Mark Kline from Aweber stopped by and left a comment here about using Aweber and Feedburner:

http://www.aaronbrandon.com/feedburner-vs-aweber/#comments

Here’s the updated article he referred to:

Can I Use FeedBurner Feeds to Make a Blog Broadcast?

- Aaron Brandon

Here’s some audio I put together about my Audio Product Creation course:

Remember, the special to get the course for only $35 ends Thursday Jan.31 at 12 noon pacific time…

http://www.AudioProductCreation.com

- Aaron Brandon

I’ve just put the final touches on my new course Audio Product Creation.

On my blog, I mainly talk about screen capture products. The reason why is simple… they take very little time to create, and have a higher perceived value than most other types of products. However, audio products have a high perceived value too and can be used in many different ways, such as podcasts and audio CD’s.

So, I decided to come out with Audio Product Creation. It’s a step-by-step video course showing you how I edit audio for my own products.

http://www.AudioProductCreation.com/

Using the information in the course, you should be able to crank out some decent audio without pulling your hair out (that’s pretty much what I did when I tried using some more complicated editing software). The software I use is easy to learn and simple work with.

http://www.AudioProductCreation.com/

For the next 24 hours, you can get “Audio Product Creation” for only $35. After 24 hours, I’ll be increasing the price to $100.

You have from now until 12 noon PST Thursday to order the course for the $35 price.

http://www.AudioProductCreation.com/

 - Aaron Brandon

Michelle MacPhearson sent me an e-mail a few days ago asking if I could try her new course called “30 minute backlinks”.  I agreed to do so in return for my input.

Well… I was blown away with her course!

If you’ve ever downloaded any free software on the internet, you’ve probably realized there are a ton of software directories out there. Imagine if you could get a link back to your website from all those directories… do you think it would boost you rankings? Bring in more traffic?  It does!

But what if you don’t have your own software product to add to those directories?  Well, Michelle found a way in.  And it takes only minutes to set up… about 30 minutes to be exact.

She’s giving a nice discount for those who purchase her course in the next 48 hours (45 hours at that time I’m writing this).

You can get it for just $40. After those 45 hours are up, she’s raising the price to $100.00.

Anyway, here’s the link (not an affiliate link) to her course:

http://www.30minutebacklinks.com/smdspecial.php

- Aaron Brandon

I’m referring to Keith Goodrum.

Check out this post he wrote about “breaking the last bond to the pitch-a-thon marketing ezines”:

http://www.keithgoodrum.com/unsubscribe-run-away-run-away/

Good Stuff. He’s definitely on the road to becoming a 2%’er.

Now… what to do with this rum a fan sent me… They must have taken my post title seriously.

- Aaron Brandon

I received a few e-mails asking for the password to the last post.  Sorry about that… I wanted to test a new plug-in for mp3 files, but it didn’t work. It was rather odd considering I followed the instructions to the T.  They didn’t work!

Well, I might as well make that a lesson. If you’re going to give someone step-by-step instructions, please, make them simple, and make sure they work. I do that with my procedures. They’re very simple. In fact, a student of mine recently asked me:

“Is it just me or are the procedures and Blogcast actions really simple?”

I was a bit confused by the question. Am I supposed to make them really complicated or something? I’m sure I could do that… or you could do that yourself. Just skip some of the steps… instead of starting at step 1… just jump to step 4.  Of course, you’ll probably miss something, probably something important, but it will end up being more complicated.  Sorry I made them so simple! I have to admit, the question gave me a good laugh…

Oh and, the password for the last entry is “test”. I know. Very secure, and very original. It really won’t do you any good considering the plug-in doesn’t work right, but, if you could just do me a quick favor and try it yourself, in case the problem was somehow on my end.  Thanks!

 - Aaron Brandon

Testing audio:

Edit: It works, now. :) 

- Aaron Brandon

I often talk a lot about creating screen capture products on my blog. The reason is, they have very high perceived value. E-books on the other hand, have a very low perceived value. But, both do have their place, and, either one can be easily created from the other.

