Internet Business Blog By James Schramko

In this podcast James Schramko asks Jen Sheahan from FB Ads Lab these hard hitting paid social media questions: Can  you really make money on Facebook? What products or services work best on Facebook advertising? Is Facebook better to use for branding, direct response or cross promotions? Jen Sheahan on stage Highlights in this paid traffic episode include: How to get dramatic improvements in ad response Mind blowing remarketing strategies for internet marketers Internet Marketing segmentation tips Should you DIY Facebook Ads or have it done for you by a Facebook service agency? Enjoy this episode and be sure to comment on iTunes. Check out FBAdsLab: Jen is a speaker at FWF3

James Dyson is the creator of Optimizepress Wordpress Software. How did he build such a strong software business that the entire Internet Marketing community adapted so quickly? In this Podcast James Dyson and James Schramko discuss the following Software Business related topics: Why good looking sites are essential for branding and the modern web How to move your mindset from specialist to business owner The best system for getting software developed Leverage concepts you can apply with the knowledge you ALREADY have! Why being a programmer is perhaps a DIS-advantage if you want to make money from software The three main types of software you can choose from Where to hire reasonably priced programmers How to test the market BEFORE creating anything or spending any money Avoiding 'investors' and how to partner on software projects if you have no money The essential steps you can take to reduce support strains after launch How big a team you might need to manage a million dollar software business What was the biggest SHOCK in his last year James Dyson's famous OptimizePress software with a BONUS Conversions Video can be bought via this BONUS site: OptimizePress Bonus James Dyson is a FastWebFormula3 expert.

Ed Dale and I caught up for an hour long chat about the changing landscape of Internet Marketing. One thing we can be sure of in the Internet space is change. Each time Ed and I catch up there are new things going on with attitudes, software, strategies, hardware, systems and observations. In this revealing podcast you will get the latest info on a broad range of topics: Working from home v's office Ed's REAL driving force for success How your brain works (and is changing!) The essential SKILL you can acquire even if you didn't think you could Creative cross -market pollination ideas Why pre-judging is hurting your results.. In this podcast I ask Ed why he does not yet have a tech blog - the answer may just help you with your own opportunity filtering. We then go on to talk about G+ (Google +) and WHY it exists. Beyond that we discuss: Why Ed chooses certain technology solutions (No, it is NOT if it has Apple on the cover)... A secret about Ed's past that explains his ability to orchestrate his business The ultimate solution to shopping cart abandonment The best continuity deal on the planet Pricing versus value trends (We mention my TrafficGrab product as a case study) The BEST way to build value around higher priced offers The +1 button and why it is a big deal (put it on your websites!) Ed's new podcast >> video animation concept How to protect yourself from losing your content (obvious answer yet so few people do this) Building your Author rank Ed's number ONE (and mine) strategy for becoming an authority Are Hoodies Good or Evil?... If you like this podcast be sure to see Ed Dale at FastWebFormula3 and be sure to hit the +1 button :) Subscribe on iTunes

Andy Grand is a rather private super affiliate from Switzerland. A member of the Apex club for top 100 Clickbank affiliates he knows a great deal about affiliate marketing. Together we run the most focused Internet Marketing Community on the web - SuperFastResults. Listen to todays podcast to hear Andy answer my questions: Is Affiliate marketing still valid? What changes have taken place in the market? The best traffic source? What is different after the Google SEO changes? Is the Google affiliate program good? Explain the Clickbank / Plimus changes? Andy will be visiting Australia to present at FWF3 ATTENTION: Affiliate Marketers Andy and I put together a hands-on 8 Week Super Affiliate Masterclass. Watch the video here to see my affiliate mistakes and successes plus discover if this program is your best option for getting ahead in the shortest amount of time: Masterclass started August 15th - CCheck the course here!! Please rate this episode on iTunes

Last week I visited Google Australia. They are getting pretty keen to share with marketing agencies how best to sell Adwords. For your benefit I made some notes since you may either be selling to businesses, considering selling to businesses or perhaps...

