Blending the OMMG/Meetup format of a free flowing exchange of members problems, experiences and solutions with the Warriors structured delivery of useful internet marketing training was something of a problem in the time available and we continue to give a lot of thought to how we will structure the day in future.

For the moment we stayed on the well proven path and worked to the OMMG/Meetup format in the morning before delivering two valuable presentations in the afternoon.

Members problems assembled in real time onto a mindmap appeared to present a very varied range of issues. However, a few minutes thought boiled them down to some broad groups as shown here and enabled us to identify common problems as well as obstacles being encountered by individuals.

As expected, a number of them (6 to be exact) were clustered around the use of Wordpress which has become such a universal tool for building web presence and credibility.

Four more fell into the field of basic marketing processes. These will be dealt with in future through the methodical delivery of training via the Smart Marketing Warriors online course.

Of the remainder, Social Marketing was already lined up to be the subject of one of the afternoon presentations, and the others were either dealt with immediately or have gone into the lesson planning process as priority items for us to respond to as soon as possible.

Smart Marketing Warriors offers the combined experience of 4 established online marketers and in the afternoon Roger Bourdon, one of the founding partners, presented his experience of launching his first product.

Of particular note was the optimisation process of starting with the basic structure and then progressively improving the offer and the consequential improvement in the profitability.

Laurence Borel, an independent consultant in the field of Social Marketing strategies, then gave a presentation on Social Media and an insight into this hot topic which is clearly becoming a very powerful marketing tool – when used correctly.

Finally, we wrapped up with some members feedback which, together with the collection of problems identified in the morning session. has given us a clear steer on what members are looking for.

As our objective is to deliver what our audience wants (good marketing strategy, that one ) members can look forward to some good stuff in the near future.

The next meeting scheduled for 22 August will follow a similar format with a nominal charge of £7 (increased from £5 due to change of venue) for the morning session and an opportunity to take part in the more formal Smart Warriors presentation session in the afternoon.

It's based on a similar system which was around a few years ago
called Subscription Rocket. The guy who ran it, Troy McDonald, had
to close the service down because of some personal problems. A lot
of people were sad to see that happen because it worked so well for
them.

Well, with those problems behind him, Troy is back with an even
better version called List Crew.

Basically, it works by harnessing the power of other peoples websites.
You agree to show other peoples ads on your site and in return you
earn credits for having your ad appear on theirs.

All the websites are in the same niche (currently Internet Marketing)
which means your target audience is very focused.

It's so easy to set up by adding a simple bit of code to your site
and then it just runs on autopilot.

There are only a handful of beta testers right now but on average
I am adding 1 new subscriber each day to my list from this system.
Just imagine what will happen when there are hundreds of thousands
of users!

Well, I'm about to find out because it is now in pre-launch stage
and will go live on 16th July.

Another clever way of earning credits in this system, is to refer
other users and in effect create a downline and that I am
unashamed to say is why I am inviting you to take a good look at
this right now. The sooner you are in the better and by joining
through me you will earn an extra 2,000 credits to kick you off.

Everyone who joins will get 250 credits, but by following this link
and getting your name on the advance list you will get 2,250 credits.

But Wait!! It gets even better because for the launch period Troy
has done a deal with the creator of a first-class autoresponder
(AdTrackResponderPro) to give everyone who signs up with ListCrew
a free licence to this software that usually costs $197.

http://www.ListCrew.com/?id=ovnw3bw

Go one over and see the quick video that explains it all.

Remember it's a free service and it's working for me.

http://www.ListCrew.com/?id=ovnw3bw

To our success,

Richard

These are just some of great things the reviewer had to say:

"Getting a good-looking site up and running within minutes is
very simple."

"Where XSitePro 2.0 really stands out is by applying this ease
of use to a wide range of additional features which, if coded by
hand or created using Dreamweaver would be considerably more
complex."

"This is one of the most pleasant to use interfaces for web
design that we've encountered."

To read the full review, click on the link below.

http://www.online-marketing-mastermind-group.com/xsitepro_review.html

This is not just another piece of website building software,
it's a total website management package.

To our success,

Richard

Click to Enlarge

Mind mapping.

