Monday May 14th, 2007: Issue #800
800 issues! Eight hundred! When I sat down and wrote the very first issue of Kickstart - the one that had no subscribers and no readers at all - I had no idea if anyone would be interested.
In fact, looking back at those early issues before Kickstart found its ‘voice’, I’m rather surprised that it lasted past #8 let alone to #800.
It all began in October 1st 2002 - a time when the Internet was a simpler place and my rudimentary knowledge of Internet marketing was notable only for my lack of awareness of how much I still had to learn!
It has been a fun ride. And worth every moment. Sure, some days the muse has been painfully absent and inspiration about what to fill the issue with has been completely lacking. But in the main I’ve thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing Kickstart for you.
Along the way I’ve learned a huge amount and made a lot of new friends. I’ve even turned what started out as a loss-making exercise (Kickstart didn’t make a penny for months) into a large part of my day-to-day income.
Ah well, that’s enough introspection. There is a whole world to talk about, so let’s get started with issue #800 …
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This issue should have happened on Friday, but you will have noticed a silence from me. The reason for that was that I attended a special meeting with the management of ClickBank on Friday morning and had to leave home early to get there.
I can’t tell you about that meeting because all who attended had to sign NDAs, but I can tell you about the open meeting that was held on Thursday afternoon.
ClickBank, as you may know, is the company that many online marketers use to process payments and run their affiliate programs. Established in 1999, ClickBank make taking the money very easy for product vendors, and provide a simple interface so that anyone can promote items sold via ClickBank as affiliates and get generous commissions (up to 75%).
Although ClickBank does its job well enough, there have always been several real annoyances about the company:
1. They don’t keep up with the times.
2. The don’t listen to what their customers want.
3. There are always questions about how secure they are.
4. They are one of the worst communicators in the business.
5. Customer support is slow and often uncommunicative.
6. Did I say that they don’t listen?
Even worse than being non-communicative, they also have a tendency to vaguely promise that changes are ‘coming soon’ but never seeming to show any signs of when soon might be.
So it was a huge surprise when ClickBank announced that their top brass were coming to London for a mini conference where they would outline the things that they are doing, and listen to what Internet marketers wanted.
Our own Harvey Segal helped them organize it.
We are honored that the very first time in ClickBank’s history that they appeared in public was here in London. Maybe they hoped that we’d be a ‘kinder’ audience!
What transpired was a real eye-opener.
First of all, CEO Bob King gave an overview of what has been happening since the new management team came on board a bit more than a year ago.
Effectively, they have rebuilt the company from the ground up by massively updating all the hardware and software systems that makes it work. They have also done a lot to improve security.
Up to now, the huge investment of time, money and effort has been pretty much invisible to the likes of you and me. And because ClickBank have had such an aversion to talking to anyone, hardly anyone knew!
But now they’ve done their groundwork, ClickBank seem to have changed. Suddenly they are talking - and more importantly, listening.
On Thursday afternoon we were treated to news that recurring billing is going to be introduced within weeks. Multiple language (and currency) support is on the cards. A newsletter or blog is imminent. Customer support is changing.
The list goes on. Many of the items that Internet marketers have been asking for for years, but felt were falling on deaf ears are going to happen - and a whole lot more are waiting for the next phase of upgrades, which will follow soon.
For each item that ClickBank announced to us, they asked our opinions. They actually made us feel as if they were taking a lot of notice of what we, the users, thought. Amazing!
Hat’s off to Bob King and his team. At last ClickBank have come out from under their rock and are blinking in the sunlight. Hopefully last week they found that the Internet marketing community is as scary as they’d expected!
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I don’t usually do product reviews to order, but I was asked about a certain new ebook on the Kickstart forum the other day and so I decided to buy it and, if I thought it was worth mentioning, let you know my thoughts.
The book is called ‘Who Loves Money?’ and is written by two guys called Kyle and Carson (they also run a very successful membership site, but I am not a member and so can’t comment about that).
Normally I like to review ebooks when they first come out so that my thoughts aren’t affected by other reviews or comments that I’ve read, but in this case it was too late. I’d already seen some really good reviews and some really bad ones.
