The Name Game

How many of you have spent hours or days toiling over the title for your book? My first book, The Cliffhanger, was renamed probably six times before I stayed with the current title. Naming your book can be difficult, especially if the book will work as a sort of branding for everything else you do. Non-fiction books are often seen as a stepping stone to speaking engagements, product launches, and a variety of other business endeavors. In fact, the naming of a non-fiction or business book is so critical that a poorly chosen title can actually make or break a books success. If you're in the midst of picking a name, or planning future titles. There are some basic strategies you should consider before you finalize your book cover:The name of your book MUST tell people what it's about. If you try to be clever and make them guess, your potential customer will just put it down and move on to a title they do understand. Put the benefit right in the name - for example Chicken Soup for the Soul tells you right up front that much like a cup of chicken soup when you're sick, this book is going to make you feel better. If this leaves you feeling perplexed, take a moment to list five benefits of your book - once you have those benefits listed slowly but surely a book title will begin to emerge. Think about all the different uses you might be able to derive from the name of your book. Is it going to be on your web site? Is it a stand alone book or part of a product line? Or is this book one of a series? Determining the exact uses of this title will help you define it further.And finally, go see what the competition is doing. Spend an afternoon at the bookstore and see what titles have worked well for similar books in your genre. Other naming tips:Did you know that some words are easier to remember than others? Sound odd? Not really. Language experts will tell us that we just react differently to certain sounds.The letters K and P for example are what language experts call "plosives." A plosive is a little bit of language that pops out of your mouth and draws attention to itself. A plosive is a "stopper" in language. A plosive makes us pause for emphasis when we say it.The letters B, C, D, K, P and T are all plosives.What's especially interesting is that brand names beginning with plosives have higher recall scores than non-plosive names. Several studies of the top 200 brand names have made that point. Examples: Bic, Coca-Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Kodak, Pontiac, etc.-----------------If you've picked a title for your book or a name for your business or product line that is "unusual" - you might want to check the meaning first. That goes for foreign translation as well. Here are a few examples of names that were chosen without the proper research: -In 1997 Reebok issued a mass recall of their new women's running shoe dubbed "Incubus" - a savvy news reporter brought their attention to the fact that incubus means: "an evil spirit believed to descend upon and have sex with women while they sleep."-Estee Lauder stopped short of exporting their line of Country Mist makeup to Germany when managers pointed out that "mist" in German is slang for "manure." -Trying to be clever, the folks at Guess jeans placed the Japanese characters "ge" and "su" next to a model in Asian magazines, intending them to mean "Guess." But "gesu" translated in Japanese means "vulgar," "low" class" or "meanspirited."

