John Reese has released the first free video for the launch of Traffic Secrets 2.0. I just finished watching it and it’s good stuff, all content and presented in a very cool style.

You can check it out for yourself here -

John is a guy who has a huge reputation in the Internet marketing industry, most notably for his Traffic Secrets 1.0 launch from several years ago that grossed a million dollars in one day. That event kick started the mainstream adoption of the product launch style of marketing that is still in use today.

You may also remember John from BlogRush, which for many people turned out disappointing in terms of delivering traffic, although I still have it on my blog because I like to use it as a tool to find similar blogs to my own.

The video John just published is the first in a lead-in series of videos for the release of the updated, Traffic Secrets 2.0 course. The world of traffic generation has changed a lot since John taught people in his first course, so I am quite interested to see what he has for us in the 2.0 version of his training.

To be honest, besides knowing John from his reputation I don’t actually have anything concrete I can talk about regarding his work. I know he makes a ton of money in other niches outside of the make money online education market and I remember a long time ago linking to one of his videos about using AdSense, where he showed some incredible numbers.

This really is my first opportunity to taste his training, and so far I’m impressed.

Learn by Observation

You have to watch John’s first video just to see how a content-focused presentation can be used to both educate and stimulate an action at the same time.

John is known as a ground breaking marketer, in the sense that he raises the bar through innovation. I think the videos he is doing now are definitely good - perhaps not quite ground breaking but definitely raising the standards for how to market effectively with video, like StomperNet have done with their recent launches.

For this reason alone, as an Internet marketer, you have to go and watch John’s traffic secrets 2.0 video purely for the lesson in marketing it presents.

What About The Content? Will It Deliver Traffic?

The video itself presents 10 traffic tips that should definitely stimulate ideas in your head. You don’t get the whole kitchen sink of how to do it, but you get the idea, which is valuable as a starting point.

John takes us through each tip and explains the concept of Results Detection, a sort of way to do online meta-research to find where the traffic and the money is.

The variety of traffic sources presented is certainly diverse, and I think most people who watch this video will not be able to say they currently use every technique John talks about - I certainly do not.

Included as possible research targets for traffic are sites like eBay, Technorati, Digg, PRWeb, Commission Junction and Compete.com. Now you might know these as good sites, but do you use them currently as a way to find where the traffic is? Probably not quite in the same way as John does.

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction, you should go check it for yourself, it’s free, and if you like what you see, follow John’s prompt at the end of the video and opt-in for a second video where John talks about how to “own the web”. I’m watching the second video now myself.

Here’s where to get started -

www.trafficsecrets.com/home

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Here’s the video footage taken from behind closed doors in the Skyloft at the MGM Grand in Vega, where Jeff Walker hosted the Product Launch Formula top partners networking event. Look for 30 second interviews with Brian Clark, Tom Beal and Michael Cheney, along with scenes from inside the Skyloft.

Back in February I received the fantastic news that I had just scrapped in as a top 25 affiliate for the release of Product Launch Formula (PLF) 2.0 by Jeff Walker (again, a really big thanks to everyone currently studying PLF who purchased through me and I hope you are enjoying the iRiver bonus I sent too!).

Jeff and his brother Jon decided to run a party/networking/mastermind event only for the top affiliates and this was the first time I qualified for such an invitation-only event. I was very excited at the prospect of meeting many of the guys I follow and look to as mentors in the Internet marketing world.

Prior to this event I had only been to one Internet marketing conference, Rich Schefren’s Strategic Profits seminar held February 2007 in Florida. There I met Rich and Mike Filsaime and many people like me, running Internet businesses. I had spoken to Jeff and Jon Walker on teleconference calls and through Skype, but this was my first face-to-face meeting.

Besides Rich, Mike, Jeff and John, I was excited to see that Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com would be coming too (the only other “pure” blogger) as well as Tom Ham, Tom Beal, Colette Marshall, Willie Crawford, Jeff Dedrick, Michael Cheney, John Carlton, Shawn Casey, Ray Edwards, Howie Schwartz and more experts from the Internet marketing world. My only disappointment was that Frank Kern was not making the trip down to Vegas as I’d really like to meet my fellow long haired Internet marketer.

The event started at 1pm and included an afternoon in a Skyloft, which is an uber-expensive ($1,000 a night) apartment style hotel room in the MGM Grand hotel on the Vegas Strip and concluded with dinner at Craftsteak, a fancy steak restaurant located inside the hotel.

I left my hotel room and went down to the VIP area where they have special private elevators to access the Skylofts and immediately bumped into Rich Schefren who was chatting to Colette Marshall, whom I had never met. Rich introduced me and we chatted briefly until Michael Cheney showed up. By then it was nearly 1pm so we headed upstairs to the Skyloft.

Jeff and Jon Walker greeted us at the door and gave us a tour around the Skyloft before we joined the main crowd that had already arrived. I started shaking hands with people I knew, some I didn’t know and some I didn’t realize I did know (don’t you hate it when someone’s Twitter profile photo doesn’t quite match their real life face - Hi Brian!).

Read the rest of this entry >>

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The day after I arrived in Vegas I got an email from Tim Kerber, the guy in charge of Membership Site Bootcamp, a training program for people who want to profit by creating their own online membership site.

Tim was super nice to me. He gave me his cell phone number via email and asked if I wanted to meet up early before the official mastermind the next day. I had plans to go see Cirque Du Soleil that night, so I had to give him a raincheck.

The next day, Tim was one of the first guys to come up and say hello at Jeff Walker’s mastermind meet-up and to be honest, besides knowing his name from the very successful Membership Site Bootcamp launch from 2007 (1.7 Million in sales), I didn’t know much about him.

