My Infamous Electronic Marketing "ButtCamp" is Back.

My infamous electronic marketing "ButtCamp" is back.

This is my serious seminar (done in 11 countries since 1997) with a goofy name where you learn how to make more money sitting on your rear end than going to work for a living.

Check out the details of what you'll learn and register to attend at:

http://www.antion.com/​buttcampLosAngeles.htm


- Multiple Revenue Streams

- Hybrid Webinars

- Crowdfunding

- Email Marketing

- List Building and more!

September 15th & 16th, 2012 at the LAX Westin


Mentees: scroll to the bottom and register at the Buttcamp Graduates link. Hope to see you there.

Catch ya!

Tom Antion

The Value of Public Speaking in Business

By Guest Author Eve Pearce  

The Value of Public Speaking in Business

One of people’s greatest fears is that of making a public speech. People seem to tie themselves in knots to avoid making public presentations even amongst familiar colleagues or friends.

However public speaking or at the very least the ability to communicate confidently both on paper and verbally is one of the skills that employers today value the most. In fact in a competitive and crowded job market it is your communication skills that can give you the defining edge particularly against people with similar job histories and qualifications.

Even those with jobs are increasingly likely to be required to deliver presentations to clients and/or internal colleagues so it is worth putting the effort into refining your public speaking skills so that you aren’t overcome with fear should the situation arise. Employers regularly look for ways to differentiate between employees and setting yourself apart from your competition can give you the edge when it comes to promotions or pay rises.

In business it is often easy to be great at your job and know your company’s products inside out but if you can’t excel in soft skills like presentations skills, networking and communications generally then it can mean you are overlooked regardless of your other expertise. Using this combination of advice and tips can really help you on your way to great public speaking skills.
 

Preparation is key

It seems like an obvious start but the best speeches and presentations are those that are heartfelt or well prepared. Even a groom on his wedding day needs to do some sort of preparation to deliver a speech that will be remembered for years to come.

Knowing your topic is essential but whether your subject matter is a new product development or about competing credit cards for business, having your key points set out in advance will ensure you won’t deviate from the task at hand.
 

Control your nerves

Even the most confident public speakers still get nervous, in fact most celebrities who do live stage performances often say it is their nerves and adrenaline that get them through a performance. What is vital to success is the way that you deal with your nerves and getting them under control so that they help you rather than hinder you is the best approach. It is a good idea to practice in front of a trusted colleague or friend and ask them to give you honest feedback. If you can’t cope with that idea initially it is also a great idea to film yourself and then play it back to critique your style. Most cell phones have a video function so you don’t need any fancy equipment and it can really help develop your confidence and presentation style.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Working through scenarios in your mind of what could actually go wrong will not really help you unless that is it helps you minimize the fear you are feeling ahead of your speech. Think through speeches you’ve witnessed in the past and draw from them tips and hints those delivering them used. Practising techniques in your video rehearsals will help you identify what you feel comfortable with and what doesn’t work so well for you.

Recognize public speaking is a skill

Like anything in life you aren’t inherently born with the skill of public speaking, it is something that is learned behaviour. Granted some people have more of a natural flair for it than others but there is no reason you cannot become a competent public speaker with a little practise.

Once you become well versed in public speaking you will start appreciate what a skill it is and be proud of your achievements. At the start you won’t think that it will become second nature but once you have delivered a few speeches it will become that way.

By recognizing that public speaking is a skill will also make it less daunting as you start your journey. Being the best at something isn’t normally something that is there straightaway and the most competent speech makers will all have had a shaky and nervous start.

Finding what works for you by way of helping you combat your nerves and the best ways to frame what you are presenting will help you develop your own individual style that will in time take little effort.

Public Speaker Marketing - Selling With Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs allow you to make money by recommending other people’s products. You get a commission if someone buys something. These programs also allow you to have an army of commissioned salespeople selling your stuff around the world and you don’t pay them anything unless they sell something.



There are basically two ways to make money with associate / affiliate programs:

1. You put other people's links on your site, or in your ezine. When someone clicks from your site or ezine to the other site and buys something, you get a commission. You can even tell someone about the link, or put the link in printed material. When they visit the link and buy something you still get a commission. It costs nothing to participate in such a program.



