The following is no more than a rough draft for something bigger later, but I want to share it with BHW as a way of saying thank you for making my journey shorter. Sorry about the length, but you should see what I filtered through. I hope it helps other newbies get a handle on the information glut and cut through the hype.
Enjoy.
BS Your Way to Internet Riches
Contents
Introduction
Whit Hat, Gray Hat and Black Hat
Market and Product
Psychological triggers
Technical information
The BS Riches Tributary
Introduction
I admit I am a newbie at Internet marketing. The first task I set for myself was to understand what the hell all the hawking was about, so I undertook some education. I have since consumed Internet marketing books, ebooks, audios and videos until they came out my ears, including crap on MLM, hypnosis, horse racing and God knows what all else. From the hype alone, I should know enough secrets to put the CIA to shame.
I don’t have many secrets, though. All I have are some thoughts, overviews and technical information. I am putting some of it down in an organized fashion, in a kind of blueprint form. This is more for me because I want to eventually make money from it. Use it if you think it’s worth something. I don’t mind sharing. The customer base is huge and growing. Just don’t spam it.
I wish I could take credit for some of this stuff, but it came from many sources. Those of you who are old-timers will know where a lot of things came from. Later, when this study comes to a money something, I will throw in the sources, elaborate a 200 page ebook, a 600 page loose-leaf binder course, 12 CD’s, a DVD six-pack, and membership site with guest guru participation and lots of freebies. Oh yeah, I forgot. It will only be $1,995, down from $3,995 for a limited time only because I think you are extra special.
I care.
Whit Hat, Gray Hat and Black Hat
The whole purpose of Internet marketing is to sell people stuff or get them to do stuff that pays you.
That’s it.
There are three basic approaches. If this bothers anyone, I don’t mean to be offensive. I am simply stating categories as I see them. I will be using them as I go along.
White Hat: Sell the best stuff you know, believe in it, and follow the rules.
Gray Hat: Do White Hat stuff, but throw in some bullshit and if, perchance, you sell some crap, take the money and run.
Black Hat: Get as much money for as little as you can. Favor quantity crap over quality value.
We can go outside this scheme altogether and sell freelancing services, but that’s employee mentality. My focus here is on entrepreneurship and getting rich. If you get real broke, sell some writing or coding or flip some hamburgers to get by until you make it. I didn’t bother studying techniques for any of that.
Another division of online promotion is useful:
Spam: There are many names for this, shotgun approach, throw a lot of mud on the wall and see what sticks, etc. The crux of this approach is to automate quantity and not care so much about profiling.
Targeting: There are colorful labels for this, too: laser targeting, finding schools of hungry fish, niche marketing, etc. The most important aspect of this approach is profiling a customer base through different kinds of studies.
White Hatters target. Black Hatters spam. Gray Hatters do both.
Market and Product
There aren’t too many aspects to worry about here:
1. Find a lucrative market and product,
2. Make a place to sell it and advertise, and
3. Sell it and get paid.
To identify a lucrative market, you have to see what folks want to buy, find something similar and offer it to them. Or you can be a stubborn fool and try to get them to buy some crap they don’t want. Stay broke, I don’t care. This is one of the most important decisions of the process and you should make it consciously, even if you think you don’t need to.
If you can be passionate about your market and product, all the better. But Don’t-Give-A-Crap marketing (when disciplined) will always outsell Fool-In-Love-With-His-Dream marketing. No exceptions. If you can’t have both, take the first. Make some money. Then you can at least become a sucker and pay for it.
People pay the most when you solve a problem. So search for phrases on Google like “no solution” and “need help” and so forth. Forums are good, so add the word “forum.” See what comes up. Find the ones that come up most often. Do some reading. Then see if you can find or make a product that solves their problem. This will define your niche and product at the same time. (Niche means small specialized market.)
Also, you could look into desperate people (people with eminent money disasters, especially home foreclosures, spouses with fear of being cheated on, insecure people who cannot get dates, those with severe diseases, fat people, etc.). This is really predatory if you do not provide value, but if you do and you over-deliver, you will make good money and provide them a service they sorely want and need. Not everyone is suited to this category, though, and you could end up a nervous wreck who is unable to sleep at nights from guilt and empathy. Check whether you have more of an inner moral compass or a callous where that should be.
