Friday, August 3, 2007

SMCC Day 3 - The Whole Truth

Ok, if you've been following my posts you'll see that I'm only 3 days into Stephen Pierce's Smart Marketing Coaching Club.

I'm excitedly planning my strategy and working my way through the steps and I'm about to get back into but I wanted to let you know what's happened, just in the past 2 days since I last posted...
  • I've received detailed videos guiding me through the membership site. I thought I'd gone through it pretty thoroughly but I soon realised there's even more than I first thought! On the forums are lots of tips and links to great free resources
  • Newsletter with updates, tips & bonuses including a great guide to managing virtual teams (I've recently been working with a virtual assistant and realized just how valuable this information is)
  • Received answers to questions I sent Stephen's coaching manager, Laura
  • An intro to the new SMCC blog
  • Received an unadvertised bonus, one of Stephen's programs and I just have to share a snippet with you from the accompanying email:
"Stephen had no established email list, joint venture relationships, name recognition, etc. in this market base before the release of this book.

As a result of 1 advertisement that cost $750 USD placed on 1 page for 1 month, we generated 1200 affiliates and over 1/4 million dollars in total sales and a high Alexa ranking:
http://www.the-whole-truth.com/alexa.html

(I'm telling you this to get you excited for the strategies Stephen wil teach you in the program you just signed up for!) ============================================="

Cool, huh?!

Did I mention that when we signed up Stephen and Alicia said all we'd need to pay for is -
  • domain name $9 (one off)
  • hosting $9.95 a month
  • 1Shopping Cart $29.95 a month (free for the first 2 months)

At last!! I was so sick of those Derek Gehl Internet Marketing Centre crap products that just tried to upsell me into their own shopping carts and affiliate managers. I spent over $300 on their Warp Speed Wealth about 18 months ago and worked out I would have needed to spend at least double that again just to get started. I really felt ripped off. That's why I was very wary of it happening again when I saw Stephen's program. Yes, I paid a lot more than Warp Speed Wealth to get into Stephen's program but I'm get invaluable support. By the way, I checked out the resources to make sure that everything we need is available and it is eg website creator, squeeze page manager and lots of other things that I don't even know what they really are yet like RSS announcer.

Finally, I really feel I've found found someone (well actually a whole team) I can trust. And no, I don't get paid to endorse Stephen's coaching program. But if this becomes available you can bet I'll be the first to sign up as an affiliate!

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Intro to SMCC Smart Marketing Coaching Club

Woohoo! I'm finally in!!!

I am now able to access all the online info on Stephen Pierce's "Smart Marketing Coaching Club".

Wow, in a way I'm kinda glad I had this delayed introduction. I have to admit I was a bit annoyed that it took so long to get started but now I'm grateful it happened that way. Everything happens for a reason, right? This way I've been able to really get to explore everything in stages rather than being overwhelmed. There is SO MUCH info on the website. The highlights are:

  • Coaching calls & events
  • 12 Modules with the first module has the theme Mindset
  • Resources - just the info in this is completely overwhelming, there are so many resources broken into categories but it's still HUGE!
  • very active Forums

I've only just gotten a grasp on the info that's on the DVD/CD and there's so much more yet for me to do. I thought there might be a double up on the info that's on the DVD and info that's online but it looks like the DVD is just an intro before even getting started! OMI!!

To start, I've been busily posting on the forums, introducing myself and sending messages to people in my area. Looks like there's a group that meets regularly here in Brisbane (Australia) which is so awesome to be able to network with people who are doing the coaching program too.

Next step is to decide what niche I want to work in, what market can I win in (as Stephen puts it). I could easily procrastinate on this indefinitely so I'm making a decision that I will choose a market by the end of today. Even if it's not the absolute perfect niche for me, at least I'm taking action and I can learn and apply what I'm doing to a more perfect niche later if needed.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

PRISE Coaching program first impressions

It looks like I will be all set up ready to go from tomorrow. I can't wait!

I received a pack in the mail, a beautiful black leather compendium with a DVD and a cheap looking photocopied information.

PRISE - Passive Residual Income System Extreme

I'm currently still going through the DVD. It's got so much information on it & is perfect for newbies. Roy Phay, a man with a strong Singapore accent takes us through step by step the video tutorials (Camtasia) through the initial "Phase 1: Getting Ready" which includes how to set up a domain (Cheapcheapdomainnames.com), set up hosting (HostGator.com) etc. It's all done in great detail so even a complete technophobe would be able to follow it. I think it will be boring if you've already done it a few times though but the videos are quite short.

The focus initially seems to be on setting up a Blog. There's no real overview to give the big picture of what we're doing or why but I think that's very likely a deliberate decision by Stephen Pierce.

Phase 2 is the Installation stage where it goes through setting up Wordpress. My criticism here is thanks for showing me in detail how to do this but what is it and why am I doing this? Ok, I'm still a bit of a newbie - I have created my own website using website builder templates (thanks to GoDaddy.com's Website tonight). I'm slowly figuring out the benefits but I'm a great coachee and I'm just following instructions and not questioning anything or trying to improve on the system.

Stephen said to follow it like a recipe and that's what I'm doing.

Phase 3 is Set-Up and Roy Phay again patiently takes us through setting up PPC accounts, smart PPC (software provided by Stephen), setting up ClickBank account and Smart Profit Feeds. Then it gets into the more creative side which interests me - modifying the Wordpress templates and setting up Autoresponders.

There are still 3 Steps to Go:
Phase 4: Promotions - gathering and submitting articles, writing posts, promoting on blogs and forums, RSS Announcer & Social bookmarking),
Phase 5: Cash Injection System
Phase 6: Help

Now that I've gone through most of the tabs I'm going back to the first phase which is picking a market and a domain name. Still not sure what I'm going to focus on there.

My overall first impression of the PRISE system - Stephen's 'recipe' analogy seems very appropriate for how he's built this coaching system.

I would have liked a bit more of the bigger picture but I gather after watching the camtasia videos that we're being taught how to set up information sites, no single page sales letters sites for us. That's a bit different from what I was expecting because I gathered that Stephen was going to teach us exactly what he does and I haven't really seen any of his sites look just like blogs with ads everywhere. But hey, I have only just started and I'm not even on the main part of the coaching yet with the website access so a lot more will be revealed soon.

Monday, July 30, 2007

Coaching Program - preliminary impressions

As you might have seen from previous posts, I have signed up Stephen Pierce's coaching program. I delayed the start as I was moving and I learned from past experience last year when I unsuccessfully did Bill Hibbler's ebook coaching program, it's best to start a coaching program when you can give it your full attention and focus.

I will be starting any day now, am just waiting for Laura who looks after Stephen's coaching program to get in touch with my logon details and I'll be posting my progress along the way.

What impressed me is that Stephen seems genuinely passionate about helping people experience success. In the private session after signing up a guy in our group asked Stephen if he offered a guarantee. Stephen said no guarantee is needed because it works. He told us about the group from HK that went through. He said that only three didn't make money and that was because they didn't follow his recipe. (He says that success is a recipe and he's got a great recipe that he teaches step by step and every one who follows the recipe will get results. He says the people who don't get results are the ones who mess with the recipe and decide that they can do it better.)

Do Your Sales 'Suck'? (Video)

Do your sales 'suck'? Stephen Pierce says You do have the power to create profits.

According to the Small Business association, over 70% of businesses do not have a marketing problem, they didn't have sales because they had either:
- Idea problem
- Product problem

Stephen says your ideas, product and services and marketing needs to be in alignment, they don't have to be perfect." Stephen talks more about this in his You Tube video below.




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