2. You purchase tracking software and have other people putting your links on their sites. When someone clicks from their site to yours and purchases something, you owe them a commission, which the software tracks for you. This software goes from free to many thousands of dollars. If you have the http://www.KickStartCart.com integrated shopping cart system, it includes top-notch affiliate software.



The most famous associate program is Amazon.com. You put a link on your site and then you make money when people click through to buy things. If you go looking around websites, you’ll see a lot of people who are selling books for Amazon.com, the big online bookseller, by putting a banner on their website. You could put a banner on your website and if someone bought a book by clicking through that link to Amazon, you’d get a commission on it.



Amazon is getting a whole bunch of people selling books for them. But we don’t recommend using Amazons’ or any of the many lesser known programs because they give you such a lousy commission. You’re getting somebody to click out of your site for maybe a buck or a buck and a half and the affiliate won’t even pay you until your commission reaches a certain level. It could be six months later. So hold out for the ones that pay good money.



You can also get your own software that will allow you to recruit associates to sell your products. If anyone wants to put your links on their site, there’s a sophisticated tracking program to monitor when someone clicks through from their site, and to notify you of such an occurrence.



Affiliate Fraud Tip: If you have your own associate program you may want to consider paying your affiliates using the online payment program http://www.PayPal.com.

Public Speaking Marketing - Sharing Your Articles on the Web

Sharing and Repurposing

You can get a ton of traffic to your websites by publishing articles that the search engines can find on distribution sites, your own website or ones that are published on other big websites. But you don't have to stop there. Here are some tips on how to share your articles with other resources that you use everyday:

- From your EzineArticles account, go to "Author Bio." From there you can enter in your login info for Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and your Wordpress blog. Now, every time you publish an article, all these sites will tell all your friends about it.

- Send tweets from your Twitter account to your followers as much as possible. Twitter followers respond best when you act as a resource for information rather than just someone who tweets out worthless links. Your articles will be the great information that your followers are looking for.

- Link to important articles from Facebook groups and pages. Find groups where your target market is gathering on Facebook and leave comments on the wall to articles that they would find valuable.

- Use sharing widgets and plug-ins such as "Share This" or "Add This" to the bottom of your website article pages so others that are reading your articles can use the widgets to share your work with their friends and followers. The widgets even make it easy for a reader to email the article to their friends.

- High content sites. A couple of popular high content sites are:

http://www.Squidoo.com

http://www.HubPages.com

http://www.Gather.com

http://www.Ehow.com


They are user friendly and give you the opportunity to fill the pages with good content articles. The keywords you use to title the modules, articles and images can be found easily by search engines.



Repurposing

Articles can be made into other products as well, so they get more mileage than just publishing one lone article. They can be gathered together to make pamphlets and small books. They can be recorded as MP3s or gathered together to make entire CD products.

Since you have already done the needed keyword research before you even wrote the article, they make great scripts for videos. They are already about the proper length for a traffic driving video and have all the important tips and information that a video should have.

How do professional public speakers make money even without speaking engagements?

Public Speaking Business - International Marketing Resources

International Website Marketing

Websites by definition are international. If you have a website, then anyone, anywhere in the world can view it. This doesn't mean, however, that they can use it. That's what this post is about.

We're going to give you a resource right up front:

How to Build a Successful International Website by Mark Bishop. You might have to try to find it on a used book search. Even though the book is a few years old, we highly recommend it because it brings up issues that you probably wouldn't think of when it comes to usability in a non-English speaking country. Giving it to your webmaster will probably save you quite a bit of money because the webmaster won't have to do as much research to make your international site happen.

For instance, do you know what graphic depictions and colors might be offensive to people in Uzbekistan? Did you know that Katakana is the Japanese script used to spell out foreign words. This information is important because you don't want to alienate the people you are trying to attract.

Here are some more resources:

The Culturally Customized Web Site: Customizing Web Sites for the Global Marketplace by Nitish Singh and Arun Pereira

Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies by John Yunker

You might correctly assume that many people around the world who are serious about doing business globally, learn to speak English. That is true, but many people don't. Many people that could buy your products and services can't speak English. You might say, “If I'm a management consultant and produce products in English, people that can't speak English couldn't use them anyway.” The answer, “Not so!” English based products are in demand around the world.

