SmilingPartners

I get lots of marketing email. LOTS – often a couple hundred emails a day to my internet marketing email accounts. I’ve been online since 2006, so I’ve responded to a lot of offers, taken advantage of getting free reports, ebooks, videos, etc. I don’t unsubscribe often, because as a marketer, I want and need to see what the other guys are doing. Even when I’m mad at the presentation (see previous post)

But there are some bothersome – if not silly – methods out there.

I’m sure you’ve seen the “wait, don’t go” pop-ups that are so popular lately. I don’t have an objection to those – although it pisses me off if I’ve failed to go through them before I buy something. Often trying to get away from a sales page will save you some money. I recently forgot that rule and spent $20 more than I had to. And, of course, they work – at least the first 2 or 3. But c’mon fellas. I just had to go through 9 – yes that’s NINE – popups to get off a page. Again, that’s not good marketing, it’s stupid marketing. You’re just going to make a potential customer annoyed, if not right out angry.

Another joy I’m seeing is a marketer telling me he got me this great ebook, video, system, whatever, for free as a special deal from his special friend. Nothing about what this special deal really is, and when you get to the squeeze page, there’s nothing more than a title (maybe) and the opt-in box.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve been at this too long and am on too many mailing lists anyway, but you haven’t really given me any reason to give up my name and email address with so little information. I don’t know who this special bud of yours is, I don’t know if I’m going to get anything I need, nor do I know if it’s the same tired ebook I’ve seen in so many giveaways and bonuses that I already have seventeen copies on my hard drive.

There was one offer today for a 300 page book on internet marketing. Um, what? What part of internet marketing? For  that matter, how wide are the margins and how big is the font? Who are you and why do you think you have something new to say?

C’mon guys, let’s at least pretend we respect our customers’ minds.

I am getting really sick of marketers sending me videos that I can’t hurry up or push to the end. Excuse me, but do you really think I have so little going on in my life that I can spend a half hour or so listening to the dulcet tones of your voice?

Do you really think your tale of woe about your life before you found – AHA – this magic thing you’re going to try to sell me is so fascinating that I’ll forget I have a bunch of real work to do?

They must work, since I’m seeing more and more of them, but I personally think it’s a pretty crappy way to do business. These marketers have decided that I’m willing to listen to their drivel, then listen to their sales pitch because they’re so damn interesting. And that their sales techniques are so good that my being forced to listen to them will overcome any objections to their pitch. And Lo and Behold, I’ll get out my trusty credit card.

Well, guess what. If your pitch goes much beyond a few minutes, I’m going to cut you off. And I’m more likely to unsubscribe rather than put myself through more misery of either sitting through your pitch or wondering if I’m truly missing the next best thing to sliced bread.

So cut it out! Give me an option or something. If your product is that good, I’ll give it a good scan, decide if it’s what I need and what I want to spend money on right now.

But I’m not going to spend my precious – to me – time waiting for you to get to the point.

I wanted to be sure to tell you about MicroNiche Finder, a most amazing tool for anyone looking to find profitable niches.

I’ve owned this tool for a few years and have seen a number of changes (all upgrades are included in your original purchase. The latest version includes some pretty awesome stuff. To my chagrin, I do on occasion find myself spending way too much time with this fascinating tool.

The tool installs on your own computer, and it’s very user friendly. I’ve looked at other keyword tools, but if I have to spend an entire day trying to figure it out, I give it back. There’s plenty of stuff you have to learn, so cutting corners on my learning time is preferable. With MNF, you simply plug in the keyword you want to know about, and it starts its magic work.

You generally get a return of 200 words, all with local search count, global search count, a bar graph of the past year’s trending, and google’s ad cost. With a click of your mouse you can also get the exact search count, a representation of the online commercial intention, measure of backlinks, and a computation of the strength of competition (conveniently shown in greed, yellow, and red), so you know whether the term is worth pursuing. And, it will check to see if there are domain names (.com, .net, and .org) available.

So, if that wasn’t enough, you can set parameters to narrow the list to your criteria. For example, you can exclude any term that doesn’t have at least 1,000 local searches or that has an ad cost smaller than $1.00. Or get rid of keyword phrases that are less than 3 words – or any criteria you want to set. All of this can be done more quickly than it took me to write about it.

Oh, another thing. Each of the words generated from your main list can be dug into even deeper. Some options are to dig deeper into a particular term, get more suggestions from google and dig into LSI searches. And that’s only a tiny bit.

I’ve been setting up sites in groups, built around the same basic market. I can quickly see if a market is viable, then narrow things down to only those terms that fit my criteria and have domains available.

I guess you can tell that I like MicroNiche Finder a lot!

This really only touches a little bit of what this great tool can do. The developer, James Jones, has added so many features, it would take the rest of the evening to tell you about them. And even with all this great stuff, it’s set up for the user. There isn’t a bunch of geek stuff to go through. Click a term and you’ll see – in plain English – everything else you can find out.

Enough already. Go to this page and let James show you his videos. You’ll be amazed!

PS: These are affiliate links. The FTC says I need to tell you that if you buy MicroNiche Finder through my link, I’ll make a little money. It doesn’t change how much it costs you.

A brand new look and a brand new host for SmilingPartners.Com. When the site was moved moved, I decided to give up on the old format and instead go with WordPress. I found that a major problem with keeping SmilingPartners up to date was the issue of updating the html – I dreaded it, didn’t want to do it, so it didn’t get done. Don’t we all have things in our lives like that?

So here we are with a new host and a new format.

On to the issue at hand…

Omar Martin and Mike Filsaime, two pretty well known marketers, got together several months ago to put together a pretty darn good program for folks new to internet marketing.

It’s called “Internet Selling For Newbies,” and that link is to my review and bonus page.

This program helped a lot of folks get into internet marketing, but it sold out and was taken off the market for awhile.

Now Mike and Omar have recently re-opened this great program. This would be a very good time to hop on over and check it out – before it sells out again.

You get a free video that explains the program first. Then you can get a physical CD-Rom just for paying the shipping and handling, which runs around $10. This CD is pretty amazing: it has 11 video modules and a study guide to teach you the fundamentals of internet marketing, with the feel of a classroom workshop. Quite honestly, study these videos and you’ll know what you need to do to start making money online.

Again, my review and bonus page: Internet Selling For Newbies.

PS: These are affiliate links. The FTC says I need to tell you that if you buy MicroNiche Finder through my link, I’ll make a little money. It doesn’t change how much it costs you.