Lee McIntyre’s Honest Marketing Blog

112 posts, 352 comments, and 2,037 blocked spams

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Well 2007 is fast coming to an end, and this seems like a good time to review the year that has just gone. This blog came alive on the 23rd June 2007, and at the time I had my internet business would become so successful in such a short space of time.

I remember writing that first post, and I was filled with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, but deep down I suspected that I’d blog for a few weeks, get no visitors, and then leave the existing content to gather digital dust.

I know I always say that you should ‘think positive’, but when I hit the publish button for the first time I certainly didn’t expect that it would be the first act in the explosion of my new business.

Fast forward six months, 112 posts, 352 comments, and 2,037 blocked spams, and things couldn’t be looking more positive for the new year ahead.

Below is a summary of my five favourite posts of the year that was.

From Zero to $20,000 a Month…Here’s How

This was a reproduction of one of my Warrior Forum posts where I explained how my business had grown, and how yours could do the same too.

The original Warrior post attracted over 100 replies, and now proudly sits in the Best Warrior Thread archive.

A New Focus For Lee-McIntyre

In this post I announced to the world my decision to become a full time marketer. This was one of the hardest decisions that I have ever had to make, and I was heartened to find so many of my readers providing such brilliant advice and support.

I’ve since received lots of emails from people saying that this post inspired them to work towards reaching a position where they could make a similar decision, and that has provided me with more motivation to continue marketing than a thousand Paypal receipts ever could.

Behind The Scenes At Lee-McIntyre dot com

This was the first time that I posted any pictures to my blog, and I did so as a few people were beginning to suspect that I wasn’t actually a real person!

Posting pictures of myself and my house was a watershed moment for me, and until that point my internet marketing tasks felt like a hobby. Posting pictures was like crossing a fictional line in my mind, and from this point the work that I did online felt more like a business, and less like a hobby with each day that passed.

Boost Your Profits With My Thank You Page Secrets

In this post I explained how I was making large affiliate commissions through the use of subtle links on the thank you page. Like most of my videos, this was made with the sole intention of giving away solid free content in the hope it could help take your business forward.

A lot of people tell me that I give away too much free content, but my very definite experience has been that the more free content I provide, the bigger the subsequent response when I do decide to sell something.

Make Money Online With Flick Switch Income

In this video I explained how I was using systems to automate traffic generation to my sites, and I’m still getting daily emails asking for more information on this.

I have a note on my desk to write this up, and hopefully I will get round to this as soon as I clear my current projects. I enjoyed making this video even if it was a little different to some of my previous content.

Internet Marketing and Crisp Sandwiches

When I posted this to my blog I had no idea that crisp sandwiches were a food specialty consumed almost exclusively in the UK! An interesting debate followed, both here and on the Standing Start Profit forums, about what the heck a crisp sandwich actually was.

Putting the joking aside, buried within the crisp confusion was actually an interesting point about the dangers of assuming that your target market understands the different throwaway terms that you might use in your marketing.

Mailing Lists Unleashed and a $200 Contest

When I posted this contest I really wasn’t expecting such a strong reaction! I asked my readers to help me decide upon a tag line for my popular Mailing Lists Unleashed ebook, and 41 comments later I was left with the extremely difficult job of picking a winner.

This post was a lot of fun, and was also an excellent community builder, and I’d recommend for you to investigate doing something similar on your blogs in the future.

And that’s pretty much it!

Listed above are my favourite posts from 2007, but now I want to hear from YOU! Which post did you particularly enjoy, and which pieces of advice helped you the most in your online business?

I really need you help with this, and if you can let me know which pieces of content you really enjoyed then I can do my best to provide even more of the good stuff in the future.

So now it’s over to you. Post in the comments below and let me know what you think of my favourite seven posts, and which posts you would have liked to have seen included in the list.

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts….

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Powerful Free eBay Ebook to Kickstart Your Auction Profits Today

If you’re looking for a free eBay ebook showing you how to start making auction profits then you  really need to check out ‘The Big Fat eBay Lie’.