We in the USA tend to think that we are the center of the Universe and we don't go out of our way to buy information products from other cultures because we feel we know it all. People from other cultures are a little more open minded and willing to learn, so don't think you can't sell in other lands. They can get the information translated and/or use it to help their own study of English.

Sometimes it doesn't take a lot of work to make a site more user friendly for those from other cultures. It's a little easier if you concentrate on one culture and go through the method. Then adding additional cultures will be a little easier.

The #1 resource for successful public speakers...

Public Speaking Business - Niche Social Networks

Niche Social Networking

A niche social network is one that concentrates on a specific industry, topic or interest. Beyond the big social sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn there are thousands of small networks dedicated to bringing together people of like mind to share their stories and expertise.

The idea behind a niche network is that users don’t have to search far and wide to find friends to network with. For instance, if you are an amateur photographer, joining a social network for amateur and professional photographers can give you quick and easy access to advice, resources, job placement, education materials and making friends that love the same things you do.

As far as business is concerned, this is an easy way to find targeted prospects for your products and services, people to joint venture with and even offer coaching and mentor programs.

Let’s say you sell primarily Christian products. Making friends, creating groups and advertising on a Christian social site such as http://www.Faithlight.com will refine your targeted efforts and lead to better conversions. Facebook may be the most popular networking site in the world, but keeping your marketing efforts from being diluted or becoming lost can be a task.

Niche social networking provides a ready-made audience. Most of these smaller sites have the sophistication of the larger ones with group creation, image sharing, video uploading and profile creation.

These smaller networks can come and go quickly, so you want to see how long they have been around before investing too much time. Important things to look for include:

• Steady membership growth

• Usability (how easy it is to work with the features)

• Length of time the site has been around

• Search engine friendly (does the site have a good presence in the search engines)

• Automation (connecting the site with your Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

There are hundreds of topics to choose from when considering joining a niche social network. Take a look at your current marketing efforts. Where are you spending your time networking?

The power of a niche social network can grow your speaking business.

Speaking Resources

http://www.AmazingPublicSpeaking.com

This video tells you where you can find tremendous video training to actually show you how to do speaking techniques. Over 450 public and professional speaking videos.

Public Speaking Marketing - Using Bonuses To Sell More Products

Bonuses are items offered as free extras if someone purchases your main product. In many cases the customer can keep the bonus items even if he/she returns the main product, but that’s not a rule unless you advertise it that way to prospective customers.

One obvious value of bonus items is that they increase the perceived value of your offer. The prospective customer sees themselves as getting more value for their dollar if they buy your main product. Offering to let the prospective customer keep the bonuses even if they return the main product really makes them feel like they are in a good position. They feel they can shell out some money (only temporarily) just to get the free bonuses and then return the product.

Yes. A certain percentage of your prospective customers will do this. What you have to believe is that not all of the people that do this will actually return the product. They will either see it and like it, or never get around to repacking it to ship it back. Thus, there is a net gain for you.

The important thing to remember is that more people will pull that wallet out to buy than would have had you not offered this incredibly good deal. When you are offering downloadable products as the bonus, then when someone returns the main product, you won't even incur any costs other than a little administrative time.

A rule of thumb is that the bonus you include should be so valuable that you could sell it if you wanted to. In fact, many marketers use bonuses that have been sold before. Multiple bonuses will generally get you more sales. Of course, if you use downloadable products you won’t incur any more costs to include them.

Selling on the Internet is easier than you think...

Public Speaking Business Marketing - Posts and Articles

Blogs and Articles

Guest posting on other people's blogs is a great way to find targeted traffic. Many major blog sites have been up and active for years, attracting thousands of page views a week and a ton of subscribers. They have done all of the hard work. By guest posting, you can give the blog owner fresh new content that they need and you can get a link back to your website that could drive thousands of readers to your services.

