Radio Publicity, Online Videos, The Next Big Wave Online and a lot more!

by Fred Gleeck | February 5, 2005

In this issue:

Experiment with People Talking
Radio Publicity
Special Training Session
Swepa Pre Pub Offer
Next Big Wave Online
Using Video On Your Site
Les Brown
Teaching Company
Domain Name Redirection

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Experiment with People Talking

I just came back from the National Speakers Event in Burbank, California. I did something I haven’t done in a long time as a test with some people I met at the event.

By way to background, I started doing this seriously back about 20 years ago when I was sitting around a pool in Boca Raton, Florida (the single MOST pretentious place I’ve found thus far on the planet).

I bumped into this woman sitting in her lounge chair. We started talking. Correction, she started talking. After I said hi I started asking her questions about herself. She was more than willing to respond and I kept following up with more questions.

This went on for about an hour without her ONCE asking me anything about myself. I found this a bit odd, but wanted to see just how long she would continue so I kept asking her questions.

At 1:30 in the afternoon I had to leave to go to a meeting. When I left she didn’t even know my name. I could tell you about the scar on the back of her knee and how she got it but she didn’t know the first thing about me.

Can people REALLY be this self-absorbed? The answer is a resounding YES.

Well, I decided to do it again this weekend. I bumped into a number of people and started asking them a series of questions. MANY of them let me go on for a long time without even asking me anything about myself.

Does this prove the many people are egocentric and self absorbed? Seems so to me. But you know that. We all know that.

By the way, if you asked any of these people what they thought of me most of them would probably tell you I was a great guy. Why? Because I was willing to listen. Most people won’t. Sad, but true.

Lesson? Make sure are never on the wrong side of this equation. If you have to, be the listener, not the talker. You may learn quite a bit. Some of it may even be worthwhile.

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Radio Publicity

My friend and protege Alex Carroll has been speaking at my (and many other peoples) events for years. Alex is a great guy and the definitive expert on the topic of radio publicity.

Years ago I saw Alex give a presentation at an event for a small group in the Self Publishing field. He sold a group of about 22 people a total of about $375 worth of his materials.

I pulled him aside after the presentation and told him I thought I could help him dramatically increase his revenue when he spoke at events.

Here’s what happened. Alex WAS selling a package that sold for under $100. After we worked together, he had, with my help and coaching created a line of products that could sell for as much as $1,000.

After he had completed his product line he went back to a similar size group and sold them a total of close to $5,000 (this is the number I recall, it may not be exactly right but it’s close).

My advice helped him improve his product sales to the exact same size group in the same field by about 1500%.

I certainly can’t take all the credit. Alex is a smart guy, but, without my help he may still be selling small packages and making a lot less money.

He now also speaks to large groups and often sells tens of thousands of dollars of materials.

Lesson? To make sure you understand that if people like you they will probably be wiling to spend a lot more money on things that you have produced than you think. Develop an extensive line of products for yourself using different modalities of learning.

To take a look at what Alex sells, check out:

http://www.TheRadioGuru.com

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Special Training Session

Over the next two days I’ll be meeting with two or three of the icons in the speaking business. I’ll be doing a small personal training session for both Tony Alessandra and Shep Hyken. I believe that Jim Cathcart will also be sitting in for a few hours one day.

These guys are very big muckety-mucks in the professional speaking field. All of them great guys as well.

My goal will be to share with them what I’m doing in the field of information marketing to help them double or triple their revenue (my hope), in the speaking field.

The good news? I’ll be recording the session.

Look for more on this topic later this month!

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SWEPA Materials – Prepub Offer

A number of people emailed me about the prepublication deal on the SWEPA seminar. Here’s the deal. Before you even think about spending any money, take a look at the website: http://www.membershipsiteseminar.com

After you do that, here’s the deal: I will be making the audios available at a prepublication price of just $197. The DVDs will be available for just $297. This is a minimum of $100 off the retail price of each.

I’ll even throw in free shipping for those in the US. If you’re from anywhere outside the US, you will only be billed an additional flat rate of $20.

This offer will be limited to the first 27 people in each category. Don’t miss out on this great deal for what was truly an amazing program. Keep reading to understand why you will want to learn how to put up your own membership site.

If you want to get the advance copies of the audio CDs, here’s the link:

Click Here to Order the Audio CDs

If you want to get the advance copies of the video DVDs, here’s the link:

Click Here to Order the DVDs

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The Next Big Wave on the Internet

In my humble opinion, the next big wave on the internet will be membership sites. I know this may sound self serving because I have just completed a piece of software geared to that market, but it’s true.

