Hi this week I’ve got an exciting freebie for you.

I’ve just finished working on a brand new Special Report that you can pick up as a blog visitor for absolutely nothing!

It’s an in-depth 14 page report which shows you exactly how I made $638.68 in 60 Minutes (and am actually still using this technique to make even more than that month after month).

You can get hold of your own personal copy for free at:

http://www.nononsensejohn.com/638.html

I would love it if you could comment on how you found the report, ask me questions etc.

Come on let’s start some dialogue here!

Have a great day

John Hillage

One thing that I find more and more in my online marketing career is that time is so darned precious and hard to come by.

It’s a constant struggle to juggle family and online work commitments on a daily basis.

And I’m quite a workaholic with my online business so find myself constantly trying to squeeze more time out of each day.

The birth of my daughter almost a year ago now has helped me greatly to get a bit better life-work balance.

But I’m still a bit rubbish at it if truth be told!

The thing is though that working harder and harder is a bad trap to fall into.

You end up exhausted and actually you can become less productive.

I can remember numerous occasions where I’ve worked on a project tired – made mistakes and it’s actually taken twice as long.

And wasted so much precious time that could be spent with my family or doing other “fun” stuff.

In the long run constant “work, work, work” online can make you pretty unhappy and can mess up your whole life balance.

I know I’m not alone in this as I started a thread in the Warrior Forum asking other marketers if they ever uttered those fatal words to their family members “I’ll just check my emails for a minute…” and I got a big response.

You can read the thread at: http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=249473

The key to beating this is to give yourself at least 1 whole day off the computer per week as it really refreshes you – something I try to stick to (but am not always successful).

Also outsourcing is a great way to cut down on the tasks you have to do – I have just begun to outsource the writing of one of my niche newsletters and my number crunching stats work (which I hate!)

So far the results have been good and for about $70 I have bought back about 3-4 hours of my life each month – which feels great.

Now I wouldn’t outsource my online marketing stuff as that’s my own know-how and another writer couldn’t replicate it.

Plus it’s my real passion and so writing it comes naturally.

But my other niche stuff – sure I outsource and plan to do more of it.

If you’re not in a position to outsource yet – at least do yourself a favour and tackle your most important tasks.

Spending hours messing around with email, Facebook, buying e-books and reading forum posts will not build your online business.

Writing sales copy, researching niches, developing products, making web pages etc. is what will drive you forward.

So try to do something today to get a bit of your time back and make your online business more effective.

Happy Marketing

John Hillage

This week post is the “Lonely Desperate Single’s Guide for Internet Dating” by John Hillage…

Only joking of course not - I’m referring to the acronym KISS which stands for Keep It Simple Silly, and how you can use it to profit online.

Now you may well have come across KISS in all kinds of areas; lots of training personnel just love these types of acronyms like KISS, setting SMART objectives etc.

Frankly I can take them or leave them when they are spouted by your average human resources or training personnel officer - but when they are applied in real life to make real money, now that’s different!

KISS was invented by someone but I have no clue who (in fact neither does the all-knowing Google machine when I ran a quick search for it) - so answers on a postcard please!

But applied to your internet business KISS can be pretty deadly.

I’m going to talk about just one area (there are load more besides) where employing this technique is crucial:

Sales Copy - Now good sales copy needs to be simple so that everyone who reads it can understand it quickly and easily.

It should be written at the average level a 12 year old can understand - that’s not to say you should use 12 your old text speak (R U GOING 2 BUY MY EBOOK!) or make it childish. But the basic grammar and vocabulary should be at a level that a 12 year old can pretty easily use and understand.

If you baffle people with long words or write in very academic and formal ways you are going to lose the majority (if not all) of your online audience a long time before they get anywhere near buying from you.

Another area of sales copy to keep simple is graphics and designs.

As you may well know fancy flash graphics that take up too long to load generally have no place on a direct marketing internet sales page.

Most internet users have a real 2 second click-click mentality; if you expect someone to sit whilst your fancy all-singing and all-dancing graphic loads up for 20 seconds you will be sadly mistaken.

They’ll be hitting the back button and buying your competitors product from his Plain Jane site that has much more emphasis on enticing copy than flashy gimmicks.

And also remember that just because you may have the latest high speed broadband internet connection and a super fast flash new computer - Average Joe from out in the sticks may be trying to read your web page through a dial up connection on a 10 year old machine with a cracked monitor!

When it comes to on page graphics then certainly a good image of your product (be it an ebook, CD, DVD or something else), maybe a thumbnail photo of yourself (as long you don’t look really weird or scary!) is really helpful in the sales process - but your sales page certainly doesn’t need much more than that.

I’m not about to go through the various components of copywriting here as there is simply not time.

But as I am sure you know the aim of copy is to sell and online this means getting your web visitor to click the order button.

So make this a simple and painless process too - by providing several payment buttons across the web page so that the reader does not need to hunt for them.

Also make them very clear so use button or text links that say “Click Here to Invest In My E-book Now” or “Click Here To Get Your Copy Immediately”.

And finally don’t them send them through some crazy upsell process that gives them all kinds of different options.

I saw a website the other day that offered 5 different packages all made up of different components which was just too complex to fully understand at first glance.

And if people are confused or have to take time to decipher what you are offering – chances are they won’t be buying from you.

In my opinion if you are going to up sell (which is a great technique that you are crazy not to use by the way) then 3 options is the optimum.

Offer Basic, Deluxe and Super Deluxe versions of your product and your overall profits will be higher.

But make it crystal clear what action the customer needs to take to purchase any of those three options to avoid any confusion.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy some profitable kissing on the internet!

Happy Marketing

John Hillage