I used a new toy to map out the discussion subjects that members wanted to cover and that caused some discussion in itself.   Buzan's iMindmap software generated the enclosed mindmap to help us to identify and then work through the agenda for the day.

It was the first time I've used it for the purpose but it was quickly evident that it was possible to add hyperlinks and any text notes to each branch while the conversation was flowing.

This not only gave us a quick reference to relevant websites if we wanted to return to the subject but has also been a great help in producing these notes of the meeting. (Just while proof reading this post it occurs to me that this is also a great way to keep the notes for the meeting simply by filing it with a date and meeting file name. )

So, from my point of view, it has already proved useful for this as well as for the original purpose of it's purchase which was to help me scope out and organise my thinking on several projects.  

Here is an example of a web based interactive mind map product that offers you  free basic use:   http://www.mindmeister.com/19055588    This link will bring you into an interactive mind map dealing with Web Monetization (Gren 090525). 

Another software tool that you might find useful for locating that 'must-have' information when you need it most is Info-Select.

Wordpress

Gren Bingham arrived late having spent some time throwing up an offer he has concocted for members and others to get a Wordpress blog created for the grand sum of $35.  You can find his instant, Saturday morning, sales page at MasterOfWordpress.com.  He also mentioned Article Helper Pro which is described in detail here Article Helper Pro. 

As you can see from the Mindmap, many members questions centred on the use of Wordpress and we ran some practical, off the cuff, demonstrations showing how to deal with the problem.  For member's future reference the 'how to..' solutions will be going up on Niche Market Blogger just as soon as I can.

For information on manipulating images in Photoshop and similar then try Jacks Tech Corner - particularly his YouTube channel for free video tutorials.

And for keyword suggestions for your blog categories and tags you should take a look at Google's Wonderwheel.

1. Click the Show options after a search

2. Then Wonderwheel in the left sidebar

Autoresponders.

One member had a question about autoresponders, particularly about whether to use an AR provided by their host.  The consensus of opinion among those with some experience on the subject was the delivery of email depends greatly on deals done between the AR provider and the major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and has little to do with how good the autoresponder software might be.

It is, therefore, only the companies for whom the AR is the main focus of their business who are likely to allocate the resources to maintaining those links and agreements with the ISPs who are likely to achieve consistently good deliverability.  This seems to come down to Aweber, Get Response and 1ShoppingCart.

The fact that you have to pay for them proves the point as no service provider that is not getting any revenue for the service can afford to allocate the resources to make sure that it works.  A free service has absolutely no value to you if it fails to deliver your messages.

Pre-built sites.

Nice looking pre-built sites at knock down prices was the subject of another discussion.  For $29 it looks like http://www.quickweightlossonline.com/ is a steal with 3 Clickbank affiliate products built in for you to change to your Clickbank id.  Indeed it is a good example of the exchange of time for money that in exchange for your money you save the time of having to learn how to build such an attractive looking site.

This serves as an example of the jigsaw of internet marketing where you need all parts of the jigsaw to be successful as the site in itself still needs traffic to convert into sales.  They are therefore good value for beginners who are going to focus their learning time on how to generate traffic.  They also serve as a good model to emulate as it does not take a moment to find that such sites are frequently now built using Wordpress.

From the index page just hit View / Page Source from your browser menu to see the source code and then Edit / Find and input 'wp-'.  This will find those tell-tale Wordpress files that tells you this is a blog.

This is no bad thing as it means that all you need to do is to install it on yet another domain name, substitute the content for a different subject, change the images and the anchor text for the navigation and you have as many sites as you like for different niche subjects.

Lead Generation

Roger Bourdon gave us a run-down on the methods he is using to generate page one positions on Google for his local, real world customers as well as the methods he uses to generate leads and customers for his web site development business.  Fair to say that he demonstrated that there is nothing new in the world and the diamonds are usually under your feet.

Roger also contributed some useful information on ImpactWebAudio in the discussion about teleseminars and podcasting.  Principally, that ImpactWebAudio takes the user through the process of getting their audio recording published on the web rather than simply leaving you with a recording.  At $37 it is another example of 'you get what you pay for' - though that is not to say that you can often avoid paying for products simply by using Google to search for 'free 'whatever you seek'.

