I’ll be moving to Seattle tomorrow, so I probably won’t be on the computer much this week. I’ll try to put up some more posts on this blog when I’m up and running again. My new course for on creating an opt-in list will be available on this blog (probably Tuesday) for a special price. Have a great weekend everybody!

I said I would be releasing my Adsense Site Creation Course this week, and I would have a special deal on my blog. So for one week, my Adsense site creation course is going to be priced at $30, which is half off the normal price, $60. You can get it for $30 using the link below. The special offer will end June 29th.

http://www.sitecreationcourse.com/special.html

 Edit: This post was originally meant to be posted yesterday! Somehow WordPress set it as “private”. Have a great weekend!

Sometime this week I’ll be releasing one of my new video courses. This course is the “Adsense Site Creation Course” which goes through the basics of how to perform market research and what to do to begin marketing a website. This course will be offered for a one time low price, only here, on this blog. The price will go back up shortly after that. The price for this course will likely be $30 dollars, which is half off from the normal $60 price tag. Stay tuned…

The first thing you need to do before starting any type of business, online or offline, is market research.

If you fail to conduct market research, you’ll just be shooting in the dark. You can’t just throw up a site, product, or build a business on the internet and expect to be earning a pile of cash. It doesn’t work like that.

So, how do you find a good market before you start working on a project? I’m going to recommend to you a tool that you should be using when you perform your research. This tool can be used for any market, and it’s used specifically to spot trends. The tool is Google Trends. You can find it at www.google.com/trends.

Google Trends will show you the “Search Volume” information for the keywords which users enter into Google. If the keyword you type in is simply not searched for enough, no data will be available to view. Google also provides numerous examples for looking at trends. On the main page at the bottom will be a list of keywords. Some are single words, others are multiple keywords together separated by commas. Separating keywords by commas in Google Trends will allow you to compare two different trends at the same time. Currently with Google Trends, you can compare up to five different keywords.

I’ve used Google Trends successfully numerous times to spot a hot, growing market. Have you?

Earlier today, James released his Article Directory Script Munius. If you go right to http://www.jamesbrausch.com right now you can still get it for only $35! The normal price is going to be $105, so don’t miss out. Munius is an article directory script which enables you to allow your website visitors to submit articles to your website. Why is that so important? Because it will build the content on your website, and all you need to do is sit back and relax, or work on more websites! This is all part of the process of automating your website. If you haven’t started yet, you need to at least get Munius.

I’m in the middle of beta testing a new article directory script from James Brausch. This thing is really neat! I’ve been looking for such a script for a while, and never found one I was fond of. The script comes with an easy to update template too. I’m in the middle of customizing it to my own needs at the moment. I haven’t found any major bugs in the script, so I’m sure it will be released any day now. I’ll be sure to post a review on the script as soon as it becomes publicly available. Apparently, if you’re on James announcement list, you will be able to receive a great deal on this script. And I’m not talking about a few dollars off. When Hermusa was released, it was offered to announcement subscribers for only $25, and only $35 to blog readers! Hermusa’s price is $105! You know they got a killer deal, so make sure you do whatever you can to be able to get the new article directory script for a much lower price than over $100, which I am most certain will be the final set price. Stay tuned!

Before Hermusa was released at the end of May, I was able to get my hands on a copy from James Brausch so I could send him some feedback. So I’ve put together a review.

Hermusa is a piece of software which automates your link building process. Since we all know that having backlinks to your website is a main factor for increasing your search engine ranking, why would anyone want to submit their link to hundreds or thousands of link directories individually, one by one?

There are a few other link building software applications I know of, but from what I hear, they never accomplish the task. Some of them only send out an e-mail like the one below:

I'd like to form a long term strategic relationship with your
website because it will give both our sites free targeted
traffic that is totally independent of the search engines.

If you would take a few minutes to add our website,
examplesite.com

to your links page at:
http://www.examplesite.com/link/

Then we will send you free targeted traffic in return.

Once you become our link partner, we will put your
link on our resource area permanently and
give you the opportunity to get more traffic
with us as we grow our website each month.