Let me explain that. Let’s say you have written an e-book. What does it take to convert that into an audio file? All it takes is someone spending the time to narrate that into audio using audio editing software.

Now let’s look at it from the other way around. What if we have an audio product, and want to turn it into an e-book. Well, you can actually narrate that too! There is speech recognition software that you can use to turn your voice into text. Or, for a small expense, you can outsource that task and have someone write a transcript.

So why would you want to do that when I’ve already said that e-books have a low perceived value?

Well, there are customers who do prefer data in different formats. Some like reading text at their own pace, or so they can just copy and paste notes into their computer. Audio would need to be translated into writing with a pen.

Do you see where I’m going with this? You can create another product by simply converting your previous products into other formats.

So I’d like to get back to my e-book example. Let’s talk about turning an e-book product into a product with higher perceived value. The best way to do this would be to simply read the e-book out loud while recording your voice into audio editing software. I recently did that for a few of my blog articles, which I will later turn into a product.

I know some people who have tried reading articles and e-books into audio editing software in the past, but it never seemed to turn out quite right. It just didn’t sound natural, unless the e-book had been written in the same way they spoke.

That’s the key to turning any text into a nice audio presentation. Write just the way you speak. Later, you can turn any writing into audio, and you’ll be able to turn that audio into a product, which has a higher perceived value than just an e-book. Then you could even go physical, and burn those audio files to a CD.

How far have you gotten? Are you still coming out with $20 e-books? Or, will you start cranking out some high end audio stuff? Let’s make that happen!

PS - Look out for my course on creating an audio product in the next few days!

- Aaron Brandon

“It’s not ready yet…”

“It doesn’t look good…”

“Nobody will like it…”

“I sound funny…”

“I look funny…”

“Common man, it blows…”

Have you used any of those phrases (or similar) as an excuse before? I did at one point in time. So have some of my friends.

If that’s you right now, you need to face the fact that… your product may need a bit of work. I say that because it’s fact. I’m sure you could do more to it before it’s ready to release. Believe me, anyone could do that. I could always add something else to my own products. All it would take is some more time.

But… there’s a point when enough is enough. What’s important is the value you’ve put into that product.

So, how do you know when there’s enough value in your product before you release it? That’s simple to find out. You just give it away. If that sounds weird to you, maybe… you’re weird. For example, have someone else review the material. Or, send it to any desired amount of people. Your close friends and family might not be the best reviewers. If they’re good friends, they’ll be more likely to give you a nice thumbs up, pat on the back kind of review. These are not the ones to send you product to for review. You need someone you don’t know… someone who might even be a potential customer.

That’s what I’ve done in the past. It works. You get honest reviews. Sometimes you get someone that watches your course, but doesn’t give you any feedback at all. Yeah, too bad. It happens sometimes, but it isn’t worth being concerned about that, nor is it worth you having high blood pressure over it.

It can however end up killing two birds with one stone. You get a review, and you get a future customer. I think drug dealers do that… “here’s a taste of the ‘good stuff’ “, then you’re hooked. Though it doesn’t always work out that way, you’ll usually get enough feedback to determine whether you’ve provided enough value.

So where do you find these people?

Here comes the “F” word…

Forums. This is a good place to get feedback. You can find a forum for any market. Of course, let me warn you that you do not want to spend much time in forums. They’re full of forum junkies. You want to seek out a few people who fit your desired customer. If you have a new product on puppy training, it isn’t hard to find a topic for “boundary training a puppy”. That’s a real example. There’s someone looking for that information. If your puppy training product has that information in it, that’s who you’re looking for.

But… don’t be that annoying forum user who has 1 post to their name and starts contacting people you don’t know. Get familiar with that forum first. Make ten value adding posts at the minimum. If you know the answers to other members topics… leave a solid answer. If you can come up with a helpful topic that other members will enjoy reading, do that. But do not spam.

