Art Of Money

Passive Income Tips - Edition #8

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1.) Product of the Week - iSnare.com
2.) Jon’s Business Update
3.) Website Spotlight - CopyBlogger

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Product of the Week
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I tried out iSnare this week. I added some credits to their system so
rather than just add an article, which is fr’ee, I set it up to be
distributed by their system.

It was recommended by my mentor as a way to distribute articles. Not
to get the article out to article directories, but a way to gather
email confirmations from the eZine publishers as they added my story
to their sites.

The results didn’t quite match up to what I was expecting. You can
see from doing a search on the article title in quotes on Google that
the story shows up on 376 [wow! http://tinyurl.com/et57c ] sites.

But I only received 1 email confirmation to add to my list of
external subscribers for use with the Artemis article distribution
software [ http://tinyurl.com/jqwou ]. For article distribution
iSnare worked great, even those the numbers will eventually be hit by
the duplicate content filters and the link value will decrease.

What I really wanted was the eZine publisher emails, since
submitting via email is the only way to take advantage of the
multi-versioning feature of Artemis.

Overall for $2 probably worth it, but for gathering eZine newsletter
emails…not so much. You can visite iSnare here [yes that have an
affiliate program so you can earn free distribution credits by
referring others]:

http://tinyurl.com/r8exz

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Jon’s Business Update
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Buzz
=====

This week I decided to email ProBlogger Darren Rowse and tell him
about my Real Blog Videos product. I have emailed back and forth with
Darren before and I even guest blogged for him last summer on a
personal finance blog of his, so it wasn’t a complete cold call, but
I was still pretty shy to approach him because he’s the main man for
blogging on the web.

The risk paid off and Darren grabbed an affiliate link and linked my
videos onto two of his archived posts about blogging for beginners.

Then he watched the videos and wrote a complete review of them. The
review was very fair and put the videos in a good light.

Archives 1: http://tinyurl.com/o3qtk
Archives 2: http://tinyurl.com/p85ef
Full Review: http://tinyurl.com/ogzx9

The full review was also featured in his newsletter the next day and
I received over 120 visitors a day for the next three days to my
sales page and roughly double that to my blog [which was also
mentioned]. That’s pretty good buzz, considering it resulted from one
10 minute email.

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The Results
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Buzz is great, but what about results? Yes, I made some sales; less
than I had hoped and expected, but enough to be encouraged. I’d have
to say that the primary results came in the category of lessons
learned.

In the comments section of the story by Darren a couple people took
me to task for charging for information that was freely available on
the web [of course I've added a lot of my own experience to it, but
that's their perception]. If you read my newsletter last week, you’ll
remember that it also was reason given for my first “return” last
week.

In my opinion the customer is not always right, but they are always
worth listening to…to at least try it on for size, however
uncomfortable, what they have to say.

The feedback helped me clarify what the “unique value proposition” of
my products really should be. Previously I focused on the step by step
instructions of how to set up a blog and that part is indeed available
for free elsewhere [even though it would certainly take more than $15
worth of effort to compile it], but the real value is in watching
someone who has set up dozens of blogs go from domain name to
functional blog.

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For Visual Learners
================

When I was in college I often thought to myself, “why didn’t he just
draw a picture?” as the instructor took 30 minutes to explain a
concept that if I could have seen with my eyes I would have gotten
instantly.

It’s the “watching an expert do it while he provides tips and tricks
along the way” that has the value, not just the instructions.

To me this seemingly subtle shift in emphasis represents a huge shift
in the potential effectiveness of my efforts to sell my products.

As a result I now see my videos as mini courses rather than simple
step by step instructions and I’m sure this will affect the marketing
and future products. If you read the comments on Darren’s post you’ll
see that “learning style” was mentioned and I see that these type of
products target a particular learning style as a subset of the
interested audience.

All in all this week has been excellent, I feel the business has been
re-focused and opened up to new energy in my marketing and product
development.

I have a bunch more notes, but I think I’ll end here, I don’t want to
use up all of your inbox space first thing Monday morning….I’ll try
and get the rest onto Art of Money this week.

Thanks for reading,

Want to say hi, or make a comment?

…just hit reply and let it fly…all voices welcome. Thanks to
everyone that send me a comment last time…it’s very inspiring to
know folks are actually reading

Jon

http://www.ArtOfMoney.org/
http://www.RealBlogVideos.com/

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Website Spotlight
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I only read a few blogs on a daily basis, and lately Brian Clark’s
http://copyblogger.com/ has become a favorite destination. Especially
have a look at his resources section for some good feature length
articles that drill down on the specifics of persuasive writing.

The tone of his site is clear and friendly, which makes if very
engaging.