Copywriting For ****heads!

Hi All,

You know, it takes a lot to get me worked up about anything these days. I've certainly mellowed over the years, as you do. But just recently my attention was drawn to a copywriting service being offered by someone claiming to be a... copywriter.

It turns out he was getting "copywriters" from India to write articles and then selling these on as his own for a profit. Now, I don't begrudge anyone trying to make a profit. Making a living these days is hard no doubt about it. But c'mon!

These articles were being written for just $3 a pop and being sold for £25 each!

Wish I'd thought of that! No seriously... these articles were rubbish. I mean bad grammar, poor English, no punctuation and typos everywhere. It made me mad!

Why?

Because someone, somewhere was actually buying them and probably using them as content for their websites. 

So What?

Yeah! I asked myself that question... so why was I so bothered?

The people buying and using them probably didn't know any better. They probably speak that way anyway and write that way too, so it would probabaly appear to be good work to them... right?

Yeah... Yeah... but who would buy this crap?

I had to know so I contacted the "copywriter" and I had a serious chat with him. At least it was serious for about 5 minutes because after that I couldn't stop laughing. Boy that made my day....

Turns out he's quite a savvy young marketer and all he was doing was acting as a middleman for his overseas clients. Who just happen to be Chinese.... LMAO!

So, he was getting Indian writers to write articles for the Chinese, who assumed that because he was English, the articles would be okay. And of course they don't know any different.

Good luck to him. Wish I'd thought of that... no seriously :)

For great copy that converts to mega sales contact me first... please!

All for now,
Bill

BusyVids
Knight-Writer

Conservation or Speculation?

Hi All,

Well, anyone in business right now just might have noticed that we appear to be in the depths of a huge recession, and anyone that has been in business for many years will have experienced similar situations in the past.

For me the most damaging recession was in the early nineties. I was running a completely different kind of service business then and I got hit very hard, having to to lay of 5 of my 7 staff.

So, if you're in business what's the best way to get through a recession? Conserve your resources, i.e., hard cash or is it best to speculate and buy your way out of it?

It's only human to recoil and shed excess baggage when you're in pain but this could be suicidal in business. You still need to make money, in fact even more so, and you still want to be in business when this whole sh*t blows over don't you?

Sure, cutting waste and making savings where possible is the natural thing to do but what many small business owners do is cut their marketing budget, which is just plain crazy! If anything you should increase your marketing to ensure your customers don't forget you and to encourage new customers to buy from you. 

Those who stop advertising and stop spending on promoting their products and services will have to compete with a whole new batch of competition later along the line and then they'll know what pain really is...

Having lived through 3 major economic crashes I think I'm pretty clued up as to how to cope with this one. During the downturn of the 80's I stopped spending on marketing and so stopped getting customers and eventually had to close my business.

In the 90's so many of my creditors went bust I found myself up the proverbial creek without a paddle and my bank (NatWest) were firing broadsides at me like they were going out of fashion. Did I give up? No but it was damn hard work trying to stay afloat, let alone steer my way out of trouble. Many events, which affected my business were completely out of my hands then, but I still advertised and I still got work.

Today is a bit different as it seems the whole world is affected in some way, so I guess we're all in the same boat this time, and as this mess was mainly caused by greedy bumbling bankers and incompetent politicians the onus is firmly placed on them to get us out of it.

Okay, I am digressing somewhat. So back to the point in question...

Should we cut back on our marketing and save a few quid or go overboard and splash out like we've just won the lottery? My advice is to don't stop spending on marketing because that's what makes your business live and breath, but during these hard times it neeeds to be approached in a slightly different way. I know money is tight for many small business owners and cash flow is... well... just not flowing as fluidly as we would all hope.

What you need to do now is look at ways in which you can add value to your products and services instead of spending more. Look at my own example with BusyVids...

This year we have changed our output format and now create all videos in High Definition, and for no extra cost to the customer...

We have also increased the length of videos to 3 minutes or more but only made a small increase in price...