It’s a 100% FREE eBay ebook, and it will show you the real truth about how to start making real auction profits today.

I’ve posted the Big Fat eBay Lie to my blog before, but I keep getting so many messages asking where to find it, that I thought I should post again!

To download the Big Fat eBay Lie for free simply hit the link below now.  Download now and enjoy discovering about the fastest way to start your eBay empire today.

Click HERE to Download NOW

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3 Important Concepts to Help You Make More Money In 2008

Hi the the play button below to discover 3 important elements to help you achieve success in the coming year. These 3 points are often overlooked by greedy marketers but they are the cornerstone of my success, and I hope they can help you take your business forwards.

Did you enjoy this video?

Either way, I’d love for you to leave a message in the comments below. It’s great hearing from my readers so get posting and let me know what you really thought of this video….

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Happy Holidays And Here’s to an Exciting New Year!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic Christmas, and that everyone is looking forward to a fantastic 2008. Personally I’ve eaten far too much Turkey and Chocolate, and probably drank a bit too much beer too.

Wherever you an in the world, and whatever you celebrate this time of the year, I just want to send my best wishes to you and your loved ones.

2008 is full of promise, and if you’re looking to grow or create an online business then make sure this is near the top of your New Year resolutions. One year ago I certainly didn’t think that I would become a full time marketer so fast, but sometimes fantastic things can happen if you want them badly enough.

I will be doing everything I possibly can to help as many people achieve their online dreams this coming year, and you can count on me to be with you each and every step of the way. Have a great holidays, and don’t make the same mistake that I did by eating too much Turkey!

Enjoy the rest of your holidays.

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The Hidden Dangers of Over Optimization

Last weekend I decided that I’d been working far too hard so on the spur of the moment I took my finace to Chester for the weekend. We don’t normally stay in hotels, and when we do we usually stay in the cheapest one we can find!

On this occasion though I felt like rewarding our hardwork so I booked a room in the most expensive hotel I could find. It had all the trimmings, and I was excited to discover that it even had Sky Sports so I could watch the football, DVDs on demand, and high speed broadband too.

Now, we were planning to go out for a nice meal and so I only planned to quickly watch the football on the Sunday afternoon and I probably wouldn’t have used the rest of the amenities, but I liked the fact that my expensive room had these extras.

Well, I THOUGHT my room had these nice little facilities.

When I checked into the room I was pretty shocked to find that I COULD watch the football, but that I had to rent out the sports channel per hour. And I could use high speed broadband but it cost £5.99 per hour (about $12!!).

In fact, the whole hotel room was set up in such a way to upsell me to various products and services, and you really did have to admire the marketing at work. For example, the internet was £5.99 per hour or £9.99 for 24 hours. I mean, who will pay for one hour when you can buy 24 hours for just a small extra amount?

And there was even a room special where for £19.99 I could have the lot for 24 hours, although why you would want to watch football, surf the net, and watch a DVDs at the same time I’m not quite sure!

My point is that the hotel in question had undoubtedly maximised the marketing process at every opportunity, and I’m quite sure that this would add to their bottom line.

Many would decide to order one film, and then be tempted by the price break to order two, and then be tempted to just pay £19.99 and order the lot.

But what’s not so easily measured is the hidden impact that this has on the performance of the business. Yes they’re extracting more dollars and pounds from every stage of their marketing process, but that also has the very serious hidden effect of frustrating and annoying me as a consumer, and I’m sure that over customers in the hotel would feel the same too.

Their stats and tracking will sure an increase in short term revenue, but I was left feeling irritated that I’d just paid £200 for a hotel room and now they wanted an additional £20 to use the facilities provided.

Sure, they may a squeeze a few extra pounds from my pockets of its customers, but at what long term cost?

If you listen to many of the so called experts they will drill into you that you should be ‘hitting’ your customers at every opportunity, and that if you don’t have a variety of upsells, downsells, and cross sells, then you’re leaving serious money on the table.