Looking forward to seeing everyone next month with updates and progress reports!

Bruce Bird is an information publisher and online marketer specialising in helping individual entrepreneurs, small and medium size companies to get online quickly, easily and effectively. Visit his blog and signup free to get marketing strategies, insights and response-boosting tips! Go now to http://BruceBird.com

His name is Michael Green, and you may remember that he is the
brains behind the phenomenally successful Money Tree Challenge
last year and the 20-20 Challenge the year before.

Michael is soon to launch a new product called Google-1st and
since I have promoted his products in the past, he wanted to
tell me about it.

We all know that having a top page #1 listing in Google drives
traffic to our websites. And traffic usually equates to money -
unless you are doing something wrong!

Well, how about having five of the top ten listings? Or seven? Or
even NINE of the listings on Google's first page pointing to your
website?

Imagine the traffic that dominating the search rankings like that
will bring. And then imagine the income that you can make from
that traffic!

It would be nice to get just to one listing on the 1st page of
google with any of my sites - the thought of getting NINE is
mind boggling.

To demonstrate this, Michael gave me a three-word phrase that was
related to his offline business. It is a popular phrase for that
market - not particularly long-tail - I typed it into Google and
it returned over 30,000 competitive pages.

He asked me to concentrate on the 1st gage listings and WOW!!
There was only one listing that DID NOT point to a page on his
website.

To prove the point, he gave me a few other non realted keywords
and told me to check them in Google. Sure enough, he dominated
page one of Google for each of them.

Finally, he gave me the absolute primary keyword that his offline
business (nothing to do with Internet marketing) aims for. This
keyword returns over 9 million competing web pages and there was
his business website at number #1, #3 and #5 on page one of
Google.

Michael told me that before he started using his special
Google-1st techniques he had never been on page one for that
keyword, but now, after barely five weeks he is dominating
Google.

As I said earlier, Michael is soon to launch Google-1st - a
detailed product that gives the exact methods he uses, in a step-
by-step, completely structured fashion. He has documented
everything he does on a spreadsheet and is describing each stage
in the process in crystal-clear detail.

If you've read The Money Tree Challenge, or the 20/20 Plan,
you'll know that Michael is very good at explaining complex
processes clearly.

I am privaleged in that Michael has described most of the process
to me and I can tell you - without giving anything away - that the
process is easy. It is complex, in that there are a lot of
necessary steps that have to be linked together in the right way,
but each step is dead simple. Absolutely anyone can do it.

And best of all there is nothing extra needed. Absolutely all the
tools you need are either free, or you have them already.

I have to admit, my very first thought was that Michael had gone
over to the dark side and donned a black hat. At first I couldn't
see how such consistently extraordinary results could be gained
without using shady and dangerous black hat methods. But I can
assure you that this entire process is 100% white hat. It is
completely and utterly above board.

In fact, it is based on giving the search engines (yes, it works
for Yahoo and MSN too) exactly what they want. You feed them
exactly what they crave and they reward you with high rankings
and free traffic.

Sounds like a good plan to me!

Now here is the deal. Michael traditionally pre-launches his
products and Google-1st is no exception. If you order it now,
before the official launch date, you'll get a substantial
discount on the price. After launch the price will rise, but
right now you will get to lock in a great saving.

And after launch, numbers will be strictly limited so that those
of us who will be using the methods won't be overwhelmed by too
much competition.

I've always said that SEO should stand for search engine
optimism, because most people who do it have no idea what works
or why. Now, Google-1st takes the optimism out of the search
engine optimization equation.

The Google-1st Toolkit is remarkable because it provides a
guaranteed white-hat method to get your website on Pg #1 of
Google (and the other search engines), without paying a penny!
As you can imagine, this is likely to be the hottest product of
the year.

Learn more about Google-1st and preorder your copy now at …
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=K9ZoJ&m=1bJjWZLtosen2b&b=ryUzgVekOPVqyq_PbjttnA

Richard

Yours truly went first (for a change!) to tell the group about NicheMarketingBlogger.com where I am setting out to demonstrate the process of earning at least a reasonable income from blogging on your chosen subject.  While the niche market in this case is blogging itself the process can be applied equally well to whatever your chosen niche market might be.