If you’re an information marketer you’re going to want to set up one or more membership sites for yourself.

Bill O’Reilly (no matter what you think about him) has close to 100,000 people . . . or so we are told who are paying him $4.95 a month to be a PREMIUM member of his site.

If you are in a mass market, this pricing makes sense. Bill is attempting to attract the mass of humanity that watch television. If you’re going after a mass market (which I do not recommend), this low ball pricing might make sense for you.

For most information marketers who are going after a smaller niche market you’d probably want to price things a a bit higher. The nice thing about MemberScript is that you can set up a multi-tier membership and pricing strategy. This will allow you to charge a low, medium and high price to get access.

Whether you have content created yet or not, you need to start thinking about a membership site.

For a great example, take a look at LYNDA.com. This is a great model of how to do a membership site. Pay particular attention to her pricing model.

For more information about how to maximized your profits when you set up your membership site get a membership with SWEPA.com. They are the folks who can show you how to do it right.

http://MemberScript.com

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Using Video on Your Site

I had my friend Rick Raddatz speak at my last event. He presented a fascinating presentation about how to use video to help improve response rates.

This is easy to use and has been shown to increase response rates on sites by a substantial amount.

I highly reccomend that you take a look at:

http://www.CoolVideoProduct.com

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Les Brown

I bumped into the legendary Les Brown this weekend. GREAT guy and great speaker as well. We were talking about “old times” and neither of us could remember whether or not he had attended an event of mine for speakers about 20 years ago. Let’s you know what growing older can do.

Les looked better than he has in years and he just turned 60. Amazing.

I’m lucky to have Les speaking with me at one of my events coming up in Phoenix in March for people in the Mortgage banking industry.

If you know anyone in that field, have them take a look at:

http://www.47MarketingSecrets.com

If you come to the event, make sure and say HI!

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The Teaching Company

I’ve mentioned these folks before, but I’ll do it again. Back 12 years ago, I met a guy when I was traveling in Europe. We became fast friends and he invited me to come visit him at school.

He was still an undergraduate at the time. One of the sharpest guys I’ve ever met. His name is Elliot Holland.

Eliot was going to St. John’s College. Not to be confused with St. John’s University in Queens, NY. St. John’s has two campuses, one in Annapolis, MD and the other one in Santa Fe, New Mexico which is where I went to visit him.

The entire school is set up on the “great books” concept where you read the greatest books of all time. There hope is to produce people who are well-rounded, liberal artsy types. If I had it all to do over again, I would probably want to go there.

Sound like it would be fun to redo your undergrad program reading the great books? Well, you don’t have to take time of your schedule. You can get a similar education in audio or video form through the Teaching Company.

They have found the countries top professors in a wide variety of fields and recorded their lectures.

Check out their website: www.Teach12.com. My only suggestion is that you only buy the courses when on sale. Most of them DO go on sale, but it sometimes takes a while. Be patient.

I just listened to a course on CS Lewis in the car driving to LA this last weekend. I LOOK for ways to spend time in the car driving as a result of all the materials I have that I want to listen to on audio.

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Domain Name Redirection

For those of you who know me well, you know that I’ll always tell you EXACTLY what I’m doing and in many cases, even HOW I’m doing it. I’m not scared to share information and do so freely.

Here’s an example from this email.

Take a look back at two of the links:

http://www.TheRadioGuru.com and
http://www.CoolVideoProduct.com

Both of these are set up as affiliate links where I get paid if you buy something from these folks.

I always tell people when I’m going to make money off of something because I think it’s always a good idea to fully disclose what you do and particularly where you make your money.

People will NOT begrudge you for making money as long as it doesn’t come out of their pockets.

In either of the cases above you won’t be paying a higher pricer for any of the products just because I’m getting piece of the action.

The important lesson I wanted you to learn here is that I set up my own separate domain names rather than use some long and awkward affiliate link with all kinds of numbers.

I use my site: www.UltraCheapDomains.com to reserve these sites and I have set up free forwarding for you, me or anyone who orders domains from that location.

When you go to that site to reserve domains, you’ll want to click on the forwarding button to forward it to the affiliate link that you get from someone whose product you want to help market.

Don’t EVER market a product of someone else’s just for the money. Unless that product will truly serve your list, don’t bother to send it to them.

I get approached daily with offers to sell this or that.

I carefully select who I will do business with based both on a “fit” of their product to my list and the level of integrity of the people who approach me.

Promote someone who takes advantage of your customers and you’re dead.