Business Development Advice

Step 6 into the Nitro Blueprint System is “Revising Your Sales Letter, Setting Up Split Testing and Launching Your Website” so this is an action packed stage.

Revising Your Sales Letter

Back in step 4 of the Blueprint System, you are asked to write your sales letter but anyone who has written copy and especially long copy knows that you have to put it to one side and come back to it.

The reason is simple.

You spend a long time working out the logic, drafting it and refining your persuasive prose and the more you polish it, the more you are convinced that buyers will be “snapping your hand off” to get whatever you are selling.

But come back to it after a week and you suddenly notice the typo in the first paragraph and how long-winded or boring some of the sections are. What had felt compelling is tedious.

So now you have to edit it ruthlessly and make sure that you are building in emotion, excitement and urgency.

The Nitro Blueprint Manual takes you through the key elements again so that you can check that you really do have a compelling sales letter which will maximise your chances of conversion.

But here’s the rub.

However good your letter is, you can’t predict what the prospective customers will do and that’s why all great copywriters emphasise the importance of testing.

Setting Up Your Split Testing

Now split testing is not the process of having one headline up for the first week and then the second headline up for the next week and comparing results.

Instead a half of the website visitors will see headline 1 and half headline 2 and you monitor what happens. Is one headline better than the other in the “stay or flee” decision when people first land on your site? Do people stay longer on the site for one or the other? Which is producing the most sales?

This has all sounded very technical to me and I’ve found myself listening to people talk about Taguchi testing but not really understood.

Thanks to the Nitro Blueprint System I know that there is a simple, easy way to introduce split testing but not many people use it.

I am in discussions with a web designer about having my main website re-developed and although the firm had heard of splitting, they hadn’t done it.

Not to worry with the Nitro Blueprint System though. Not only do you have the demonstration videos to show you how it’s done, you also have the “done for you” service to fall back on.

Launching Your Website

We knew it was happening but at the end of step 6 of the Nitro Blueprint System, your website is ready to launch.

Or is it?

The Nitro Blueprint manual takes you through the final checklist, just like an aeroplane about to take off.

Some of the Internet marketing gurus need to read this section as I seem to be quick on the uptake and I’m getting to sites which don’t work as they should.

Now that you have your site published, the next step is traffic and that’s the topic of step 7. In fact it’s split into 7a, 7b and 7c.

Conclusion

I remain extremely impressed with the thoroughness of the Nitro Blueprint System.

As I continue my review of the Nitro Blueprint System, this is where the Nitro Blueprint System gets technical in step 5 with “Creating your website and sales system.” At this stage you may want to hand over to one of Nitro’s outsourced service providers to at least get your website up and running.

You can then watch the Nitro videos and study your own site so that for your next website you can do it if you really want to.

But first the Nitro Blueprint System forces us to think about money and in particular collecting money. I like this bit as being paid is definitely what your online business is all about.

Before you create your website you have three main decisions:

1. How is your ordering system going to work and how are you going to collect payments?
2. How will you capture email addresses of people interested in your free offer but not yet ready to buy?
3. How will you process affiliate promotions and payments?

Good questions and the Nitro Blueprint System provides the answers.

Internet Payment Processing

First on the payment system you have a very nice “Fors” and “Againsts” for Clickbank, Paypal and your own merchant account.

I know you want the best system for the least money but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. The best, most flexible system is the one that costs you the most but Nitro very fairly point out the issues and allow you to make an informed decision.

Email Hosting

You want an email solution which automates the creation of the email capture form, stores the email addresses and allows you to send out and track emails. I uses Campaign Monitor which is free to create but costs you to send emails. It works very well but I doesn’t have an auto-responder system beyond the initial sign up process so you can’t use it to deliver a seven email course.

The Nitro Blueprint System makes a specific recommendation which I will have to check out soon.

Affiliate Programs

You may not have considered having an affiliate program where you pay people a share of the sales proceeds in return for promoting your website but it is an essential part of Internet marketing.

Why rely on just your traffic when you can have ten or one hundred affiliates telling their readers about your product or service?

The Nitro Blueprint System again takes you through the options and what you should look for when choosing your affiliate system.

Putting It All Together

The best solution is a complete shopping cart but it does cost.