Alexi Neocleous from MarketingBump has developed a terrific system for getting high paying customers coming to him. Getting the customer to take action is the topic of todays Podcast. You will discover: - How to sell by NOT saying same thing as others - What almost ALL multi-million dollar entrepreneurs have in common with each other - The core difference between branding and direct response marketing (and why one should be the focus) - Why hiring specialists will speed up your results faster than figuring it out yourself The ultimate customer getting funnel Listen to how Alexi sets his filters to attract the perfect 7-8 figure customers who love what they do. His sales and marketing knowledge is so strong that he designed the ultimate system to only ever attract the right customers. This discussion is perfect for you if you are consulting to businesses. Consider getting rid of your desperate, low end, service needy customers and replacing them with a high end customer instead. Profitable Mind Control When you want to increase your revenue work on your money mindset. When you have a good psychology for wealth you get better results. The self confidence that YOU and your business possess will control the type of interaction you gave with yoru clients. Alexi states you will get your exact match client. When you are starting out it is critical to re-enforce the positive wins you get as you get them. Take losses as experience lessons. It is all about positioning... Here are the steps for setting up a great sales funnel for consulting: Have a layer between you and the prospect. Instruct the client to look over your website. Ask them to look over your prices and have high prices. It is a pre-screen for cheap clients. Use lots of proof elements and success stories. Point your client to your proof elements. Create a report to give away amazing content and give your prospect the report. It is better to find out early! Some situations are best avoided. You will not be good and right for every potential customer. Make a 15 minute initial consult via phone. The customer must have read the report and the video. If the customer does not take action or the time to commit to the pre-screening process, they are not going to be right for your paid work. Work on yourself Continue learning, be a sponge and work on your self beliefs. Enjoy the discussion and please post questions / comments below! {Please rate this podcast in itunes!!)

Kevin Rogers from The Conversion Kings is a top Copywriter (and one heck of a funny guy).  Kevin has been writing some of the highest converting and hugely compelling sales letters for the big dogs in the ClickBank marketplace. Add to that his consulting gigs with super guru's in the health and property markets and you will clearly see why we have much to learn from Kevin... Kevin Rogers and James Schramko in San Diego Highlights from this podcast: Kevin takes us back to the days when he was performing stand up comedy beside Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld. His gas bill was more than he earned. Things certainly took a turn... How forum posting and guest blog posting can get you 'in' with the right crowd even if you are a total unknown. (This lead to a great connection with Copywriting Legend John Carlton)... Why Kevin creates his own offers in the niche marketplace of the Warrior Forum and his results thus far... The number one MISTAKE new people make when writing the headline. (Hint: It is probably not what you think!)... Several cool tips and a free no strings-attached gift you can download right now... Resources mentioned: Kevins FREE  training reports (No Opt-in required and no affiliation) The Conversion Kings Joe Sugarman Copywriting Book: The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters John Carlton Copywriting Course: Simple Writing System Please comment an ask questions below Kevin will also respond:  

James Schramko interviews Clint Maher from Oracle Digital. They discuss his extraordinary business growth over the last year. [Clint used the  SilverCircle weekly Mastermind program to start a new business model from scratch]. The results were staggering. Internet Marketing for Small Business The average Internet Marketer can take these skills to local business. Doing it profitably is more difficult than some of the 'gurus' preach. Make no mistake it will come with some growth challenges. Moving from sole operator to a small business has certain steps. In this podcast we get some real insights into the growth steps small business owners face. Clint offers tips about: Avoiding the 'one legged horse' business model and what NOT to do! Building a super team to write, post and syndicate content plus deal with clients Team management software Billing techniques and software Where the big opportunities exist right now for Internet Marketers Partnerships...  the good and the bad.... Tips for Putting together a six figure month: Have clear goals Adjust your goals when your business grows Look after yourself Recognize your capacity constraints Make the tough decisions when you need to Ask: "What can you do differently?" Empower your team so you can step away from the business Consider expenses versus costs Re-invest early to grow faster What should the Team have access to [According to Clint] ? NOT the money NOT the domains Gifts and Presents Excellent behaviour from the owner A feeling of belonging and fun The BEST advice available from REAL experts Summary: To grow your business very quickly you need to know what you are trying to do in advance and invest your time and early profits into accelerating it. Build a great team and be very customer focused! Keep a long term vision about your business. Please ask questions or comment below:

In this podcast I talk to my friend Jeff Siegel a multi million dollar Clickbank internet marketing expert (and a heck of a nice guy!). As a top level marketer and partner in "The diet solution program" selling over 1000 copies of health related information products per day you will enjoy the key points on offer here.... Opportunity Next door Jeff  lived next door to Isabel (now his co-partner) who attended high level training conducted by Craig Ballantyne. This led to Isabel meeting Vince Delmonte and Mike Geary who are also fitness industry superstars. Knowing this was an advantage not to be ignored Isabel asked Jeff for help putting up a website.  (This is proof that a Mastermind level coaching can pay huge dividends). Do Sales Videos Work? Jeff really pushed the envelope testing out Video Sales Pages. Soon a few hundred sales day turned into a few thousand sales a day. Start with an introduction, then establish credibility and follow up with ten minutes of solid content. How Super Affiliates Conquer The Market With 500 Sales Per day... They use paid advertising. If you are stuck on the 'free' treadmill then it is going to be a slow ride at 1% conversions...  Jeff recommends product owners prove conversions yourself first. JV's will send spurts of warm traffic, in fact some affiliates can do 500 sales themselves in a single day. TIP: January is the big month for diet solutions! How important is the product itself? You need to continually update the product but it is super important to have quality from the start. Jeff is all about integrity.  Make sure you have related up-sells that accelerate the results, save time or effort. Perhaps build a community to encourage additional product consumption. Increase customer service with a call centre. Jeff will have operators verify orders and answer questions whilst offering additional deals. Does Size Matter? Currently Jeff has a small company size - 10 people on staff with outsourced remote team members. The structure is 2 senior partners, 2 junior partners. On Striking JV Deals.... With ClickBank you will need to get JV partners on board. How do small players approach big players for deals? TIP: dont bring up business first! Be sure to attend conferences. Super affiliates big in marketing stuff always have things going on so super affiliates can come and go. Focus your energy on helping affiliates make money It takes 75% of your effort to stay up to date and tread water. Jeff has a warning about crazy affiliates who can get you banned from Google. Keep a close eye on them and avoid affiliates who run 'scam' angle campaigns. Conversion Suggestions It is essential to conduct split testing and tracking. Jeff often creates special pages for affiliates who make a lot of sales and have a good history. These special pages will have headlines to match ads for continuity. Lead people all the way from start to finish - you must not slack off at the finish. Everything is counter intuitive so persistance and risk are important. What tools can be used for testing? Jeff recommends Googles Conversion Optimizer . TIP: always go with simple. Get simple working first then go advanced. Start with A:B split testing before trying heat maps. How do you attract affiliates? Hire an affiliate manager to recruit super affiliates. The Diet Solution Program is ClickBank’s top selling program in the Health & Fitness space. Jeff knows what he is talking about! Affiliate Site: www.thedietsolutionprogram.com/affiliates Success Tip From Jeff Go the extra mile with your own internet marketing campaign.... Ask questions or comment below:

Lets hit the boost button and apply a few leverage tips to optimize your profits. Effective use of financial concepts in your business can really add to your bottom line each year and hopefully this will help you with a couple of ideas. Cost Cutting Mistakes The first concept that I really want to address is cost cutting. Most people try and reduce costs instead of increasing profits and this is what keeps people poor. Stop being obsessed with “cost”. They can only ever be reduced by 100%. What you need to be doing is to focus on getting the profit and I’m going to show you some formulas to help you explain this. Lets open our eyes to bigger possibilites... Total Sales x Margin = Profit I have to give credit to Jay Abraham because he is the pioneer teacher of this method. Total sales x your margin = profit. So take everything you sell times your margin equals profit so if that’s true let’s just look at some numbers. $100K x 50% = $50k If we sell a $100k and our margin is 50%, we make $50k. Our costs are $50k and most people will try and focus in reducing that costs and try and get more of that $100k. Increase Investment But what happens if we increase our costs? If we call it an investment and we go and buy some really targeted traffic using everything we’ve learned in a course like Traffic Grab? If we would increase our investment in traffic 10 times, if we would’ve go crazy and spend $500,000 and if we could scale it to a $1,000,000 sales amount then now, we have a $500,000 profit. We spent ten times more but we made ten times more. Advanced Financial Mindset Lets apply an advanced mindset to the process. Frankly, a lot of people just don’t have a good financial mindset so your big question should be, ‘How can I invest more into my business that converts so that I can sell more than what I spend?’ and that’s the goal. The Next Level Take this up a notch. If you can increase your expense by another factor now you’re generating $3 million in sales and let’s say that you have a margin of 50% because a lot of these things are completely scalable (and I know this because this is about what’s happened to my business). You’ll end up with a $1.5M profit. Sure your cost is 1.5M and your profit is 1.5M. Now if you remember that first example you’re making $50,000. So what I’ve just shown you is pretty much my business graduation from the beginning to now and I can tell you I’ll keep looking to increase my sales if I could do $10M and it costs me $5M, that’s okay because I’m still going to make $5M profit when it’s all said and done and there’s other side effects too. Asset Growth I can tell you that it’s more likely if I’m investing $1.5M a year into websites and domains and teaching my team, then I’m pretty sure I’ve got an amazing asset that could be sold for multiples and at the end of the day, the goal of the business for me is to build up equity that I could sell to somebody else. I want to create a business that has cashflow and is sale-able.  Three step Action Plan So that’s a leverage concept worth grasping. Stop playing with 'push button magic' and start growing your REAL business. Here are some action steps you can take that are partly inspired by business genius Peter Drucker. 1) Identify what needs to be done that is best for your business 2) Develop an implementation plan (and be responsible to carry it through) 3) Focus on opportunity (investments) rather than problems (costs) Please Post your comments / questions below:

Podcasting is pretty cool because we get to create premium MP3 content and distribute it everywhere across the internet. We can fully take advantage of all those portable devices out there and this is taking content that we prepared for other channels ...

Our podcast guest is Daniel Dobos a memory expert who runs  Mental Blank VCE. Dan is an education memory expert specializing in advanced learning strategies. Students using his techniques experience better results. I ask Daniel how can people get the best results from a product since people tend to start at the start of a product and start from the beginning  and follow through the program in a linear fashion. Before you consume (or create) your next Internet Marketing info product you should be aware of how you learn. Many people ask for 'Step-by-step' training without knowing the facts. When I was putting together my latest product 'TrafficGrab' I thought I would help students optimize the learning outcomes of the training. This interview was the next logical step. Here is the typical linear viewing activity as displayed in Analytics "People need to know what outcomes they want when they approach it" If they do not know in advance they will most likely find it hard to learn anything useful. The best method is to dive into the parts that solve the biggest problem. After listening to Dan Dobos Ideally your video viewing will be non linear, you will get more consumption and faster solutions. People are going to have different problems and they may not reach the gems waiting for them if they start at the beginning. The best way to consume Upfront gain an understanding of the total product. As product creators we should encourage people to find the right part of the products. Customers may only consume a small part of a product and it is our job as the content creator to make products easy to consume. Break your product into small chunks and let people dive in to the part that can help them the most. How to Create Better Information Products Create a welcome video to help people see the whole program and TELL them to jump to the videos that will be most useful for them. Daniel highlighted that we probably have different types of customer need to use the product differently and we can tell them how to consume the product best. Putting a table of contents is the best way to help people mocha through transcription PDF. Another technique is to categorize your videos into smaller groups that relate to the same topic. Daniel mentioned that in TrafficGrab I could split my videos into paid / free and borrowed traffic. Bottom line - make it easy for people to get the maximum amount of value that is there with the minimum amount of effort. Tip: Using a multiplayer video display makes this very easy. Accelerated learning Enounce is software that allows you to speed up videos and can help retention of information fast. Dan recommends it highly. Please comment or ask questions below  