And while this may be true, how much money are you LOSING by forcing your customers to jump through these hoops. How many customers are you alienating by constantly trying to upsell them to the next level of service?

I’m sure the hotel that I stayed at makes a significant amount of money by squeezing its customers in this way, but I’m equally sure that they lost a few lifelong customers too, although the immediate test results won’t sure this of course.

One thing I am sure on though is that any hotel that disrupts my plans to watch the televised football game on a Sunday afternoon certainly won’t be getting my business again!

So what are your thoughts on this? Do you think that this is just great marketing, or do you think that the hidden cost of this kind of optimised marketing is actually larger than we’re led to believe?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below….

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Time Sensitive Free Money

If you’ve read this blog for a while now then you’ll know that I try and fill it with the best content around. In fact, I try and give you all of the tools and information that you need so that you can create an online business that helps you earn a full time living from home.

If you want to get ahead of the game and get notified about my blog posts BEFORE anyone else then simply enter your email address into the field next to the ’subscribe’ button next to this post.

It’s powered by Feedburner, and is a really clever way to make sure you never miss an important blog post again.

This will make sure you get a friendly notification every time the blog is updated, so that you’ll always be the first to know.  And remember that I often run time sensitive contests with HUGE prizes, so getting notified the second the blog is updated really is a no brainer.

Enter you email address in to the small subscribe form to the right of this blog now, and I look forward to sharing more and more killer content with you in the days and weeks to come!

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The Lee McIntyre Newsletter Issue 14 is Now Live

I just wanted to make a quick post to let everyone know that issue number 14 of the Lee McIntyre Newsletter is live.  If you’re one of my subscribers then you should have received this in your inbox a few days ago.

And if you’re not currently on my list?  Well don’t worry as I have you covered too!

To get access to this exciting issue simply enter your details into the field in the top right of this blog and once you confirm your email address you’ll get INSTANT access to this issue and ALL the previous issues too!

Don’t hesitate and enter you details now and you can enjoy all of this explosive content for free.

In this month’s issue

1. The Real Reasons Why People Read Your Email

2.  The 10k Videos and a Special JV Request

3. Always Do More Than What is Expected

4. Your Goals And You Future

This issue took forever to write, but I really think that it was time well spent.  Anyway, I hope you like the content, and if you have any feedback at all then don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

Enjoy!

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In Praise of Colm Butterly - We Will Never Forget

Writing this post is quite simply one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do, and I’m not afraid to say that I do with tears in my eyes.

It is with deep regret that I have to pass on the tragic news that Colm Butterly sadly passed away on Sunday 16th December 2007, and he will be greatly missed.

For those who didn’t know Colm, then you really did miss out.

He was warm, generous, and unbelievavly giving in everything he did. I lost count of the number of times he helped me out of a sticky situation with his fascinatingly deep techinical knowledge and skills, and you could always count on him to lend a hand.

I called him Colm ‘Man of Action’ Butterly because he was always seeking to help out others, and I’ve never known one man give so much assistance to those around him and expect so little in return.

He was the volunteer site admin over at Standing Start Profits and he was respected and loved by each and every member there. He really will be deeply missed, and our community is much poorer as a result of this tragic loss.

I know that I will never forget the help that Colm gave me, and I know others won’t forget either. He touched my life, he was my hero, and he really was the kind of human being that we should all aspire to be.

My thoughts go to his family as this deeply difficult time, and I’m sure that others would like to join me by passing on their regards in the comments below.

We will never forget…

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New Gadgets and a Touch More Traffic!

The more eagle eyed visitors to this blog will have noticed that I’ve been busy making a few changes over the last few days.  I’ve added a few extra plugins, and altered the layout of the sidebars and optin box too.

Shortly I’ll be making a free video talking about the changes and the reasons behind them, and you can expect to see that sometime over the next week or so.

For now, enjoy the new layout and please let me know if there’s something that you’d like to see added.  This is YOUR blog which means that if there’s something you want to see here then I’ll do my best to get it setup.

