Local Businesses Need YOU...

Do you have ANY idea how much smarter you are, at least marketing wise,
than any other business owner in your town?

No?  Try talking about what we do as marketers to the local yokels and
watch their eyes glaze over and their greed glands start to water, even if
your explaining basic opt-in strategies and simple autoresponders, they will
think your a genius, I guarantee it.

A few of my students have really caught on to this and are making a FORTUNE
right in their own back yards.

One guy in Florida is selling the “brain dead” simple service of setting up local
mom and pops in Google local, Google’s simple local listing tool.

He does a really great job and ads photos and some interesting copy for each listing.

His fee: $200 for about 20 minutes work so he can do 10-20 a week. Plus, he
uses an outside sales person on commission and never even sees the customer.

Another sharp student in Atlanta sets up and maintains local businesses Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube accounts then updates them from time to time.

Her fee: $175 a MONTH minimum and she has built up to over 100 clients in just a few months.

Do that math!

Lastly, this one really killed me. One of the more clever guys I’ve seen offers a
“Who’s talking about you” service for local businesses that send alerts to the
business any time they are mentioned online in a search engine, social media etc…

He charges $79 a month for his service and relies largely on the free Google
Alerts and Twitter Search service for most his information. I don’t know his
numbers, but he has 6 full time salespeople on staff and has had for a while.

The big point is, you ARE smart. Smarter than most of the businesses owners
in your area and NOW is the time to share your skills and collect some great
fees in the process.

Best Wishes,
Ryan

P.S. Comment below and tell me if you offer a local service, have a question or
just want to be heard. Go ahead, brag a little…

It’s official!

Microsoft announced today that they have struck a deal to power Yahoo’s search, while at the same time Yahoo will be powering paid ads on Bing.com (Microsoft’s new search platform…formerly known as MSN).

You can get all the details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-29release.mspx

…and here:

http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/Default.aspx

So why is this good news for marketers?

It’s simple. With Yahoo and Microsoft now a team, Google finally has some competition in the search market. This means:

1. Ad costs may go down, and…
2. Google may stop being such enormous jerks to their advertisers (which could mean less “Google Slaps”)

Obviously this is just my speculation, and the deal doesn’t go final until 2010 so don’t expect anything to change overnight, but competition is (almost) always a good thing for consumers, so for now, at least, I’m chearing this deal.

Comment below and let me know what you think…

-Ryan

I just sent an email out to my list promoting my latest course on email marketing (“13 Sneaky Email Marketing Tricks”) and the link in the promo went to the WRONG WEBSITE!

Seriously, this really did happen, but fortunately it wasn’t my fault (for once!) Check it out:

(And for the record, the correct link is: http://www.SneakyEmailTricks.com)

NOTE TO CYNICS AND SKEPTICS: I know that more than a few people will accuse me of staging this or even speculate that sending out an email with the wrong link …

I’m only gonna say this once: This email screw-up was not…I repeat NOT staged or planned in any way.

It also is NOT one of the 13 “sneaky email tricks” we discuss in “13 Sneaky Email Marketing Tricks”, so if you comment and say that on this or any other blog or forum all you’re really doing is proving that you 1) don’t (or can’t) read or 2) are so dang cynical you probably can’t be saved and should seriously consider a different business.

Here’s what this IS: It IS a good example of turning a lemon into lemonade.

Just remember that in all aspects of life, successful people see opportunities in everything…even their own personal screw-ups. :o)

GoToWebinar has really put the screws to us and limited our room size to 1000
when we have 3000+ people registered for tonight’s webinar so…

What can you do LOCK your seat?

#1. If you haven’t registered do so right now.
If you waste time registering tonight you will
be shut out. The registration link is…

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/734669138

#2. Be on the webinar 15 minutes early to secure
your seat.  Once your on you can’t be booted

#3. If you get the “This Webinar is Full” when you
message log in go immediately to

http://www.frankkernwebinar.com

to watch the streaming simulcast (if we can get it set-up
in time)

Perry and I are so sorry. We knew that Frank would draw a ton of folks and we
thought we had it covered.  Stick in there and you’ll make it.

Just remember if you CAN NOT get on the training tonight, IMMEDIATELY go
to:

http://www.frankkernwebinar.com

to watch the streaming simulcast or get directions on exactly how to get in.