Over the last three months I have been collating and recording a serious training product about getting targeted website traffic called "TrafficGrab". I went through the last five years worth of traffic strategies I have tested. Next I mapped out and sytstemized the process my own team use. What was left was the trafficGrab system. Just the information you need and nothing else. The first training modules are free and they cover: How to research the right buying phrases The best content to prepare to attract buyers What site structure to use to harness conversions The other (paid) modules cover: Traffic - and LOTS of it Conversions - so you make profit Leverage - make event more profit! What you can expect There are 24 traffic Steps, a huge Mindmap and at least 9 hours of high quailty video in this full course. (Some people think I am a little crazy making all of this available for just a one time investment of only $79.95). Start viewing the first modules from the course for FREE Highlights from the course include: How to get targeted traffic from scratch. How to build a list of qualified buyers. How to scale campaigns once you get conversions. The big traffic channels are covered: Facebook Traffic (Paid and Free) Youtube Traffic (Video domination) Google Traffic (Getting top SEO positions) Affiliate Traffic PPC Traffic (Pay-per-click) RSS Traffic Article Traffic Web 2.0 Traffic Email List Traffic and way more.... Case Studies revealed In this training I am showing a few case studies where I generated truly excellent sales results. You can see the EXACT campaigns and how I did it. It is not often you see real results laid bare like this. I am taking a big risk educating my competition.  The system I have developed can be replicated. My students have been able to get similar results so perhaps you can get some value from this too. TrafficGrab System reveals... If you ever wanted to see how to generate 300,000 views per month on Facebook, or have more than one million dollars flow through your shopping cart each year, this is the place to see it. I've done it. The introduction video is waiting for you here (please make a comment if you like the videos!)

Today we talk to Jennifer Sheahan  - aka PPCmom, Social Groove and FbAdsLab.com.  These days Jen is a Facebook paid marketing expert. Jen and her husband decided that a corporate career was not the best way forward for a family so she taught herself affiliate marketing. Paid traffic is awesome Paid traffic was something she got really good at after creating her first information product (an ebook).  Driving more traffic turned into a PPC obsession where she taught herself how to leverage an income from building up the size of the campaign from very small starting budget. Facebook domination time! After some hardcore CPA (Cost per action) advertising Jenn settled recently on mastering Facebook since so many people are going on there and it makes perfect sense to specialize on that platform in the mid term. Maximizing paid advertising spend on Facebook Facebook has highly targeted advertising opportunities since it draws in around 500,000 million users at any one time. These Facebook users are sharing extremely personalized information making it easy make sales. Research  your product Make sure you have a product / offer that you can sell. Some products can not be promoted however Jen recommends you start with offers / products that you love such as cameras or video coupons etc… Find products at Amazon, Commission Junction and direct affiliate products. Direct linking is alive and well on Facebook Set up a direct link to the merchant to test it and then when you meet advertising costs then you can build out a site on the topic. You can also build a fan page for affiliate products in passion markets. Getting started advertising on Facebook Now set up a simple Facebook ad to promote it. Low campaign budget is recommended $10 - 20 per day and a low cost per click. Put the click budget way lower than what Facebook recommend (ignore the warning that the bid is too low). If you do not get any clicks then bump up the clicks to the next bracket. CPC versus CPM? Initially CPC (cost per click) is better to test the campaign and then roll out to CPM (cost per thousand impressions) as you know your metrics. High CTR The goal is to get at least  .30 CTR (click through rate).  Whilst the average  CTR is .03 Jen thinks a high CTR will lead to success for distribution.  Use images every time. Eye contact is important. Use pictures Get a picture of a happy smiling women (from the waist up) who is looking you in the eye. If that happy smiling is doing something that relates to the product that can be great for CTR.  Amateur photos showing the thing that you are selling work really well. Add text to images Get photoshop, Gimp or snagit to add text to the photo. You can put text in images to extend the headline. This really helps when you advertise a fan page. Use a matching font to the headline to give it the appearance of being  a longer headline. Drive Traffic internally a fan Page or externally? If you have a custom fan page you can send them there. If the fan page is bland or auto-posted then you should send traffic offsite. Engage people or lose them. If you are going to send them to a website you can squeeze emails and you can also do that on Facebook now. Targeting Google and Facebook are very different. Before you create your ad you should have a great list of all you competitors and targeted people who your customer will be following. Pay particular attention to the demographics of your market. Ads should target your ideal client is massive detail according to country, state, gender, marital status, school, suburb, fans and job. The insights section of your fan page will tell you who is visiting. Ninja Targeting Secret You can bid on competitors names as an interest (if they are there) in the like section and it will show when people visit there. This is seriously like a stalker ad with social proof mice in.

