The basic principle of online business is as follows:

Traffic + Offer = Sales

Like most people my favourite part is the Sales, but even those with no mathematical qualification will realise that if you don’t work on Traffic & Offers then you don’t make any sales.

By the same principal if you spend all your time creating offers then it would the same as setting up a bespoke suit for rich City Traders in the Outer Hebrides rather than Saville Row in London – for those from outside the UK look up Google Maps!

Now I’m guilty of buying products that help me understand the whole offer process. I know that you give away free content, include upsells & downsells via the butterfly marketing script, and that you put loads of cross sells on the download page, and put a dozen messages into your autoresponder. Heck I’m even planning on a micro-continuity site where I do free plus shipping with 2 weeks free coaching followed by 12 weeks @ $47 per month.

So I think that you can see that the part of business I hate is traffic generation. Now I do have some systems in place, eg adswaps and safelist mailings, but with so many tactics available I just don’t have the time / get bored, and end up doing a half arsed job to actually get the results I want.

Over the next few weeks this is about to change, I’ve realised that the way to make a business grow is to hire people to do the bits that you hate. The more I study the marketers I want to emulate, the more I realise that they also hate traffic generation, and they outsource it people all over the world who in this current ecomonic climate are more than willing to do it.

At the moment I’m waiting for my Automated Traffic Blast to arrive, Lee’s video was exactly what I was looking for – it may be worth hiding your credit card before watching!

Assuming you’ve enjoyed reading this article I would like you to do 1 of 2 things – or both if you really liked it:-)

#1 Click here to retweet this message

RT @andrewstark New Blog Post – Which Part Of Your Business Do You Hate? http://TwitPWR.com/umn/ Please RT

#2 Post a comment with which part of internet marketing you hate…

Thanks for reading

Andrew

Summary of the video:

I’ve bought into Micro Continuity this week, so I need to create some content to put onto a DVD that will be given away for shipping & handling.

My niche is going to be squeeze pages, so I want to help up to half a dozen people by doing a makeover, and turning the process into a free report and physical DVD.

Please post a comment giving the url of your squeezepage and I’ll be in touch.

Andrew

p.s. Please click the banner below as Randy let me have the perfect domain name for this project

I think that the term “Affiliate Landmines” was coined by Russell Brunson, and it basically refers to a free report that you give away to as many people as possible. The report will branded to contain your affiliate links, and over time you will find that you will earn commissions from sites mentioned in the report.

The more people who find and read your “Affiliate Landmine” the bigger the explosions will be – I still regulary earn commission for sites that I have not promoted for months if not years!

This afternoon I spend an hour branding a new report and creating another landmine. The content of the report is excellent, and if you want a great source of free targeted traffic then you need to go now abd read SafeList Marketing Tactics.

You should recognise now that I’m using the same download page template that you get for free as a member of squeezepagesecretsrevealed.com and the html advert for your squeeze pages will be getting added to the promo tool section shortly.

Andrew

p.s.  When you join SafeList Marketing Tactics you’ll get a chance to rebrand the report, I would pass up the first offer for $47, but please take him up on the 2nd or 3rd offers so that you can create your own affiliate land mine.

p.p.s Please comment & post the link to your affiliate landmines.

If you’re on Maria’s VIP list you will know that she’s giving away 2 copies of her course, and more important some of her time so that you really get to grips with her Social Media Blueprint

I’ve posted my entry on YouTube, hopefully it gives you an insight into my busy life…

So it looks like 2009 is going to be the year of twitter.

With mainstream UK media coverage from the likes of Chris Moyles, Lord Schofield, Stephen Fry, and Jonathon Ross people are joining by the thousand. All these people and the ability to re-tweet has lead to something called the “TwitterEffect” so there’s never been a better time to start using twitter to network and find new targeted visitors to your blog.

#1 Update Your Twitter Profile

Under settings you can add a url, make sure this link is your blog address. This means that when you get new followers and they view your profile they’ll have a direct link to your blog.

#2 Twitter is the new RSS

When you visit any established blog you will see the orange RSS feed in the top right hand corner. Now most people won’t check their RSS feed everyday, but most twitter users will, hence I think twitter will be the new RSS. At the moment a standard button for twitter hasn’t been established, but you should be adding an image next to the RSS link that points to your twitter page.

