I would have gone myself but am recovering from a badly broken leg. My physio reckons I won’t be fully good to go by then.

Now this ticket would cost you as much as $2990 for the 3 days which you can check out at http://dankennedy.com/summit2011/#/page/1

I bought a boatload of their stuff and got a complimentary ticket (effectively paid for via my purchases of course- nothing is ever FREE), which I will pass on for the equivalent of $1200 a saving of $1790! it is also possible to take a friend along for a modest additional fee.

This years line up and content is quite exceptional and with hands on tuition from Dan Kennedy himself then you are going to learn techniques capable of putting you well ahead of the curve. I only wish I could go myself.

Visit the site and if you’re interested, contact me via this site’s ‘contact Miles’ form [top menu bar] to take this further.
It’s first one first served but please only if you are serious about attending.

Payment to me upon reservation via Paypal upon receipt I will set up the necessary via Glazer-Kennedy, having them confirm your reservation direct to you. Bear in mind that there is (separate to this deal) the need to make a refundable deposit in order to reserve your seat. See the site for details.

SORRY, THIS TICKET IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE

I’ve been having a close look just lately at a wide range of tracking solutions after having been let down by an author that took my money but never delivered the goods. So, it may come as no surprise that I looked closely at the products available AND who was behind them together with their track record.

I wanted a real time tracking solution that was up to the task and not so heavy in its coding as to bottom anything other than a well tuned VPS. There are far more tracking solutions around today than just twelve months ago and so making a choice takes time, patience and lots of eyestrain!

I quite fancied going with a service provider that was cloud based (and there are some really good ones out there too) but in the end I went for a product that I could own and control outright, was very capable and able to handle multivariate testing, otherwise reffered to as the Taguchi method. The advantage being that one is able to reach valid conclusions with fewer clicks and therefore with all things being equal in less time and less money if using PPC etc.

In the end I went with Conversion Prophet which looks to give me everything I need for now and at a fair price too. Add to that the fact that it works really well with SpeedPPC and does not make use of API calls (which you get charged for in some competing products) and you start to see the flexibility and cost effectiveness of this.

This product  requires the embedding of a small script chunk on your pages (ala Google Analytics) just a simple tracking code, it’s not a desktop product but a server script that is dead easy to install and configure.

The following explains a bit more about the multivariate capabilities which show just how much beyond basic tracking solutions that products available elsewhere, get left behind.

Advanced Taguchi Multi-Variate Testing Predicts & Pinpoints The Most Profitable Combination Of Elements In Your Sales Copy

The Taguchi feature is the most powerful feature of Conversion Prophet because it takes your testing result to the absolute MAX!

I’ll show you how I tested 9 different sales letter elements with just 73 visitors!… Maximizing the conversion rate right from the start!

This special testing method uses advanced mathematics that automatically create the best combinations of AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) elements and pinpoints which is the combination that will return the massive profits and loads of new customers.

And best of all… Conversion Prophet makes all these complex calculations for you! So you just sit back, relax, and watch your sales letter evolve into a non-stop profit-pulling machine.

Real-life example of the results of a Taguchi
campaign made with Conversion Prophet

Conversion Prophet predicted that headline #2 in red color, with a dark gray background, and a subheadline without the “free” word in our sales letter was going to be the winning combination in this Taguchi testing campaign:

(Look how much info you can get with 73 visitors. I have pretty good
idea about how each version will perform for 4 different variables)

After 477 visitors and 10 sales, the actual Taguchi results confirmed the predictions of Conversion Prophet that the indicated combination of factors was going to be the one with the highest conversion ratio.

(477 visitors later, the result validates our earlier assumption about each variables)

With 73 visitors, I tested 4 different variables, headline color, headline text, background color, and sub-headline with fair accuracy.

Let’s do a table comparison of normal taguchi vs CP’s AIDA + taguchi combo testing for this multivariate testing I did. I ran this test for 5 days and average PPC was 15 cents per click.

After making the adjustment by using the “winners” only, the conversion rate doubled. Isn’t good quality tracking software wonderful? That’s conversion prophet for you. Visit them here.

My particular situation makes this of genuine interest and I have started collecting available education on the subject – white papers, research and training courses with a view to…

• Rapidly adding to my existing knowledge on the subject
• Verifying by the use of separate sources, the viability of this business with respect to my personal attributes
• And to give me something to get stuck into whilst my badly broken leg recovers – though that is not a good reason really
  (nor do I recommend breaking a leg either!) We shall leave that to the more theatrical among us.

So I have today (after a careful look around that is)  purchased what promises to be a very comprehensive training course called

Local Lead Machines with the intention of meeting the bullet points above and reporting back as to whether it is worth the money. I should be in the position to confirm this (or otherwise) within a couple of days. As I said earlier… I do have quite a bit of time on my hands at the moment.

