Two days to christmas...That may be the reason why I wasn't really
into the mood for "work"-related items that I wanted to mark as
"completed" on my todo-list.
I have a travel blog that has no revenue stream built into it. I was
hoping to sell some pre-made ebooks but it seems the situation has
made it that none of the local publishers are interested to do it. As
on this blog, I can be proud to be a lonelyplanet featured blogger, I
wanted to look for some affiliate program from lonelyplanet book to
sell on this blog. I found out that lonelyplanet offer 15% commission
through commission junction (which is good compared to the 4%
commission offered by amazon.com, but not motivating enough as the 75%
that some clickbank publishers offer)
Clickbank and click2sell doesn't have an interesting product inventory
related to my blog, comission junction does (and they also sell
lonelyplanet's guidebooks)... So I decided to open an affiliate
account through commission junction. After confirming the routing code
for my bank, I could receive confirmation on my e-mail that I was
accepted as a CJ affiliate, however I had to fill my tax info through
the comission junction account manager. So there I went to this
account manager and found out the option that best fit my case was
something like "I have no activities in the US"... There comes the
issue: my current web hosting provider is US-based... Which means
either I can't use them for any CJ-related affiliate promotion, or I
try to go to other tax-related forms that I have no clue about what to
fill... Though the title of this post: should I move to a europe-based
web hosting provider for my affiliate sites? ... I need to dig deeper
into it.
On the other hand, I began adding some salesmanship into my "silent
sales machine"(the aweber e-mail follow-up). My niche pack already 10
article mini-course... The challenge is to add a sales sequence
throughout this mini-course, whether it is a "hard sell" (go buy my
ebook), a half-half (mid-education, mid-4elling, kind of "you liked
that course, go find more by buying my ebook"), and finally pure
education
Adam and Allen suggests to start the mini-course with a hard sell (I
remember John Chow also said he directly sells right from the first
e-mail from his sales funnel)... I think I need to review all the
10-series mini-course that include the salesmanship, and eventually
turn some of the mini-course into a candidate for my article
marketing...
I'm also pretty satisfied by the content of my sales page, I need to
finalize its design(tinyMCE advance should help on this, I have to
find a way to have nice bullet points through TinyMCE though)...

I received my aweber bill today. For those who wonder what aweber
services are, it's one service that delivers one of the core pillar of
any internet marketing services - it provides the e-mail autoresponder
and follow-up service that internet marketers usually refers to as
"sales funnel", as well as web-form services for capturing subscribers
info. It also has nice and useful tracking features for any campaign
you setup.

