Robert Plank

Reading time: 2 - 2 minutes

A while ago I dealt with a guy on a public message board (not the one I usually frequent) who said something along the lines of this:

I've never seen a sales letter actually implement any of this JavaScript or PHP interactive sales letter stuff.

Every time I see one of these sales pages, I check out the site for every person leaving a testimonial.  The truth is that nobody is actually using this stuff... is it a case where the emperor has no clothes?

What a dumbass question!

What proceeded was, several of us replied to him but he seemed to be off in his own little world.

Guess what, if you go to the Clickbank marketplace and choose the top sellers in ANY niche... most of them use some sort of pop-up, lead capture, survey, peel away ad, walk on video, or chat agent setup.

Most of what goes on is invisible to you because they'll use all kinds of personalization, landing pages, dynamic autoresponder follow-ups, sublisting, and all that.

If you are trying to tell me that adding PHP has no affect on your sales, or hurts them?  Gimmie a break!

You can still sell a product with good copy and no PHP and JavaScript tactics.  But good copy plus PHP scripts?  Unstoppable!

You could add an exit pop-up to turn lost sales into opt-ins.  Or simply add a countdown timer or interactive sales letter... it's up to you.

How will you use this information to the fullest?

Reading time: 2 - 3 minutes

One thing I forgot to mention the other day about my Camtasia PowerPoint process is that I now have a dual monitor setup:

On the left is my new computer that came this week.  It's one of those iMac ripoffs where the whole computer is contained within the monitor.  It's an AVERATEC F1 D1002UHCE-1.

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E4600, 2 GB DD2 memory, 320GB SATA hard drive, 22 inch monitor, Nvidia GeForce 8400 256 MB graphics card, built-in wifi, memory card, DVD burner, webcam, TV tuner.  I upgraded from a Shuttle, little toaster shaped computer I bought a couple years ago.

I like tiny computers... less clutter.

But I plugged my 19-inch monitor from the old computer into the back and now I have a second monitor.  Great for recordnig those Camtasia PowerPoints as you can see in the picture.

I configured PowerPoint to display the actual slide show on the right monitor, and show "presenter view" on the left so I can see what slides are coming up next.

Yep, if you go to "Set Up Show" in PowerPoint you can not only specify which monitor will display the presentation, but also what resolution to resize it to... I tell it to resize to 640x480 for the presentation.

What's more, if you use the REAL PowerPoint (not OpenOffice like some people named Jason) and you install Office first, then Camtasia, they will add a little button to the "Add-Ins" tab of Camtasia to start the slide show and start recording with one click.

I click ONE button, it resizes my second monitor to the low resolution for recording, starts the slide show, and starts recording.  As soon as the slide show is finished, it resizes the monitor to the old resolution and asks where to save the Camtasia recording.

Super cool, right?

The one-click thing might sound stupid, but I'm recording so many videos for the Daily Seminar that I'm at the point where I need it.

I've used dual monitors at work for over a year now and it makes you way more productive in other ways.  You can code in one window and read instructions in the other... edit graphics in one window and write in a document on the other.  But Camtasia recording is by far my best use for dual monitors.

Do you have a dual monitor setup?  If you don't, why not?  What desktop setup do you have to get the most productivity?

Looking forward to your comments...

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

What are you working on this week?  I'm cranking out a bunch of content for a new membership site...

Lots of marketers the past couple of months are using the economic recession as a hook to sell their stuff.  "This system will help you profit in a recession..."  I'm sure you're tired of it.  You can't have a Unique Selling Proposition if it's not unique!

It's not just the internet marketing niche either.  I got this e-mail from Experts Exchange (a programming forum) a few weeks ago:

"If you had invested in the S&P 500 just before Thanksgiving 2007, and cashed out just before Thanksgiving 2008, you would have lost 41% of your money."

Boo-frickin-hoo. I lost $30k in cash to the stock market the first month of this year.  The value of my home has dropped $137,000 in the past 5 months on a city block where at least 30% of the homes were in foreclosure when I moved in.

One of my relatives was laid off this month, and you know what he immediately did?  He didn't feel sorry for himself -- he started looking for another job.  He has a savings account that will last him a little while and doesn't have a ton of debt that will eat him alive.

Another friend of mine just bought a brand new car and a house for his wife and kid, neither of them are college educated, they work "average" jobs and they can actually afford the payments.

For my business partner and I, 2008 was our most profitable year ever.  I just made close to $5000 selling a 7-pack of PHP scripts, and another $4000 before that selling a 23-page PDF report, using minimal outside advertising.  It was almost 100% in-house e-mail marketing.  He is close to $100k in income for the year.

