Graham Cox.com

You may have noticed a brand new design on this blog if you have visited in the last few days.

It’s a custom design based on Chris Pearson’s astoundingly good Thesis wordpress theme. I wanted a unique design that would help me stand out from the internet marketing crowd and brand my business going forward into 2009. Hopefully the new look will do just that.

For the logo I ran a competition over at 99designs.com which is fantastic if you are looking for a high quality logo or web design. You simply create a design brief, nominate how much you are willing to pay for the winning entry and then designers from all over the world submit their work for your consideration. There are some amazing designers on there so it’s well worth checking out.

Not only has the blog look changed but from now on I’m going to be making much more use of camtasia video screencasts on this blog, showing you what I’m doing to drive my marketing business forward and how you can do the same. So stay tuned!

So what do you think about the new look? Let me know if you like it or prefer the old vanilla (not that I’m leading you or anything…lol!) Thesis style.

P.S. Look out for a video from me early next week, showing you how incredibly versatile Thesis is and why you should consider it for your blog.

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Have you ever seen a really cool feature on another blogger’s site and wanted to implement it on your own? Or your wordpress install has gone wrong and now you’re getting strange database errors appearing? Or how about if your visual editor suddently stops working?

If so, then I’ve recently come across an excellent outsourcing site specifically devoted to all things wordpress, which you might be interested in…

WP-Pro is a one-stop shop for getting new blog themes designed, fixing database errors, customising a plugin or whatever else you need done to your wordpress blog.

I just used it for the first time the other day. It’s not a conventional outsource site. It’s actually a private mailing list anyone can subscribe to and it’s run by Automattic, the company behind wordpress itself.

If you want to post, you simply send an email listing the job spec (and what you can afford to pay) to the list members and they reply (usually within hours) directly to your inbox. The quality of responses I received to my post were excellent and both of the bugs in my wordpress install were fixed within hours.

I’m now employing the same freelancer to make a customisation to this blog.

Bear in mind that many of the freelancers on WP-Pro are highly skilled in wordpress and charge accordingly. But if you wait until plenty of responses to your job have come in, chances are you can find someone within budget. Often a price can be negotiated down too if you can offer future work.

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Do you spend half your working day answering emails rather than working on building your online business?

I know I certainly do at times. Not only can answering email be incredibly time-sapping, but a new email in your inbox can be a seductive beast too…like an unopened Christmas present just waiting to be unwrapped.

Manage Your Email More Efficiently

Well recently I’ve taken a few important steps to handle my email more efficiently. Some of them are the suggestions of Tim Ferriss’ eye-opening book, the ‘Four Hour Work Week’ , which you can read about at his eponymously titled blog.

So here’s what I’m doing to reduce the time spent answering emails…

1. Stopped checking my email as soon as I switch on the PC in the morning. Instead I now just check it twice daily at noon and 4pm GMT.  I also notify people in my email signature that I’m doing this.
2. Turned off the auto send/receive so I’m not constantly distracted by new messages in my inbox.
3. Installed Frank Haywood’s Ticket Desk Pro script on my new Customer Support Desk.  Whilst it sends automated notification messages whenever I reply to a support ticket, I know that even if it goes into the customer’s spam or junk email folder by error, the customer can still read my reply by opening up the ticket.  Not having to spend time locating email messages I’ve already sent customers will be a massive time saver as my customer base grows.
4. Unsubscribed from those newsletters, ezines and blog mailing lists I’m no longer reading.  I’m still subscribed to far too many. But atleast I’ve made a start in the right direction.  A work in progress.

Improve Your Productivity

Why not give these suggestions a try yourself. Particularly numbers 1 and 2. I won’t lie…doing email cold turkey hasn’t been easy! I’ve had some lapses along the way. But overall, I’ve noticed a big improvement in my productivity since implementing them.

Why not try it for a week and see what difference it makes to your business? And let me know if you’ve got any other suggestions for managing the inbox by posting a comment below.

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If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work involved in running your own internet business, then you’ve probably considered outsourcing various tasks at one point or another.

Let’s face it, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. So if you’re still trying to blog, social bookmark, recruit JV’s and affiliates, write articles and do all the other myriad jobs involved in marketing online, then it’s time to consider outsourcing.

