Work at home on the Internet: internet marketing and affiliate program help.
Back issues here Issue 236 | Sept 15th 2002

Letter from Phil

if you publish an ezine, and aren't having a great deal of success with it (or even if you are), you need to read Len McGranes ebook "How To Boost The Importance Of Your Ezine...And It's Editor"

(I just wish Len had an affiliate program because if he did I'd be
building a mini site or two to promote this book)

Even if you don't put out an ezine, but you're struggling to come up
with quality content for your web sites, I'd advise you read it.

It's only short, but it's direct and to the point. The book concentrates on showing you how to make your ezine/web content different by running quality success-story interviews with people who are making money online.

I've often thought of running similar success stories here, but I've
always been worried I couldn't keep finding enough people to
interview. But long-time journalist Len shows exactly how to find
them...plus he provides you with a template letter to help get them
agree to an interview, then even helps you out with the questions.

There's more in the book than that, of course. It's good.

I'd been wondering how Len found so many people with interesting
stories and tips. Now I know.

My only gripe with it is that it's not long enough, Len could add more. But he's working on a revision and if you buy now you'll get it for free..

Here's the link again

2. Sales Letter software...yes or no...?

A couple of weeks ago the writer of a well known marketing ezine,
one I really look forward to reading every week, advised people not
to use salesletter creation software.

I disagree.

The simple fact is that most people CAN'T write compelling salesletters. No matter how much they study, how long they work on it, many people just can't come up with the goods.

No disrespect if you're one of them. We're all good at different things online. Some people are fantastic web designers, others are ace programmers. Or you might by brilliant at sniffing out joint ventures....but, even if you can do any or all of these things you might suck at writing a sales letter.

I struggled for days over mine at http://www.minisiteprofits.com

And it turned out ok, but I know that most people just can't do
it no matter how long they work on it.

So I DO suggest you try sales letter creation software.

In his book "How to Succeed In Business By Breaking All The Rules," master direct response copywriter, Dan Kennedy says the secret of his success is his "swipe file".

Rather than coming up with something from scratch he copies and pieces together already proven "stuff" rather than indulging in his creativity.

Using his swipe file, a huge collection of successful ads he's clipped over the years, he puts together headlines, offers, story copy, and so on. Then he smoothes it all out. Makes the pieces connect. Changes words, phrases, terminology to fit his client's products and customers...and he winds up with an ad that has mostly written itself out of old, used material.

This is just the way you should use sales letter creation software.

What you should is use it to write your basic sales letter, then tweak the words a little, change a few things, and instill some of your own personality.

The best way to do this is print out the sales letter you've put together with the software and take it into Starbucks or somewhere
and fiddle around with it until it's more "you".

Two pieces of software to help you create such sales letters (and by sales letters I mean the main pages of sales sites like my Mini Site Profits site ) are Marlon Sanders Push Button Sales Letters and the new Sales Letter Generator tool from Armand Morin which comes with a complete text manual and 7 audio tutorials even formats your page for you complete with links to your credit card processor including Clickbank and Paypal.

If you also own Armand's Ecover Generator software or his Header Generator product you'll get a complete sales letter and website
just like the one at this link

I've got to admit I've not used either of them. So I don't know which one is best. Like I said, I struggled for days over the only sales letter I've ever written...the one at Mini Site Profits

It's not a process I'd like to go through again. It just takes too long. Next time I'm going to take the easy route, by using one of these tools, then I'll pop into my local version of Starbucks and tweak it a bit.

3. Interesting Downloads...

If you're like me you're probably always downloading files from the
Internet - updates, patches, new software, ebooks...here's something to help speed up the downloads. And it's free.

Fresh Download is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager
software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite freeware/shareware, mp3 files, movie files, picture collections, etc. Unlike any other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no charges, no banners in the software (which steal your bandwidth) , no spyware.

And there's a nice little script at the Smart CGI site to let you know
how long it takes for your web pages to appear in someone's browser.

Why is that important? Because if your page is slow loading people
aren't going to hang around to look at it.

Load Timer will calculate how many seconds it takes for the monitored page to load for each person that visits it. The stats page tells you everything: average load time, fastest time, slowest time, a detailed graph, and more! You could track anything you want with this script, such as the amount of time it takes for visitors to get from one page of your site to another.

You'll find it, and a lot more interesting scripts here