The idea of the sales funnel is simple:you rarely have people buy
something directly from your website (unless you are one of the big
guys such as amazon, itunes,...), though you work hard attracting
visitors to your site (that's where the moneyword matrix keyword tool
provided by NPC is key), capture info from your visitors by a clear
call-to-action via a web form (designed through aweber services). Once
the visitor subscribes to your mini-course, you setup aweber to send
immediately the first mini-course via e-mail(that's the autoresponder
feature).You can then schedule other e-mails to be automatically sent
to your subscriber via aweber (for example, everyday, or every two
days,...). During this e-mail mini-course, not-only do you establish
trust with your subscriber, but you can also insert some salesmanship
in order to sell your product. You can even move a subscriber to a
"customer-list" once they have purchased (if you want to upsell some
bonuses for example, or if you want to send some instructions on the
use of your product, ...). The point here is: you can setup an e-mail
follow-up that each subscriber will automatically receive once they
subscribe. From time to time, you can also send some important e-mails
directly. The nice thing with aweber'e-mail services is that with a
huge experience, aweber's e-mail composer has nice features that
includes:
- a text-only or HTML version for each e-mail
- a "wrap long lines" for text-only version of your e-mail
- hundreds of customizable HTML e-mail templates you can use
- a fully customizable e-mail scheduling feature
The good thing about aweber is that they have been in this business
for almost ten years now, they have acquired a solid reputation and
has a good set of anti-spam policy that gives you a very high rate of
e-mail delivery. Indeed,once you've written each of your e-mail
follow-up, aweber gives it a spam score (you're good to go if your
score is under 5).
Added to all those features, you've got a nice tracking feature that
really helps you evaluate how good your campaign is.
If you read from big guys, they always advise you to start directly
with services like aweber for your e-mail autoresponder services
instead of trying to use your own, or cheap services. I fully agree
with them as:
- first of all, I think aweber has a high spam-protection services,
though limiting the risk for your e-mail campaigns to end at the spam
folder of your subscriber
- aweber has a mandatory double-optin subscription, which means the
user has to give their e-mail address (first opt-in), then they have
to confirm their will to subscribe by clicking on a confirmation link
they've been sent automatically. A lot of big guys/bloggers have lost
a lot of their subscriber list at their early stage when they tried
other e-mail service/autoresponder service before moving to aweber as
very few users wanted to optin again.
As for webforms (those small fields where you ask your users to
subscribe to your mini-course), aweber has a nice set of design that
are well-crafted, and that usually do not use pop-up, though not
blocked by pop-up blocker.
I personally love the one that is set inline that you can use as a
splash-screen on your page after a few seconds... I'm pretty sure
you've already stumbled on webpages that pop some dialog box reminding
you about an important thing (whatever the thing is) once you leave
the site, this is also possible with aweber services... Remember,if
you're familiar of google-analytics (or web statistics in
general),it's pretty hard having a bounce rate of less than 50% which
actually means that 50% of users who came to your website leaves it as
soon as they came, those kind of webform that shows-up when leaving
your site can be useful for making your "last offer" ...
To summarize, for a small guy like me, I think 19USD/month for any
number of lists that sums up to 500 subscribers is a good deal, for
what I get...I am using it on my niche pack, as well as one of my
travel blog (that I use as a testing-platform, as well as a place to
share my passion for my country, this blog will soon be a money-making
site that will also sell ebooks)
Yes, so far I'm a happy customer (look I wrote this review after I
just received my bill)

From the user/customer's point of view, buying online a digital
product has almost become an ordinary thing: they search for the
product (amazon, itunes,...), then click on "buy now"
At this stage, they either are asked for their credit card infos
(visa, amex, mastercard,...), or they are taken to some other payment
processors (paypal, moneybroker,...)
Once they have confirmed their order/or the did a checkout, they are
taken back to the online store.
That's from the customers' point of view.
Now, when coming to setting-up this system as a merchant, I didn't
think I'll have to ask for a lot of questions.
What I wanted was:
- using a service provider that has some kind of full-fledge service
covering the "buy it" button. At some point of time, I considered
e-junkie but finally found it too geeky to implement,
- a system that comes with a network of affiliates ready to promote your product
- an easy to foresee pricing scheme
- allow my customers to pay via their credit card or paypal
- receive payments directly on my bank account or on my paypal account
As you've noticed, I'm keen on using paypal-mainly because they have a
solid reputation. I thought I only have to choose the provider
(paypal), the copy-paste some script on my sales page... But that was
too simple
Paypal is asking you to chose between a standard, business and
corporate(?) account. I opted for a business account as the standard
one was too limited and as a beginner I thought it was too pretending
to opt for the corporate one. O that's it for the paypal account.
Then I went to click2sell and found out I have to map my paypal
account to my click2sell in order to be able to do mass affiliates
payments (yes, I really want affiliates to promote my product and
receive 50% commission). So I had to get a paypal API, username and
key...Who would have thought of it? Not a newbie like me :-)
Then,I went on uploading my first product on click2sell- which I could
do without any major trouble except the fact that the order link is
automatically generated can't be customized(or at least I couldn't
find how to do it), click2sell automatically create a link from the
e-mail address you sign in. Hmmmm.... Moreover, I couldn't find to
change the click2sell profile associated to the "buy now" link on a
per product basis. For references purposes, I will sell ebooks and
will probably use different pen names for different products- so I
want to be able to associate a different profile for each product...
Didn't find a way to do it as of now... I will have to deal with it
when launching the second product.
Despite all of this, I could make it up to getting a javascript "buy
now" button that I incorporated to my sales page... Now click2sell
offers a "test buy" feature for testing the buying process... I tried
to do it but it seems I have to either create another paypal account,
or directly purchase from my credit card.... Hmmmm
Moreover, one thing still bothers me: I first setup my "buy now"
button to ask for additional buyer info, but finally I think it's not
necessary, however, I don't seem to be able to reset the "buy now"
form not to ask for those infos...
So here I now have set my sales page with a supposed-to-be-working
working order link - but I need to test it - anyone wants to buy my
e-book for testing purposes? :-) The topic is about "morning sickness:
what every pregnant woman must know" :-)