CLICK HERE To Register for the FREE TRAINING WEBINAR with Frank Kern:
“13 Ninja Mind Hacks That Make People Buy From You”

Have you heard about the latest Twitter Hoax?

Apparently some jokesters convinced many in the Twitter community (including one well-known internet marketer who will go unnamed) that Twitter would soon introduce PAID premium accounts.

The accounts would range from $5 - $250 a month, and would include features such as:

• Higher character limit
• Free “random followers”
• Listing on the “Recommended People To Follow” list
• Celebrity followers…

…and more!

The hoax was “outed” almost immediately and everyone had a good laugh about it.

But it got me thinking…is this really such a bad idea?

I mean, obviously some of the premium features bordered on the ridiculous, but is it really such a bad idea for a Social Media property to offer a paid continuity option for premium/business users?

By most estimates, Twitter has over 1 MILLION users and is growing at an insane rate. And for a company that still doesn’t have a viable business model, this hoax idea seems as good as any.

Imagine if Twitter had a $4.95 a month Premium account that had additional features such as:

• Higher character limit (maybe 200 instead of 140)
• Ability to “highlight” your tweets (i.e. change the background color)
• Directory/category listing (of course, this would require them to first create categories)

I can guarantee you I’d buy it!

And I’m probably not alone. And with over 1 MILLION users (and counting), that $4.95 a month would add up pretty quickly.

I realize any mention of profits or capitalism is heresy to the Social Media community, but eventually all these free services will need some sort of sustainable business model or they’ll all fold up and die.

I for one say “Bring On Twitter Premium!”

What do you think? Please let me know by commenting below.

Watch the video below to see the 3 step filter that run all of my lead magnets through:

Get The Squeeze Page Template That I Use At:
http://www.googlefriendlylandingpages.com

On February 17th during the early morning hours our server literally died. It didn’t crash, the hardware actually ceased to function. As a result of the hardware failure our daily back up was corrupted and we lost everything. Fortunately the last backup pre-hardware failure on the 16th was successful.

Needless to say we have now upgraded to a server that has all the bells and whistles with backups, more backups and then more virtual backups.

Unfortunately, all the customer support tickets submitted between the 16th and yesterday around 3:00pm Eastern have been completely lost. I sincerely apologize if this has inconvenienced you in any way.

My team has literally been working around the clock to rectify the situation and get everyone taken care of. It has been all hands on deck since we figured out what happened.

Thankfully the majority of the tickets were answered but if you needed further assistance please re-submit to our new customer support system Zendesk, that we’re now using to ensure this does not happen again.

You can submit your questions here from now on:

support@drivingtraffic.zendesk.com

Thank you for your patience and level of professionalism in handling this situation. I consider myself to have some of the most savvy clients and consider myself very fortunate to work with you.

Thank you and please accept my sincerest apologies,

Ryan Deiss

P.S. For those of you who are contemplating housing your customer support system on your own server, Zendesk is a solution you may want to check out as well. Having scripts like our previous customer support ticket system can make life much more difficult.

Needless to say I’ve been researching this even before the death of our server, and Zendesk is a great online application that does not hinge on nothing ever going wrong with your own server.

To learn more about Zendesk you can check it our here (this is not an affiliate link):

http://www.zendesk.com

I  figure if you can head off any possible fires by learning from our experiences then this while very untimely and inconvenient was an educational exercise.

My buddy Ed Dale made a dramatic and controversial decision to “unfriend” all his Facebook friends and start over. Watch this video I made to get all the details, and let me know your opinion.

Read Ed’s post at: http://tubbynerd.com/2009/02/10/its-not-you-its-me-my-goodbye-to-facebook-friends/

I am re-opening the “Your First $1000″ program.

You can get more info by going to: http://www.YourFirst1000.com

Due to the “one-on-one” nature of this program, I’m only able to take 25. Because of this, the first one sold out in under 5 minutes and the waiting list has ballooned to over 2000 people.  And needless to say I’ve had a lot of requests to do it again.

So, starting THIS THURSDAY (January 29th) at 3:00pm eastern that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Again, you can get all the details by going here:

http://www.YourFirst1000.com

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment and I’ll do my best to respond between now and this Thursday.

-Ryan

P.S. There is also going to be a webinar this Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Time: 8:00 PM Central (9:00 Eastern). You can sign up for the webinar here:

http://www.yourfirst1000.com/theplan.html