The best stuff is digital because there’s no overhead, but you know what you know. So if your product is physical and there is shipping, deal with it.
Then look on Amazon, eBay and other places that provide product sales statistics. See how the products sell for this problem and niche. There are all kinds of techniques for checking this, so look for them in the literature. The only important part is to be sure you are looking at
closed sales statistics and not simply product searches or offers.
On keywords, you’ve got to do the donkeywork. Keep in mind that when a person types in a keyword on Google or a search engine, he is looking for something. You need to get him to look at your stuff and not someone else’s stuff. Do what it takes. It’s easy to lose sight of this when you start studying it because of all the math. There are a gazillion books on keyword strategies, but you can actually get the basics for free by searching Google.
Product names make the best keywords. Next come 3-5 word phrases called long-tailed phrases. The worst keywords are general terms like “make money” and the worst of the worst are ones nobody is looking for. You type them in and nothing comes up except
“sorry.”
Once again, make sure people who search for your keywords are people who buy stuff (do Amazon, eBay, etc., again if you need to). “Freeware,” for instance, is a terrible keyword. So are “cheapskate” and “free ebooks.”
The highest-selling niche markets are those whose keywords have:
1. A lot of search requests (over 200 a month on the free Wordtracker keyword tool), and
2. A low number of pages to search (under 300,000 or so on a Google search).
This is just a rule of thumb, though. If everybody is selling Wii’s and making money, then sell Wii’s, too. When everybody’s doing it, unless you want to specialize, don’t compete. Copy. Copy everything you can from top sellers and expose yourself as much as you can to their traffic. Expect modest earnings, not a fortune from this.
You can sell all kinds of stuff, both niche and popular. If you sell enough modest stuff, you make a fortune.
Next you need a site to sell the stuff on. Learn HTML sites, do Wordpress, or set up a free site like a hosted blog, Squidoo or a Web 2.0 site. Learn the options. There’s tons of assorted crap out there to teach you. For a small niche site, you need about 5-10 pages of quality content and your offer, which will send the reader to a sales page. Make it pretty to look at and that’s about it. You can pepper it with Adsense if sales are down.
Don’t be fooled by a lot of blah blah blah about blogging. Treat blogs as niche presales sites or backlink pages. End of blogging course.
You can make Adsense sites with blog farms, etc., but products give you more money per sale. Learn to sell products. Then learn to make Adsense sites. That’s the best sequence in my opinion unless you’re a real geek or math freak.
If you can learn the shit-through-the-snake sales page techniques, all the better. (This means your reader starts at the top, goes through a long scroll until he hits bottom and comes out by clicking to the order page.) Lots of hype, testimonials, fake high prices that you discount, fake reviews, freebies, big ugly “Buy Now” buttons all over, and other techniques. There’s oodles of stuff on this. They are usually called landing pages or sales pages. They are crap but they work. That’s why people use them.
If you have trouble learning the techniques, find a good sales page that impresses you and copy the damn thing. Then replace the dude’s stuff with your info. Sales pages don’t get any search engine attention, so you can copy up a storm.
IMPORTANT. Make sure you can get paid and accept credit card payments. Set up accounts with Paypal, Clickbank, some other places (look for them). Get a merchant account (the best option, but do the others as well).
Make sure you deliver promptly. For digital products, make sure there is a way to download it. Those who sell other people’s stuff online don’t have that problem, but they need to learn how to cloak their commission link (usually called a hoplink). It’s pretty technical but doable. Even if you don’t do it, you still make money. You are just ripped off sometimes.
If you are starting out with your own digital product, protect the download page, but not too rigorously. It’s good for Black Hatters and other clever fellows and gals to grab it for free and comment about it. Your name grows as it spreads. They’re going to steal it anyway, so don’t even worry about it. Just make it a little challenging to keep the newbies out. Of course, it’s better to get paid, but remember that if you completely isolate yourself and you are a nobody, you will get 100% of nothing.
As to physical products, like I said, there’s shipping and you have to deal with it. This isn’t rocket science, though and the literature is easy to find. Look for “drop shipping” and you will get all kinds of places to sell goods and let others worry about shipping.
