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My copy of Traffic Secrets 2.0 from John Reese arrived last week and I’m about to dive in and study the resources.

Here’s a short video of me going through the product -

If you haven’t ordered your copy it’s not too late, you can purchase Traffic Secrets 2.0 and you are still eligible for my bonus, an invitation into my private Traffic Secrets club, including access to the members only forums and live teleconferences with me.

Over 50 people have already ordered through my link and so far the feedback on the course is very good. John’s produced a really polished product.

The study package and access to the Traffic Secrets 2.0 live community costs $397 and in my case I think that’s great value because just a 1% increase in my sales as a result of a boost to my traffic easily recoups my cost, but I expect it will help me a lot more than that.

For more information about what is in the package, see here -

http://www.trafficsecrets.com/home

If you can’t afford to buy Traffic Secrets 2.0 you should at least spend some time watching the free videos John released in the lead up to the product launch if you haven’t seen them already. Here are the links -

• Traffic Secrets 2.0 Video - John Reese Presents 10 Traffic Tips
• Traffic Secrets 2.0 Video: How To Use Software As A Traffic Generation Tactic

How To Claim The Bonus

After ordering Traffic Secrets 2.0, send through your receipt to supportATblogmastermind.com and I’ll send you details for the private club with me.

http://www.trafficsecrets.com/home

No doubt what John teaches me will influence some of the future posts at this blog. I won’t be able to go into as much detail as the full training package does, but hopefully I can share a few nuggets based on my own interpretation and testing of the techniques.

Yaro Starak
Traffic Tactician

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Update: I put this post up just before Anik went into launch mode, so the directory link below points to a sales page at the moment. I’ve emailed Anik to find out how to get free access to the directory again and will update the post as soon as I find out myself! Sorry about the confusion - this surprised me too!

Update 2: Anik just sent me the link. To go straight to the article directory, go to http://affsphere.com/. The links below will take you to a page that sells a $10 report on how Anik has been using article marketing to make money during the previous four years before you get to the directory.

A long time ago I conducted an article marketing experiment to promote my blog using the article directory site EzineArticles.com. The experiment didn’t go brilliantly, however there were good reasons - I just didn’t do it for long enough.

I’ve remained wary of article marketing since then, preferring to outsource the work if I do it at all. I still believe it’s a good system to build traffic, it’s just not going to blow you away in a short period of time. Like most things when it comes to online marketing, it takes time and consistent testing to deliver a good result.

AffSphere Opens

This week a recent new friend of mine, Anik Singal, released a new article marketing directory called AffSphere.

Here’s a video explaining what AffSphere is -

The core function of AffSpehere is like any other article directory service - you submit articles and they are syndicated across the web. In return you get traffic when a person who reads the article clicks the link in your signature file.

That’s where the similarities between AffSphere and other directories end. AffSphere has a few more features that designed to help you make money, including -

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Over the weekend I worked hard on video presentations for the release of Blog Mastermind. Obviously the core topic of the videos is how to make money via blogging, however I’m introducing a new form of blogging for profit, something that can lead to income quicker, it’s more stable and in the long haul is a much better model for bloggers to follow.

I’ve got a name for this type of blogging that I will reveal when the video comes out but what I can tell you now, it is based on email marketing. I’m not the only person doing this form of blogging of course, but I’m one of very few compared to the total number of professional bloggers out there.

How The Humble Email List Changed My Business

Back in 2005 I started blogging. A few months later I began studying the work of some prominent Internet marketers and a trend arose - everyone talked about how you had to have an email list.

Strangely enough, I didn’t listen. Well, at least I didn’t take action, which is just as bad. I could see how having an email list was valuable, but my focus at the time was my editing business and I just didn’t see how email marketing was going to help it. My blog at the time was still more hobby site than a money maker.

Fast forward to the end of 2006 and I decided to finally launch an email list. However I still didn’t get it completely right because instead of leveraging my blog for continuous email opt-ins, I created an off-site landing page and wrote a few blog articles pointing towards it. At least it was a start.

