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What A Video!

By Mark | September 29, 2008

I posted earlier about The Golden Thread which is basically about video sales letters. The idea is to make the video compelling and that will increase click throughs, sign ups and sales.

What you are about to see has nothing to do with internet marketing and it is not a sales page BUT it’s ability to make you notice it is outstanding.

It’s about a WII game – nothing to buy – but it struck me with its brilliance for capturing the attention.

It’s so good people just tell their friends, send the link out and blog about it :) . Wouldn’t it be great if people were doing that about a video you created?

Get some tips…

Watch the video – it’s very short – turn your speakers up for full impact.

Topics: Blog Videos | No Comments »

The Golden Thread – Another Over Hyped Launch?

By Mark | September 29, 2008

Michael Cheney’s The Golden Thread launches this week – you may have heard about it!

BUT…

I actually like much of the work Michael Cheney does. His products usually over deliver and his way of explaining things is easy to follow.

So what about The Golden Thread?

In concept it’s great – create a Cash Cannon, Michael’s term for a video sales page. Nothing so unusual or groundbreaking about that. But when combined with persuasive commentary and stamped with your own personality AND all produced for you then maybe there is something special.

Michael’s launch includes a number of case studies including mind maps AND a live webcam at his blog.

I was really taken by the first video in the series – you can read my review and watch the video at The Golden Thread – particularly because of the success of the lady concerned with very few visitors to her site. When i say site – it really is just one page.

For many people adding an extra $1,000 to their income each month would be a life saver – and for anyone generating a lot of traffic increasing sales percentages from 1% to upwards of 10% would have a massive impact on profitability. That’s the promise!

As for the cost – I don’t know yet, but whatever it is – if an extra $1,000 a month is possible with little work it has to be worth looking at.

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Topics: General Guru Fodder, Marketing, Working From Home | 1 Comment »

FoxTab for Firefox Browser – Awesome

By Mark | September 24, 2008

Mozilla Firefox Icon

Image via Wikipedia

If you use the Firefox and you certainly should, then you’ll love FoxTab.

Instead of clicking on tabs across the top of your screen to find the webpage you want you get a preview of each.

Easily accessible via on screen direction arrows or just hold Ctrl & Tab and the pages scroll right in front of your eyes until you find the one your looking for.

Take a look by hovering over FoxTab.

Download the FoxTab Addon

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Topics: Free Resources | No Comments »

Apture – Multi Media Blog Posting Solution

By Mark | September 24, 2008

My friend Mark from Health and Wellness introduced my to a new service (free of course) called Apture. Just hover over the link to view the video that will open in a new window over this page.

So you show your site visitors related reference material without sending them off never to return.

Wow, is this cool.

They do a better job of explaining how it works than I can but as a summary:

I’ve overloaded this post as an example

Here’s my personal blog at TheAntiHype

Just heads over to Apture and download the plugin (works on most blogs). It’s a page of php code. Upload to your blog in normal way. Activate and full instructions are provided.

I did have a slight delay as the theme  I’m using required me to insert a line of php code into the footer. Dead easy to do though – just follow the instructions.

Have fun.

Mark

P.S. Are any of you are WordPress experts? If so I’d love to hear from anybody who can explain to me why over the past few weeks, every so often some of my posts seem to be published multiple times. If I return to the admin area and log out they then seem to disappear. Spooky!

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Topics: Free Resources, General Guru Fodder | 1 Comment »

Homer Gets Taken For A Ride

By TheAntiHype | September 9, 2008

I’m not sure what Homer thought he was getting involved in. Probably been reading too many of the junk emails getting through his filters.

He told me he was looking for a little “pick me up” but has ended up with another huge package (cluttering up his hard drive)

Here’s the sales message he responded to – It’s actually very funny!

The Anti Hype

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Topics: General Guru Fodder | 1 Comment »

Homer Exposed by Sylvie Fortin

By TheAntiHype | September 4, 2008

Homer is hopping mad!

I’ve never, ever seen him so agitated. In fact I’ve never seen him act so quickly about anything.

Already upset by Sylvie Fortin’s comments about their “brief, albeit unsatisfying affair” Homer wanted to read the 2nd part of her Internet Marketing Sins (released today) and publicly criticise her work. That’s the measure of the man – own back time! But, having read it cover to cover he has been left with no place to turn.

He told me in confidence that “Me Too” hit him so hard he was winded!

Read Sylvie Fortins 2nd part of Internet Marketing Sins to see exactly why Homer was winded by the term “Me Too”.

