Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Jim Cockrum
For the last marketer I feature on this year's list of "The Good Guys of Internet Marketing," I'll feature Jim Cockrum.

Jim started with a simple little ebook "The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay," which detailed the strategies he had used to build a HIGHLY profitable business through eBay. Note, I said "through eBay," not "on eBay."

Jim's ingenious methods made it possible for him and his readers to build relationships with and make sales to people who hadn't even bid on any of his eBay listings. That book has become one of the biggest selling ebooks in history.

Jim followed up with a couple of other very successful books as well: "Turn Auction Traffic into Cash" and "A Part-Time Plan for Massive Success Using eBay and the Internet." Both of them offer the same unique blending of eBay strategies and website strategies to leverage both eBay's huge traffic stream and a website's freedom from the restrictions that eBay places on sales done on their site.

With all the attention his methods have received, he could easily have raised his prices to five or even ten times what he started out charging. But he has held his prices down to their original level that he sold them at five years ago.

In addition, he has developed two training sites that offer some of the best value for the cost around. Jim's My Silent Team site offers dozens of successful marketers as experts sharing their expertise in various areas every day in site forums.

It features a HUGE library of free training materials. Each of the books that you are free to download from the site generally are books that the experts who share them there sell for more than the monthly membership cost of My Silent Team. So you get tremendous value there.

He also has a second membership site, Offline Biz.com. Offline Biz helps marketers who have developed marketing knowledge from working on their own sites to learn how to start profitable consulting businesses for small local businesses in their area.

Both sites are among the most economical training sites I've ever seen. Yet they offer value that outshines many training sites that are far more expensive.

Perhaps that's why Jim has consistently been rated as the most trusted Internet marketing teacher online. Personally, I think you can't go wrong learning from any of the marketers I've featured in this past week.

I urge you to check them out, as well as their free content and their paid products. You will always get far more than you pay for anything that they offer.
Jeff

Labels: Good guys of Internet marketing, Jim Cockrum, My Silent Team

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Ken Evoy
When I made my first "Good Guys of Internet Marketing" list four years ago, Ken was one of the guys I featured. Ken is the founder of SiteBuildIt!, a full featured business-building tool unlike anything else I've seen.

You notice I didn't merely say "site-building tool." I said "business-building tool." That's because SiteBuildIt! (or SBI! for short) doesn't just give you the ability to build a website. It walks you through the process of building a business.

SBI! isn't what I'm featuring here, though. I'm featuring Ken. What makes him someone I classify as one of the "Good Guys of Internet Marketing?"

Quite simply, when Ken developed SBI! he developed something that had never been seen before. Its site-building capability was equal to any site-building tool on the market.

What set it apart was that it didn't merely help you build your site. It walked you through finding a profitable niche for your business. It helped you understand the inner workings of creating a profitable business. It even helped you promote your business once your site was built.

If you went out and bought, separately, all the tools that SBI! contained, it would cost you 10 times the cost of SiteBuildIt! itself. Seriously, it's a huge bargain for all you get.

Four years ago, it was the huge giveaway of value that convinced me that Ken belonged among the Good Guys of Internet Marketing. And although Ken has now stepped back from actively running the company to semi-retirement as the public face of it, that focus on overdelivering value (one of his favorite phrases) continues.

This fall, SBI! added powerful new functionality that lets site owners tap into hot Web 2.0 technologies that most other site-building tools wouldn't even dream of adding. An addition like this could easily have boosted the price of SBI! by 30%, 40%, 50% or more.

What did they do, though? They left the price exactly the same. Not only that, but they also added more flexible payment options to make it even more accessible to anyone starting a business.

That's the philosophy that Ken Evoy instilled in SiteBuildIt! back then. It's the same philosophy of overdelivering that drives SBI! today. And it's why I keep Ken on my list of the Good Guys of Internet Marketing.

I encourage you to check out Ken's SiteBuildIt! Check out also the library of free marketing ebooks that he and his people have created:

• Make Your Site Sell!
• Make Your Knowledge Sell!
• Make Your Content PreSell!
• Make Your Net Auction Sell!
• Make Your Price Sell: The Master's Course!
• Make Your Words Sell!
• The Work-at-Home Mom's Master Course
• The Affiliate Master's Course
• The Service-Seller's Master Course
• The Net Writing Master's Course
  

Each one of these books range from 50 pages to over 800. You get the picture, though. He has provided A LOT of free content.

I encourage you, like I have with the others I've featured on this list, to check Ken Evoy out. You'll find lots of free and valuable content that he has provided, as well as a business-building tool that just keeps adding more and more value to the money that you spend on it.
Jeff

Labels: Good guys of Internet marketing, SiteBuildIt

Living the Adventure of Life
Here's a favorite quote from John Eldredge:

"Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an adventure to live."

