March 31, 2005

Internet Marketing: How NOT to write a sales letter!

Guys I just had to post this! It is so funny

Money Secrets

The thing about this sales letter that shocks me is that despite it being hard for me to believe (mainly because of the pictures and bad grammer) this particular product is ranked 30 or something in the business to business category in clickbank.

So people are believing it and actually buying it!

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 8:44 AM | Comments (0) | Internet Marketing | TrackBack

March 30, 2005

Endurance Kart Racing: Round 1 2005

Where have I been? Recovering from a grueling 6 hour endurance race thats where! Man am I out of shape as are the rest of the team also.

Yes on Sunday we raced at Sandown park in round 1 of the British Endurance champs. Qualification on Sunday saw us attain 18 place on the grid out of 40 karts with only 1.5 seconds seperating the whole field. well done Nick for that 46.867 time! It was not untill my drive that I realized how much I had let myself go since last season ha ha :( Serious back ache only 20 mins into my drive with over an hour to go is not good, and with only 9 seconds on the straight in which to try to relax your muscles you dont get much of a break around SP!

We had our usual run of bad luck with a front stub axle snapping whilst Chris was on a fast bend. This saw the wheel fly into the pit area and him spin off luckily with no other kart damage. We managed to get him back in and replaced it but by the time he went back out we were 9 laps down and spent the rest of the race trying to get that back. We finally finished in 7th place in Clubman which saw us get 33 points so not a bad result all things considered. Roll on round 2 at Milton keynes in 3 weeks.

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | The 2005 Season | TrackBack

March 25, 2005

Internet Tech: Robots.txt

Now here is a subject thats close to me heart :) Having built no less than 3 robots from scratch I know a fair bit about the subject.

However This post is about another type of Robot altogether, our little spider bots that roam the net 24 hours a day. More specifically this post is about the robots.txt file and why you should have one.

Search engines will look in your root domain for a special file named "robots.txt" (http://www.15dn.com/robots.txt) The file tells the robot (spider) which files it may spider (download). This system is called, The Robots Exclusion Standard. The reason you want a robots.txt file is so you can exclude certain files/directorys from being spidered and indexed. Now why would you want to do that? Well essentially it will prevent pages that you dont want people to see popping up somewhere in a search engine. This is my robots.txt file here at 15dn

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /15dn Subscribe Pages/
Disallow: /Aff/
Disallow: /arp3/
Disallow: /Banners/
Disallow: /BonusBooksGiveAway/
Disallow: /Corey4StepsDownloadBin/
Disallow: /emailTemplate/
Disallow: /Flash/
Disallow: /FreeToSellDownLoadBin/
Disallow: /Funny/
Disallow: /Linkpage template/
Disallow: /MailMerge/
Disallow: /movabletype/
Disallow: /Spam/
Disallow: /wusage/
Disallow: /En/
Disallow: /Templates/

User-agent *

means all robots and then you can see the directorys I have disalowed below that line. The tutorial Here walks you through creating a robots file for yourself.

Of course only spiders that adhere to the robots.txt standard bother to read the file. Malicious robots dont bother and will still try to harvest email addresses etc from your site even if you disallow those pages in your txt file.

Mark...

PS
Have a great Easter weekend

Posted by Mark at 8:53 AM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

March 24, 2005

Endurance Kart Racing Team: A New Year A New Team.

Well the new season is upon the FifteenDegrees-North Endurance team already :)

We are racing this Sunday in London at Sandown park in round 1 of the 2005 Pro kart Endurance series. Lets hope we do better than last year ehhh :)

Team members are

My brother (Who likes to think he is Ross Braun)
Me
Chris
John
And Nick who is new to the team and suitably nervous about his first drive :)

I will of course like last year be following our progress round by round in the Blog. In between marketing stuff of course :)

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | Endurance Kart Racing Team | TrackBack

March 21, 2005

Internet Marketing: Be realistic

Well its Monday again and true to my last post this one is not about horses :) I can't promise I will keep this trend going though!

I had an email over the weekend that is quite sad. Here it is

"I am a failed businessman. I have very little money to spare and so I can't afford to pay you anything at this time, but I do love your products. Please could you send me a couple of your courses free of charge, and then when I get rich I'll send you via paypal double the cost of the material with a healthy bonus! You can then feel free to add me to your list of success stories."

No disrespect to this guy but...

1. You can't start a business with nothing.

Don't misunderstand me here. Many businesses can be started on a shoestring. My Adwords course is just one such business but even that requires some money to run. If you try to start a business while living on $150 a week and with no other money behind you, you're heading for trouble. The slightest hiccup is going to put you out of business fast.

To be honest this is the biggest myth with internet related business in general. That it's easy and can be done with little to no money when you start out! All types of people with little to no experience wake up everyday and think for some strange reason they are going to become millionaires with an internet business! Yes it can be done. Hell even I started out with no experience. But it does take money and it does take time and it does take a lot of hard work too.