My Guerrilla Marketing friends recommend Easy Web Automation but Nitro recommend another solution and many of the Internet marketing gurus use Infusion. This is a big decision to make and will depend on how big you intend your Internet business to become.

Designing Your Website

Do you really want to become a web designer or do you want to master Internet marketing? My advice is to pass over to an expert at this stage but if you really want to do it the Nitro Blueprint gives you the step by step videos of formatting your sales letter and FTPing (?) files up to your website.

It then introduces the essential topic of monitoring and adding Google Analytics to your site.

Me, I’m definitely happy to pay someone else to handle what I think of as the techie aspects.

Conclusion

That’s it for step 5 and you now have a functioning website ready to take your customers money.

In the next few steps the Nitro Blueprint System goes into topics like split testing and attracting traffic.

I remain very impressed with the Nitro Blueprint System and regard it as the system to buy for move you from inception of the idea through to having a finished website which makes money. It saves you wasting time looking at what other gurus are offering when you could be taking the actions necessary to build your online business. Get your business up and running, get the most out of the Nitro Blueprint System and then start learning about other people’s ideas for generating extra traffic.

 Writing Your Million Dollar Sales Letter

“Writing Your Million Dollar Sales Letter” is step 4 in Nitro Blueprint System and this is where you start crafting the copy which is going to make you your fortune.

You will remember from steps 2 Planning Your Business Strategy and Creating Your Offers and Step 3 Creating Your Front End Product that you have been focused on what it is that your target niche market is looking for.

In Step 4, you develop your sales letter to explain to your prospective customers why they should buy your solution to their problems and why your offer is credible.

Copywriting Is Fascinating

Copywriting is both an art and a science which I find fascinating and I recommend that you start paying more attention to the direct mail and sales letter style websites that you encounter.

There is an old advertising acronym - AIDA - which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

Start studying the letters and see how they capture your attention with a benefit focused headline. Then work your way down, all the way through to the call to take action.

See if you can identify why some copywriting is good and subtly influences you while other copywriting is poor. It either doesn’t move you at all or comes over brash and arrogant. The ingredients are right but the cake isn’t mixed properly.

The Old Advice - Write Out A Great Sales Letter By Hand

If you study copywriting you will read this advice a lot.

Just take a letter you like (perhaps Nitro’s own sales letter) and start writing it out by hand. This way you feel the words and you can get into the copywriting mood much more effectively than just reading the letter or trying to analyse it.

Yes it takes time and you may be best to choose your sales letter carefully based on length as some can be 30, 40 or even 50 pages long.

Nitro’s 11 Part Formula of a Successful Sales Letter

The Nitro Blueprint System handbook has a really nice section based on the components of a successful sales letter which I hope they don’t mind me repeating in headings:

1. Headline
    
2. Opening Section
    
3. Establish Credibility
    
4. Providing the Solution
    
5. Bullet Points
    
6. Testimonials
    
7. Bonuses
    
8. Price Of Your Product
    
9. Your Guarantee
    
10. Call to Action
     
11. Formatting Your Sales Letter

Can you see the way that the AIDA factors are being brought in?

In the following steps if you buy the Nitro Blueprint System, you will be creating your website with the sales letter as the central page and then testing it.

To find out more see Nitro Blueprint System

Kevin Wilke of Nitro Marketing has announced that the Nitro Blueprint System has increased price on 1 April 2008.

It seems some stupid blogger told him that the product was too cheap and that the price almost stopped him from buying.

I think it was me.

The price is going up from the “bargain of the century” price to “still a great bargain” $497.

Sorry For My Slow Progress

If you are attracted to the Nitro Blueprint System but you have been waiting for me to finish my reviews before buying then I do apologise. I have been going much slower than I expected through the system.

Most importantly I have read ahead and I am very impressed with what I have seen from Kevin and his team at Nitro Marketing.

My business on here is reviewing and promoting business development products but there have been too many Internet marketing launches going on at the same time.

Let me put this $497 into perspective.

The new Product Launch Formula will be $1997.

StomperNet SMARTS program was $1,397.

Rich Schefren’s Business Acceleration Program launched at $1,997 and has now increased to just under the $5k which is close to his Business Growth System coaching program.

