During my quarter century as a copywriter, I have observed that business owners and managers fall into one of four categories as far as their competence and skill in marketing is concerned.

By recognizing which category you are in and taking the action steps recommended below, you can move up to the next level and significantly increase the ROI from your marketing efforts.

The lowest level of marketing competence is “unconscious incompetence”. You don’t know what you are doing, and worse, you don’t know that you don’t know.

You may even think you are a pretty sharp marketer, even though to others, that is clearly not the case. Egotistical small business owners who appear in their own TV commercials and junior employees at “creative” Madison Avenue ad agencies can fall into this category.

Do you think you are an okay marketer, and blame the lack of results generated by your marketing always on external factors, such as bad timing, bad lists, or bad luck? You are probably in the unconscious incompetence stage.

Solution: Recognize that you don’t know what you’re doing and it is hurting your business. Get help. Hire a marketing manager who knows more than you do. Or take a marketing course or workshop. Read marketing blogs and trade publications.

The next stage up the ladder is “conscious incompetence”. You’ve recognized that the reason your marketing isn’t working is that you don’t know what you’re doing.

Again, take the steps listed above. When I was at this stage as an advertising manager recently graduated from college and with only a year of work experience under my belt (instead of the considerable paunch that resides there now), I hired an experienced ad agency and leaned on them for guidance.

This strategy worked well for me and my employer. The company got better advertising than I could have produced on my own. And working with the agency accelerated my own marketing education, making me a more valuable employee.

Moving higher up the ladder of marketing competence, you reach the stage of “conscious competence”. You’ve read the books, taken the courses, and understand what works. But your experience at putting it into practice is limited.

That means whenever you want to create a promotion, you have to slow down and think about what you are doing. It doesn’t come naturally.

In this stage, you should keep checklists, formulas, and swipe files (examples of successful promotions you admire) close at hand. Model your own efforts after the winners of others.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Observe what works and adapt it to your own product and market.

Do this enough times, and you will slowly begin to become a true master of marketing. You will reach the highest level of marketing competence, “unconscious competence”.

At this stage, coming up with great offers, promotional ideas, headlines, and copy is second nature to you. You do it naturally, without having to consult your checklists or reference files. The quality of your work is better, and it comes faster and easier.

However, you should still keep an extensive swipe file of promotions. Borrowing ideas and inspiration from direct mail packages that are working is a time-honored tradition in our industry, as long as it does not step over into plagiarism or copyright infringement.

My colleague Michael Masterson says it takes approximately 1,000 hours of practice to become really competent at copywriting, marketing, playing the flute, or anything else. If you have expert guidance, you may be able to cut that to 500 hours.

But ultimately, you learn by doing, and doing a lot. If you are at this stage, keep doing more and more marketing. When you put in 5,000 hours, you will become great, not just good, and your results will be even better.

Action step: Rank yourself using the four levels of marketing competence as described here, and follow the recommendations for whatever stage you are in.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

We all know CPA offers can be a very lucrative business, but right now there are far fewer marketers who can teach CPA marketing than the majority of gurus who are still in affiliate marketing.

Now here’s your chance to learn from someone who is a true CPA marketing master making a cool 6-figure income over the last one year.

Here’s a screenshot from just ONE of Ritoban C’s accounts at a major CPA Network:

CPA Instruments is a fantastic step-by-step course consisting of 30+ videos, blueprints, process maps, assignments…the works! Ritoban has created a module-based “watch and follow” course which will force members to actually take action and make tons of money following this strategy.

And if this was not enough, he’s also giving away tools and software on which he had spent thousands of dollars in development…as FREE SURPRISE BONUSES to members.

He’s also giving members a video footage in which he starts from scratch and creates a CPA offer website…It’s literally an “over the shoulder” experience watching this.

There are a total of 9 modules in the core course.

Module 1: The Basics

This module is about introducing the concept and warming up the brain. It contains the following concepts:

➔ About “CPA Marketing Model” and the role of Advertisers and Publishers in this.
➔ A brief on working of CPA Networks in relation to the Advertisers and the Publishers
➔ An Introduction to Various types of CPA Offers on the CPA networks.