Once you’re familiar with the forum and have done the ten post minimum, you can begin contacting other users who have questions. If your product answers that question, or more questions that one person could have, send them an e-mail or private message. Provide a link to your course, and ask them for their honest feedback. Yes, it is that simple, dude.

- Aaron Brandon

This Aaron Brandon guy e-mailed me like 10 times within a minute… crazy guy!

I’m not sure what happened, but my autoresponder sent out the last 10 blog announcements to my list. I’m trying to figure out what triggered that to happen. In any case, if you get 10 e-mails from me in a row, just delete them.

Thanks,

- Aaron Brandon

I’ve decided to re-release my report on how to run a multivariate test using MuVar and Aweber (or any other autoresponder).

This time, it’s for only 24 hours.

If you need a bit more of a description, you can read the previous special offer I wrote, here: http://www.aaronbrandon.com/?p=190

This is where you purchase the report: http://www.aaronbrandon.com/special.html

After ordering, you’ll be sent to a thankyou page. From there, you’ll simply enter your name and e-mail address in the form provided, hit the submit button, and you’ll be sent to the page with the report. You will also receive an e-mail from me with the URL to access the report.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS OFFER ENDS ON THURSDAY AT 12 NOON SHARP (PST).

I DON’T WANT ANY OF MY READERS TO HUFF AND PUFF BECAUSE THEY MISSED THIS SPECIAL. SO IF THIS IS OF ANY INTEREST TO YOU, GRAB IT WHILE YOU CAN!

- Aaron Brandon

I was recently asked which service was better. Feedburner or Aweber.

I couldn’t answer that question. Feedburner is a news feed management provider. Aweber is an autoresponder. Both are used for different purposes. But, you can also use Aweber to broadcast your blogs RSS feed to subscribers.

The reader who asked the question was probably wondering which service was better to use on a blog so readers can subscribe to blog updates. I haven’t used Feedburner before, so I don’t know all its features.

Using Aweber’s blog broadcast feature has worked brilliantly for me. You simply enter your blogs feed into Aweber, customize an e-mail which is sent out regularly to subscribers, create a web form, and start advertising the benefits of blog updates to your readers. It’s no secret that I’m using a Blogcast. I created the Blogcast course so other blog owners could build lists of their own. The purpose of it is to get your readers back to your blog.

Recently, my friend James Brausch moved his blog to a new website. If most businesses did that, they would immediately lose most of their readership. They would also lose a number of their customers. James didn’t. He uses a Blogcast with Aweber. He was able to move his blog, and continue to send out e-mails to his list of readers (a main source of repeat traffic). A minor adjustment to the e-mail he sent out was made, and that was just about all there was to it.

Did you catch that last benefit? If you did, you now know that a Blogcast is portable.

So, you should certainly see the reason for a Blogcast.

It takes less than $20 per month for an account at Aweber, and 30 minutes of your time to get the Blog Broadcast working.

You can get the whole course here: http://www.blogcastcourse.com

- Aaron Brandon

No, Alexa is not the name of a girlfriend of mine. Sorry if the title was at all misleading. 

If you read this blog entry: http://www.jamesbrausch.org/reasons-for-moving/

He has a link showing his Alexa ranking. How how the heck did he do that? It’s like a huge increase in the amount of traffic to his website. Pretty incredible… almost unbelievable. Do you think he’s cheating Alexa or something like that?

- Aaron Brandon

I just found a pretty good blog post which really sums it all up… which is good, because now I don’t have to write a big long blog entry like this one:

http://www.doshdosh.com/20-quick-ways-to-increase-your-alexa-rank/

- Aaron Brandon

As some of you may know, I do my work on my laptop… well I should say “notebook” because it’s huge and stops the blood circulation to my legs when it’s on my lap. But that’s another story. Where was I going with this…?

Oh yeah, my notebook runs on Windows Vista. The Alexa Toolbar does not work on Vista. So, I did some searching around and found some suggestions for those Vista users who might want some alternative.

Alexa Toolbar Rocks!

(I know you’re confused, I just said it sucks… so here’s why) 

• It works with Internet Explorer… I’ve got that.
• It works with Firefox… I’ve got that too.

