Make Money Using Internet Marketing And Your Brain

First Page Of Google Using BackPage and CraigsList

Are you utilizing such tools like BackPage and CraigsList in your business in order to get to the first page of Google and generate traffic to your website? Turns out it’s still a new idea for a lot of marketers out there and I’m going to try to shed some light on this subject.

CraigsList has a Google Page Rank of 8, which is very high. BackPage is right behind the CraigsList in popularity. Naturally, a back link from BackPage is going to add a lot of value to your website as far as the quality of the back links (unfortunately, CraigsList is “no follow” any more).

Another great thing is that based on the Google Page Rank your ad in either one of those  locations will get indexed in a matter of minutes and will pop up on the first (hopefully) page of Google organically in a matter of hours.

Remember: it’s not about getting traffic from the visitors of the CraigsList or BackPage, but about getting to the first page of Google and getting visitors from Google.

Obviously, both of those guys have pretty strict rules,  but it’s just a matter of phrasing your ads accordingly in order not to get flagged right away.

It’s all about the keywords you use. You can change the copy any way you want in order to comply with the requirements of either site, just make sure you use your keywords correctly.

So, in order for your ad to get to the first page of Google you need to follow this concept:

1.  Place your keyword in the title of the post
2. Make sure you have your keywords in the body of the post
3. Insert your URL in the ad and make sure it’s clickable: http://www.URL.com, not just URL.com
4. Use long tail keywords to insure first page of Google placement of your post. General criteria is that the niche has to have about 300000 search results or less, but according to my tests you should be able to get to the first page even within niches of up to a few millions search results. That’s how much Google loves those two websites.
5. That’s it, you are done.

From the automation stand point BackPage is much more convenient to use, because it allows you to schedule re-submitting your adds for you automatically.

With both of those sites you need to make sure that you do not spam and therefore you shouldn’t repeat the same submission more than twice a week, I would even recommend to do it only once a week in order not to irritate nobody.

When your post gets to the first page of Google it will stay there for a few days, so once a week re-submission should be just as good.

Quality Of Your Artcles For Article Submission

There has been a controversy on one of the forums I’m a member of regarding the quality of the articles that one should maintain for the article submission and I decided to make a post out of it here.

Allow me to tell you this story.

When I just came here, I started working construction as most immigrants.
We were installing vinyl siding and after I learned the trade my crew would always be the best. I demanded the highest quality from my guys and would make them tear down the entire wall and re-side it in order to be absolutely perfect.

There was this builder who we would side the houses for for a few years in a row. And again, my quality was just like in the text book - unprecedented.

This one time we were to busy and he had to use some other crew - two rednecks with one busted step-ladder, one of them was my former supervisor who was well-known for being a useless idiot when it comes to a vinyl siding installation (that's him on the picture from the post about "Anthropology..."). Every time he screw something up and I would point it out to him, he would say "I don't care! Can't see it from my house, all right?"

So this time his crew sided the house and got paid exactly the same money as I would.
I went to check out the job

after they were done and it took me just a few minutes to find a whole bunch of ridiculous screw-ups. I didn't even have to look for them, they were right there in my face when I just approached the house.

So the builder was there and I asked him if he was disgusted by this quality and if he finally understands what a unique people my employees are.
He said that the quality was exactly the same and he doesn't understand what I'm talking about.

After that I scaled down to what we call "production quality" - visually almost identical for the consumer, but much less time-consuming for me. That's where I was able to stop working physically myself and finally started making money.

Another example.

I enjoy cooking a lot and I would often invite my guys over and cook something impressive and we would have a good time and play some pool and have a few drinks.
That particular time I cooked, I think, Pollo Alla Rustica, elaborate dish that takes knowledge and time to cook and present accordingly.
When I served it, two guys immediately requested ketchup.
Like if they were in a Burger King eating French fries for 99 cents!
It would've been less offensive if they would've just stood up and pissed in their plates!
I bet they would have been as satisfied if I gave them just some lame hot dogs!
That was another time when I made a decision to stick with a "production quality".

When it comes to articles - I've written articles myself for which I received an "otta-boy" from published writers, and I've also outsourced article-writing to different groups of people with different price-tags and different levels of quality. The worst case was a bunch of very inexpensive writers from India who supplied me with a few sets of fraises, each of which would be a very properly-built English sentence, but all together they would be just a senseless garbage. All of those "writers" would advertise themselves as "article writers."

