dollars – more than I made in Internet Marketing for that particular day. The winning horse was Vow and Declare, an Australian bred and trained and ridden horse – one of only two Australian bred horses in the race. Maybe the name could be a mantra for what I need to do next

I Vow and Declare to be more focused on IM stuff.

So you might well ask what have I done with the time given that the last blog post was sent out two weeks ago.

• I have done some cycling – I did complete the extra kms to get past 1,250 kms for my Great Cycle Challenge. I have done a little more too.
• I have added a few new tools to the Internet Marketing armoury – one in video and one in social media.
• I have promoted a few new product areas to my lists.
• I have promoted a few new avenues in the Internet Profits suite.

Let’s walk through the stories.

New tools used

Vidnami (was Content Samurai)

This is a tool for creating videos from slide packs. Periodically they run a 40% off special offer on the monthly charge. This new offer was a bit different as it includes for the first time a huge library of video and music tracks. Now I am perfectly able to create my own videos in Camtasia – the library was the swing point for me to add another shiny object. Now I did dive into my Video Marketing Insider training to see what Adam Payne had to say. He had a good walkthrough – hooked. Bought it and made my first video in 10 minutes to test out on one of my blogging opt-in pages.

Convertri Video

My landing page builder, Convertri, were also running an upgrade promotion around their new video player. They were finding that upload times were being hampered by slow load times from Youtube and Vimeo and Wistia, so they built their own video player. As a charter member of Convertri I get access to that ability – so I used it for my new opt-in page. I do like leveraging stuff in a “two for the price of one” sort of way.

Now I did send that new opt-in page to one of my solo ads sources which has proved to have a high click rate but a low conversion rate. That first run did get solid traffic (about 200 clicks) but low opt-ins (2 only on day one). That tells me the video stuff is working better than the static web page stuff for that traffic source. For my next scheduled Traffic For Me solo ad run I hoped to split the traffic between the text based and the video based opt-in pages to see what sticks. Sadly I got to make the changes too late – stuck with the static pages for this run.

I did also make a video for my 2nd lead magnet opt-in page on list building – that has been getting some traffic but no opt-ins. What I have found along the way is that the integration between Convertri and Getresponse, my autoresponder, is being reset periodically. Ticket is into support at Convertri – I cannot identify the problem from my end and I do know that Getresponse integration with my Fusion HQ page builder is still working uninterrupted as I did get an opt-in there last week.

Also started supporting the product launch as an affiliate. Got some clicks BUT no sales just yet.

Social Media Booster

I bought into a program of done for you social media posts from Alice Seba. It was a lifetime deal to get 30 daily social media images (quotes, thought starters and tips) delivered month by month. Engagement on social media is central to any organic free traffic model – being creative every day can be a challenge. Here is a sample – click the image to get your own free sample pack.

Social Media Booster recommend branding the images used for social media posts. I developed a logo a long time ago. Today was the day to dig it out and apply it. Might as well make it into a favicon too. At one level making a favicon is easy – shrink a logo to 16 X 16 and save it as a .ICO file. Getting favicons to work across all the mobile devices is a little harder. Found this fabulous tool which sorts out the complexities wrestling across the various standards. Adding a logo to an image as a watermark was easy enough – I use the Batch Conversion tool in Irfanview – a free image editor. It did all 30 images in one pass.

Automated Posting

That took me into the next set of challenges. How to automate the posting? I have been using automation tools for quite some time to get social media posting working. This is a challenging area as the rules of the game change all the time – keeping track and dealing with the changes is a nightmare. Finding the right sort of tool to schedule was what I focused on. Two of the leading tools are Buffer and Hootsuite. I have paid accounts at both. I worked with both to see what would work best. I landed up using Hootsuite to post to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Pages. I am still struggling to do Facebook personal profile – Facebook seem to have closed that down OR I have run into limits on the number of profiles I can use. I picked Hootsuite as it was easier to do multiple profiles at once. Buffer seems to be a one by one process. I run two passes at it for a week at a time – one for Facebook and Instagram and one for Twitter as it has a different message size limit.

