Times they are a changing

There’s Ed Dale (below) and then Ryan Deiss Doom and Gloom Video called – Is this the end of the Internet! (selling his answer to doom and gloom program)

and Frank Kern going to the offline market (but marketing his offline program – online- watch here)

However its true – Times they are (as usual a changing)

Ed Dale – Oct 18th: -

I’ve been thinking deeply about the direction of online business and the most crucial element of all, how we get traffic.

When it comes down to it, there are only 3 ways you can get people to see your stuff.

1. You can drive traffic to your site from the organic listings in search engines such as Google.
2. You can buy traffic. Google pay per click and Facebook demographic advertising, along with banner advertising, list buying and more exotic techniques such as re-targeting all fall into this category.
3. You become a market leader. You become one of the top 20 influences in your market. Easy!…

It seems to me, there are 3 major factors combining to create one of the largest inflection points we’ve seen in years in our business.

(Look at me – I used the phrase ‘inflection point’)

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

The cost of effective traffic has been going north at a rapid rate. Notice I said “effective” traffic. As more and more of the traditional advertising spend for large corporation’s gets poured in to online advertising it makes it harder and more expensive for us entrepreneurs to compete.

This is particularly true, when you’re starting out. The average cost of a phrase test with pay per click advertising is between $200 and $400. I remember, with some fondness, when a phrase test would cost $20, way back in the good old days of 2004.

The other economic condition we cannot ignore, is the current global environment. In many parts of the world people are struggling right now and their disposable income is not what was.

This is both a threat and an opportunity.

I remember Gary Halbert telling me about the “little blue books”. While I was researching my current theories I decided to hunt down what the “little blue books” were all about.

For 10 cents, you would get a pamphlet stylebook covering everything from stories by famous authors such as H.G.Wells, guides on how to win competitions and for the time, quite thought-provoking topics such as atheism and homosexuality.

During the depression, these little blue books were the equivalent of today’s Internet. A little respite, in the overall economic devastation of the late 20s and early 30s.

At 10 cents apiece, E.Haldeman-Julius sold $15 million worth of these books (that’s $193 million in today’s money)

Right now, we’re seeing extraordinary sales for apps, I think this is the equivalent of the “little blue book”. For $.99 we get a bit of respite and a little bit of enjoyment.

It’s no coincidence coffee sales also, are extremely strong.

It’s these little pleasures which delight and brighten our Day that seem to be driving markets.

You might have noticed we have been experimenting with different price points as well. More on that later.

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM

If you add up all the information collected from the beginning of time to 2003, Eric Schmidt (Googles Chairman) has been quoted as saying the search giant collects that amount of information every 2 days!

When I grew up, I lived in a tiny country town that had two TV stations, one radio station and one newspaper. If it wasn’t for the lifeline of Judge Dredd comics and PC Magazine I’m not sure where I would’ve ended up!

Today, we are bombarded with an almost dizzying array of messages. I believe the success of Facebook is in large part due to its ability to filter out information for the average person so they only receive interesting stuff from people they know.

E-mail delivery and open rates have been declining and I don’t see the trend changing.

As marketers, we have been able to take each of these technologies and exploited “arbitrage” type situations – where for a period of time we could exploit a new technique or technology.

If users are fleeing the traditional Internet of e-mail and web browsing and finding safe haven inside of Facebook and their smartphone (I love you Siri!) where they have much more control of the information they receive I for one believe we need to change and take it into account.

DUNBAR’s NUMBER

It’s worth taking a look at Wikipedia to read about Dunbar’s number. His contention, is any one human being has the capacity to maintain approximately 150 relationships and in early society villages tended to break up once they reached around the 150 figure.

What’s remarkable, is we are seeing the same phenomena online with Joe and Jane Smith (average people, not crazy people like you and I) not being able to maintain more than about 150 friends.

In this new world, the power of recommendation is becoming dominant. Joe and Jane Smith are inundated. They have no choice but to rely heavily on the recommendations of friends and family (not to mention the recommendations of friendly Australians who they follow online :–))

The competition for attention is becoming crazy, what hope has someone new to a market to try and grab some of that attention?

The great news is, there is a repeatable, step-by-step process that will allow anybody to become a respected influencer and in any market inside 12 months.

TECHNOLOGY

I really feel for Google (stop it, I really do!), The cornerstone of the entire search algorithm is breaking down and they know it.

