Every highly successful marketer has to manage information addiction. Notice I said “manage,” not “deal with.” Managing information addiction is possible, and I’ll show you a system for doing so. I believe you’ll NEVER become a Top 2% Marketer if you don’t have a thirst for knowledge.

You should be learning new stuff every day. If you don’t, you’ll become stale, boring, average – one of the 90% of people who are content watching TV 30 hours a week. The simple fact that you’re reading this blog, however, tells me you probably aren’t in that group.

So, let’s dig in. In my experience, you can’t cure information addiction without understanding the root cause of the problem in the first place.

There are two types of Information Addicts.

Information Addict #1 buys information “just because.” She may have a business of some sort, but believes she just doesn’t know enough yet. She’s expecting the key to the next level to come in a box of material from a marketing guru. The critical flaw in this thinking is the belief that the person who created the course actually has a solid businesses model and is speaking from a place of experience vs. theory. The problem lies in the fact that Information Addict #1 is looking to the guru for a business breakthrough rather than a tactical advantage.

(Note: Sustainable increased income and a solid, scalable business model come from strategy, planning, and scalable processes – not from tactical advantages. Tactical advantages are important, and if focused action is taken on a tactical level, you can leapfrog over your competition and make fast money. But without the strategy, planning, and scalable processes in place, it’s kind of like a one-night stand.)

Information Addict #2 knows he is an information addict but takes steps to manage his addiction and use it to his advantage. When a new information course comes out, the first two questions Information Addict #2 asks are:

1. Can I consume the information within 30 days?
2. Can I apply it directly to my business within 60 days?

If the answer to both questions is yes, he will buy. Information Addict #2 never EXPECTS a product to be the end-all–be-all for his business. He buys the product with the understanding that if he can extract one to three key strategies or tactics from the information to plug into his business, he’s won. Information Addict #2 never looks at price, either; he is only focused on value delivered and Return on Investment.

The bottom line is this: you want to be Information Addict #2.  If you find yourself relating to Information Addict #1, then recognize your errors and fix them. It’s as simple as that.

Now, once you have the right mindset when it comes to digesting information, you need to know the best way to study the material. I’ve developed a fail-proof system that works like a charm. Following this system is part of being a Top 2% Marketer. If it feels overwhelming, just try it once. I guarantee that if you try this system, you’ll be sold. I call this my “5-Point Information Retention & Application System.” You must start with Retention. Most people have it all wrong when it comes to retaining information.

Your goal should be to retain only applicable information. Trying to remember statistics, facts, and the whole body of content is not only difficult, but at the end of the day, remembering those things won’t open big doors for your business. Remembering all those factoids will only make you feel better because you learned something new and can sound smart when you talk to others. Unfortunately, feeling better and acting smart won’t make money for you. That’s why I recommend you avoid this strategy.

So, here’s exactly how to apply my 5-Point Information Retention & Application System – the system I personally use for all information consumption.

Point 1:

Decide whether or not you’ll even consider buying or studying the information. This is where you evaluate if you can consume the information with 30 days and apply it within 60.

Point 2:

When you get your new information, start with the table of contents and spend 5 to 15 minutes scanning the content from cover to cover to get a feel for the material.

Point 3:

Now you’re ready to dig into the material you’ve just bought. But that would be an amateur’s mistake. First, visualize what you want to get out of the information. For example, if it’s a time management book, BEFORE you read anything, you’ll want to understand what your biggest flaws are and how you want to fix them.

Okay, so now you’re ready to dig in. You’ve bought the information, you’ve made the mental decision to consume it, and you know you’ll be able to read the information in 30 days and apply it in 60 days. At this point you’ll need a highlighter (never consume information again without a highlighter at hand). As you read, use your highlighter to highlight information that is directly applicable to your business (or your clients’ businesses if you’re a consultant). I’ve found that, on average, you’ll use only about 2% - 5% of information in a course. Whether it’s a DVD, a book, a seminar, doesn’t matter – in any case, you’re left with 2% - 5% usable, actionable information.

