This is Part 2 of 2 of “Test This” – if Part 1 went sailing by you last week, you can read it here.

*** NOTE – at the end of this post there’s a contest open to all StomperNet Newsletter subscribers.

If you’re interested in like 40 hours of SEO, Conversion, and ecommerce education – you’ll probably want to enter.

Let’s begin.

This week, we’re going to continue to survey my gross ineptitude and egregious mistakes that resulted in bigger sales numbers for my company.

You see what I just did there? I used plainly negative phrases and concepts and juxtaposed them with a positive outcome.

It’s called cognitive dissonance – it’s where your brain consumes concepts or ideas that don’t make sense without further explanation.

And it’s a powerful marketing technique that you need to become skilled at. Why? Let me explain:

When you present “uncomfortable tension” or cause conflicting thoughts in your prospect, one big reaction that you can always almost count on is their desire to REDUCE the discomfort of those thoughts.

So, if you suggest a conflicting point of view, your prospect is going to (sometimes rabidly) search for a way to rationalize your statement.

Here are some examples of cognitive dissonance at work. By the way, I did NOT make these up – these appeared in newspaper headlines – meaning, they actually rose to the level of being printed – with ink and paper and everything.

Beer Beats Prostate Cancer! (If Only…)

Granny Scares Off Robbers By Pulling A Bigger Knife!

Researcher Calculates A Snowball's Chance In Hell To Be .000000000134%

Booze Can Melt Away Pounds

The Sixth Sense Is Not 'Intuition' — It's a Unique Combination Of Smell & Touch: SMUCH!

Legless Mountain Climber to Scale Mt. Everest

Couch Potatoes Are Smarter! (oh please be true, oh please, oh please…)

Now watch as thousands of people magically and rapidly unsubscribe from this newsletter…

Seriously, those headlines SOLD newspapers – a LOT of newspapers. And notice that there was NOT a single “Feature, Advantage, Benefit” statement to be found in any of them.

It was all **cough** “fact-based”. You know what I mean – the elements of the headline were presented as facts, not in terms of how it can benefit you, the reader.

You see, if there were benefits, they were IMPLIED. For example:

Drink Beer, Be Cancer Free

Be A Slug, Get Smarter

Even The Meek Can Fight The Big Nasties With The Right Gear

You Can Achieve Anything – Legs Not Required

Why do these (let’s admit) slightly sleazy and completely over-stated headlines sell newspapers?

Cognitive Dissonance.

Lame, right? They actually get away with those headlines. And the reason that they do is because they are careful to offer NO EXPLICIT VALUE – the only thing they’re offering is to tell you a fantastical story that stretches the imagination. And since we can’t help but wonder if there really is such a thing as a free lunch, we make some of these rags the most profitable papers in existence.

Yes, lame.

But… But… There’s a way – a non-sneaky way – to use Cognitive Dissonance techniques in your marketing that will actually create a MORE satisfied customer, and a customer that wants to purchase from you over and over again.

Some of the following exercises will create “Dissonance” (cause conflict) and “Resonance” (create comfort):

Question #4: (There’s a pretty good chance that you were expecting Question #1 – but since this is a continuation of last week’s newsletter,
it’s actually #4 – that’s Dissonance at work my friend.)

Subject lines in emails should be in:

1. ALL CAPS.

2. Title Case.

3. Sentence case.

4. CamelCase.

5. lower case.

This is really a trick question, but it was a clever way for me to show you a little tip that can create both Dissonance and Resonance at the same time.

When your prospects receive an email from you, most of the time they are expecting to receive Subject lines that CONFORM to the standard accepted practices of written communication. That’s usually “Sentence case” – where the first word of a sentence is capitalized, and the only other capitalizations are words that are MEANT to be capitalized, like proper names.

Now, what if, from time to time, you sent them an all lower case subject line – what would that do?

It would cause Dissonance, because it’s outside of the norm. Again, most email readers expect commercial communications to be formally formatted.

So, they pay attention – they notice the strange.

Second, there’s some Resonance at work here – because INFORMAL communications are usually from… FRIENDS!

That’s right – when your mate, buddy, pal, or significant other sends you an email, there’s a good chance that they ignore the formal conventions of written communication. 1 out of 5 emails from friends of mine don’t even contain a subject line (are you having an “Ah HA!” moment?).

The point is, this kind of technique, when used sparingly for important communications will create two wanted perceptions – The Dissonance and therefore curiosity of an unconventionally formatted subject line – and the Resonance of a communication possibly from a friend, or trusted acquaintance.

Question #5

What works better in a Sales Letter?

1. Starting with soft or easy-to-believe claims and ramping up?

2. Or starting with MASSIVE Claims of success and working backwards to soft or easy-to-believe claims?

Again, a trick question – why? Because most people think of a sales letter as the first exposure that their prospect might have to their offer.

That’s a huge mistake – in fact, you need to take a good look at your sales cycle with your customers and MAKE SURE that the first exposure to your offer does NOT come from your sales letter. More on that later.

The point is that the real questions should read, “What works better in your Sales Message?”