I didn’t say too much about one aspect of your product:
what you sell. You can sell other people’s stuff, your own stuff or try to get them to do stuff like click on an ad, fill out forms or install programs on their computers. I didn’t say much on purpose. There are gazillions of ideas, techniques and so-called secrets out there. Find what tickles your fancy, find the instructions for getting it or making it on a Google search and simply do that.
But none of this is nearly as important as making sure your product or information solves the problem of
people who buy stuff. Or it tickles their dream or they think it’s cool. If you get to them and offer them they want, you sell. That’s the only real secret and any kindergarten kid can tell you that.
Make sure you choose decent profits, too. At least $15-20 a sale. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.
On advertising, I will deal with this below.
White Hatters fall in love with their product and market regardless of sales. Gray Hatters do the market research donkeywork and sell what people want. Black Hatters sell home loans and penis enlargers and so forth by spam with no research, or try to get people to do stuff often by tricking them.
As regards customer profile, remember that it is easier to sell one person out of 2,000 an item (and a dream) for $2,000 than it is to get 2,000 people to buy something for a dollar. You only need to lay down some bullshit to get the first, but you need a whole lot of bullshit to get the second and the money is the same. There is a lot of literature on this so make sure you become familiar with it. I will go into it a bit below on BS Riches Tributary.
Psychological triggers
I love the concept of psychological triggers. There is a lot of stuff written about them, but I have yet to read Internet marketing literature about the dark side. The positive triggers don’t work without it. First let’s look at the light side.
There are six standard psychological triggers that are constantly discussed:
1. Reciprocation: If you give someone something for free, he feels the need to give you something back. That’s why you give out freebies. That’s also why you are constantly told to over-deliver in the Internet marketing literature.
2. Consistency and commitment: If someone does something once, he is more likely to do it again under the same circumstances than he is to do something different. That’s why you try to get him to make that first click or accept that first email, etc. This is sometimes called baby-steps.
3. Social proof: If a lot of people say something is good or bad, the person hearing it or viewing it will be induced to go along. The whole reason for testimonials is right here. Crowd psychology is based on social proof triggers.
4. Liking: A person is more prone to grant someone he likes the benefit of the doubt than someone he doesn’t like. That’s why you try to be human, show your weaknesses with charming humility, talk about your problems and dreams, etc. Once he likes you, he will actually read your sales copy.
5. Authority: Another word for this is credibility. If a person thinks you are an expert, he will often take your word over another person’s without checking it. If you have trouble being truthful, which is the best way to obtain long-term credibility, bullshit people often about what an expert you are. Many will believe you sight unseen.
6. Scarcity: Our customer likes to have something others can’t have. This makes him feel special. Countdowns and “Only 23 left” kinds of messages yank this trigger.
There are many studies on this and sales techniques developed from them. There are people who provide even more triggers. But the 6 above are the main ones used most of the time in the Internet marketing material I have seen.
Now for the dark side. The ugly fact is that it is hard to get these triggers to work without lying or misleading people. You must omit at best. If this bothers you, just be yourself and forget about using them. The White Hatters will not like the following comment, but if you play it straight all of the time, you might be seen as one hell of a nice guy, but you will not sell jack.
Now here’s the really dark side. There are some other triggers that nobody talks about except for cult fighters. I will give 6 for the sake of symmetry, but there are more.
1. Vanity: If a person thinks he is more important than other people for superficial reasons, he will do many stupid things. Flattery works. Pile it on in sales copy. And present your call to action right after. You will often get it.
2. Laziness: People in general like to automate stuff so they don’t have to think. They are lazy. They prefer to push a button and feel like they are masters of the universe than study and get it right. All you have to do is tell them they will learn a secret or simple-to-learn technique nobody knows, that they will only have to do it once, then repeat it without thinking to get a desired result like a profit, and they will pay good money for that secret. Use the phrase “rinse and repeat” often when yanking this trigger.