Eben Pagan’s Guru Mastermind launch this week was at a high price. I haven’t really been watching it because of the time pressures but it was at a price beyond my “let’s just give it ago”. I also missed out on the Frank Kern Mass Control launch because of the time factor.

These Internet marketing programs are expensive but for the right people the Nitro Blueprint System stands up to any of them from what I have seen.

You get a detailed action program which walks you through every step. You get extra videos and help on the active forum. There is a “done for you” option on the resources if you don’t have the time for certain aspects of your business launch.

So who are the right people for the Nitro Blueprint System?

Effectively it is for people who want to have an Internet information marketing business.

If you have tangible products you can touch and feel or you have a service business then the information product creation sections in the Nitro Blueprint System are not as relevant.

BUT

1. You can still learn a lot about putting together an Internet business and at this price, the tips on creating your website, blogging, generating traffic, copywriting and many of the other things are well worth the purchase price.
2. Information marketing is a great way to generate leads for any kind of business. Everyone is time pressured but wants to “be in the know” when making decisions. So if you have a kitchen fitting business, you could create and sell “The 17 Unmissable Tips For Making Sure You Have The Kitchen Of Your Dreams.” The same logic applies to virtually any kind of business and even covers routine purchases.

The Bottom Line

See the Nitro sales letter or videos to help you to decide whether you should buy. Remember you are still protected by the Nitro guarantee.

Pricing Update August 2008

I have checked the current price of the Nitro Blueprint System and it is back below $300.

Nitro Marketing are sophisticated marketers and offer a series of optional backend offers so I suspect that after testing, they must have found that Nitro customers were spending less with them following the price increase.

The Nitro Blueprint System is well worth the $497 there were charging but it may have scared away some of the very new Internet Marketers and sent them into the clutches of products that are not as good or as comprehensive as the Blueprint System.

 Creating Your Front End Product

This is step 3 in the Nitro Blueprint System for creating an online business with the focus on creating your front end product.

While this is primarily aimed at people wanting to develop Information product businesses online, it is also worth remembering that information products can also be a great way to develop the relationship with a customer for real world, physical products.

For example my parents have just had a new kitchen and it has all gone very smoothly but it did bring back memories of how overwhelmed I felt when we were looking to choose a new kitchen. There were so many different styles, units, handles, work surfaces, accessories. This list seemed endless and we did need to be gently led through the process and that could have been done by an information product like “How To Choose The Kitchen Of Your Dreams.”

Anyway back to Step 3 of the Nitro course and the importance of having the right front end product.

While you should make most of your money of back end products with happy customers, if you fail to tempt enough people into beginning the relationship with you, then your business is destined to struggle.

It is just like this blog. I want people to maintain the relationship by subscribing to the RSS feed but I know that you won’t have any temptation to do that if I fail to deliver pertinent comments, assessments and advice.

The Nitro system provides good solid advice in how to make this front end attractive which I am obviously not going to repeat. That wouldn’t be fair to Kevin Wilke and the Nitro team, especially when the Nitro Blueprint System is available at such a bargain price.

Remember your information product could be a written report or e-book (or even the option of a properly bound book like Nikki Pilkington’s 299 Steps To Website Heaven).

One of the dilemmas for new marketers is the conflicting desire - to go where all the customers are while avoiding your competitors. That is some challenge and while it would obviously be nice to find some keyword phrases with lots of requests but no matches, you are likely to have to decide between a trade-off.

Popularity v little competition.

I have recently blogged about the problems of choosing a niche and the difficulty in deciding whether to be a generalist or specialist on my Business Coaching blog.

My belief for Internet marketers is that you have to find your own special focus where you can stand out and get to the top of the search engines but then  to develop a series of products which will appeal to the same customers and which can cross-promote each other.

One tip that isn’t mentioned in the Nitro Blueprint but I have head my idol, Jay Abraham mention is the Amazon school of marketing.

Just pop along to Amazon.com or your local Amazon site and look at the top selling books in your area. Where is their focus, what type of titles do they use? Then have a look at the reviews and you should see people writing 5 stars reviews explaining what they like and people on the 1 & 2 star reviews saying what they don’t like.

Another idea I really like, and I can’t remember where I picked it up, is to get other people to effectively write your product for you.

The example I heard I think was about recipes for quiches but I had been planning to use the same principle with a prospective client I had in the Carribean food industry. I thought that I could create a blog and get people to tell me their recipes for a mention in the book along with interesting twists in recipes.