And when it gets down to the details, the purpose of a Sales Message is NOT to just sell your prospect; it’s to get them engaged.

And MASSIVE Claims (um…TRUE, please – meaning, your biggest successes) are the ones that turn people’s heads, get them engaged, and get them reading.

Remember, “Beer Beats Prostate Cancer”? MASSIVE (and totally sleazy) claim.

Now, I have not had the sincere pleasure (barf) of reading that article, but I’ll bet that the actual article backed WAY OFF that claim. It was probably something where a quote was taken out of context, like “Man finally admits that he lied when he told his wife that Beer Beats Prostate Cancer just to get her to buy him more beer”.

But, the resulting claim got the reader engaged. And that is the JOB of any claim that you make in your sales message – to get your prospect engaged – otherwise, what is a claim for? To brag? No. It’s to show the results that you have had by using your product, service, or information to solve the problem that your prospects are interested in solving.

ENGAGE, Engage, engage! And as you continue to engage them, personalize their possible results by talking about smaller, easier, and less astounding claims.

Now look, I know this might come across as a little hypocritical from the guy who had a multi-million dollar internet marketing product launch where the headline in the sales letter said “This Space Intentionally Left Blank”, but consider this:

The Sales Messaging of the original StomperNet Launch happened WEEKS before the Sales Letter was revealed to the public. Weeks before the actual launch, we deployed about 50 case studies and testimonials, and the net result was Massive Claims.

The point is, GET your Prospect Engaged – and then personify (make it seem attainable to THEM) your claims with smaller, easier to attain results.

Question #6

If you could only have one of these in a Sales Letter, what would you choose?

a “Damaging Admission”

a “Powerful Secret”

That is a tough one. If you just barked out an answer, you’ve got issues – because they both have very specific places in your messaging to your customers.

But, after careful consideration and testing, I have to go with “Damaging Admission”.

This has to do with a concept that Frank Kern has been talking about in his Mass Control videos. It’s called IDT, or Implied Decision Triggers.

Frank spends a lot more time on this concept in his free videos, but let me give you the broad strokes…

Husbands of Wives – PAY ATTENTION!

It’s far better in any process of persuasion (sales or otherwise) to allow your prospect to decide for themselves that they are interested in something that you have to offer – and trust plays THE most important factor in that decision.

Trust exists on many levels in the process of persuasion, and one of the more powerful forms of trust can be created via admitting that you, your product, your process, your service, your information – whatever it is you’re selling, has a very particular flaw.

This is important – it doesn’t mean that what you’re selling is bad, or sub-standard, or a bit of crap – it simply means that under certain conditions, it’s not going to perform the way you want it to. Or, your sales message is conditional.

For Example: Let’s use StomperNet…

“This is NOT for beginners”.

And then I back that up with the price point, the amount of content, and testimonials from StomperNet members (former and current) that say they were “Overwhelmed”.

Since 70% of the Internet Marketing Educational Space is made up of Newbies, that Admission resonates pretty well.

Here’s another from Frank Kern. In his sales letter, he talks about the twenty four million dollars his Mass Control Marketing techniques have made.

But just a few paragraphs later, he substantiates that Massive Claim with a Damaging Admission – “Only about a Million Dollars of that money was Mine”.

He “Admits” to a lower number. He “humanizes”. He “Personifies” and makes the results seem FAR more attainable to the average prospect.

On the home front, men are stupid. Sorry. But we are. Because I live your stupidity every day, brother.

For example (and I don’t know why I’m getting into marital issues, except that most people won’t argue with me about them – heh. In marketing, we call that the “Halo” effect).

When your significant other asks you how the repairs to that terminally running toilet are going and your response is “Um… Well….” – take a bit of advice…

Admit: “I totally blew it – lost track of time, but I’ll get on that right now”.

Forgive me for relating this to the process of Internet marketing, but… if you were simply honest with your prospect (spouse) and told them exactly how you failed and exactly how you were going to make amends, you’d build a level of trust about that particular issue that would smooth out any future conflicts about THAT issue.

And so goes the process of selling. Admissions of fallibility work wonders to humanize and engender trust with your prospects. And your spouses.

And no – I’m not going to turn this newsletter into Dating or Relationship advice. My “testimonials” are really bad so you wouldn’t listen anyway…

The point is, building a relationship with your prospect based on trust helps THEM decide (implicitly, meaning, you have not had to convince them – they decided on their own) that your product is worth further investigation and consideration.

It truly is “Selling” without “Selling”. A subtle art, to be sure, but a powerful one.

Oh, long newsletter… Sorry friend – I like talking about this stuff. But it’s time to sign off for now.

Fair Warning – there’s video circulating around the Internets (which are Tubes, you see) that are causing both a stir and smiling faces.

But (damaging admission time), they will likely result in some kind of (gasp) sales pitch at the conclusion of them.

Obviously, I got a lot of email as a result of the Going Natural 2.0 videos – 99% of the people were happy to have them. 1% crucified me because they said that I gave them away ONLY to sell SMARTS.