Module 2: Getting In

This module teaches a complete step-by-step process of getting accepted into CPA networks. It consists of the following sub-parts:

➔ The entire process of setting up an Approval Instrument to get approved in the first CPA network.
➔ Process of Applying to various CPA Networks after setting up the Approval Instrument.
➔ Proven Strategies to get accepted into CPA Networks.

Module 3: Choosing Offers

This module teaches all about choosing money-mustering CPA offers from these networks. It covers the following content:

➔ Techniques involved in using the backend of CPA networks.
➔ Various ‘Selection Criterion’ to keep in mind while selecting CPA Offers.
➔ Excellent Keyword Research Techniques to get hold of extremely profitable CPA Offers.

Module 4: Free Traffic Instruments

This module deals in CREATING various types of Instruments with which CPA offers can be promoted. It teaches creation of following instruments:

➔ Selecting and Creating a ‘Single Keyword Instrument(SKI)’
➔ Selecting a Product Name Keyword and Creating a ‘Profit Instrument’.
➔ Role of ‘Social Media sites’ in promoting CPA offers.
➔ Promoting CPA Offers with ‘Video Instruments’.
➔ Promoting CPA Offers with ‘Niche Instruments’.

Module 5: Driving Free Traffic

This module covers some of the best strategies for driving FREE traffic to CPA Instruments. It covers the following concepts:

➔ Highly Efficient Search Engine Optimization(SEO) strategies that have worked best for CPA Instruments.
➔ A LOT of SEO strategies are discussed in this module.
➔ There are over 11 videos and more than 15 different SEO techniques that are covered

Module 6: Paid Traffic Instruments

This module teaches how to quickly build various types of affiliate landing pages and the basic structure that needs to be followed in each one of them.

➔ How to structure a basic landing pages that forces amazing conversion rates
➔ How to create squeeze/optin pages
➔ How to create review pages with/without sidebars and some samples
➔ Ritoban gives away a CPA Instruments WordPress Theme that’ll make the creation of squeeze pages and review pages seem like a piece of cake.

Module 7: Driving Paid Traffic

This module talks about paid sources of traffic to the CPA Instruments. Following sources of paid traffic are explained in complete detail:

➔ Driving Quality Traffic with Cheap Clicks using ‘Pay Per Click’
➔ Driving media traffic with ‘Pay Per View’
➔ A form of Heavy Advertising through ‘Media Buys’
➔ How To Combine Mobile Advertising With CPA Marketing

Module 8: List Building

This module discusses everything about E-Mail Marketing. It covers the following concepts:

➔ Proven Techniques to promote various CPA offers with Email Campaigns.
➔ Creating highly converting Email Campaigns
➔ All about ‘Web Forms’ and ‘Bait’
➔ A Detailed Process of setting up cash cow Landing Pages to generate Leads.

Module 9: Advanced Mechanism

This module gives Advanced Strategies to grow your business further with CPA Marketing. It covers the following concepts:

➔ Changing Roles and moving up from Publisher to Advertiser.
➔ Never Revealed Strategy of how ‘Building Relationship’ with Affiliate Manager can change the entire game
➔ A Highly ‘Powerful Strategy’ that increases conversions ‘three folds’
➔ Solution to Deactivated CPA Offers

There are plenty of opportunities in CPA marketing that are still untapped but if you know how to take first-mover advantage you can reach out to whole new worlds of targeted markets. CPA Instruments could be your ticket to a new source of 6-figure income. Wash, Rinse, REPEAT!

Get your education now for the current low entry price.

“I want to charge $399 for my audio cassette album,” a small publisher told me. “But Nightingale-Conant also sells several audio albums on the same topic for $79,” I pointed out. “What makes yours worth 5 times more than theirs?”

The answer most people would give is “because mine is better”. Well, maybe it is. But “better” is a difficult proposition to sell through a direct mail package.

So how can you charge a premium price to buyers to whom the greater quality of your product is not immediately obvious? Here are 7 ways to ask for and get the price you want for your products and services:

1. Vertical niche. The more vertical your product, the higher the price you can charge. Your total audience will be smaller, but their need for a specific solution to their problem will help them rationalize paying your premium price.