Though still in its early stages and slowed down by the necessity to document the process in detail everyone is till invited to visit, sign up and follow along with progress.

Michael Richards' taichiteambuilding.co.uk was next up.  With the tai-chi site up already for recruiting corporate work Michael is considering how to adapt his product and maximise his income with online sales through different channels.  His mind/body health approach together with being unique in the UK with the Four Minute Fitness programme has considerable potential.

Brian Gibson's StepIntoInternetMarketing.com already shows signs of adaptation to the landing page following his last visit to the group.   StepIntoInternetMarketing.com provides 3 day training courses for beginners to internet marketing.

So it was very interesting to hear Brian report on his experience after buying the Semiologic Wordpress blogging package after his last visit.  Having given it a thorough once over himself he is now changing his recommendations for website building on his courses away from html and solely to Semiologic due to it's power and ease of use.

Gerard Marcel's favoured subject is healthy aging and he reported progress since the last meeting that he now has his blog up at LouisMarcel.com.  Some advice on cleaning up the superfluous default links was provided.  A great example of progress being made.

Websites-uk.com is the work of Arthur Stoller who travelled down from Nottingham for his first visit.  Arthur has an existing business at websites-uk dealing mostly in Search Engine Optimisation and brought some useful experience and contributions to the group. As well as his existing business Arthur is interested in moving into affiliate marketing.  We also racked up a success for the group by solving a specific problem on Google indexing that Arthur was experiencing.   Two heads (well, fourteen in this case) are always better than one!

Likewise, Gren Bingham's wise head and experience made contributions to everyone else's issues though I am at fault for managing to miss his report out of the discussions.  You can still find him at http://win-with.us.

Laurie Dalton's Web Booking Form is still occupying back burner position in his life but he remains interested in all feedback from members on usability and improvements.  With a senior technical position at Reuters for many years he is now working on developing websites for others as well as a new software project on optimising the presentation of multiple, large image files on the web page.

Linda reported on developments with her ecommerce site at ShiftDress.co.ukand got some advice on presentation and copy.

Copywriter Sian Murphy is working on developing a website review service while partner Mark has been absorbing the contents of PPC Classroom with the intention of starting into affiliate marketing of Clickbank products.

Following the intention he expressed at the last meeting, Frank Piazza has launched his blog on Web 2.0 at Web2Diary.com.  Following his enthusiasm for the subject we are hopeful that Frank will soon be providing good advice to the group on social networking issues.

Loran has run into a few technical questions with her blog on how to Control Depression which were sorted out.  The relevant tips on changing header images in basic Wordpress themes will appear shortly on NicheMarketBlogger.com

Some useful tools that emerged from the discussion:

For producing fancy images of text and shapes: http://www.quickwebcreations.com/ - Just decline the OTO (one-time-offer) and you will be given access as a free member.  The paid for version is intended for graphic designers who are using it all the time.  As a free member - which is good enough for occasional use you can use the tools but cannot save the image settings.

Use the images produced by QuickWebCreations in XHeader, free  from XHeader.com.

Interested in producing computer based training?  Try Moodles, a free software tool within Fantastico on your cPanel.   Find it here: http://screencast.com/t/XtSJX5oUU0

Membership site revenue calculator: http://www.scottboulch.com/calc.html

Hope to see you all again at the next meeting currently scheduled for 23rd May.

Bruce Bird is an information publisher and online marketer specialising in helping individual entrepreneurs, small and medium size companies to get online quickly, easily and effectively. Visit his blog and signup free to get marketing strategies, insights and response-boosting tips! Go now to http://BruceBird.com

Although both of them are established users of aMember the gem turned out to be what they are moving to.  And best of all it turned out to be a Wordpress plugin - yet more evidence that Wordpress is taking over the world.

You can find out more on the Membership Sites page.

Bruce Bird is an information publisher and online marketer specialising in helping individual entrepreneurs, small and medium size companies to get online quickly, easily and effectively. Visit his blog and signup free to get marketing strategies, insights and response-boosting tips! Go now to http://BruceBird.com

New arrival Brian Gibson is already building his internet marketing coaching business with real world and online seminars. stepintointernetmarketing.com is his site to which he drives traffic using offline advertising. Brian had some recommendations for using video online that I hope he will share here with a Comment.