And just recently we have added at least 100 free backlinks to each order. These links can be applied to the client's video or to their website, and at no additional cost.

You see, the aim is to create so much value for money that the client will not even consider going anywhere else for their videos. The best part is, it has cost us very little to add this service when compared to the new business we have generated.

So, whatever business you are in right now, don't stop spending on your marketing, and do increase the value of your products or services. It will help you get and retain more customers during these difficult times, and when times do get better they'll still be loyal to you above your competition. 

You know it makes sense!

All for now!

Bill

BusyVids.co.uk

Knight-Writer.co.uk

The Power of Press Releases

Hi All,

Having written many hundreds of press releases for my own business and for my client's businesses over the years, I thought I'd remind you all about how really powerful they are.

Whilst some small business owners are shelling out hundreds if not thousands of pounds on SEO and PPC, in the hope they will get their websites noticed, I as usual don't pay anything and still get a formidable presence on the first page of Google for whatever search terms I want.

Let me prove it to you...

Recently I joined a forum because forums carry a lot of weight in terms of importance on the internet, especially when it comes to positioning on Google. This is because the content of forums is constantly being updated by its users. User generated content is always fresh and that's like prime real estate in the eyes of the almighty Google.

So, here's what I did. I wanted to get some global exposure for my BusyVids operation so I wrote a press release, and here it is...

UK Based, Small Business Video Marketing Service Set To Go Global

A new video marketing service, capable of generating free website traffic, has just been simultaneously launched in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The video marketing service, currently being offered by BusyVids, has already received rave reviews from many small business owners in the UK, where it was first launched in April, 2011.

This particular video marketing service is designed to generate free website traffic from Youtube and other video sharing sites, and helps to get business websites ranked and listed in Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines. Many of these small business marketing videos are now residing on the first page of Google for their selected keyword phrases.

Video is becoming increasingly important for business, as a means of delivering sales messages, with more than 92 billion video page views each month on Youtube alone. However, this new video service taps into a hidden loophole, which sends free targeted traffic from the video sharing sites directly to the small business owner’s video.

Once there, the video is designed to drive traffic to the business owner’s website. This targeted traffic then helps the video to rank in the search engines, moving it higher in the search engine ranking as it generates more traffic. And so the process goes on creating a continuous loop of free highly targeted traffic.

Almost all of the videos created by BusyVids get to the top of Youtube within 2 or 3 days, and then show in the Google Video search results a few days later, and eventually climb up the general search results. Many of these unique videos have made it into the first page of Google within 24 hours. Some of the videos go viral after a couple of weeks generating even more views and free traffic. It’s an ingenious marketing idea and obviously works extremely well.

Video is the perfect media for getting a marketing message right in front of a potential customer because video is readily accepted by Internet users worldwide, and fits in nicely with social networking sites like Facebook. It’s also perfect for raising brand awareness and for developing a loyal customer base, as many people will actively seek out videos on just about any subject of interest.

This insatiable appetite for online video shows no signs of slowing down any day soon. In fact all indicators suggest it is getting more and more popular with both advertisers and consumers every day.

BusyVids managing director, Bill Knight said, “A business operating online needs to get its sales message, or in this case its website, right in front of people who actually want to see it. It’s more than simply a numbers game, but you do have to go where people congregate in very large numbers or where people will instantly find you. That means Youtube, Facebook and the search engines, especially Google. The videos we create for our clients tick all the boxes. It’s the best form of free advertising anywhere on the Internet.”

The BusyVids video marketing service is currently being offered as a special low-cost advertising option, and is only available to individual business owners, SME’s and entrepreneurs.

A user-friendly and dedicated website has been set up to provide all the relevant information, and which also has several video demonstrations and examples of videos that have already been created. Visit www.busyvids.com for further details.

Contact Email: info@busyvids.com

Tel: 01275 837 577

Notice the keywords in the title. This is very important for where I wanted to rank. Now the forum I joined has a free Press Release option for full members so I was quick to make use of it, otherwise I would have used PR Web, but that would have cost me about £90.00. 