We limit the number of websites that we place in
each of our categories and constantly rotate the
order of the sites on this page so we can give
more traffic to our link partners.  We'd like you
to be one of the special sites that we list.

Linking to us is very easy.  Your webmaster can
do it in just a few minutes.

First, place a link to our website on your website
using the ready to paste linking code on this page:
http://www.examplesite.com/linkrequest.html

Second, be sure to edit your listing and your contact
information in our system by clicking here:
http://www.examplesite.com/someotherlink.html
Within 48 hours, our staff will verify that you posted
our link and we'll display your link in our
Miscellaneous category
on this web page:
http://www.examplesite.com/linkpage

If you think there is a more appropriate place for your
link, just tell us your choice of category when you
edit your listing by clicking the edit link below.
http://www.examplesite.com/editlink

Make sure our link is posted on your site so when our
staff reviews your site we can make your site a permanent
link partner and send you lots of free traffic over the
years to come! - Sum Moron
Hhttp://www.examplesite.com

Blah…blah…blah. Holy smokes! Who wants to…scratch that…Who has the time to read that e-mail and follow their instructions? If you had 100 of those e-mails a day in your inbox, you might as well just sacrifice your day job and spend hours of tedious work building links to your site - which may never end up helping you in the first place.

So if you have some link building software that does just that, (sends out those lousy e-mails) then you’ll be much better off using Hermusa. Read the wrest of this review though first.

Now, I can’t tell you what Hermusa does exactly, because it does some secret “behind the scenes” work. You’ll never be able to know exactly where all of your links have been submitted. If you’re ok with that, then read on!
However, I can tell you what I think it does.

I think James has developed a huge database of websites which contain link directories. You can find these types of websites when searching a search engine for “add link” “add url” “trade links” or similar. In the database, there are probably a few keywords attached to an “add link” URL. So, if there were a link to a car directory, lets say www.somecarsite.com/links/add_url.php, the database would contain the keywords: “car”, “auto”, “automobile” and so on. That could be a bit hard to follow, hopefully it makes some sense to you readers.
So when you submit a link to Hermusa after entering the keywords associated with your website, Hermusa will scan the database and match up your keywords with similar link directory keywords and submit the link through the submit forms. It’s a bit complex, but unless you’re a software developer, learning how it works may just be a waste of your time. Again, that’s what I think it does.

Alright, lets move on and actually take a look at the Hermusa software. Below you can view the screenshot.

Click Here To See The Full Size Image

Hermusa allows you to enter a URL, Description, and up to 6 different topics which are related to your website. If I were to enter this blog into Hermusa, I would probably enter a few topics like “business”, “entrepreneur”, “webmaster”, “marketing”, and “blog”.

Here’s something unique with Hermusa. When I first tried submitting one of my websites, I had my website description something like: Visit Example.com for New, Articles, Info, and More!

Well, Hermusa doesn’t want me to use the words “Articles” and “Info”. Why? Well, I can name several reasons. If you were going to tell your friends about your website, would you tell them “My website www.example.com offers articles and information, and even some news”? Probably not. I can list you millions of websites with articles, news, and information. That’s just about every site there is on the internet. There’s absolutely nothing unique about your site in that case. A better description would be something like “The widget site lists the 13 top methods for developing a widget factory”. You’ll get a much better results being more descriptive.

Hermusa also comes with instructional videos explaining how to install Hermusa, and how to submit your site.

My Final Thoughts:

Hermusa is a software tool. It will help you accomplish a rather long and tedious task for submitting your link to thousands of link directories. Do you need it? No, of course not. But if you had to choose between spending hours and submitting your site to link directories by searching through search engine results, or just spending $105 (Hermusa’s current price) and have your link on thousands of websites in a matter of minutes, which would you choose? Hermusa Link Building Software

The only requirements for Hermusa are Windows 2000/XP, some speakers, a pair of ears and eyes, and of course, your own site to submit to.

A few months ago, I received the Statistical Copywriting Home Study Course from James Brausch. If you don’t know who James Brausch is, I suggest you read his blog.