2. Supply and demand. It’s always easier—especially when selling your services—to hold out for more money when the demand for your service outweighs the supply.

If you market to the point where you are generating more potential business opportunities than you can handle, you can raise your fees, because you can afford to have some of these potential buyers who balk at the higher fees walk away.

3. Add value. Add value to your product or service until the buyer perceives that the price you are asking, however high, is a drop in the bucket compared to the value he is receiving.

One way to add value is to offer a premium that is inexpensive for you to source but has a high perceived value. Example: Ron Popeil gives away cooking tools free when you buy his cooker on TV.

4. Become a guru. Whether it’s Tom Peters, Alan Dershowitz, or Dr. Ruth, people can’t get enough of gurus.

Make an effort to build your reputation and establish yourself as a guru—a leading expert—in your field. When you are a guru, people will pay a premium price for your seminars, speeches, videos, audios, books, newsletters, software, and products.

5. Demonstrate Return on Investment (ROI). Buyers are less reluctant to pay a high price when you can show that they will get a rapid—and significant—return on their investment.

For instance, a direct mail package selling a $149 newsletter on employee hiring says, “Hiring the wrong person costs you 3 times their annual salary.”

The reader figures that if his average employee makes $50,000, and the newsletter can prevent even one hiring mistake, his return on investment for a subscription is 3 X $50,000 = $150,000 divided by $149, or better than 1,000 to 1—which makes the $149 asking price an easy sell.

6. Unique system. Despite the glut of free stock tips and financial information available on the Internet, a direct mail package from Agora Publishing successfully sold a $59 a year newsletter with this headline, “Unlock Wall Street’s Hidden Logic”.

Why did it work? It offered the reader something he felt he couldn’t get from all the free Web sites and e-mail newsletters he was offered: the secret to how the stock market really works—Wall Street’s hidden logic. If the customer perceives he cannot get what you offer elsewhere, he will pay a premium price for it, provided the product offers benefits he desires.

7. Guarantee. A guarantee overcomes buyer resistance, including price resistance. When your product is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, you can offer a “no-risk trial” or “risk-free 30-day subscription” rather than just say “buy my product”.

In essence, you are not asking the reader to buy anything; merely to try it—to accept your offer of examining it for a month in their home or office, with no risk or obligation of any kind.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

If you watch this video and keep buying PPC you gotta have a screw loose.

Ryan Deiss has figured out how to get you all the traffic you need, FREE.

Watch his presentation.

When it comes to marketing, ‘free’ is one of the most powerful, most overused, and most wrongly used words in the English language. You see, when most people want to use this word in their marketing, they’ll write it in big, bold letters, slap it in the headline, and wait for it to work its magic.

Make no mistake, ‘free’ is an extremely powerful word, but if you don’t know how to wield it with precision and skill, you’re in for a nasty surprise! It’s a little bit like the difference between a scalpel and a machete. Both are extremely sharp and powerful tools…but you must have the right skills to use them safely and effectively.

One of the best places to use the word ‘free’ in your marketing…is when you use it to offer your customers and prospects a free report.

So, what is a free report? A free report is exactly what it says: a free source of useful information you give your prospects. You see, you are an expert in your industry, and there are things you know that your contacts can certainly benefit from. Offering a free report is an excellent way to:

* Build your relationship with your customers and prospects
* Give your customers and prospects value
* Bring in leads (when you offer your free report as a download)
* Keep your name in front of your prospects
* Educate your prospects about your services

There is NO doubt about it: the value you get from giving a paper-and-ink report returns a value far out of proportion to its cost!

The advantage of giving away information is this: because you are the expert and because you’ve done your contacts a favor (by giving them something of value), they are going to feel comfortable with you and indebted to you. And, that will drive more sales!

Clate Mask is the CEO of Infusionsoft.

I just wanna share with you a simple idea today.

What if you could save someone from financial ruin?

Do you have any idea what that person will do for you?

Not only will they thank you for life, they will most likely buy any debt-reducing solution from you that you offer!

That is what it is like to position yourself as the GO-TO guy with all the right tools and techniques to help people bust their debts!