Point 4:

Most people never make it past Point 3, so if you made it this far, you’re on your way to becoming a Top 2% Marketer. At this point you’ve finished your book and highlighted around 2% - 5% of it. This is where the men are separated from the boys. Now you need to pull up a Word document on your computer and type out all the information you’ve highlighted. So, for a 300-page book, you would have roughly 6-15 pages of notes. These notes are pure gold in your life and business, so treat them that way.

Point 5:

You’ve made it! Now, take all the typed pages of actionable, usable information from the information product you’ve purchased and print it out for easy access. I keep all of my information in 3 ring binders, filed by author. So if I’ve read all of Dan Kennedy’s books and went through his DVD, etc., I might have 97 pages of notes. I’ll put all of them in a 3 ring binder with Dan Kennedy’s name on it for future reference.

Following this process is critical if you want to be smarter and more savvy then other people in your market. Think about how powerful this is! You’ve just condensed 1,000 pages of material down to 40 or so pages of actionable, usable material. So now you can review the material in one day as opposed to the 12 days it took you to digest it. Can you see how this will compound in your life and make you a marketing beast?

Real quick post today. I just wanted to let everyone know I’m taking the rest of 2009 off as far as consulting goes. I’m going to be focusing on our new hair growth vitamin, shampoo, and conditioner line. We’re also expanding products on some of our other websites this year so I’m cutting my consulting back dramatically. The only thing I will be doing is some phone consulting because I enjoy that. All project work is officially over for 2009 for sure though.

Thanks for understanding!

If you’re not offering alternative payment plans, you’re probably leaving a ton of money on the table. Since we began offering payment plans in our businesses, we’ve seen the amount of our average order almost double, along with a significant increase in total sales.

Your marketing voice will never trump the relentless doom-and-gloom your typical customer gets from the media concerning economy. That’s why I say you’re better off riding the negativity and finding a way to profit from it. Two years ago, this wasn’t an issue, but now it’s critical that you offer payment plans, especially on anything over $50.

If you don’t feel comfortable accepting payment plans for all your products, just try it on your three best sellers. I can almost guarantee you’ll be happy with the results.

Alot of people think I died, well I’m here to let you know I’m still alive and everything is all good.

I just got back from Los Angeles for a meeting with our hair supplier and have been working hard on our new hair line non-stop. That new business will launch NLT January 2009.

I’ve also cut down my consulting to only 3 clients now to focus on this current project.

Expect more writing from me in 2009!

I pay close attention to user behavior on our websites. Mainly because opinion is just opinion as far as conversion, funnels, so called “best practices”, etc.

Most people have an immature view on what’s really happening with their website analytics. Most website owners know what their conversion rate is, how many unique visitors they have, etc.

This is all basic information and gives people a warm/fuzzy feeling inside when they can spit these figures out quickly, but at the end of the day, those figures mean nothing.

You have to get to a point where you not only KNOW that data, but you have to take it to the next level and make educated decisions on what to DO with that data. Avinash Kaushik explained it perfectly in his latest book when he said…

“Combining the why (intent, motivation, and so forth) with the what (clicks, visitor counts) has to be the cornerstone of any successful actionable web analytics program”.

Notice Avinash used the word ACTIONABLE when he was speaking about how to have a successful web analytics program. You not only need to know the why and what, but you need to have a plan of action once you get that information.

I’ve been doing some testing with ClickTale for a while now…

This service has been around a little while but I finally decided to use it. In my opinion, this tool is one of the most important tools I’ve ever experienced on the internet for understanding user behavior. If you combine this, with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer as a small business person and start taking this stuff seriously you can start making so much more money it’s crazy.

I highly recommend to everyone here that you shift away from the latest and greatest persuasion and marketing techniques that are being pushed on the internet. All of that stuff can be found in books from Amazon and learned very quickly with some daily reading discipline.

Having a product, having good direct response copy, and having traffic are the cornerstone to a successful internet based business, we all know this. But WHAT next? Your next step should be drilling down and figuring out the best way to survey, communicate, build products for, and service your list/customers.

