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Where’s Your Affiliate Program or Associate Program…

By Charlie Cook | July 3, 2007

I often get questions about whether I have an affiliate program or associate program people can use to make money marketing my small business marketing ideas and tools. The answer of course is yes, I do have one though to be honest, I haven’t promoted it much because it didn’t have all the supporting materials I wanted it to have.

That’s changed. Over the last couple of months I’ve built a site for my affiliates to use that provides every tool you can think of to make it dirt simple to promote and market the best selling marketing books and training tools on my site. I’ve included ads, articles, sample emails, etc

You can sign up at http://www.insideraffiliateprogram.com/
If you haven’t already reviewed these best-sellers. Here they are:

Marketing messages to get increase sales.

Discover the web site marketing strategies that increase online lead generation and sales.

How to Close More Sales With Your Small Business Marketing

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas Proven in the Marketplace

How Do You Automate Your Online Info-Product Business

By Charlie Cook | April 24, 2007

“I have an e-book that I want to market on the internet, however I do not know any companies that set up the e-book system on the website (digital download). Can you recommend any companies? Who did you go with for your books? Also, did you set up your own affiliate program, or did you get help from a company?”
– Chris M

There are already easy to use comprehensive shopping cart and delivery systems online. Here’s the link to the ecommerce service I use for everything from building my opt-in email list, to broadcasting my newsletter, to processing orders, to providing digital downloads of purchased books, to managing my affiliate program. Use this link >> https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/shopping.html

– Charlie
Web Site Marketing That Works

Don’t Do It! Small Business Marketing Scams

By Charlie Cook | October 16, 2006

The small business marketing question I got today shocked me! The woman on the line confessed she’d made every wrong mistake in the book and now with a maxed out credit card was trying to figure out what to do next. While her goals were high, she wanted to become a millionaire, she had no idea where to start.

She’d just gotten off the phone with a representative of a firm that promises to help anyone become an instant success in real estate. When she told the representative her financial situation he told her to talk to her credit card company and see how much cash she could come up with towards the $10,000 cost of the sure fire get rich program.

Her question was should she take on additional debt to sign up and “Find fast wealth in any city, town, or neighborhood” ?

My immediate response was NO! And then I did what she should have done first. I went to:

Report A Ripoff.

It’s not a pretty or fast site but when I searched the name of the program in question, I found countless stories of people paying their $10,000 for real estate coaching and getting next to nothing in return.

Want to make a million with your small business? You can, with a good idea, a high level of expertise, hard work and effective marketing. If you’re looking for an opportunity and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. Before you invest in it, do your own due diligence and look through the industry relevant message boards and sites like Report A Ripoff.
– Charlie Cook

How Do You Know When Your Marketing Isn’t Working?

By Charlie Cook | March 4, 2006

As the story goes, a Mississippi tug boat company had one key question they asked prospective captains. The owner of the company would ask, “How many times have you gone aground?”

If the person said, “Never”. he knew he was a liar and would dismiss the prospective captain on the spot. Given the twisty nature of the Mississippi and its constantly shifting sand bars, every barge captain has “touched” bottom more than once.

The same is true in marketing your small business. Everyone has made a mistake or two or three. Recently I made yet another one myself. I don’t look forward to making mistakes but each time I discover one, it gives me a chance to make my marketing even better.

The culprit in my case was my new subscriber autoresponder series. It had been working well to convert recent subscribers to clients but I was intent on increasing my conversion rates, so one day I fiddled with the copy of each of the messages in the series.

It would have been a good idea, but some days not every neuron is firing and by mistake I pasted two messages in the series together into one. The top of the message started with Dear so and so, then at the end it started again with Dear so and so, etc.

Of course I didn’t notice this mistake for a couple of weeks because it just goes out automatically each time someone signs up for my marketing newsletter, something that happens almost 500 times per week.

What I did notice was that more people than usual were unsubscribing from the marketing ezine. Hmm! This prompted me to review the individual messages and correct the error. In the process I found a couple more ways to increase my conversion rates and sales.

If you haven’t done so already, sign up and take a look at the autoresponder series. I can’t share the exact numbers with you but let’s say I’ve doubled sales in the last couple of weeks.

Here’s the link to the site’s free marketing stuff page
Free Marketing Resources
and the direct link to sign up for free marketing guide and the autoresponder series
Get the Free Marketing Guide
– Charlie Cook

6 Things to Do In 2006 To Grow Your Small Business and Improve Your Marketing

By Charlie Cook | January 2, 2006

HERE ARE SIX THINGS TO DO IN 2006 TO BE MORE SUCCESSFUL

1. Hire someone to do all the stuff you spend time on that keeps you from having enough time to work on improving your marketing. I use a bevy of Virtual Assistants, web designers and programmers to sort email, submit articles, build web pages and f.ree up my time to develop products and improve my own marketing.

When you stop doing mundane time consuming tasks you’ll have more time for the fun and more rewarding ones. I’ve found some great virtual assistants with these resources.

International Association of Virtual Office Assistants
http://www.iavoa.com

The Virtual Business Group
http://www.virtualbizgroup.com

Canadian Virtual Assistant Connection
http://www.cvac.ca/

2. Listen to Your Prospects and Clients
Each time a prospect or client asks a question, write it down. Review these each week for new product ideas and for informational reports you could provide for free. You can use each client encounter to get ideas on how to even better serve your clients. Use these ideas and your clients will love you and your products and services.

3. Develop New Products by Thinking Outside of the Box
Set aside 10-20% of your time to develop new product and marketing ideas. Identify a problem your clients have and solve it with your products and services. When you do, even more clients will seek you out and you’ll sell more to existing clients. Need help thinking outside of the box? Here are some of my favorite books and sites.

