Marketing Sparks

This Blog Has Moved!

2007-05-03T19:27:00.001Z

The Marketing Sparks blog is no longer being maintained at this location.

It has taken up residence in its WordPress new home at:

http://www.MarketingSparks.com

And, even better - it's being regularly updated!

Why I've Been So Busy Recently

2006-05-26T11:15:00.000Z

Here's the background..

I'm a great believer in generating income from Google AdSense. I've been using it for 3 years now, and it's a great source of "passive" income for me.. set it up, do nothing more - and rake it in! OK, I keep updating the content on my AdSense sites from time to time, but it doesn't take me much time to do that.

AdSense website building has been a hot internet marketing topic over the past year, with numerous "systems" aimed at generating websites very rapidly.

Apart from writing content yourself (or paying someone else to write it), there's been two main content sources:

1) "Private Label Rights" ("PLR") articles
Some marketers have paid "ghost writers" to churn out articles on niche topics, and then have sold these articles to thousands of other people.

The problem here is that you have to modify each article to make it "unique" or the search engines will ban your website because the content is duplicated all over the net. So even more convoluted automated methods have been sold to automatically modify PLR articles in an attempt to make them unique.

I've tried many, many of these systems, and usually the result is garbage. No-one is going to read them, let alone hand around to look at the AdSense a.ds. Just look at this example. What an appalling mess!! And that's not the worst I've seen.

I set up an AdSense site system for owners of my Newbies Starter Kit. But, not only is the content fresh and readable, but I've also encouraged my newbies to manually modify each article. I've also told them to drip feed one or two articles per week into their websites, rather than upload all the content at one. Google gets suspicious if huge websites appear overnight!

So I'm less enthusiastic about PLR articles than I was a few months ago.

2) Articles From Article Directories
There's some great directories of articles on the web, with thousands of articles carefully categorised. The authors of these articles want people to take them and put them on other websites, as long as their name and links to their own websites remain intact.

So software started to emerge which automatically scoured these directories quite aggressively, lifting articles and building websites with them. Then, after a while, the article directories got fed up with these high-pressure raids on their servers, and most of these software programs stopped working.

This was a pity, because using other people's articles is a great way to build a themed website - and the search engines don't treat such articles as duplicate content.

I needed a solution - so I started to come up with one..

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a system which is friendly to the article directories, and yet allows you rapidly to generate themed websites with content that is highly readable. The software and the sales system have been finished a while back, and you can see a video of the software in action here. I hope it whets your appetite :-)

So why haven't I released it yet? Well, what I've been working on for the past week is the User Manual. It's not that the software is hard to use. Quite the opposite. The software instructions take up just a small part of the Manual.

But I wanted anyone who has this software to be able to use it even if they know nothing about website building or graphic design. So in the Manual, I've been developing a highly-detailed step-by-step tutorial covering subjects such as:

How to use f'ree graphics software to create stunning banner headers
"Easy HTML" for complete novices
A little-known "sec'ret" way of getting an AdSense account quickly - even if you don't have a website

Owners of my Newbies Starter Kit know that I take very little knowledge for granted!
I've also been assembling a powerful set of AdSense-related resources - not the usual bundle of worthless "bonuses"!

I'm nearly finished. Watch out for its release!

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

The Power Of The Upsell

2006-04-17T21:21:00.000Z

OK, so just where IS your market? Who are the people who are going to buy from you?

I've just spent this Easter weekend being 'dragged around' visitor attractions by my family. Yes, I went around with a smile :-)

And whilst I was smiling, I was also watching how other people were selling to me.

To start with, they got me and my extended family onto their "site" - a stately home, a nature reserve, a roadside cafe - anything. They got me there through conventional advertising in the press, by "word of mouth" (other members of my family knew of the site), and by roadside advertising.

But, once we were on their site, what else did they do?

They went for the "upsell" - i.e. 'now that you've bought, what else can I sell you?'

The "upsell" can double your profits. Once someone has bought from you, once they are on your site (physical or virtual) they are more inclined to buy from you than at any other time. These hooked customers are the easiest to sell to.

Never neglect the power of the "upsell"!

I've Been Beaten To It!

2006-04-14T21:56:00.000Z

For some time now I've wanted to write an eBook about my marketing techniques. I wrote the outline of the eBook months ago. I even registered a domain name for it. But it didn't get off the ground. Now someone's beaten me to it.

A few days ago I came across six short "fluff-free" reports, written for "newbies" and covering the main areas of internet marketing. These were just the type of reports that I would have written had I got round to it.

I didn't have to think twice. I dug (quite deep) into my pocket, "flashed the plastic" and bought the Master Resale Rights to the collection. Such reports are like gold dust - maybe even nuggets! And only a few Master Resale Rights were being sold.

I've decided to make these reports available to you. I'm going to have to make a small charge, not just to cover my costs, but also to comply with the terms of the Master Resale Rights. But I've brought the price right down to a very affordable level - and even sweetened the deal with three great bonuses, all of them educational, and all of them designed for "newbies".

Here's where you can get them

If you are a battle-hardened internet marketing veteran these are probably not for you. But you might be interested in another angle.

I'm making available a small number of Resale Rights Licenses. I'm restricting the numbers so that the market won't get flooded and that the people who purchase these licenses won't face excessive competition.

Check out the Resale Rights deal here

Note: Don't delay. I'm expecting these few licenses to sell out quickly.

"AdSense Websites" - Do They Work?

2006-03-27T07:27:00.000Z

Google's "AdSense" contextual advertising system enables owners of content-rich websites to generate income from their websites. I've had AdSense on my "Marketing Magic" and "City Of York" websites since July 2003 and it's been highly profitable for me.

But you will have noticed in recent months a huge push to sell various systems which generate content-rich websites very quickly with the sole purpose of bringing in cash from AdSense ads. I've tested about eight such systems in the past few months. Some work well - as far as building the sites is concerned. Some were terrible!

However, I have reservations about the whole concept of building large numbers of such sites:

Duplicate content: If you just upload these sites "as is", your sites will be identical to hundreds, maybe thousands of other sites. And the search engines are weeding out such duplicates. I'm not talking about the content of the articles - the search engines are fine with the same article appearing on many different sites. But if the same article collections appear in the same order, then those are duplicate sites.
Competition: If you target content niches which are known to having high-paying AdSense advertisers you'll face huge competition from other sites. This means that it will be more difficult to be found on the search engines (even when your site is in the indexes). Consequently, the number of visitors to your site - and your AdSense income - will be low.
Time: Generating websites from these systems doesn't take long - except that you'll need to tweak many of them. But, as I showed in my marketing experiment, generating traffic to a website can be time consuming. One guy selling one of these systems said "It doesn't matter if you only make a dollar per day from each site - set up a hundred sites!". Oh yes, and how long will you have to spend driving traffic to each site just to make a dollar a day?