It turns out Tim is a regular reader of my blog. I chatted with him for a good half hour at the networking event and I was impressed by how down to earth and friendly he is.

My Favorite Business Model - Membership Sites

It’s no secret that I have made a big chunk of my living from Blog Mastermind, my first membership site. I made over $100,000 from this one site in the past year alone.

The money is obviously great, but what I’m most happy about is how the steady income proves that my members receive so much value that they choose to stay a member of my program for the long term. This is very satisfying intrinsically, as well as financially.

Membership sites are a solid business model because you foster an ongoing relationship with your clients. The recursive income is obviously a motivation, but as anyone who runs a membership site understands, the money is a result of delivering ongoing value, it’s not a one-hit-wonder style product where you make your money and then walk away.

I’m not a fan of releasing one product after another, going from launch to launch. Creating and marketing products is a lot of work, so I prefer to have flagship products that you invest in over time and improve to the point that you have a superior position in your marketplace. If you focus your energy on just your membership site, it can become the basis for an entire six, or even seven figure business.

Membership Site Training From Tim Kerber

This week Membership Site Bootcamp reopens again for only the second time.

Tim’s currently in prelaunch mode for his flagship training program and as usual, that means there are free videos and other educational materials flying around the Internet marketing community. This is a great opportunity to grab some training on what is definitely the best online business model I know of so you can learn how to start your own membership site.

You can check out Tim’s latest video here -

Membership Site Bootcamp Video

This first video shows the outcome of some of Tim’s recent student’s successes launching membership sites.

Some of the numbers Tim shows from his previous students are impressive, but don’t let that daunt you. I aimed for 50 members when I first launched my site because I figured even 50 members times $50 a month is a great starting income of $2,500 a month. I ended up with 300 after the launch week, which obviously was a great result and fully convinced me of the viability of the membership site model.

Put it another way - if you can attract just one member a week, that’s 52 members a year and even with a 10% dropout rate, you are still making good money. Chances are your site will grow quicker, so you won’t stay at one new member a week for long.

If you have an idea for a course or a subscription service or any kind of membership site, it’s worth checking out what Tim is doing. Take a look at the free 8 minute long Membership Site Bootcamp video and if you like what you see, opt-in to grab the rest of the free videos.

www.membershipsitebootcamp.com

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I’ve put together a new video of the footage from around the Vegas strip. In this video I take you for a walk down the main casino and hotel strip, showing all kinds of crazy sites and sounds.

The strip is obviously a very commercial area, probably one of the most commercial places in the entire USA.

Spending time in Vegas is like entering a different world, with airplanes flying low to land in the airport which was in the backyard of my hotel the MGM Grand (almost!). The lights and sounds and visual stimulation makes the place feel very surreal, like you have entered into a movie that features an entirely new theme every 100 meters or so.

There a few interesting observations to make when it came to marketing techniques that I took away and can relate to you now. Obviously a place as commercial as this has to be able to market themselves. Here’s some thoughts -

1. Vegas offers comparatively cheap hotel rates. Even the most fancy hotels can be booked for under a $100 a night if you search the web and you can go much lower than that if you stay at the hotels just off the strip. These are some of the most impressive hotels in the world (the MGM Grand is the second largest hotel in the world) and if you don’t drink or gamble it’s quite possible to have a “cheap” holiday in Vegas, especially if you just want to lounge around the pool and walk up and down the strip.

   As soon as you start spending money on shows or gambling or drinking, that’s when the cost tends to rise up. This is of course a deliberate technique - make the accommodation cheap to get people there and then trust that the will spend up big. There’s no many products that offer as good a profit margin as gambling, so the hotels are quite happy to let people stay cheap.

2. As I pointed out in the video, there’s evidence of social proof and other forms of proof all over Vegas. One casino had a “wall of winners” showing photos of all the normal everyday people who had struck it rich showing off their big checks. Some had even become new millionaires.

   This is a classic technique that creates excitement and most importantly - hope. The whole idea of gambling is to purchase just a little potential for winning big with every bet. It’s this hope that creates the excitement that keeps people gambling away more money, despite fully understanding how bad the odds are in most situations.

3. The whole marketing image Vegas has developed is one of decadence and uninhibited pleasures. The psychology means people who come to Vegas leave their usual self-imposed restrictions at home. It’s okay to eat bad, drink lots, gamble and sleep with strangers in Vegas because that’s what people do. This frame helps the businesses benefit financially since money is spent a lot more frivolously than usual.

In my next post I’ll have the video up from the Jeff Walker Mastermind, including some short interviews with the experts attending. The networking was by far the highlight for me and I think you will enjoy my behind the scenes take of such a high-level meeting of marketing minds.

As always, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed and follow my Twitter profile if you want the latest from Vegas.

Yaro Starak
Not Gambling

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Here’s a video I just edited together of some of the early footage I recorded after arriving in Las Vegas. Please excuse some of the commentary - I was quite tired so I went a bit silly at times.

I’ve been in Vegas for a few days now and finally found some time to string together some of the video footage from my Creative Vado.

It’s an amazing yet bizarre place, and I’ve got lots to share with you including about 15 minutes worth of video footage and some photos. I did some short interviews with people at the Product Launch Formula 2.0 Top Affiliates Networking bash plus some shots from around the hotel strip.

Today is my last full day here so I’m going to venture out now. Over the next few days I’ll publish more video and stories. It’s been an amazing trip so far, especially the networking yesterday with some of the top Internet marketers in the world.

Make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed to catch the videos coming up and I’ve also posted updates to my Twitter Profile, including links to some of the tools I’m using to create and edit the videos and what I’m up to around Vegas.

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