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Recommended Resources

This is basically a list of bits and bobs I've gradually pieced together over the last couple of years and which I've found helpful with learning about selling online successfully. Some of this info is free, some of it isn't but this is all stuff I've found hugely useful.

Please note after using some of these products I've become an affiliate to help promote them so may receive a small commission if you end up buying something.

"Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins

$8.87 (~£5) from www.LearnOutLoud.com

What does a book written in 1923 have to do with internet marketing (IM)? Well although he's mostly talking about mail-order, he may as well be describing selling on the internet.

This is The Advertisers Bible, now available conveniently as an mp3. I have the paper version of this which is actually two books together. I read the first book on holiday ("My life in Advertising") but rarely get time to read books during normal working weeks but was *desperate* to devour this. Now with the mp3 I know it practically off by heart.

The filenames were all in the wrong order when I got it but have been assured by the site's operator that it's all groovy now.

*All* the IM bods I follow rate this book as practically legendary - well it is. To quote David Ogilvy from the book's cover "Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book (Scientific Advertising) seven times".

David Ogilvy knows what he's doing, I reckon my IM bods know what they're doing - they all said learn it, I figured I'd learn it and if you're selling online then you probably also should. This is by far the easiest way of digesting it too. Let it go round and round on your mp3 player or while working and let it soak in till it becomes instinct :)




www.PerryMarshall.com

Perry Marshall - audoresponder and adwords Jedi, author of the Definitive Guide To Adwords. If Claude hopkins is the bible then this is the gospel according to Perry. It's just a pity it doesn't come as an MP3 like Claude Hopkins.

For me Perry Marshall is the person who introduced me to the power of autoresponders. To be honest Perry gives away so much top-quality, useful material that if you implemented it all you could probably afford the paid-for services from the proceeds. In any case start with The definitive guide to Adwords (or something a bit more hardcore? Adwords Blackbelt)



How To Double Your Business




90min Video from Glenn & Sharon Livingstone

This is a truly superb video to do with surveying your intended market and really reaching deep to find out the best area and approach to use with your potential customers. Glenn Livingstone is a researcher and statistician/psychologist. He's developed a uniquely mathematical approach to identifying, surveying, communicating with and ultimately serving your market. Glenn's "system" is actually stunningly elegant and this video explains his approach pretty much from start to finish. This is another one to watch several times to let it really sink in. I've been on his various email lists for a couple of years now and recently subscribed to one of his monthly services. I think what he does is superb. Most people will never bother to follow it - their loss.


Get 17 Free AdWords Cheat Sheets, MP3s, and Videos from someone with a proven track record of AdWords success.




Adwords bidding system explained by Google




Video from google as to how the adwords bidding system works. Very explanatory, watch several times and hopefully understand how writing better ads translates into direct cost savings.




Handy SEO video from Google




This video is from a page which has other useful info for setting up good meta tags and whatnot. Check it Here




Aweber email communications

Aweber provide a premium email service - basically automated email lists with follow-up sequences and most importantly exceptionally high delivery rates.

I know that perhaps doesn't sound that exciting, but if you've ever sent a mailer and stood there tearing your hair out because you realise you have no idea whether anyone even got it, whether they clicked or whether you're actually just posting emails into the ether and effectively talking to yourself....*then* you start to appreciate the beauty of the Aweber system.

It's not for everyone - they have strict policies about not adding bought/harvested addresses and no automated emails/API which means you can't use them like an SMTP smarthost. In real terms that means you can't really integrate them into an existing system to send confirmation emails and stuff for a website/database you host (e.g drupal), it all needs to work from within Aweber.

But for building and growing mailing lists with traced results, timed follow-up sequences, custom tracking and split testing, a full analytics package, twitter integration and rss archiving...it's absolutely superb., and if you follow any of the free teleseminars from Perry Marshall, Glenn Livingstone and the like you'll often hear Aweber mentioned and also see it used to good effect.

I run my lists on Aweber and so do my more astute clients. They've currently got a promotion where you get the first month for $1 here.



Google apps

Google apps is so far the only email service which hasn't failed me. Outlook will stitch you up, Outlook express will too eventually. Gmail keeps a copy on the server, and there's a squadron of winged monkeys on standby should a server go down. You can still check mails from your Outlook express, Blackberry or whatever, but you don't lose your emails when it packs-in, plus you get intelligent email filtering and can scale up as needed...oh yes, very cool.



They recently made it harder to find the free version (up to 25 users). I'm making it easier: here. My clients get this as standard equipment. It's the most reliable email host I've ever had and it's free.



There's a paid-for version which is about $25/pa or so which will allow you more than 25 users and has a support line etc. I can't comment on that because my clients are generally small organisations so we've never needed it.




Google analytics

Originally sold by Urchin Software for around $1500/mo, Google bought them and released it as "Analytics". Awesome stats package which in the right hands can answer pretty much any marketing question you might have.



Google website optimiser

Website testing in a can. Learn what really makes your website tick. Blue Headline or Red (or no headline)? Find out for sure, for free. Frankly...Google rock for giving us these tools for free.

This isn't actually taguchi testing which apparently that uses some compression algorithms so you need less repeats of the experiment to get a confident result. GWO is called "full factorial testing" because it tests every single variation. That can mean tests take a looong time which can limit GWO's usefulness on small-traffic sites.


The System Seminar

The System Seminar, hosted by Ken McCarthy is an annual seminar and a bit of a meeting of minds of the IM world which happens in the USA in the spring. They developed a unique approach of giving away huge amounts of valuable content in the form of tele-seminars with their upcoming faculty. If you're trying to find your niche (or "nitch") the breadth of their programme will give you a huge amount of material to get your teeth into. The "pre-system seminars" give you a rough idea of what each faculty member is about. Once you've figured that out they normally have their own website/mailing list you can join to find out more about that person.



Other resources:

Google Search-based Keyword Tool

Google Trends

Google HotTrends

Google Insights

Google Local business Centre Dashboard - Register your business and get a Local Business entry on Google Maps. Requires some form of verification (post/phone) but then means you've effectively "bagsied" your address on google maps. This is a good step towards entrenching yourself in a niche from an SEO point of view.

Google Webmaster Tools - Make sure your sites are in Google's index, upload an XML sitemap, check for dead links within your site. All good SEO basics

Google Ad Planner - Use this to search for placements on the content network rather than letting Adwords run wild. Make sure you set the Ranking Method to "Composition Index" to find the most targeted locations.


123-reg.co.uk for domains - I know it's not a big thing but for cheap domains with a decent, usable control panel I've found 123reg to be where I've ended up hosting mine. The system's not perfect by any means but I've yet to find one which is. So far this is the least worst overall I've found.


They seem to have recently introduced a very annoying auto-renew policy which means unless you want domains to automatically get renewed (and your last source of funding to get charged automatically) you have to request they remove your payment details. So far I've always found the staff happy to do so. I'm hoping they'll get bored eventually and perhaps make it optional. See my blog post about this here


Other than that and some whacky framesets it's actually a pretty decent system and offers all the functionality you're likely to need and most important - reliability. There's even some bulk management tools and of course decent prices too.


In the past I've noticed that 123reg will not forward to hotmail accounts (the email just vanishes) but that's not something I've tested recently so they may have changed it. It's probably an anti-spam measure but still kinda annoying if it happens to affect you.. and yet despite this 123reg seem to be the best... what does that tell you about the others!


Monastic.com - website monitoring. Your website goes down, you get an email. Lets you monitor up to 3 sites for free.


Improve your website's visiblity to advertisers Effectively this is optimising how you are shown as an ad poublisher on the adsense/content network