OK, here's my conclusions - and remember, they are only personal opinions.

Maybe, just maybe, some people are making the multiple-site systems work.. for the time being. But they are probably spending a lot of time on them - and using techniques that most people would struggle with - interlinking sites, blogs, RSS and maybe "AdSense arbitrage" ("Google" it if you don't know what it means!).

I don't think that it's a method for "newbies", despite the attraction of having large numbers of "ready-to-go" websites.

Then there's the grey area of ethics. I personally don't feel comfortable having a website which deals with a topic that I don't understand or have any enthusiasm for. That's the reason why I put a month of work into developing a content-rich, customisable website for owners of my Newbies Starter Kit around a topic which most people have some understanding of and feeling for - "self improvement".

I have five websites aimed at generating AdSense income - apart from my two main sites that I mentioned earlier. But they all deal with topics which I have some understanding of - and enthusiasm for. And that's the way I'm going to continue. It's a personal decision.

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

Another Neat Webmaster Trick For You

2006-03-20T13:06:00.000Z

You've probably seen it before - you mouse-over a link on a web page, and up pops a coloured box with some information. No, I'm not talking about the standard pale yellow box. That's achieved by adding the 'title' attribute to a link.

No, these little fellers are coloured usually to match the website. Just have a look at the demo page I've put up here.

As I said on that page, there's some very fancy scripting stuff going on behid the scenes. Fortunately, there's a handy f'ree online service that does all the grunt work for you. Just fill in the form with your desired colours and fonts, and it generates all the code for you to copy and paste into your web page.

Access this handy service here

This was something completely new to me. I've often wondered how it was done!

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

IMP x CTR x EPC = $

2006-03-14T09:15:00.000Z

Catchy headline, eh! What does it mean? What's it all about?

Last one first. I'm talking about Google AdSense. This program displays "contextual" adverts that you can insert on any content-rich website (i.e. an info site rather than a selling site). The ads which are displayed are supposed to be related (it isn't 100% accurate) to the content of the page. If / when it works, the chances of a website visitor clicking through to the ad are much better than a blatent banner ad.

Banner ads aren't really effective. The "468 x 60" format is tired. We all suffer from "banner blindness"; we ignore them. The Click Through Rate ("CTR" - remember this acronym) is usually less than 1 per cent. A lot less. Because they are indiscriminate. Usually, they don't relate to the content of the page. So, apart from "banner blindness", our visitors have no reason to be interested in the ad.

Let's face it, if you bought a magazine devoted to "ice skating", would you be interested in the slightest in adverts for "baby care" products? I don't think so!

"Contextual ads", where the content of the ads is related to the content of the web page, is far more powerful. And that's what the Google AdSense system does. It allows any webmaster (or webmistress) with a content-filled website to use its contextual ads on their pages.
You might have noticed lately a spate of new products aimed at building a mass of content-filled websites very quickly. The reason? To generate income from AdSense. OK, back to that mysterious formula:

IMP x CTR x EPC = $

Just how successful you'll be in generating income from your AdSense websites depends on these three factors:

IMP = Page Impressions
That's the number of times that your pages are viewed. So, the more visitors you drive to your site, the higher your AdSense income is likely to be. This is one of the factors which is under your control.

CTR = Click Through Rate
That's the percentage of visitors who click on the AdSense ads. That's a crucial factor in increasing your AdSense income. Again, it's something over which you have some measure of control.

EPC = Earnings Per Click
That's really dependent on the subject matter of your web pages and how many advertisers are competing with each other. Your EPC is likely to be lower on a page about, say, philosophy, than on a page about marketing.

I decided to write about this topic today because a year ago I made a small but very significant change to my AdSense ads. I've charted the impact it made on this web page. Powerful stuff, eh?

The turning point was a report that I bought - "AdSense Secrets" by Joel Comm. I've read a lot of reports about AdSense but Joel really lives up to his reputation as "Mr AdSense". He lives and breathes it! What impresses me even more is that Joel updates his report regularly, and he's just issued version 3.

Read about it here

If you use, or are planning to use, AdSense on your website, you really ought to get Joel's report. But if you do, not only must you read it, but you should act on it. You've seen the difference that just one of Joel's tips made to my income.

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

"Ian's Marketing Experiments": Month Two

2006-03-10T16:23:00.000Z

Mid-January, I posted an account of three very hectic days I spent building and launching a new website about a niche topic: "Learning Yoga". I had such great feedback about this diary that I decided to continue with it.

Over the last six weeks, I've kept a detailed diary on what I did to get the site indexed in the search engines, get in-bound links to the site from other websites and generally tidy up the site. I describe:

My feelings of both frustration and elation when I encountered failure and success.
What I did to get a Google Page Rank of "2" in less than 6 weeks
How I detected a copyright cheat
Why I rejected a lot of offers to link to my new website
What my plans are for future work on the site

Read my Marketing Experiments Diary here:

http://www.marketing-drive.com/the-experiment/

And please - give me more feedback using the form on the Diary page. By the way, if you missed the January Diary, there's a link to it on the current Diary page.

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

The Merry-Go-Round System

2006-02-27T11:41:00.000Z

How easy is this to do?

You set up accounts with ClickBank, Google AdSense, Google AdWords and Blogger.com The cost of all this is zero apart from a $5 activation fee for AdWords
You find suitable products to promote as an affiliate on ClickBank. Then you drive targeted traffic to the products' sales pages through your affiliate link using AdWords. This costs as little or as much as you like. You're in total control. All you need to do is to make sure that your affiliate inc.ome is greater than your AdWords spend
You build a few blogs at Blogger.com (no skills required) and add some content to each (there's plenty of sources of articles around). You put AdSense code in these blogs - and some of your ClickBank affiliate links. Another $0 spent!
You get your blogs indexed by the search engines and your blogs start earning you both AdSense and ClickBank income

So there you have it. A way to generate income online with no website and no products of your own.

So, how easy is that to do? Very easy.

