In the past few months I’ve seen a few of the big guns in internet marketing such as Mike Filsaime and Keith Wellman sell products without an actual sales letter. Instead they have a kind of “infomercial”, or video sales letter as they’ve been called, that sells the product. There’s a lot to be said for video advertising, but is it a good substitute for an good old fashioned sales letter?
A look at video sales letters as a means of advertising
Now I’ve got to be honest with you here, from a consumer’s point of view I don’t like them. Last week Keith launched a product and I’d have had to sit through a half-hour long video just to get the chance to buy it or even find out what it was. I’m a busy guy and didn’t have the time to sit through his video. I’d much rather scan a sales letter and see if it was for me. I can bet that many people were the same as I was. There was no link to find out more or anything like that. It was just pitch, then order link.
I’m really big on online video as you know and using short videos on your site can increase conversion rate. However I think it’s marketing suicide to use nothing but a video to sell your product. In the way Keith did anyway. I think if you had a video and a link to a sales letter that said something like “prefer to read? Click here” then you could cater to both the visual market and people like me who prefer to read rather than have to wait to find out what product I’m being encouraged to buy.
You can bet your bottom dollar that in the coming months you are going to see more and more of these video sales letters, and then will come the hyped up products teaching you how to do them yourself. Trust me on this one when it comes to marketing stick to the stuff that works. Good old fashioned long sales copy will always outpull a video in my eyes and until I’m proved wrong you won’t see me marketing in this way.
Wholesale Traffic System – the untold truth
Last week there was a high-end traffic course being sold by respected marketer Ryan Deiss and “Mr X”. The Wholesale Traffic system teaches you all about how to make money from pay per click advertising. The market is awash with these products so it really needed to do something to stand out to me. The fact the guy had spend seven million dollars, yes that’s million, on advertising using Google adwords stood out quite a bit I can tell you.
I was just about to order the course when I got an email from a marketing friend of mine who’d found something out that concerned me somewhat. “Mr X” was being investigated for fraud.
Oh oh.
I did a bit of searching and found a web site from the Sheriffs department. Here’s an excerpt:
“Additionally, the affidavit states that Perry Belcher or his companies have sold e-books claiming to be written by medical experts. The affidavit says that the investigation revealed these books are not, in fact, written by medical professionals”
I won’t go into all the legal stuff here but essentially Mr X, or Mr Bulcher, is being accused of selling health related products using false advertising. Whether or not he is guilty we’ll leave the court to decide that. What I am interested in is the people who promoted this product.
Now I know when I found this out I was somewhat put off the product itself. I have no doubt that Perry did in fact make a lot of money but it is going to be somewhat unsettling for all those people who spent over a grand to get their hands on the information only to find out he’s being investigated for fraud. What makes me a little angry is that so many people promoted this product. They will have done so for the big commissions and I get that. But either they didn’t research this guy enough, or they didn’t care that he was being investigated and promoted to their customers anyway who will, quite rightly, be a little annoyed at the whole situation.
This is a good example of how so many of these “big guns” completely miss the point when it comes to their email lists and customers. Yes they might make some money from promoting that product, but you can be sure a lot of their customers will lose faith in them when they find out the truth and they’ll lose money in the long term.
Make sure you don’t promote something just for the sake of a quick commission. Make sure the products good and think about your business in the long term. I’m not sure but if Perry is being investigated his entire business will probably be looked into. That means his partners may also come under scrutiny. So anyone who promoted the product may have just opened up a whole host of problems for themselves all for the sake of some commissions. Not very clever.
Traffic Secrets 2 coming soon
Having said all of that there is an exception. Usually I would never recommend a product without ever seeing it. I can safely say that Traffic Secrets 2 which is to be launched very soon is going to be a must have for anyone looking to make money on the internet.
The creator, John Reese, is one of the genuinely brilliant marketers out there that everyone always talks about. He was the first guy in the industry to make a million dollars in a day and his first course, Traffic Secrets, takes pride of place on my shelf as one of the best courses I have ever bought. He’s THE guy when it comes to marketing online.
Now I’m not sure of the exact date when Traffic Secrets 2 is being released, but you can be certain I’ll be one of the first to buy it. Without traffic (visitors) you cannot make any money at all on the net. Be in selling info products, adsense, blogging, affiliate marketing, whatever, you need traffic. And lots of it. John Reese is the man to learn from when you want to learn how to get visitors. It’s that simple.
This course won’t be cheap. I’d be surprised if it was less than a grand. However I have no doubt that if you follow what John teaches and put it into action you’ll make a lot more than that. I’ll be reviewing the course once it’s launched and I’ve got my copy. Watch this space.