HTML Email Sending

In the recesses of my mind, I seem to recall being told that sending plain text emails improved deliverability. So up to now I have been setting up my entire autoresponder series using plain text emails. Quite frankly my open rates have been low – or have they? Truth is a plain text email has no way of telling if an email has been opened. You only know there has been action if the email bounces or if the recipient actually clicks one of the links. So I know my click rate is low – does that tell me anything about how good my email subject lines are? No idea. Almost all the emails I receive from an army of Internet Marketers look like plain text – barring one difference. The links are not autoresponder gibberish links – they are proper sentences with real words and calls to action. Big clue there. The emails are in fact not plain text emails – they are HTML emails with only the links set up as HTML – so they do not look like auttoresponder gibberish links. Time to change that. Into my autoresponder help system I dive to find if I can convert my existing series – nah – got to cut and paste and replace. So I started doing just that – start in the middle of the series where people are about to receive emails and work forward from there. I did that in a few places for 10 days or so – will get back to finish off before I start my next solo ads campaign. Done now though I still have one series to fix – and it is about to start a new campaign with a lot of new members.

Iceberg Effect

Over the last few months, Dean Holland has been putting the finishing touches to his new book The Iceberg Effect. I have signed up as a co-branding partner. It has taken him some time to get all the pieces in place. That has suited me just fine as I am well behind the game too. I did get my copy in the mail this week and am half way though as I write this. His story of struggle is compelling reading – basically bankrupt at age 24 through buying too many shiny objects with not a lot of sales to show for it. The key part of the story was in him finding a mentor, Alex Jeffrey, to help him. Mentoring has been a key part of his journey to success – learn from people who know how to do stuff.

The model for the launch is Free Plus Shipping = the book is free just pay a small charge for shipping and handling. The charge does not cover the costs of shipping but it does look for a commitment of some form. These buyers tend to be better quality and less like tyre kickers we see from free giveaways.

Getting ready for the Iceberg Effect did prompt me to promote Dean Holland’s earlier “free plus shipping” book, Affiliate Marketer’s Playbook, directly. I made a video which incorporates one of his stock videos and promoted it to one of my solo ad channels. Ad worked and it did get some traffic and a few clicks but no sales. Key is I have the template in place to run the Iceberg Effect – just change the video. The direct promotion has one key weakness – new subscribers land up on Internet Profits list and not on mine. As response rates are low in a few channels I use I figured that this was OK – takes out one step in the path which might just be the step that blocks people from acting. I will promote the offer to my lists with the new video running.

Comfort Zone Launch

I really like Alice Seba’s PLR materials. They are well presented and well thought through = look very professional. I have added her stuff to the products I will promote. Dean Holland did suggest to co-branding partners that we needed to widen the range of products we support. I will be selective in what I promote as the product launch model is a way to burn a list – I have promoted two now (Social Media Booster and Comfort Zone). The promotions are telling me a lot about my channels – getting people to look but very few clicks to open and no sales just yet. This is prompting me to write a blog post about Using PLR and maybe even run some webinars.

Back on the Horse Lessons

A few things come out of ten days of getting back on the horse

• There is a lot of technical stuff one has to grasp
• There are a lot of moving parts to corral – between products, promotions, lists, solo ad runs, autoresponder series, social media engagement

That all points to a need for two things

1. Tighten up on documentation of how to do things
2. Use to do lists more actively.

I have written about using Trello to do both. I have just not been disciplined enough to make it work. That has to change. I am currently working of a hand written list = massive progress. That said I did miss the timing on item 1 of today’s list – it was time critical. But it can be scheduled in for next week.

Resources

Convertri is a page builder first and foremost. Its strongest selling points are the load time for pages and the easy to use editor for desktop and mobile pages. It works for me and the price point is lower than the main competitors. There is a free trial period – you will not be disappointed. Try it here

Vidnami (was Content Samurai) is a tool for creating videos from slide packs. It includes a large library of free to use video clips and images and also music. There are AI based voice effects but I prefer to do my own voice overs – they work better. There is a free trial period – you will not be disappointed. Try it here

Real Favicon Generator is  a neat tool I found to generate favicons. It creates the images and the code needed to plug into your website. You will see mine – the stylised M.  If you don’t have a logo to use, there is a link on the page to get one for only $19. Access it here – it’s free but you can make a donation. I did.

Social Media Booster is a done for you service to create material for social media posts. Download a free 30 day trial  pack here

Hootsuite is a platform for managing all your social networks. It provides a single dashboard where you can see all the social interactions in one place. It also includes publishing tools to share content across platforms with  direct posting and scheduled posting.  There is a free plan and a 30 day trial opportunity (not an affiliate link)

Video Marketing Insider is a membership site run by Adam Payne focused on video marketing. Adam has built a standalone business in video marketing basically promoting video related product. As a former teacher, he has a good teaching and coaching style. I like his stuff. Take a tour – he is threatening to raise the annual fee this coming week. Get in fast