Early in 2007 Brad Fallon launched FreeIQ.com as the ‘marketplace for ideas.’ It was supposed to be the YouTube for information marketers – where you could, among other things, upload, show and monetize your videos.

It hasn’t been quite two years since the launch of FreeIQ, but if Google Trends for Websites is any indication… the site has never really taken off.

There could be a number of reasons for FreeIQ’s less than stellar performance. Perhaps the service has never lived up to its promise… perhaps there were some technical difficulties that hindered initial uptake… perhaps its selling proposition is unclear…

Who knows? I have no clue, as I’ve never used it. Then again, perhaps that itself IS a clue…

(more…)

When it comes to comparing successful Internet business owners with those who struggle to make a dime online… we can draw a lot of distinctions.

But there’s one particular distinction that gets surprisingly little attention. Perhaps it’s so obvious… that it’s not obvious. And yet it arguably trumps everything else you can say that separates those who thrive from those who barely survive.

Is it joint venture partners? Is it loads of money to invest in marketing? Is it having technical or marketing skills? Is it just good luck?

It’s actually none of those things.

Is it something deeper, like positive thinking… or the law of attraction?

No.

It’s actually what Rich Schefren (founder of Internet marketing firm, Strategic Profits) calls the difference between ‘having or wanting resources’ and ‘being resourceful’.

You see, the arguments about having JV partners, money, skills, etc just don’t stack up. There are too many successful entrepreneurs - whether Internet based or otherwise - who had NONE of those things, yet went on to success, for those arguments to be true.

And although it may have been positive thinking (or focusing on what they wanted) that drove such people to success…

…don’t we all know of people who ‘think positive’ or visualize what they want… yet still struggle to GET what they want?

What’s missing?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in the power of positive thinking and focusing on what you want. I honestly think, however, that unless you channel positive thinking and focus into the right kind of ACTION… then all that thinking and focus is for nothing.

And central to taking the right kind of action is looking for ways to accomplish things when the ‘how’ is not so obvious. It’s about using our BRAINS to come up with creative solutions… without automatically asking others to give us the answers.

It’s about asking ourselves ‘how can I?’ rather than complaining that we ‘don’t know how’ and giving up.

It’s about being resourceful… rather than necessarily having the resources.

Without exception, what ALL rags-to-riches entrepreneurs have in common is RESOURCEFULNESS. It’s NOT starting with the resources - people, money, skills. It’s working out how to get those resources… and going out there and getting them.

In fact, next time you hear someone say that so-and-so Internet marketing guru is only successful because they have a lot of JV partners… gently ssk them:

‘How do you suppose they get those JV partners in the first place?’

I bet they were resourceful, right?

Nowadays, there are more how-to Internet marketing books, programs, courses, etc available than ever. Unfortunately, a lot of them are cluttering up bookshelves and hard-drives.

Meanwhile, we continue to hear of people who had access to NONE of those resources… and yet were able to build impressive businesses.

Why?

Because it’s not resources that separates the winners from the losers. It’s resourcefulness. When you’re resourceful you will always find a way.

Want to buy Bloglines? According to TechCrunch, Ask is trying to divest itself of Bloglines. But although the service has been up for sale for the past few months, there are no serious buyers in sight.

Ask acquired Bloglines in February 2005 for around $10 million, but TechCrunch believes it may be willing to sell the service at a loss. Despite delivering a popular blog / news search engine and reader service, Bloglines has generated virtually no revenue, let alone profits, to date.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Bloglines Gets A Band-Aid; And We Hear It’s Still For Sale”, TechCrunch, October 20, 2008

Visit the marketing section of a bookstore and you’ll see numerous books extolling the virtues of ‘branding’. Talk to ad agencies and branding consultants and they’ll all say that the most important thing a business can do is to ‘build the brand’.

So you could be forgiven for diligently following their advice and plastering your company logo and slogan all over your website and marketing materials.

After all, you want your customers to know – and remember – who you are, right?