But how easy is it to do well? Ah, that's a different story!

I've done all of these, and I know some of the pitfalls. And I've learnt some of the "tricks" to make these strategies more productive.

You need to know which are good products to sell. You need to figure out which keywords to target for these products when you're setting up your AdWord campaigns. You need to know how to get your blogs into the search engines quickly.

And you need to know a heck of a lot more than just those three things. I can't pretend to tell you that I've got all this knowledge and skills. I haven't. But I know a man who has..

Richard Quek. He's was a Chartered Accountant before he 'discovered' the internet. I've been dealing with Richard for quite a few years now, and he's one of the few internet marketers that I both trust and admire.

He's really gone deeply into this "merry-go-round" system (that's my phrase, by the way, not his). And now he's put all his ideas together in a couple of eBooks (and bundled in a load of other very useful resources).

Please note that his system is really aimed at newbies, not experienced marketers. Having said that, I learnt some new techniques with 5 minutes. For example, I hadn't realised how easy it is to set up a "WordPress" blog as an alternative to Blogger.com. Right, so that's something else I've got to have a play with!

Richard's reports are concise and free from "fluff"! Wish I could say the same about the other half dozen I've ploughed through this week. OK, want to know more?

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

Handy Online AdWords Tool

2006-02-24T08:55:00.000Z

If you use Google's "AdWords" pay-per-click system to drive traffic to your website, you'll know that you shouldn't just target two or three keywords.

You bid on dozens or hundreds to have an effective campaign. Maybe you use a service such as WordTracker or software such as AdWord Analyzer to research your keywords. Either way, you end up with a big list.

But then, there are three keyword matching options in the Adwords system:

Broad match: If you have jewellery box in your keyword list, your ad will show when the searcher includes both these words in the search term - in any order. So if the search term was "silver box for jewellery", your ad will be displayed. This is the least targeted option.

Phrase match: If you enclose your keywords in speech marks thus: "jewellery box", your ad will show if the searcher includes those words in the same order. So your ad will show if the search term is "silver jewellery box", but not if it is "silver box for jewellery".

Exact match: If you put square brackets around your search term thus: [jewellery box], your ad will show only if those two words were searched for without any other words in the search term. This is the tightest of the targeting options.

It's very useful to use all three matching methods to get as broader coverage as possible. But there's a problem..

I've just used the AdWords system to generate keywords starting with the initial word "jewellery". It came up with 140 different keywords. Now how long will it take me to produce two more variations of each phrase - one with speech marks and one with square brackets? And how boring is that job?

Fortunately, I've found a handy (and free) web service that does the job in seconds. It's kindly provided by a guy called Mike. Just copy your keyword list, paste it into a box on Mike's page, hit a button - and out pops all the keywords with all the match options. Great stuff! And there's no fluff about having to sign up for anything. Just use this great little tool if you are an AdWords user. Go to it here.

Incidentally, even if you aren't an AdWords user, you can still use the AdWords tool to generate keyword lists. This can be handy for all sorts of purposes. Access the AdWords tool here.

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

Email Postage Charges: Fact Or Fiction?

2006-02-18T18:55:00.000Z

It was announced recently that AOL and Yahoo! are going to start using the "Goodmail" system to implement a "sender certified" email system.

This means that every message sent through Goodmail has a little tag which identifies it as "certified" and it then goes through whatever spam filters the participating ISPs use.

Email senders have to go through an approval system, which costs $399 ($199 before 31 July 2006). Although I couldn't find it on the Goodmail website, I believe that email senders are charged 0.2 to 0.4 cents per email, depending on volume. Oh, and your business has to be based in the USA or Canada to be a Goodmail certified sender.

So what does this really mean to us? Certainly, the media have hyped it up. "AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam" was the USA Today headline. Total rubbish! It will not impact on spam at all, and Goodmail don't claim this.

And it's entirely optional. If you decide not to join the Goodmail system, nothing will change at all. Your chances of getting emails through to AOL and Yahoo! mail boxes (which account for about 50% of consumer mail boxes) will be just as good (or bad!) as they have always been.

Is Goodmail the thin end of the wedge? Won't it be just a matter of time before we all have to pay to send email? Maybe. But I doubt it. Goodmail aren't the first providers of such a system. Habeus and BondedSender have been around for much longer. And they haven't made much impact.

My advice to you? Don't panic!

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

Google's Bigdaddy - Prepare For Some Changes

2006-02-14T16:44:00.000Z

In case you hadn't heard, Google has been working on a new search technology called "Bigdaddy". At the time of writing, it's still in test phase but it's expected to become the Google default search mechanism this month or next.

The main aim of Bigdaddy is to deal with "web spam" (e.g. pages consisting of 'scraped' search engine results) and a number of cheating re-direct tricks For example, the search engines see one page; human visitors see another. BMW's German site was removed from Google's index for pulling a stunt like that! BMW sensibly removed the re-direct and they're back in. Bigdaddy could also result in many near-identical websites being removed.

It's important to understand that this is not just an algorithm change like big updates in the past. It changes the way in which the whole Google search engine works. It contains new code for sorting and examining web pages.

Matt Cutts is a Google search engineer who has become quite a public figure. He's a very useful channel of communication between Google and webmasters (I had a talk with him at a "Webmasters World" conference in London a couple of years ago - he's a very approachable guy).

Matt has a very informative blog, and he's been drip-feeding us with info about Bigdaddy on a regular basis. On 1st February, Matt posted news to his blog that Google was converting data centers at the rate of one every 10 days (Note: Google uses a network of data centers with different IP addresses to answer search queries. These decentralized servers share the workload of indexing web sites.)

There are now at least 3 data centers running Bigdaddy. There's one you can test here. Note that this may not always show Bigdaddy results because data centers are sometimes taken out of the rotation for testing purposes. One way to test it is to enter the search term "sf giants". If the first site on the results page is 'giants.mlb.com' then it's a good chance that the data center is running Bigdaddy.

You can read Matt Cutts' blog here. Check out various entries in January and February for his Bigdaddy news.

So what does Bigdaddy mean for most of us?
Possible very little, if you have a normal website and you don't try to fool the search engines. In fact, if some websites are removed from the index, others are going to move up the listings.
I was please to find that when I typed in "selling and marketing techniques" into a Bigdaddy-powered search box, my Marketing Magic website was at #1! And I couldn't find my site with this search phrase when I used one of the older data centers.