3. Inner Thief: Almost anybody will steal on the Internet if he thinks he can get away with it and nobody will find out. Anybody. So promise him that if he buys your stuff, you will teach him how to steal other stuff on the sly and nobody will be the wiser. Use pretty words and euphemisms like “secret weapon” and “special technique” and “loophole” and “hedge” and “sidestep” so forth. Don’t say steal. This way he can lie to himself and pretend he is not stealing.
4. Tribe Member: The most common way this trigger is yanked is by an “us against them” approach. Establish this easily by saying “Other gurus teach blah blah blah to the majority of people, but this is a lie!” You make your potential customer feel he is part of a special minority that is striking a blow against an enemy for truth, and, as an “unsought” result, he will get filthy stinking rich by being so virtuous. You also reinforce this by putting together some easy-to-learn insider jargon for common concepts and using these words and phrases frequently in your presentation—always with a subtle superior smirk (vary this with nodding your head knowingly). Also, once you establish group contact with your customer, and yourself as the cool expert wealth guru, single him out for special praise in front of the group. This blends the tribal feelings with vanity. Then he will dig deep in his pockets and fork it over whenever you need him to.
5. Guilt: If your customer is lazy, it is easy to get him on guilt. He knows deep down that he doesn’t know jack, so remind him once in a while about it. Right after he feels comfortable that he is an insider and doesn’t need to think to get rich anymore, he only needs to push some damn button or other, remind him that the stupid fools “out there” always try to get off the easy way and not do the work that needs to be done. That’s why they stay poor. Thunder a little here. This will make him feel guilty and in a panic. Then offer him another “secret” that will show him the light and another button to push for only $XXXX.
6. Greed: This is my favorite. Tell a person he is not to be greedy, but must seek inner balance. Then say because he is very special and enlightened, you will teach him how to make millions. Hit him with visualization. Make him think the millions are arriving tomorrow or the next day. Show him pictures of money and beaches and fancy cars and mansions, telling him that this is his just for the asking. Spend some time showing bank statements. (If you don’t have them, use a graphics program and make them.) Get him really worked up and salivating, then hit him with your product. Once he bites and forks it over, if he complains that his riches didn’t come, then up the ante. Tell him to forget about that old stuff. There is even more coming with this new secret (make up something, whatever, at the time). The customer will fall for it again and again because the larger amounts cater to his greed. This isn’t the only form of using this trigger, but it is widely in use like that.
If you want to learn more about this, study cults and cult fighters. There is a lot of free information on the Internet, so all you have to do is Google it. Cult leaders are masters of using the dark psychological triggers.
I don’t see White Hatters using psychological triggers too much, except for some lightweight stuff taught by standard gurus. They might think this kind of manipulation is dishonest. Gray Hatters will be more ruthless and I see them as the largest group of users. Ironically, I don’t see Black Hatters using them too much, except for special projects and spam texts. Then I see them going forth without mercy.
The real danger is that the line between using psychological triggers and becoming a con artist is pretty thin. A person needs to be emotionally balanced and highly disciplined to use them well without becoming a total scumbag. The best way to avoid this is to always provide value on your end.
Technical information
If you want to work at Internet marketing, you have to bite the bullet about learning technical skills. There are many, too. Fortunately, there is a lot of automated stuff out there that can be used to make money while you are learning the other stuff.
One of the most important technical skills you need all the way from the beginner level, one I have never seen discussed, is fabricating and operating aliases. You need to learn to make up people and act as if you are them. The only person who does not need to do this is one who strives to become an authority and only work within that field. If you want to sell a large quantity of stuff, though, and you are not Wall Mart, you will need to use other names so you don’t blow your authority work. It would never do for an expert in diets and weight loss to sell candy.
I will not go into many specific details, but keep to broad outlines as I have done up to now.
If you have difficulty with imagination, there is a small resource called Fake Name Generator (look it up). It will give you name, address, phone number, credit card number, etc., all fake but in the correct format. (Obviously the credit card doesn’t work.) That’s a start. Get a real phone number for free online from K7 if you feel you need it (look it up). Otherwise, get a Google account (or similar), an email account, and whatnot. Then start signing up for a My Space account and other Web 2.0 sites. The more stuff you get, the more credible your new alias becomes.
You should also keep some kind of records, maybe a spreadsheet folder for each alias. Otherwise, keeping track will be hard after he/she grows up and you have other aliases taking off.