Think about it, the only people creating backlinks today are you, me and the digerati. It’s the tiniest percentage of people on the Internet. Hardly the perfect indicator of what is relevant anymore. For 13 years, backlinks have been everything, today, they still are.

But the days of backlink dominance are coming to a swift end.

I think this is a good thing.

As Leslie Rhode pointed out in a recent conference, a class of 14-year-old girls in high school will create more links in a week than were created on the Internet in 1994.

Joe and Jane Smith do not blog.

What they do do is update their Facebook status, tweet and slap the +1 and like buttons with gay abandon.

Google can’t ignore these new social indicators. They’ve said so themselves.

What gets Joe and Jane Smith to punch the like button?

Content that matters, content that’s funny, content that has a point of view and most importantly, content they want to receive!

To ignore this new reality, to both Google and ourselves, would be suicide.

THERE IS A BRIGHT SIDE

Never before, has there been so many ways to build an audience and have an influence.

Before I go on, let me point out there are 2 kinds of influence, both equally effective.

You can be a “front of the camera” influence, someone who is comfortable with putting their own point of view and leading from the front.

You can also be a “behind-the-scenes” influencer, someone who uses the influence in a non-public way.

You also have the power to choose your communication tool. There are so many ways to build an audience now with little expense and perhaps even more importantly little skill. Being shy is no longer an excuse.

Out there just waiting for you is a message and a medium. The trick, is to figure out both. The fortunate thing is there is a step-by-step process for this to.

I’m actually dictating this blog post, on my new iPhone 4S.

I shot some video yesterday on my iPhone. The quality of the video would have required a camera costing $6,000 only six years ago!

In the old days (2004!), The big bottleneck and the hardest thing to do was produce content. It was expensive, time-consuming and required real expertise. Traffic, was easy as paying $.05 a click and being able to fill out an online form.

Today, producing high-quality content has never been easier or cheaper. Sadly, traffic has become the expensive bottleneck.

For the past 3 years, I have been shaping the idea of “Market Leadership”.

I think it’s an idea come of age.

In an online landscape where traffic is getting harder and for many existing techniques – the writing is on the wall. We need a 3rd way.

I’m guessing you want to be really proud of what you’re producing online, you want to stand behind it 100%, unfortunately some of the techniques that I’ve had to use in the past have not stood up that test.

Don’t get me wrong, the fundamentals have not changed! If you have a list of 100,000 people in your market that love what you do, you’re going to have to be a monumental screwup not to make a decent living!

If you’re one of the top 20 most influential people in your marketplace, again, you’re going have to be pretty tragic to not make a decent living.

So! All we need to do, is become one of the top 20 most influential people in a marketplace!

From Ed Dale’s Blog

First it was (and there will always be a place for) THE WORD – copy writing, the sales letter. The long page, the short page. The above the fold hard hitting message, the long page with 4,000 social proof  endorsements.

Then there was audio – while you read, or looked at bullet points an audio played.

Then came video. The little video player, the fancy video player, and the cheap production with a laptop webcam, to full production shoots.

Now comes the avatar video where your spokesperson walks onto the page – Strut is a good example on the iMambo programs.

Strut example - let it fully load to see the avatar (the guy talking)

And then there was…

Still video. It seems video hasnt peaked yet.Nor likely to in a while

Video is still the best way to get your message across the divide. The divide between the webpage and the mind of the customer

Some samples on this page, from the first John Reese and Frank Kern ‘sort of video’,

to one of his more lush shoots.

to an iPhone Vid with Frank Kern

By the way Frank Kern is promoting his Video Black box here which is probably the best seminar on how to structure Video marketing, from the expert himself -

link here – (not an affiliate link)

——————————————————

OK listen.

Today’s the day that I’m supposed to send you an email
telling you that if you don’t go to my cleverly disguised
affiliate link here:

https://touchstone. infusionsoft.com/go/ptf/a165/

(this is actually Franks link – so feel free)

…And get Perpetual Traffic Machine …then the world
will end and there will be no hope for humanity.

And then I’m supposed to do like everyone else and
offer a “killer bonus” (new kidney!) if you buy through
my link.

—————————————————————-
SCREW THAT.
—————————————————————-

Look, the ugly truth is I haven’t even looked at the
product.

So I have no clue if it’s any good.

I think it’s probably good …after all, lots of Ryan’s
stuff is VERY good.

In fact, I actually swiped the entire structure of my
Mass Control and my List Control trainings from
what I learned when I was watching Ryan create
products.

And Ryan is a member of my primary mastermind
group and I regularly call on him for advice.