Hit the comment button below and let me know what you think about the changes, and don’t forget to tell me if you have anything in mind about what you would like to see added to this blog.

I’m here to help in anyway that I can. :) 

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Resale Rights Blueprint Last 24 Hours Until The Price Goes Up!

I just wanted to make a quick post to remind everyone that the price of the excellent Resale Rights Blueprint will be rising in less than 24 hours time.

If you want to learn about how to make money by selling products with resale rights then I strongly urge you to grab John Thornhill’s action packed 7 day course before the price goes up.

And don’t forget that my $10k bonus videos are still available, and you can get more details HERE.

If you’re sat on the fence with this one then now’s the time to decide as I’d hate for you to have to pay much more when the price rises shortly.

Check it out for yourself at the link below and then don’t forget to grab your $10k bonus videos for free too!

>>> Download Resale Rights Blueprint Now <<<

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The Power of Goal Setting For 2008

I’ve had a brilliant year in 2007, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed the success I have if I hadn’t set firm goals at the start of the year.

There have been times over the last few months when everything has seemed so difficult, but my goals have kept me on track, and helped to keep me motivated during the difficult times too.

I really believe in the power of setting attainable goals which is why I want YOU to share your targets for the year in the comments below.

What do you want to achieve in 2008? Where do you hope to be by the end of the year?

I’d love to hear what YOU want to achieve in the coming year, and hopefully writing it down will help keep you on track towards achieving it too.

Post your 2008 goals below now and I can’t wait to hear what you have planned…

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The Lee McIntyre Newsletter Issue 14 Coming Soon!

I just wanted to post a quick note to say that my newsletter will be hitting your inbox in the next day or so, and I think it’s the best issue yet!

If you’re already a subscriber then you can expect an action packed issue full of the best marketing content online.

And if you’ve not yet opted to receive the best newsletter around then it’s not too late to claim your FREE subscription and get notified the second the next issue is released. Simply enter your details into the big box to the right of this blog and you’ll be guaranteed to receive the first issue the second it’s written.

If you thought that some of the previous issues ruffled a few feathers then you really haven’t seen anything yet. This is going to be explosive!

More to follow…

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How to Score a $10k Joint Venture as a Complete Beginner

If you’re a Lee McIntyre newsletter reader then you’ll know all about the incredible bonus that I’m currently offering for those who download John Thornhill’s new Resell Rights Blueprint.

If you’re sick of emails everyweek offering you tacky bonuses with no real value, then you’re in for a treat when you see what I have in store for you!

You see, if you download John’s excellent new Resale Rights Blueprint now then I’m also going to send you 3 powerful new videos that I made yesterday morning.

This isn’t the usual bonus that’s just a collection of resale righ product which can be found somewhere on eBay for a few cents.  This is brand NEW content that is only available here.

These videos show you EXACTLY how I scored a JV with John Thornhill that helped me earn $10k+ in Paypal receipts alone from his promotions, and how YOU could do the same too.

This is a powerful stuff and will show you how even complete beginners can grab HUGE JVs with people like Planet SMS.  And if you download now then I’m also throwing in a PDF copy of the exact same JV request that I sent to John back in July.

This is the same JV request that led to John’s promotions for my products grossing more than $10k, and you can use this to sculpt your own powerful JV requests too.

To claim your freebies, simply submit a ticket at AskLeeMcIntyre.com quoting your order reference and the phrase “the 10k videos have landed” and I’ll send this powerful content to you within 24 hours.

Getting a JV with John as a beginner really did change my life, and as I explain in the videos, the one JV request that I sent back in July was the catalyst for the fact that I now work from home.

Click HERE to download John’s excellent course now and then don’t forget to claim your FREE bonus videos too.  You’ll regret it if you don’t!

>> Click HERE to Resale Rights Blueprint Now << 

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Free Content For Profit and Cheap Shots of Vodka

One of the myths that I hear a lot online is that it simply isn’t possible to make money by giving away free content, and that if you education your userbase to expect valuable information for zero cost, then you’ll have a fantastically hard job subsequently selling to these customers.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, and this is advice could be dangerous to your business.