Now if you open a Google search page and type in "global video marketing service for small business", without the quotes, you'll see that out of 73 million results my press release is at the top of the page (as of today's date).

It also ranks for quite a few variations of the title. And that's for just one press release I'm showing you. I have several runing all over the internet. So, can you see how incredibly powerful they are? Don't ever underestimate the humble press release for getting your message out there. The secret is not to make your sales message look salesy, instead you have to make it look and read like news.

A well written press release can work for you whether you operate an International business, a national business, a regional business or just a small local business. It could even work for you if you only operated a small shop on your local High Street!

Now to prove that this isn't some kind of fluke or just a stroke of luck, I wrote and released another press release. Here's the title...

 

News About Video Marketing For Small Business

Now here's your mission should you accept it. Go to Google now, and type in my headline title word for word...  

... see what I mean guys?

I rest my case.

All for now,

Bill

BusyVids.co.uk

Knight-Writer.co.uk

Hey Man Wanna Buy Some SEO?

Hi All,

Everyone in business with an online presence, whether that's a website, a blog, a Facebook page or a Twitter account wants more exposure. More exposure to their potential customers and more cash in the bank, thank you very much. But what is everyone doing to get more exposure? Just how are these people exposing themsleves? :)

Well, just about everyone seems to be hooked on someting called SEO. "Hey man wanna buy some SEO?" And so what is SEO exactly? Well, many SEO "experts" will tell you it's all manner of things, and really nothing in particular. Some will tell you that you need backlinks and the more the merrier. Some will tell you it's all about on-page stuff like keywords and content and graphics and interactivity.

Does anyone really know what SEO is? Well I can tell you something for nothing. It's not what it used to be. Anyone in the know will recently have heard about the latest algorithms known as Google "Panda" and Google "Penguin", and that's just the start of what looks like a planned Google onslaught of useless spammy websites that have no place on Google's treasured search engine.

So what is Panda? Well if you have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks to non relevant websites like forums and blogs then you'll soon find out. And what is Penguin? Well if you have all kinds of regurgitated crappy content on your site that doesn't make any sense to man or beast then it's curtains for you my friend.

Well what do you expect? Google are in the business of providing their searching surfers with good quality results. That's what makes them the biggest and best at what they do. So if you want to get into bed and cosy up with Google then you simply have to take on the submissive role and do exactly what they say... or else.

But hey, it's not that hard to do...

So here's my 10 point plan to help you...

1. Make sure all the images on your websites have alt tags, and your keyword tags are limited to 4, and you have your main keyword in your site's description.

2. Make sure your website has a site map.

3. Make sure you sign up for Google + Trust me you need this!

4. Make sure your website has good quality and informative content and your main keywords appear in the first 2 or 3 paragraphs.

5. Keep it fresh! This means keep the content coming regularly... like a blog for example.

6. Get some quality and RELEVANT backlinks. Pay if you have to!

7. Link your website to your social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.

8. Have some quality videos created an uploaded to Youtube and make sure your website URL is included in the description. Put a copy of the video on your website.

9. Get some interesting and informative articles written and submitted to the article directories especially ezinearticles.com - Pay attention the bio section!

10. Send out press releases every month. (This is like gold dust!)

Is it really that difficult to understand SEO? No! It's not rocket surgery it's just plain common sense. So, don't fall for all that specialist SEO stuff that the SEO specialists are trying to sell you for silly amounts of megabucks, just follow my 10 point plan and you too could be riding on the crest of the Google wave.

So what's next? Oh you want to know how to get more customers? Well, that's coming in my next post and don't miss it. I'm going to blow your socks off with some amazing tried and tested marketing strategies that virtually nobody has ever even dreamed of. 