But if you have a website which is nearly identical to other people's sites, you could well have a problem. That's why, as a matter of some urgency, I am replacing the current AdSense Starter kit in my Newbies Starter Kit with a site that owners of the Kit can easily customise and make unique. I needed to find a way for people to do this easily.

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

Affiliate Honesty

2006-02-06T17:14:00.000Z

Why did I decide not to promote "Butterfly Marketing"?

It's all to do with my conscience!

I've nothing against Mike Filsaime. He's produced some great products from which I have benefited. And it's nothing to do with the Butterfly Marketing product, which I have not seen.

Quite a while ago I made the decision that I would not put my name against any product which I had not personally reviewed and liked. It's subjective, I know, but that's the way I work; I sleep easier at night :-)

Mike Filsaime is an astute marketer whom I admire and, in some ways seek to copy. His pre-launch of Butterfly Marketing was brilliant. But there was a flaw, in my opinion. A big one..

No-one, except a privileged few, saw the product - or even the sales page - until launch day on 31 January. Yet dozens of people sent out email after email extolling the virtues of the package; many of them will not have even seen the sales page. Is that being honest? I don't think so!

OK, I believe and respect the opinions of some of the 'big hitters' who probably did have sight of the product, and, having seen the sales page when "Butterf'ly" was launched, I think that they are right in saying that it it is a great product - for certain types of people..

But having read the sales page several times (and I re-read it just before writing this), I am still happy with my decision. My impression is that "Butterfly" is not for inexperienced marketers, and quite a few people will have bought it thinking it will solve all their problems.

The whole concept of Mike Filsaime's software and home study course is, I believe, brilliant. But from what I've read - and what other people are saying - if you are not already an established marketer, "Butterfly" is unlikely to be very helpful to you.

But, bear in mind that this is my uninformed opinion. I could be wrong. Remember, I haven't seen or experienced the product. If you want to decide for yourself then go to the website: butterflymarketing.com and make up your own mind. Incidentally, I can't put in the full URL for "Butterfly" because it's already in a "block" list!

Not for you? Here's an alternative

If you decide that "Butterf'ly" isn't for you, there is an alternative which I do endorse. It's the late Cory Rudl's "Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business On The Internet" course. I've owned it for a couple of years now, and a few weeks ago I took delivery of an updated version.

This is a home study course for both 'newbies' and experienced marketers alike. The course comprises two thick ring-bound manuals and three CDs. One of the manuals covers the basics of internet marketing and the other deals with more advanced techniques (some of them were real eye-openers for me).

What I really like about the course is not just the content, but also the presentation. This makes the course highly readable. There's too many topics covered in the course for me even to put them here - there's a good description on the sales page (you have to wade through a lot of hype, though!)

Again, you will need to form your opinion. Here's the sales page - and yes, it is an affiliate link!

Have a look at it now

(From my Marketing Magic "News Update" newsletter)

Yahoo! Challenges Google AdSense

2006-01-18T17:24:00.000Z

I've been a very happy Publisher with Google's AdSense program for a few years now. It's another very profitable income stream for me, with the context-relevant ads appearing on two of my main websites.

What has astonished me is that there's been no serious competitor to AdSense over the past few years.

Well, maybe that's going to change! Yahoo has now entered the field, very tentatively, and restricting itself to website publishers in the USA.

A recent article on my Marketing Magic website by Merle (she doesn't admit to a second name!) takes a look at what Yahoo!'s Publisher Network ("YPN") is offering to website owners. She goes into a lot of detail. So, if you're looking for an alternative to AdSense..

Read her article here

A Marketing Experiment

2006-01-17T17:21:00.000Z

I don't know how regular this is going to be, but I've written a diary of three very hectic days I've had this week.

I set myself a challenge - build a 500-page content-rich AdSense website and launch a new niche product.. within a week. I managed it in three days. My diary is far too long to go in this newsletter, so I've put it online:

http://www.marketing-drive.com/the-experiment/

In it, I take you step-by-step through all the processes I went through, from first selecting the niche to finally launching both websites.

I give you links to the resources I used, own up to the errors I made, and put some useful tips throughout the diary.

Set aside a few minutes and see what you can learn from me:

http://www.marketing-drive.com/the-experiment/

Oh, and the niche topic I chose was completely unrelated to internet marketing. It was all about "Learning Yoga". Here's the content-rich site:

http://www.learning-yoga.com

.. and here's the new product's sales page:

http://www.learning-yoga.com/beginning/

My task for the coming days and weeks is to drive traffic to both sites!

What's Your Plan For 2006?

2006-01-06T11:16:00.000Z

A few days ago, I listened to some very inspiring planning advice from a top marketer. And I followed his advice and made some notes whilst I was listening to his audio. I'm sure that he won't mind me sharing his thoughts with you.

It's all about what you are going to achieve in 2006. There's five steps you need to take to reach the goals you really want to achieve:

Decide the life you want to live - don't let other people interfere with your dreams. Plan it in detail; imagine it in detail - and visualise it in great detail.(Me? Some years ago, I visualised myself driving a top-range Volvo estate car - five months ago, I took delivery of a Saab Aero Turbo.. much better than a Volvo!)
Write down exactly what you want, and make it measurable - e.g. make a hundred thousand dollars by June 1st. Don't limit yourself. High expectations are the key to everything.(Me? My wife, Ruth, who's also my accountant, sets my targets. I ignore them, treble them and achieve them!)
Take ACTION. Everything starts with ACTION. The faster you move forward, the more you'll get. Focus on your goals, not on your mistakes.(Me? I have a little notebook with the label "Ideas Journal". Each time I get a new idea, I write it down - check it daily, and cross it off whenever I achieve or reject the idea)
Measure your results, and take corrective action. Do it weekly. Aim for your results.(Me? I have a series of spreadsheets which, on a daily basis, I record my financial results for the previous day. I always know when I'm hitting my targets)
Enjoy your life! Imagine the possibilities of your life, and decide to attain them. Have fun! You'll achieve more if you enjoy what you are doing.(Me? I really do enjoy everything I do at work and in my ample leisure time!)

Don't just read these words - act on them. It's powerful advice. It's worked for me!

I'm Still Pumped Up!

2005-12-20T11:29:00.000Z

In the coming weeks, I've got a host of really powerful internet marketing advice and information to share with you.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent all weekend at the Internet Marketing Center's "Bootcamp" in London. It was an incredible two days. My adrenelin started flowing on Saturday morning, and I still haven't come off the ceiling!

