Here it is.

I’ve put together an email mini-course that steps through the process of making money online with internet marketing.

It contains information about doing market research, testing, creating you own product, list building, how to become and expert in one afternoon, autoresponders, copywriting, and many more tips and techniques I’ve learned from some of the best internet marketing gurus like Ed Dale, Frank Kern and Jeff Walker.

You know, we’re probably a lot alike.  I want to live life on my terms, not be chained to a desk working to make someone else rich.  I want to be able to decide when and where I take my vacations

Technorati Tags: ed dale, email, frank kern, free, halotis, jeff walker, make money online, matt warren, mini-course, plan of attack

I’ve been up late at night for the past few days putting the finishing touches on my Free Make Money Online Plan of Attack email mini-course.

At noon EST on Friday April 18th. I’ll make it available right here on HalOtis.com

They say that being an entrepreneur is hard work. It takes long hours and dedication. Well for the last few weeks I’ve experienced that.

I’ve been doing an extraordinary amount of research over the last 3 weeks or so. I get home from work and sit back down at a computer until late in the evening.

I’m compiling everything that I’ve learned over the past year into a concise plan. It’s just about done but needs some last minute loving before it’s ready for everyone to read.

I’m calling it “Your Make Money Online Plan of Attack” and it will be available this Friday, April 18th.

Stay tuned because there’s lots of great information in it. I’m so excited to get some feedback from everyone about this.

If you’re not on twitter yet. what’s holding you up?

Since January Twitter has just exploded and within the last week I’ve noticed a huge bump again in the popularity of the service. You have to sign up to see what it’s all about.  Watch these videos to take you from absolute beginner to a Twitter NINJA.

On Twitter?  Follow me http://twitter.com/halotis

Here’s a video on how to sign up:

And then install the best twitter client around called Twhirl

Then see how it all works:

Once you sign up follow me http://twitter.com/halotis

Technorati Tags: ed dale, halotis, how-to, master twitter, sign up, twhirl, twitter, twitter ninja, videos, youtube

I’ve been learning a lot about copywriting lately by listening to some of the world’s best copywriters namely John Carlton, and Gary Halbert. I’ve read a number of books on the subject of sales and selling and marketing. Though I wouldn’t consider myself to be a good copywriter I have developed a sense of what qualifies as good.

Why is it that telemarketers have the lamest scripts of all. Someone must be the professional copywriter that pens those things before handing them to the people that actually do the calls. It’s as if they’ve broken every rule about good marketing. I hope they get fired.

The last telemarketing call I got was for an identity protection program that costs $15/month. The script was lame, uninteresting, and felt like they were taking my attention and wasting it. It was 5 long minutes that I’ll never get back.

If I were writing the copy for such a sale it would go something like this:

Hello, I’m looking for [First name]

–
Hi Mr/Ms [Lastname] I’m [callers first name] calling on behalf of [business name]. Have you heard of Identity Theft?

Identity theft is a growing threat that many of our customers are worried about and I want to share with you some FREE TIPS that you can do right now to help protect yourself against identity theft. We value you as a customer and it’s in our best interest as well as yours to prevent identity theft. I have FOUR really simple things that you can start doing today to reduce your risks.

First, when you’re throwing bills, receipts and invoices in the garbage, make sure you use a paper shredder. Identity theives can get a lot of information about you from your garbage, names, addresses, phone numbers, and bank account information found in the garbage could be used to create fake documents and steal your identity.

Second, only buy things online from reputable sites. Ensure that the page you punch your credit card information into is encrypted and that you trust the site to be able to keep your information safe. Hackers have on several occasions over the last years broken into website databases and downloaded hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers. Making many accounts vulnerable to fraudulent charges.

Third, use cash. Recently sophisticated criminals have been swapping out point of sale keypads for ones that have been modified to record all the card information that gets swiped. Make sure that credit card and bank card keypads are either fixed to the counter or have another way that would prevent someone from switching keypads.

Lastly, [business name] is offering its GOOD customers a program that will actively search for fraudulent charges, and newly issued credit cards under your name among other things in order to keep your identity under your control. Since starting this program we’ve identified [insert number] identity thefts in progress before any damage was done to our customers. We’ll also throw in a copy of your credit report and give you a consulting call with a credit expert so you can ask questions about improving your credit score, or anything else regarding your credit score or report. We’re offering this today FREE for the first 60 days and after that we’ll have to charge you $14.95 per month because it’s not easy to stay one step ahead of the criminals and we have an excellent team devoted to keeping you safe. If you’re interested, I’ll just have to confirm your address so we can send you your free information package in the mail which should arrive by [5 business days from today]

Can I confirm your mailing address and get this sent out to you today?
…

Hell, I might have bought it with that script.

Technorati Tags: copywriter, copywriting, gary halbert, identity theft, john carlton, marketing, telemarketing

So I did spend the $2000 for the Jeff Walker course about doing a product launch. I was on the fence but because I had the money saved up to invest in the business anyway and I’m planning to do a launch on one of my niche sites this summer for a product that I’m working on it just made sense to buy the course.

I’m really hoping that this 5 week course pays for itself by doing two things:

1. keeping me motivated and focused for the next few months on my product launch.
2. giving me ideas to use to increase the sales for when it does go live.

The course starts on April 7th. Stay tuned to this site because I’ll be sure to let you know about the stuff I’m learning.