All for now

Bill

Knight-Writer.co.uk

BusyVids.co.uk

The Magic Story - Revisited

Hi All,

I was recently asked about how business was going and whether I was feeling the effects of the downturn, recession, depression, austerity measures or whatever you want to call it. It all amounts to the same thing whatever label you put on it. I replied, "well we're ticking over". I consider myself and my close work colleagues to be in a very fortunate position, in that we always seem to have work.

This is probably because we offer so many diverse services to our clients. From copywriting to web design and graphic design to video production and marketing, we are the ultimate one-stop shop for online business services. But that's not all. We also generate income from affiliate programs and product sales too. So all in all I guess we are doing okay. (Although we've lost our Adsense income stream as mentioned in my last post).

So is there something to be learnt here? Yes. Don't just rely on one source of income or one product or even one product range. To survive in this harsh economic climate you have to get out there and find out what people are looking for and what they're buying, and then offer it to them. Sell it cheaper if you have to, package it better, offer free delivery... anything to give you an edge over your competitors. But keep it legal and keep it clean.

Whatever business you are in you should always play by the rules. I mean the unwritten rules, which means never rip off your customers or your suppliers. Don't bullshit anyone and do act with the highest integrity at all times. Yes undercut them, out-sell, out-perform, out-advertise, out-promote and out-do them on everything else but never, ever stoop to low-life tactics. It will always come back and haunt you later... guaranteed!

Okay, now I know that some of my clients are really struggling this year, and I know a couple of them have even decided to throw in the towel. So what I want to say is... whatever your situation right now don't give up.

If you are feeling a little despondent don't despair. To help you get back into the right frame of mind I think you should perhaps read this story. We all need some motivation at times and even though you might have read this story once already I highly recommend you read it again and take in the message. It's very important... here's the link. The Magic Story

Till next time.

All for now,

Bill

www.BusyVids.com

How I Got Done Over By Golf Oscar Oscar Golf Lima Echo

Hi All,

I have to be  bit careful what I say in this post. "Why?" Because I was mugged by yours truly. "Yours truly?" Yes you know... the boss. "The boss?" Yeh, you know... the Internet god. "OMG not?" Yes exactly!

Got it? Okay here's the story but I'll be careful not to mention any names for fear of further reprisals..

About two weeks ago I was innocently working away on one of my ideas to create a new income stream from affiliate marketing. I had already built several small websites for this and filled them with banners from my CPA affilaite programs. The income comes from the companies who want me to get them leads, and so every time someone clicks on one of these banners and submits their email, they get a lead and I get a dollar or two.

So I had four of these sites up and running and I was promoting them using videos, well what else?

Two of the sites were doing quite well. One was promoting several oline surveys and the other was promoting video games and free games downloads. Now when I say they were doing quite well, what I really mean is they were making a few dollars each every day. So then I thought of a great idea. I thought... Why don't I put some Adsense links on each site and then drive tons of traffic to them using a CPV program?

For those of you unfamiliar with CPV (Cost Per View), this is a paid program where you can get your site to pop up in front of people who are searching for something similar. Take a look at DirectCPV.com to get an idea. Using this program I can get a view of any of my sites for just 1.5 cents. So for $100 that's over 6,600 views.

Now needless to say with all this traffic hitting my affiliate sites, clicking on the banners and clicking on the Adsense links I was getting a little excited. I could see my Adsense income increasing daily. Not by thousands of dollars but certainly by hundreds. Then... Wham!

I get this email from Golf Oscar Oscar Golf Lima Echo telling me that my Adsense account has been disabled. Here's the gist of the email I received...

"After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation."

So, naturally I file an appeal. In my appeal I explain exactly what I had been doing, which in essense was just getting more traffic to my sites. As far as I could see I wasn't committing any crime and I wasn't even breaking any rules. Well, they weren't having any of it.

They replied within a few hours and basically said their decision would be upheld and my account was going to be closed. I had over £250 in my Adsense account and they took it all. Some of it had been earned before I used the CPV program, but it was all gone.