He sent me his course and told me I had to promise him I would take action and make my own product and give him feedback. Actually, here’s the exact e-mail from him:

"Here's a copy of the Statistical Copywriting course on me: *Secret Link Removed* You owe me a testimonial once you've watched it. You also owe me a promise to take some action and actually create a product using the information in that course." - James Brausch

We all know that’s wrong, RIGHT?

This course starts with Notepad. Yes, Notepad! Now some people would think that using a simple text editor for their course would kill perceived value. Nope. In my eyes as a website designer. Using notepad is absolutely one of the best ways someone can teach web design, or in this case, sales page creation.

With 12 camtasia videos, his course is packed with every bit of vital information you’ll need to know if you’re serious about releasing a product. If you’re still not ready to take action, and quit your day job, well, you might not want to start with this course. And that’s ok.

So, now we know that nothing else is required to take this course (besides Windows XP and Speakers). After taking you step by step in the creation of your first sales page template, you’ll need to begin working on your headline. If you’ve never created a headline, no need to worry because James includes his famous copywriting scoring software: Glyphius. Alone, Glyphius is priced at $135. Here’s a screen shot so you can see exactly what Glyphius looks:

Click Here To See a Larger Image

Glyphius is a very simple piece of software to use. Though the look is simple, it contains tons of research data for profitable/unprofitable words. I won’t go into detail about Glyphius here, because I’m only reviewing the Statistical Copywriting Home Study Course.

The course doesn’t stop there. James goes through each step for the whole sales page. After creating a headline which scores close to a 600 with Glyphius, you watch how James writes each paragraph individually. First, it’s the product description, then how to insert your product picture. Video 7 shows your how to write a guarantee.

Now it’s time to choose a price for your product. Why not just choose $27 or $97 just like everyone else? Well, according to test results, you should try to avoid using the number 7. Seven scored a -7 in Glyphius! Ouch! James goes over his personal pricing strategies to show you how exactly you can come up with a price your customers will like.

We’re finally getting close to the final steps for launching our product.

In the ninth video of the course, James shows you how to sign up for clickbank. Clickbank is going to be your payment processor. It’s simple to use, and it will enable affiliates to market your product. How awesome is that? The clickbank video itself is just over 20 minutes long. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a course which goes into so much detail for setting up a clickbank account.

The last three steps in the Statistical Copywriting Home Study Course will show you how enable yourself to receive money by placing an order link on your sales page, then two very important parts, how to Get Testimonials, and then how to Post Testimonials.

Sure, you can ask a friend to write a testimonial for you, telling you how great the product is. Sorry, but that’s just lame. If you do such a thing, you will never witness the real feeling a REAL customer testimonial has. When you look at your sales page and see real customer testimonials because your product actually contains value, and you receive feedback from customers telling you how much your product has helped them, you will feel good about yourself.

So, James shows you how and where you should get testimonials for your product. And I should mention, his unique way of doing so is NOT by spamming forums. James does not include any videos on “how to fail”. Sorry to break the news to ya.

Alright, I’ve got to wind it down now, we’ve reached the end!

My Final Thoughts:

Statistical Copywriting Home Study Course by James Brausch was one of the best courses on copywriting I’ve seen in long time. The instructional videos are designed for beginners who have never written copy, and are ready to take action. The course was easy for me to follow and I was able to repeat his process successfully. However, I am not new to web design and uploading files to my web hosting (This is my affiliate link) account. If I were new to web design and uploading files to my website hosting (This is my affiliate link), I would be a bit lost. James does not explain this step.

But there’s good news! James has a newer course “Information Product Creation Online Home Study Course”. That course will guide you through prior steps like buying a domain name and website hosting (This is my affiliate link).

I hope you have enjoyed this review - More to come!

Well, first, this blog is still completely new. I’m going to have to start somewhere. I’ve decided that I will write about my current online ventures, and what I’m learning in internet marketing. First, I’ve decided to review a few new products I’ve recently purchased.

Then, I’ll be writting about some of the current projects I’m working on…well, as much as I can share.

Ok, stay tuned to this blog. You won’t want to miss anything coming up!

- Aaron Brandon