So I decided to upload my first 5 articles (that I radically rewrote
from the 5 articles given by NPC niche packs). Uploading it was a
piece of cake, writing it wasn't that easy though :-) The good thing
is that at least I've begun tackling the biggest challenge (at least
for me) for the whole NPC system. I still have to write 5 secondary
articles as well as the other (21 articles)
that will be used on article directories further on...
I then tried to update the home page of my first niche. I thought this
one would be another piece of cake but I was damn wrong. Using NVU to
update it, then trying to modify some aweber code was a headache for
me.In fact, the whole thing changed as NPC refers to the old aweber
forms while aweber has setup new fancy web forms - though different
codes... And I couldn't figure out what I did wrong. When I checked
the NPC community (the member access area), I found out I am not the
only one struggling with inserting optin code to my home page...I
think I'm going to implement this page the wordpress-page way (I have
just installed the tinyMCE advanced plugin that should allow me to
write fancier pages)
- sidebar optin bar is working though: I have setup a two column page
for other pages than the home page, then inserted the awebr-generated
javascript, and guess what: this optin form works perfectly. I
subscribed myself to it, and I received the forth e-mail mini-course
today... Right on time, thanks to aweber follow-up autoresponder
service...
- uploaded my 5 articles: yes, I finally did it...Still nees to write
more for the 21-days traffic blueprint implementation though. I've got
a nice idea to do it
- On one of my posts, I was wondering which e-mail address to use for
the "contact us" feature and communications with customer, I finally
setup my generic e-mail helpdesk on google-apps- the good thing is
that I can have info@xxx.com, info@yyy.com and so on that falls into
the same mailbox- thanks to @tattum's suggestion on the comment
section of the post. Moreover, aweber highly suggest I setup my
own-domain-name setup e-mail address for the autoresponder follow-up
in order for my mini-course not being assimilated to SPAM by my
subscriber's mail system. BTW,It's great that my cpanel hosting can
help directly modifying the MX records for my domain names... Point in
case is: when chosing your hosting account, go for one who has
cpanel... A great piece of software
So, next step, finalize the home page, insert click2sell order
button+upload the ebook, work on generating traffic by
following-through the already provided 21days blueprint...
No I'm not lying to myself, I believe in this NPC system- I just have
to overcome some obstacles- no one said it's going to be easy (I still
confirm, NPC, the way it is now, is not a "one-size-fit-all
everybody-can-do-it" system...it finally involves hard work...)

When your internet connection sucks while you're trying to be an
internet marketer, you've got to use your whole brain in order to be
productive.
So I've been working on trying to find a way to sell my own product -
I know on one of their webinar, Adam and Alen advised to launch niches
with other people's product first by becoming their affiliates, but
applying NPC to one of my blog- who existed before NPC is too
tempting, moreover we'll have a tourism trade show for my country this
coming week-end and I'm really passionate about this topic, so I ended
up crafting my business card, writing a sales letter in order to have
some published materials be the ebook I'll sell for my niche
websites.... See? His all fit together :-)
I also spent the last two or three nights playing around with ninja
affiliate wordpress plugin (an awesome piece of software BTW... Too
bad I can't promote it as an affiliate as it's on clickbank
marketplace...and clickbank don't like my country... Grmbl...)
When I step back, I now my first niche hasn't moved much those last
days, but I'm really on exploration mode so far, and frankly speaking,
after long-hours spent at work, I didn't feel like wanting to be
really productive those today once I get home...Anyway, this first
niche is still going on:
- I just got familiatized with click2sell system and found out I have
to craft some nice thank you pages
Moreover, a recent experience buying ninja affiliate made me realize
it's better I host my product on click2sell rather than on my own
randomly chosen URL (yes, I'm not yet on amazon S3 but still on a
starter web hosting plan).Despitr all this, expiring URL, as well as
other features make me feel it's safer to put my product on
click2sell... It's although amazing to see tha big guys either have
their products on amazon S3, or on their own servers (as shown by NPC)
I am at a stage now where I'm still trying to figure out the product
upload on click2sell as it's not as abvious as I thought it would be
(I still need to get back to it once again)
Finally, I've just discovered that aweber has an option to
"automatically" move one user to another list after they have made a
purchase through their e-mail parser... This is a great feature for an
upsell but I have to find a way how to properly set it up and test (I
don't want to have users who already bought my products receiving the
same infos I give to prospects...)
Well, I guess I was too optimistic planning ti have my first niche
launched last week as I still have other things to learn and
understand... Or am I just lying to myself 'cause I'm afraid to move
on and see if this thing actually works?