If you have been reading my other posts with any regularity you will have seen that I joined Jonathan Van Clutes Membership some time ago and the good news that imho his way of doing things although a tad slow at times is really fist class. The tools he gives you are themselves worth a years membership alone never mind that he personally helps with anything related to I.M.
I just don’t get how he does it all.

You can still watch his video http://milessentme.com/rd/JVCSOL or read the whole article here

I was blown away once I realised the sheer power and convenience of this thing, which is easy to install, comprehensively supported by a whole string of training videos and worth every penny of it’s pre-launch price. I strongly suggest you pay the site a visit. Just watch the demo video to see the sheer scope of this product – awesome.

Well a few weeks have passed so time for a brief update before I head off on a much needed (and some would say well deserved) break.

Usually after some time into a course I tend to have one or two critism’s but in this particular case I actually don’t, – I think that might well be a first.

In fact joining the JVC solution was probably the best move I have made in a long long time let me give you just one example.

The most popular part for me is the suggestions area in which members are invited to post a request for material about which they would wish to be trained. Every member gets 10 personal votes per month and can use them however they like toward promoting a topic they would most like to me mentored/trained on.

The Result – and Next topic up? (exact quote)….

Alllllrighty gang, it’s that time! From the responses in the forum, it seemed pretty clear that everyone felt they would get a ton out of a list building webinar. That’s a potentially huge, nebulous subject though so I’ve been pondering how I want to handle it, and here’s what I’ve come up with.

First, I think it’s important that we divide up the concept of “list building” into parts so that we can more easily focus on a specific goal and manage the results to get there. To that end, here is how I think it should be divided up:

1. Getting traffic to a squeeze page.

This is a whole topic unto itself as many people have told me that they can build a squeeze page and send emails, but they just can’t get the traffic.  I suspect if you’ve paid any attention around here thus far, you’ve probably figured out that I view this as the easy part!   Enough people have told me how valuable they would find it for me to cover this, so… that’s where we’ll start.  I’ll get into keyword research, setting up links and passing tracking information, and some other “ninja” type stuff.

2.  Building the funnel.

That’s really what we’re doing here right?  We’re building a funnel.  It starts with a squeeze page and progresses to… anything we want!  It can be simple, it can be VERY complex, or somewhere in the middle.  I think this needs to be broken up into a whole separate discussion as there’s a lot of moving parts and I don’t want to lose anyone.  Building a squeeze page, tweaking graphics, setting up the autoresponder code, passing data around for tracking purposes, thank-you pages, etc.  This will be the real nuts & bolts mechanics of what happens after you’ve got the traffic on tap.

3.  Mailing the list.

Email marketing is an art unto itself and while I don’t consider myself an “email marketer”, obviously I have lists because you’re on at least one of them!  I really do actually enjoy my relationship with my list members, but my list is tiny compared to the “big dogs” in the IM world.  Still, I think I have a more personal relationship to my list than many, even though I don’t mail terribly often (I don’t like promoting every damn product launch that comes along).  But if we’re going to be building a list, obviously it’s with the goal of mailing to them and hopefully getting the desired response!  We’ll discuss what those responses might be, and what approach we’ll want to take.

4.  Campaign optimization.

This one could go on probably indefinitely, since optimizing is pretty much a never-ending process.  There are so many aspects to optimize too…. traffic sources (including partners at adon), targets (keywords/domains/urls) dayparting, intra-day-parting, lander tweaks, funnel tweaks, email sequence tweaks, testing different offers… the list goes on.  I’ll try to cover as much as I can to illustrate how I would optimize this type of campaign thoroughly.

This entire process is going to take a while, this will NOT happen overnight or on a single webinar!  I’m thinking each one of these will be its own webinar (and probably followup series), and each one may or may not actually tie into the previous one (because in order to show one part clearly, the others already need to be built).

Now, to make sure I stay on track and don’t digress too much, and end up with another multi-hour webinar epic, I’m thinking I’ll take a different approach with this one:

I’m going to record a video outlining the whole plan.  I’m going to start at my whiteboard (so there’s really no good way for me to do it live anyway) and probably end up at the computer for some of the finer details.  BUT you’ll all get to watch the video as I stream it to you on the webinar, and then I’ll stick around after for Q&A (and it means I’ll be able to type in the question box WHILE you’re all watching me.  Multitasking for the win!  )

I do plan to use my own tools for as much of this as possible too so you’ll undoubtedly pick up a lot of good tricks along the way, not to mention all the other things I’ll undoubtedly end up using (graphics programs, autoresponders, etc.)

I think this is going to be a hell of a series, and though it’s going to be a huge amount of work I think it’ll be worth it.  Hopefully you agree!