Robert Grant and Ian Chapman are the dynamic duo who produce great content relating to Facebook. To become the experts they have had to spend hours delving into the 'ins and outs' of Facebook. With the new attention put onto social media by mainstream press awareness is at an all time high. Now most media outlets, cinemas and newspapers are fully talking about Facebook. Robert and Ian also consult to high end clients. The massive changes Facebook is integrating with Paypal and the Visa network. Now people will be able to do business ON Facebook. this is a huge change because people will no longer need to leave Facebook to do business. Facebook Places Facebook Places taking on the 'Foursquare' style of locational marketing places local business into the picture. Businesses can now interact with clients and users by using a reward system. Shops and restaurants are exploding with new opportunity and this changes the game for ever. One Billion LIKE buttons.... The consequence of this mass roll out of LIKE buttons have caused Facebook to now refer more traffic than Google. Now we refer people to new websites via friends and fan pages rather than just search engines. This is the biggest driver affecting buyer behavior more so than any time before. This is the exact same phenomena that the Link Liberation team were saying changes the traditional SEO game for ever. Referrals Having a referral base with endorsed qualified traffic makes this a very interesting time to be using Facebook. Smart web masters can also use the Facebook connect feature to bring Facebook into your site. You can (depending on the Facebook pricey settings) now laser target specific demographics and run highly targeted marketing campaigns. People will find out At the click of a button people can share content fast driving endorsed traffic. Google must be wondering what to do about this. The other shift now is from one way marketing to integrated marketing. Modern marketers must integrate marketing channels to create a fan base. Fan pages, email marketing, viral friend referral and peer group influence used together mean you will have a super engaged audience.  When we see crowds moving into a product or service area then we see a whole crowd becoming a larger crowd fast. The social movement creates a ripple effect. This is the same as when the cool kids at school create a new trend. Offsite Integration with facebook 150,000,000 people per month are integrating with off site Facebook integration. When people on your site integrate with a plugin that connects to Facebook you will see faces and that implies social proof. Everyone sees the comments and they are almost always logged into Facebook so it is easy to place comments. When the faces belong to friends - then it is the best scenario possible. Visitors will find it hard to forget about you. Is it dangerous to include the connect function because of leakage? Sometimes you might not want to include a like or connect feature if you have a specific conversion path. If you have a blog then you can put a widget on the sidebar. These can also be used on an exit pop. This is a GOOD place to put it. I am adding one to my email subscription confirm page. Be strategic and think about the goal of the page. Can we be too dependent on Facebook? Some people build their entire business on the Facebook platform. Given FB's consistent appetite for change users should be careful. Make sure you know the rules, Drive the traffic into your list and get into the Facebook game as much as you can while it is hot. Once you have a client list you have an asset. Facebook do make changes at times that are difficult to debate. Take the precautions such as having a dual admin for your account. That way if one person gets banned you can still manage the fan page. Participate but know the rules! More Facebook Marketing Tips With 5.4 Billion subscribed to fan pages you need to have one.