In fact, don’t just consider it…actually start outsourcing as soon as your pocket allows. If you have your own products to sell, the cost of outsourcing work should more than pay for itself in increased revenue anyway. Plus you’ll have more time to focus on the aspects of your business you enjoy the most, whilst giving the more mundane, tedious tasks to someone else.

Since I became a full-time marketer online in July 2008, I’ve been focussing my efforts on creating automated processes for outsourcing different areas of my marketing. For instance I’ve created a process for recruiting JV partners and affiliates. The process is simply a templated html document which gives step-by-step details (usually a mix of camtasia screen recordings and written instructions) on how to contact other marketers for JV’s. I just give the url of the doc to the person I’m outsourcing the task to and let them get on with it.

If I then ask another outsourcer to do the same task a week later, I just customize the instructions accordingly.

Currently I’m using 5 freelancers to help build my business. One is developing my first software product Ultimate Footer Ad, two are blog commenting to get backlinks to drive traffic back to this blog and other sites I own like Small Lists Big Profits, and another two are doing webmaster work such as installing scripts, setting up split tests and creating squeezepages etc.

And you’ll be surprised how little it can cost to outsource tasks too.

Btw, one of my favourite sites for finding freelancers is GetAFreelancer.com.  I much prefer it to Rentacoder as projects are much quicker to post and the site just seems much easier to use generally.

Whilst it might feel a little daunting at first, outsourcing a task is actually pretty easy once you’ve done it a few times.  Why not give it a try and start leveraging the work of others to benefit your business.

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One of the biggest myths of internet marketing is that you need a huge mailing list to make big money online.

It’s a myth because it’s not the list size, it’s the responsiveness of your list that counts.

You can have all the subscribers in the world but if no one’s opening your emails or clicking your links then you’re dead in the water.

So how do you build a responsive list?

Well the simple answer is by giving valuable and engaging content which connects with your audience’s needs and desires.

Discover what information they are looking for (online surveys are a great way to find out) and then give it to them.

The days of being able to get away with bombarding your list with offers are over. That did ok a few years ago but not anymore. Now it’s about giving great content, creating trust and building a following.

If you can do that, you’re onto a winner.

If you’re looking for proof…I recently interviewed a leading online marketer who builds incredibly responsive lists. In fact, in his very first email promotion as an affiliate he earnt a staggering $1,180.79 from a tiny list of 603 subscribers, outselling marketers with lists running into the tens of thousands.

Nowadays, he rarely bothers promoting other marketers products as his own promotions sell so well to his own lists.

If you want to discover exactly how he does it, check out the interview at http://www.SmallListsBigProfits.com

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You may have noticed things have been a little quiet here on this blog recently. Unfortunately due to some pressing family commitments I’ve not been able to devote as much time to my marketing as I would have liked.

However that’s all about to change…

Last Friday I finally quit my 9-5 day job after six and a half years to start working full time as an internet marketer. I can’t tell you how unbelievably excited I am at this prospect. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for atleast 2 years but it’s only now I’m actually in a position to take the leap.

My office job was with a I.T. company specialising in video game console software and they were actually the best company I’ve worked for in terms of how they treat their staff. Unfortunately my heart just wasn’t in it any more and to say I’m relieved now I’ve quit is an understatement. And I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way…it’s just the way I feel.

So anyway, now it’s time to look forward and hopefully a much brighter future doing something I truly enjoy. It definitely feels liberating to be working from home, or the local coffee shop if I prefer. The other great benefit for me personally is I’ll be able to spend more time with my family including my lovely 10 month old son.

My goal is to create a true business, not just another job for myself. A business that makes money even when I’m not there and allows me to focus on those aspects of online marketing I enjoy the most. For me, that will be coming up with ideas and product creation.

I’ll be taking my inspiration from guys like Lee McIntyre and Terry Dean, in my opinion, not only two of the best marketers around but two of the best teachers of marketing aswell.

I also have certain financial goals ofcourse but I have no intention of letting them become all consuming. Life is far too precious for that.