Hmmm, let’s see – there were 4 videos and a free bit of conversion software. 1 of the videos was about SMARTS. I know, it doesn’t add up, but that’s life on the internets.

Now, I wonder what they’ll say when I start releasing MORE GN 2.0 videos? They’ll probably make fun of my hairline. Fine. I’ll wear a hat.

The point is, good videos about Internet Marketing are good videos about Internet Marketing, whether or not there’s a product or launch behind them.

I’m talking specifically about Frank Kern’s videos.

He’s launching a product called Mass Control on Friday and one of the ways he’s been building additional credibility is by releasing gems of video instruction.

To be perfectly honest, even if he didn’t release like 9 free videos and his sales letter consisted of “Buy Now”, I’d still recommend him.

Why? Because I am Frank’s Poster Boy Case Study.

I’ve not only been through Mass Control – I’ve lived it and used it. And the title is Sinister. And it freaks people out. It causes Dissonance – and then they see the video of Frank, hair all bleached from his daily surfing, his low-impact southern drawl skipping along his educational stuff like a rainwater out of a gutter.

He’s just an aberration (that means FREAK) – a “Good Old Boy” that markets and writes copy better than any Madison Avenue sales copywriter or advertising agency than I’ve worked with – and keep in mind, I’ve worked with a bunch.

But he doesn’t just posture with hyperbolic sales copy and massive claims – he’s released like 14 hours of solid marketing videos, and I’ve watched every frame – even the videos where he makes fun of my editing skills. Creep.

Anyway, this is a weak pitch for a Strong Portfolio of free stuff. Go watch his videos and exercise your right to use your own Implicit Decision Trigger.

**NOTE – At the moment, Frank is pulling down public access to his videos – the only real way to get access to his other videos is by opt-in in to his list. It’s no biggie – he emails his list like once every 90 days or something.

Oh – I KNOW! Do this – see if you can tell where Frank is using Mass Control in his videos. See if you can detect Mass Control at work.

A CONTEST!

And then when you’ve detected the Mass Control spots, tell me about it in the comments and let me know where you detected Mass Control at work in Frank's Videos. And, it doesn’t count if he says, “I am about to use Mass Control On You”.

I’ll even give you a prize! If you can tell me in 4 of his 9 videos JUST 2 places in each video where he uses Mass Control, I’ll GIVE YOU a copy of the StomperNet Home Study Course.

Let’s say that I’ll give away 5 copies. The winners will be chosen on a Merit Basis. Meaning, the BEST Example in 2 places in at least 4 of his videos (It can be any of the videos he’s released) where and how Frank Uses Mass Control.

Now, for the next 100 people that do this, I’ll hold a teleconference where I’ll discuss exactly how you can use what I call “Mass Control in Social Marketing”. I’ve already given a teleseminar kinda like this to Eben Pagan’s group of Altitude Members, and the lines over sold by 400 people. It was pretty popular. (Understatement)

So, here’s the rules, one more time:

You can get prizes by watching really good videos for free and learn a lot about Internet marketing.

First Prize (Quantity 5) A copy of the StomperNet Home Study Course. 15 DVDs and 40 hours of SEO, Conversion, and ecommerce Instruction.

Second Prize (Quantity 100) Live Attendance to the Andy Jenkins “Using Mass Control in Social Marketing” teleseminar.

Third Prize (Quantity 200) Download the recording of the Andy Jenkins “Using Mass Control in Social Marketing” teleseminar.

How you Qualify to Win:

This is based on MERIT – meaning, it’s gotta be a good and accurate comment.

In the comments section of this post at StomperBlog.com, give me 2 Mass Control Techniques that Frank uses in at least 4 of his 9 videos. Your job is to describe fully the technique and how he uses it.

That means a TOTAL of 8 Examples.

Yes – this IS very much like a research assignment.

1. You have to watch at least 4 of Frank’s free (and great) videos.

2. You then need to report back to the blog. Your report will consist of 2 examples from each of the 4 videos where Frank used Mass Control in the videos.

Now, this is a lot harder than it sounds. First, you’ve got to know what Mass Control is – that means watching his first video.

Second, you’ve got to be able to identify (with examples) from the video where Frank is stealthily using a Mass Control Technique ON YOU WHILE you are watching that video.

Um, YEAH – this is gonna be hard! But SO WHAT? Nothing worth doing is easy.

And at the end of watching 4 of his videos, you’ll be smarter than 90% of all of the other Internet Marketing wanna-be’s out there. And if you win the Home Study Course…

Let me put this in perspective – The Original Stomping the Search Engines which we released in 2004 was a bestseller – in a big way. It was 8 hours of Audio about SEO.

The Home Study Course is 40 hours of VIDEO about SEO, Conversion, and ecommerce.

Do the math. Kern Mass Control FREE Videos + StomperNet Home Study Course = good.

(“=good?” Sigh. This is why Jeff Walker and Frank Kern write my sales copy. WOW Andy, what amazing sales skills you have… Wow.)

