Great Salesmanship

Andy Jenkins & Brad Fallon have released some tutorial videos to help promote an upcoming video and training offering of theirs about improving search rankings and site conversion.

Andy is probably one of the best salesmen in the market...you know he knows conversion well just by listening to the content of his videos. If you can create ads that inspire confidence AND are good enough content to be citation worthy then you are going to be a few steps ahead of most competitors.

Out of the 3 videos they released so far, the only thing I don't really agree with is the idea of showing single page sites ranking as something that is easy or common...especially if you use an official movie site as one of the examples, because the odds are pretty low that most people new to internet marketing looking for internet marketing information are building a site to push a $50 million dollar movie.

But the rest of the videos are of high quality. His tips at the start of video 3 about lemmings and building the perception of trust are quite useful. The tutorials are packaged and marketed in a way that it is conducive to conversion and viral spreading. If you give them your email to get a special report they then give you the option of sharing the video with a dozen friends.

I also think the idea of showing numbers from specific stores adds a ton of credibility when you are selling how to information. One of the hardest things to do as a consultant is to have concrete examples and verifiable results that you can share.

If you do much client work, they typically do not want to share it (and why would they if they are paying you top dollar?). If you do exceptionally well selling your how to product you get so much customer feedback that it is hard to keep up with it all while: still being willing to take risks, and having the time to build out other wildly successful ideas. Plus a glut of success can make you less hungry and/or lazy. My recent trip to Amsterdam is the first time I have been off the web for a week straight since 2002.

I have a good number of sites making a few hundred or a few grand a month, but have not hit too many homeruns as for having examples that I would be willing to openly share as examples of how to make lots of money, plus I cringe at the thought of having employees. Growing a highly profitable longterm business on the side via partnerships without having to manage employees is no easy task. I still have a couple really cool ideas that I (and friends) are building, but it has been a slower process than I have wished. One of my biggest flaws with my current model is that most of my income still comes from selling high end consulting and my information product. Which makes it quite hard to hit a homerun or two outside of my current market, but I still intend to.

If you have decent street credibility AND can create a story about making stupid money it is killer easy to get links because so much of the value system in US culture seems to revolve around money. I bet PlentyOfFish.com at least tripled his link equity and solidified his market position by doing interviews about how much money he makes.

The more you can sell your theories as proven facts with numbers to back it up the less they look like selling and the more they look like content. I got about 4 really cool ideas to launch, but it takes time. Hoping to have at least 3 of them rocking by the end of the year.

Here is also a freebie to anyone looking for a market worth exploiting for huge profits. Be the person who is known as the video marketing expert. With so many companies fighting for marketshare on the video front, and Google soon to be pushing video ads just about everywhere I would bet that if you were branded as one of the original video marketing experts it wouldn't be hard to make deep into 7 figures within a year or two.

Video as a medium is probably far better at showing empathy and rewiring associative connections than text is. Plus most people have limited attention to spare and are a bit lazy on the reading front. The text stuff won't last forever. It has only been as successful as it has because it is cheap to make, there is so much of it, search is still so primitive, and it is taking time for search engines to forge distribution partnerships that do not undermine the authority of established intermediaries.

Search works so well because of the great targeting and the user feeling they are in control of where they go. Soon all types of media will have that targeting and perception of control.