I wonder if it could work with profit tips?

I am still very impressed with the Nitro Blueprint System for developing Internet businesses and I recommend that you take a look at the sales letter and videos to learn more.

 Planning Your Business Strategy and

Creating Your Offers

This is step 2 in the Nitro Blueprint System for developing a successful online business and I continue to be very impressed with the Nitro system.

Business Plans Don’t Have To Be Long and Boring

Read any book or guide to starting a business and you will be told that you need to write a business plan.

I completely agree but often people fail to distinguish between two totally different plans:

1. A business plan to act as a guide to the entrepreneur/business owner as the business develops and to capture the current thoughts about the business and its future.
    
2. A business plan to take to a bank or other someone else to help you to raise finance.

These are totally different purposes.

If you don’t need to raise cash then the plan is for you and has to capture the logic of:

1. What you will sell to whom
      
2. Why they should buy
    
3. How they will find out about your products or service
    
4. How you are going to supply your product
      
5. How you are going to make sure that you make a profit and a reasonable estimate of your expected results over the first 12 months.

No over-complicated numbers, no summary of the management but a simple document that records your current ideas and logic.

Just writing down the plan will force you to think and the value is in your thinking and considering different alternatives and not in a fancy 50 page plan which changes within days of being completed.

Nitro Agree

I was pleased to see that in Step 2 Planning Your Business and Creating Your Offers Nitro agree.

In fact they don’t call it a business plan but a business map which is intended to be a fun way to capture the big picture of your business idea with 5 key parts including a few key numbers.

If you are scared of numbers and accounts then don’t be.

Just get a pen and paper or create a simple spreadsheet and start “playing with numbers”. I recommend that you wear different hats to do different forecasts:

1. An optimistic one which can be used to show how much your business could make if things go well (and if this doesn’t excite you then you have probably picked the wrong niche),
    
2. A realistic one of what you think may happen based on your research and
    
3. A pessimistic version where things take longer than expected, initial take up is less than you hoped and your prices are less.

Just focus on the major drivers of your business so it may be:

1. Number of leads
2. Percentage of leads converted into orders possibly with a time lag
3. Number of orders - this is 1 x 2
4. Average profit per order
5. Your contribution or gross profit = 3 x 4
6. Your overhead costs
7. Your net profit = 5-6

That doesn’t look too scary does it?

If you have a continuity program (recurring income) you would then have a separate section between 5 & 6 to capture the profit from the ongoing income which should build up nicely.

Creating Your Offers

The Nitro Blueprint System is keen to make sure that you have set a direction and also in Step 2, you are asked to start thinking about how your are going to pitch your product to prospective customers. It is revised and polished later but in this section, you are just asked to start formulating your ideas.

Conclusion

I remain very positive about the Nitro Blueprint System but I think I have said before, it is not a quick and easy solution as it requires focus and regular investments of time.

If you are thinking of buying, you can see the sales letter or the Nitro videos or wait as I continue my slower than expected walk-through of the process and my review of the Nitro Blueprint System.

Sorry about the delay in taking you through the Nitro Blueprint System Step 1 - Market Research: Discovering and Choosing Your Million Dollar Market. The StomperNet SMARTS coaching course is keeping me busy.

The Nitro Master Manual explains how you can find ideas to discover your market.

This is an essential step and people can make costly mistakes in this area very easily.

If you are setting up a new business, it is tempting to think that you want a market which is empty. A market where there are no competitors so all the customers will see you as the obvious and only choose.

There is one fundamental problem. No competitors indicates no customers. 

If you can’t find the “expert guide to choosing the best Bolivian blue goats milk cheeses” or equivalent available from anyone else, it indicates that demand is low and it will be difficult to make money.

This is not the time to aim for new unexplored territory. You can do then when you are established.

The Nitro Blueprint System is targeted towards helping people create an Internet business selling information products and there are plenty of ways for you to search to see what is available.

You then need to match the market opportunities to your strengths and interests. You don’t want to create a business that means little to you. It is too important.

The Nitro Master Manual takes you nicely through the process and then teaches you how to do keyword research for tools, demonstration video and practical help available through the members resources.

