5 Tips To Create A Kick-Butt Mini-Course That Pulls In Thousands of Rabid Subscribers… in a Flash! – Real Estate
5 Tips To Create A Kick-Butt Mini-Course That Pulls In Thousands of Rabid Subscribers... in a Flash!
Jim Edwards
One of the fastest ways to develop, build, and grow your own list of subscribers is to develop a "mini" course with an incredibly compelling promise.
I have personally used "mini" courses to build lists of several thousand subscribers in as little as a week.
A "mini" course is simply a series of e-mails where you teach people a specific skill, set of skills, or reveal other information they really want to know.
In the process of providing this focused, valuable information, you prove to your subscribers that you are THE expert in a particular area - and, you also encourage people to pay you to get even BETTER information from ebooks and information products youve either written or recommend.
An example of a "mini" course offer Ive used with great success is the free mini course at www.7dayebook.com that appears in the exit pop up window when you leave the site. The promise of this "mini" course is strong and compelling. Heres what it says...
FREE eBook Mini-Course
"How to Write and Profit from your own eBook...
while youre still young enough to enjoy it!"
All the registration page asks for is first name and email address... and this mini-course has generated thousands of subscribers!
So heres the basic formula in a nutshell: Strong promise+ low risk+ high perceived reward= Subscribers
Now, if youd like to build your own list of rabid subscribers, here are 5 sure-fire tips for creating a mini- course that truly kicks butt!
Tip #1 - The Promise
If you want to launch a successful mini-course, target an audience with a specific need and then make them the biggest possible promise you can deliver on.
People are pressed for time and rarely see as much value in something they get for free as opposed to something they pay a lot of money for.
Add to this the fact that the Internet gets more and more crowded everyday and you can see that the best offers are the ones that grab peoples attention by making a benefit- driven promise they cant resist.
Even though you offer your mini-course for free, you still must SELL people on WHY they should pay you with their time and attention.
Example: If you want to do a mini-course on real estate investing, look for the biggest and best promise you can make for people.
Lets look at these various promises for identical mini- course content:
Good: How to make a fortune in foreclosures.
Better: How to find and buy a profitable foreclosure within 2 weeks.
Best: How to find and buy a profitable foreclosure property in your area within 2 weeks - using none of your own money!
** The promise you make has everything to do with whether or not people sign up. IMPORTANT: After they sign up, make sure you deliver on the promise.
Tip #2 - Dont reinvent the wheel
Look for existing content - your own or other peoples - you can adapt directly or indirectly into the mini-course.
Hey, I understand youre busy... Im busy too!
Why would you want to spend 2 days coming up with all the content for your mini-course if you already have past information you can adapt!
If you dont have any existing material, then find someone else who has written an article and use that for part of your mini-course - with their permission of course.
Youd be surprised at all the pieces of the puzzle that are out there independently which you could combine into a great mini-course without nearly the mountain of effort you might expect.
Tip #3 - Give yourself lots of chances to make money
One way to build more value into your mini-course and make sure people hang onto your messages instead of deleting them is to put lots of quality links into your mini-course.
This allows people to get additional information on specific aspects of the mini-course.
Some of those links can be to free resources, others to resources where you earn an affiliate commission, and still others to your own products and services.
The more links you have that actually contribute to your students learning the subject of your mini-course and fulfilling the promise you made to get them to sign up, the better your chances of them clicking those links.
If you create lessons people save for future reference because they have great links in them, youll make more money!
For an example look no further than your "in-box"! Almost everybody has email messages theyve saved from other people because they contain links to sites you want to use now or access in the future.
Tip #4 - Build anticipation for the next message
If youre going to take the time to put together the mini- course, wouldnt it be great of the majority of people who subscribed actually read your messages!
If you want to launch a successful mini-course, youve got to rise ABOVE the noise of all the other email messages people receive every single day.
One way to do this is to always end each lesson with a small "ad" or excitement builder for the next message. You do this by really playing up a big benefit theyll receive as a result of reading the next message you promise to send them.
Heres an example:
"The next and final installment in this mini-course will give you five tips for how to get 10,000 visitors to your website without spending a dime on pay-per-click traffic! So stay tuned for the next lesson in 2 days..."
Its a simple, yet very powerful way to build anticipation for the next message into EVERY message you send.
This simple step helps make them look forward to the next message so it gets read... not trashed!
Tip #5 - Tell them what they dont know!
If youre using the mini-course to promote a product that covers a much "bigger picture" of the topic as a whole, constantly remind people that the mini-course is just a "tiny piece" of the whole product.
Remind them of what else they need to know and tell them if they buy the product then theyll get this benefit, and that benefit, and even more specific information.
Remember, you didnt publish this mini-course to practice your typing skills! You are in this to make money, to get subscribers, and to make sales!
Once you deliver quality content that gives people a real taste of whats in store when they actually purchase, then its time to close the sale... you deserve it!