I think that it's great if you are passionate about the subject and you know how to express yourself and you have actually interesting ideas and thoughts, but I honestly believe that for our purposes the "production quality" of articles will do just fine.
Average Internet marketer would have difficulties to come up with a well written, engaging article. We are not journalists and we rarely possess the skill.

Most of us are not writers and when we are trying to achieve particular results with article submission and have to write large volumes of articles I seriously doubt that the final results will be very impressive from the art stand point, but they will do just fine for our purposes.

It obviously will depend on the niche you are working and therefore the clientele that you have to deal with.

I'd like to think of an article (in our case) as just a format of a sales page (if you don't like using the term "sales page" here, lets call it "a-bunch-of-visual-or-auditory-triggers-designed-to-make-a-person-click-the-link-and-make-us-a-few-bucks") required by the publisher we are working with in each particular case: they accept articles - we convert it into an article, they want video - we convert it into a video file, pod cast - there you go, press-release - we can do it as well.

I still cook complex meals for my wife and when I do some repairs around the house I'm very precise, but for everybody else - "production quality."

First Page of Google Organic Search with TrafficGeyser

After my yesterday’s post about using the TrafficGeyser software to promote my videos I received a gazillion emails questioning my accuracy describing the results I get from this software or actually calling me… a dishonest person, to be polite.

First of all, I keep telling everybody: DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!

We are so accustomed to just accept somebody’s opinions if he or she looks like they know what they are talking about!

I know you’ve been told by some “guru” that it’s extremely difficult to get to the first page of Google even in Sponsored Links, not to mention Organic Search.

Go search article directories about the subject of Videos and Marketing. I’ve seen all kinds of articles over there including actual strategy to open 5 windows and start uploading your video to 5 sites at the same time when you are leaving the office in the evening and by the time you come back in the morning everything will be uploaded! And the guy claims not to be a first-timer!

Guess what? I am a first-timer of sorts. I’m not a full time Internet marketer and I’m not planning on becoming full time anything work-related! Like I indicated before, my approach is: set up the tools and systems that would allow me to make money on autopilot and free up my time for something actually valuable, like spending time with my lovely wife, my kids, teaching, writing books, doing charity work etc.

I needed to figure out how to automate video-submission process and it took me only so much time to locate this software and here are actual next day results:

Video “Making Money On-Line Scam: Free Tools” was the #1 out of 677,000 searches.

Even if you use only “Making Money On-Line Scam” it would still appear as #5 out of 1,120,000 searches.

Also, because of this software, my blog “Make Money Using Internet Marketing And Your Brain” was turned into a podcast and popped as the #4 out of 8,040,000 searches on the second day for the key-words "Making Money From Home Using Internet."

Obviously they are not going to be on the first page forever. Google is looking for a fresh content and I’m going to have to do a few tweaks in order to stay on top, but everything is explained in the tutorials for the TrafficGeyser.

Yes, I know, a lot of “gurus” have a whole bunch of advises on how to get to the first page of the Google organic search after a few months of whatever they teach, but here is a thing: I learned about labor economics from professor Oranzen and from a text-book “Modern Labor Economics.”

And the professor Oranzen and the text-book were obvious authorities. I never questioned neither one of them and I still don’t.

Another thing is an Internet Guru. Most of them are self-proclaimed. They learned how to use a couple of tools out of hundreds available and decided to call themselves a guru.

Every time you want to use somebody’s advice you are going to have to question if the guru is actually a guru or not.

I’m learning as I go and I can actually show the proof of what I teach.

First Page Google Placement Through Video Submission

First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted
There are different tools available today for Internet marketers in order to get to the first page of Google organic search results in a timely manner. Articles, podcasts, press releases, video submission, etc.

I think it’s obvious by now that using videos to get to the first page should be one of the main tools for every Internet marketer. First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

From 50 to 70 percent of the Internet visitors watch videos and actually prefer watching videos to having to read through the written text.

If you have any knowledge in psychology, you know that watching a video can create greater impact on the prospective customer than a written text. It generates more emotions and therefore gets him closer to making a decision based on what he learned.

First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

Google loves videos as well. I’m pretty sure if you create a video and an article with the same name the video will get higher in the organic search results and it will get to the first page faster.