I thought that I was "experienced" in many internet marketing techniques, but during the weekend, I came away with 30 pages of notes and 51 action points for me to implement (I've done four of them!). In future posts in "Marketing Sparks", I'm going to be telling you about some of the ideas I came away with - and I'm going to let you know about my experiments with them.

Amongst other things, I'll be covering:

Technology:
Blogs - how you can use them to get high search engine rankings and drive traff'ic to your site (I've had a blog for 2 - 3 years and done little with it - that's going to change)
RSS - what it is, why it's easy to use, and why it's so powerful for marketers (I've dabbled with it, but not really seen its power until now)
Podcasting - again, what it is, why you should start using it and again, how it's simple to implement (I'm going to make my first "Podcast" in the next 2 days)

Marketing:
Copywriting - what needs to go on your sales page - and where it should go (I'm going to be making major changes to my sales pages in the coming weeks)
Email - methods of ensuring your emails are delivered.. and read (I use some of them, others were new to me)
Affiliate marketing - if you've joined my affiliate scheme, you're going to see even more help from me in the future!
Search engine marketing - how to use Pay-Per-Click effectively and how to boost traff'ic from the "organic" search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc). Again, I found that this old dog can still learn new tricks. I'll describe them, and tell you how successful I've been

So, there's going to be some hot stuff in future posts in "Marketing Sparks", kicking 2006 off to a great start! And no, despite the source of a lot of this info, I won't be angling the material towards affiliate links to the Internet Marketing Center!

Building Content-Filled Websites - Update

2005-12-02T11:50:00.000Z

After using ContentDesk for six weeks, I decided it just wasn't for me. The online software was a little clunky, I found it difficult to find enough articles for the niche site I'm building, and the user support was not ideal.

But what I have come across is a lovely bit of free software called "Orwell". It doesn't automate the site building very much, but it enables you legally to trawl article directories.

The trouble with the "scraper" type of software is that article directories are increasingly banning automated interrogation of their websites. And Google is getting wise to websites built of "scraped" content, and is rooting them out.

I came across "Orwell" through a fascinating report about this change in Google's policies, and you can only download "Orwell" from this report. I asked the author of the report is I could make it available for public distribution, and he said "yes".

So, if you want to experiment with "Orwell" for rapidly gathering a lot of tightly focused articles, download the report from here. It's in PDF format.

Inside the report, there's a link to the download website and (important!), the PDF also includes the software's unlock code.

With "Orwell", I managed to find about 80 articles on "cold calling" and "sales prospecting". With ContentDesk, I only managed half a dozen or so.

A shameful confession..!

2005-11-04T17:38:00.000Z

I've been involved in internet marketing since about 1997, and I've been selling my own products for the past five years.

But it's only today that I've finally got around to setting up an affiliate scheme.

I hate to think how many extra sales I could have made if I'd set up the scheme years ago. I've known, from my conversations with other internet marketers, that the majority of sales in this market sector are made through affiliates.

Well, at last I've done the deed. Here's where you can sign up to become one of my affiliate partners:

The Webmasters Cheat Kit Affiliate Scheme

I'm offering a generous 60% commission on the first product in the Scheme - my Newbies Starter Kit.

I'll be adding more products to the Scheme in the next few weeks.

Building Content-Filled Websites

2005-10-14T10:13:00.000Z

There's been a spate of "article scraper" tools recently. These scour various article directories for articles, based on keywords, then stuff them automatically into a website template.

On the face of it, they seem to work well. I've built a 100-page site in less than 10 minutes: Management DataVault. But there are two problems with these systems:

Some article directories are stopping the automated "scraping" of their sites
There is evidence that search engines such as Google are able to detect and ban such sites.

Recently, I've taken the plunge and invested a large monthly sum to become one of the 400 Charter Members of "Content Desk". This is a huge set of resources which automates the process of building content-filled websites, but with a few significant differences from "scraper" software:

Articles are pulled from Content Desk's own vast directory of articles
The system can be automated so that new articles are added at regular intervals
Article summaries can automatically be posted to blogs
.. and quite a lot more

You can find information on Content Desk and its Chartered Membership here. Since membership is restricted to 400 people, I don't know if there are any vacancies when this entry is read.

The Rich Jerk - Reviewed

2005-08-31T10:38:00.000Z

There's been a lot of controversy recently about a guy who calls himself "The Rich Jerk". He's brought out this short (40 pages) eBook, claiming to reveal precisely the methods he's used to make in excess of $1 million every year for the past few years.

Some people reckoned he's a charlatan, others say the eBook is brilliant.

I had to see for myself. Should you buy it or not?

Read my review here

Skype - It's Not Hype!

2005-08-19T15:29:00.000Z

I've seen a lot of hype about VOIP mechanisms in the past! But, after having used Skype for several weeks, I can definitely recommend it as a marketing tool.

It has a vast user base - 150 million downloads, I think - and there's usually about 3 million users online at any one time.

Like any popular system, Skype has attracted a lot of 3rd-party developers, and there's an increasing number of add-ons and plug-ins. This is where the marketing interest lies for me.

Today I installed "Skype Card" on one of my websites - look at the footer on any page on my TKA website The Skype Card allows my website visitors to contact me in a variety of ways (if they have the correct plugins installed). The Card even shows the visitor if I'm online with Skype (again, if they have the plugin installed).

My feeling is that Skype is going to get better and better. If you're not Skyped yet, then get it. And the service is free.

All the info is here

Update On Google's "Back Door"

2005-06-29T13:13:00.000Z

I was right not to have invested any cash in expensive software to build the "sitemap.xml" files, needed for the fast-track submission of pages to Google.

I've found two free pieces of software which do the job - and even better, a free web service which produces the XML file in just a few minutes.

I'm now carrying out an experiment to see how fast I can get a completely brand-new website into Google's index. I'm making a video of this experiment and will be releasing it to subscribers to my "News Update" weekly newsletter. Like the web service, this video will be completely free.

You can sign up for the newsletter at any page on my Marketing Magic website

A Backdoor Into Google?

2005-06-23T16:40:00.000Z

I got an email today, pointing me towards some software, which claims to be any easy way to get all the pages in a website listed very quickly in Google, using a "backdoor" method.

The software's sales page pointed me to a fairly new development - Google Sitemaps.

