Did you go for Stephen Pierce’s “Unleash Your Marketing Genius” seminar last night? If you have, did you learn something new from him? I certainly have. For those of you who did not attend for whatever reason, not to worry. I am going to post, in this entry, the discussions from last night’s seminar.

Stephen Pierce started off the whole seminar by telling everyone his life-story – how he turned from being homeless to making multi-million dollars on the Internet. His success certainly doesn’t come easily – at one point he was out of home, out of cash, and he had to borrow money from people to start a business, and it failed! Stephen’s really determined to succeed, and he did not stop taking action after he failed. He tried and tried again and eventually, he succeeded. He now has multi-million dollars to his name, and all these don’t come with 1 day of effort. It’s years of cumulative effort.

We are in fact no different from Stephen. We are also no different from people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet. We have the same amount of neurons as people like them (except for smokers, who lose some from the harmful effects of smoking. Haha!) And the one thing we have that’s so invaluable is…. No, not money… but TIME. Yes… We have the most valuable thing in our own hands – Time. Money can be earned back, but not time. Once time passes you by, it’s over. You can never go back to the past (unless you have some time machine or something that can bring you back to the past). How we make use of our time really determines our success.

How important is success to you?

Just how important is success to you? Do you wish/hope/want to succeed, or is it a MUST to succeed for you?

These 2 mean totally different things – by saying you wish/hope/want to succeed, success isn’t a MUST, success is a good to have, success is an ideal… but not a MUST. When something is not a MUST, you’ll start to procrastinate, you’ll start to waste time away… and by doing so, you will NOT be successful. Success to you will always be an illusion.

However, if success to you is a MUST, you will do whatever it takes to achieve it. You will spend time everyday working towards your success, you will set goals, define strategies to move towards your goals, and most importantly, you will take ACTION to become successful. By doing so, there is still no guarantee that you’ll be successful. But if you try and try and try again, you’ll one day be successful. That’s just the way it is.

Barracuda vs Mullet

Stephen shared with us the story of Barracuda vs Mullet. Both Barracuda and Mullet are different kinds of fishes. Barracuda feeds on Mullet for survival. One day, they did an experiment – they put one Barracuda and several Mullets in a tank. However, the Barracuda was separated from the Mullets by a piece of glass.

So what did the Barracuda do when it sees the Mullets? It charged towards Mullets and *WHAM*… It hit that piece of glass. Undeterred, it tried again, and it hit that piece of glass again. It then tried again, and again, and again… with the impact softened at each attempt, as it got tired. It then gave up and stayed at one corner of the tank.

After some time, the piece of glass was removed from the tank. Now the Mullets were unprotected from the Barracuda, and the Barracuda could now feed on the Mullets! But it continued staying at one corner of the tank and eventually died of hunger.

What does this story tell us? It simply tells us that success could very well be just one step away… Yeah…. Just ONE more step away. Had the Barracuda tried one more time, it would not have died of hunger. He would be able to eat up all the Mullets and survive… Not just survive but have its stomach bloated with Mullets! But it did not try again, and died in the end…

The conclusion is this – Its not about how hard you get hit, but how hard you get hit and keep pressing forward.

No one is perfect

No one is perfect… Everyone makes mistakes and gets hit at a certain point in time. Take for example, when you are studying, do you ALWAYS get a 100% in all your examination? Certainly not, right?

When we look at successful people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, we tend to focus on their success. We admire how good they are… but did we actually focus on the steps they took to success? Did we actually look into the amount of losses they make before they attain success? They probably lose much more than us – much more…. Not just money but time as well. But did it deter them from wanting to succeed? Of course not! If they give up after a few tries, we will not see Microsoft today. We will not see Virgin Airways today.

Everyone is a marketer

Stephen shared with us one thing – “Everyone of us IS a marketer”. You may say – “I’m not a salesperson… How can you say I’m a marketer?” But the fact is, all of us ARE marketers.