How it’s decided – Winners are decided by ME. And my decision is Final. If you don’t win, you have ME to blame. I’m a fair guy, but there’s no appeal, or any of that tomfoolery or ballyhoo. And hey – I want you to win at least SOMETHING, so… I’m not going to be a jerk about it. Honest effort will be rewarded.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

Frank’s First Video

Frank’s Latest Video

Frank’s Best Video

Funny Videos of George Bush (Not part of the contest – yet important nonetheless)

Good Luck! And be careful – you might learn something. Gasp.

Talk Soon,

Andy Jenkins

P.S. Yes, in case you watch any of the Mass Control videos – they are Rated PG-13…

…then again, so are the Bush Videos…

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(Note – there's a new video to watch here but read this post first for some context)

Now that SMARTS is well under way, I wanted to let you know what's coming down the pike for both the StomperNet Newsletter AND the next set of GoingNatural 2.0 videos (yes, there's at LEAST 4 more planned).

But first, in this post, I'm going to talk about, or, I guess I should say, expose to you (not in a weird way) some of the techniques and tricks that we here at StomperNet use to market not only SMARTS and StomperNet, but also my own personal eCommerce and Information Product businesses.

Here's the thing – MOST of what I'm about to tell you is Totally COUNTER-INTUITIVE. And…most of it was a mistake.

Meaning, I BLEW IT – and made more money. (Love the internet!)

Quick Story:

You probably know that I in my old life, I was a TV and Film editor, animator, and post-production supervisor.

And, I spent a LOT of time on TV and Film sets as an Assistant Director and Production Manager. I also directed a LOT of TV spots over the 14 years that I worked in the business, along with spending some time working for the soap opera "The Guiding Light".

Now, when we shot a scene, once in a while, something would happen during that scene that wasn't planned.

In the business, we called it a "Happy Accident".

For example, an actor might fight back a sneeze during the scene, and while he was doing that the look on his face was SO awesome that the director decided to include that in the final cut. (Hint, the actor’s name rhymes with… with… Bortz-a-neger… whew)

Or one time (this is classic), I was shooting a Potato Chip commercial where a bunch of raw chips got blasted into boiling oil with an Air Cannon.

You know where this is going, right?

Anyway, the Air Cannon was dialed up with a little too much air pressure and the raw chips became "chip projectiles". The splash that they made when they entered the BOILING oil wiped out part of the set.

But, before it did, the camera captured some of the coolest slow motion footage used in a Potato Chip commercial – ever. It was for Lays Potato Chips, and the commercial ran for 2 years – WAY longer than most.

The point is, IF you know that MEASURING your results (i.e. keeping the camera recording) is an absolute requirement when you market, you're going to start coming across your own "Happy Accidents".

Let me share with you a few…

First, let’s conduct this like a little quiz – try to guess what the right answer is.

The reason I'm doing this is to show you that the brain often thinks very differently when it's learning versus when it's being marketed to.

(BTW – there's a whole video full of this stuff here but take the quiz before you watch it)

Here we go:

Question 1:

For email SUBJECT lines, the best open rates come from:

A. Benefit Laden Subjects
B. Announcement-Based Subjects
C. Good News to the Reader Subjects
D. Fear-Based Subjects
E. Mysterious Subjects

Answer? The BEST open rate for an email that I ever got was when the subject said "Bad News".

How bizarre is that!?! So, the next question is, why? Well, consider this:

In any culture, humans desperately want to prevent bad things from happening, but will spend the most time, effort, and energy on CURING bad things once they've ALREADY happened.

You see, no one wants to exercise to prevent heart disease, but they will bankrupt themselves and their entire family on pills and surgery to FIX it once they've got it.

And what they WILL do is "Rubber Neck" to find out if they're at risk or not.

You know how traffic slows down when there's an accident? Even if the accident is on the other side of the median going in a different direction?

Part of that behavior is morbid, weird, curiosity – but MOST of that comes from our desire to protect ourselves from something really bad happening to us. So, if we can see it coming, we can brace ourselves, potentially lessening the damage.

We WANT to know about BAD NEWS so we can be prepared for it.

I was very surprised at that result. People are weird. Let’s move on…

Question 2:

True or False – Speaking of Email Subject lines, their only purpose is to get your prospect to open the email – you let the email copy do the rest of the communication.

FALSE!

Okay, that might have been obvious, but here's something that's not:

During a recent, errr, *cough*, "Flub" of mine, I accidently included some copy that was in parenthesis IN the subject line.

You see, the Subject line was "24 Hours Left (for the "drop our drawers" sale)"

The ("drop our drawers") part was meant to tell my assistant that the LINKS in the email pointed to the sales pages on the ecommerce Store. At the time, the sale we were running was so ridiculous that INTERNALLY, we called it the "Drop Our Drawers" sale.

It was an inside joke – a joke that made it out to a list of about 45,000 home décor subscribers.

The open rate was pretty good, but what REALLY surprised us is when we sent the SAME email to our buyers list that had the corrected subject line.

The difference between the click-thru rate from the email WITH the mistake and the email WITHOUT the mistake was huge.

The email WITH the mistake got 30% MORE clickthroughs.