I’ll try to be objective - and at least you’ll know that THIS review is from someone who has actually read the book from cover to cover and who has no particular axe to grind (I don’t know and am not associated with the authors, and don’t own or belong to any of their other products or sites).
First of all, the sales letter. Unlike another book I reviewed recently, I feel that the salesletter for ‘Who Loves Money?’ is a fair description of the product. Of course there is a degree of hype - that’s to be expected in a sales letter - but I do think that what is promised is actually in the book! So far, so good.
One thing the sales letter doesn’t say, however, is that ‘Who Loves Money?’ is aimed squarely at the newbie market. I can see a lot of the more experienced Internet marketers buying and being disappointed that there isn’t really anything new. I suspect that some of the more negative reviews around reflect that disappointment but I don’t think it is fair criticism.
‘Who Loves Money?’ outlines a process for finding, assessing and promoting affiliate products. It is clearly written and, as far as the process goes, pretty complete. You won’t be left guessing what to do next.
There are no brand new techniques to jump on and no earth shattering revelations. No close-to-the edge twists that might work gangbusters now, but will be banned in a week’s time.
If you are already making a decent affiliate income, save your money. You might get a few interesting ideas and insights, but perhaps not enough to justify the price of the book.
So is this a bad review?
Not at all. The very fact that it is not a latest fad type of book is its real strength in my opinion.
This is a book for beginners. The hardest thing for newbies to get to grips with in Internet marketing is the process. It is all too easy to get confused, and confusion leads you nowhere. A confused newbie is one who will never get past the first post.
‘Who Loves Money?’ basically describes a very workable business plan in words that almost everyone will be able to understand. It is simple, in that it doesn’t go off on tangents and talks in plain, easy-to-follow language, but it most certainly is not simplistic. You can follow the blueprint and make this business model work.
If you are a newbie, or have been around for a while but haven’t ventured into affiliate marketing yet, ‘Who Loves Money?’ is a very good place to start.
http://www.urlnex.us/wholovesmoney/
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Delia and I had an excellent night out on Friday. We went to watch the TV show ‘QI’ being made.
I don’t know if QI airs outside the UK, but in case you don’t know it, it is a comedy quiz show that is based on trivia - the QI of the title means ‘quite interesting’. As you can imagine, it is one of my favorite shows, and the host, Stephen Fry is brilliant.
In real life the half-hour show takes nearly two hours to film, and the whole thing is a huge laugh from beginning to end.
As far as I can remember (and my memory isn’t what it used to be) it was the first TV show I’ve seen made. Now I can’t wait to get tickets to go again!
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Close to 50 people have emailed me to say that they are interested in learning more about my mentoring/coaching program. A few have emailed me several times wanting specific questions answered.
My intention was that your original email was simply so that I could gauge if there was enough interest and to give me some idea of what help people need. I can’t yet enter into communication with individuals, so forgive me if you expected a reply but haven’t received one.
I’ve been formulating what my mentoring program will offer and how many places I’ll open up.
Here’s what I have in mind so far:
* It will take the form of a monthly subscription and will, initially, be limited to only 27 people.
* Every prospective new member will receive a questionnaire that will be designed to let me understand more about you, what your current skills are and what I can help you with. Not everyone will be accepted into the program and this questionnaire will help me to identify those people who my particular skills wouldn’t be much use to. I don’t want to take your money under false pretences.
* Accepted members will have email access to me for asking specific questions. I’m still deciding exactly how much access this will be, but it will be at least one email exchange per week.
* I will set all members a monthly project that will grow your Internet marketing skills and confidence.
* There will be a weekly backside kick communication that will be both personal and pointed.
* There will also be a daily motivational message to keep those fires of desire burning!
* As the program develops, I will also consider introducing a private forum and when the monthly printed version of Kickstart is launched, all mentoring members will receive it as a special bonus. (The likely cost to the public of the printed and mailed Kickstart Monthly will be at least $25 per month, so this will be a real bonus.)