When it came time to do a blog redesign I was well and truly convinced that I had to include an opt-in for my list on my blog. I asked my designer to put the opt-in in the right column at the top in the above the fold area. You can see it in action in most of the 2006 archives of my blog at the Way Back Machine.

Instantly my opt-ins grew and I quickly found myself generating an extra 20-50 new leads per day, which continued to increase as my blog traffic increased.

Since then, nearly every success I have enjoyed online has come thanks to making these decisions. I finally understood what Internet marketers were talking about when they said you have to have a list - and yes, that applies in EVERY niche online, not just the make money topics (email marketing is so good in non-business markets because not so many people use it well there).

How Email Will Make A Difference To Your Blogging

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John Reese just released the third and final launch video as part of his Traffic Secrets 2.0 release.

You can watch the video here -

I just finished watching it and it was great stuff, just like the first two.

In case you missed John’s first two videos released last week, make sure you head to this page to watch them before watching this one, they follow in a sequence.

http://www.trafficsecrets.com/home/

Marketing With Software

Something very few people implement as an online traffic technique is to build software applications. I will stick my hand up as one of those people too and after watching John’s third video I am REALLY excited about the potential. I was busy taking notes during the video, jotting down ideas for software apps I would like to make as marketing tools for my current projects.

It’s clear John thinks big when he considers how he will generate traffic. The application of a successful software marketing strategy can result in hundreds of thousands to even millions of visitors - we’re talking mainstream big, maybe not quite Facebook levels, but at least within the same playing field as some of the most popular sites in the world.

I can see why this strategy is so powerful. Very few people do it and even fewer execute it well if they try. If you can - as John suggests - make an online user-content generated software application, the potential for growth is tremendous.

Video Breakdown

John begins the video with strategic advice regarding why this tactic works and how he has implemented it himself in the past, then presents real world suggestions for software applications and offers tips on how to find the people to build the software for you.

I won’t reveal everything from the video, but a couple things I thought worth repeating even though they might seem obvious to some when creating software are -

• Test programmers with a smaller project first regardless of how good their ratings may be within a freelance site
• Create extremely detailed specifications for your project

There’s a lot more advice and some great suggestions from John that I know will spark ideas for you while watching the video, so make sure you take notes when inspiration strikes. Here’s the video link again -

http://www.trafficsecrets.com/home/v3.html

The Sales Pitch You Just Have To Watch

The second half of the video is the sales pitch, since obviously John is promoting his new training program Traffic Secrets 2.0.

What’s interesting about John’s pitch is how he’s decided to go opposite to what’s been prevalent in the last few years with Internet marketing product launches. He’s done a completely soft approach, there’s no upsells, no forced continuity, no false scarcity - pretty much any grumble people might have had about “marketing gimmicks” and John’s decided to blatantly state that he’s not doing it.

This in itself is a clever marketing tactic but it’s the execution that has to be watched. John has a very professional and clean-cut presentation style. It’s a serious presentation (no Frank Kern or Ed Dale antics here), John’s serious about his business and he’s put it all together in a video that gets the message across without any hyperbole.

And it’s worked on me - I want this product, bad.

I want it because of the videos I just watched. I want to learn John’s traffic tactics and also copy how he markets things. With John Reese you study what he says and how he says it.

John’s presentation style suits me. I like the soft sell, I use it myself all the time and I expect it’s going to pay off for him, especially as he’s priced the product lower than recent launches.

Traffic Secrets is just $397 for the product and access to any future upgrades.

During the second half of the video you will see what exactly is inside Traffic Secrets 2.0, which includes some DVDs and manuals and access to an online training resource. It’s sort of a melding between a home study and an online community, which is a nice approach.

The product goes live Tuesday 15th July 12 Noon EST and I’ll be there to buy my copy for sure.

Even if you have no intention of purchasing this, go watch the videos, see how video and a soft approach to selling can work and learn from both the content within the video and the strategy behind the video.

Here’s that link one more time:

http://www.trafficsecrets.com/home/v3.html

Yaro Starak
Borrowing John’s Ideas

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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!).

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