I’ve been trying to automate my marketing efforts and set everything on the autopilot instead of becoming “full-time Internet marketer.” Not that there is something wrong with it, but I’ve done full-time things in my life and now I want to create a system that would require minimum maintenance from me so I can enjoy things in life that I actually enjoy and work is not one of them. First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

Using videos is one of the tools that is going to assist me with my goal.

Take a look at YouTube, for example. There are some videos that have hundreds and thousands views and yet it cost nothing to the owner to place them there. Doesn’t it blow your mind?! How much would you have to spent using Pay-Per-Click to generate the same traffic? Plus, it’s a known fact that you will have less conversions from 1000 visitors you get through paid advertisement compared to organic search traffic.

First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

Another important point: you video will stay there forever! (I haven’t checked all video submission sites, but I think it’s true for most of them) Can you believe it? No cost at all for constantly working advertisement!

Basically, you have to create a video once, submit it to YouTube and that’s it! It will continue working for you day after day! I especially recommend it to the beginners. Until you feel comfortable with your niche, until you find out if your website can convert or not, until you learned how to find the right keywords you shouldn’t try to spend any money on paid advertisement, because you are going to run out of funs before you made any sales. Ask me how I know that! First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

And again, like with the article marketing, automate the submission process!

There is a large number of the places you can submit your videos to (as of today I know about 40) and it is very important to know how to delegate this task in order to achieve good results. First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

The software I recommend is called TrafficGeyser.

It can automatically submit your video to all available locations and it has all the tutorials about creating your videos and actually submitting them. Setting it up is rather labor intensive, it took me about two hours the first time I used it, because you have to go to each video submission website and manually open an account.

As far as results of using this software… First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

I submitted my first video after midnight on Saturday and when I woke up at about 8 AM on Sunday it was ON THE FIRST PLACE ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS!

In case you didn’t understand the last sentence, ON THE FIRST PLACE ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS! First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

Not on the first page, not close to the top, ON THE FIRST PLACE!

Obviously I’m talking about long tail keywords, but it was the top of, probably, 500000 searches.

I know, it’s hard to believe. I didn’t believe it myself, but it is true.

That’s the kind of automation I’m talking about! How much work would it take you to get to the top of the organic search results with manual submission? A few weeks? Probably. First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

But, again, if you want to become a full time Internet marketer you might consider doing everything manually.

First page google using video generate traffic website massive targeted

One More Time About Article Marketing

After the last post I received a couple of emails proving my point:

Article marketing, despite of some negative opinions out there, is still a very powerful strategy to generate traffic and back-links to your website.

No matter what kind of submission software you use, you can expect your article to show up in 2000-3000 of directories practically immediately.

Even based on my personal experience, you can expect to have around 100-200 people reading your article every month, which is at least 200000 readers. I consider this kind of exposure rather impressive.

As far as the back-links, here we might have a problem.

I know myself and also I was told a few times about the situation where the owner of the website knows approximate amount of the back-links to his website, but Google shows much smaller number of them. I think, that is direct indication of that fact that Google does not count every link. And one of the explanations is that you have the same piece of content all over the place, but for the search engine it’s just one link and therefore submitting the same article to multiple directories will not help you with getting to the top of the first page in organic search.

That’s why I use Unique Article Wizard that generates a unique version of the same article for every directory and last time I checked I have enormous amount of back-links after each submission through the UAW.

How to Get to the First Page Of Google With Article Marketing

I need to make a disclosure right in the beginning of this article, that I’m not a “guru” by any means and I’m not going to pretend that I know everything about Internet Marketing. I’m offering my opinion about the subject based on my personal experience and based on the tools I personally use every day and tools I found helpful and productive.

One of our main goals should be to get to the first page of Google search results organically. I’m not really interested in Sponsored Links position because most people are going to be looking for the information they need on the top of the organic search results, not in Sponsored Links.

Think about it, if you are looking for some useful information, would you be looking into the paid advertisement section? I don’t think so.

To get to the first page of Google organic search you will need to have a large number of back links (among other things) to your site from all over the Internet. That’s where it gets tricky: you know how to create a single back link here and there manually, but in terms of statistics it’s not going to create any impact on your rankings.