WOW! I was not only embarrassed for being an idiot, I was cross-eyed at the results. "That's just WEIRD".

So, as it turns out, the more we tested setting EXPECTATIONS of BENEFITS in subject lines, the more solid the results were. When you set an expectation at the BEGINNING of a communication, and then pay it off with the rest of the copy – a visitor WILL take more action.

Okay, we'll do one more – again, this video has a bunch more examples.

Question 3:

When your prospect is reading your sales material, how many simultaneous conversations are they having with themselves?

Choices:
—–
Just one – People consume sales material in a linear fashion and then render a decision.

Two – People consume the information, and before they move to the next chunk of information, they decide if what they just read is meaningful before they continue.

Or Three – People consume different parts of the presentation in different containers of thought. Each container of thought is treated differently.
—–
Answer? When your prospects consume your sales information, the ACTUAL formatting of your copy, even the style of your images, will cause them to consider each format group a little differently than the standard formatting – and it's been my experience that the maximum number of internal conversations that you want your customer to be having is three.

Let me give you an example:

In a Typical Long Form Sales Letter, there are 3 pretty specific and repeating format choices:

Sub-headlines
Bullet Points
Bold, Italic, or Highlighted Text

Here's a little trick:

Once you've written your copy (and by the way, this can work for LONG form copy AND product descriptions for ecommerce, (hint, hint) go back and review your Sub Headlines…)

What you want to do is make sure that:
**if your sales copy ONLY consisted of Sub Headlines that it would STILL tell some part of your story**.

Use this same technique for Bullet Points and for Bold, Italic, or Highlighted text.

The point here is, each format variation should be able to deliver a message on its own to the reader.

Why? Because people scan.

And I'm not talking about someone who just scans through a page looking for some thing that interests them.

I'm talking about the actual way that your eyes read the page. Even when they're reading line after line of copy, they dart ALL around the page, looking for points of high contrast and even white space.

High Contrast and White Space are natural attractors to human eyes – and guess what Sub Headlines, Bullet Points, and Bold, Italic, or Highlighted text ALL have in common?

High Contrast and White Space.

So, TELL a Story, a separate story, with each one of those formatting or style options.

Well, like my videos, this post is getting Looooong.

In the next one, I've got 3 more little Happy Accident test results to talk to you about. Some of them are just strange – like, X-Files strange. But they work, consistently.

You know how some people always talk about having "An Unfair Advantage" (barf), or a "Secret Weapon" (hurl) that they use for their marketing? Ya know what I think?

Glad you asked. Heh.

I think that being good at this stuff is 50% fundamentals, and 50% testing.

Sure, I can teach you the fundamentals, but unless you cause a Happy Accident, you're NEVER gonna know the other 50%.

And to cause a Happy Accident, you actually have to…

DO SOMETHING!

And you've got to test it and track it.

There – there's the secret to big money. I am so full of Hype. Seriously, have you seen Frank Kern's Mass Control videos?

They are SOLID fundamentals. SOLID A,B,C's of marketing communication. And when people watch them, they FREAK OUT because it's stuff they've never seen before!

Why? Because, I think, or, it's MY opinion that the vast majority of Internet Marketers don't teach the fundamentals because fundamentals are not "sexy". Meaning, there's no money in teaching the basics, the “blocking and tackling”.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard at a conference, btw.

And I've heard some pretty stupid things.

They're under the impression that everyone wants the “Easy Button”, you know, the big red button that says "push here to make me wealthy". And whether they want that or not, it's NOT what they need.

My MOST successful StomperNet members (and I'm talking 7 and 8 figures worth of successful) are Masters of the Marketing Obvious (I just made that up). They did the fundamentals over and over again until it was as natural as walking…except that PARTICULAR walk generated sales.

So, getting straight with Fundamentals, even if Guru's don't think it’s sexy, is really the way to go. And I'd rather be rich than sexy… Cause I've got NO SHOT at sexy.

I **think** that Frank has 6 Mass Control videos out right now. There might be 8.

They're "Free Line" (meaning, they're, um… free), so you can watch them just by going to his site here.

And I know I don't have to say this, but I will anyway – you probably saw at least one of the Going Natural 2.0 videos – Just because they were free didn't mean they were not worth watching, right?

Same goes with Frank's vids. He'll be the first to admit that his videos are not (as he likes to call them) "all fancy pants" – but that doesn't matter. They're smart, entertaining, and Frank is a trip.

He's also the best copywriter that I know. His skills are…inhuman.

I get a lot of credit for building StomperNet, but make no mistake, he launched it.

Watch them – WITH a notebook and pen:

Mass Control Videos (Rated PG-13).

Okay, the next set of GoingNatural 2.0 Videos are in the pipe. I'll let you know when we'll start releasing them in the next couple of blog posts.

BTW, thanks for following along. We're gonna have a LOT of fun over the next couple of months.

Yours in Happy Accidents,
Andy "Not Sexy" Jenkins

P.S. Nope… Don't have one.

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OK, I got lots of comments and questions – so I thought I would give you all of the sordid details…

A few days ago one of the sites that we mentioned in our "No Secrets" video had made some changes. Basically, they introduced a new "no linking" strategy.