We both bought homes this year, and we're both taking our girlfriends to Hawaii for New Years at the end of December.

I don't have to tell you about how there are more cars on the road, more people in lines at stores and in the movies now than ever...

The whole point of a "recession" is to weed out the weak businesses. You can either watch the news way too often, believe the world is going to end tomorrow, and let it depress and demotivate you.  OR you can realize that there are people out there giving up (just because they hear bad news) and you can get ahead of them.

You might have already read the story below.  It's "The Man Who Sold Hot Dogs!"

There was a man who lived by the side of the road and sold hot dogs.

He was hard of hearing so he had no radio.  He had trouble with his eyes so he read no newspapers.  But he sold good hot dogs.

He put up signs on the highway, stood on the side of the road and cried, "Buy a hot dog, mister?"  People bought.  He increased his meat and bun orders.  He bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade.

He finally got his son home from college to help him out.  But then something happened.  His son said, "Father, haven't you been listening to the radio?  Reading the newspapers?  "There's a big depression.  The European situation is terrible.  The domestic situation is worse."

The father thought, "My son's been to college, he reads the papers and he listens to the radio, and he ought to know."  He cut down on his meat and bun orders, took down his advertising signs, and no longer bothered to stand out on the highway to sell his hot dogs.

His hot dog sales fell almost overnight.  "You're right, son" the father said to the boy.  "We certainly are in the middle of a great depression."

D'oh!!

Do you belong to any clubs or memberships to network and get more ideas, do you know what you want in 2009 and do you know what you have to do to get it?  Heck, what can you do differently in the next three weeks that hasn't worked for you this year?

Please comment below, and let me know what you are working on for the remainder of this year.  And guys, PLEASE don't turn this into a political or economic discussion.  The whole point is that politics and economics won't affect your business unless you let it. Your bad attitude will KILL YOU if you let it.

Make sure to comment below!

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

My question to you today is: does working at a day job make me evil?

I have been balancing the day job and internet marketing thing for years.  It's not that bad.  I'm getting my first 3-5 year computer programming job on my resume, lots of free training that would otherwise cost $5000, really good health insurance, and a reason to get up in the morning.

I don't always work 9-to-5 hours.  Some days I work 6AM to 2:30PM, or 10AM to 6:30PM.  It's also not the most challenging job.  I don't have to work overtime, I'm not on-call, I don't take my work home.  So I'm free to do internet marketing stuff after work, during lunch, and on weekends.

Quick Story:

Sometimes I forget to pick up my paycheck at my day job.  Last month when I went to the receptionist to pick it up, one of my co-workers, a really cool woman in her 40's, noticed I'd taken a while to pick up my check.

She commented, "Someone else must be making those Mustang car payments..."

I told her nope, I pay for my car, but I wasn't making payments on the car... I bought it for $20,000 in cash last year.

She was surprised. I shrugged and said I'd saved up some money.  I forgot to add that I own a home at age 24, or that I pay double into my principal every month.

I also kept quiet the fact that I'd launched a product the night before, and made more in 90 minutes than she made in 30 days.

How about the fact that I dropped two months worth of pay at that job for a one week vacation in Hawaii during the winter break?

No one at work knows my secret, that I make more than my boss, his boss, and his boss.  Out of 800+ employees at my place of work, the only people who take home more money than me are the president and his 10 vice presidents.

When do you think I should quit?

When I have a year's worth of income in savings?  Don't give me that, "Quit when your internet job has replaced your day job" line.  I did that years ago.

I'm not going to be one of those guys who quits without health insurance.  When did you quit and do you have health insurance?  Who is your provider?

Once you lost that "time crunch" to get back to your day job, did it kill your productivity?

I am completely lost here... I had planned on being self employed right out of college but this REALLY nice and easy day job fell into my lap.  Some days it keeps my busy, some days I get bored and wish I could take a road trip or something.

Stay or quit?  Please tell me in the comment box below.  If I don't get ten replies maybe I'll just quit regardless.

Please comment.

Reading time: < 1 minute

I am now the OWNER of a 2200 square foot, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, cute yellow corner house... and I'm 23!

I am no longer going to screw around with the stock market. That $30,000 loss in January still stings a bit. That was supposed to be my financial shortcut to getting a house and it had the opposite effect.

My goal now is to work like crazy and build up exactly 2 years worth of living expenses, then throw more money at that house to cut the payments in half.

Comment below if you feel like congratulating me.

Your thoughts?

Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes

How the heck do you get a business partner motivated?