When you are interviewing for a job, do you just sit there and keep mum and get the job? Of course not! You will tell the interviewer everything that’s good about you – your achievements, your education, your previous working experience, what you can offer the company, etc. Am I right? By doing so, you are already marketing yourself! You are selling yourself to the company? And how do you know when you’ve clinched the deal? You’ve clinched the deal when you got the job you went for interview for! =)

Let me give you another example – when you like someone to be your partner, do you just wait there and pray that he/she comes to you? Of course not! You’ll think of ways to impress him/her, you’ll think of ways to attract his/her attention right? By doing that, you are already trying to market yourself… How do you know you’ve clinched the deal? – When he/she agrees to be your partner! =)

Yeah! We are all marketers by nature.

7 Steps to Achieving Success on the Internet

Step 1:
Do a market research to pick the right market.

You must have a specialized niche in order to make money on the Internet (e.g. “Golf balls” is more specialized niche compared to just “Golf”) There are a few tips Stephen gave on this – Got to Amazon.com, and look for products that are most popular right now. He also suggested looking into “New York Times Best Sellers List”

Step 2:
Do a product research to pick the right product

You can either choose to create your own product, resell and re-brand other people’s product, obtain Private Label Rights for other people’s product, or sell as affiliate.

For those of you who like to create your own product but not sure what products you can create, think about this – What are the things you like to do in your spare time? What are the things I’m good at? What do I know about?

You may want to do up something like the following to help you identify the products you can sell:



Step 3:
You can choose to market information products, such as audios, videos, reports, books, courses, newsletters. Information products are the easiest to sell simply because you need not worry about shipping costs, you need not worry about warehousing, etc. Digital products can be sent to the buyer immediately after payment.

Step 4:
Use lead generation advertising. Build a list of “interested” people (leads), and sell to your leads. 7 – 12% of the leads purchase the products at the end of the day.

NEVER EVER direct your leads directly to the sales page. People do not normally purchase when they see your site the first time. After they leave, there is no way you can follow-up with them. It is very unlikely they’ll re-visit your web again. You can say that you have just lost a potential customer.

Take for example a salesperson, if he/she gives up after being rejected the first time, he/she will never be able to capture any sales.



You must always create a lead capture page – a page where you request for a person’s name and email address, before bringing them to the sales page. Once you’ve captured the person’s name and email address, you can send follow-ups to him/her.

Even if your leads do not buy this time round, it is ok. When you have other products of a similar nature, you can send emails to your leads to tell them about it.



Step 5:
You need to use the top ways to market your products.

You can choose to use either MySpace, Youtube, blogs, links (bidclix.com, adbrite.com), ezines, solo ads, CraigsList, banner ads, articles writing and submitting, press releases, etc. to create product awareness.

80% of Internet Marketing success is dependent on your ability to generate traffic to the product you are selling on the Internet.

You can have the most fanciful website, you can have the best product offer, you can have the best support. However, if you do not know how to generate traffic to your website, you will not make any sales. It’s as simple as that.

There are 3 types of traffic – free traffic, performance traffic and paid traffic.

I’m sure you know what free traffic and paid traffic is. Free traffic is traffic you get without you paying for it (e.g. someone sees your website and tells his/her friends about it, and they visit your web. These are called free traffic). Paid traffic is traffic you get by paying (such as Pay Per Click).

Performance traffic is traffic that you pay only after something has taken place (such as one of your affiliates sold your product, and you need to pay him/her a certain amount of commission – that is performance traffic).

Step 6:
You can make use of auto-responders to generate cash at a rabbit-breeding rate. You can make use of auto-responders to send emails to your leads who signed up in your lead capture page and chances are, if you deal appeals, they’ll buy your products.

Step 7:
You should make use of the cash injection accelerator.

Here are some cash injection generators – One Time Offer, Bonus Offer, Limited Time Offer, Bundled Offer, Last Chance Offer. Offer your leads offers. Give them an irresistible offer.

A basic one-time offer look like the following:



Stephen’s 10 Steps to Setting Up a Multi-Million Dollar Autopilot Sales Process

The following is Stephen’s 10 steps to setting up a multi-million dollar autopilot sales process. The numbers at the top of each box is the step number.



You can apply Stephen’s 10 steps too, by filling in each boxes (those with step numbers) the information you want to show to your leads/customers.

I hope you find this blog entry useful. I wish you all the best in your Internet Marketing adventures. If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to either submit a comment under this post or email me at ljunyuan@msn.com.

Yours Sincerely
Jun Yuan