Know this:

1) Anything that helps people to save money or generate quick cash is hands down the most lucrative market in the world!

2) Helping others to reduce their debts frees up their funds so that they will buy your products.

3) Helping others first will almost guarantee that they will remember you as an expert and follow you for life!

So with the private label rights to the following products:

- Gas Saving Secrets Exposed!

All the techniques you’ll ever need to know about saving big bucks at the pump

- Millionaire Money Mindset Mastery
Reconditioning Your Mind To Get Out Of Debt And Live A Wealthy Life

- Internet Marketing Instant Money
Hands down the fastest cash generating methods on the Internet!

- Recession Retribution
How To Fight Back During A Recession And Save Your Financial Future!

- Budgeting Strategies For Busy Families
Financial Control With Less Effort And More Results

- How To Save Money In Internet Marketing
10 Ways You Can Save Money Online And Keep More Profits!

- Organizing Debts For Better Money Management
Know Where Your Money Goes And Keep More Of It

- Real Estate Money Making Techniques For Newbies
Insider Secrets On Making Money With Property You Don’t Even Own!

- Credit Card Catastrophe Avoidance
Everything You Need To Know About Managing Credit Better

- Curbing College Debt
Tips On Cutting Down On College Expenses And Tuition Fees

Imagine branding yourself as the author of the following books and marketing them to the world…

You can become a debt buster today!

Click here to find out how and get more details!

1. Plant Your Flag! Ask yourself, “What is the one great thing I can say about my product that none of my competitors can say about theirs?”

2. Dig Your Trench! Ask yourself, “How can I find a place for my product in my customer’s mind by relating it to what’s already in there?”

3. Take Dead Aim! Ask yourself, “What does my best prospect already believe that will make her want to buy my product without persuasion?”

4. Take Your Best Shot! Ask yourself, “What is the most I can afford to give away to get a new customer?”

5. Take a Risk! Ask yourself, “How can I make buying from me as easy, safe, and convenient as possible?”

6. Make an Impact! Ask yourself, “How can I break through the clutter?”

7. Make it Count! Ask yourself, “How can I move my customer from awareness to action?”

Not all WordPress list building plugin are made the same, but this one is designed by Pawan Agrawal a.k.a. MaxBlogPress, one of the smartest bloggers around.

The Subscribers Magnet is an absolute NINJA WordPress plugin that is dead simple to use and can increase your subscription rates by 200% or MORE!

We already know that list building is the Holy Grail of online marketing but it presents many obstacles for some people. The Subscribers Magnet eliminates those obstacles and takes your blog to the next level at the same time.

Just look at some of the UNFAIR advantages this plugin gives:

* Easy Placement – Using the “Multiple Hit Strategy” you can have your opt-in box after each post, on the sidebar, in the footer or a combination of any.

* TRANSLUCENT FOOTER BAR: This is pretty slick! You can see it in action via the Subscriber’s Magnet intro video.

* Blog visitor’s NAME and E-MAIL AUTO FILLS the opt-in form increasing exposure and call to action.

* SILENT SUBSCRIBE! This is Powerful! Auto-subscribe commenting visitors…

* Send personalized messages to commenting visitors

* METHODICAL TRACKING: track what’s working and what’s not.

The benefits of this new WordPress plugin are endless!

True list building comes down to utilizing the right tools and resources that are the most cutting edge of their time. You really gotta check this out! The subscribers magnet will transform your blog into a list building machine within an hour.

“The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But how can you use this principle in your PR to get media attention? My colleague, marketing expert Marcia Yudkin, says you can do it by:

1. Taking issue with a survey result.

2. Disagreeing with a common belief or counteract a stereotype.

3. Championing an underdog.

4. Revealing common misconceptions.

5. Making surprising predictions.

6. Exposing flaws in something assumed to be beneficial.

7. Describing the underside of something popular.

Example: Bob Baker and 3 colleagues in the music business collaborated on a press release titled “What’s Wrong with American Idol?”

Their press release criticized the popular U.S. talent show for misleading aspiring musicians and the public about what it takes to succeed in music. Baker’s reward for stirring up controversy: 5 radio interviews that highlighted his status as an expert on careers in music.