But when I go to http://www.alexa.com/site/download I get the following message:

“The toolbar currently does not work with Windows Vista. We are working on a fix and hope to release it soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!”

WHAT!? They hope to release it “soon”? I really hate the word “soon”. Why? Because it’s very often used instead of the word “never”. That’s right. I think I can recall seeing that same message a number of months ago. Nothing new to report.

So here are a few suggestions:

http://compete.com/

http://www.quantcast.com/

http://www.comscore.com/

http://www.hitwise.com/

http://www.netratings.com/

Richard Lee wrote about these alternatives back in November. Here’s the link to that post:

http://richardlee.com/?p=91

For now, can someone PLEASE tell me what my Alexa rank is!? If you’re running Vista too, you might as well make a good guess for me.

;) 

- Aaron Brandon

How do you determine whether a prospect is looking for free information, or has their credit card in their hand ready to buy?

That’s something I learned when I ran a number of Adwords campaigns. I don’t do that anymore, but the market research process involved has stuck with me. Even if you don’t work with Adwords, this lesson still has plenty of value for any online business.

So let me give you an example of what I’m talking about…

Let’s say Joe is interested in creating his own audio or video product. He’s been told he needs a good microphone to record audio, rather than using his laptop microphone, which is pretty crumby.

He didn’t catch any of my blog entries, so he has absolutely no idea what to look for.

He goes to Google and types in “Microphone”.

At this point, if we owned a website and he happened to land on our page, we have no idea whether he’s a potential buyer or just an information seeker. He could actually be looking for “microphone tips”, “microphone jacks”, “free microphone”, “microphone soup”, etc. We don’t know. Better provide him with some options.

He see’s a number of informational websites for all types of microphones. Some sites are also about studio microphones. Hmm, maybe the search term was a little too generic. He knows he’s looking for a microphone, but it’s for a computer. So he changes his search term to “computer microphone”.

Ah… the first site in the results shows “computer microphones, Headsets & Microphones”. He enters the site.

He see’s a microphone he likes… it’s the Plantronics Audio 500 USB headset. It happens to be in his price range. He’s getting a little excited.

At this point, we know what he’s looking for. We still can’t be 100% percent sure if he’s really going to buy it.

He goes back to Google because he wants to find some customer reviews of the product. So he searches for “Plantronics Audio 500 USB headset review”

At this point we know he’s serious about this product. If he finds a good review, there’s a good chance he’ll buy the product. If he finds no reviews, or poor reviews, he’ll probably go back a step and look for a different product. Some people tend to type in “compare”, “best”, “best rated”, before the keyphrase.

A number of the top ranked sites didn’t have any signs of customer reviews, but further down in the results he was able to find a review from bit-tech: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/02/01/plantronics_dsp_500/2

Apparently, the speakers aren’t great, but the mic performed well in Skype and gave the reviewer “a clear and well-pitched recording” and “the mic is clearly capable of handling basic VoIP”. Joe doesn’t care much about the speakers, he just wants a good microphone. This review was helpful. He’s determined to buy it, he just needs to find a website that sells them.

Again, he goes over to Google, but now types in “buy Plantronics Audio 500 USB headset”.

At this point, if he finds a website that sells this product, there’s a very good chance he’ll order it. He has made the transition from seeking information about a product, to seeking a retailer.

He clicks on the first result, which takes him to Amazon. He’s reassured that his choice IS, in fact a great headset because he notices that Amazon has 118 customer reviews and has an average rating of 4 stars for the headphones.

Some people go even further and look for bargains. They’ll type in such keywords like “cheap” and “discount” in front of the rest of the search phrase. These people are still potential buyers, and not information seekers.

Now we’ve seen Joe go through all of the phases from potential buyer, to buyer. Here are the keyword phrases he searched through:

1. microphone

2. computer microphone

3. Plantronics Audio 500 USB headset review

4. buy Plantronics Audio 500 USB headset

Interesting how they get more specific, and longer…

- Aaron Brandon