The whole idea of the mentoring program is to work with you to both keep you on track - and to ensure that you don’t go off on wild goose chases. Internet marketing is a whole lot of fun, but unless you are making money at it, there is little point.
I haven’t fixed on a monthly cost yet. On one side I want to keep it affordable for as many people as possible, but on the other I have to balance the time that I plan to devote to it.
There are a few things I still need to sort out before there will be anything for you to join, but I will keep you informed.
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Niche Inspector is proving to be even more useful than I’d first thought.
One thing with keyword research that is becoming more and more apparent is that it is a lot easier to get a high ranking for a keyphrase if that phrase is fairly long. Three, four or even five or more words.
The reason is that most people who target keywords go for the obvious ones, the one or two word phrases that are thrown up by the free tools that many people use to research their markets. As a result, there tend to be thousands or millions of competing web pages for each of the generally accessible 1, 2 or even 3 word phrases.
That much competition is very hard to fight.
Long keyphrases are used far less frequently, but many of them still enjoy a lot of searches each month.
Lately I’ve been using Niche Inspector in a way that finds a huge number of really good long phrases.
In my video review of Niche Inspector I showed that you can give the program a seed keyword and then set a ‘dig’ level. What this does is finds the top 100 keyphrases that include the seed word (dig level one) then goes back and uses each of the 100 phrases as a new seed to find hundreds of longer phrases that contain each of the seed ones (dig 2). The dig 2 level can get you a keyword list a thousand or more long but set it to dig 3 and each of the new long phrases is interrogated even further.
It takes a long time to process, but I tend to just set it running in the background. It doesn’t appear to slow things down appreciably.
At dig 3 level, within a few hours you can get a huge list of 3, 4 or even 5000 keyphrases.
Then Niche Inspector’s filter tools come into their own.
For a first sweep, I set Niche Inspector to flag all the keywords that satisfy three things: the keyphrase must contain at least 4 words, must have a monthly search of over 200, and have less than 1000 competing websites. You’d be surprised how many useful phrases remain!
In one of my niches that I ran this weekend I found 167 phrases that matched my critera and over 30 of them had less than 10 competing websites in Google. How’s that for easy pickings!
My bonus offer of packs of seed words has run out, but I’ve been doing some more work with my dictionaries and can now offer 25 different word packs that should help you find some hidden niches. If you’ve bought Niche Inspector already (through my link) and have not yet had a word pack from me, let me know and I’ll send you one of the new ones.
Buy Niche Inspector here: http://www.urlnex.us/nicheinspector
Or view my video review here: http://www.kickstartdaily.com/nicheinspector/
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An Inspirational Thought
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I saw one of those inspirational posters in a shop window. It was close-up of two runner’s hands passing a baton between them.
The caption read: “Communication is the secret to success … pass it on.”
Consider it done.
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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Nelson Mandela said,
“The only thing I am scared of is waking up one day and not knowing what to do.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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Today is the very best of days.
Today every possibility is open to you. All you have to do is take hold of them.
Today is the best day you’ll ever have for taking action and laying the foundations for your success.
Yesterday was a great day too, but if you didn’t grab its opportunities then, if you said ‘tomorrow will do’, then it wasn’t so good for you.
And in case you missed the obvious, yesterday’s tomorrow is here already.
Tomorrow is a black hole into which good ideas, plans, hopes and dreams disappear. Usually never to emerge again. You see, you can’t really ever DO anything tomorrow, You can only hope that maybe you will.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not pin my goals and dreams on a vague hope that I might take action at some point in the future. I know myself a lot better than that! Procrastination isn’t just putting off actions, it is putting off success. Usually permanently.
The only time that matters is today, right now. Do it, or don’t do it, but don’t put it off until tomorrow.
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Fascinating Facts
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A Bible was published in England in 1632 that had one small but very significant error.
It missed out the word ‘not’ in the seventh commandment.
In case you are not on top of your Bible studies, the seventh commandment is the one that should say, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’
This particular edition soon became known as ‘The Wicked Bible’.
What a shame it wasn’t the tenth. I quite fancy my neighbor’s ox.