But what if I told you that including big graphics of your logo and slogan is, at best, confusing potential customers… and, at worst, turning them away? That no one actually cares about the name of your business, your logo or your slogan? That building your brand could actually be costing you sales?

Whoah! What am I suggesting here?

That you don’t have a catchy name, or an attractive logo, or a slogan that represents your unique selling proposition (USP)? Or that I don’t believe in the value of branding?

How could I suggest such things – after all, doesn’t my business, Kikabink, have a catchy name, a cool logo (well, I think so) and a meaningful slogan that reflects our USP? And don’t we recognize the importance of branding?

All right, let me explain…

Firstly, I do believe in the value of branding.

Branding is the ’silent marketer’ – the means by which people are attracted to, and trust and buy from you, because of who you are, not the specific products or services you sell. And branding effectiveness does rely on being recognized through a strong visual identity and powerful statement that describes what you stand for – your USP.

However, for new, small and medium sized businesses, branding isn’t the CAUSE of loyal customers and healthy sales and profits – it’s the RESULT of effective marketing that generates loyal customers and healthy sales and profits!

In other words, if you’re a relatively unknown business, emphasizing your company name and identity is useless – because your prospects don’t know who you are!

Instead, you should focus on four (4) CRITICAL marketing goals that are aimed, primarily, at generating sales and profits, and secondly, building your brand. We’ll go through these four goals - as well as some major DOs and DON’Ts in tomorrow’s issue of Kikabink News.

The number one key to success in Internet marketing – in fact, the key to success in just about every endeavor – is abiding by one simple principle.

The principle of continuous improvement.

In Japan, it’s called ‘kaizen’ which is a nice, shorthand way of saying you must always strive to improve, and that in order to improve you must constantly:

• Test different approaches;
• Track (or measure) which works the best; and
• Innovate or come up with a new approach to test.

Ideally, kaizen should govern every single aspect of your business – from how you recruit and train staff, to your production processes, to how you handle the books. After all, every improvement counts. To your bottom line.

But whatever you want to improve, it’s essential to choose the right measure; otherwise your efforts to test, track and innovate will prove fruitless. For most businesses, the measure should have a direct or indirect impact on profits.

When it comes to marketing, and in particular Internet marketing, there are numerous elements you can test, track and innovate.

For example, our company, Kikabink, focuses on two general components of Internet marketing:

1. Generating web site traffic; and
2. Converting it into customers.

Therefore, our aim in testing, tracking and innovating is to measure and improve such things as the quantity of traffic, the conversion of visitors-to-sales, the conversion of visitors-to-optins, sales, and profits. And since there are numerous influences on traffic, conversion rates, sales, and profits, there are numerous things to test!

Fortunately, testing on the Internet is relatively inexpensive. To the point where it’s almost inexcusable for any online business not to test.

However, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by so many testing opportunities too. So, unless you’re capable of running complex multivariate tests (where you test numerous things at the same time), I suggest adopting a simple, methodical approach.

Divide your marketing into different categories, identify all the elements within each category, and then test them one at a time. This is critical - you need to be able to isolate exactly what causes a change in your results.

For example, you might consider traffic-to-customer conversion as one category. Some of the items within this might be the:

• Product
• Offer
• Headline
• Price

On that basis, you might select one of these to test first, get to a level you’re happy with, then move on to the next.

Which brings us to an important point: when do you stop testing? According to the principle of kaizen, the answer is never.

In practical terms, though, it’s reasonable to continue to test something until the rate of improvement start flattening out, at which point you can move on to testing something else.

However, if, for example, you started by changing the price… and then you changed the product, and then the offer and then the headline… you’d definitely want to retest the price!

Above all, embrace the principle of kaizen – you will literally grow your online profits by doing so!

What Google may giveth… it may also take away…

Many of us have learned that the hard way. As domainers, search engine optimizers, advertisers and publishers, we’ve seen revenues and profits rise… and plummet… as Google changes its mind about whether it ‘approves’ of our business model or marketing… or not.