The 3 Secrets of High Traffic Sites

It seems to be in vogue these days to downplay theimportance of web traffic. It's popular (and perfectlyvalid) to say things like: "Traffic is worthless if youdon't turn it into money." Excellent point, but this assumes that you actually havesome traffic to begin with. Each step of the InternetMarketing Process is not just important - it's required forsuccess. So, let's focus today on getting traffic to yoursite, and remember: A. Getting traffic to your site is like putting gas inyour car. You can have a great engine, but it won't goanywhere without the gas. Likewise, you can have a perfectsales letter - but without traffic, it's just pretty tolook at. B. The highest traffic sites of the world do not just geta little more traffic than the next guy - they getexponentially more traffic than the next guy. For example,according to Media Metrix, AOL's network weighed in at #1,getting more traffic than any other site in the world inApril of 2001. Amazon was ranked #10. Both are top tensites... And the difference? AOL had 89,000,000 visitorsthat month and Amazon had 19,000,000. That's a whoppingdifference of 70,000,000 visitors between the #1 site andthe #10 site. Interestingly, the higher up the ranks you go, the greaterthe gap between each site. So, what's the difference? Why is it that the better asite gets, the further behind it leaves its closestcompetitor? Here are their secrets: 1. They Set Up "Multiple Streams of Traffic" Back in 1995 I observed an interesting phenomenon. I foundthat the likelihood of someone responding to your websitewas highly dependent on the path they took to get there. People may ask you "what is the conversion rate of yourwebsite," but that is really an irrelevant question. Conversion rates are meaningless unless they take intoconsideration how someone gets to your website. (Test thisyourself and you'll find it to be true.) So, I coined the phrase "All Clicks are Not CreatedEqual." For example, traffic from a site recommending yourproduct is more likely to generate a sale than traffic froma site criticizing your product. That's an extremeexample, but you get the point, right? When people discover this, their natural tendency is tostart getting picky about how they get their traffic. Whywaste your time on traffic that won't generate a sale,right? If you're paying for advertising, this makes perfectsense. However, many people mistakenly throw away trafficfrom free sources as a result. High traffic sites never throw away traffic and constantlyendeavor to set up new traffic streams. Let's take the worst possible traffic source imaginable:FFA pages. Traffic from FFA ads is extremely sparse. Tomake matters worse, this traffic is rarely the source of animmediate sale. Very little amounts of the lowest qualitytraffic in the world - yep, I think that qualifies it asthe worst possible traffic source. If, however, you have an automated FFA promotion goingthat doesn't take you any time to maintain and still bringsin traffic, should you throw it away? Maybe not... I still have in place free automatic traffic buildingsources that I set up years ago. Much of the traffic thatcomes from these free sources is of low quality, but hey, Idon't lift a finger to get it any more. Most super-high-traffic sites are constantly working onnew ways to bring in traffic - many of which are not verysophisticated at all. Even Yahoo, for example, uses alow-budget "tell a friend" script on their site toencourage people to forward articles to their friends. DoesYahoo care that anyone can do this with a free CGI script?Of course not. It's just one of thousands of trafficsources they've established. When you read #3 below, you'll realize why "low-quality"traffic may not be so bad after all... Remember, though, if you're paying for "cheeseburger"traffic, don't pay a steak-and-lobster price. Better: getyour cheeseburger traffic for free from as many automatedsources as you can. 2. They Use Viral Marketing "Viral Marketing" was the vogue buzz-phrase of 1999.Several books have been written on the subject in hopes ofcracking the code, but still very few sites are takingadvantage of this incredible concept. Viral Marketing is any type of marketing that encouragespeople to spread your marketing message around for you. Think about this - it sure would be great if peopleadvertised your product for you, wouldn't it? It beats theheck out of paying for advertising. Here's a viral marketing story for you: When I started the e-book marketing craze back in 1995with the release of "Search Engine Tactics," I promoted thebook with a very simple viral marketing scheme. Here's what I did: I put a note in the book itself that everyone was grantedpermission to give away or even sell the book on theirsites. They would benefit by giving something of value totheir visitors - I would benefit by advertising products inthe book. The people that they gave it to saw the note inthe book, and they gave it away on their sites - and soon... So, did this work? You be the judge: a. The e-book was downloaded over 1,000,000 times when welast counted in 1998. b. The e-book was noted by ZDNet as one of the topdownloads of 1999, and is the only e-book ever to be given5 Stars by ZDNet. c. Experts have since written entire books about mylittle ploy showing people how, they too, can unleash theviral power of free e-books as traffic builders. The point? Well, one simple viral marketing tactic put myname on the map. Granted, it was an unusually successfulvirus, but this was just one simple tactic... People are still giving this book away on their sitestoday, and I haven't done anything to promote it in years. High traffic sites are always looking for new ways tospread their message virally. 3. They Turn Traffic into More Traffic This is where most people blow it. Allow me to explain... Whenever I consult for businesses I always teach my"Internet Marketing Battle Plan" concept and use that asthe basis for everything we do. This lays the groundworkfor the best marketing possible. (Side Note: I very rarelydo any consulting anymore - and usually only as a favor toclose friends. I just don't have time for it - I love it,but my own Internet business is too lucrative to spend timedoing anything else.) The Internet Marketing Battle Plan is a cohesive systemconsisting of 5 unique tactics that represent each step ofthe Internet Marketing Process. All successful InternetMarketing I have encountered follows one form or another ofthis plan. Step 4 is: "A Tactic for Getting People to Come Back toYour Site." If you're selling a product on your site, remember thatmost sales are not closed the first time someone hearsabout a product. Obviously, getting people to come backwill greatly increase your chances of closing a sale. If you're selling advertising on your site, clearlygetting initial traffic to come back over and over againwill snowball your traffic. There are thousands of ways to do this, but you alwaysneed to have: a. An incentive for getting them to come back. For example, at the killertacticsjournal.com site, weentice readers to come back by offering free marketing advice each week from world-leading experts. This incentive needs to be truly valuable or it won't work. If we offered misguided advice from self-proclaimedexperts, it would not be nearly the same incentive. Instead, we offer battle tested advice from undisputedworld-leading experts like Jay Conrad Levinson, BrianTracy, Joe Sugarman, Ted Nicholas... If we didn't offerour readers value each time, they just wouldn't come back!b. A method of informing them of the incentive. For example, sign up for our newsletter and we informyou whenever this new information is available. You comeback and this starts the cycle again. Can you think of other ways to inform people about yourincentives? Use your imagination. High traffic websites always keep people coming back formore. You now have the plan - it's up to you to put it intoaction. Work on all three of these secrets every singleday and I assure you that your traffic will increasedramatically.