I do not suggest taking this concept so far as to procure a real SSN for your alias or things like that. You do not need the authorities after you. All you want to do is make money and provide value in return, not break any laws by falsifying government documents.
But playing around with this, for example, getting your photo from public domain photo banks, making an avatar, etc., can be a hoot. A money advantage that’s a hoot is using your community of aliases to plug each other’s products and start drawing attention to the products. This sales force can get hilarious.
Now for your other skills. Here is what you should learn at least in rudimentary terms. I suggest learning something superficial about these topics (outline or overview kind of stuff) before going into more depth. This is not all-inclusive, but it will be a good foundation.
Beginner
How to register for email account, use a browser and all elementary things like that.
Money accounts (Paypal and Clickbank to start with)
Affiliate accounts
Free site accounts: Google, Blogger, Squidoo, Weebly, etc.
Free Web 2.0 accounts: My Space, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.
Craigslist and other classifieds
Yahoo! Answers and similar
Forum marketing
Basic Niche site and review site concepts
Keyword research
Basic HTML (formatting text and href with anchor texts)
Backlink strategies
Basic Web graphics
Adsense
Adwords and PPC
Article writing and submitting
Sales copywriting
Press release marketing
Making PDF files
Pinging
RSS
Intermediate
More HTML
FTP and CPanel
Scripts
Link Cloaking
Wordpress, both as blog and niche site, including plugins
Web site creation (and site creation program)
Sales site creation, including squeeze page and popups, popunders, etc.
Autoresponders, list building, opt-in forms, follow-up messages and broadcasts
SEO in general
Sitemaps
Audio (and Audacity, including Podcasting concepts)
Video (screencasting, recording, editing, codecs and uploading)
Developing digital products
Site nets and interlinking strategies
More Web 2.0
eBay
Advanced
Blog and site farms
Proxies and IP filtering
Mass posting and link programs
Content scraping and manipulation programs
Advanced HTML, PHP, Perl, etc.
Other Black Hat Techniques
At this point, the person will have a really good idea of what more he needs, what he does well and what he does poorly. The good thing about the Internet is that it is growing so fast that no one needs to learn it all. You can specialize in, say, Squidoo or Wordpress as your main marketing platform, use no audio or video or Black Hat techniques, and still make a bundle on White Hat stuff alone.
Internet marketing is hard to get right, even if you want to bullshit your way to the top. You need hard work any way you look at it, so don’t bullshit yourself. Bullshit others if you want to bullshit. You can choose what you want to do, but you are going to have to learn skills to be able to perform. No exceptions.
Writing
I have read so much crap about writing that I need to say a few words. Most of what I have read is not worth the paper it is written on, but I have come across some good stuff and I have a few thoughts.
About 90% of Internet marketing is about writing, even spam. It is unrealistic to say you don’t want to learn writing, but want to make money off the Internet. That’s like saying you want to go swimming but you can’t stand water. If you loathe writing and refuse to learn it, do something else. All you are going to do is waste your time looking for money on the Internet.
The most important part about writing is to understand why you are doing it.
Spammed backlink. This is the simplest form of commercial writing in existence. Write the link and nothing else. Move on. If you need a comment, say something noncommittal like “Great job!” “Nice forum!” etc., and put the link in. Obviously, the more relevant the comment, the less likely it will be to go the way of all spam.
One-page content blogs or Web 2.0 pages for backlinks to a niche minisite. Use an anchor text with keyword in your link and write something relevant to that keyword and your site. That way the search engines will not penalize it like they do with spam. Rework an article from the minisite and you are done.
Article for article directory. These articles are used for content on sites, blogs, ezines, etc., by people who can’t or won’t write what they need. The article includes an author’s box that needs to be published with the article as the price the user pays for using it. The author’s box includes a link to a site you own, preferably a money-site.
The whole purpose of writing an article for directories is to get the reader to keep moving down the page on into the author’s box and click on the link. There is a very good formula I came across for this.
All articles are niche articles by definition. The most important overall point is to give the reader enough information about his interest to keep him reading, but not enough to satisfy him (or bore him).
You can use this system for reworking scraped content, but I will give the system as if the article were being written from scratch.
