If you weren’t in Chicago last weekend, you missed a great conference. Ken McCarthy hosts one of the longest running internet marketing conferences, and it seems to get better every year. This year, there were 23 speakers over two days, including two who first spoke at live events that I put on last year.

Everyone I talked to thought it was one of the best internet marketing events in a long time. But if you missed it, don’t despair. These days, if you want to learn about internet marketing there are more and more great seminars you can attend all the time. It seems like there are events almost every week.

For example, next week I’ll be speaking at Carl Galletti’s SuperConference in Las Vegas. This event is in its eighth year! I spoke at it last year — Carl is a great guy who loves to teach and his conference just keeps getting better and better. If you’re going and you want to spend some time hanging out with me, I’ll be arriving Friday night and leaving Sunday night. (Will trade internet marketing advice for Miller Lite.)

Then, just a couple weeks after that (June 11-14th) I’ll be in Panama for my Import-Export Workshop which I’m putting on in conjunction with the great people at International Living.

As many of you know, Jennifer and I are expecting twin girls about the first week in July so I hope they don’t come early!

The “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” Workshop

Let me help you make more money online — I guarantee it won’t cost you a nickel.

In July, I’m trying something new. I’m doing a private two-day weekend workshop in my office in Atlanta. It’s going to be limited to how many can sit around my conference table. So far, there are four coming that signed up at Mark Victor Hansen’s MegaMarketing conference in L.A. I know it will sell out, so if you’re interested let me know asap.

I don’t have a sales letter or anything, it’s just a cool weekend workshop I’m doing for a small group where I can really teach everything I know and work on the participants’ individual businesses. It will be July 7-9. It’s $4,995, and goes Friday night, and all day Saturday and Sunday, plus all the follow-up help or coaching you need for the rest of the year.

It’s going to be a really cool, in-depth learning experience, with individual attention. If you don’t make 100% of your money back with the workshop and my ongoing help, I’ll refund 100% of your workshop fee. How’s that for an internet marketing workshop?

If you want to reserve a place, call Jayne in my office at 770-446-1577 x721 (since I can only take a few more people, I want to make sure everyone is a good fit for this small group workshop — people who already have businesses and who I can help right away are preferred, etc.)

If you come, make sure you can come in Friday because I’m taking everyone to Chops, the best steakhouse in Atlanta, probably the Southeast.

Fore!

Tomorrow I’m leaving for Memphis. For those of you who follow golf, I’m going to play in the PGA’s St. Jude Classic Pro-Am on Wednesday and attend the golf tournament as a guest of FedEx. Their headquarters are there, and I expect it to be a pretty cool time. I don’t know if I’ll get to meet Fred Smith, but if I do, I’ll let ya know!

(There’s something to be said for having to deal with shipping 1,000 boxes a day after all.) It should be a great time. I never played with a caddy before; just wish I was a better golfer.

It’s funny — last year, I called FedEx to see if I could get any better rates than what we were paying with UPS. I never heard much from them, but as soon as this truck was parked outside our warehouse, that seemed to make a difference. Heh heh

For those of you attending the System Seminar this weekend in Chicago, come introduce yourself! I’ll be speaking Saturday from 3:30-5:00, and again Sunday from 1:30-3:00. Hope to see you there!

For those of you who won’t be able to make it to the System Seminar in Chicago this weekend, here’s a great resource for you:

http://www.thesystemblog.com/

Ken McCarthy, who runs the System Seminar each year, will be posting highlights of the event on that site as it happens - so be sure to check back frequently for all the latest info.

p.s. I did an interview with Ken last month - you can download it for free here: http://www.thesystemblog.com/2006/04/brad_fallon_the.html

In this issue:

1. The Last of The Four-Part Blogging Course. (See below.)

2. Import Export Seminar in Panama — coming soon! This is an event that I’m putting on with the folks at International Living (Agora) — I just got the itinerary for this 4-day conference (June 11-14) and it is going to be really excellent! Those of you interested in selling physical products and importing can see details about the conference here:

http://www.internationalliving.com/events/06/i_e_workshop.html

This is the most comprehensive importing seminar I’ve ever heard of and I don’t think it is sold out (yet) so there is still time to register. Check out the seminar web site at the link above.

3. Interns Wanted — again! Summer is almost here, and so I’m putting the word out — come to Atlanta and learn internet marketing firsthand. Work side-by-side with our e-commerce team that sells more than $1 million a month online. (Last summer we had three interns, and two of them work here full-time now.)

Whether you want a full-time career opportunity (we’re up to 50 people now and still growing) or you just want a great summer job, send an email to bradf at bradfallon dot com with Internship in the subject line if you want to apply. (Or forward this to someone you know who wants to learn as much as possible about internet marketing.)