So after saying all that, the big “secret” to making MORE money online is you need to go much deeper within your market. You’ll make so much more money by implementing what I just talked about and learning that than you ever could with a new monthly subscription or marketing product. A new monthly newsletter is NOT what you need to hit the next level.

P.S. If you install ClickTale on your site and actually WATCH what people do on your site, most people reading this post will finally believe at last that copywriting is a DISTANT 4th compared to LIST, PRODUCT, and PRICE!

90% of our readers skim, and FAST! And that’s not just my market.

I made a lifestyle decision not long ago and I’m finally blogging about it. I didn’t want to blog about it while I still had paying clients on the books but everything is cleared up and good to go now.

The bottom line is I’ve restructured my entire consulting business. It became very time consuming and I’ve made the decision to only keep a few clients and get rid of the rest. You can read how I’ll be doing business from now on here on my services page.

I still love helping people, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t want to work more than 10-15 hours a week. And those hours will be spent on my own businesses or with the top business people I’ll continue to work with who don’t require babysitting.

Thanks for understanding.

I hope 1ShoppingCart pays attention to this blog post because this fix is so easy to make.  I’ve already called them about this problem and there’s still no fix. Why? I have no idea.

Here’s the deal… When people use the E-Check function in 1SC there needs to be a simple text change.

Click on the attachment below, do you see the problem?

The problem is that the wording is confusing for the consumer. Marketers may not think so but customers do think so. Why in the world would you ask someone to enter a “Transit Number” in the box but call it a “Bank Routing Number” as the example?

This is usability 101 and will cost you money if you use 1SC.

I just started using 1SC so I have no connections over there. But if anybody reading this blog post does have some pull over there, please bring this to their attention.

Thanks!

I’m amazed at how unproductive people are. In fact, the problem is so terrible that I feel the need to reveal my biggest secret—the secret that makes me so productive.

But before I tell you how I’m able to get so much accomplished, we must first understand why people are unproductive in the first place. Here are the five biggest things I see….

1. Unproductive people constantly blame other people. Almost all unproductive people are experts at rationalizing their destructive behaviors.

2. Unproductive people are perfectly fine being broke. Give them some weed and a Budweiser and you’ve just made their day.

3. Unproductive people try to do 10 things at once, whereas productive people do one thing at a time. When they finish the one thing they were doing, they calmly move on to the next thing.

4. Unproductive people are generally negative people who surround themselves with other negative people. This makes them feel better about themselves. I’ve forgotten who said it, but someone said that you’re the average of your five closest friends. If you pay attention to the negative, unproductive person, I’m positive you’ll find that quote to hold true.

5. Unproductive people don’t read. They don’t read because they already think they’re smart and know everything they need to know. That’s why when you talk to these people, you want to cut your wrists after two minutes.

So let’s get into how to become a productive person.

First things first…. Don’t do any of the things I just mentioned. Second, you must set dates with yourself. It’s really that easy. If you don’t set dates, you’re screwed.

Here’s what I mean…

If you don’t tell yourself what to do, your daily circumstances will determine your schedule. To get this right, you must be ruthless with your time, schedule, and activities. You must also understand that most people are bored and want to rape every bit of your time to “hang out.” There’s nothing wrong with “hanging out,” but this must be planned. If you have time to just “hang out” without planning it, you’re not working hard enough.

Protecting your time and being a beast about planning your day and sticking to it is critical if you want to reach any amount of freedom. Here’s an average day for me:

1. Wake up and read for one hour.
2. Eat a healthy breakfast.
3. Workout.
4. Check e-mail, sales statistics, etc.
5. Study marketing, advertising, and business for two hours via books, courses, etc.
6. Implementation – Setup tests, create traffic strategies, and build businesses.
7. Write for one hour.
8. I also give myself 30 minutes to one hour to think. My best ideas and breakthroughs come during this time.

I’m finished by 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. When I’ve finished working/improving myself, I’ll think about the next day and what I want to get done. I never allow what happens during the day to affect my plans.