5 days that I last posted... 5 busy days where :
- I moved this diary to its own domain name, from a posterous install
to a wordpress. I love posterous as I'm addicted to my e-mail.
However, I love more wordpress for its flexibility/plugins. Since
posterous can autopost to wordpress, why not use them all?
- 5 days where I finally took all my courage and rewrite the 5 primary
articles on my first niche
- 5 days where the third set of niche pack has been published- there
is one that I think I should be comfortable with and I'll surely work
on it for my second niche website
- 5 days closer to christmas- while I was searching for any blogger
who could give me a discount for one affiliate-management tool for my
blog (it's good to know andf acquire the tools that big blogger guys
use), Santa Claus already arrived and Prawan (the owner of the ninja
affiliate product) made an incredible offer today that I rushed
investing on it and implemented it on this blog (though my choice to
stay with wordpress for my blog while sending this post from e-mail
via posterous)
- 5 days where I finally read and adjusted the standard pages of my niche site
- today I tried inserting my aweber optin form to my niche profit
press... It's not obvious since aweber has implemented new webforms
(though new html codes to adjust to niche profit press)... I will
still need to work on it tomorrow night (as I'm not alert enough now
to work on it)
- 5 days where I received feedback from senior NPC community members
not to try to run wordpress MU+domain mapping for implementing
multiple niches...
- 5 days where I rewrote my homepage and tried without success yet to
put the optin form- the optin form on my sidebar is working though
- 5 days where I tried to find the right time to work from home after
everybody's gone sleeping while it's not raining and where my internet
connection is collaborating (I had a 5 seconds, not millisecond RTT
when pinging www.google.com today... If you happen to have a good
connection wherever you are, don't take it for granted)
Finally, although those are busy days, I am not yet ready to launch my
first niche ...so, not an efficient five days ...

I joined NPC on october, was given 2 niche packs by then, then it took
me almost a month to watch the "acceleration course" videos (I was
fortunate enough to have access to broadband internet by the time I
joined- thanks to firefox+downloadhelper I could save a whole bunch of
NPC videos ranging from acceleration courses, webinars, internet
marketing basics, and other high-value videos... As a pal pointed out
"watch out, you'll end up wanting to watch them all then you won't
act"... Damn, he was so right. Today, NPC is going to release two set
of niche packs...
In the middle of the course, I found an interesting affiliate offer
from NPC whereas I could get a free membership if I refer two people
to the program... Yet another interesting opportunity from this
program ...
So I started finding out how to best promote and attract buyers for
NPC today...and "forgot" to continue implementing my first niche
site...
Grmbl, I really have issues on getting focused as there are too much
opportunities to run after- having a day-job then trying to implement
NPC once everybody's sleeping at home doesn't help much too, as I
hardly work over midnight as of now (I know, on one of their
"hyperproductivity" webinar, Adam and Alen advised to have 7 hour
sleep, and not go over 11PM...I'm not a good student on this one :-)

Ok, so my short-term goal: finalize and launch my first niche site by
this sunday midnight.I need to rewrite 5 already-provided article to
prevent duplicate-content penalty by google, then write 21 original
article on the niche topic the continuously adjust, prepare promotion
materials for affiliates to use, ... Guess how long after the launch
am I going to have my first optin subscriber, and when is my paypal
account going to be credit with the first sale?...

... Here I go again, man I need to get focused on wrtiting those articles...