Search engine is a machine. A robot. T-1000. Cybernetic organism. Advanced prototype. Mimetic poly-alloy, liquid metal. It thinks like a machine, it makes decisions like one. It assigns you a certain place in the organic search results based on the statistical data: how many links are pointing at your site from all over the Internet (as one of the criterias).

That’s where the Article Marketing can help you. By submitting one article to one article directory you will create one back link. So naturally the question would be: how to submit that article to a whole bunch of different directories and create a whole bunch of links?

There is a number of article submission services out there and they all can automatically send your creation to a large number of directories, but that’s where we trigger the duplicate content issue.

Out of two main points of view out there I’m going to join this one: by submitting the same article with the same resource box (author info) we will create a number of back links, but their quality will be very low. They all will be considered Duplicate Content and the search engine is not going to treat them as unique links and your position in the search results page might not improve the way you expect.

The solution that I found is Unique Article Wizard software: it will create (and submit) a few hundreds of unique articles for you based on your original. I’m not talking about some computer generated content or replacing words with synonyms. The process is rather involving, but the product is amazing: you will have a statistically impressive number of unique articles out there with back links to your site and they are going to be high quality links.

 Plus the software helps you create hundreds of unique resource boxes in minutes. Yesterday I was scheduling a few of my articles for the submission and it took me about ten minutes to create 576 unique resource boxes.

Nobody knows how Google actually makes decisions about the first page organic search results, but I find the idea of the duplicate content logical and my results with this software are rather impressive.

People join experts, not wannabes!

Here is another issue that not every new marketer understands.

You are trying to get people to join you. You learned about personal branding and shoved on the YouTube a video with you sitting on the pile of hay telling the world that you had just joined Global Resorts Network and you want other people to join you so you can finally start making money on their sales.

Day goes after day, but there are no sales, and there aren't even any views on YouTube and you start calling your mentor blaming it on him and questioning the entire system.

It's a simplified version, but you get the gist.

Here is a thing: people will join you when they see you as an expert in this field, when they see that you can actually help them to start their business, that you know what you are doing and you are willing to share your knowledge with them.

The number one fear or an obstacle stopping new people from joining you and any MLM generally is a fear of not knowing anything about this business and fear of inability to succeed based on the lack of knowledge.

Be realistic! Most of the people who will be joining you are going to be people who doesn't know anything about MLM and Internet marketing. So unless they are absolutely sure that they will get all their questions answered they are not going to give you their money.

They are looking for a mentor, a coach, somebody who can teach them and walk them by the hand. They have heard all the horror stories about MLM and Global Resorts Network and their heads are spinning because of this enormous amount of controversial information around. They need somebody who can explain everything to them and to cure their fears.

They need an expert!

They need you!

Stop looking around! I mean you! You can become an expert if you want to and it's not that difficult.

The amount of information you need to posses in order to be an expert in any particular field is actually very limited. All you have to do is to make sure you are clear on who you are in your personal brand, therefore who your ideal client is, what kind of question he or she will have and to have all the answers for those questions. 

I know it might sound unrealistic and frightening, but it is very doable. The matter of fact that's what I teach everybody on my team and most of my guys don't have any problems with this task.

Particular techniques and steps, I share only with the members of my team and therefore that's, unfortunately, the extent of the information you will get from this article.  

Internet-Based Business And Delegation: Do I Dare?

Global Resorts Network business: the way to delegate without loosing control

Delegation has always been a problem for a lot of entrepreneurs. In a many cases there isn’t even a question about it: it’s my business and therefore I must be as involved as I possibly can! It feels normal - I’m my own boss and because of it I don’t have anybody to help me, I’m only as successful as how hard I work.

And the problem is obvious: our business is our baby! It’s our heart and soul and we will fight anybody who will touch it!

Having been through a number of businesses myself, I’ve come to realize that we often have difficulty telling the difference between the business concept itself and the dirty little things that are involved in actual production or manufacturing process.

By default we think that as business owners we are supposed to be involved in every aspect of our business; that we have to know everything about everything that is involved in the process of the creation of the final product and that’s the way it should be if you want to run your own business.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

This kind of ideas actually run a lot of small business owners out of business every year and they rarely understand what kills them!

In order to see why it happens let’s go back a little bit and ask ourselves: what is a business? Is it an opportunity to provide your customers with fresh bread and cleaning services or an opportunity to make money for an entrepreneur?