#3 Follow The Leaders In Your Industry

When you first start out you’ll probably know a few people you want to follow, but it’s quite daunting to figure out who the movers & shakers are in the Twitersvere. If you Follow MrTweet you will be given a list of people who you should be following. If you’ve posted a few updates and a good bio then some of these people will follow you back, so let the networking begin.

#4 Install TweetDeck

Once you install this software onto your computer it opens up a whole new twitter experience.

When someone your following updates it will ping and let you know someone has tweeted. It allows you instantly reply to updates, and it will monitor for anyone who replies to one of your tweets. No more frantically refreshing the homepage to get that twitterfix!

#5 The TweetMyBlog Plugin

This nifty plugin allows me to have my twitterfeed in the sidebar of my blog.

It will also automatically update my twitter account everytime I make a new post, and if you have established good relationships then you should see instant traffic.

#6 The Sociable Plugin

Once installed this plugin makes it easy for readers to share your content. Be sure to tick the “TweetThis” function so that people can tweet about your blog post in seconds. Providing you produce good Pillar Content the amount of extra traffic could be huge.

#7 Use Search To Get Found

Have you seen people post updates with a #nerdpickuplines or similar? If you use the search function then you will this is a way of trending and picking out what is popular. By tweeting about popular topics not only will you have topics to chat about at the watercooler but you’re being part of the community, which will bring more traffic back to your blog.

#8 Use ViralTweets instead of E-mail Capture

The thinking about offering a free report in exchange for your readers email is that you can follow-up and email them about new blog posts. Whilst email lists are fantastic the chances of ytour reader telling all their friends about the free report are pretty slim. If you study the offer on my sidebar you’ll see that anyone who tweets the message automatically follows me, and posts a link to my main website – long term much more valuable than an individual address.

#9 Be Yourself

Twitter is a big social network that works on the basis of “What Are You Doing?”

If all you’re doing is blasting adverts over the twitter network then you’re not going to make any friends, and you’re wasting your time. Conversly if you use it a “Micro Blogging” site and post things that aren’t worth whole blog posts it will work fantastically well for you, and help establish a relationship with the readers of your blog.

#10 The Power Of The Retweet

This final point is probably the most important for traffic generation.

When someone you’re following posts a link to a blog post and you like the content you go to tweetdeck and hit the little arrow button. This automatically retweets the link to the content, and shows your followers you’ve found an article you think they would like to read. By retweeting great content you will gain the respect of your followers, and get on the radar of the person who wrote the content.

Finally if do write a hot topic article then be sure to make sure to tell people that you want it retweeted.
With that in mind if you found this post helpfull then copy this into tweetdeck and hit enter

10 Twitter Tips For Bloggers – Please Retweet http://TwitPWR.com/3JH

Once you’ve done that be sure to leave a comment and include your twitter link, I will follow back anyone who comments.

Happy Tweeting

Andrew

So it’s the last day of August, and I had to pop over to Buxton to collect Molly.

The weather on the moors was horrific, and on the way back I got Molly to video it, to show everyone just how great the british summer has been.

I hope the weather is better where you are

Andrew

Hi folks

As so many of you liked the baby pic I’ve decided to upload a few more.

Missing from the family pictures is Amanda’s daughter Molly, she’s currently away for the week camping with the Scouts. When I get round to updating the “about me” page I’ll include a picture of her.

Andrew

“Hold that thought!
” I exclaimed. “As soon as we get this first shot, I want to get that little gold nugget on tape too.”

And with that, he revealed two incredibly simple tactics that literally had my mouth hanging wide open and my brain screaming ‘WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT???”


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Just to let you all know that little Elsie has been home for a few days now, and everything is going really well. I’ve been reading all the comments and good wishes to her, and it makes her smile.

She’s also been out to the pub for lunch today, but she stuck to the house white, whilst daddy tucked into a very nice burger & chips.

During precious sleep time I’ve been able to set up a little something that I’ve been putting off for ages.

http://www.andrewstark.com/SafelistGuide/

This guide is the perfect compliment for my listbanditexpert report, and I know that if you follow Soren’s advice then you will soon be getting a lot more targeted traffic to your squeezepages.

 Andrew

A couple of weeks ago I decided to purchase and test Marl the stock trading robot (doublingstocks dot com). I fully anticipated it to be hogwash, in fact if you do a search on Google you will find plenty of people complaining about these scam artists. But I decided to test it anyway (remember I did this so you don’t have to).

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