...It's rainig a lot over here, and my ISP strongly advises me not
using my internet connection under this rainy situation...I'd better
follow his advice as I've just wrote the check for replacing my modem
today... Fortunately I have my mobile phone where I can post by email
via posterous...
Do you remember that I told you that I unsubscribed from almost all
lists but those of Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse? Both bloggers
referred to a new product and recommend them (although I always
appreciate Darren's transparency, and Yaro's to some extent)... Guess
what, both were praising to a new product from a guy named Jeff Walker
who seems to have negotiated good partnerships with trusted bloggers
to launch his product...So what's the point here? I definitely want to
stick with my sole technique/strategy/product (you name it) which is
"Niche Profit Classroom"...but the temptation is so hard to "try"
other things although I fully understand I shouldn't... I guess that's
because I have to go through some hurdle implementing a critical step
into NPC, though I'm more "vulnerable" to trying other things...But
anyway, if I don't follow through and go full circle with NPC, how can
I make sure I will terminate the next shiny-trendy approach?... So
let's stick on NPC and consider other things once I need to diversify
(it took almost 3year 1/2 to Mr problogger to consider diversifying
his portfolio in 2010, so why should I hurry)
Back to implementing my NPC, I have seen how to secure my PDF files
(you know, some things you took for granted like PDF files but it's
important to secure them especially when you plan to sell ebooks). I'm
still stuck at choosing if I want to host my product on click2sell or
put it on my own web server.
On a more technical side, I have setup more sites in the last two
weeks than I did in the last two years- they are mainly
wordpress-based. The point of the matter is that updates for wordpress
and its components comes so often, so I'm a bit lazy having to log
into each of my niche packs and proceeding to updates for each of
them, so those last two days, I tried finding out how to setup
wordpress MU for handling all of my niche sites on different
domains... Imagine only one installation of wordpress MU to maintain
rather than one wordpress pack for each niche, wouldn't that be
wonderful?... But I need to have my laptop and a better internet
connection than the one from my mobile in order to dig further...

So I watched this 2 hour recorded webinar that members of NPC had few
months ago, one of those twice a month webinars NPC is offering.. The
title was appealing to me and Adam and Alen shows how they would have
done it if they have to start it all over again
Few things stroked me:
- first, the title sounded a bit hype to me , and I easilly get
skeptical on those kind of "too good to be true" but after watching
the video, I do admit, I just told to myself "this whole thing makes
sense"
- second: they are providing the tools and methodology to search for
the right product to promote via clickbank marketplace, then only
invest in launching your own product- yes, you can start by selling
other people's products
- third: those guys are just having an awesome approach to SEO that
just rocks: why run for the overcrowded market while you can target
"under the radar profitable loopholes"
- they concluded with the following targets that seemed achievable to
me- although I would have said "are you crazy?" If I didn't explore
NPC... Look by yourself and I bet you'll also think the following
target are crazy after 21days launching your product:
"A- focus on getting 100 visitors to your site per day
B- focus on getting your optin rate to 20%
C- focus on getting your sales conversion rate to 3%
"
Now I can comfortably say: "those are achievable targets"... What about you?

Ok, so I finally took the time to fully read the 70 pages ready-made
ebook that were given as part of the niche pack when I get into the
NPC membership site (NPC gives you two full-fledge ready-made niche
packs every months, though you "only" have to customize them and
implement the strategy). One general impression: it's a high quality
book, and I do love the writing style.

Just customized it a bit: redesigned a bit the front page and added
the author name, then added the URL of my niche website on each
footer.Hehehe, didn't really need to leverage on my ugly graphics
talent :-)

So today, I finished customizing and producing a secured PDF of my ebook.

Now, back to my main hurdle in this NPC process: rewriting the
articles. The main idea is that in order to produce unique content on
the internet, I have to rewrite those PLR articles - remember those
niches are distributed to thousands of members and you just don't want
to produce the same thing. (And I know you're wondering how come those
niches don't become niches anymore since everybody's implementing it-
well, Adam has a well-done video explaining it inside, and His
explanations makes sense when he says not everybody implement and take
action... And personally I think although they give all the
ingredients for starting a new niche, it's not obvious to put things
together...I don't think NPC is the kind of "everybody can do it"
trap, and that's one of the reason I like it since I really don't
believe in those get-rich-quick-without-any-effort scams)