It’s the money! It’s the profit that we want to receive from our business! That’s the main reason we quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs!

So when we consider a new opportunity we have to calculate ahead of time: are we going to make money on it or we just know how to bake bread and clean floors and we assume that if we own the entire business it will automatically make money for us.

Ultimately, your work as an entrepreneur is to invest available resources at a rate of return that exceeds the price that you pay for them.

That’s where it gets tricky! What is your cost of all the parts and components of your business? Are you sure you are aware of it? Are you?

Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!

You know exactly where I’m going with this! That’s right! Your own time!

Inability to put a price on their own time runs a lot of small business owners out of business!

They think that if they do something themselves, they are getting it for free! This kind of entrepreneurs end up doing everything without any help hoping to “cut costs” and they don’t realize that the problem would never happen if they budgeted for every component and every position in their business.

Haven’t you met business-owners who never has time available or money available because “You know, we run our own business, things are tough?”

Things are not supposed to be tough unless you make them this way!

It all comes back to budgeting. Did you budget for an accountant, for a cleaning lady, for a receptionist, for a loading-unloading professional, or you thought you would do it yourself and therefore it will be “free”?
One more time: everything has a price! Your involvement costs money!

As an average small business owner you want to make average small business money, right? It should be high six- low seven- figures per year, on average $1,000,000.00 per year (according to John Assaroff), or $420.00 per hour!

So, every time you do anything for your business other than making a decision, you should ask yourself: ”Can I buy it for less then $420.00 per hour?” and if you can - you should!

Another problem is - what if you can’t? Then you have to be honest with yourself - your business idea does not have enough upside to support itself and you should immediately abandon it! And by “immediately” I mean IMMEDIATELY!

After all we start our own business to eliminate things that we don’t like about being employed by somebody else: lack of financial freedom, lack of geographical freedom, lack of ability to spend time with our family, lack of ability to travel, lack of ability to contribute.

If we don’t get to experience all this, then why bother?

Robert Kiyosaki explains the difference between a business and a job this way: if you can leave it for a year and find it still running and even grown when you come back - it’s a business, if it dies the next day you leave - it’s a job!

So when we are talking about Global Resorts Network Business we should be open to the idea of delegating most of the activities to outsourcers: article and press-release writing and submission, TrafficGuild activities, link building, social media communications, message boards and forums postings, content development and distribution, etc.

It’s not about loosing control, it’s about gaining control! You are the brain, you are the brand! Let somebody else execute your ideas! After all you want the benefits, not just a feeling of involvement!

Keeping the big picture in mind is what it takes to build a large organization.

Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.

I remember, in the beginning of my real estate investing I was flipping houses: you buy a falling apart house, fix it up and sell hopefully making some money at the end. I was trying to do everything myself, because you can’t let somebody else mess it up! It’s my baby! Nobody else can hang drywall better than I can and nobody can install a new toilet the way I do it!

Take alook at these pictures! It's me at work (a camera adds five     pounds) and at the same time trying to look like a real estate investor and cutting ribbons by my houses for the newspapers.

It would take me forever to finish one property and after having spent so much time and effort on it you get really frustrated when a prospective buyer refuses to see how special that house is. All they see is one more three bedroom house among the other three bedroom houses on the market!

And at some point I partnered up with a group of people who had been flipping houses for quite a while as well and, seeing how attached I get to the house we were renovating, they shared with me their approach: they would actually make an effort not to be at the property during the renovation process, they actually hired a project manager to supervise the process and to avoid the need for them to be at the property. They were subbing out everything, focusing only on acquisition and selling aspects of the business. This approach allowed them to avoid falling in love with each property and to become the biggest company on the market within literally a few months!

I have another great example for you.

Back home, in Russia, we have this belief that has been around for decades: you have to grow your own potatoes, because if you do it yourself - it’s free. I’m not joking!

I remember how every year we all had to participate in this weird activity: no matter how wealthy you are, no matter who you are, everybody was getting really involved in planting and growing potatoes. We would plant it manually and harvest it in the fall by manually digging it out of the ground! It was a lot of work!

I kept asking my parents why don’t we just buy potatoes at the store (they were obviously very inexpensive) and they would keep telling me that if we grow them ourselves they are free!