I'm going to give you all the details about what happened, and possibly WHY it happened.

There's a lot of information in this post… so it's going to be a bit long. But I think that you will find that it pays you back many times over for the time you spend reading it.

But first I have one important announcement…

— Re-Opening SMARTS for 24 Hours —

I will give all the details down below, but we've decided that we're going to re-open SMARTS for a final 24-hour period.

And we are going to open it at the ORIGINAL discounted price. In other words, we are turning back that $600.00 price increase.

But only for 24 hours, starting Monday at 2:00pm Eastern time.

http://www.stompernetpresents.com/SMARTS

—————————————–

OK, just about two weeks ago we released our "No Secrets" video. In that video we gave a bunch of new strategies for using social media sites to build your business.

One of those sites was scribd.com

To see the exact strategies we mentioned about scribd.com, check it out here:

http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural2/

The part about scribd.com is right at the 27:20 mark in the video.

(HOWEVER, if you haven't seen that "No Secrets" video… don't skip ahead – the entire video is completely packed with strategies and tactics for social media sites. Go watch it now.)

Now this is where it got interesting – and it proves the power of social media. That "No Secrets" video went viral. People started talking about it, blogging about it, passing the URL around.

And it was viewed many, many tens of thousands of times.

Naturally, many of those people put the strategies to work. In fact, lots of them got almost immediate results… they even posted comments about their results on this blog.

But, of course, with SO many people viewing the video, well let's just say not all of them used the scribd.com strategy the way they were supposed to.

And just a few days after we released that video, scribd.com made some changes.

http://blog.scribd.com/2008/01/support-for-html-uploads-discontinued.html

Now this post is NOT about bashing scribd.com at all. It's their site, and they are completely free to set their own rules.

And I imagine our video sent an insane amount of traffic to their site. And since this was a free video, those people did NOT have the benefit of our SMARTS coaching program… so some of them may have abused the system.

Inside SMARTS we are very, very clear on how to use the social media sites AND stay within their rules. The bottom line is that you need to stay on the right side of the social media community – or you could get burned.

Here's another key point – these social media sites are constantly changing. They come and go, they add rules and change rules.

And that's why we've built up a SMARTS community. Basically, you have a whole team on your side — from all the people in Stomper Labs to all the HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of other people joining SMARTS. This has already blossomed into a long term social marketing community – this community will be our radar screen and keep us at the cutting edge of the Web 2.0 world.

In other words, there are HUNDREDS of social media sites (actually, we currently have 1,920 in our SMARTS database… and we add more every week.)

Now obviously, no one person can keep track of all those sites, much less learn how to use them effectively. That's what our SMARTS community is all about. It's like having hundreds of other people watching your back.

As sites come and go, get stronger or weaker, our community will have their finger on the pulse of the social marketing world.

So that leads us back to SMARTS and our decision to pull it off the market last Friday…

Now I will admit that we were a bit hasty in our decision. When in doubt, I will always – ALWAYS – overreact on the side of protecting our SMARTS community. That's going to be my first instinct.

Basically, when it comes to the community, it's a case of "shoot first and ask questions later".

But I'm not "Attila the Hun", and I'm always willing to reconsider.

And that's what I've done this time – so this is what I'm going to do…

As I mentioned up above, we're going to re-open SMARTS on Monday… but only for 24 hours. After that, we'll close it for good – or at least a long time.

And if you look at the way we've run StomperNet (which is STILL closed to new members), you know that we stick to our word on that kind of thing.

One more thing – because of the general "weirdness" of the way we pulled it off the market without warning, we're going to go one step better…

We are going to TURN BACK the $600.00 price increase, and you can jump onboard for the initial discounted price.

To get in on this deal, go to:

http://www.stompernetpresents.com/SMARTS

Remember, this deal is available from Monday at 2:00pm Eastern until Tuesday at 2:00pm Eastern.

That's it. After that, it's gone.

Best regards,
Andy Jenkins

P.S. If you still haven't seen the "No Secrets" video, http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural2/

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I really hate to bring this up, because it's been such a "feel good" few days…

For instance, inside the new SMARTS forums, the community is already blossoming…

And we made the crazy decision to just plain give away our SMARTS "Instant Grad School" to all the SMARTS members.

(The Instant Grad School was SUPPOSED to cost an extra $497.00, but we decided to give it to the SMARTS community at no extra charge. It hurt our pocketbook some, but it felt great to gift that bonus to the community.)

It's been all beauty and grace for a couple of weeks now.

But this is the thing I've been avoiding…

It's almost time to close down sales of SMARTS. You see, we are getting SMARTS classes started in full next week.

So… we have to do this:

On Friday at 2:00pm Eastern time, the price for SMARTS is going up by $600.00.

In addition, we will pull down the offer for the "Instant Grad School" instant upgrade.

AND we're also going to have to pull down my bonus Video Creation webinar series.

So it's getting down to the nitty-gritty. You've got less than 48 hours to go. If you want to get on board our SMARTS traffic system, you have to
act now.