Serves us right, eh? If we choose to play Google’s game, we must accept that Google can change the rules any time it chooses. That’s a right Google reserves legally - i.e. when we agree to Google’s terms of use - and as a practical matter, due to its sheer market power.

Or must we just accept it?

When does a company’s exercise of its rights go from simply being ‘unfair’… to constituting an abuse of market power or being ‘unconscionable’?

‘Unconscionable’ is a legal term that has slightly different meanings in different jurisdictions. In general, it loosely refers to contractual terms that are so unfair that no reasonable person would, under normal circumstances, accept them. They typically arise where a party to a contract has much greater bargaining power than the other party and uses this power to extract unreasonably one-sided and onerous rights from the other party.

Successfully proving the existence of excessive market power or unconscionable contracts is generally tough, whether in the United States, Europe, or here in Australia. But there are indications that businesses, large and small, are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Google’s dominance over the Internet.

For example, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recently wrote to the U.S. Justice Department to object to the Google-Yahoo search advertising agreement. And, at the other end of the spectrum, there’s the letter sent by the lawyers of Dan Savage, owner of Sourcetool.com, to voice concerns about Google ratcheting up his Adwords prices due to low Quality Scores.

Warranted or not, I bet those letters to the Justice Department are piling up. Whether it should - or is able - to address some of the concerns remains to be seen.

You know, I would much prefer to see the marketplace - rather than the government or the courts - sort out who wins and who doesn’t when it comes to market share, sales, profits, etc. I’m not convinced that Google is abusing its market dominance. But one thing IS true: none of us can afford to rely on Google for our livelihoods.

Source: Joe Nocera, “Stuck in Google’s Doghouse”, The New York Times, September 12, 2008, Anna Johnson, “ANA Objects To Yahoo-Google Ad Deal”, Kikabink News, September 15, 2008

If you’ve been involved in direct response marketing for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of the concept of ‘lifetime customer value’ (LCV). Indeed, you may have heard various marketing experts extol the virtues of LCV as being the chief indicator of how much you should spend to acquire a customer.

For instance, if you know that the total or lifetime gross profit generated by an average customer is $100, you know that you can afford to spend $95 in marketing costs to acquire that customer and still make money ($5).

But there are two MAJOR problems with blindly letting LCV dictate your marketing spend. The first problem is, perhaps, not so worrying. But the second can be FATAL to your business.

The first problem is this: while LCV may be used to indicate how much you CAN afford to spend to acquire a customer, it shouldn’t be used to indicate how much you SHOULD spend.

Sure, you can spend $95 to buy an average customer and be comfortable in knowing that you’ll still derive $5 in real profit from that customer. But do you want to generate $5 in real profit… or $10… or $50?

Perhaps there is a better use of your money that can generate much more in real profits for your business. It might be investing in an alternative form or marketing… or it might be focusing on an entirely different target market altogether.

Now, if you understand that LCV is a benchmark rather than an indicator of how much you should spend on marketing, this may not be an issue.

But here’s where blindly relying on LCV can be a HUGE problem… and one which could literally SEND YOU BROKE.

Let’s consider an example to show you the FATAL FLAW in relying on LCV to determine your upfront marketing spend:

• The lifetime of your average customer is 2 years.
• During their lifetime of 2 years, the average customer generates $100 in gross profit.
• You calculate that you can and should spend an average of $50 to acquire a customer.

Nothing wrong with this picture, right? You can afford to spend $50 on customer acquisition because you’ll realize $50 in average profit net of marketing expenses per customer you acquire.

But what if your CASH FLOW is such that you can’t afford to wait until your average customer generates that overall $100 in gross profit?

In other words, let’s say you spend $50 on customer acquisition in Year 1, while your customer generates an average gross profit of $30 in Year 1 and an average gross profit of $70 in Year 2.

Now, because your marketing expense exceeds your average customer profit in Year 1, you experience a loss of $20 per customer.