You need to read these 3 Facts TODAY:

1. The Internet Marketplace is Saturated
2. PPC (Google Ads) is too Expensive
3. You can’t make a fortune in 24 hours

Do you agree? I’m sure you do.

In that case you need to know that Micro Niche PROS has been publicly released TODAY.

The Micro Niche PROS Mentorship Program is a series of Mentoring Sessions that will let You:

1. Create your OWN Niche Market (from the scratch)

2. Position Yourself as an Authority in your field

3. Squeezing Traffic and get the highest conversions

4. Generating Profits For Life!

Each session is delivered every 3 to 4 days and you will be given action items to get started ASAP, and increase your abilities progressively.

Having such Professional Marketers sharing what they do to make money online is simply priceless.

If you are one of the first 250 lucky guys buying Micro Niche PROS, you’ll get some appealing bonuses!

When you encourage prospects to act now instead of later, response rates increase.

1. One way to do this is to put a deadline on your offer.

Since 3rd-class mail takes an average of 2½ weeks to be delivered nationwide, make the deadline at least 8 to 12 weeks from the mail drop date. Alternatively, for any mailing that goes out September or later, a good deadline date is December 21.

Copywriter David Yale recommends emphasizing that the deadline date is final by adding the phrase “it’s too late” as follows: “This offer expires December 21, 2010. After that, it’s too late.”

For e-mail marketing, you can say the offer is good only if the recipient replies “today” or “this week”.

2. If you are not comfortable putting a deadline date on your mail piece, specify a time frame within which the reader must reply, e.g., “reply within the next 10 days”.

3. Or at least make it clear that this is a time-limited offer. Copywriter Milt Pierce suggests this wording: “But I urge you to hurry. This offer is for a limited time only. And once it expires, it may never be repeated again.”

Do you agree “the faster you get approved with your new ClickBank product, the faster that you will start making money?”

The ClickBank marketplace is a great way to sell your products with an instant army of affiliates promoting for you, the problem is it can be hard to get your product approved to sell on their website.

If you agree that time is money then you’re going to want to make sure that you know all the secrets to getting your product approved fast, so that you can get to selling your product sooner rather than later.

Brian Dew have just finished a step-by-step video that will allow you to look over his shoulder as he sets up one of his products for the ClickBank marketplace, and share with you all the secrets on how he gets approved so fast over and over again.

Of course you could spend days or weeks trying to figure out on your own, but if you’re one of the kind of person that knows time is money then you really should access “ClickBank Approved!” now.

My answer may surprise you, but it’s enthusiastically “yes” IF these 3 conditions exist:

1. You are an excellent copywriter.
2. You enjoy writing copy.
3. You have the time to write copy.

Business owners and marketing managers who fit these criteria often produce copy that’s better and more successful than the pros. Why?

They know the product and the market intimately, because they live with it full-time. Half the battle in copywriting is really knowing the customer and the product, so the business owner or manager has the edge…IF he can write.

On the other hand, marketers who can’t write, don’t like to write, or don’t have time to write copy are better off farming it out to an agency or freelancer.

Check out this presentation from my buddy Anthony Jones. It’s really short but well worth watching!

In the presentation Anthony reveals how he made over $27,000 in the past 10 days alone using 100% free traffic…he didn’t pay one dime!

When you write with a clear picture of your reader in mind, your copy is much more effective.

Samm Sinclair Baker, author of many best-selling books (including “The Scarsdale Diet” with Dr. Herman Tarnower), had an interesting way of picturing his reader as he wrote:

Baker looked through magazines until he found a picture of a person he imagined was a typical reader for what he was writing.

He then cut out the picture and taped it to the edge of his PC monitor.

As a result, he was constantly looking at his reader while he wrote.

Baker says this helped him write more conversationally, because he was “talking” to the person in the picture as he typed.

A new Software is literally turning so called “social media experts” on their heads…

Never before has it been so easy to use social media to get traffic to your sites.

This software was on the “hush-hush” until now. I am getting all GIDDY just thinking about how much time and money it will save you.