I used to have Adsense ads on this blogtoo. You can see the big empty space on the right hand side. My ads had been there for years. It now feels like I've lost a close friend, and I didn't even have time to say goodbye :(

I had been robbed, mugged, violated and humiliated by the Internet God. They just took my money, shut me down and there's nothing I can do about it. And all I did was what every Internet marketer wants to do... get more traffic!

Well, they make the rules or should that be laws? Whatever, there's certainly an element of 'Big Brother' about the whole thing. And is there a moral to this story? Beats me!

Go carefully my friends!

All for now.

Bill

www.busyvids.com

Don't Fall For The Software Scam

Hi All,

Have you ever bought a software program because you were led to believe that it would create automated income streams for you, and all you had to do was less than 30 minutes work a day? C'mon... own up. Well I did and quite recently too. In fact to my shame, I'm going to admit to buying into no less than 3 different programs. Phew! Glad I got that off my chest. I feel like I've just confessed my sins and now I'm cleansed and redeemed.

Okay guys I'll let you into a secret about these software programs that the sellers say will create massive passive incomes for you while you sleep. Here's the scenario...

I want to make a lot of money right... so I get together with a few friends and we sit down and brainstorm. We come up with the idea of creating a software program that builds websites, loads them with affiliate products, content and adsense ads ets etc. It's going to be the all singing, all dancing, out of the box, set it and forget, push button program to knock the socks off everything else on the Internet.

But will it work?

Well we call in a programmer and ask him if he can build such a beast. Programmers say everything is possible and will never be beaten, and so he agrees to write the code for the software for a whopping price on the condition that it will do most of what it is expected to do. We also promise him lots of beer in return for sticking with it and ironing out any bugs.

So this is what happens. We give the programmer our brief and explain exactly what we want the software to do. He gets to work.

I the meantime, we write up the hyped-up sales copy and create some amazing bogus videos showing clips of big bank balances and continuously show new incomes being generated in "real" time. This is guaranteed to whet the appetite of every gullible shmuck who sees it. Then we'll run a webinar and invite everyone to attend... for free. In the webinar we'll talk about this amazing software and say things like "you can easily make $50,00 a month with this". And then we'll get a few friends and relatives to back us up. Getting the picture?

So the sting begins to work and we start making dozens, then hundreds of sales. Problem is the software doesn't work properly. Only that's not a problem because as customers start complaining we just tell them that there's a minor issue, which will be resloved very soon and then remind them that they have 30 days guarantee. We could even extend it to 60 days.

As the complaints start rolling in our programmer works on them and fixes them one by one, at least as best as he can. So, in effect, what we have done is get our customers to pay for the development of our software. Then we pay the programmer, pocket lots of dosh and slope off into the sunset to work on another software project. Simples!

Oh yes and we make a few reluctant refunds. So did the software work? Who cares... next!

All for now comrades.

Bill

www.busyvids.com

Social Marketing - What Works?

Hi All,

Social marketing? Well I can categorically tell you what doesn't work and that's Twitter and Facebook. If anyone can make money from marketing on these social networks I'd be very interested to know exactly how they do it.

As far as I'm concerned IM twitterers would just like to think that all their "followers" are actually reading their tweets, when in fact nobody is. And the reason? Nobody is the slightest bit interested and everyone knows that they're just trying to sell them something. Now if you're a celebrity then that's a different matter. In that case everyone who is following will hang to to every tweeting word.

Now then what about Facebook? Well I tried an ad last year when I was promoting my License2Profit product. I spent $100 and I didn't get a single sale from it and only a handful of clicks. Well since then I kept on hearing and reading about how people were making money from Facebook so I thought I'd have another go.

This time I thought I'd put up an ad to promote the BusyVids service to the business community. Many businesses have scrambled to get a facebook page recently because... well it's a trend. But that's all it is... a trend.

So, I created an ad and submitted it for approval. And I couldn't believe it when it was disapproved. You just can't track these Facebook bods down to ask them why exactly your ad is disapproved, which is really frustrating. You're just referred to their policy and guidelines, which are pretty ambiguous to say the least.