That’s fine… assuming you have $20 in spare cash per customer lying around. Because if you don’t… your business is in trouble!

Which means you can’t simply rely on LCV to determine how much to spend on customer acquisition. You also need to bear in mind how much you can afford given your cash flow situation.

In this example, assuming you don’t have any sources of cash apart from sales, you can really only afford to spend $30 up front. Spend any more and you’ll go broke.

Of course, if you DO have cash flow from other sources, you can s pend more. It all depends on how much spare cash per customer you have when it comes to outlaying your customer acquisition dollars. If, for example, you have an average of $10 in spare cash per customer, you can afford to spend $40, rather than $30.

In fact, since you’ll make so much more gross profit per customer in the second year ($70), then after the second year and an ongoing basis, you should theoretically have this money available as spare cash to enable you to spend an average of $50 per customer. Well, that’s the theory… but it assumes you retain all profits for future marketing expenses.

Realistically, you probably won’t reinvest ALL the money you make into marketing - and that’s why it’s important to keep track of CASH FLOW - not just LCV - when determining how much you spend on customer acquisition.

Amazing isn’t it?

You’re the one building an Internet business… you’re the one who’s taken the risk and invested your time, effort and money into making your business successful… you’re the one who continues to overcome challenges and setbacks… you’re the one who’s steadily achieving better results, more sales, more profits…

And yet everyone else has an opinion about what you should and should not do in your business!

Now, there’s nothing wrong - and plenty right - with considering different ideas, insights, observations and suggestions… FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE QUALIFIED to give you those ideas, insights, observations and suggestions.

But those people probably make up about 10 percent of all the people freely giving you advice on how to run your business. The vast majority of advice givers are probably the LEAST QUALIFIED.

You may love ‘em, but your friends, family, in-laws, old work mates and neighbors are probably not in the best position to judge whether selling widgets online is a good idea or not.

The fact is…

Most advice comes from most people… most people are not doing what you’re doing… and, consequently, most people’s advice doesn’t count!

Here’s my simple rule of thumb: before you listen, let alone follow, someone else’s advice about something - ask yourself: has this person achieved or are they achieving what they’re giving me advice about?

If not, you’re probably better off ignoring what they say (as harsh as that sounds) and finding someone who really is qualified to give you advice.

Of course, that’s just my opinion…

What’s the greatest asset in your business?

Your people, right?

That includes you and your employees (if any)… but also your contractors, consultants, advisors and coaches (if any).

Look at any successful business - online or offline - and you’ll find that their success is almost solely due to having a great team.

A team that generates far greater value (and ultimately profits for the business) than what it costs (in terms of salaries, consulting fees and other expenses).

So what does this have to do with Internet marketing?

Everything! You and your people are the “who” and “how” of optimizing your marketing. Hire or engage the right people, manage them properly, and they’ll deliver the marketing results you want.

And in case it isn’t clear by now, I do recommend engaging experts rather than trying to do everything yourself.

Not only are you unlikely to be an expert in every aspect of Internet marketing, but your time is simply better spent orchestrating rather than doing.

Even so, to get the best and most out of your hires YOU must properly manage and leverage them.

Easier said than done, right? Well, let me point you to a resource that will help you: it’s a FREE report on how to manage people: “How To Be An Outstanding Manager - The 8 Vital Keys To Managing People Effectively”.

You can download it here:

==> The 8 Vital Keys To Managing People Effectively

Here’s how a site upgrade can positively impact the bottom line.

Mint.com, a personal finance site, has just upgraded its look. Apparently, its fresher, cleaner design has seen conversions lift by up to 20 percent over the old version.

With 350,000 registered users and $11 billion in assets according to TechCrunch, then, at current growth rates, such increases in conversion rates may well translate into hundreds of thousands more registered users within the next year. And that means substantially more sales and profits.

Source: Jason Kincaid, “Redesigning For A Reason: Towards Better Conversion Rates”, TechCrunch, August 18, 2008