I’m back!!!!

I was recently at Warrior Forum and saw a post there where a user was asking where I went. It was fun to see the responses and speculation as to what happened to me.

My favorite guess was that I had made so much money from flipping websites that I had sailed off into the sunset and retired forever.

In actuality I was filming a feature length movie I wrote and directed. The movie was in theaters in Utah, AZ, Hawaii and Idaho in January and February and
just came out on DVD
on April 1st.

As you can imagine this was a full time endeavor for me that lasted 15 months. It was an amazing experience. I made the movie for the LDS (Mormon) audience although anyone could enjoy it and the response was awesome. Tons of laughs in the theaters.

Here is the trailer for Inspired Guns:

Flipping Websites

ALthough I was away from the internet marketing world fulfilling one of my lifelong dreams I am excited to be back and to tackle the world of website flipping head on. If you are still interested in learning how to buy and sell websites the Prosperly way then stick with me and let’s do this together.

You Want To Make Money Online? Have An Awesome Product…

I just got back from a 2 day trip down to Nevada. I went to a firearms training course (I affectionately call it “Superhero Training”) where I was trained on using my handgun properly and in defensive situations. The training was intense and I gained a new respect for my hand gun including a new emphasis on safety.

The instructors were awesome and friendly, the facility was top notch and there were at least 300 people there taking one course or another.

They actually offer training with tactical shotguns, sniper rifles, defensive driving, double edge weapons, repelling and much more. This truly is like Disneyland for grownups.

Here is the best part. I paid $250 for a high level membership that allows me to take courses there for free for the rest of my life.

For the entire 2 days I was trying to figure out how they were making money. To quote Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little, “You guys can’t be making a dime on this.” But they are making money. It was abundantly clear that this business is thriving.

Most of the students there were not members. You could pay $1000 for a single course. In fact it is even very hard to buy a membership unless you get put on their email list and the owner sends you out an offer to snatch up a membership which only happens once in a while. (Great scarcity ploy).

That’s right, I said email list. The owner of this company is nothing more than an internet marketer. If you sign up for his email list you will get emailed almost every day from the owner of the site. The emails are clearly effective. They run about 300-600 students through the facility every week.

This is a great example of how to apply traditional internet marketing to a physical business. He gets students coming from around the country to take courses there.

How do they do so well? Two reasons, one, the internet marketing is done the right way. Two, the product is amazing. I only spent 2 days there (they have a 4 day handgun course as well) and I had a blast. I would go back in a heart beat. I have told as many people as would listen to me about my experience. Why? Because it was an experience worth talking about.

That’s how I heard about it. I have two friends from different circles that took a 4 day handgun course and they both raved about it. One of those guys is the one I bought the membership from as he bought like 10 of them when they became available.

There are so many products out there that really are just a pile of feces wrapped in a good sales letter. Everyone wants to make money online but the thing that gets overlooked 90% of the time, is the actual product you are going to be selling.

When I put together my training course on how to find and buy undervalued internet businesses I spent 90% of my time working on the actual course and 10% of my time working on selling it. I probably lost out on some sales of the product but I know I built a quality product.

I got an email from one of my students taking the Prosperly course over the weekend. This is what he said:

“Hope you are having fun shooting. I love your course, you did a fantastic job. You certainly know what you are doing.”

It makes me feel good to get that kind of feedback.

So how can you apply this information into your own internet business? If you are trying to sell a product online, make the product as awesome as you can. Give more than you want to. Kill your customers with kindness and that will create an experience worth talking about.

Homepage Split Test To Increase Conversions

So if you have read much of the posts here at Prosperly that I have written you know I talk a lot about the importance of running split tests on your site all the time to always be improving conversions.

Google has free testing software called website optimizer that is awesome. I use it all the time. I just started a new test and thought I would show you what kind of things I test.

So when you run tests to increase conversion, the more different you can make the two versions that are running against each other the better. You will get better results that way because the optimizer will be able to give you a definitive answer on which version is better more quickly.

Sometimes when you run tests the two versions you run against each other will make no difference in conversions. This happens more than I would expect.

Anyway here is the test I am running now:

and this is the new version that I am testing against the original:

You can see from the 2 screenshots that I have removed the bullets and replaced them with a button trying to get people to sign up right away. I know that conventional wisdom says not to ask for the sale too soon on your page but I also am offering a free trial so I wanted to see how placing the button there would perform.

I also changed the sub headline to reflect the bullet points that I removed. (Wanted to keep those benefits on the page.)

Which one do you think will perform better? Post your guess in the comments section below.

How To Get Visitors To Buy From You

I recently received this question from a Prosperly reader:

Thanks for the article Adam. Yes I’m aware that this is a great way of earning some money but the thing is, how do you come up with something interesting enough for people to actually buy online? I mean a book or a guide. How many people would actually do that?

Believe it or not, getting people to buy is not the issue. In fact as long as you know a little about creating sales copy and internet marketing, getting people to buy is the easy part. Getting qualified people to your website is the hard part.

The reality is, if you do your sales copy and internet marketing properly you can expect to sell to 1-2% of your visitors. That is simply a fact of life. Some people will say they get more than that but for the majority of the internet world that is where they are.

If you want a quick way to increase revenue, look at your conversion rate and figure out how to get it closer to the 2%. Think about it, if your site converts at 1% and you raised the conversions to 2% you just doubled your money. Not bad considering you didn’t have to get any more visitors to your site to do it.

Website Optimizer is the best free tool to do this. You can do straight up A/B testing which means you take to versions of a page and test them against each other to see which one converts higher. Or you can do multivariate testing where you take small pieces of a page and change them and test them against the original (ie a headline, testimonial and buy button etc).

I use it all of the time and it works like a charm. ABT – Always Be Testing

As far as creating the product is concerned, back in 2003 or ’04 I created a digital product teaching how to start a lawn care business. How did I know people would buy it? Because people were searching for things like “how to start a lawn care business” and “starting a lawn care business”. They truly wanted to learn. If I could teach them I knew I could get them to pay for it.

Now remember 98 out of 100 people will not buy it, but 2 people out of those 100 will. Its a numbers game.

So I created the product and then put together some long sales copy for it and people started buying it. I already had the traffic from good organic SEO rankings. The day I launched the product and from then on visitors to my site bought my product like crazy. Give your customers what they are looking for and they will buy from you.

The #1 Internet Marketing Secret…

Before you get too excited, this is another post about a clean romantic comedy film we just finished shooting. I know, I know it was under handed to get you thinking I had the #1 internet marketing secret but I was feeling bad about only posting filmmaking stuff.

The movie we just finished is called Chick Magnets. Check out the Chick Magnets Trailer or check out the website here at Chick Magnets Movie.

It will only be shown in theaters here in Utah at first but if it does well enough we should be able to get it into other theaters. The movie will have a PG rating.

P.S. The number one internet marketing secret is to choose a niche you know a lot about and love.