Well, undeterred I revised the ad and submitted it again. Wham! The same thing happened. They refused my ad because of the image, which just happened to be the image of a video button. Well, I mean I was trying to promote a video service so what was the problem?

Okay, I thought I'll have one last try. I kept the description the same and changed the image to a laptop. I submitted it for approval and ... well I was now beginning to sound a bit like Victor Meldrew with my "I don't believe it" chant. "Oh let's just forget it", I said. Yes I do talk to myself.

Hmm Hmm do de do... twiddle twiddle... No! I can't stand being beaten and I was NOT going to give in. Actually, maybe this was the reaction they really wanted, so I'd willingly throw money at it without question. Hmmm... good marketing ploy.

Okay so I rewrote the description to something much less salesy and much more bland, and I changed the image to a UK flag. Well, what could they do? They had to let it pass, although it wasn't really what I had wanted. Right let's cut to the chase...

Here's a screenshot of my ad campaign more than half way through my $100 budget.

As you can see, it was running on a CPM at a cost of $0.19 per thousand views. But it was costing me almost a dollar a click so it would probably have been cheaper to have set it up for PPC. Anyway, at the end of the campaign I had a grand total of 102 clicks for my $100 and not a single call or email.

Well, in my opinion Facebook is simply for friends and not for business. Unless of course you know different?

All for now.

Bill

www.busyvids.com

Video Creation & Resurrection

Hi All,

Well it's been a busy time for our new venture BusyVids, and it looks like we're going to get even busier this year as more and more business owners finally realise the true value in video marketing. However, it can sometimes be an uphill struggle to fully explain our service and educate business people about the big advantages of video marketing.

Many business people are notoriously difficult to presuade when it comes to promoting new marketing ideas, and our video production and marketing team has recently come up against a few of them. First, many business owners don't like to get out of their comfort zone, in terms of advertising options, preferring to stick with tried and tested methods like pay-per-click and banner advertising.

Although these methods are costly and very few businesses see any relevant ROI, they tend to hang in there because they don't really understand what the alternatives have to offer. Inertia is one word that might describe this reaction, or should I say inaction, and technophobia is another. 

Unfortunately, plain old ignorance is one I would tend to use, albeit very quietly. For example, just recently I was emailing an "interested" client about having a video created and I mentioned keywords and keyword phrases. He emailed me back and said, "Well I don't know... there doesn't appear to be any keywords that suitably fit our business".

Phew! So, I emailed him back with a very long and detailed explanation about keywords and how they work with search engines etc etc etc. Well, that was the end of that. I didn't hear from him again. 

In our marketing, we do our level best to get the message across as painless and as simple as possible. We have created numerous videos explaining how our video marketing works and how it will work for them. And yes, thankfully, many business owners get it, but sadly there are those who don't. I guess they'll come round when they see the rest of the flock heading over to greener pastures. So till then...

Okay, now I just wanted you to know that we have added another video related service to our repertoire, which we have duly christened "VideoResurrection". This is for businesses that have already had a video created but it has done absolutely diddly squat since it's launch, birth, inception or whatever.

This service is mainly targetted at the many thousands of "punters" who have been cajoled into buying a video from Yell.com. These videos are at best mediocre but at an average cost of around £950 plus VAT, they also represent very poor value. Our own BusyVids videos are only £149.95 and get ranked in Google, so maybe we should be hiking up our prices!!!

So what we do here is we contact the video/business owner and ask them if they would like us to get their video into Google. There's no upfront fee for this service and if we don't succeed then there's no fee to pay. It's a win win offer for the business owner. Needless to say it's beginning to take off big time. You can find out more about this sevice here.

Well, that's about it for now. Look out for my next post as we continue to deliver amazing results for our clients with our BusyVids service, and there will be some news about another video related service coming very soon. 

Till then take care all.

Bill

www.busyvids.com

www.videoresurrection.com