I tell my customer service team that unless someone has died or my kids have something terribly wrong—and I really mean this—then it’s not important. They simply take all messages and send an email to me at 5:00 p.m.

Everything, even death if you think about it, can wait until 5:00 p.m. The fact that I was bothered and my concentration was broken really didn’t affect the bad news; I just know the information earlier. Big deal.

So that’s my secret. I set strict deadlines for myself. I tell my day how it will act because I don’t deal with distractions; therefore, I’m in charge of my day and productivity. And I guard my time like a mother guards her infant.

If you want to increase productivity, I suggest that you do same.

Most people I know think when you use autoplay videos on your website it makes the visitor mad and encourages them to leave your site.

Well after much testing I’m finally convinced autoplay is the way to go. At least in my niche. I’ve done extensive split testing over the last 12 months on autoplay vs. no autoplay. Autoplay has won 6 out 6 extensive testing rounds.

I’ll show you 2 of my latest tests here:

“Original” is the autoplay version. And “Combination 1 - Variation 1″ is the no-autoplay version. So what’s the big takeaway here?

The big takeaway here is to never assume anything in your marketing. You simply can’t take opinion as the final word in today’s competitive online marketplace. You must get out in the trenches and run tests, create new ads, and constantly be doing and creating new “stuff”.

Opinions are like… well you know the rest. Happy testing!

I want to explain my mindset as far as tracking online advertising is concerned. So many people overcomplicate this issue. They think there’s some “secret” formula. Well, there’s not.

People make millions of dollars simply by sticking to this little system. This is not complicated. Just follow my simple system and you’ll be golden.

I’m assuming that you already know how to find website owners to promote for you, so let me share what most people do.

Most people simply send the owner’s email list to a standard link on their webpage, and try to sell them whatever it is they sell. It’s not good, but that’s the basic system for most people.

Here’s the right way to set up your promotions.

1. Contact the website owner with your joint venture proposal. I personally always offer a 50/50 split of sales minus shipping costs. I recommend that you do the same.

2. Stress to the website owner that there’s absolutely no risk for him. All he needs to do is simply press “Send.”

3. Always set up a special URL for the website owner. If everyone knows the owner by name, and his name is John, you could simply have it this way: www.yourwebsitename.com/John. Make sure to always personalize your link for the list owner.

4. Take the link you’ve just created and cloak it with Adtrackz. It will look something like this: www.yourwebsitename.com/Johns-Friends. That will obviously redirect to /John. You’ll want to know exactly how many people have clicked on the link in the email that was sent. Don’t count on your internal analytics program to track this information for you. This is too critical.

5. On the actual landing page, which is www.yourwebsitename.com/John, make sure to address his specific list in the headline. For example, say something like… “Special Offer Available Only to Friends of John!”

6. Create a new ID for the product in your cart that is specifically set up just for John. So if you’re selling lawn mowers, make sure to have the description say, “Lawn Mower Special – John.” This also reinforces the idea to the person who’s checking out in the shopping cart that it’s truly a special deal that’s not available to anyone else. Believe me. He will scour the entire website price checking, double checking that he is getting the best deal possible.

7. Create a backend offer just for buyers from John’s list. Offer another special on the backend. You can either keep 100% of the profits or let John in on it. It’s up to you.

8. Go through your sales letter, and look for places to personalize the letter so the visitor really feels special. Anywhere you can use John’s name or bring up that the deal is just for John’s list, do it. And always leave the original price very visible. The reason you’ll want to do that is because it gives you a reason to mark it out and put the “special” price next to it to reinforce the special offer.

There you have it. It’s so easy. By following this simple 8-step system, your next promo will go smoothly, and you can track exactly how many clicks and exactly how many sales came from those clicks.

A lot of people who have big lists think they’re sitting on gold. The sad reality is that most of them have no clue how to nurture the relationship with their list. This makes for a non-responsive list. I’ve seen it time and time again. Someone has a 30,000 or 50,000-person list, but if you actually track the CTR you can’t even get 2,000 clicks. It’s sad.

So make sure to track everything from start to finish, and you can’t lose.