I've had a quick look, and seem the underlying principle.

Basically, you turn a list of all the pages in your site into an XML file, feed it to Google Sitemaps, and your pages then get into the Google index faster than any other way.

As I said, it was only a "quick look" I had today, and it seems fairly heavy technical stuff.

I'm not investing in the software which claims to make the job easy. But I will be digging deeper to see if I can use this new method. Read more at:

Google Sitemaps

When To Say No To Offers

2005-06-19T20:20:00.000Z

Over the past six months, I have invested some serious (for me) money in buying digital goods.

Some have been information products which I think can help me to improve my skills
Some have been software items which I think will help me to do my job better / quicker / cheaper.
Many have been various types of rights to products which I think I can add to my portfolio.

I haven't wasted too much money of the first two categories. I've been fairly selective, and most of the info products / software items I've used and found useful. If they don't live up to their expectations, I ask for a refund. I very rarely do this, and when asking, I always explain to the vendor why I'm asking for a refund. It's only fair to them.

But where I do fall down big time is in the third category.

I have a butterfly mind. There - it's out; I've confessed!

Currently, I've got 1 product about to be launched, three in preparation, five waiting in the wings for me to look at seriously - and half a dozen which I can't ever see myself devoting enough time bringing them to market.

And I've spent quite a bit of money buying these half dozen products. I'm talking of $200 - $400 each.

That's serious money to me.

So why not learn from my mistakes. Here are my rules on when to say "no" to 'irresistable offers'..

Does it fit in with my mainstream product line? If not, say no.
Have I got the time to use it profitably within the next 8 weeks? If not, say no.
Am I really enthusiastic about this product? If not, say no.
Can I afford to spend the time / money developing this product idea? If not, say no.
Is it going to improve my cash flow within the next 12 weeks? If not, say no.
Do I trust the person selling this product to give me reasonable support? If not, say no.
Is it going to lead me into new markets which have a reasonable chance of becoming acceptable within 12 months? If not, say no.

OK, I'll stop there. I'm sure that there are other "rules" which I could think of. Do you have anything else to add? If so, please comment on this article.

Personalised Web Pages

2005-06-12T20:28:00.000Z

Personalised direct mail has been with us for many years. You know the stuff:

"Only you, Joe Bloggs, has been selected from the residents in High Street, Anytown, to receive this offer".

Old technique! But still effective.

Personalised emails are now also well established. I start my weekly newsletter, "Marketing Magic News Update" with:

"Dear {FIRSTNAME}"

.. and my autoresponder picks up from its database the first name of each recipient, and personalises it: "Dear Joe"

Again, not a cutting technique.

How about personalised web pages? There's a variety of techniques.

The simplest is one which gets a website visitor to enter their first name in a form. When they submit the form, the resultant web page is personalised with their name, wherever the webmaster chooses to insert the personalisation.

I've got a simple little PHP script which enables me to send out my newsletter to my subscribers which contains URLs such as:

http://www.mydomain.com/salespage.php?{FIRSTNAME}

Again my autoresponder picks up the subscriber's name from the database, and inserts it wherever I put a bit of code on the page.

There's also a third technique which works on any web page found by a search engine. It picks up the key words (or phrases) which the visitor used to find your page, and repeats them wherever you want - for example, in a headline:

Wanting to find keyword or phrase? You've come to the right place!

But do all these personalisation techniques work? I've yet to be convinced.

I'd appreciate your comments here on this.

Some Blogging Research..

2005-06-10T16:29:00.000Z

At last - I've found a way that I can put this blog as a scrolling "news ticker" type of box on my websites.

I am now in the process of writing a short report explaining exactly how it is done. The method is very simple, and it's free!

My report will also be free, and I'll put a download link from this blog once I've completed it.

OK - back to writing the report..!

Good Service Is Appreciated

2005-06-08T12:36:00.000Z

I experienced an excellent example of good service recently.

I decided to invest in some software called ClickBank Download Manager. Basically, it has high levels of security in terms of preventing online products from being stolen. It uses very sophisticated ways of protecting your download links, and it works with PayPal. These are the two payment processors that I use.

So, I downloaded the software, and installed it on my web server. It's very easy to install. The only server-side requirement is that it must have PHP installed (most Unix servers do). And, despite it keeping a record of previous purchases, it doesn't use MySQL, which I found surprising.

However, when I started to investigate all its facilities, a few doubts came into my mind about how well it would meet my needs.

So I shot off a list of 10 questions to the owner of CB Download Manager, Sam Stephens, and I got a detailed reply back within the hour. And Sam is in Australia, where it must have been very late in the evening.

The result of this excellent service: win-win. Sam kept the sale, and I've got a superb download protection system which I now understand a lot better.

If this type of product interests you, have a look at it:

ClickBank Download Manager

Marks Out Of Ten For Your Website?

2005-06-06T14:52:00.000Z

I had some of my websites "marked out of 10" this morning. I was quite pleased. They all get more than 8 / 10 !

The "marker" was SiteReportCard.com

Now what they are offering isn't new. But the way that they present the service is original.

Basically, they test any web page you give them, and it looks at broken links, spelling, HTML errors and so on.

It then scores each element of the analysis and gives you an overall score out of 10 points.

It's worth testing your websites from time to time in this way. Errors can easily creep in.

Incidentally, I found the site from a posting on The Internet Warrior Forum, probably the liveliest marketing forum on the Web. I visit it on a daily basis.

A Sad Day For Internet Marketers

2005-06-04T21:27:00.000Z

Yesterday I learnt of the tragic death, at the age of 34, of Corey Rudl, one of the world's leading internet marketers.

I've been an associate (although not a very active one in recent years) of Corey's "Internet Marketing Center" since 1999. I remember his first, very primitive, website; but his marketing messages rang clear and true.

His Internet Marketing Course was a world leader. It continues to sell in record numbers today, having gone through numerous updates. I am deliberately not putting my affiliate link to his course as a mark of respect.

Corey lived life in the fast lane, and he "walked the talk". He made $8 million a year online. He died as a passenger in a Porsche Carrera GT on the California Speedway in Fontana.

He was the same age as my daughter, with whom I'm staying as I write this entry. I have three granddaughters. Corey never had this priviledge.

My thoughts go out to his young widow, Tracey.

This is a sombre reminder that life can be short; money can seem to be important in the short term.

But in the longer term, spiritual matters seem to come to the fore.