Here's the link.

Best Regards,
Andy

P.S. This whole SMARTS process has been amazing… downright heartwarming.

But as you probably know, I can be ALL business when I have to be. We have a hard deadline on Friday at 2. The price goes up by $600.00, and the bonuses go away. Don't wait until the last second… there's always a mad rush at the end. You don't want to risk the server getting overloaded and your membership not making it in time.

So jump on board now!

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I'm going to keep this short and sweet…

We've just added a HUGE new component to SMARTS… the "Instant Grad School".

This is an extension beyond the 10 week program where we are going to teach our super-advanced ninja-level material.

We had planned to offer this as an additional $497.00 product at the end of SMARTS.

HOWEVER, we've already been inspired by the way the SMARTS community is rapidly coming together… so we got a little crazy and decided to offer this course extension for free to anyone who joined SMARTS.

That's an extra $497.00 value added on top of an already amazing program.

And yes, if you have ALREADY jumped on board SMARTS, you will get it as well.

There is only one catch… you need to join by this Friday at 2:00pm Eastern time if you want to get in on the SMARTS Instant Grad School.

Here's the link.

One more thing… we had one great Fast Mover Bonus that we had to pull down on Sunday night… that was my Video Creation Webinar series. Well, if you missed that deadline, that ship has sailed. Sorry about that.

HOWEVER, since we're in a kinder and gentler mood, we've added another bonus – you can get the video recording of that Video Creation Webinar series. It's not quite as good as being there live… but it's the next best thing.

However, to qualify you need to join SMARTS by this Friday at 2:00pm Eastern. That's the same deadline as we have for the "Instant Grad School" bonus.

You can get all the details here.

Best regards,
Andy

P.S. Don held his first "orientation session" for SMARTS last night, and it was a smashing success. The official classes don't start for a few more days… this was just a "pre-day" to cover some of the details.

He has another orientation coming up later in the week, so you can still attend if you join up right away.

Plus, you will get the recording of the first orientation call. Here's the link to find out more.

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Hey there… Andy Jenkins here.

And news flash: our servers did NOT crash when we launched SMARTS yesterday.

(I'm sure you're as sick of hearing about crashed servers as I am!)

But, well… I just don't know how everything survived.

I mean, we had five load-balanced hardened servers – and they were ready.

But MY BRAIN wasn't ready.

I mean seriously, we knew there was going to be a lot of demand for SMARTS – but I was just not ready for what happened.

My brain was not ready to handle the numbers.

The first time we pulled stats from our servers was FOUR MINUTES after we went live. We already had 121 people join by then!

In four minutes. In-frickin'-sane.

I don't know how those guys could fill out the form that fast. They must be a lot faster at typing than I am.

And the orders didn't end there – they kept going at about 10 per MINUTE.

Shocked. Dumbfounded. Near disbelief.

One of the first things I did was check that somehow our shopping cart wasn't messed up and double or triple-counting orders.

No… the orders were real.

That was sorta good news and sorta bad news.

I mean, don't get me wrong – I like making a few shekels just as much as the next guy.

But after weeks of building up to this, I didn't want to have to pull SMARTS down in the first half hour. And I was more than a little worried about the blowback we would get from people who got shut out (you wouldn't believe the heat I took when I shut down StomperNet).

So we called a fast huddle with our staff at Stomper – some of them in our conference room, some on iChat, some on instant messenger.

And luckily we had a contingency plan to dust off – let me explain…

About 15 months ago we had something vaguely similar happen when we rolled out StomperNet. We had WAY more people sign up than we expected.

We ended up shutting down and we stopped taking new members after about 26 hours. That membership has remained closed since then, except for when we opened up for a few days last spring.

To this day, you still can't get in.

But even with putting StomperNet in lock-down, we had lots more members than we expected.

So what we did was almost instantly hire the staff and build the infrastructure to handle the demand.

We aren't quite there with SMARTS yet, because we've already got a good size staff at StomperNet… but we had to make a quick pivot earlier yesterday. It was either that, or put SMARTS in lock-down within minutes of going live.

So this is where we are at… we are still taking memberships. We have changed a few logistical things in the background, stuff our new SMARTS members will never notice – and that's going to mean we can gracefully take some more members.

KEY POINT: because of the nature of our "You've Got Friends" component, well it's CLEARLY a case of "the more the merrier". The bottom line is that the more friends you have, well… the better.

ANOTHER key point: because ALL of your Fast Mover bonuses were gone nearly immediately, we're making a change. The Video Creation Webinars were going to be limited to the first 300 people. We have changed that… anyone who buys by Sunday at midnight eastern time will get that Fast Mover bonus.

So if you want to get onboard with SMARTS and put the power of Social Marketing and drive more targeted traffic into your business, here’s the link.

OK, that's it for now…

Best Regards,
Andy

P.S. I still can't believe we didn't crash the servers! I'm never going to forget pulling up that shopping cart for the first time and seeing 121 orders.

I was NOT prepared for that.