Unlike simply linking to your website from a higher page-rank blog, popular blogs with a lot of traffic can increase the visits to your site dramatically. These posts stay archived forever. You could get traffic months, even years after the post was originally published. Blog owners have to keep their content fresh to appease their readers and the search engines. Providing content is a win/win situation for everyone involved. Even if your website is brand new, with no real traffic, you could get a huge response from just one guest post on a popular blog. And there are hundreds of high-traffic blogs, even based on a topic just like yours.

On almost every blog, there is an 'About' or 'Contact' page that has the email address of the blog owner, manager or webmaster. Simply write them and ask if they could use fresh content for their blog, new content not found anywhere else, that they could post and link back to your website.

Articles

Content rich articles will be found by the search engines. They can be a section of your website, distributed through article marketing directories or published on other websites with a link back to yours.

Content rich articles come up in results when people are searching for specific topics. These people are your targeted traffic and they will click on the links to get to a place where you can opt them in to your newsletter or database. You build targeted traffic through the use of keywords: keywords in your blog posts, articles and even your videos on Youtube. General traffic that may come in and out of your website, without specific niches or topics driving them there will be difficult to convert into sales.

Articles of yours that are published on someone else's website can give you a huge boost in targeted traffic. For the most part, a website that gets high search engine positioning and has been around for a while will attract visitors based on a niche. These are your potential clients as well. Exposure on these websites can bring a ton of valuable visitors that are easier to convert into customers.

The #1 resource for successful public speakers....

Public Speaking Business Marketing - Leased Access TV

Leased Access TV

Did you know that you can buy a half hour of air time on a cable station for as little as $15.00? This is not pie in the sky or hocus pocus. This is “leased access” TV.

The government mandates rates for one channel on all cable stations in the USA. Of course, the cable companies hate this, but they really don’t have a choice in the matter.

Here’s how it works: You contact a cable station and ask to speak to an advertising sales representative. Don’t mention “leased access” or they will most likely try to put you off as long as possible. Remember you are going to get a severely discounted rate that is forced on the cable company so they are in no mood to talk to you.

Once you get through and start talking to them and they find out you are calling about leased access you can expect them to throw barriers in front of you. One of their major barriers is that they want you to have a producer’s license and insurance. This is totally unneccessary, but apparently a loophole in the law.

You would have to pay thousands of dollars to obtain this license and insurance. Sometimes you have to threaten them with a formal complaint to the FCC before they become easier to deal with. And yes I know all this sounds like a hassle. I’ll have a solution for you shortly.

The Money

Let’s first talk about the savings you can get from running on leased access and also about some of the deals you can make. The $15.00 figure mentioned above would be for a very small cable company with a very small number of homes in their market. You can expect to pay more for most larger cable companies.

Even though I don’t live there I ran my first show in Phoenix/Tucson for $117.00 for a half hour.

The regular cable rate for this area was approximately $760.00 for a half hour. This area had approximately 1 million homes in that service area. I also checked out San Jose, California. They had 398,000 homes in their market and the cost of a half hour leased access was $51.00 for a half hour. The time slot I was looking at was 12:30 AM which would be right after Letterman and Leno was over.

Prime time rates could be two to three times as much, but still far cheaper than the regular rates. One way to reduce your costs even further is to sell commercial space in your show. In the Phoenix area I get the entire thirty minutes and in some areas you only get 28.5 minutes. I made my show 28.5 so I would only have to have one version of it that would work with all stations (if your show is shorter, that’s OK, they will fill the space with ads or public service announcements).

Since Phoenix sold me the entire 30 minutes I had an additional 1.5 minutes of ad space that I could sell and keep the money. My show already included 2 minutes of ad space so in total I had 3.5 minutes of ad space that I could sell during my 30 minute time slot. This amounted to seven 30-second ads.

Let’s say I could get $15.00 a piece for these ads. That’s $105.00 revenue against my $117.00 cost. With this scenario I’m only paying $12.00 to run my show in front of 1 million people. With a little effort you can become a celebrity all over Phoenix for only $60.00 a week. In some cases the ad revenue would exceed the cost of the half hour and I would make money each time my show ran.