Plus, you’ve seen the quality of the prelaunch
content.

That was awesome.

So Perpetual Traffic Machine is most likely
awesome.

With that said, the best advice I can give you is
this:

1. If you *think* it’ll help you, you’re probably right.
…hard to beat good ol’ intuition.

2. You can probably get a pretty good bonus if you
buy it through someone other than me.

3. If it isn’t any good, you can get a refund.

…And considering the fact that 1/2 of the planet is
promoting it right now, your inbox probably has
plenty of good bonus offers to choose from.

So I don’t see how you can go wrong.

Of course, you’re welcome to use my blatant affiliate
link below so I can make a few bucks.

I promise to squander the money on shiny objects
and beer.

https://touchstone. infusionsoft.com/go/ptf/a165/

(again Franks own link – feel free)

Talk soon,
Frank

Think you know the best day and time to send your email newsletter?

Ever wonder if your fellow email marketers are all sending at the same time you do?

Convinced your open rate is too low (or amazingly high)?

Some recent statistics pulled from all AWeber users may help you answer these questions:

What Kind of Open Rates Are People Getting?

If you’re sending HTML emails, you probably use your open rate to help gauge your success.

Even though it’s not a perfect measure of whether people are actually opening and reading your emails, it’s useful as a relative measure:

If it goes up over a short period of time, more people are probably reading

If it falls over a short period of time, it’s almost certain fewer people are reading.

Plus, all other things being equal, it can give you some motivation (if your open rates are lower than other senders’) or satisfaction (if your rates are higher).

So, here goes…

When Is/Was The Best Day To Send?

You’ll often hear (at least, I often hear) that Tuesday is the optimal day to send, because on Monday people are catching up from the weekend, and that on Tuesday morning you’ll have their undivided attention before they jump into their work for the upcoming week.

Do the numbers back up that theory? Let’s see.

The breakdown of open rates by day of the week:

Last month, Tuesday was actually the second-worst day to send, at least if you’re measuring by open rates.

(While we’re breaking assumptions, I should point out this, too: the hour of the day that got the best open rate was not 8-9AM, or 9-10AM, but in fact 2-3PM Eastern Time — email newsletters sent during that hour last month enjoyed a 19.1% open rate.)

Does This Mean I Should Switch My Campaigns To Thursdays?

In a word: No.

In both March and February, Thursday newsletters got the 3rd-worst opens vs. the rest of the week.

I hesitated a little to publish these stats, because I’m concerned that people might flock to sending their newsletters at the day or time that happened to get the best results lately.

Please, don’t drastically change your sending times/days just because you see that the average last month, or any month, happened to be higher on a different day or time.

Yes, you might eventually be able to shift your sending schedule, or split test some broadcasts, but if you up and move everything, you may throw off subscribers who are used to hearing from you at the usual time.

“It’s So Busy, Nobody Goes There Anymore”

To get at the other reason for not shifting your sending based on these stats, let’s paraphrase Yogi Berra (see above).

If everyone switches their sending schedule to send on say, Thursday, then recipients will start getting a ton of email that day, and start paying less attention to each individual email.

One possible reason for Thursday’s success last month may be that it wasn’t as popular as say, Tuesday or Wednesday for sending email:

Those higher-volume days mean more emails in readers’ inboxes, which might contribute to reduced open rates. Following that reasoning, some people may look at the low weekend volume (more email newsletters were sent on Tuesdays than on Saturdays and Sundays combined) and see an opportunity to get their audiences’ undivided attention.

My main point in showing these is to point out that our assumptions about what works are often quite wrong, and that you ultimately have to test for yourself to see what best suits your audience.

Some Inspiration… And Some Help

Are you getting better open rates than this?

If so, GREAT! Give yourself a pat on the back…

…but don’t get complacent. Open rates aren’t the be-all, end-all of email metrics. They don’t guarantee that people are reading your emails, only that they have images turned on and that they probably saw your email for at least a moment.

Plus, there’s always room for improvement, right?

Some ideas that can help you raise your open rates:

Ask people to add you to their address books. Some email programs will display images from senders who are in the recipient’s contact list.

If you are putting pictures in your emails, use the ALT text for those images to pique readers’ interest in what the picture is, so that they enable images. Or, just directly ask readers to turn on images!

Add a picture of yourself to your emails, near/next to your signature. People like seeing your smiling face, and if they see it in one of your emails, they may be more likely to turn on images to see it again later.