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

I recently received an e-mail from Richard Lee showing me a new CD product (or “newest baby” as he called it) he created.

But in the e-mail, he wasn’t asking me if I could promote the product, or anything like that. He e-mailed me because he just wanted me to “check out the graphics” of his new CD because he used a product of mine that assisted him in the creation.

The product Richard Lee sent me a link to was The Tabacon Debrief. Though I highly recommend Richard’s product, I’m not writing this for the sake of promotion. I actually already promoted this product in a previous entry.

Anyway, Richard Lee was thanking me because he had used the product DVD Case Cover Creation to make the cover art for The Tabacon Debrief. I was flattered… But was actually more impressed because he didn’t use the product exactly the way I teach in the course.

In DVD Case Cover Creation, I instruct the viewers to download the free trial of the software “Adobe Fireworks”, only because that’s just the software I’ve used for several years to do graphics editing stuff. But Richard didn’t do that. Richard used a different graphics editing program.

He instead decided to use Open Office Impress (a program like PowerPoint) because he already had it and was more familiar with it. It turned out that there were quite a few differences between the two programs. But Richard (a smart guy) figured it out as he went along using the videos in my course to practice the same techniques in Open Office Impress and applied them.

So, if you’re considering creating a DVD case cover for your next product (it doesn’t make a difference if it’s a CD or a DVD), then I encourage you to try the DVD Cover Creation course. It’s only $20 dollars, and probably be the best $20 you’ll ever spend to learn how to design a case cover.

Interested?

Here’s the link to the course: DVD Case Cover Creation

- Aaron Brandon

I’ve been seeing this new “widget” (as they call it) named BlogRush pop up on all sorts of blogs lately, that I can’t resist at least mentioning something about it. I’m sure several readers of mine would like to wonder why there isn’t one of these “widgets” on my blog.

I’ll tell you exactly why…

It’s one of my business principles to only use reliable, heavily tested technology which assists my readers and processes. If you’ve followed any news about this widget, (and I’m only calling it a widget because that’s really all it is and I’d like to avoid mentioning the name of it) you’ll know that it was released prematurely without being thoroughly tested. How do I know this? Because I’ve simply been following the news… here are a few of the latest headlines:

Quality Audit Complete

10,000+ Blogs Being Removed

Phase 2 Update

Phase 2 Feedback

In fact, I’ve even seen the “results” from another internet business blog… it wasn’t anything to blog about, so I didn’t.

The main page of the blogrush site claims to “drive a flood of targeted readers to your blog”. That’s interesting, because I thought I already had a widget that did exactly that. Oh yeah, I made a course on how to do that!

It’s called The Blogcast Home Study Course. It’s an online video course which guides you step-by-step how to create a blog broadcast which will automatically send an instant e-mail to your blog readers each time you post a new blog entry.

I’ve been using my own Blogcast for over a year. It works (and I’ve got the data to  prove it). Once you’ve convinced your blog readers enough times to add themselves to it, you’ll witness that flood of traffic everyone loves talking about.

Even if you don’t have a blog yet, it’s no problem, the course also covers everything you need prior to installing the Blogcast.

In fact, I’ve gone ahead and temporarily lowered the price to $15 (regular price is $50) for my blog readers who don’t own a copy yet.

Here’s where you can get the course: http://www.blogcastcourse.com/

(Note: The sales page will still show $50 as the price, but you’ll see it’s only $15 on the order page.)

Here’s the link if you’d rather have the course on CD: http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00DK57QD

I’ll be raising the price back up soon, so if you’re interested in grabbing the course for just $15, you’d better hurry.

- Aaron Brandon

Are you stuck reading a bunch of success or business books? Did you know you can find very useful knowledge which you can be applied to your business in “out of the ordinary” type books? Here’s an example of one book I’m reading that’s somewhere out of the ordinary…

The book is: ”The Toyota Way – 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer” It’s about the Toyota production system and explains many differences about them, vs. their competitors.

It’s a fascinating book, but how in the world is a book on automobile production going to help me with my business? I sell information, not cars!

The book tends to talk quite a bit about inventory, systems, processes, goals, continuous improvement, and more. Do those few things sound like important parts of a business? They are, very important! I use all of them in this business. In fact, I’ve even found more than one way to make improvements to my intern program. It runs on multiple procedures I use to continuously improve my business.

So what are you reading? I don’t think Harry Potter can help you with your business, but I haven’t read it, so I wouldn’t really know.

Have a great weekend!

- Aaron Brandon

This last weekend I saw two new movies. One was an action film, the other a documentary.
I’m sure most movie watchers can guess which movies I watched just from that information.

The first movie was Live Free Or Die Hard. You may remember the previous Die Hard movies from a number of years ago.

Here’s one thing that was portrayed in the movie that I really thought was well done. Hackers have taken over just about everything you can imagine that are connected to computers or the internet in some way. At one point, they manage to take over all of the television channels in the United States. People who were tuned to the news, are now tuned to a picture of the capital building…or was it the white house? Doesn’t matter. In any case, the building suddenly blows up. Everyone is now in shock over what they just thought they observed.

The people in D.C. who are able to run and view the building do so, and to their surprise, it’s still standing. It was just special effects.

Of course, someone unable to see the building in person might wonder if this was real or fiction. You could just call a friend and ask if what was on television was real. Oh, one more problem, the phone lines had been hacked and they’re out now too. Millions of people are now stuck with an image of what might be happening to their country. A situation much like The War of the Worlds being read over the radio in 1938.

What’s your solution to this problem? Would you simply believe everything you saw on television? Do you believe what you see and hear on television, now?

The other movie I saw was Sicko, Michael Moore’s latest documentary. It was very well done. I recommend you see these movies when you have a chance. Oddly enough, this film also mentioned how most people are simply tuned into ridiculous media on television.

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!