Then what? . . . Rinse and repeat in other markets. What kind of show? I’m using a simulated national talk show instead of the standard infomercial format. This drives people to opt in to a freebie site where I get affiliate commissions if they buy something.

You can see the Internet MarketingTraining Center show on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF_RQTkMAKk

I went out to Palm Springs to CBS studios, which is the same place they shoot the evening news. Each of the 4 cameras cost a half million dollars and they had an entire crew, makeup artist and the host. I was in and out in a couple hours with the gorgeous show you can see at the link above.

Not only can you show it on TV, but before it even aired on TV it paid for itself because people saw it on the web and on DVD and joined my mentor program. So, the video paid for itself within a week after it was shot. The other end of the spectrum is a simple web infomercial designed to sell one product.

See an example at http://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com

Checklist for Evaluating a Shopping Cart System

(Remember… most pieces of software are simply shopping carts and not complete and integrated sales systems)

Instructions to use this checklist

Whenever considering any shopping cart or shopping cart system ask the questions in the list below. Most have either yes or no answers.

If you start getting answers like, “Well if you wanted it to do that, we could custom program it for you,” or “Yes it will do that if you buy another module from a third party vendor,” or “I think we could get it to do that, but we’ve never had anyone ask before,” then you may be on pretty shaky ground by going with the system or shopping cart in question.

• Will it calculate shipping & tax?

• Does it handle specialized shipping like FedEx and UPS?

• Will it deliver soft & hard goods in the same transaction?

• Does it offer customizable “Return to Shopping” pages without needing custom programming?

• Does it allow you to make special offers?

• Does it deliver receipt and confirmation emails?

• Does it allow multiple order and dropship emails?

• Does it have a Web-Based administration page?

• Does it use encryption technology?

• Does it deliver easy output to your accounting software?

• Does it have its own associate program or is it easily compatible with other major brands of associate software?

• Does it have integrated upsell modules?

• Does it have an integrated sales and prospect database?

• Does it have broadcast email capability?

• Does it have mail merge capability?

• Will it deliver your ezines/enewsletters and automate the subscription process?

• Can it handle coupons and other discounts?

• Can it work for multiple websites with no extra fees?

• Does it have unlimited and fully integrated autoresponders?

• Does it have Ad Tracking tied into actual sales?

• Will it rotate ads for you and tell you which one makes the most money?

• Can the order form page be customized?

• Will it do automatic recurring billing?

• Does it give you a variety of sales reports?

• Does it have a “Tell a Friend” module?

• Will it allow you to easily make questionnaires and surveys?

• Does it have a pop up box builder?

• Does it have a printable off line order form?

• Can you recommend the cart to others and get recurring income from doing so?


Check out the system that does all of the above...

Article Marketing For Public Speakers

What To Write

Article maketing is a great tool for driving targeted traffic to websites, opt-in pages and sales letters. Using the different article distribution sites can be a bit tricky, though. There are a few things to look out for when submitting articles to sites such as:

http://www.EzineArticles.com

http://www.WryteStuff.com

http://www.ArticleDashboard.com

http://www.SelfGrowth.com

Tip # 1 - Make sure your articles are on your own site first as a page of your website. Also, make sure that the article page on your site has been indexed by the search engines first before submitting to the article sites. To find out if a webpage has been indexed, copy and paste the URL of the page into the Google search box and hit "search." If a clickable result appears, then the page has been indexed, if the result says: "Your search did not match any documents", then it has not yet been indexed.

* We use the strategy of publishing to our websites first so that we get the credit in the search engines and not the big article sites. The site that publishes the article first gets the most credit.

Tip # 2 - That being said, make sure that your name is closely associated with the article on your webpage. ie: your name at the bottom of the article, your name at the top of the article or your name SOMEWHERE on the page that is easy to see.

Article sites will reject articles that they can't easily find the authorship. If they can't find your name on your webpage and you try to submit the article to them, they will think you plagerized it. This can hold up the approval of your article for weeks.

Tip # 3 - Keep articles between 400 - 500 words. Articles work best if they are not too long, and your reader is still engaged in the point. We suggest that if your article is 1000 words or more, break it up into two articles. This will give you more material anyway. Read the terms of service for the different article marketing sites to see the minimum text length.

