The Death Of… Everything?
November 13, 2006
First it was the Death of AdSense, which was shown to be bunk. Now it's the "Death of Internet Marketing". Only this time it's a very well known and well respected marketer saying so, Mike Filsaime.
If you're sweating and worrying, don't. Park the Hearse, and don't freak out. Mike's a good marketer, and he used a catchy headline that would get people to download his report, but the title is just a scare tactic. One that frankly I think should have been different, because it's seems to me to be very misleading.
Despite all of the "it's free" stuff going around, Mike's report is a product, just a different kind, which I'll talk about in a second.
What's In The Report Is Nothing New
Mike's report says simply this: there's a lot more people creating products for the Internet Marketing audience than there used to be, and so it's time to expand out into other arenas.
That's it. That's really the whole substance of the 59 pages of the report. If you're marketing any kind of product other than Internet Marketing products, the report doesn't apply to you at all.
To call that "the death of internet marketing" is like saying McDonalds should have closed their doors when Burger King and Sonic came along. And yet McDonalds is a multi-billion dollar business even now. (Maybe I should write a report called "the death of fast food"? I mean, look at all the competition–it must be doomed!)
That said, I do recommend that you download the report, as it has some good information in it about effective marketing versus efficient marketing. Just don't take the title seriously, and certainly don't stop working because of all of the nay-saying in the report. Just focus on the gems of information.
The Report Sounds a Little Whiney
To be completely honest, the report sounds a little whiney (sorry Mike). It basically reads like this:
"Oh, us poor gurus who used to make a million dollars with one product launch! Woe is us! Now we're only earning $100,000 per launch because there are other people in the market who know what they're doing too! And shucks, we actually have to do extra work to get that $100,000!"
It's Business As Usual
Just a few years ago there were only half a dozen big names in the Internet Marketing world, it's true. Those marketers did their job well and their products taught a lot of people how to do things right, and now there are dozens of well-known IM people creating great products for that Internet Marketing audience. So yes, competition is making it harder to be on top.
But that's just business, isn't it? Did McDonalds think they would be the only fast-food burger joint forever? Did Kleenex think they would be the only people who made tissue? Or Coca Cola the only soda?
When this inevitably happens (and it happens in every emerging successful market), what do you do?
You make your products better. You set yourself apart from the crowd. You advertise more. You study your conversion rates to see what's maximizing your sales (which Mike encourages you to do in the report, and gives some great ideas on how to do it). You do what any brick and mortar business has to do to survive in a competitive market: you work smarter.
Does that mean more work? Yes. Lower profit margins? Yes. Bankruptcy? Hardly.
(Oh, and another thing the report fails to mention is that along with the increase in gurus and products there has been a huge increase in the number of people looking to earn a living online! So the market is growing as well, even if if the guru-to-customer ratio is increasing.)
It's Been A Great Year
Despite all of the nay-saying that goes on in that report about how bad this year has been for product launches, 2006 has been my best year for my products! Why? Because I try to set my products apart. I try to make them better than the rest, easier to use, or stand out in some other way.
Also, and this is a big one I think, I actually send useful information to my list in between product recommendations! I've noticed that since I've been doing that some of the people I receive information from (who I happen to know are on my list) have begun to do the same.
I've always thought it was obvious that you shouldn't bombard people with product after product without giving good training and education in between. I guess not everybody realized that.
Why I Am Calling This Free Report A Product
So if the report is free, why do I say that it's still a product? Because it's clear to me that Mike is prepping the Internet Marketing audience for something to come.
Here's my theory:
[Start Theory]
Mike knew that if he, Mike Filsaime, marketer-extraordinaire, created a report with a scary title and offered $1 for every person who downloaded the report, that all of the names that mattered would immediately email their huge lists about it. In a week, 9 out of 10 people in the Internet Marketing world will have read the report.
So now 90% of people who matter have read about how they need to start switching gears and selling to other markets as well. And everyone who downloaded the report is now on a list where he will no doubt continue to emphasize that same point again and again.
In his report Mike mentions that he already has some new product ideas for 2007. I wonder if any of those products will help people who were working in the Internet Marketing sector to branch out… ?
[End Theory]
It was brilliant really. Mike has leveraged a huge audience into his list where I believe he will launch "the next big thing" at some point.
Knowing Mike, whatever that "thing" is it will be top quality stuff, but I know better than to think that a guru like Mike would do anything that didn't have dollars floating around behind it somewhere. And he surely wouldn't pay $1 per download of the report if he didn't plan on cashing in on it in the end.
Oh, and when that next big thing comes out, who do you think will be buying it? You got it–internet marketers. You know, those people in that "dead market"?
Summing It All Up
Overall, it's worth reading the report. Just don't take the doom and gloom stuff too seriously.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I get $1 if you download it from that link. Why not? If Mike's going to give me a buck for sending you to get a report I'd have sent you to anyway, I'll take him up on it. I run a business too, you know. 
A case study on the traffic-building power of article writing.
November 8, 2006
If you've been around the Internet Marketing world for any length of time at all, you've heard one guru or another talk about the need to write and distribute articles to your sites. I've always done this, and it's always been a great way to build up my email lists, but I've never taken the time to actually sit down and do a case study on just how much traffic you can receive through article writing and distribution.
Until now.
On October 31st, I put up a dog training mini-course site, whose domain name I won't point you to so as not to skew my page view figures. It's just an opt-in page advertising a free 5 day mini course on how to train your "best friend". After the five day course the visitor is sent a sales pitch for a great ClickBank dog training product.
It's a very simple, one-page site with a good headline and some bullet points. It converts about 37% of its visitors into email subscribers, which I am very pleased with.
After writing the 5 day mini course, I wrote an additional 5 articles about dog training and distributed them to only 3 article sites: EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and ArticleCity.com. My purpose in only submitting to 3 instead of to hundreds was to see if it was really necessary to submit to a very large number of smaller article sites using submission software, or if only submitting to the "big 3" really mattered.
As a side point, all 5 of the articles were good enough to receive Expert status from EzineArticles.com.
I have done absolutely nothing else to get traffic to this site. I have not submitted the site to any directories, have not purchased links or ads, and I have not posted about the site anywhere online. The only source of traffic is the articles–period.
Well it's been 7 days since the first article was published (though the site was up two days before that), and how are things doing?
Here are my stats:
| Page Views | Signups | Sales |
| 68 | 25 | 0 |
| In Google? | In Yahoo? | In MSN? |
| Yes | No | No |
| Google Backlinks | Yahoo Backlinks | MSN Backlinks |
| 0 | 0 | 0 |
So after one week I already have 25 people on my mailing list, and most haven't made it through the course and as such haven't purchased anything yet. These figures also show that none of my traffic is coming from the search engines yet. In fact, only Google has the site indexed as of today. So all of the traffic is coming from people clicking on my link in the About the Author section of my articles.
I will be posting the progress report of this site each week for the next few weeks. That way you can see how much benefit comes from writing and distributing articles that point to your site. Of course you would normally pursue multiple traffic avenues, but this case study is just to demonstrate the power of article writing.
See you back here next week!
P.S. The success achieved by my new mini-course site is due to Michael Cheney's 11 Days to List Profits instructional videos. The methods taught in those videos were used to create the site.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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