Before research: Make a list of 3 keywords or keyword phrases you want to use throughout the article.
Research: Use one of the keywords on a Google search and open several sites from the first page. (Or use scraped content, PLR, etc.) Read them quickly, partially or superficially to get a general idea of a point. Write that point down. Get one point for your article from each source and make a list of 3-5 points. Do not copy the other content, but keep the page open for checking facts while you are writing the article.
Title, aim for:
1. Curiosity (“secret,” “hidden,” etc.),
2. Shock value,
3. Benefit (“how to,” “discover,” “7 Ways” etc.) or
4. Ask a question.
Any one of these is good. You don’t need to use more than one. Include your main keyword.
Paragraphs: In the outline below, each number should be one or two sentences, three maximum.
First paragraph:
1. General idea of the subject.
2. List an abbreviated form of your points.
3. Statement of article’s purpose (“explore,” “compare,” “discuss,” etc.)
Point paragraphs (3 to 5):
1. Give point (in different words).
2. Two or three informative sentences about that point.
3. Conclusion and transition to next point. Note: in the last paragraph, mention that the points are over.
Last paragraph:
1. General statement about what was presented.
2. Sum up the points covered (abbreviated), but mention some things you didn’t cover. Focus on things the reader really wants to know.
3. Sum up article based on the purpose given in the first paragraph.
Author’s box:
1. Give something, but minimum information on author. The less the better. This bores folks. Picture is OK.
2. Use anchor texts in links to your site or sites.
3. Give an idea of what to expect on your site or sites.
4. Give a good reason (benefits) for going to your site. Hint that the missing info in the article is there. Say you have ironclad systems or secret solutions and other bullshit (but have something like that up when they get there). Offer freebies.
Notice how this drives the reader down the page in a logical manner and pushes him to click on the link.
The article should be about 500-1000 words. If you do shorter, the reader feels cheated or the information was too superficial for him to click on your link, and if you do longer, he might put the article down before getting to your link. Make your keyword density about 3%.
Review article. This more or less follows the principles given for directory marketing articles, but there are some differences. There are three kinds of reviews and all of them aim at getting the reader to click on a link to the sales page of a product. Always use anchor text in links. Period. No exceptions. A banner or two on the side of the review is OK (or above or below it). A picture of the product is good to include in the reveiew.
Review articles are used more on review minisites than anywhere else. These minisites are actually niche presales sites in drag. If you do present a review as a guest on someone else’s blog or publication, link to your niche presales site and not directly to the sales letter for fewer headaches with site/publication owners.
1. Normal review. Give product and some basic specs. Mention problems it solves. Bullshit some personal story (or stories) about how you or someone you knew had a problem, the more personal the better, and the product helped solve it or made the person rich or whatever. Give a minor issue or two that the product doesn’t solve so you sound objective. Hint that there are other great benefits (minor ones) you have heard about but still need to look into. Then strongly endorse the product as a problem solver. Click here. You are done.
2. Comparative review. This is actually 3 or more reviews of similar products with some kind of rating system. Do no more than five products at a time. Use the normal review system, but elaborate more on the product you want to sell. Make sure second place is really close and there is at least one with a rather poor rating in third or fourth or fifth place.
3. Scam review. Two of the most searched-for words on search engines are “review” and “scam,” so use this traffic. (Bonus is also high up.) Sound like a hard-hitting journalist at the start. You want the bloody facts and nothing more. You’re nobody’s fool. Say you heard a lot of gossip about the product being a scam and you are going to get to the bottom of it. Then really bullshit a personal story about you or someone you know using the theme of “I was lost but now I’m found.” Life was hell before the product. Someone mentioned it to help you. You were suspicious as all get-out. You tried the product with misgiving. Voila. Problem solved. Life ain’t all roses now, but you are no longer a sufferer and you’ll be damned if you’ll ever talk bad about that product again. Yada yada yada… click here…
Normal content articles and books. Go to school to learn how to do this or use other people’s stuff. Blog posts and forum posts for content are about the same. You do this stuff because you love it, not to sell stuff. So this is outside of my discussion.
Style.
1. Use a conversational tone for Internet marketing. If a reader needs to look up a word, he ain’t buying and he can’t read fast.
