I don’t do ANY SEO and I’m doing GREAT! My SECRET Four “C” formula.

Posted by Jim in Email Marketing tips, SEO: Search Engine Optimization 29 comments

I’ve caught some flack lately for my stance on SEO.

To me nearly all SEO efforts are the art and science of trying to stay one step ahead of Google in order to get undeserving websites a higher ranking than they deserve.  A great way to avoid all of that nonsense is to NOT CARE and NOT RELY on your Google rank.  If you do rank well occasionally, it’s a bonus. If you don’t rank well don’t worry about it. Just use my proven Four C formula below.

Are you curious how much time I’ve spent working on, thinking about and paying people to assist me with SEO? Ready for the total?

It’s ZERO.

And yet (to grab one example),  SilentSalesMachine.com (a simple one page website with a google pagerank of 5) gets loads of organic, search engine traffic. This is because people talk about it, they link to it, and it’s a great book according to the “crowd”.

Ready for the Four C’s?

I choose to create fantastic content that starts conversations and then the crowds find me every time. (I’ll call it my four C’s)

Each time I have an audience online paying attention to me I offer them the option of getting on my email list so I can contact them later with other stuff they might love (email marketing). Yep – it’s all that simple.

If you are spending your time, money, energy or heaven forbid you are building your career around figuring out ways to get Google “Love” for websites that only deserve Google “slight affection” (or worse), then I say embrace the 4 C formula now and only spend your money and time with people that get it.

Keep in mind this trend while you are making up your mind:

The Internet is increasingly LESS and LESS about “websites” and it’s more and more about RELATIONSHIPS, PEOPLE, TRUST and COMMUNITIES.

Being good at tricking google is not a skill that will get you through life much longer if I’m right.

Now, click the comment button and tell me all the reasons I’m nuts (I’m serious – I want your best shot!)

Additional reading:

http://www.jimcockrum.com/blog/?p=1688

Silent Sales Machine 7.0 finally launches!

Posted by Jim in Affiliate Marketing, Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Finding Customers, Great Business Ideas, Information Marketing, Offline Biz (IM for Brick-n-mortar), selling on eBay 138 comments

SilentSalesMachine.com was my first “big hit” ebook back in 2002 and I’ve just released the 7th update.

I’m rolling it out to loyal fans – many of which have read EVERY version!

Since 2002 I’ve been updating and re-releasing what is surely one of the all time (if not the all time) best selling ebooks in the world.

What’s this book about?

Quite simply, it’s about what works NOW and what doesn’t work NOW online. It’s about where to get started and what to avoid. It’s the story of my success online and the success of thousands of others that I’ve taught, but better yet, it’s how you can do it as well.

Yes it’s true-  thousands of people have used past versions of this book to launch their online income streams.

Here are the details on the “Silent Sales Machine 7.0″ ebook update:

•   If you are a member of MySilentTeam.com log in to get the latest update at no charge
•   If you bought the book in the past I’ve emailed you a copy by now (or you dropped off our email list).

If you are a long time loyal reader of “Silent Sales Machine” I have a favor to ask though:

• Read the new version
• Send me your feedback (as an email, or post it as a comment here)
• If you have a story of your own success that belongs in the book send it to me! I’ll include it (once verified of course). I always have room for new success stories!

Ready to pick it up at the $5 launch price?
Visit SilentSalesMachine.com

Have a question, comment feedback etc.? Please leave a comment using the comment button above! We will publish all comments that others might find useful, but if you have a private question you can leave it here as well and we’ll respond to the email address you leave us.

P.S. Want to get paid to tell your friends about this book on facebook etc.? Check out the affiliate info at the bottom of the SilentSalesMachine.com page.

“Free Marketing 101…” TEARING up the charts one year later

Posted by Jim in Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Finding Customers, Grow Your Business, inspiration, Outsourcing, Traffic Generation 141 comments

GET THE BOOK HERE

GET THE AUDIO VERSION HERE

The story behind this book:

Here we are in late 2012 a year after the book hit the shelves…and it STILL at the top of the charts for all Marketing books in the world thanks to your support!

The publisher is the “For Dummies” publisher – Wiley and Sons -  and they asked me in late 2012 to write a book about how to START or GROW a business (or spread and idea, a cause, an organization etc.) using free and virtually free marketing ideas centering on Internet based strategies.

After a year of hard work this book was the result.

What made me qualified to write this?

From the perspective of the publisher I’d achieved something that many others would like to accomplish. I’d grown multiple successful and creative online businesses…and had done it WITHOUT ever needing to invest a wad of cash. In the rare instances where I did spend any money it was either on inventory that would quickly sell for very nice profits, or it was nominal expenses like $5 for a video, or $30 to have a long audio transcribed into writing etc.

I’ve been a ravenous consumer of effective and “Free Marketing” concepts for over 25 years.

From here forward I’m considering the self appointed title of:  “World’s Foremost Expert on Free Marketing Ideas”.    You like it?   ;0)

Seriously though – the book is CRAMMED with my best ideas and the first few dozen reviews are all RAVING.   It’s so stuffed with great ideas that they asked me to shorten it but I refused. Since they initially asked if I had 100 ideas to fill such a book and I agreed…I decided to deliver those 100+ ideas on MY terms.

The final product is the best ideas from my nearly decade of success online. It’s not a cover to cover type of book though. Whether you have five minutes or six hours to spend with this book I hope you’ll walk away inspired (that was my goal).

100% of the author proceeds from book sales go to “Hope Village” – a ministry that teaches financial independence to budding inner-city entrepreneurs.