Giving away free content in almost any niche will help you earn the trust and respect of your target market, and will ultimately make the act of selling that much easier.

It took me a long time to understand this in the teaching niche, but when I finally grasped the power of earning trust through the zero cost content that I provide, the results were astonishing.

If you give your target customers content for free, then a relationship will be built and many pre sale barriers will be removed.

Here’s an important point though….

A few years ago I went on holiday to a pretty ‘cheesy’ beach resort in Spain.  Many of the local bars gave away free shots of local alcohol in an attempt to get you into their bar where they would subsequently try and sell you more expensive drinks for the rest of the night.

In fact, this policy of giving away free shots as a loss leader was so prevalent that almost every bar on the beach front followed the same policy.  The result?  Well, we usually setup camp in the first bar that offered us freebies and then proceeded to spend our measly allowances on beer and cocktails.

The bar had earned our trust, we were grateful for the freebie, and we were happy to give them the rest of our money for the next few days.

We spent money on beer, cocktails, and bar food, but did anyone spend money on any more cheap shots? Of course not, because you could get cheap shots for free anywhere on the strip!

My point is that giving away free content can be a potent strategy for business growth BUT sometimes you have to be careful about the content that you choose to provide for free.

The bars in Spain had educated the local market that shots of vodka should be free of charge, and subsequently no one would ever consider paying for one.  Likewise, if I had given away Auction Profits Unleashed, then it would have been subsequently difficult to sell Auction Secret Profits as I would have educated my market to expect such content for free.

Earn the trust of your target market through the most incredible free content that you can muster, but you must simultaneously protect and maintain the value of the premium content that you subsequently hope to sell.

And here’s something else to ponder too.  On the Spanish strip EVERY bar gave away a free shot as a profit seducing loss leader meaning that you had to do something really special to stand out from the crowd.

The bar that we spent the bulk of our time in didn’t give away free cheap shots of vodka…they gave away bottles of Champaign if you were in a group of 6 or more!

Now, I just prefer Beer if I’m honest but when someone offers you free Champaign you’re not going to say no are you?!

Giving away free content to earn the trust of your market, while also protecting and enhancing the value of your premium material, is a tricky balance to maintain.  And this balance gets a lot tougher too when people in your market start handing out the equivalent of free Champaign!

Start giving away the good stuff today but make sure that in doing so you don’t compromise the perceived value of your premium offerings or your generosity will be counter productive.

And if you get to the point where everyone else is giving away similar free content?  Well, then it’s time to find the Champaign of your market and give that away too (as long as it doesn’t undermind the value of what you subsequently hope to sell of course!)

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Lee McIntyre Man of Action!

Inspired by a post over on the Standing Start Profits forums I thought it would be a good idea to lift the curtain a little and show a few of my personal pictures.It seemed like a good idea until I noticed that I only have pictures from holidays, weddings, and when I’m being a bit silly!

No worries though, and below you can see a few pictures that show what I get upto when not writing ebooks and making videos…

Above you can see a picture of my back garden. This is where I like to sit outside and drink a cold glass of beer while working. Sadly I live in the North of England, so I usually spend my time working under a blanket drinking hot chocolate, rather than in my garden in the sun!

Maybe posting this picture was a bad idea?! This is me in one of my most natural elements….

And when I say I ‘take action’ I don’t just mean that I write a lot of ebooks. Above you see why I really am a ‘man of action’ by being a bit silly on a tree swing that I stumbed upon!

Maybe posting this picture was a bad idea too?!

More proof that I am indeed a man of action! Here is me and my red jeep on my last holiday. I loved that car.

And now for the the softer side of my character, as demonstrated by me and the cute cat above!

Anyway, that;s pretty much it but I just wanted to give you a little sneak behind the curtain here at Lee-McIntyre.com towers. I hope you enjoyed the pics, and as always, leave your comments below and I really would love to hear from you.

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