This is exciting… SMARTS is going to be amazing, and now we're going to be able to make it an even stronger program. If you want to join us or get all the details, go here.

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SMARTS is Now Available

http://www.stompernetpresents.com/SMARTS/

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FAST MOVER BONUSES

Personal Coaching with SMARTS creator Don Crowther – The first 10 people to jump on board get free personal ONE on ONE coaching with Don Crowther (3 sessions). And who better to give one-on-one coaching than the creator of SMARTS himself, Don Crowther? The material alone is of great value, but with the personal input and motivation from Don – you'll be able to reach your greatest Social Marketing potential.

12 Weeks of Professional Coaching – The next 20 who join us get 12 weeks of personal coaching from our Professional Coaching staff. This will be one half-hour session a week with one of our in-house Professional Coaches. They will help you with everything from your online strategy to personal motivation to helping you craft your life choices and create balance.

StomperNet Home Study Course - If you are among the first 150 to sign up you will get our StomperNet “Business Brain Transplant” Home Study Course

That's right – you'll get the ENTIRE 15-DVD set of the original StomperNet Home Study Course!

This DVD set has become legendary, mainly because you can't get this material ANYWHERE ELSE but on these DVDs. This is the foundational knowledge that StomperNet is built on, and if you want to get a glimpse of what Stompers learn on the inside, this is the only way currently available.

It's FORTY HOURS of world-class instruction on SEO, Conversion, Blogging, Keyword Analysis and more. Taught by me, Brad Fallon, Dan Thies, Dave Taylor, Leslie Rohde and many more well respected experts!

Special Video Creation Webinars with Andy Jenkins – Finally, the first 300 anyone who buys by Sunday at midnight eastern time will get to attend a special 3-part webinar series – “Secrets of the Video Masters" that I will be personally teaching. I'm not one to boast, but one thing I do know is video production. If you've seen any of the GN 2.0 videos, you know that I really enjoy making those videos. And when you have fun creating videos, your viewers have even more fun watching them. I'm prepared to teach you the basics and share my choices in gear, but I also want to give you those little tips that can transform a good video into a great one! It's the standard that I call StomperStyle.

Good luck, and for the Fast Movers – Enjoy the bonuses!

-Andy Jenkins

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Lots of folks have asked for the details of our StomperUniversity SMARTS Coaching Program, so here are some more details on how the Coaching Program is going to work.

Every Monday morning Don will release a set of online videos on our special "members only" website.

Each week we will have a different module that contains a number of different videos, each covering a specific strategy (some might give a big picture strategy, some will be extremely specific).

Along with the videos will be a set of optional assignments. I did say "optional"… but I'm going to be encouraging you to complete them while the information is fresh in your brain – that's the way you will get the best results. Of course, we can all get busy at times, so if you just have too much going on… well, I've got your back.

Then midweek, we'll have a conference call where we go even deeper on that week's topic, and I will answer your questions. The beauty of these calls is that you learn both from your questions AND the questions from the other coaching students. These calls will be scheduled for 90 minutes, but I'll basically stick around until we're done with all of the questions.

Of course, all calls will be recorded, so if you can’t make one, you can still catch up. Plus, you'll be able to submit questions via email in advance just in case you can't be on the call.

But that’s not all… you will also have an online forum – you can ask questions, get answers, share experiences, request feedback, and share your insights with the group. Since we’ve already been sharing many of these videos with the StomperNet members, many of those forums are already populated with lots of good questions and answers, so there's ALREADY a big knowledge base just waiting for you.

I also have some more surprises… like calls with some of the top experts in the world on Social Marketing. We're still finalizing the details of who those calls will be with, but I can guarantee, I've got some very "big" names lined up.

Plus, I'll be making videos every day. So, if questions can best be answered in video or audio form, then I’ll record one and post it to the site quickly. I'm going to be there as your coach and mentor. If it takes another video to really crystallize a lesson… then I will make a video for that lesson. It's that simple.

Oh, and I almost forgot the software. We've got several very cool tools that will significantly reduce the time and effort you need to put into your SMARTS Social Marketing campaign. I'll have more details for you soon… but the software is going to rock. And it's going to make all of this stuff as easy as pie.

And then there's our You've Got Friends system… I explained that one on this blog post.

So those are the major pieces… there will be more coming on top of all that, but you get the idea.

Now here are the week by week contents…

Week 1: Overview of Social Marketing

• You'll learn to see the underlying structure behind the seemingly chaotic network of social media sites – and how to STRATEGICALLY target it to drive the maximum traffic to your site

• You'll get a Social Media "Mind-Meld" so you will AUTOMATICALLY avoid the landmines that can destroy reputations in the Web 2.0 world

• You'll know the 5 key strategies that will drive ALL your Social Marketing successes… and will drive nearly unlimited free traffic to your sites (not to mention getting you an almost instant boost in the search engines)

Read more

Andy Jenkins here.

In the last couple of weeks we've released four cutting-edge videos and one amazing Strategy Guide.

But I've got to admit – I've held out on you on one thing…

And that's our "You've Got Friends" program.

Let me explain… where you ever the "new kid" in school? Read more