About The Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
Create A Flash Presentation For Free With Open Office – Web Hosting
Create A Flash Presentation For Free With Open Office
Steve Howson
The intentions of this short tutorial are not to teach you how to use Open Office, but rather to show you a quick and dirty way to create presentations and tutorials that can be exported as a Macromedai Flash file.
What is Open Office It is a free, open source, cross platform office suite that has a lot of the same features as popular commercial suites.
Being that its cross platform means it can be compiled for just about anything, Windows, Linux / Unix, Mac, etc..
Using Open Office Presentation -
Basically, if youve ever used Microsoft Powerpoint, youve pretty much used Presentation. Its a slide show or presentation creator that lets you create any style slide show you want.
You can have text, graphics, charts, etc... or any combination
It does not take much to figure out Presentation. You can add text or picture boxes, add designs, add tables and pretty much anything you can think of.
After you have created the presentation, heres where you convert it to Flash:
You simply go in to the file menu and select Export.
A save as dialog box will come up where you can choose the file name, location and the format you want.
From the pull down box you will see the Macromedia Flash SWF option, thats the one you want.
Select the format, pick your location, name the file and press the Save button.
Thats it.. you now have a Macromedia Flash version of your presentation that you can include on your website.
Why whould you want this
Macromedia Flash is pretty much a standard for multimedia on the web, as a result there is a plug-in for almost every browser and most people already have this plug-in.
This gives you the chance to put Flash content on your site without having to play for the Macromedia Suite.
About The Author
Steve Howson is the Webmaster for SG Network Technologies web hosting company.
http://www.sgnettech.com
Flash Deadly Sins that can kill your web business – Web
Flash Deadly Sins that can kill your web business
Alan Steward
Looks like every client wants a Flash site these days but the reality is...as flashy as these sites may look, there are many negatives you may want to consider before delving into Flash.
Deadly Sin One - Long Load Times
This is the most obvious problem with most Flash sites. Flash files can get large in a hurry and if the page takes too long to load, your visitor will move on without even seeing your site. Ideally, you would want your Flash web page to load just as fast as a regular page with text and images. And yes, it can be done!
Problem #1 - Images
The whole reason why Flash was developed was to be able to use vector graphics on web pages. Vector Graphics are infinitely smaller than pixel based images, they can be resized to any size and animated without creating large file sizes. Unfortunately, many designers use regular pixel based graphics like photos in their Flash design and end up with huge files. Rule #1 for good Flash design should be...Use Vector Graphics only!
Problem #2 - Sound
What is a good picture without sound Once you have this great Flash animated page, you want to add sound to it. This is the #2 culprit resulting in large file sizes and slow loads. The trick here is to use loops. Flash Music Loops are ultra short slices of music, that when looped in Flash play great background music sound tracks that load fast and sound great. You can find Flash Music Loops at http://www.flashmusictracks.com These loops that are near CD quality and most are only 15k or less in size. They also offer a free Flash Music Player that allows for the music to continue playing even if the visitor switches to another page, you can even select a different music track or stop the music at any time while browsing, totally impossible with any normal Flash implementation. Another thing that helps keep file sizes down is to use low-res MP3 files for button effects and sound effects. You dont really need 128k MP3 quality when most computers speakers will sound just as good with 24k or 32k MP3s. Another easy file size saver...use mono!
Deadly Sin Two - Missing Links
This fact is often overlooked. When you use Flash Buttons and Links, search engines will no longer find your links on the pages. This can be extremely disastrous for your search engine rankings. Search Engines need to be able to follow links to successfully index your site. Plus, the more well placed links the robot finds on your site, the higher your ranking will be. When you use all Flash, you wont have any visible links and you effectively kill any chance of being found on search engines.
Whats the answer here Use a Flash/HTML hybrid page. Even if you have Flash links, still try to duplicate those links on the bottom of the page in HTML code so the search engines can find them.
Deadly Sin Three - Compatibility
This factor used to be important but today its no longer relevant. In the early days of Flash, many web users didnt have the Flash plug in and they moved on to another site rather than to download and install Flash just to visit your site. This is no longer an issue. 99% of all web users will have browsers that can see Flash pages and you no longer have to design a Flash and Non-Flash Version for your site. If your visitors run for the hills rather than stick around to visit your site its the load time, not compatibility that is to blame.
So what is a man to do You want Flash but you still want quick load times and good search engine rankings. It can be done but you need to design your Flash site with all these factors in mind. It is possible to design Flash Pages that actually load faster than many regular pages with lots of graphics. A good hybrid design with enough HTML elements can get you ranked well with the search engines. The FlashMusicTracks website mentioned above is a perfect example. It uses Flash Banners and Logos only, everything else is HTML. The site looks good, sounds good and everything loads very fast.
So, you dont have to be afraid of Flash killing your web business if you use Flash wisely.
About The Author
Article by Alan Steward, Webmaster and Sound Designer at http://www.musicleads.net.
You are free to use this article on your website or in your ezine as long as you do use it in its entirety.