I hadn’t been to college yet, but I was already feeling that it wasn’t the way to go, that this one-sided self-sufficiency was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out why everybody was still doing it.

I remember eventually, when I was already in college, when the time came again to harvest potatoes, I said to my family: “Hey, guys, I can handle it myself, you don’t have to go with me. I’m a strong guy and I will take care of it without your help!” They said: “Are you sure? It feels really weird, because for years it’s been an activity that the entire family must participate in! Everybody else does it this way!” I said: “No, you are fine. I got it!”

Then I went to the place in town where bums were sitting all the time waiting for work and for barely any money I hired them to take care of this potatoes situation and it was done by the end of the day.

I don’t think I ever told my family what happened, because it would be almost a crime, what I did!

Plus, they were so proud of me!

And, eventually, in college, I learned that I was right, when I read in the book the words that I remember by heart:

“A world of individual self-sufficiency would be a world with extremely low living standards.

Trade allows people to specialize in activities they can do well and to buy from others goods and services they can not easily produce.

Specialization and trade go hand in hand because there is no motivation to achieve gains from specialization without being able to trade goods and services produced for goods and services desired.

That’s why economists use the term “gains from trade” to embrace the results of both.”

So I was right!

It sounds like poetry to me!

One more time: you don’t have to do everything in your business and you don’t have to be good at everything in your business!

As John Assaroff taught me: “Hire people who play at what you have to work.”

The faster you learn how to delegate, the faster you will be able to develop your business to the point where you can finally move to Costa Rica, learn how to surf and get to spend day after day on the beach with your family relaxing and drinking those fruity drinks with little umbrellas!

You are a business owner! That’s what you do: you own your business!

Let somebody else handle the technical aspects and that’s when you will experience the freedom you started your business for in the first place!

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Branding: Why Does It Work?

The science behind one of the most advanced marketing tools available today.

 

Personal Branding has rapidly become one of the most controversial marketing tools used by Internet marketers today. Opinions differ from one “guru” to another, but by now it’s clear for the majority of marketers, that Personal Branding (also known as My Story Marketing) is a valuable tool in most kinds of web-promotion. Like a magnet, it attracts tons of traffic and helps create massive lists of qualified leads.

While most people have some general understanding about the subject, rarely anybody realizes that there is an actual science behind it.

So, how does it work and, most importantly, why does it work?

On the surface it looks really simple or even lame: you put yourself out there, you allow your prospects identify the product with yourself, you tell them about your personal story and, miraculously, you get enormous amounts of leads to your website or whatever your platform is. So, the question is, why does it happen? What is so attractive for the prospects in this weird way of presenting the product. Doesn’t it look almost unprofessional?
In most cases it does, but that’s the beauty of it!

Let’s see what’s going on in the brain of your potential client.

We all know about the comfort zone, that little castle that we all have inside of our heads, that little world that we create for ourselves, familiar, predictable and understandable. That is the tool that we use to fight the real world with all it’s unpredictability and complexity. We want to be certain, we must be certain in order to be able to function and to be able to sleep at night. So we simplify the world to a little comics book that we call our comfort zone. We know everything and everybody in that book and we feel safe and secure inside of it.

So, all of a sudden, a salesperson comes along and starts knocking at the front gate of our little castle. What do we do? Of course, we freak out!

He is an outsider! We don’t know him! He is out of our comfort zone and we feel uncomfortable with him!

Plus, he wants us to give him our money!

We are not dealing with him! That’s the verdict!

So, if he is a beginner, he will just leave and we will re-establish our comfort inside of our castle.

But if he is a pro, he knows about our mental issues and he will try to play by our rules. What are they? There is only one rule: we are dealing exclusively with objects and characters from our little comics book.

So he will start playing mind games with us: he will start a drip campaign to increase the amount of times he appeared in our life in order to become more familiar; he will tell us that he understands what we need (and therefore he is not a complete stranger) and his product is going to satisfy our needs; he will give us the most beautiful sales pitch, that will create the need and will offer the solution as well; he will do anything in order to get inside of our little castle.

It will take a while, it will take a lot of effort, certain monetary infusion, time and knowledge. He might succeed, he might get killed by our guards before he reaches the outer wall of the castle.