My goal is to complete the video portion of “Episode 1? this week.  Once I have it done, or at least almost done, I’ll announce the specific time & date for the “broadcast” webinar, and then we can finish it up with the Q&A.

Sound good?

Oh also, for the followup reports – especially when it comes time to talk optimization or details like the partners I’m running on, keywords I’m using, etc. – I’ll probably release them a bit delayed, so as to not overly affect my results.

Let me know how this sounds but unless there are any strong objections, I’m going to keep moving on this approach!

JVC

See what I mean?

Not exactly thinly spread is it? What I can attest to is the quality of what is put into everything presented so far.

So if you are interested in learning more and with my personal assurance that you will never be subjected to the unbelievable mistreatment wrought by Matt Harward and instead get first class content at a most reasonable price point then take a look and watch the video.

Here’s the video http://milessentme.com/rd/JVCSOL and then get yourself signed up in time to start this next major chunk of training. By the way you also get some awesome marketing tools as part of the mix.

As always if you have any questions just drop me a comment.

Best to all

Miles

Managing Time with Clarity

I don’t know about you but I reckon I have bought more than my fair share of “Getting Things Done” books and Guides in my time and I just never seem to find a perfect process that works for me or at least one that I will totally stick to for any length of time. So I guess you could say I have self taught knowledge of this area and if nothing else am well read on the subject!

Until recently I was, well my usual, moderately organised individual despite all that I have already mentioned. In fact the best (until now that is) system I have come across is called the ‘Pomodoro’ technique which sets out a process by which you single task (Humans are rubbish when it comes to serious multitasking) serially throughout the day with consistent regular breaks for say 10 minutes during which you can grab a coffee or whatever floats your boat.

The key here is having the break which it is claimed gives your sub-concious brain time to assimilate the material you have just spent time on.

Well I can confirm that the Pomodoro technique does its job, at least for me it does as I can say with confidence that my retention and absorption of material measurably improved as a direct result of the system. I even use an electronic egg timer (ipomodoro) on my iphone to count out the elapsed time, remind me of my break period and remind me once again that it’s time to get on with my task’s.

If you want the book (I purchased the ebook ) then you can get it from the Pragmatic book store.
Pomodoro Technique Illustrated (eBook) by Staffan Nöteberg which is first rate if a bit quirky in places yet highly recomended.

So things had been progressing quite nicely as I have said, the only drawback being the lack of automation and flexibility beyond that ‘ducks in a row’ structure which ends up paper based. So I am always on the look out for ways of automating things if for no other reason than the consistency that brings to ones approach.

Well now I have found it and the great thing is that it works on windows and Mac and has been around long enough to suggest it’s very stable, I just had not found it previously. The software is known as The Action Machine and it fits very well into the Pomodoro way of doing things yet is flexible enough to adapt to the traditional GTD approaches also.

So now I have a ‘single’ system that in total means I am in full control of my time planning yet in a very efficient and flexible way and I don’t need the iphone to help out any more either.

It’s been a while now since I have made a serious commitment to another ‘GURU’ or ‘GURU WANNABE” but now I find myself in a very happy position having found what I can only describe as a truly marvellous training source. And if he knew I had suggested he was a Guru etc then I know he would be none too pleased, precisely because he has absolutely no ambitions in that direction at all.

All of us got bled out to varying degrees with the Harward con and understandably are cautious about hooking up with another ‘trainer’ – I know I was, but I am really happy to say I KNOW I made the right choice because the place I get my training from now is absolutely bloody fantastic!

There is sooo much useful stuff in place already and last thursday I got hooked on a webinar that lasted three yes THREE full hours and it was superb for almost the whole time. And how about this too…. EVERY single question got answered. We were shown in real time how to build a PPV campaign, rotate it through seventy or so email submit offers, assign the right budget, track the clicks as they came in etc and yes all live and within the webinar. We are gonna see this campaign right through to conclusion with detailed info along the way. AND ALL the software he used is included with the training and at no extra (i.e. hidden) charge! (And it’s already written and tested … whoopy!)

Truth be known? I reckon I have got more content in my first two weeks of membership (thats good content by the way) than I did in the entire Harward debacle.

It must be obvious by now that I’m a bit like a cat that got the cream so might I suggest you go and watch a shortish video for yourself and if you become a member look out for me in the forum under MilesP. See you there!

Here’s the video http://milessentme.com/rd/JVCSOL

”

You know I tell you how it is (at least as see it) this blog is evidence of that and as I stated months ago I only recommend what I buy and use myself.

50+ Tools to Automate Your Link Building
Jeremy Bencken | Apr 28, 2011

Suggest you go take a look as there is some useful stuff to be had.

You can find the article over at search engine watch.
Direct link is here