Later news: There is now a memorial website for Corey where you can add your tributes:

http://www.remembercorey.com/

Finding High-Ranking Link Partners

2005-06-03T16:38:00.000Z

Pay attention! You'll need to concentrate on the next few lines..

Everyone knows that a website's Google rank is improved by having inbound links to it.

And a lot of people know that the higher the Google Page Rank of the site providing a link, the better the ranking of your site will be.

A few people even know that your ranking will be higher if the content of the site providing the link is similar to yours.

I've had a reciprocal links scheme for a long time, and I run it manually. But I'm getting increasingly choosy about my link partners. I insist on their home page having a page rank of at least 4. I reject sites with content that doesn't match that of Marketing Magic. By the way, if you have a website which meets my demanding criteria, and you'd like to exchange links, follow the instructions on this web page.

But I've been struggling to find enough high-quality sites to exchange links with. I know how important it is. But it's a question of time. I don't have too much of it to spare!

I've recently invested in a tool that has now started to save me a lot of time - and it is finding high-quality reciprocal link partners for my various websites.

I'm not going to take up space here describing exactly what it does. But if you (a) have a website and (b) are trying to get reciprocal links (and you should be!), then have a look at "Rank Retriever".

Full details are here

GoLexa - A Useful Tool For Webmasters..

2005-06-01T18:34:00.000Z

GoLexa is an interesting site - especially if you are obsessed with website stats!

It combines a Google search with plugs into a range of other sites which provide website data. The GoLexa search results page gives you the click-through options for such info as:

Google PageRank
Alexa Rank and web traffic info
NetCraft's info on the web server hosting the site
Link Popularity on Google, MSN, Yahoo, AltaVista and more
Search Engine World's keyword and meta data analyser

.. and so on. Have a look for yourself at GoLexa

Creative Commons - Getting Leverage For Your Articles

2005-05-31T08:46:00.000Z

I've just added a new article to the Archives of my Marketing Magic website.

"Creative Commons" is a way of marking your articles to indicate whether or not other people can use your material, and under what circumstances. The website that gives you the appropriate code to add to your article pages has been around for a while.

What is new - and it's of importance to anyone who uses articles for marketing - is that Yahoo! has just added a way of searching for articles which carry the Creative Commons license code.

You can read the full article here.

It's by Robin Nobles, and it gives a clear explanation of the benefits for anyone who uses articles for marketing. It also has step-by-step instructions on how to implement a Creative Commons campaign.

Payment Processors - New Developments?

2005-05-29T20:51:00.000Z

ClickBank ("CB"), one of the leading payment processing companies and with a great affiliate payment system, have just announced that in July, PayPal ("PP") will be added as one of their payment options (in addition to the various credit card options).

This is interesting. I've been giving my customers the option of choosing either CB or PP to buy my products. This means that I have to set up, for each product, two payment links and two download pages. On the face of it, CB's announcement should be good news for me.

But is it? Yes and no!

Yes - it will save me time and, when I set up my affiliate scheme (coming soon), it will help me to avoid the complications of paying my affiliates when a customer pays through PP.

But there's two "no's":

I prefer people paying me through PP; their charges are lower than CB's
I get paid instantly through PP. The new CB scheme will mean that CB get paid instantly through PP. I still have to wait for my 15-day check from CB.

Hey ho - it's swings and roundabouts time again!

I've got some thinking to do :-)

AdWords - Time To Get Serious!

2005-05-28T16:03:00.000Z

I have to admit I've just been playing with AdWords as a way of driving traffic to my websites.

I set my AdWords account about 18 months ago, mainly as an experiment, and so that I could learn more about AdWords to advise my clients.

I selected just one of my products to promote, and set my spend as the minimum of £0.05 per click, and a maximum spend of £1 per day. Not exactly bank-breaking figures!

Just to show how little importance I've been placing on AdWords, it's been about 6 weeks since I went into my account to look at the stats. Then I did a few sums. Now I'm not going to reveal commercially sensitive figures here. All I'll say is:

AdWords Spend = x
Total Sales Value = 13 times x

.. and the sales for this product is into 4 figures over the past 17 months.

So, what have I been doing wrong? Here's a few things:

I haven't been tracking the conversion rate from the AdWords clicks. I think that most of the sales have come from this route, but I have done a few other things to promote this product.
I haven't experimented enough with different wording with the ads. OK, I've got a variety of ads for this product, but I haven't seriously tweaked the ads continuously to keep on improving the click-through rate.
I haven't seriously been using AdWords to promote the raft of other products I have for sale. OK, I tried AdWords advertising on one other product, but dropped the campaign after the sales barely covered the ad costs. Yes, it was in a highly competitive keyword market, but there's plenty of other products where the competition is lower. Heck, if I can achieve a 13:1 sales to ad cost ratio on just five other products, this will have a serious and positive impact on my bottom line.

So now I need to spend some time on using AdWords for at least three other products. I've got some great tools I can use, the main one being Adwords Analyzer You really ought to have a look at this, not just for AdWords campaigns, but as a powerful tool for finding just the right keywords to use.

And I need to be prepare to commit more cash (both a higher daily limit, and a higher cost per click) in the short term.

I also need to use AdWord's conversion tracking script, so that I really know where my sales are coming from.

OK, that's confession time over! Now it's time to get to work.

Oh yes, and if you want to know which product I've been promoting with AdWords, it's a superb headline generator tool. And the headline is the most important part of any communication message!

Missed Opportunities?

2005-05-27T07:33:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a neat utility called "Search Automator". It's like a browser on steroids - enabling the user to carry out a huge range of search tasks. I won't try to describe them - visit the site, and watch the video.

Anyway, when I first found the site, they were in the process of selling the product to another company. As a consequence, you couldn't buy Search Automator - you could only download a trial version, which I did.

There were no signs, when using the software, that it was a trial version.. no nag screens, no indication as to the length of the trial period.

So I kept on using it, and was very pleased with it. Then, today, it suddenly stopped working. Fair enough, although I would have appreciated some warning. All that popped up when I tried to open the program was an "alert box", which said "Thank you for trying Search Automator".

Now, here's the marketing error - there was nothing to indicate where or how I could buy the product. What a missed opportunity!

I revisited the site (guessing at the URL), and the new owners had obviously taken control. Now you can buy Search Automator ($50) as well as downloading a trial version. And here was error number 2..