This quote brings me back to my screenwriting days, just like last week's did. It reminds me of it from a different angle, though.

The movies are all about adventure. Whether it's an adventure lived out in epic scale or the quiet little adventure of connecting with the love of your life, movies revolve around adventure.

The reason that movies are so popular is because we hunger for adventure. We seek to experience adventure by identifying with the adventures of those people on the screen.

Sadly enough, we often recoil from the adventures that our own lives could be. We shrink back because, with adventure, comes risk.

We want our adventures to excite us without exposing us to risk. We want our adventures to inspire us without them forcing us to face the potential problems they include.

Each of us is capable of living out our own adventure. Each of us is capable of experiencing the excitement of exploring -- and conquering -- new worlds.

When we shrink back from the adventure that lies before us, we only diminish ourselves. Not only that, but we rob the world of what we could have added to it.

Don't satisfy yourself with living out vicariously some fictional character's adventures. Create your own. Yes, you'll face problems. But you'll have the ride of your life.
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Clayton Makepeace
There's a good reason I didn't list Clayton in my "Good Guys of Internet Marketing" list four years ago. I didn't know the guy existed back then. Clayton is a multi-million dollar copywriting master -- one of the best around.

I wasn't into copywriting all that much back then, so I didn't pay much attention to copywriting experts. As my awareness grew, however, about how important good copywriting is to selling, I kept hearing one name over and over again when I talked to colleagues about copywriting.

They'd tell me, "If you want to learn copywriting, you've got to read Clayton Makepeace's daily blog! He gives away so much great information for free every day."

Their advice was 100% accurate. Like I said about Jim Edwards the other day, the tips and strategies he gives away for free is better than what was in almost any copywriting course I've paid for.

The minute the email arrives that alerts me that his next blog post is up, I go to Clayton Makepeace's "The Total Package" copywriting blog to read it. If you want to improve your copywriting, I suggest you do the same.

You can get all you need to get you started in copywriting from his free info. And you can get a master class in copywriting from any of his paid courses that bring his best tips and strategies together in a well-structured format where each lesson builds directly on the last.

The following two paid products are especially helpful for those who want to learn to write more profitable copy in a hurry: Double Your Profits in 12 Months or Less and Steal These Secrets!

Granted, those two aren't free. They will, however, give you the structured learning that will get you writing more persuasive copy a lot faster.

If you're interested in improving your copywriting (and increasing your sales in the process), I think that the best person to check out is Clayton Makepeace. And just about every marketer I've ever talked to about copywriting agrees.

Start with his free blog. You'll learn a lot from that. Then move on to his more structured training. You won't regret it.
Jeff

Labels: Clayton Makepeace, copywriting, Good guys of Internet marketing

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Perry Marshall
Perry, like Jim Edwards, is another guy I missed in my original "Good Guys of Internet Marketing" series four years ago. Time to correct that mistake.

As with Jim, Perry was not all that high profile back then. He was emerging as a leading Google AdWords expert, but I hadn't really seen enough of him to class him among those who overdeliver on their promises to a degree that makes them really stand out.

Now, four years later, I've followed him for years. It's clear that he's a lot more than a one-trick pony when it comes to marketing. And he stands out when it comes to sharing what he knows.

Perry started out with one, excellent product, his "Definitive Guide to Google AdWords." He quickly became recognized as the the top expert in that field.

In fact, most of the other top AdWords guys were themselves trained by Perry. Not only is he the best, but he has also trained most of the other guys who are considered the best.

He didn't stop there, though. He quickly moved on to other strategies as well. And he's given out plenty of free content along the way.

Unlike Jim Edwards, you won't see his articles all over the Web. His philosophy isn't to make himself highly visible through articles. He opts, instead, to give away his content in lengthy autoresponder series that engages fence-sitters until they buy.

I encourage you to sign up for his free newsletters -- as many of them as you can. You'll get lots of information and lots of inspiration as you study his way of setting up his series. Sign up for his free adwords course. Also consider joining his Renaissance Club.

Be aware that the Renaissance Club is a paid newsletter that Perry sends via snail mail. He sends a ridiculous amount free content just for trying it, though. And I doubt that once you get the first issue you'll want to give it up.

Each month, Perry gives tips, describes his recent marketing tests, and basically looks at marketing from different angles that will really open your eyes about marketing.

As I've said with other marketers I've profiled, check Perry out. You'll be happy you did.
Jeff

Labels: Good guys of Internet marketing, Perry Marshall

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Jim Edwards
I don't think I included Jim Edwards in my original "Good Guys of Internet Marketing" series four years ago. That was a foolish omission.

Granted, at that time all I knew about Jim was that he gave out a lot of excellent free content, but I don't know whether I had bought anything from him yet. I ravenously consumed all the tips and strategies that he offered for free and pretty much took for granted all that he was giving.