Anyway, that brings me back to this blog. I’ve been giving serious consideration to how I make it stand out from the thousands of other marketing blogs out there.

I realise ofcourse that blogs live or die by the quality of their content and their ability to engage with their audience, and that’s central to my new plans for the site. I’m still formalising my ideas but rest assurred some exciting changes are afoot which I’ll be revealing very soon.

So onwards and upwards as the saying goes.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear the experiences of others who’ve made the move into full time internet marketing? Was it all you expected? Were there any aspects of working from home you didn’t like? Or was it the best decision you’ve ever made?

Let me know in the comments below…

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Hot on the heels of my Rosalind Gardner interview, I’ve a great new interview ebook to share with you today.

Allan Gardyne has over 12 years experience marketing online and is best known for his associateprograms.com affiliate marketing directory.
His passion is writing and it shows in his prolific output and easy to follow style.

He’s one of the very best affiliate marketers around and now lives an enviable lifestyle down under.

Check out how he’s achieved his success and what it takes to emulate him by downloading the ebook below…

Download the Allan Gardyne Interview Ebook here

P.S. If you download the above ebook you’ll also get access to a rebranding package so you can brand the ebook with both your own website URL and a special discount link to Allan’s amazing SpeedPPC Pay-Per-Click Management software tool.

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Ros Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook was the very first ebook I ever read on internet marketing. Ros’s success got me hooked on the huge money-making potential of affiliate marketing (she earns well over half a million dollars a year) and her annually revised ebook is still, in my opinion, one of the very best affiliate marketing manuals on the market today.

So I was delighted when Ros recently agreed to an interview with me. Ros talks about her early success with pay per click marketing, why she’s now using blogs for niche marketing, and just what it takes to be a super affiliate. Plus much more besides.

You can listen to this 21 minute interview here

Update: I’ve now had this interview transcribed into a pdf ebook which you can download here.

The ebook is also rebrandable with your own website’s name and your affiliate ID for Rosalinds best-selling and highly recommended Super Affiliate Handbook.

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Like many, I’m a big fan of promoting products with recurring or lifetime commissions. The only difficulty can be in finding products or services that are of high enough quality to make promoting them worthwhile.

Many membership sites for instance have a high churn rate because their quality is poor or they simply don’t have enough follow up content to justify the monthly fees.

One monthly membership site I joined last year and have happily promoted ever since is Lee McIntyre’s Standing Start Profits

As you may be aware, Lee has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the last year, creating hit product after hit product and now consistently makes over $20000 profit a month. And SSP is where he teaches exactly how he does it.

Lee’s a former schoolteacher and it shows in the straightforward and enthusiastic way he delivers his message. Personally I’ve learnt more about marketing online from Lee in the past year than I have from anyone else.

He’s the real deal and I highly recommend Standing Start Profits to anyone who wants to make money online.

So anyway here’s where things get interesting.

Lee recently revamped his affiliate center and now offers 90% recurring commissions on all new members you refer but only if you are a member yourself.

Membership is $19.95 per month so you can earn around $18 per month for each member you refer.

You can still promote Standing Start Profits as a non-member through Clickbank but you only receive 50% commission for each month people you refer remain members.

But in any case, I certainly wouldn’t recommend promoting a membership site you havn’t joined yourself as you won’t be able to give an honest review.

Ok, so here’s the thing…

You may have already seen my interview ebook with Lee from last year. If not you can download it from the far right hand sidebar if you scroll down a little.

Now that ebook is the original one which includes a reseller package allowing you to rebrand the ebook with your own affiliate link for Standing Start Profits. However it’s the clickbank 50% commission link rather than Lee’s new 90% one.

So I have an offer that I hope you’ll find worthwhile…

Simply join Standing Start Profits through any of my links in this post and contact me to let me know. I’ll then send you a special version of the ebook which you can rebrand with Lee’s 90% commission affiliate link.

All you have to do then is giveaway your rebranded version on your website, blog, or your forum sigs etc and allow others to pass it onto their visitors too and you could soon have a very nice passive residual income coming in, month after month.

Remember it’s all a numbers game and the more hands you get the ebook into the more money you’ll make.

Just click the link below to get started…

Click here to join Standing Start Profits now

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