It will:

- Create over 10,000 social media accounts at the push of a button
- Use these accounts to get 10s of thousands of backlinks to your sites
- Create “link pools”, spin posts titles, message and profile descriptions

And lots more…

It’s so simple to use that even a complete NEWBIE can use it.

So don’t waste anymore of your precious time.

Check out Instant Social Anarchy right now.

Dynamo entrepreneur Ali Brown gives these 9 clear and accurate tips for writing powerful sales pages:

1. Establish credibility.

2. Address the potential customer’s pain.

3. List several benefits.

4. Demonstrate how an investment in the product will pay for itself.

5. Provide testimonials.

6. Create an incentive for customers to act in a timely manner.

7. Make a personal connection with the audience by including a picture and some appealing biographical information.

8. Offer a guarantee.

9. Add eye-appealing formatting and graphics to make the page visually appealing.

Early this year, Facebook is declared to have overtaken Google as the primary traffic source. It symbolically means that the Internet is taking on a more social dimension and net users are becoming dynamic and interactive. For the online marketer, it means we can’t rely only on Google to feed the leads, NOT when we are bending ourselves over their rules and getting our Google accounts suspended in the process.

In a way that’s good news, because many of us marketers are gradually discovering new traffic sources and new ways to funnel leads to our websites. Bill McRea is one of them. He has been marketing online since 2002 and one of his niche site he’s famous for is his Guitar Warehouse. Today he’s making about $2 million per year and he relies mostly on free traffic.

He is also a blog marketing/list building type of guy, much like me. Today he launches his “Never Fail List Building” system, a traffic blueprint that he has perfected over the years to build his lists automatically using only free traffic.

To let you in on the nature of Bill’s methods, you will learn how to source for new content to publish on your sites and syndicate it to every other directories by taking full advantage of RSS feeds, ping-and-tag, article marketing and Web 2.0 properties, but there’s so much more to the details that my short description here does them no justice.

“Never Fail List Building” consists of step-by-step videos and tools that would help you to get started building lists on day one. Here is what NFLB is exactly about:

* You’ll get a “never fail” list building system that runs on autopilot.
* You can get leads from the very first day.
* This system can bring you over 250 targeted leads per day.
* Plug and play Never Fail List Building System tools that do all the work for you, almost!
* Step-by-step video tutorials.
* How to outsource this system completely.
* Insane LIST PROFITS training.
* 8 weeks of training + unlimited “question and answer” session.
* How to build a sustainable income that is not affected by Google slap, etc.

If you are willing to put in a little bit of effort then this system can work very well for you. You have absolutely nothing to lose. ALL THE RISK is on Bill McRea, you have a 60-day money-back guarantee from him.

Do you know the SINGLE element that every business MUST have in order to be successful? This element is not a suggestion. In fact, I will be bold enough to say that without this ingredient…your business will fail. And what is it??

Yes, an e-mail newsletter! An e-mail newsletter is a vital tool that will help you skyrocket sales, develop better customer relations, monetize from your current customer base and much more!

If you currently do not have an e-mail subscriber base or are not making any money from your own, we have a special opportunity for you to learn from a list building MASTER!

David Riklan, Founder of SelfGrowth.com, the #1 Self Improvement website in the world and owner of a 950,000 email subscriber list recently created one of the most comprehensive live training events for List Building. It is called List Building University.

He had hundreds of people paying $697 to learn his secret list building strategies which shows you how to create a MASSIVE e-mail list and start making money from it almost immediately!

For the next 24 hours ONLY, David is going to provide you with complete access to all of the recordings from this powerful program for only $1.

That means you get access to his tested List building strategies for just $1!

In this powerful program, he will help you identify a list building strategy, implement important list building techniques and teach you how to make money from your list and even how to build a list from scratch.

Make sure to claim your spot in David’s List Building University before this limited time offer expires!

Here’s a free video case study that reveals how an online NEWBIE was able to become a six-figure SUPER AFFILIATE in less than 3 months!

And the really surprising part is he did it all with NO product, NO staff, and NO technical skills.

He broke ALL the rules and did the exact opposite to what most so called “gurus” teach yet he was STILL able to earn more than $100,000 from scratch!

Anyway, this case study won’t be available for long so go watch this immediately before you miss out for good.