Basically, even with all the great tips I got from him, I had no idea what all he had to offer.

Over the years, Jim has turned into my most valued mentor. I've talked with other marketers that he has mentored and discovered a curious fact about his approach.

With other marketing teachers, the marketers with whom I've discussed them could always trace our knowledge of them back to some product or other. We would hear of the product, feel that the product was worth buying, be pleased with it, and then grow to be fans of these marketers through the followup information they provided.

Yet, when I talk to people about Jim, none of them can remember what the first product they bought from him was. His free content was spread over the Internet so widely that we all got to know him from that. He was simply everywhere.

He built his credibility through free content. We became aware of his paid products gradually, as he sprinkled information about them into his free articles. Buying from him was not a leap of faith, as it was with other marketing teachers; it was a matter of, "If Jim's free content is this good, his paid content has got to be even better!"

It definitely was. Right now, I'm a charter member of his The Net Reporter training site, and the strategies he teaches there are well beyond anything I've ever seen any other teacher share.

I've seen paid training sites whose material wasn't even as good as Jim's free materials. And the strategies he shares on The Net Reporter are simply amazing.

He takes us step-by-step through strategies that most other marketers -- even big-name marketers -- haven't discovered yet. If you carry out what Jim teaches, there's no way NOT to succeed!

As I've said before, the only way I'd ever cancel my membership at The Net Reporter is if I decided to close my business forever. It is the one and only business expense that I would never cut.

I've described his free content (syndicated across the web as well as on his free IGottaTellYou blog) and on The Net Reporter because they are the clearest examples of why I consider him a Good Guy of Internet Marketing. These are not the only examples of his work, though.

His Mini-Site Creator is an excellent and easy-to-use site building tool for building just about any kind of site you want in a way that helps it bring in profits. His book, "Turn Words into Traffic," is a blueprint into how to achieve the kind of success that Jim has achieved through creating free content.

And he has another, personal growth, membership site of which I have been a member for the past year. That site has proved priceless in helping me overcome obstacles and increase my effectiveness. I can't give you a name or link for it right now. It's currently under wraps until Jim is ready to open it to the general public.

I'll be sure to let you know, though, when that happens. It's the best personal growth course I've ever seen. That seems to be the pattern, though, with any market in which he offers training.

As I did with the marketers I've identified previously in this series, I encourage you to check out Jim's products that I've mentioned, or anything else connected with Jim. He's one teacher I am convinced you can't go wrong with.
Jeff

Labels: Good guys of Internet marketing, Jim Edwards

The Good Guys of Internet Marketing -- Jason Potash and Jason Katzenbach
A few years ago, I listed some people I considered to be the "good guys" of Internet marketing. This list identified marketing teachers who excel at helping new business owners get started. All those I listed gave exceptional value to their students along the way.

It dawned on me the other day that it is high time for me to update that list. It's time to add a couple more and to update what those who made the list four years ago have done to solidify their position on the list.

I'll cover each of them in some upcoming posts. Today I'll cover two of them: Jason Potash and Jason Katzenbach. Jason Potash made my original list way back when. He's no less deserving of that praise today.

I praised him back then for a lineup of products that HE NEVER STOPPED UPGRADING FOR FREE.

Most marketers either stop upgrading their products after you buy them or charge you for each little tweak that they call a "new version." Jason impressed me by adding fantastic new functionality to products for which I paid a one-time fee. I never paid a cent for them after that, but the improvements just keep coming.

He has done that repeatedly with products like Article Announcer article syndication software and Content Composer content development software. He's always improving them. And he never charges for all the extra features he puts into them.

He since has gone on to partner with Jason Katzenbach on some even bigger projects, like Portal Feeder (a complete site-building and traffic generating tool), Traffic Kahuna (for those who want only the traffic-generating parts of Portal Feeder), PPC Kahuna (to help you find sweet spots for your Google AdWords campaigns), and Web 2.0 Mayhem (more traffic-generating tools).

These are all monthly membership tools, but the same applies to them when it comes to constantly adding more features. They never stop pushing more value on you.

They have also come up with lots of totally free tools that are extremely useful. Comment Kahuna helps you find dofollow blogs and get valuable backlinks from them. Keyword Corral helps you find profitable keywords to bring in more traffic. Article Assistant drastically cuts your research time for writing articles and helps you write them much faster as well.

And Jason Katzenbach's John Cow blog not only provides great content for Internet marketers, but also offers a the best book I've seen on how to make money by blogging -- and he offers it completely for free. (You can get it in the upper right corner of each blog page.)

I heartily recommend any of the products I mentioned and anything else connected with these two Jasons. They truly are good guys of Internet marketing.
Jeff

Labels: Good guys of Internet marketing