Guru Fodder has never had such a stronger sense of being. Sylvie has ripped into Homer and his clones like never before. Could it be she is so angry that her liaison with him became public knowledge?

The Anti Hype (yes, that’s me) tackles the issues of Guru Fodder in a lighthearted fashion. I raise the issues of the poor marketing tactics, the over hype, the unscrupulous tactics of the bad gurus and the way people like Homer are either taken in or secretly want to be like these guys. But, I do so by gently suggesting that Guru Fodder are responsible for their own demise and they should be wary.

Sylvie hits you like a runaway train!

And that train hit poor Homer right were it hurts!

As he told me about page 39, the veins on his head stood out – I though he was about to explode:

“How does she (referring to his ex – Sylvie Fortin) know that I’ve bought that many products? She’s even got the numbers correct – apart from the Adsense Training guides – I’ve got 355 of those. You know My AntiHype (he still calls me that) I think she’s been spying on me”

And then he admitted it.

“She, she, she (he couldn’t bring himself to speak her name again) has accused me of following a Cult Leader”

I had to explain that the report was going out to thousands of people and it wasn’t a letter addressed to him personally – But if the cap fits!

He continued as if to justify his position and prove Sylvie wrong in one sentence:

“It’s rubbish Mr AntiHype – I follow loads of gurus not just one – she really has gone too far with this. The “cult leaders” I follow are all genuine – I know that because their products always sell out so fast”

My question “how can digital products ever sell out” remained unanswered!

Homer by now was almost all squawked out. But he had enough momentum to accuse Sylvie of one last thing:

“You know she has lied, don’t you? On page 112 she says “I had to make absolutely sure that nothing in it would come close to resembling specific people. I needed to be certain that no one person could point a finger at another because of anything I said”. Mr AntiHype – I know she wrote it about me – and that’s what really hurts. After all, we did have that fling – and I believed for years she just lost my number”

I guess some people are born to be and stay Guru Fodder!

The Anti Hype

P.S. You can get FREE access to the first 2 parts of Sylvie’s Internet Marketing Sins here.

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Topics: General Guru Fodder, The Anti Hype | 2 Comments »

5 Things You Must Know About StumbleUpon

By Mark | August 29, 2008

{{pt|O cantor brasileiro Zeca Pagodinho.Image via Wikipedia

If you’re into Social Bookmarking you’ll know about StumbleUpon. But there are some important things you should avoid or you could be putting not only your own site but those of others at risk.

No. 1 – The Thumbs Up Stumble, Stumble

If you click on the Stumble “thumbs up” button and that page has not already been submitted a pop-up screen appears that requires some more detail.

DO NOT CANCEL. If you do the page is only partially submitted. The page is registered but as the submission was canceled no one is associated with it and the page usually suffers as a result.

Any visitor to your blog can just hit thumbs up and then cancel because they don’t want to fill in the details. Bang – your page is consigned to graveyard. Please don’t do this to my pages :)

No. 2 – The Self Stumble

There is nothing wrong in Stumbling your own posts and StumbleUpon expects you to do so from time to time, BUT, you may get your account terminated if you abuse the Terms of Service. They state that accounts created for the primary purpose of promoting a product or service will be considered spam.

To avoid this you should be Stumbling many other sites to dilute the impact of your own submissions. You should also avoid submitting every one of your posts as you run the risk of a Thumbs Down on any that are not considered good – unless you are superhuman there will be a few dogs from time to time!

No. 3 – The Stumble Mate

Similarly, you should not be limiting your Stumbles to a few of your favourite blogs. This too will start to look like a spamming technique and may lead to your “mates” sites getting penalised. Be careful too of submitting several pages from the same site at the same time.

No. 4 – The Wrong Category Stumble

The first time a page is submitted the submitter has to choose a category. THIS IS A VITAL STEP because only the original submitter can change the category later – and that’s not very likely!

The category selected for the page will be used to determine who sees that page when they use StumbleUpon.

If you set up StumbleUpon to show you pages about, say photography and you get shown pages clearly about politics (because someone has wrongly selected the photography category for a photographic site) you are not likely to approve!

It is vital, therefore, that a page is allocated to an appropriate category otherwise members who are shown pages that they are not interested in may give those pages a “thumbs down”.

No. 5 – Not Using StumbleUpon Correctly

The concept of Stumble is to identify categories of sites you are interested in (when you sign up), and then to Thumbs Up those you particularly like as you are served up pages from the Stumble toolbar. This helps the system serve up better sites to you in the future – more relevant to your tastes. Sites you don’t like, sales pages, too many Adwords, slow loading, irrelevant etc may be given a Thumbs Down.