How Customers Think: Essential insights into the mind of the market – Gerald Zlatman

Thinkertoys (A handbook of business creativity) – Michael Michalko

A Whack on the Side of the Head- How you can be more creative – Roger Von Oech

Weird Ideas that Work: 11 1/2 practices for Promoting, Managing and Sustaining Innovation – Robert Sutton

Why Didn’t I Think Of That? Think the unthinkable and achieve creative genius – Charles W. McCoy Jr.

Bill Myers Product Development Resource Center
http://www.bmyers.com/

4. Use Tracking Links to Test Every Variable of Your Marketing
When you make a change to your web site test everything from the words to the background color to where you put pictures on the page to find out whether it reduces or increases response. Using the test results you’ll know what works and what doesn’t.

My favorite testing tool is the ad tracker feature that comes with my shopping/ecommerce software.
https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/shopping.html

5. Get The Small Business Marketing Tools and Resources You Need to Succeed

Small Business Marketing Gold Special

Your Web Site Marketing Road Map

Your Marketing Plan

Your Marketing Message

A Marketing Mentor

6. Work Less and Earn More
Go away more often with your family and/or friends. Every time I take a couple of days off I come back with new ideas for growing my business and with a clear head get twice the work done in half the time. I use an automated online delivery system so I make just as much from product sales when I’m away anyways. You can too.
https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/shopping.html

Best Wishes for a Prosperous 2006,

Charlie Cook
Marketing For Success
www.marketingforsuccess.com
3 West End Avenue
Old Greenwich, CT 06870

/ Helping you get a better response, more clients
and more sales with your small business marketing //

To Succeed With Small Business Web Site Marketing – Think Big

By Charlie Cook | August 10, 2005

My current site, www.marketingforsuccess.com, has become one of the top sites on the web. How did this happen?

Each week for the last two years, I’ve written an article a week and more recently added a couple of blog entries. Page by page the site and the resources it provides has grown until it now is big in content.

Want your small business site to be big in profits. Start thinking big in terms of content. Add a page to your site each day and soon the search engines and your target market will be seeking you out.

– Charlie Cook – Helping you get a better response and more clients with your marketing

How Can I Ensure My Web Site Works With All Browsers?

By Charlie Cook | May 23, 2005

When people visit your web site you want them to see it at its best. If it looks good on your computer, you may assume that everyone else is getting the same professional view of your online business, but there is a good chance you’d be wrong. Each browser, browser version and operating system combination interprets your web site code differently.

It may look great in your IE browser, but columns could be squashed to AOL viewers or typefaces bold instead of not. Unless you own one of every operating system, each browser version and type, you won’t know how others view your site. Fortunately there is a simpler way to check your sites browser compatibility.

Thanks to an alert Ari at ximedia.net I was alerted that one of my primary pages had alignment problems in IE and was quickly able to fix the Marketing Tools Buyers Guide.

To see the problem I tested Browsercam.com. Within a couple of minutes it provides screen shots of your site from as many browsers and operating systems as you want so you can ensure your site looks its best for all viewers. Worth a try. – Charlie Cook

Avoiding Spam

By Charlie Cook | February 9, 2005

“My email box is being overwhelmed with spam. Someone is putting “microfish” or “ab123″ in front of my url to create email addresses like microfish@charlie.com as the return address for spam emails they are sending. Yesterday I received over 9,000 returns to my my email box. What do I do?” – Philip

About six years ago when I had my popular site SearchIQ.com, which I sold to CNet, I had the the same problem. A number of spammers had found my email address on the site and started to use it deluging my inbox with thousands of emails. The simple solution is to set your email to only specific email addresses. When you do this, all others such as dasfy09p7@charlie.com will be rejected by your server and you won’t be bothered by them.

The next step you can take is to remove your email address from your site and use forms instead. That way you’ll make it harder for the spammers spiders to find your email address and use it. – Charlie Cook

How Do I Build My Mailing List?

By Charlie Cook | December 4, 2004

“I need direct marketing ideas, a list of RN , LVN, CNA, with addresses so I can send flyers, postcards and market to these individuals and not all and every one because its more costly, I’m sure there is such a list, I just don’t know where to get it.

I am a Nurse myself and I always get mail from hospital or home health agencies with job offers so where did they get my name and address? and how do they know I’m a Nurse?” – Liz

A – I’m sure your town has a couple of printers who specialize in direct marketing mailings or can help you find someone to create a mailing list for you. Start with your yellow pages. I use Betterlists.com here in Stamford, CT. They have access to databases that can provide current listings of nurses, doctors or almost anything. If you can’t find a list provider in your town you can always use google.com. Just type in “mailing lists, nurses” and use the results to find a provider. – Charlie Cook

Isn’t Ezine Announcer Less Expensive than Your Ultimate List?

By Charlie Cook | December 4, 2004

“I’m interested in buying your Ulitmate Article Distribution List but Ezine Announcer looks like it does the same thing for less.” – Suzanne Falter-Barns

A – Often you get what you pay for. My ezine announcement list is constantly updated and checked and costs roughly half as much per lead if you used Bacon’s service to create your own list.

You might be interested in the following letter sent to me. I haven’t verified this personally but it suggests checking this resource out carefully before opting for the less expensive ezine announcement solution.” – Charlie cook

“I do use EzineAnnouncer but I don’t recommend it to anyone else anymore. I seem to be the only person who can use it and there is NO technical support. I know people who couldn’t even get it set up after purchasing and had to ask for a refund.

Last summer Jason updated the database but not the software. The software has not help section, no user manual and the new database is all screwed up. He just shoved thousands of new listings in without setting up the software to send to those sites so most of what he added does not work. It took me three entire weekends to fix the mess.

If you can set up software and use it with minimal instruction then you might want to consider EzineAnnouncer. I only continue using it because I spent so much time fixing it!”

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