I can sniff out winning ideas like a bomb sniffing dog on caffeine. It’s a gift and a curse, but I tried to capture that way of thinking and put it all into a single book.

Click the book image or visit 101freemarketing.com for more info.

Want to see the reviews from readers? Click Here for Amazon’s Reader Reviews Page

Tearing up the charts! It’s a #1 Top Seller Worldwide!

Can you help spread the word?

Finally, here’s my invitation to you to help spread the word about this book. I also explain where the proceeds are going (I’m not keeping them).  You’ll also see a video of my wife, kids and I seeing the book for the first time ever just a few days before it hit store shelves – it was a fun family moment!

Be Sure to buy more than just one copy!!

o   Booster seat for toddlers
o   Have any business minded friends? They’ll love you!
o   Have non-business minded friends with insomnia? They’ll love you too!

o   It’s always a good time to do some Christmas shopping!
o   Sell them on eBay? (or Amazon) after you read it and get most if not all of your money back!

Have a question? Leave a comment below and someone will help you out.

In our first week using the ideas in Free Marketing, we posted some astounding numbers (for us, anyway). We set a record for monthly visits to our content site in only seven days and reached more than 6,000 people through social media and our email newsletter.

While we’re still ramping up, this quick start is proof enough that the techniques in Free Marketing really work. Here’s what we did last week:

1. Published daily posts at http://livingtodayforward.com
2. Shared posts via social media and used Facebook’s promote feature
3. Emailed our first weekly newsletter to our contacts thanks to a gmail export

In the next two months, we’ll keep doing with daily posts and weekly newsletter and post 16 videos to YouTube and Vimeo, publish two Kindle books, and introduce our re-designed web application. Based on the last week, I have no doubt that this combination will produce outstanding results as we move forward.

Thanks for writing such a useful and timely book!

Sincerely,

Michael Harr
Co-Founder
TodayForward

Read even more great stories below!

I want an Internet business. Where do I start?

Posted by Jim in Affiliate Marketing, Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Information Marketing, Offline Biz (IM for Brick-n-mortar), Selling on Amazon, selling on eBay 94 comments

Use twitter? Leave me some twitter love! ->

 

 

I’ve been helping my readers and students launch successful online and Internet based businesses for nearly a decade. Even though I’ve been part of helping thousands of people achieve significant online incomes, I’m aware that much if not most of my audience is still stuck at square one for one reason or the other. This is a visual map to help you pick an idea to start with, or if you’ve had some success and want a new income stream you’ll find my favorites here.

Welcome to my “Opportunity Landscape” or “map”. A lot of thought went into this – I hope you like it.

To download this full image (bigger) use this link.

I’ve made three very short videos (under 5 minutes) for you to explain the detail on this table. Please let me know what questions you have by leaving a comment (use the comment button at the top of this article).

Did I leave anything out? Do you want more detail on any of these opportunities? Do you disagree with where I placed any of the opportunities? Let’s talk about it… (also – for additional reading check out my SilentSalesMachine.com book. It’s the best $5 you’ll ever spend to help shape your online income goals.)

Video 1 of 3:

Video 2 of 3:

Video 3 of 3:

Please leave a comment! The button is at the top of this post.

How do most businesses get new customers? Knowing the answer is powerful.

Posted by Jim in Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Finding Customers 35 comments

See if you can answer this simple business question…

…but first the “back story”:

David Frey has done marketing consulting for Fortune 500 clients and mom and pop businesses alike for well over a decade. He’s helped online businesses thrive and he’s helped offline businesses alike.

He often asks a simple question when he meets business owners (online and offline).

He asks businesses:

“Where do you get most of your new clients and customers?”

What answer do you think he hears the vast majority of the time?

The answer is “referrals”.

Thanks to all who took a stab at the answer BEFORE I revealed it.

I asked my readers to take a guess at the answer in the blog comments and several of you nailed the answer.

The opportunity:Very few businesses ever deploy a solid referral strategy with a systematic approach. Which leads David to his next simple question he asks business owners which is:

“Do you have a simple system in place to automate and capture referrals?”

If you are bold enough to ask those two questions you could have a thriving, fun business.

David is the sharpest guy I know is this arena – you’ll meet no one better.

He’s agreed to do a training webinar with me to teach you some new things that I promise you’ve never seen before. He’ll also show us a tool he uses to generate literally MILLIONS for his own business.

Watch a  replay of the webinar by clicking here

Here’s  some of what we covered:

• He’ll show us the tool he uses to automate referrals for his own business and multiple other businesses.
• He’ll reveal his most successful advertising campaign ever (he’s NEVER shared this before online and has revealed it only once before to ANYONE outside his business).
• Shows you the system he uses to generate autopilot income month after month (and has been using it for years)
• One of the things he’ll show us is what I call a $150,000 business model that I believe ANYONE can duplicate
• Shows us a simple service that those of us in the “Offline Biz” world can use to attract and serve clients in a way unlike anything they’ve seen before
• David will share with us his PERSONAL CELL PHONE number if you want more detail about what he’s teaching us

The webinar is aimed primarily at those of us that work with “offline businesses“, but even if that’s not part of your business plan you should attend this webinar or watch the replay. David will teach you some simple stuff that ANY business can benefit from including your own.

He’ll be revealing the MOST POWERFUL WAY HE’S EVER SEEN to attract and build relationships with prospects and clients. It’s not to be missed if you have a business of any kind.

If you have any questions or comments about the webinar or the topics we cover feel free to post them here as a comment.

Have a question for David about the presentation or SOC? Here’s his email address:
SOCDavidFrey[at]gmail.com (replace [at] with @ of course)