I clicked on the "Free Trial" button. It led straight to the download file. Again a missed opportunity. What the owners should have done was to set up a page to capture the user's name and email address before they could download the trial version. Then they could have followed up after a period, reminding the user just before the trial period expired where they could buy the product.

A final error, another missed opportunity, is the lack of an affiliate program. Search Automator is an ideal product to sell via the affiliate channel.

So I won't make any money by sending you to the site :-(

Here's where to go

Scrollers And Affiliate Classrooms..

2005-05-26T11:36:00.000Z

Two marketing aids have caught my eye over the past few days..

Scrollers:
You've seen many of these around the web - little boxes that scroll text across or down a small window. Often, they are used as news tickers and the like. I've actually got one that gives fresh marketing tips every day: Marketing Tipster.

But a new scroller device has recently come to my attention: Scroller Controller. This allows you to include images as well as text. And you can even incorporate an RSS feed. I shall definitely be looking at this in more detail over the next few weeks or so.

Affiliate Classroom:
Many, many people struggle to earn pitifully small amounts of money by acting as an affiliate for another business. Yes, the rewards can be substantial if you (a) work hard at it and (b) know how to work it.

No-one can teach you how to work hard! But affiliate marketing skills can be acquired.

There's no shortage of eBooks and the like which claim to show you how to make a fortune as an affiliate. They often don't deliver!

But I've been having a look at a new resource: Affiliate Classroom. This is a members-only website, and the material in the "classroom" is the highest quality I've ever seen.

You can test drive it for $1 and at the same time, get their members-only newsletter. Have a look at it here.

How To Make Voice Mail Sell For You

2005-05-25T07:02:00.000Z

With most people having voice mail systems installed at their desks, there's a chance that when you try to get through to a prospect, you'll get through to an answering machine instead. Here's how to turn this sales curse into a sales blessing.

Judging by the messages that most sales people leave on my voice mail system, it's clear that many sales people regard this as a 'dead call'. All they do is leave their name and number, and expect me to call them.. without there being any incentive for me to do so.

What a missed chance! Here's a chance for you to get over a clear, concise sales message, without being interrupted! Always have one ready scripted, so you're just waiting for that voice mail announcement. Here's a few hints for a script:

Make sure that it's got some clear benefits with which the prospect can identify.
Give the prospect some evidence of other people enjoying the benefits - if you can mention a well-known name as your customer, so much the better.
Make your message a little mysterious. Give enough information to want to call you - but not too much.
Give your telephone number clearly, at least twice in your message (no-one likes replaying voice mail).
Give them a date and time when "I'll be waiting for your call" Sound enthusiastic, without going over the top - and speak clearly at all time.
Don't forget to mention the prospect's name clearly, at least once.

So, get your script ready, and wait eagerly for that first voice mail response!

A New Angle On Blogging..

2005-05-24T13:58:00.000Z

"In the middle 1990’s everyone started talking about needing a website. Now, the new 'must have' is a web log or blog", says this week's guest writer, Kevin Eikenberry.

Yes, "blogs" - "weblogs" - are certainly fashionable (they're like an online diary, if you didn't know). But Kevin puts a new (to me) spin on the subject. What he homes in on (and it's almost a footnote to his article) is the networking power that blogs bring by the fact that other people can comment on your blog entries.

"By writing regularly", says Kevin "(my goal is 4 entries or “posts” per week), seldom does a week go by that I don’t add someone to my network or use what I am writing to make a new connection with an existing or potential Client."

Read the rest of his article here

Call Me Paranoid But..

2005-05-23T20:45:00.000Z

I've been a professional Webmaster for 10 years now. And you won't believe the mistakes that I've made in the past. I've been preyed upon by:

Spammers: I put numerous 'open' email addresses on my websites. And I've been spammed to hell since then. Just 10 of these email addresses have had 250,000 sp.am emails in the past 12 months.
Affiliate Commission Thieves: I've been promoting other people's products as an affiliate for many years. And my commission levels were so low that I thought I'd been poor in my prom.otion. Wrong! 'Commission Hijack Thieves' had been stripping out my affiliate links and substituting their own.
Website Content Thieves: I've been very fre.e and open putting articles and advice on my Marketing Magic website, and some villains have been 'framing' my pages and making it look as though my content was their content. And there's been even worse content theft.
Product Download Thieves: I've been making some very good value sales offers, only to find that thieves have been by-passing my payment system and stealing the products that I've been selling.

Hey, don't get me wrong.. I'm not accusing you of any of these crimes! I'm just having a general moan about these rogues.

But I've done more than just moan. As H.G.Wells (or was it Richard Burton?) said in "War Of The Worlds":

Slowly, surely, I've drawn my plans against them

I've fought back. And I'm winning. I'm using a range of tools which enable me to take control of my online security. Now I have:

Put a contact email address on any web page, without it ever being harvested by the spam bots.
Set up special affiliate links to any of my affiliate programs - in seconds - which prevent affiliate hijack thieves from stealing the commission which is rightfully mine.
Implemented various devices which reduce (note: just reduce, not eliminate) content thieves stealing text and images from my many websites. You can never prevent content theft 100%, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Stopped the download thieves dead in their tracks. No longer can villains get their hands on my products without paying for them.

Yes, full-strength paranoia! But do you blame me? Now you can share my paranoia! Introducing..

Web Protect Pro
I've now developed tools to enable any webmaster (or webmistress) to get the same level of online security that I enjoy. They're being sold as a package: "Web Protect Pro", and I've tried to keep the package at an affordable level.

It's likely that I will be adding to this package over the coming months, and existing customers will get free upgrades.

You can view all the details of Web Protect Pro here

My usual satisfaction guarantee of course applies!

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles...

2005-05-23T12:41:00.000Z

"A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Starts With The First Step" - ancient Chinese wisdom!

Thus starts the first posting to the new Marketing Sparks blog. I've been half-heartedy running a blog for a couple of years now, hosting it on one of my own servers, using "Grey Matter" as the blog engine.

But I never really had the enthusiasm to post frequently. Maybe with its new host at Blogger.com I'll be a little more diligent.

So, what's Marketing Sparks going to contain? Quite a variety of marketing and sales support material, I hope. There's going to be the latest editions of my "Marketing Update" newsletter, some product recommendations, maybe, and certainly some marketing tips and tricks.

Most importantly, it's going to be spontaneous!

To receive the Marketing Update newsletter by email, just visit any page on my Marketing Magic site