Sian Murphy's copywriting business continues to develop as a protege of Alan Forrest-Smith and her 'retirement' date when she ceases to be a wage-slave creeps closer. Partner Mark is next on the list for independence as he ceased to be '+1' on the RSVP list and will be starting his own projects focusing on using PPC to drive traffic to Clickbank affiliate products.

Roger Bourdon was unable to attend but we gave his new coaching site the once over in any event. Nice, clean site, Roger, and a very effective, keyword rich, domain name.

Some discussion about blogging and membership sites and how to manage them and a recommendation for Amy Bass at http://www.thenicheblogger.com/. Reference to DLGuard.com for payment management rather than membership management.

Laurie Dalton reported on his activities and has been asked to develop 2 new sites for customers. His Web Booking Form has also generated some unexpected results in that users have started to use it to find events. A good example of the customer always being right and finding unexpected uses.

Frank's development of a social networking site for the art community at www.artlyst.com is still under development but expects to launch soon. His interests turning towards blogging around his passion and interest in Web 2.0.

Gareth is getting to grips with the technology of ftp and rebranding with his www.reviewsitehub with 47 pre-loaded Clickbank products. He also reported his successful experiences with Jing for making short videos to provide relevant information to Help and support desks. I also use Jing extensively for screenshots for the same purpose.

In both cases, the advantage is that the content, either the video or the image, is held by Screencast, the developers of Jing, and all you have to send to the recipient is the link. This saves enormous amounts of bandwidth and disk storage space.

Loran made it back after an absence caused by clashes with her work schedule to report on getting not just one but three Wordpress blogs up and running. Controldepression.co.uk and harleystreetsymbiodynamics.com relate to niche market developements with commercial potential and loranorthey.co.uk is her professional 'brochure' site.  All credit to Loran for getting the blogs up and running even though she knows nothing about Wordpress (so far!).  Next stage is to improve the appearance of the sites and optimise their functionality.

Gerard reported on some difficulties with his Bluehost hosting service. While Bluehost is generally well regarded in the online marketing community it has moved away from Fantastico for the management of one click installations. However, the alternative of Simple Scripts is equally manageable.

Look forward to seeing you all next month with further progress.  As ever, new members are always welcome.

Bruce Bird

(who talked, as ever, about the advantages of Semiologic for bloggers and showed fleeting glimpses of his new site for Model Airplane Videos - built entirely with Semiologic.

Bruce Bird is an information publisher and online marketer specialising in helping individual entrepreneurs, small and medium size companies to get online quickly, easily and effectively. Visit his blog and signup free to get marketing strategies, insights and response-boosting tips! Go now to http://BruceBird.com

Giving away something useful is a necessary requirement of any viral campaign.  Giving something away that is automatically going to be used whenever the user goes shopping online - and for a long time to come - and from which the giver is likely to make affiliate commission every time the 'Buy Now' button is pressed must be marketing magic.

As marketers you will know that there is always a front end cost to be paid for the subsequent advantage but read the page on MyShoppingGenie or just click the Genie ad to find out more.

____________________________________________

Bruce Bird is an information publisher and online marketer specialising in helping individual entrepreneurs, small and medium size companies to get online quickly, easily and effectively. Visit his blog and signup free to get marketing strategies, insights and response-boosting tips! Go now to http://BruceBird.com

"Hello,

We're writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site's privacy policies. You'll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to display ads based on a user's previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. "sports enthusiast").  To develop interest categories, we will recognise the types of web pages that users visit throughout the Google content network.  As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the "sports enthusiast" interest category.  To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Centre at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310&hl=en_GB.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557&hl=en_GB to ensure that your site's privacy policies are up-to-date and make any necessary changes by 8 April 2009.  Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we're unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Yours sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team"

Following the link does deliver a form of wording, though, of course, they do not go as far as telling you exactly what you should do.  However, the very fact that Google is covering it's back by telling you in advance that there is a potential legal risk is sufficient to indicate that it will be well worth your while to take notice.