What I learnt from Big Seminar, even though I didn’t attend it
Last Wednesday, I met up with a couple of friends in the SEO Web Design community, and each of us shared our experience and insights about our Internet endeavours.
It was really interesting to find out that many of us have all gone into our own specialities. We all have different business models and strategies – from eBay, to SEO, to Blog Marketing (hey that’s me! 
), email marketing and stuff… but for sure, we had something in common – to make money from the Internet and live a work-at-home lifestyle!
One of the members have actually recently went to the big seminar in Atlanta recently, and his insights and experience of the seminar were particularly useful. Here are some of the points:
- We need to work in a mastermind group that consist of people that complement each other. Mastering everything is crazy. Members of a mastermind team also help to push each other to keep up with work.
- It is important to view the endeavour as an “Internet Business” rather than just “Internet Marketing”. That means that there must be specific plans on how to manage cashflow, how capital should be invested, budgets for anything and everything, an specific plan of what is to be done, and what training to attend.
- It is important to uncover what is your biggest challenge in making things work, and direct energy and time to solve the challenge. To psyche yourself up for this, you could think of “What will happen to me if I solve this problem?”, “How much more free would I be?”
- Part of an Internet business is about networking – and networking is critically important! Networking brings about opportunities for joint ventures, and we all know joint ventures are one of the best way to bring in a massive amount of traffic to your website. Through the big seminar, my friend managed to network with several of the gurus in Internet marketing – and you can imagine how powerful such a JV would be!
- One of the ways to find the hottest product to sell on the net is through eBay pulse, or the Amazon top sellers.
- It is critical to train your affiliates when you have an affiliate program for your product. You are better of having five super affiliates, rather than have one hundred lousy ones.
- There is power in words, and very often, using the rights words in you sales copy can make significant changes in sales. The best way to tell which works best is the tweak and test.
- Tools/Services critical for Internet Marketers: Domain, Hosting, WYSIWYG web page design software, Email Autoresponder, Power Squeeze Page.
- Follow up with your prospects at least 7 times.
- If you are not an expert, one of the easiest ways to create a product is to interview an expert – be a reporter!
- An alternative to elance.com is designoutpost.com
- Putting Adsense Ads on your site may well be giving away traffic which could be better monetized. Instead, what you could do is to make your own ads to sell your products, or use Adwords to get traffic instead.
All right… sorry for the randomness. Its just the notes I scribbled as he talked. It was definitely an interesting session we had last Wednesday evening!
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Tan Kian Ann is blog marketer based in Singapore. He now works with individuals and small businesses reach out to the world using blogs. 
December 11th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Visit Andy
Hm, nobody took photos? We should start that as a habit to create some juicy fodder for our blogs!
December 11th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Visit June Goh
Happy Birthday Kian Ann
Hope your day has been a cheerful one.
Just finish class at 11 pm and got home a while ago.
Bravo for listing down the points for the BIG SEMINAR and sharing.
Will make attempt to try out Wordpress and look at the tips you offer in your blog.
Bye for now
June Goh
December 12th, 2006 at 12:53 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks June and Andy!
Andy, I remember TC took some photos… maybe I should get a couple of them from him to add to this post. ;P
Let me know if any of you need help for WordPress. I’m also learning
December 12th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Visit Jolly Tan
I like your attitude and your spirit in going all out to be the BLOG Master of Singapore. Thank you for sharing. It sure took you some some time to get those points blogged. Thank you for the wonderful effort and time.
Beeeeeelated Birthday Greetings! Wow! 1/4 century old! (If I knew we would have celebrated the night we met as a community…) You are definitely doing something great at this age. You know what mixing with people like you keep me going though I am close to 1/2 a century old. Friend…you are a great inspiration to me to keep me going. We are never too young or too old to do what you are doing.
Keep it up!
December 12th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Visit Shi Hengcheong
So it was a good evening we spent with Kian Ann. We learned a lot from one another.
As for the birthday, it was my fault – I forgot. It would be so nice if we have prepared a birthday cake!
December 12th, 2006 at 9:25 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks everybody… Never mind about the cake and the birthday lar, we all had fun, and that is what is more important!
I think we really should quickly set up the proposed community portal up, so everyone can get their questions answered and everyone can get started on their Internet Business too.
December 12th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Visit Shi Hengcheong
Hey! That’s a great idea – eCommunity Portal. So who has the experience of building and marketing a community portal here? Since we are a small group, we will open to public to grow our membership. Should it be a Singapore focused or regional or international platform?
Am I asking too many question already?
Where is Steven Yap? We need talk to our CMS expert now.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Visit Jolly Tan
Hey! TC has actually started a blog….but does not know how to work from there. He said he needs Kian Ann to help program this http://grouppower.wordpress.com to make it more effective. We can discuss this. It may just end up in our hands afterall.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Jolly… I personally feel it would be better to work on our own domain, i.e. use the version from WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com.
Would anyone like to volunteer a domain and some webspace for a blog? I can do the setup and all the necessary settings for the members to post and receive everything via email.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Visit Kian Ann
Haha.. alternatively, we can get Steven to do up a site using Joomla! so we can have both static and dynamic content, and all the poll features, forums and everything.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Visit Jolly Tan
I think Shi may be able to help with the hosting…Domain, will discuss with Shi also, maybe he has a un-used domain name hanging somewhere. You are the expert Kian Ann…you orchestrate this and we will help with the activities.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Visit Shi Hengcheong
I was on Skype with Jolly just now. He agrees that we go for bigger scope than our existing SEO workshop ecommunity. So I think we need a community portal rather then a Wordpress blog.
It’s just a new idea for the new year. I don’t know how to make it happen but I know why we need to do this community portal for people who want to learn online marketing or e-marketing not that sort of internet marketing that talks about list-building, email marketing, affiliate marketing and selling to internet newbies, and people trying to strike it rich online.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Visit Kian Ann
I think there is a need for one specific to your workshop community too – in a sense, more of a large mastermind group rather than people contributing ideas… it needs to be one where the people already know each other, and it is just a platform to check back and make sure we do our work, rather than for us to get to know more people.
That said, I think this two could be two different projects altogether.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Visit Shi Hengcheong
Mastermind group does not function when it’s large. In fact, I believe quality is more here and one has to handpick mastermind partners. We can provide an environment to foster the forming of the group but I don’t think I should form mastermind groups for others.
As for an online meeting point, I think this blog is doing fine for a start. When more people come here and participate actively, we can then spin off. Meanwhile, I hope it will help you to increase traffic and achieve your top 50k ranking!.
Hopefully, we will burst your bandwidth limit!
December 12th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hahaha! I would love to have that “good problem” to solve… and I will have more comments and conversation on this blog!
December 13th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Visit Evan Carmichael
Great post! I write a blog on Mastermind Groups and have created a new entry that mentions your post.
Keep up the great work!
Evan.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Evan! Yeah, the power of like minded groups and people with similar vision is indeed fabulous. Working together is always synergistic!
December 14th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Visit rajay
Hello Tan Kian Ann
I went through your site taking considerable time.
Its quite well organized and contented. I wish you good luck in your endeavours. Its also quite nice to see singapore bloggers being active and content oriented. Keep doing !
December 14th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thank Rajay! Your blog is really nice too! I’ve always wanted to start a photo-filled blog like yours, but my photos are disappointingly ugly… still got a lot to learn about photography. haha..