There is this guy, Steven Schwartzman. I have been working on internet marketing stuff for years... but... he can't freaking get a product launched to save his life!

My first contact with him was in 2003. I spent a week writing a PHP script for him, he paid me $650 for the job, it was all done and ready to sell. I even thought up a cool name for it. (HyperSplitter.)

We both made money, right? Wrong. In 2004... I get a message from him saying he needed some bug fixes. He waited so long to launch the product that some of PHP's changes broke the script.

I made the changes... then in 2005, I get a call from someone else saying, "Check out this web site... Hypersplitter.com. The script isn't for sale but I want you to look at the features on that site and clone the script. I would have bought resale rights but he isn't offering those either." I'm not even making that up... I really did get that phone call from Jaime Ojeda!

I think Steven eventually launched it but it only made a few hundred dollars. No big deal except it took him YEARS to launch it. Come on, Steven!!!

The guy is a great copywriter and he comes up with really great ideas for products. But he can't follow through! Everything he makes is half finished.

When I visited him last August he was working on a membership site. The last thing I said to him in person before getting on a plane and flying 3,000 miles back home was, "Promise me you'll have that product launched by the time I get back." It still hasn't been launched!

He does great when he's working for other people (writing copy and headlines) but for his OWN stuff... he just can't do it. He was supposed to write a report and registered a GREAT domain for it, but waited so long... that the domain expired... and copywriting legend HARLAN KILSTEIN snatched it up!

It was for that reason that I mentioned in Fast Food Copywriting about Mark Joyner's policy to never use the word "wait." You shouldn't be "waiting" on anything... ever.

Do everything you can right now. Focus on one thing and get it launched.

Steven had to study to take the LSATs for law school, he was sick for a while, he took a family trip to India and another to Portugal... okay, that's all behind you, it's time to get to work. Steven, can you launch just ONE product by the end of the week?

Come on dude. You come up with the BEST ideas I have even seen. If you just put products out consistently, you could be more popular than Brausch.

I'm sorry if I seem like a jerk here, or too nosy, but I want you to do well. All you need to do is keep posting special offers, keep building a list, and only work on things that will make you money. Not spending days helping someone else put up a web site for free.

Looking at my launch calendar over the past several years, I noticed that in 2006 I was lucky to even post one WSO. These days I feel guilty for going more than 5 days without posting one or sending a mailing out to my list.

Can you do one thing every day?

Please, give Steven some advice on staying motivated.
He NEEDS to get his ass in gear.

 

Please let me know what you thought of this post... I'm dying to find out...

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

What do you do with the leftover internet marketing money you have laying around?

The easy answer is, reinvest it back into your business. That doesn't work for me because I very rarely do any outsourcing or advertising.

Okay, so what about financial goals? I already own a car, there are no specific places I want to travel.

I want a house. Actually I want a condo... I don't want to have to deal with keeping up a yard or mowing the lawn or any of that stuff.

With a 30-year fixed mortgage at 8%, I could get a $100,000 loan for equal to the same rent I pay now, living in a 2-story townhouse, with no roommates. Okay great you say, what homes in California sell for that much?

There are condos down the street slightly larger than my apartment... PLUS a garage... that sold for $250k this summer... that are now $160k. If I can put $50k down, my monthly mortgage payment on that thing would be close enough to the rent I'm paying now for me to be happy.

So how have I been doing? Since buying my car with all cash in June (I should have had it financed... but that's another story) I added $20k over time into a stock brokerage account.

With a little bit of work and a LOT of aggravation I built that up into $30k by December. I learned a lot along the way. I avoided so many of the usual stock trading newbie mistakes.

It was way too emotionally taxing to gain $1000 in the morning on some days only for the gains for the day to go back down to $0 by the end of the day. I would check several times daily, sometimes every 5 minutes.

What I learned quickly is that I was creating another job for myself. It wasn't even a fun job. Either I gained some money and started worrying about losing it, or I lost money and worried about how I was going to get it back.

I was a freaking full-time gambler and I didn't even realize it. So where do you stick your leftover money?

• Figure out a way to reinvest it back into your business. You need to find some way.
• Put it in a savings account and slightly beat inflation.
• Put it in a CD for a 4% yearly return.
• Invest it in an index fund or money market account for a 5% return.

I no longer daytrade.

Whatever you do, don't create extra work for yourself. Don't create an extra job. Your time is way more important than any amount of money.

What are your financial goals? (Seriously, post here and share them with me.)

What do you do specifically to reinvest your profits back into your business?

Would you still pursue internet marketing and create products for fun if you had all the money in the world?

Participate in the conversation by leaving your comment below.