4. Product Launches.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying watching the bar get raised on “How to launch an info product.” First, Jon Reese sells a million dollars in one day with Traffic Secrets. Now everyone else is launching products with better and better marketing. Kind of like a four minute mile, it’s still not easy to do, but it makes it seem a lot easier to do 5 or 6.

The latest one is Sterling Valentine. Have you seen his JV formula thing yet? This is the guy’s very first info product ever, and darned if he isn’t going to sell $100,000 on the very first day. Everyone in the world will be promoting it, and if you haven’t seen the emails and deals leading up to the launch next Tuesday you should get on the list and check it out: http://www.bradfallon.com/jv

If you’re in the info product business, you know that the JV partners are really what it’s all about. And Sterling put together all the teachings from all the top internet marketers — specically about how to do joint ventures — in one place. Very cool idea.

Start up to $100k in a few months. Yep, the internet still rocks.

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Week 4 of 4 — Blogging for Business (By the way, the eight week telecourse I did with Dave Taylor, 19 books in bookstores and bigtime blogger (intuitive.com, askdavetaylor.com) is going to be ready soon. There’s over 10 hours of content on CD plus class notes and transcripts — and Anne Holland from Marketing Sherpa, and Joe Vitale from everywhere did great bonus lectures. Stay tuned.

This week we’re going to wrap up the blogging course by talking about what makes a blog tick - the words. The content. The copy.

Whatever you want to call the end result, blogs are fueled by the written word. People don’t initially come to your blog to buy products (though you hope they will eventually!) or to look at pretty pictures. Customers visit your blog to read what you write. They want to know more about your industry or your product line, or maybe they just want to know what you think!

So if we’re blogging at least 2-3 times a week . . . what exactly are we blogging about? Where are you supposed to find enough content to fill all that up?

One of the best ways to find something to talk about in this new media, is to use the OLD media…newspapers and magazines. If you’re stuck for something to write about, a great blogging “trick” is to go out, read the newspapers and magazines, excerpt a chunk of the article you want to talk about. Then stick a paragraph or two before and after the excerpt and voila! You’ve got yourself a brand new blog post! (Of course remember to cite or give credit to material you quote.)

Another great way to bust “blogger’s block” is to quote someone who’s posted on a message board or forum. A lot of times you can get great ideas or blog seeds by simply keeping an eye out for posts you find compelling or thought-provoking. Email the author of the post and ask them if they mind being quoted on your blog. Nine times out of 10 they will be flattered. You get ideas for your blog content, they get flattery — a win-win!

You can also republish entire articles and essays you find online. Again, it’s important that you get permission to do so first, but once you have it, you simply tack on a preamble that says “My friend Todd just wrote a great article on X and he’s kindly given me permission to republish it here!” Then post the whole article. Don’t forget to link back to the original author’s site.

Another great way to get content for your blog is to hire someone to write it for you! There are plenty of outsourcing sites out there where you can find competent, trustworthy and affordable writers-for-hire. (If it makes sense for you financially, you can even do what I did, and hire an in-house writer.)

To find outsourced writers try craigslist.com first.

And if you don’t have a myspace account yet, get one. You can run ads on there for free in multiple categories and you’ll automatically get internet savvy applicants. Plus, you can see everything about them (often, way too much) before you ever interview them!

That’s it for this week. Keep an eye your inbox for the next edition and as always . . .

Keep on Stomping!

Talk soon,

Brad Fallon
www.bradfallon.com

Google recently announced a new referral program to spread the use of Firefox, which is open to anyone with an Adsense account.

They are offering a $1 referral fee if someone clicks on your link and successfully installs Firefox.

What do you think about this? Did they add the referral program mainly to take away market share from Microsoft — or is it because they think Firefox is a superior browser?

If you have your own website, you really need to have both IE and Firefox on your computer so you can make sure your website is set up correctly in both browsers. It can be quite surprising when you think everything is laid out perfectly, but then in another browser the page is a broken disaster.

If you don’t yet have Firefox, you can get it here:

Skype just launched a new service that allows people to host free audio conferences for up to 100 participants, called "Skypecasts."

You can set up a conference on anything you can think of, post the time, a description, and keywords so people can find your Skypecast by doing a search of the directory.

Running the conference can be done as an open discussion or you can use the moderation tools to host a one-way broadcast. You can mute/unmute everyone or you could just unmute certain people.

This would be great for specific niches. It’s free, you have complete control over how the Skypecast is run, and you can position yourself as an expert in your industry.

You can check out more detailed information on Skypecasts here - or go directly to the Skypecast home page.

Google never ceases to amaze me. Their latest launch, Sketchup, lets you design 3D models of all kinds of things.

From the Sketchup website:

"Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you’ve built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies."

Sketchup is pretty robust - I know a couple people who have used it in the past in order to create 3D models for remodeling parts of their house.

It’s free to download, check it out here.