I can’t emphasise how important keyword research is. I was amazed when I first did my research and found out the difference in the number of searches between business planning and business plan. One is so much more popular than the other and in my ignorance I optimised around the wrong phrase.

It is not required but I do recommend the keyword research tools from Nichebot. It does cost you a small fee (how much depends on which option you choose) and it takes some time to learn how to use it. However effective keyword research can be the difference between success and failure for your Internet business and many people can’t be bothered. Don’t make that mistake.

The Nitro system then takes you through a process to find out how competitive those keywords are for pay per click adverts - good evidence that the keyword phrase is a money term and not kids researching school projects.

There is great advice in Step 1- do not ignore the keyword stage and think that you know best. You would be turning your back on one of the best features of the Internet in that you can find out exactly how people search for your product or service. If you don’t do it effectively, you can be sure that your competitors will.

Creating Momentum

Step 1B is a bonus issue called the 99% solution.

It takes you through the process of buying your web domain and web hosting. So my domain name here is www.businessdevelopmentadvice.com. The Nitro Master Manual gives you tips on how to choose the right domain name. I used to think who in terms of the name of the business. I now think what, in terms of the service provided.

So if you are looking for a business coach, the best domain would be businesscoach.com as people will find it easy to remember while paulsimistercoaching.com isn’t.

Thanks to the Nitro manual and videos registering the domain is easy once you have reached your decision and buying the hosting is simple. When you buy the name, you just get the name and you then need to pay someone else to host the domain on their computer and give you the space to create your web-pages.

You will feel very techie doing this and I thought something had gone wrong but I hadn’t read all the section in the manual including the “it takes 12 to 24 hours for the change to take place.” I am impatient.

The Nitro Blueprint System then encourages you to install a Wordpress blog in your domain to start creating content and training the search engines. It then teaches you how to start promoting the blog.

Good solid advice with the strong recommendation to develop certain regular good habits.

Conclusion

After Step 1, my faith in the Nitro Blueprint System remains very high. This is truly a step by step development system where they hold your hand through each stage.

I should make it clear that it is not a quick fix system. The Nitro Blueprint System builds up your business from the basics but don’t buy it if you think you are going to have a money making website after 3 or 4 hours of work.

You can learn more about the Nitro Blueprint System by reading the sales letter or through their videos.

The Nitro Blueprint Master Manual

I have worked through Section 1 of the Nitro Blueprint SystemMaster Manual covering three chapters that looks at developing a Success Mindset and is an orientation of the Nitro Blueprint System:

1 - Introduction

2 - The Mindset Of Business Success - a fascinating system that helps you prepare mentally for success and I have just listened to the first bonus CD “The 4 reasons people fail and 3 simple exercises to permanently eliminate them”

3 - The Big Picture Overview of the Nitro Blueprint System - a brief summary of the Live Orientation Video to reinforce the key factors and lists the 10 steps in the system.

The manual is very clear in saying “do this exercise now” or “listen to this audio recording now”.

This step by step guide makes it very easy to combine learning with doing.

This is a persistent concern I have about business development programs and why I wrote to long articles on my Business Coaching Blog:

• Are you a business advice junkie?
   
• Cold turkey for the business advice junkie

It is so easy to fall into the habit of reading and listening to the program, having a few good ideas about how you can apply it to your business but then, instead of taking action, you move on to the next DVD, CD or chapter and then the next.

This is a subject I feel very strongly about and why some business advice and training gets a bad reputation. Too many people try something once and then, because they don’t see the benefits (because they haven’t taken action), they believe that business development training is a waste of time and money.

It will be if it doesn’t change the actions you take.

The Nitro Bluepint Members Site & Forum

It’s early days yet but at the moment it is very impressive.

The Members Site includes short “how to” videos and copies of the resources we’ve been sent combined with various other extremely useful sections like recommended resources and a list of people you can outsource work to.

The Forum looks active. I like that because I believe that you get out as much as you put in. I’ve introduced myself and posted several questions and received answers from Kevin Wilkes, co-founder of Nitro Marketing and other members.

Starting My New Internet Business

Decision time.

I have been talking to an entrepreneur/business coaching client of mine about a joint venture and I am conscious that the scope of my Business Coaching Blog has become too wide.

Decision made. You are reading it.