I could give this guy a couple of my courses BUT. Nobody ever values what they get for free!

This is very important. We place a value on things, roughly corresponding to the amount of the hard earned cash we've had to pay for them. If you pay £5,000 for a wristwatch, you're going to look after it. If you paid £5, you probably won't care nearly as much. The same goes for information. The faith you have in information, and the use to which you put it, will vary in direct proportion to what you've paid for it. So even if, out of the goodness of my heart, I decided to send this gentleman the information he'd requested, he wouldn't have valued it, and therefore wouldn't have acted upon it.

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 2:27 PM | Comments (2) | Internet Marketing | TrackBack

March 18, 2005

Blogging: When Blog readers demand of Blog Authors!

I had a funny email yesterday regarding my blog here. The author of the email complained about my recent post about Humbug my new oh so cute Mini Shetland.

He basically said that he enjoyed reading my blog, but why did I have to post stuff that is not related to internet marketing all the time. At first I was annoyed it has to be said! Afterall this is MY Blog and I am the author and therfore it's up to me what I decide to write about. Isnt it?

But that got me thinking who is right here? The author or the customer (reader) It's an interesting point with regards to Blogs because if you dont keep your readers happy they WILL delete your feed and go elsewhere. Still in true English oddity and style I dont care :) This is my blog and I am happy that lots of people like it, read it and post comments and such.

BUT

I decide what to write and also when which is why its called slightly off centre. The diary of a slightly off centre internet marketer which means posts about anything at anytime and not always marketing or design related!

Mark...

Have a great weekend and I promise next week to renege on the above and post a whole bunch of money making and marketing stuff just for you :)

Posted by Mark at 12:59 PM | Comments (6) | Blogging | TrackBack

March 16, 2005

Funny: Midweek Blues

This might make you laugh if you have midweek wednesday blues :)

Soon be Friday

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | Funny | TrackBack

March 14, 2005

Internet Marketing: Ask and Ye shall receive!

Well Well.

I thought I would post this rather than bury it in the comments Here

On Friday after much consideration I sent a lengthy email to Google stating the reasons I would like to keep and continue to use Adwords-Masterclass

I was of course the picture of politness and most humbly asked if I could be allowed a dispensation and keep the domain. To say I was shocked when they said yes is an understatement :) One minute im being threatened with $100.000 lawsuits, the next it's ok for me to keep it as long as I

A. Put a larger diclaimer

B. Lose the Google logo im using

Fair enough :) Thanks Google for listening to what is in comparison to you, the little guy :) ta very much your all chaps.

Mark...

PS
Just goes to show that a little humbleness and actually asking foir what you want in a clear way can work wonders for you and your business :)

Posted by Mark at 1:08 PM | Comments (4) | Internet Marketing | TrackBack

March 11, 2005

Internet Marketing: Cease and Desist!

Today I have been served a cease and desist email from a rather large corporation! I dont want to name names here (can you get in trouble for that too in our complicated modern world)?! But they dont like my

Adwords-Masterclass Domain name.

They want me to stop using it and transfer it to them :( Apparently it contravenes the American law (that I hadnt heard of)

Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA")

I have lots of questions regarding this email as you can well imagine! Not least is this? Am I a Uk citizen provision to Amercian laws on an internet that is not policed by any one body and when Im not an American and dont live there? Most confusing huh!

After 5 mins of research I found several other domain names that are similar in nature to mine and also promoting similar products or services. Your comments on this are most welcome. Have a great weekend

Mark...

PS
Any lawyers care to comment?

PPS
David and Goliath! No prizes for guessing my role then huh! Anyone got a packet of gravel?

Posted by Mark at 1:28 PM | Comments (7) | Internet Marketing | TrackBack

March 7, 2005

Life: Sun Shades

Does anyone know why it is deemed important to raise the sun shade on an airplane when coming in to land? I am always getting asked to do this and as yet have never been given a reason as to why?

Is it because if we crash we can all look out and see the ground rushing up to embrace us at 500 mph and thus feel better!

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 12:49 PM | Comments (9) | Life | TrackBack

March 3, 2005

Internet marketing: Become an Expert in Anything!

If you're an expert already in a niche then congratualtions to you :) If you're not then did you know that by reading for an hour every day for a year will place you in the top 5% in that field!

So if you want to become an expert in SEO for example simply read all you can get your hands on. Have a reading schedule each and every day and let nothing intefere with it. Personally I read when I go to bed for at least an hour. I also read on and off during the day, newsletters, courses that sort of thing.

However it is also true that 90% of people do not apply what they read or aquire! Drag yourself out of that 90% group and then you will experience success.

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 1:19 PM | Comments (0) | Internet Marketing | TrackBack