Well Gizmo here and I finally got fish after the last post so I guess I better get writing to get some more. So you know I am well fed but fish are much better than those pellets I usually get.

Besides it is fun chasing them

Have been going through Profitable Blog Steps per the Turtle dad’s instructions and this week went through step 2 research and choosing a topic.

This is very important and I tried to convince the Turtle Dad that maybe we should talk more about turtles and less about marketing.

See I love talking turtles but alas there is no money to be made talking turtles. And as fish cost money and I like eating fish guess we will keep to the current topic.

So check out Profitable Blog Steps and I am off to bug the Turtle Dad for fish now that my post is done and start watching the next lesson.

Maybe that is the one with the big ready easy button but I am starting to doubt that. Seems it takes work to make money blogging.

A fat and hungry Gizmo

Technorati Tags: blogging, fish, gizmo, marketing, money, profitable blog steps

The turtles are showing signs of being spoiled. It is probably my fault as I keep them well fed. This week they got a new batch of fish added to their tank. Now usually if I add 16 fish they last an hour maybe two if they are fast.

This time though it is now Sunday and the fish were added on Thursday and there are still over half of them happily swimming around. Guess the turtles have gotten fat and happy and are willing to wait on me rather than have to expend some effort to get fed.

The funny thing is that they can be up on their dock sunning and totally relaxed but if I look over at them it is in the water and start splashing to see if they can attract my attention to add food.

If they expended the time and effort that they do trying to get my attention in chasing the fish their belly would be full. Hey it feeds my ego to know that they watch me and try to attract my attention but it does nothing to get them fed.

How often do we do that with our marketing?

You know how it is, You set something up and it starts to work. Now it is time to start improving it and ramping it up. You are so happy though that something is working that you go on to the next thing.

Instead of continuing to add blog posts, submit articles or find other paid traffic sources to ramp up your process and create more success you get side tracked.

You stop testing and improving your process or adding more to your system because you got fat and happy (but usually not for long.)

Now if you have never started to get success then maybe you need some help getting started and putting the pieces together. If that is you then check out Powerstart Marketing from Doug Champigny.

But if you have had a bit of success what have you done to add to it this week?

Did you…

• Add a new squeeze page system to get more subscribers?
• Create or add a new product to your mix?
• Submit more articles or do blog posts or preferably both to generate traffic?
• Checked your split tests to improve what you are doing?

If not, then like the turtles you will start to get hungry. Once they get hungry the fish will disappear quickly because they will be motivated hunters once again.

One important note it is very easy to keep the ball rolling but once it comes to rest it takes a lot more energy to get it going again then it does to make the moving ball go faster.

Are you going to wait to get hungry until you get going again?

Technorati Tags: Doug Champigny, marketing, Powerstart 2010, subscribers, traffic sources, video squeeze page

Unlike me the turtles have become quite lazy except when they are begging for food.

With the snow this past week or so I have not made it out to the pet store so they have been stuck with the stick food and have not had any fish for a bit.

When they complained about it I told them they have not been doing there part in keeping the blog up to date. So I told them “no income from content no goodies for the turtles”. That got their attention.

After some discussion (yes I know I am nuts and talk to turtles) they asked what I was reading when I was scribbling furiously last week?

When I said it was The Writers Secret from Marlon Sanders (the turtles like Marlon by the way because his products always give me a good return on investment which leads to more fish for turtles) the next question was why so many notes?

Because as I read through it I kept finding little tweaks that would improve what I was doing. The one little idea increased my normal conversion rate on a product and I will be adding some of these tweaks to all of my products.

Now for a new person this will save them time because instead of struggling like I did they can add these in from the beginning. The one test I did showed how much money I have left on the table because I did not do that tweak.

As always Marlon over delivered on this one and I don’t know but I expect the price will be increasing as the value is there to support it.

Check out The Writers Secret today. The turtles approve it. Now off to the pet store here.

Oh and the title of the post comes just because I have been reading Anne Rice’s “Interview With A Vampire” and I liked the idea

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: increase conversion, marketing, Marlon Sanders, The Writers Secret

This morning I awoke to find the turtles feeding on the last of the gold fish. The last one had survived almost a year and was as big as the turtles.

The fish would even push the turtles away at feeding time to get a share of the food. Really surprised that this fish lasted this long. It has been over two months since the 4 other big fish were eaten.

So for almost a year the fish survived and even thrived growing to be over 4 inches long. Eventually though the nature of the turtles came out and the fish is no more.

Now how does this apply to marketing? After all that is the theme here.

First nature does not change. Maude can’t believe that the turtles would do such a thing after sharing a tank that long. Wrong. The nature of turtles is to eat fish. The world is an eat or be eaten place. That does not change – EVER.

Sooner or later the turtles were going to eat the fish. It did not matter how smart the fish was, how fast the fish was, it was a foregone conclusion.

In that tank the turtles were at the top of the food chain. Had the fish been in a tank with out the turtles the fish might have been at the top.

The fish had the same nature and always went after the small feeder fish that were added as a turtle snack every so often too.

That is one of the reasons I always talk about finding niche markets. Find a “tank” where you can be at the top of the food chain.