Internet Success Story Interview: Mark Joyner

Marty Foley of ProfitInfo.com and AffiliateProfitInfo.cominterviews Mark Joyner, one of the true pioneers of online marketing.Among other things, Mark was instrumental in sparking thee-book marketing craze, wrote an e-book which has beendownloaded millions of times, and is responsible for one of the greatest success stories in Net history: the building ofSearchHound.com on an ad budget of $0 - and selling it formillions.[Marty]: Mark, can you give us a little background on youronline business operations?[Mark]: Well, I started on the Net back when I was a very youngman and the Internet was then called the "Arpanet." My uncle hadan Arpanet teletype machine in his house and from that point onI was hooked.In 1994, when e-commerce was just starting to happen on the Net,I opened my first business and acted as a software reseller. NowI own my own Internet software company - Aesop dot com.Our latest project is called ROIbot. With this, we started outby asking "what does everyone doing business online really needto be successful?" and we built tools that answered thatquestion. [Marty]: What are some keys to Internet success that you'vediscovered? [Mark]: Two things: Testing and persistence.There is so much advice out there... Some of it's very good,some of it's horrible. To make matters worse - some of it may begood advice for someone else, but bad advice for you.So what do you do? You can test!When you test, you know exactly what's working. And when youknow what's working, you can duplicate that success again andagain.Try some simple math. Imagine you have a website that isgenerating one sale of your product for every 300 visitors. Younet $50 per sale.If you get 3,000 visitors per month, you're making $500 permonth in net profit.Then you test out 5 new websites and find one that gets you onesale for every 50 visitors.For the same traffic level, 3,000 visitors per month, you arenow earning $3,000 per month, rather than $500.Here is where persistence comes in. You have to be willing totry out different things and accept that most of what you trywill fail. If you keep trying, sooner or later you'll hit onsome winners.Many make the mistake of trying out one thing and then giving upwhen it doesn't work. You should just assume that your firstround out of your gun is going to be a dud. Accept it and keepfiring!One problem with the Net is this - what may be working one daycould soon become obsolete! The only thing that stays consistentis testing.[Marty]: What specific types of online tools are you usingsuccessfully?[Mark]: I mentioned ROIbot above. One of the many tools that ROIbot gives you is a detailed tracking system that will allow you to track and measure the results of your marketing - withoutquestion.I don't do any marketing at all without using our ROIbottracking tools. I honestly can't sell a product that I don't usepersonally. With ROIbot it's not a problem, as it's simply anessential part of good marketing.You're invited to check out the powerful Internet marketingbenefits that the collection of ROIbot tools offers by visitinghttp://www.roibot.com/r.cgi?IM10766_mji-1[Marty]: That's great advice, Mark. I'm always glad to runacross other marketers who appreciate the power of testing. I'malso a ROIbot Pro user and know how helpful those tools can be.As an Internet marketer myself, I've become very serious about testing, and have created a different type of testing tool; one that allows split run testing on web sites. It can be used in tandem with ROIbot, and is described at:http://ProfitInfo.com/catalog/v4.htmWhat major mistakes do you see Internet entrepreneurs make? [Mark]: Wow - there are so many. The biggest one is: "makingyour site for you rather than for your customer." So many peoplebuild sites that are shrines to themselves. Who cares, right?People in general don't care about you - they care about themselves. You've got about 2 seconds to get your visitor'sinterest - or he will turn around and leave![Marty]: Do you have any other advice to those wanting to buildsuccessful online businesses?[Mark]: You bet - you're probably going to hear from everyone that you're crazy. Don't listen to this!I can't begin to tell you all of the "authoritative" statementsI've heard from nay-sayers: "Your business model will never work.""It's too late to start a new business on the Internet." (Iheard this early this year when I started ROIbot.)"It costs millions of dollars to do business online" (A lieperpetuated by those charging millions to set up onlinebusinesses! Doing business on the Net is cheap if you do itright!)If I had listened to any of these statements I wouldn't havenearly as much money as I do now. And those that have said such things to me are making just whatthey've always made.