2. Talk the talk of your audience. If the demographics of your market profiles young girls, don’t talk macho. If it is religious folks, don’t talk jive. You get the idea.
3. If you get stuck, ask a question and answer it. (“Why do you want to do that? Well…”)
4. Spin a “most people” bullshit story. (“Most people say this…” or “Most gurus say that…” followed by “But the truth is…”) There is no way on earth you could know what most people say, but it makes for great bullshit. Since you are giving The Hidden Truth, you are the Hero of the Day and the reader is pleased to know you.
5. Get other style stuff from the literature or on Google searches. There’s a ton of it out there.
White Hatters will learn this stuff down cold. Gray Hatters will do it, but will often use pre-prepared content and content re-writing programs to help. Black Hatters will use scraped content and content re-writing programs almost exclusively. But even they can use these techniques to improve their content while checking for gibberish.
The BS Riches Tributary
BS Riches Tributary? How’s that for a phrase? I’m getting my jargon together already.
The idea is that you start with a trickle and it grows and grows as it moves along until it is a raging river gushing out into the ocean. I’m talking about money, of course, and about one person’s pocket flowing into yours.
I am going to discuss this in terms of Internet marketing and your own product, but it can be applied to any niche with reasonable traffic and sales.
Remember that it is easier to get one person in 2,000 to fork over two grand than it is for the 2,000 people to plunk down a buck each.
If most people see you are hyping bullshit, don’t worry. (But you can hype quality value, too. Both quality stuff and bullshit sell. Just remember not to bullshit yourself.) The bullshit spotters would never get snared into your BS Riches Tributary, anyway, so don’t worry about them.
You first got to get people to listen to you. Try “permission marketing.” This means that you give them free stuff and they give you permission to send them your spiel. This is the concept behind opt-in forms and autoresponder marketing.
But you can hook them on sales pages and niche presales minisites, too. It doesn’t matter where. The more hooks you put out, the merrier. The important thing is to get them to bite and buy that first whomp-ti-do ebook or software.
I need to open parentheses here. How do you get someone to buy something like that and accept you as an expert if you never sold anything before and don’t have jack?
Easy.
Don’t mention you name at first in the bright lights. Focus on the system. When you talk about yourself (or “others” talk about you), say you have been in reclusion for 5 years or more, during which time you have been working on and perfecting this top-secret system. Only now have you felt it could be unleashed on the public. Say you tried it out first and made a fortune with it, so now you want to spread the good times around and share it with others. Talk about the virtue of giving something back for your blessings. Make up stuff, texts, photos, videos, etc., about how much money you have and show it off.
Start putting your aliases to work. Make them do it in any manner you want (endorsement, pure sales page, reviews, “is it a scam?” etc.), but the final message has to be, “Oh Wow! This is IT!” Mix it up and have a ball. Other people will start jumping on the band-wagon after a while.
Once you start making some money, get in touch with another guru (or more than one) and offer him a cut or outright money for plugging it to his customers and plugging it in general. His name will bring others and the whole shebang is on its way in the BS Riches Tributary.
The present average price for an ebook is around $47 and that’s pretty good. If you go much cheaper, you lose image and market focus. A dude who forks over 47 smackeroonies for a piece of crap like a PDF ebook that he has to print out when he can go down to the bookstore and buy a new attractive bound book for 25 bucks is probably willing to dig deep for other crap that makes him look like an insider.
Also, you might want to increase the perceived value of your product by saying the real price is $97, but for a limited time, yada yada yada…
Once your fish bites the bait and hook, you start reeling him in. This will be far less than 1% of all people who look at your stuff, but this small group is where your BS Riches lies. Sell your customer the dream. Sell him the sizzle. Tell him he is going to get rich beyond decency and belong to the world’s elite of insiders. Sell him on His Special Fine Destiny.
Don’t think he’s a total fool, though. He might be committed because of the 47 smackeroonies, but he wants to be told he did a good job and he wants some insider info.
So pepper the ebook (or software manual) with phrases like “Congratulations!” “You did it!” “Get ready for a wealth make-over!” “This will blow your mind!” and so on. Be generous. After all, the dude paid for this. Make him think he already has money in the bank.