Tomorrow a course is being made available for sale. And only tomorrow. It’s being sold by Jeff Walker, a guru in the online marketing world that is known for orchestrating massive product launches that bring in millions of dollars in a single day for people that use his techniques.

He’s selling a 5 week course along with some really good bonuses. The kicker is the price. At $2000 it’s a pretty expensive proposition. Is it worth it? would it make a good investment of my time and money? Do I have the time over the next few weeks to dedicate myself to the course and putting things to good use?

I really want it. (a testament to the anticipation that he’s built over the last month of marketing) The whole niche is in a frenzy waiting for this to become available on Thursday.

At $500 I would have jumped on it, at $1000 I could justify it because I just got my taxes back. At $2000 I’m torn.

I may just have to do it.

The site is: Product Launch Formula

In my last post I mentioned that I was thinking about the difference in investing in stocks vs investing in assets you can sell online. That thinking has evolved over the last week into deciding what is the best way to bootstrap a new online business.

You see the internet business that I started last year has been languishing since the beginning of the year without making any sales. Now I’m thinking of a re-launch, but this time I want to do it right from the start. A proper start that will create not just a small number of sales, but something that will be a real business.

The problem is that I’m basically starting from scratch again. I have the website set up but it’s getting no traffic. I have no email list, no connections, and no product. I’ve found a niche that which has made me $600 and I want to explore further. My next thing to do is to plan the creation of a real business from scratch.

Different internet marketers are all selling different approaches but the one thing that is hard to find is exactly where to start. If you have an email list there are tons of good products and ideas out there that you can just drop in to quickly make a huge impact in sales. If you’re already getting good traffic to a website then there is tons of stuff out there for tips on how to increase your conversions and how to leverage that traffic into collecting emails. If you have a product then there are ways to find other people to help with selling it.

But what do you do if you don’t have any of that to start with?

There are a couple of ideas that I’ve been spinning around in my mind. I’ve been weighing the benefits of different approaches. Launching a business properly is no easy task.

I still haven’t figured out the entire approach that I’m going to use, but stay tuned to this site as I reveal my business launch plan over the next few weeks.

I’ve been thinking about investing.

With the upset in the markets over the last few months due to the credit crisis, and a looming recession in the US which has led to record low interest rates as a last ditch effort to keep the economy growing. With many stocks taking a nose dive, I’m weary about putting more money into my stock investing account until we hit the bottom.

I’ve been trying to think of good alternate places to invest. To diversify my investments to something that has the potential returns of the stock market but isn’t as susceptible to market swings.

After reading a couple of blog posts (such as Why Do So Few Bloggers Sell Their Own Products? by Yaro Starak) and doing some pondering. I’ve come to the conclusion that investing in assets which you can turn around and sell could prove far more lucrative of an investment.

One of the things that I’ve done for this website and my online business ventures is to set aside some money automatically from my bank account into a savings account. This money is to be used to get HalOtis profitable and increase the cash flow. In the past I’ve used this money to pay for Google Adwords campaigns and pay for hosting of sites.

The missing part of the picture has been lack of products and business assets that I own and can resell over and over to continue to make a profit passively.

Lets compare the potential costs and returns from an investment in product creation vs. the stock market over a one year investment period.

Case 1

$1000 could be used to outsource the creation of an ebook and marketing material that would sell for $25. If you add in about 20 hours work to do some videos for youtube, find some affiliates or jv partners, create some webpages and link to those site with the social sites. The sale of just 40 copies of the book is the break even point. Lets say you have a fairly terrible launch and over the course of the year manage to sell just 50 copies. That works out to a total income of $1250 subtract the $1000 cost gives $250 profit or 25% return on investment for the year.

Case 2

$1000 invested in the market during an average year should return about 8% if invested in a market wide ETF. Of course, you’re at the mercy of the market the only thing you have control over is when you buy and when you sell. Market timing is notoriously difficult. Still, lets assume you had an average year and you’ve made your 8%. That’s $80 minus trading costs.

What’s the biggest difference between these two scenarios? In case one, you’re in control you decide what the ebook will be about after testing the market, you build the anticipation, you control the quality of the product and can do what ever it takes to create something that people want and then convince them to buy it. In case two you’re at the whim of the market, and of macro economic trends. There’s very little if anything you can do to influence your chances of beating the market.

Furthermore, it’s possible to leverage the exposure you get with this first product in case 1 for subsequent products. There’s the chance to create an email list, build authority, make connections to other sites, get more exposure in the search engines etc which can be leveraged time after time to get a bigger and bigger return each time. Not to mention that you can sell other peoples stuff at no cost for even more income!

When looking at these two scenarios side by side it’s easy to see that investing in your own product creation is a very effective way to invest your money.

As you might have been able to tell from the last couple of posts, I’m doing a lot more research about Internet marketing. I’m keeping my ear to the ground to keep on top of this dynamic business.

I’ve developed a short term project plan to help get some good quality content for my various websites.  I’m hoping that with some more good content matched with some time spent promoting the sites I should get back on track for my 2008 goals.

With the money that I’ve been putting aside to invest in my business I’m considering outsourcing some of the work to a virtual assistant. I need to jump start one of my websites with the creation of a mini-course or e-book that I can use to start an email list.

The more I read, the more important I realize the value of creating an email list. Websites can die very quickly if Google removes it from the index, or if it looses ranking. But having direct contact with customers gives you control, and adds an asset to the business.

One of my goals for this month is to open an aweber account and start creating mailing lists for my niche sites.  I’ll let you know how it goes, and continue to post interesting things that I find to this blog.