Even if you can have a bit of success competing in the big “tank” like the internet marketing arena sooner or later the nature of the turtles will catch up with you. Find an area where you can easily be the top of the food chain.

If you need help finding those spots check out Finding Profitable Niches by Teri Champigny. This will show you exactly how to find the “tank” where you can be on the top of the food chain.

Do that or eventually end up like the gold fish no longer around.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: marketing, niche, niche marketing, profitable niche

The picture to the left is Gizzard’s back paw spread out fully. Now I have yet to figure out why they love to lay on the dock and stretch out like that but seeing the paw fully spread like that did make me understand something about their swimming.

Quite often you can see one of them paddling like mad and not going very fast at all. They almost look like they are stuck in quicksand.

Then all of a sudden they take off like a shot. After watching for a while it was apparent that little changes in the angle they were paddling and how wide their paw was was spread made the difference.

Same effort but vastly different result.

Your marketing can be like that too. Little things like changing a word in a headline can make the difference between paddling and going no where and taking off like a shot.

That is the reason that you really need to be testing and tracking everything you do. I know it is a royal pain at times but…

It allows you to discover those little changes that make you jump forward. It is important that you track everything through to your ultimate action. For doing that I use Hits Connect. There are lots of other solutions available.

Lots of people just track traffic stats but if you can not track and see which traffic source gets you the result you are trying to achieve you will not be able to find those little changes.

Lets take an example of a result. You set up a squeeze page and send traffic from three sources. Knowing how much traffic is good but what you really need to know is which traffic source delivered the people that went to the verification page, then clicked the link in the verification email. That is your ultimate goal because once they have done that much you have a subscriber you can contact.

That is the ultimate goal to know what works to get people to your final result which in this case is to be fully signed up for your email campaign. It would work the same way for your product if that was your ultimate goal.

So take the time to set up your testing and tracking. You never know what will make a difference. I have had a friend get a 10 fold increase in results from changing the title and graphic of their giveaway on a squeeze page.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: marketing, testing. Hits Connect, tracking

This was previously published at Mike Paetzold recommends but I wanted to pull all of the turtle tales to one place. Enjoy.

Let me tell you a tale about 3 small cute little turtles. They are named Gizzy, Gizmo and Gizzard. The picture to the left is Gizzard the last addition.

For Mother’s Day, Maude, my better half (and I would be dead if I said it any other way wanted a turtle. She had seen these cute little turtles at a local pet shop.

Being the softy and peace loving person I am we went to the store and came home with 2, Gizzy and Gizmo. You need a home so we bought them one of those cut little bowls (it even had a palm tree) and a jar of food.

This was going to be easy and watching them could be fun. After all how hard can it be to feed and care for two little turtles.

We had not done any research on turtles before we made the commitment. We quickly learned that it wasn’t really all that easy. Now that we had turtles we figured we should learn a bit more. Big surprise.

These weren’t just turtles but red ear slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) and you think some of the marketing language is tough These cute little turtles will grow to about 10 inches across eventually. First surprise.

First Lesson – Do a bit of research first before jumping into a business model. You will still have surprises but they hopefully won’t be as big.

Now we got a used aquarium, went out and bought a ramp for them to get out of the water and figured now we are set.

Then came surprise #2. Turtles are extremely dirty creatures. They can cloud a clean aquarium with a standard pump in about a day and a half so you can’t see the other side. Hmmm. Back to researching in more depth.

Second Lesson -Even research won’t stop all the surprises. Be prepared to add more investment into your business that you were not expecting.

Out to the pet store and get a second filter made for turtles and a 10 gallon tank. Problem solved. Until 4 days later when the water was cloudy again.

Now with 3 filters running, a cleaning maintenance schedule set and a separate feeding tank we are hoping to have a clean tank to watch the cute turtles do their thing.

Will it work? Don’t know for sure but each step has improved the process and we now have a much better idea of not only what we are doing but what we will need in the future.

After finding other turtle owners and seeing the set up they have we know that we have to prepare for. (Don’t be surprised if I run a new Turtle Home Sale in the future.)

Eventually this small $30 initial investment to get Maude her Mother’s Day gift will end up in over $500 and probably closer to $1000 of expense for the new home in the future. Not exactly what I signed on for when I paid the initial $30 (That does not count feeding or God forbid a vet trip. Just the gas to get to the closest turtle vet hurts forget the vet fee.)

How does all this apply?

You need to do research before you start something new.

Take action. Yes I probably would not have bought the turtles if I had researched them properly. I have adapted and learned what was needed.

Be prepared for the unexpected. It will happen no matter how well you research. That is why action is the most important.

You won’t get it right the first time. Learn from it and continue to improve.

Are you taking action? Have you goofed it up the first time and adapted? (I do it all the time)

Leave a comment and let me know.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: adapting, marketing, researching, turtles

One of the things you quickly find out once you truly embrace marketing is how you find lessons in every day life.

This is one of the keys to finally “getting it” and this blog will follow the travails of raising the red eyed slider turtles named Gizzy, Gizmo and Gizzard. Then we ally what is happening there to what happens when creating a business.

The surprises, the shortcuts all can teach you a lesson and help you to avoid it in your path.

Hope you enjoy the ride it should be a fun one.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: business building, marketing, three turtle