The Business Development Advice Blogis the first tangible evidence of results from the Nitro Blueprint System. You will find out more about how it happened in my next Blueprint post that covers the first step.

See Welcome To My Business Development Advice Blog for what my mission for this website.

If you think the Nitro Blueprint System sounds good and you want to start or build an Internet business, you can see the Nitro sales letter here or the Nitro videos here.

The Nitro Live Video orientation is a film of Nitro Marketing co-founder, Kevin Wilke presenting at the Unleashing Marketing Genius Conference.

The presentation is clearly designed to introduce the audience to the Nitro way of developing Internet businesses and to promote the Nitro Blueprint System. It is included in this program as an overview of the Nitro system and be assured, the emphasis is on delivering high quality, useful content and not sales hype.

It’s nice to see Kevin and to start getting a feeling of his personality after receiving plenty of emails from him.

Kevin Wilkes is not a dynamic presenter but comes over well and clearly knows his stuff.

I love the Nitro idea of an Internet Business Model and format based on standard boxes. The challenge is to work through the system and fill in the boxes in your unique way.

Complete each box successfully - and the course promises to teach you exactly how to do that - and business success should be guaranteed.

This is a really clear idea and the model looks spot on and covers all the ingredients I would have thought about (keyword research, generating traffic, writing your sales letter)and some that wouldn’t have occurred to me. For example I know virtually nothing about split testing.

The video goes through the ten steps in the Nitro Blueprint System in a reasonable level of detail. I really appreciate this approach because it caters for people like me who need to see the big picture.

10 Step Nitro Blueprint System

Step #1:Market Research: Discovering And Choosing Your Million Dollar Market

Step #2: Planning Your Business Strategy & Creating Your 4 Key Offers

Step #3: Creating Your Front-End Product

Step #4: Write Your Million Dollar Sales Letter

Step #5: Creating Your Website And Automated Sales System

Step #6: Launching Your Website And Split Testing Made Simple

Step #7: The Big 3 Of Traffic

Step #8: Email Marketing: Creating Money On Demand

Step #9: The Top 20 Traffic Enhancers

Step #10: Backend Profits: Where the BIG Money Is Made Online

I am very excited about the Nitro Blueprint System and the effect that it will have on my Internet business in the next 3 to 12 months. If you can’t wait to read about my progress, you can see the Nitro sales letter here or the Nitro videos.

What Is The Nitro Blueprint System?

Without try to repeat the sales letter the Nitro Blueprint Program is an Internet business development program organised around three themes:

1. Developing The Success Mindset and Orientation
    
2. Starting and Launching A Successful Business Online
    
3. Growing A Successful Business Online

That sounded good to me and I decided to give it a try. If the program takes me a quarter of the way towards the promises in the sales letter, it will still be a great buy.

So what did I get in my Nitro Blueprint box?

1. Nitro Blueprint System Quick Start Guide - it explains is included in the box and lays out briefly the implementation program and also includes a module tracking sheet. A very useful, brief overview but I do like to see the big picture.
    
2. Nitro Blueprint System Master Manual - 328 pages that looks very clear and well organised.
    
3. Nitro Blueprint System 2 Foot x 3 Foot Wall-Poster - a neat summary of the whole system that I will look at each day and gradually understand how the system fits together.
    
4. 12 audio CDs starting with market research, moving through developing the business strategy, creating the product and the website, building traffic and building back-end products.
    
5. 4 bonus CDs
    
6. A bonus DVD of the Nitro Blueprint System Live Video Orientation as the first introduction to the system.
    
7. Access to a member’s website stuffed with extra video and audio resources, a resource and outsource directory and a member’s discussion forum.

First Impressions of the Nitro Blueprint System 

There are plenty of reasons to be impressed but it is quality that counts not quantity.

The price of the program looks great value for what I have received so far but the true test is what I achieve when I put the program to work. At the moment I expect it to pay for its costs many times over this year

If you have an existing Internet marketing business or you plan to develop one and would like to take a good look at the Nitro Blueprint System before I complete the course and write my review, you can find details on the Nitro Blueprint website. I also recommend their What Works Now free newsletter.

If you have already bought the Nitro Blueprint System home study kit, I would love to hear your thoughts on it and about your success stories so please do leave a comment. I am sure that I will get to know some of the people well in the Nitro forum.