Tip # 4 - Be sure to always use the Spell Checkers that the sites provide. We've seen far too many people submit without spell checking and the article site will reject it. Too much bad spelling and grammar, and you may not get valuable submission upgrades and could possibly have your account suspended. Don't believe that this sounds like too much trouble...it's good practice when submitting articles to other respectable websites that can provide you valuable backlinks, lead generation and credibility.

Everything you need to successfully market your public speaking business....

How To Make Money With Public Speaking

SELL YOUR KNOWLEDGE

This is my overriding principle that came from years of hard knocks trying to get people to hire me to speak. I get more speaking engagements than I ever had before when I quit trying to sell them and began selling my knowledge in as many different formats as possible. The idea is that infinitely more people can buy what you know through books, tapes, CDs, Ebooks and videos than could ever hire you to speak. Your name recognition because of your knowledge distribution makes speaking engagements much easier to come by because the people that could hire you have already heard you and your message on your knowledge based products. In the mean time, the money from the product sales keeps your business thriving.

GET SPONSORSHIP

You can get other companies to sponsor your speaking fee so they can be associated with your message when you speak. Stop and think of what kinds of groups would want to be associated with your message. Let's say you speak to the banking industry. Maybe mortgage, or mutual fund companies would sponsor you. Maybe bank equipment companies would. Think of anyone who would want to have exposure to your target audience then simply make a proposal to their public relations department.

GET DIRECTLY PAID

This is pretty straight forward. You speak to a corporation, association, civic group, or anyone who would hire you and they pay you directly. Most of the time you should try to get a deposit up front of about 50 percent and the balance either before the event, or the day of the event. You will use various methods to get hired. I have had the greatest success in my career getting hired to speak by promoting myself properly on the Internet.

SPEAKERS BUREAUS

A speakers bureau is a for profit organization that locates speakers for paying clients. The speakers bureau normally takes a percentage of your gross fee. The percentage is usually in the 15 to 30 percent range with the average fee being 25 percent. It is very difficult to start with speakers bureaus unless you are a bonafide celebrity and your fees are substantial. You must remember they get paid on straight commission and the higher your fee, the more they make. Also, unless you have a proven track record, a speakers bureau will be afraid to put you in front of one of their clients because if you bomb they could lose many more bookings from the same client. You must also supply the bureau with promotional materials that don't have your contact information so anyone that sees the material will contact the bureau directly and not you.

PUBLIC SEMINARS

This is another fairly simple idea, but that doesn't mean it's simple to do. Basically you promote your seminar to the public and they buy tickets to attend. You could also promote it to corporate management and get them to buy tickets for their employees to attend. I avoided public seminars for years because of the risk and expense involved in printing and mailing brochures. Now I do lots of public seminars because I can promote them at no cost through my website and email magazine.

TELEPHONE SEMINARS

This can be a form of public seminar, or it can be done for private groups. You arrange for a telephone bridge line (very inexpensive), or a conference call (can be VERY expensive). You have participants call in and you deliver the seminar over the telephone. This saves a tremendous amount of money on travel expenses for you and the participants along with all kinds of savings for the participants (travel, time, etc.) For visuals you can have the participants sitting in front of their computer while on the phone. You tell them what web page to visit to see your visuals. I have produced a CD set on this topic. http://www.antion.com/teleseminarkit.htm

WEBCASTS

This is similar to telephone seminars except you are using the Internet instead of a telephone to hold the seminar.

TRAINING COMPANIES

In this case a company hires you to deliver their programs to public seminar participants, or to participants all from the same private company. Career Track, SkillPath Seminars and Fred Pryor Seminars are examples of companies who hire seminar leaders. In some cases you can develop programs for the seminar company and get a higher fee for delivering that program and a fee each time it is delivered by another seminar leader. You also get a percentage of all the back of room products you sell. These companies can keep you on the road quite a bit so you better be ready to travel and don't think each event will be in the Bahamas . . .Your events are more likely to be in places like Toledo, Cleveland and Columbus. These are relatively low paying jobs when compared to the kind of money you can get promoting your own speeches and seminars.

Keep reading...