This helps the system serve up more appropriate content to every user.

If all you are using Stumble for is to submit your own and a few favourite sites – you and your friends sites will suffer from being downgraded and ultimately not served up on the network.

So please, download the toolbar and spend a few minutes each day Stumbling through the sites served up and giving them some Thumbs.

For more detailed information and full training on the correct way to use StumbleUpon I recommend Caroline Middleton’s excellent free course.

Hope to Stumble into you soon.

Mark

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Topics: General Guru Fodder, Marketing, Social Bookmarking | 3 Comments »

How To Slash The Volume Of Spam You Receive

By Mark | August 28, 2008

SIERRA MADRE, CA - MAY 29: Seventieth anniver...Image by Getty Images via Daylife Spam or unwanted emails are the bane of my life.

Upon my return from holiday I had over 3,000 spam messages AFTER my spam filters had done their job!

Here’s what the problem sounds like to start with:

And here’s a solution to reduce spam:

SpamKiller

Jeff Mulligan of CBMall fame, runs a great site called Quickie Profits and has developed a briulliant free tool to prevent those, oh so bad robots from harvesting email addresses from blogs and websites.

I knew this happened but hadn’t removed email addresses from a number of my sites (too lazy I guess). As a result I receive mountains of spam to little used addresses.

This is a breeze to use – just enter the email address, enter the text you want to show and copy and paste the code it produces.

Take a look at Jeff’s page now. There’s an explanation video and NO SIGN UP box. So anyone can use it.

It’s a bit like my own Easy Hyperlinks solution.

Thanks Jeff.

Mark

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Topics: General Guru Fodder | 6 Comments »

Sylvie Fortin Puts Homer To Bed

By TheAntiHype | August 21, 2008

That should really read ” Sylvie Fortin puts the Homer affair to bed” but it doesn’t have quite the same impact.

Following my earlier revelation Sylvie interrupted her writing to admit to her brief, albeit unsatisfying affair with Homer.

Read her revelation here:

Sylvie’s admission

On a serious note, thank you Sylvie for being such a good sport and joining in the fun.

You may wish to follow Sylvie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sylviefortin

The AntiHype

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Topics: Fun, General Guru Fodder, Humour | No Comments »

Randy The Hermit, Homer & Sylvie Fortin in Threesome

By TheAntiHype | August 21, 2008

Randy, The Hermit, has entered the fray!

This is what happens when you take a holiday.

I’ve been away for just over two weeks and I return to an unprecedented upset.

Randy (The Hermit) is upset with me for not giving him credit for introducing Homer to Sylvie Fortin.

Michel (Sylvie’s husband) is clearly upset with me for introducing Homer to Sylvie. He’s been around here again looking for evidence! You can still see him below as I write.

Sylvie, however, appears to be the only happy one out of them all. She’s not retracted here positive comment about Guru Fodder “a Must Read” from her blog – so that’s my assumption anyway.

And here I am caught up in the middle of this messy threesome – Homer in his pajamas, Randy Baustert – the introducer – & Sylvie Fortin whose only “crime” is to write an excellent report slamming some of the underhand marketing tactics used online.

So let me put the record straight.

Randy told me about Sylvie’s report – The Internet Marketing Sins. I took a look and liked what I read. So Randy, thanks for the introduction. Randy is already known to Michel & Sylvie Fortin – if you don’t know him you should. He runs an excellent site called Marketing Beginners – and you can read more about him at his blog. Although he lives in the Virgin Islands his time spent living in the UK sounds very interesting – see Being Randy In The UK

Loads of innuendo’s in that lot!

I thought the report would be great to quench Homer’s thirst for internet marketing products. In fact, secretly I believe Sylvie was actually writing about Homer in part of the report. (If so that suggests she knew him long before Randy told me about the Internet Marketing Sins report – the plot thickens!)

Now, in all of this mess – Homer has gone quiet again. For obvious reasons I can’t ask Marge what has happened for fear of adding another dimension to this farce.

My conclusion is I should leave them all to sort themselves out. Perhaps in future I should simply say -

Read Internet Marketing Sins by Sylvie Fortin – it’s outstanding.

But if I did, I wouldn’t be The Anti Hype would I? :)

The AntiHype

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Topics: Bad Gurus, Fun, General Guru Fodder, Humour, Pajamas | 16 Comments »

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