Show him your rich-dude stuff as proof (young pretty women, fancy cars, yacht, mansion, etc.) If you are starting out and don’t have jack, make this stuff up. There are photos all over the Internet and if you can’t copy-paste, hang it up. What the hell are you reading this for?
Tell him to change his mindset, to start thinking about how he wants to spend his new riches and pay off all his debts. Give him a generous dishing of bullshit mental images about his wife smiling, friends laughing, “debt-free” signs, telling his boss off, cars, houses, jewelry, hundred dollar bills floating around, the works. Hit him hard, but don’t go overboard. Even a duped fool has a bullshit meter and you never want that to go into the red zone.
Now you have to provide some value. Mostly tell him how to sell some stuff and how drive traffic to the sales points. You might want to tell him how to make some stuff to sell or how to get some stuff from other people. There are tons and tons of “secrets” out there, so use your imagination. If you get really stuck, focus on a small item, like an Adwords title for instance. Crib from the literature, but use your own words. Write 7 pages on how to do the title, whether to use a call to action or a question mark or any other bullshit you can think of. Use some big words if you know of any for statistics, but keep the insider jargon flowing in abundance.
There is another angle. A person who is reading a PDF file that he paid $47 bucks for is
paying attention. You have a captive audience, so make a sales pitch. Tell him that he can raise his earnings “up a notch,” or “take it to the next level” or some other bullshit phrase that sounds good. Then offer him some other stuff. Make sure your pitch about his imaginary wealth takes it to the next level, too, so he thinks he is going to get even richer than before.
I read in one place that this should observe the proportion of 20% information value, 40% selling the dream and 40% sales pitch for new stuff. That doesn’t sound right from the stuff I have seen, but the categories are correct. To make an off-the-cuff estimation, I have seen it more like 50% information value, 30% selling the dream and 20% sales pitch for new stuff or something along those lines. This should be tested and varied according to results.
The next step (the new stuff you stick him with) is to get him signed up into a membership site where he can download videos, mp3’s, transcripts and other people’s leftover stuff for free. Charge a sign-up fee of $100-200 and a monthly fee of $20-40.
Once inside, he can also buy a special DVD course for $497 or so. Or he can get the entire multimedia home-study course (including a 600 page loose-leaf binder text) for $1,997.
Change these prices if they don’t work or if you think you can get more.
Give your disciple (he is now a disciple) more secrets and start peppering in Black Hat info. But keep the jargon and the bullshit flowing. Remember, this is a tributary and you are now in the river part. So flood the bullshit. He is now an insider and he needs to be treated as such.
Then shoot for the moon: a few one-on-one coaching sessions with membership to a special insider’s club with group coaching and workshops. Make sure your insider’s club can be accessed from inside the first membership site with aggressive “Members Only” type gateways. Here you can get $20,000 or so a pop.
What about traffic for all this crap?
Well, there’s the normal stuff you teach (
SEO, backlinks, PPC, etc.), but there’s a whole lot more.
Make an aggressive affiliate recruiting campaign. Like I mentioned above, put your aliases to work as your first affiliates. Make them sound like they are selling the hell out of your product. Make it easy for new affiliates to sign on. Offer free training and teach new affiliates how to spam the living daylights out of the Internet, sites, blogs, forums, audio, video, the works. But always say on your own sales material that you are “100% against spam and unconditionally condemn the practice.”
Give the new affiliates pre-written texts so all they do is say good things about you all over the place. Give them banners and sales buttons and templates. Cloak their hoplinks for them. Offer them a 75% commission. Keep your aliases pumping right along beside them and if an affiliate starts selling well, copy all his sales stuff for one of your aliases and do the same.
You will meet many people along the way and other bullshit artists. Use them for ideas. It shouldn’t be hard to come up with an unending list of new products and campaigns. Before too long, you will have a name as an Internet guru, you will be invited as speaker to prestigious seminars and conventions, you will be a world-class authority and your trip on the BS Riches Tributary will have reached the ocean.
By this time, it doesn’t matter whether you are White Hat, Gray Hat or Black Hat. You are king.
THE END
BS Your Way to Internet Riches
:-)
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