Organization “Inside Google” Runs Ads About Google CEO’s Big Brother-Like Attitude

Most parents understand that the Internet is NOT their friend. Companies like Google are making billions by tracking everything you do online… and then selling that information to the highest bidder. Worse, they are tracking everything your children are doing as well… up to and including using the GPS in their cell phones to track their movements.

Fortunately, the public is FINALLY waking up — and fighting back. The organization “Inside Google” is now running ads on the Times Square Jumbotron lampooning Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s famous comment that, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Schmidt could have worked for the East German Stasi with that attitude. Between corporate sleazebags like Schmidt and Big Brother totalitarians in the U.S. government, Americans will soon have their every movement watched, online and off.

On a more practical level, Inside Google offers a number of privacy tools on its website that can help you get started taking back your life from corporate totalitarians like Schmidt. Go to…

http://insidegoogle.com/takeaction/privacy-toolbox/

It’s not just a matter of disabling “cookies.” Hundreds, even thousands of websites –especially those that use Flash Video — place tracking programs on your computer that monitor everything you do. These tracking programs — known as LSOs or Local Shared Objects — remain in place even when you delete your cookies.

To get rid of LSOs, you can add a special plugin to your Firefox browser. You can get this plugin, Better Privacy, by clicking here…

More later.

8 Easy Ways to DOUBLE Your Opt-In Response Rates

A “squeeze” or “opt-in” page is the web page that visitors land on after they click
on a search engine keyword.

The only purpose of an opt-in or squeeze page is to elicit a specific response from a website visitor — usually to give a name and an email address in exchange for specific information. Smart marketers often have visitors land on a squeeze page first… before being redirected to a sales page.

In recent months, Internet marketers have been complaining about declining opt-in rates… but the truth is that many web developers ignore proven, tested techniques when creating their squeeze pages. Fortunately, just a few simple changes can dramatically boost your results — often doubling or even tripling your opt-in rate.

Step 1: Make sure your headline matches keyword search terms exactly. Fully 50% of people who visit your site after clicking on a search engine keyword make their decision to stay or go within the first 2 seconds. Their only question when looking at your web page is: Is this the right place? If they think it might be, they’ll linger for a few more seconds. Your first and most important job is to help them realize that, indeed, your site is the right place. If the dominant keyword for your product is “seaweed shampoo,” then the words “seaweed shampoo” better be in the headline of your squeeze page and found throughout the body copy.

Step 2: Tell your visitors EXACTLY what you want them to do and tell
them immediately. If you want visitors to sign up for your free e-zine, then the sign-up box should be front and center and “above the fold.” Smart Internet marketers put links and sign-up boxes throughout the body copy of their squeeze pages. You want people to always know what you want them to do.

Step 3: Show your product immediately. We call this the “hero shot” because your product or service is the “hero.” Again, this should be done above the fold. If you’re selling a service, then you must graphically represent the service with photos. The purpose of the hero shot is to convince visitors that they’ve found the right spot.

Step 4: Make sure you have a privacy statement right next to your sign-in or purchase box. The world loathes spam. If you don’t convince your visitors that you respect their privacy, right from the get-go, they’ll be gone Johnson.

Step 5: Use tables or bullets instead of text to describe the benefits of your product or service. As a copywriter, I never thought I’d say this… but on squeeze pages shorter copy is better than longer copy. You still can have body copy and sales copy, but 50% of people who opt in probably won’t read it. They’ll be convinced solely by your headline, hero shot, bullets and privacy policy.

Step 6: Ask only the minimum necessary for a sale or opt-in. Too many marketers ask visitors to their site for everything from their mother’s maiden name to their fax number. Keep it brief. Don’t frighten people off unnecessarily.

Step 7: Add audio or video to your squeeze page. It’s 2008. If you’re not using video or at least audio on your squeeze pages you’re badly hurting response. There are dozens of free or inexpensive tools available now that make online video a snap. If you don’t know how to add video to your site, ask your web developer. It’s now easy as pie.
Step 8: Use graphical credibility enhancers — again, “above the fold.” These credibility enhancers include your best testimonials… Better Business Bureau icons… any industry logos or association logos your company is authorized to use… and so on. You need to communicate immediately that your site is credible. You should try to do that as much as possible without words but with graphical elements.

I’ve used all of these steps for my clients – with amazing results. One project I worked on had a slightly less than 2% opt-in rate on a free offer. It was a long sales letter with an opt-in box at the bottom. After implementing the steps above, the opt-in rate skyrocketed to 15% and higher. That’s an amazing difference.

Bottom line: The only purpose of a squeeze page is to capture leads. It’s not there to sell a product… build brand identity… or tell prospects about your company. When you keep that in mind when designing your squeeze page, it will make an enormous difference in the results you get.

How to Create “No Brainer” Offers That Double, Even Triple Your Revenue

Years ago, a friend of mine… who built up a $200 million travel club business from scratch… told me his entire philosophy of direct response marketing could be reduced to just two words:

The Offer.

He told me he has tested every variable imaginable both online and offline – copy, lists, colors, text sizes, formats, you name it. But when push comes to shove, he said, nothing — absolutely NOTHING — produces sales like an irresistible, no-brainer, “you’d have to be crazy not to accept it” offer.

That was his specialty. He would cobble together 50% to 75% discount offers from airlines, car rental agencies, luxury hotels, restaurants, and cruise lines and put them all together into a package that he’d sell for something like $49.95 a year.