And here is a completely different story: a guy from our comics book approaches us and offers the same product, but this time we know the guy, he looks familiar, he lives where we live, he eats the same food, wears same clothing, has erectile dysfunction, like we do and works at the same tractor factory. He is almost identical twin of ours and we feel like he is almost a family member. We have trust and understanding with him instantly and we are open to the idea of dealing with him and therefore buying from him.

That’s why this technique is so effective! Your ability to establish instant rapport with the prospect is based on your similarities.

I personally have been using this approach marketing Global Resorts Network for a while and the results are nothing short from spectacular! And my story is not really interesting or impressive, but that’s the beauty of it: it doesn’t have to be!

It’s not about your story being fascinating, quite the opposite, it’s about your story being average and you being an average Joe.

My students often tell me: ”I’m afraid it’s not going to work in my case, I don’t have anything interesting to say about myself, I don’t have anything impressive about myself, I suck and I don’t think my story can attract anybody!”

When I hear it I always remember the scene from “Keeping The Faith”, when Ben Stiller explains to the kid from the church’s choir: “That’s the challenge God gave you! Embrace your suckyness!” And the scene ends with the kid singing: “I love that I suck! I love that I suck!”

You need to understand: it’s not about your story being fascinating, it’s about your prospect having the same story and being comfortable with you because of it.

I hate to shatter your ego, but you are not unique! There are hundreds and, probably, thousands of people in the world with almost identical story, almost identical circumstances and almost identical set of challenges. They will be glad to find you, they will feel extremely comfortable with you, you will be able to establish an instant rapport with them by just telling them about yourself and your life and what you do and what you have been through. Every word you say, no matter how lame you think it is, will be a one more possibility to find a match out there in the world for you. They will be an amazing group of people! You will enjoy communicating with them and you will feel like you’ve known them for years! They will be the most productive team members for you, you will have such a synergy going on that it will blow your competition away!

You all heard about what I consider one of the most effective communication tools known as “personality mirroring”. Andy Bernard from “The Office” was one of the best practitioners of it and you can check it out in the episode called “Merger” if I’m not mistaken.

The basic idea is that you copy the person you communicate with: the posture, intonation, volume of their voice. They speak fast - you speak fast, they use a lot of hand gestures - you do the same, they cross legs - you follow.

What happens is - by copying them you are becoming more familiar and therefore less threatening. They feel more comfortable with you and more open to what you have to say. This technique works beautifully and yet not a lot of people use it because it looks to simple. Try it and you will see how effective it is.

Why am I mentioning it? Because Personal Branding and My Story Marketing is in essence a highly developed case of Personality Mirroring: you are almost like identical twins with your prospect, you do the same things, the same way, you have been through the same events and you are trying to achieve the same goals in life. And the beauty of it is - you don’t even have to learn how to use this tool (like with the Personality Mirroring), it’s already there, you mirror them already by just being who you are!

This all became possible because of the power of the Internet and, particularly, YouTube: now you can display yourself out there and eventually your matches will find you and attempt to contact you.

Talk about targeted traffic! No more cold calling and trying to convince people in things! Your conversion rate will shoot through the roof!

And this all will happen just because of your personal story! Any story will do!

I’m not going to make sweeping generalizations and tell you that this is the best tool and the only tool you should use. There are different people with different approaches on the market and they all have the right to exist.

If Johnny Bolton is good with talking to people on the phone and it works for him - great! If Ty Coughlin succeeds at attracting prospects with his tricks - beautiful!

I’ve found great success with Personal Branding and, if you are not using it, it is worth researching it and, possibly, incorporating it in your marketing. It all depends on what you feel comfortable with and what you are good at.

In my case, I can’t say that I handle rejection very well (or in a very polite manner) to actually call my prospects, plus, being a foreigner with a thick Russian accent, you can figure how successful I was when I attempted to call leads in the beginning of my career.

Paid advertisement didn’t appeal to me either just because of being faceless in most of the cases.

So, eventually, I learned about Personal Branding and it works for me just fine! Weirdly, most guys on my team are not foreigners, as I expected, but rather somebody with similar background, people who had been through different kinds of small business in the past and eventually recognized the beauty of the Internet marketing and joined me to promote Global Resorts Network. It proves one more time, that one shouldn’t try to predict which part of your story will be the most attractive for your prospects, just be honest and personal with them and you will have more leads than you can handle!