I am currently attending Robert Puddy’s seminar in the UK, along with John Delavera, Simon Hodgkinson Jeremy Gislason and many other marketers.

In fact, John and I do not only attend and we somehow contribute by performing mastermind sessions.

The first one was held last night, and John and I were grilled during more than 2 hours on a lot of Internet Marketing areas:

- Traffic Generation
- List Building
- Outsourcing
- Creating and managing membership sites
- Tools to manage your business
- Strategy, vision and goal settings

were the main topics we discussed with attendees.

This was a really interesting session as it was conducted like a ping-pong discussion where John and I were delivering our thoughts on each topic in ‘duo’ mode :

For example, John starts answering a question, and then I will add my contribution to what he said to raise other points. In turn he will add things etc, etc thus enriching the discussion for the pleasure of the attendees.

Now, you can visualize how it took place.

I would like to share with you some of the most important things we discussed last night, the “ah ah” moments, or the main marketing insights to say it differently.

They will be mainly bullet points as I cannot transcribe the whole discussion, but it might give you some ideas and directions in case you need them

a) Traffic Generation.

- Traffic generation does no hold any secret

- You do not create traffic, you redirect it: either from search engines, or from ‘referred’ traffic source.

- Do not focus on search engines when designing your traffic generation strategy, focus on ‘referred’ traffic sources: this is where your visitors are, and thus, this is from those sites that you need to redirect them to your sites. Search engines traffic will then follow.

- You need to build trust, and work on the relation you want to create with your visitors. Your existing visitors should be considered as ambassadors of your site

- Do it! Most people don’t receive traffic because they don’t do anything to generate it (understand: they keep looking for the latest secrets in traffic generation)

- Test. If you do it, then you need to test it. Some tactics might work for a given site better than other. Test everything, and then focus on the most rewarding traffic generation tactics

b) Outsourcing

- Rentacoder.com is the place to go when you need to find new providers for any project you may have. (huge base of providers, efficient review system)

- Be as specific as you can when you post a project.

- Do not select a bidder with no rating / reviews

- You cannot blame a provider not to deliver quality content (or script, or graphics) if you don’t provide a quality and detailed brief. It’s your fault, not his.

- If you cannot have the expected quality from a given provider, then accept it, move on and find another one.

- Once you find a good provider, keep him (her)

- Your goal is to create a virtual team of talented individuals that will know you, that will understand your needs, and that you will trust.

- Quality has a price

c) Membership sites:

- Main (overlooked) difference between a membership and a product is that a membership is a dynamic offer: first because, you need to create product on a regular basis (monthly for example), secondly, because your members’ needs will evolve with time, and you need to have your membership evolve with those needs.

- You cannot imagine running a membership for years if you don’t follow the above ‘rule’

- Do not lower your price. Once you set your price, change the value by changing the components of your offer. But do not play with your price.

- Stand 100% behind your membership and your members. Learn from them and survey them to always stay ahead of the curve

- Your goal should be to be the best membership on your market…and to maintain this position. Do everything you can make it happen

d) List building – Highly related with traffic generation: your list building strategy is bound to your traffic generation strategy. Drive quality traffic by sending your visitors to content they want to see.

- Quality traffic leads to quality subscribers (understand profitable on the long term)

- Your list should know you and you should focus on building a strong relation with it and with your subscribers

- Be an expert: people will subscribe and remain subscribed if they feel they can learn from you.

- Your list is your main marketing asset and it should be your #1 priority.

e) Tools to manage your business:

- Centralization and automation are your best partners

- You need to create a system from the beginning: in other words, you should not create 1 product using one system to manage sales, another to manage customers, another one for affiliates…and then start again when you launch another product (using different scripts)

- There’s no other solutions on the market than JVManager and now Fantasos (JVManager version 2) to manage all the parts of your business:

www.ethiccash.com/fantasos

www.ethiccash.com/jvm

- If you have not a centralized system, then get one ASAP as it is critical for your business (if you’re serious about it)

f) Strategy and Mindset

- Everything starts with a Vision (what you want to achieve in life, in your business, how you want to be perceived in 10 years, what you want people to say about you, what you want to think about you…)

- Without a Vision, you cannot design the correct strategy that will fulfill this vision and make it possible.

- Without a strategy, you’re blind. How can you achieve something if you don’t know what you want to achieve. How can you go somewhere if you don’t know where you are going?

- With a clear Vision, you can then design a clear strategy

- A good strategy needs Goals

- With a good mindset (entrepreneur mindset) then you can implement, control and update your strategy to finally reach your goals.

- Do not think that you are better than others, that no one had this idea before. Do not reinvent the wheel. BUT do anything you can to market your value better than anyone!

That’s it for now:-)