The offer was simply incredible. If you liked to travel, you’d have to be crazy not to accept it. Why pay $350 a week for a car rental when you could get the same car for $125? You’d pay for his service with a single coupon!

So, what does this have to do with marketing non-travel products?

Well, too manymarketers spend a lot of time on every other element of their marketing campaign and very little time thinking through their offer. You have to really ask yourself some tough questions: What’s in it for the customer? Is the offer you’re making something that is SO GOOD — such an incredible deal — something that provides so many overwhelming benefits — that he or she would be insane not to accept it?

The best resource I can think of for health marketers to bone up on creating superb offers is Mark Joyner’s now-classic The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less (John Wiley, 2005). You can pick this up used at any decent bookstore or order it from Amazon.com.

I don’t have time to go into all of Joyner’s theories right now, but let me just summarize a few key points. For Joyner, the Irresistible Offer has three basic elements:

1. An incredibly HIGH Return on Investment (ROI) for the buyer…

2. What he calls a TOUCHSTONE or instant summary of your offer… and

3. Believability.

The TOUCHSTONE is what is unique about Joyner’s approach – and which is difficult for marketers to achieve.

Examples are Domino’s Pizza’s “Pizza in 30 minutes or it’s free” or Columbia House Records’ “10 CDs for 1 Cent.” Another good Touchstone is Federal Express’s: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” That tells you immediately what they are offering – and, if you have a package that HAS TO BE THERE, it’s irresistible.

Believability is something everyone understands. If I offer to make all your wrinkles disappear overnight, I have to have some pretty heavy credibility enhancers. But if I can tell you I can make your wrinkles FADE in just 7 days, you might believe me – especially if I’m an MD and I have loads of studies to back me up.

The final point that Joyner doesn’t really discuss is the target audience. The best offer in the world will flop if you make it to the wrong group of people. You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo, as the saying goes, but you CAN sell ice… a lot of ice… to a thirsty crowd. All you have to do is give them a taste… and then offer them a second glass.

I recommend you check out Joyner’s book. He has dozens of valuable insights about such essential copywriting elements as offer intensifiers, risk reversal tactics, pricing tricks, viral marketing and more.

Take the time to master these secrets of top-level copywriting, and you can have orders flying in from every which way! Coming in via call centers, email, your website, fax machine, FedEx, mail, etc.

Copywriting is the ultimate security in a very un-secure world. Your ability to produce cash on demand for your business, through the power of persuasive words alone, is truly the modern-day equivalent of alchemy.

And it all begins with those two words: The Offer.

Robert Hutchinson: Author and Essayist

Veteran travel writer, author and award-winning essayist Robert Hutchinson insists his latest book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Regnery, $19.95), grew out of his world travels where he came into first-hand experience with, and developed great respect for, the world’s great religions.

His first paid article, he adds, written for an alternative newspaper in the late 1970s, was about the children of the Hare Krishnas. Hutchinson went on to write numerous articles about such diverse religious groups as Tibetan Buddhists, Zen, Zoroastrianism, Bahais, the Sikhs, Orthodox Jews, and the myriad branches of Christianity.

“I have the opposite view from the new crop of atheist polemicists, who display a kind of Cartesian solipicism,” Hutchinson says. “They seem to think that the only truth worth investigating is what you can discover on your own. While I see the attraction in that stance, I think in practice you miss out on the accumulated wisdom of mankind, passed on over the generations in the world’s great religions.”

He adds that atheist writers such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, in their insistence that all belief is illegitimate, in practice would dismiss “virtually all human knowledge” which is built up through a series of accumulated insights.

Hutchinson says his ecumenical orientation is reflected in his education. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate at a Catholic university, moved to Israel to study Modern Hebrew in a series of ulpanim – intensive six-month language courses for new Israeli immigrants – and then completed an M.A. degree in theology and Biblical studies.  He also lived for several years on a Pacific island where he has studied Tibetan Buddhism and interviewed a number of high Tibetan lamas, such as the late Kalu Rinpoche, for magazines.

“What studying other religions taught me first hand is that all religions don’t teach the same thing,” he says. “I learned that very dramatically while living in Israel and visiting Arab countries like Morocco and Egypt. What I tried to do with The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible is to show just how unique the Bible really is. The ideas that permeate the Biblical stories and teachings differ in profound ways from what almost all other religions believe, and they shaped, in a unique way, the way western civilization developed.”

One of the central claims in Hutchinson’s book is that the philosophical and moral ideas found in the Bible gave birth to many of the “social realities” most cherished in the modern world, including experimental science, the abolition of slavery, the recognition of universal human rights, and a belief in limited government.

Hutchinson insists that his book is not a work of biblical apologetics as such – although he does defend the Bible against attacks that it is unhistorical – but an attempt to demonstrate how the Bible “shaped the world we live in.”

Hutchinson, who has won nearly a dozen journalism and writing awards, is the former managing editor of Hawaii Magazine and Hawaii Bureau Chief for The Hollywood Reporter. He is also the author of When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City, a travelogue about his family’s adventures in Rome while he wrote about the Vatican; and The Book of Vices: A Collection of Classic Immoral Tales, a light-hearted parody of William Bennett’s classic The Book of Virtues.

A long-time student of the Japanese martial art of Aikido, Hutchinson lives with his family in a small town on the ocean.