A couple of customers of my “Be A Hypnotic Writer” Course have let me know about a few broken links and other errors that I’ve gone back and now fixed. I also created a new, one hour delta meditation audio for kicks.

I emailed everyone the updated info. If you didn’t receive an update, let me know and I’ll check the records.

If you’d like to see the new cover art for the course, go here:

http://kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZTZ1HH

I’ll still be posting here from time to time though less often due to a new project I’m working on. If you’re interested in sustainable living, I encourage you to check it out:

Austin Tiny House

Split testing is testing version A versus version B. That’s about all you could do before the age of computers and the internet. You ran two different ads in similar periodicals to see which one did better. Of course back then, there were way to many variables to give you perfect results if it got close.

Now, one of the most perfect split testing operations is Google AdWords. Not only can you rotate A vs B, but you can test A vs B vs C… as far out as you care to write copy for.

So what’s multivariate testing? If you’re only writing a headline and two lines of copy, you can probably do without it. On the other hand, if you have much more than that, you need to know which headlines work best with which leads with which calls to action. If you introduce multiple variations for every variable you want to test, the possible combinations are practically impossible to sort out.

Even so, sorting out and pre-planning is what Taguchi testing is all about. Think of Taguchi testing as advanced split testing with many different combinations pre-planned. It was originally designed to test factory production lines.

What Taguchi can’t tell you is what relationship all of the variables have to each other outside those preplanned combinations. So essentially, it’s split testing with more versions.

For a tangible example, consider the following:

You have an email you’d like to test. You want to test 3 different headlines, greetings, opening paragraphs, body copy and closing. That’s 3 to the 5th power or 243 variations. If you had just two versions of 15 different variables, you’re talking over 32,000 total variations. Are you really going to try to split test that? No, that’s not possible. Taguchi testing would try to pick several of the best ones and split test them. Multivariate testing would test them all until it found the best combinations.

If you’d like more detail about why multivariate testing kicks butt over split or Taguchi testing, check out the white paper below. It was written by a Google Authorized Consultant who uses Google’s solution, Google Website Optimizer.

http://sitetuners.com/taguchi-method.html

If you realize how much better multivariate testing is, how can you take advantage of it? Here are some of the different solutions so far:

• Google Website Optimizer: a free solution. It’s great if you can write code or pay someone to.
• MuVar or now TestiVar: a former product of James Brausch. It’s written in php so you also need to know code. It’s a one time fee for the software and you can install it on as many websites as you have. The reason it’s better than Google’s solution is that it “watches” the results and over time favors the winning combinations. If you give it some time, you’ll end up with a fully optimized website. Otherwise, you have to have someone constantly setting up tests and analyzing the results.
• ConversionMultiplier.com: These guys SAY they multivariate test email and web pages but they don’t have enough info on their website (which doesn’t look like they optimized it either) to know. There’s no 3rd party credibility so I can’t say whether they could deliver or how they work.
• Vertster.com: These guys look reputable from their website. Unfortunately, they only do Taguchi testing. The good thing though is that it looks like it only requires a small amount of coding (good if you know how) and then it’s an easy user interface.
• Optimost.com: They also look like a reputable company. They do full multivariate testing. They require someone to do coding and ongoing technical support.
• Sitespect.com: This looks like the easiest solution out there so far. They don’t require you to make any changes to your website but instead act as a filter for your site. When people go to your site, they intercept the traffic and send out the variations you wanted to test. Of course you have ongoing fees to support it but unless something easier comes along, it’s probably well worth it depending on your business.

All of these solutions required some amount of coding at one time or another. Personally, I’ve been challenged with MuVar because I’m not a programmer and realize that to get the most out of it (and be able to test the nuances of NLP language patterns in different formats), I probably need to go learn CSS.

What is NO ONE doing? Easy, multivariate software for marketing people… your typical business owner can barely manage a website IF there’s no coding involved. They aren’t going to figure out Google Website Optimizer or any of these other solutions aside from maybe Sitespect if they can afford it.

What would be the ideal solution? Drag and drop interface. You click, highlight and insert different variables to test. You can test depending on different sources of traffic. Your test results automatically favor the winners and let you know when those winners have been decided with a certain degree of certainty.

There needs to be one click installation or a technical support rep available to walk you through it (needs to be even easier than installing WordPress). And it ought to have the option of being a web app so you can log in from anywhere and add more variables.

There aren’t many companies out there positioned to take advantage of this. Partially that’s because the market has been driven by IT department purchases. That’s changing now as web tools become more accessible to marketers. As marketers start driving software infrastructure purchases, they’re going to start asking for essential modern marketing tools like multivariate testing.

And what about email? I don’t know of anyone multivariate testing email. Conversion Multiplier claims to but their website has no proof so maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.

Here’s how an email multivariate testing program could work:

Instead of the typical split testing approach (testing 2 or more emails on a small percentage of your list), a multivariate tester could return results in real time.

Typically, you’re wanting to measure a number of different actions: bounce rate (or if the servers think it’s spam), open rate, click through rate, unsubscribe rate, and purchases once they click through. Almost no one measures customer longevity but that would be a good metric too.

What if you multivariate test by trickling out emails to a percentage of your list? Your email program would send out versions generated from your different variables and rank them according to however you weighted the different action metrics. The whole setup would need to be an easy interface, drag and drop, and point and click too.

If you had optimizing capabilities (the program favored winners), you could send it once and be done. By the time you were halfway through the list, the program would be sending out only a few different variations that were all close winners.

How do you think that would affect your conversion rates or future copywriting? It would change everything.

And if the barrier between programmers and marketers were removed… everyone would be doing this and we’d all be seeing much better marketing messages.

Any company out there want to make this happen? We’re all waiting.

Eban Pagan is having a info product course launch this week and some of his free materials have inspired me to revisit how I do products. If you haven’t seen any of his videos or reports, go to:

http://www.gurumastermind.com/homestudy/voodoo_video.asp

Before I switch my course over to a 12 week delivery, I’m going to be writing an autoresponder script to encourage opt-ins. I plan to do that this week. Once that’s done, I’ll switch the course. Until then, you can still save a little money and time buying the whole thing at once at:

http://hypnoticwriter.org

If you’d like more than the course alone, now you can get hypnotic writing coaching and hypnotic writing critiques.

The coaching will include the course, a review of all assignments, email contact and a critique at the end. At this point I think it would be fair to have a one time payment for six weeks of email consultation (one email per day) and no deadline to get the critique in… all for $500 (includes the course).

Critiques will be unique in that I’ll especially pay attention to hypnotic writing uses and opportunities. I’ll also look at copywriting basics as well as anything else in particular requested. While this won’t include rewrites, I will make suggestions for improvement or places to use hypnotic techniques. I will review the same letter twice for the price. Critiques not already included in coaching start at $250 for a sales letter less than 10 pages. Any other critiques can be priced relative to that.

If you’d like to get your feet wet before you get anything else and want more than the content on this blog, I’ll answer individual questions related to hypnotic marketing for a nominal $10 fee.

Here are those services for quick reference:

• Hypnotic Writing Coaching
• Hypnotic Writing Critiques
• Be A Hypnotic Writer Home Study Course
• Hypnotic Writing Questions

If you’re interested, the order page is here or in the sidebar:

Hypnotic Writing Services

For the next 24 hours, the price will be $15. After that, the regular price will be $35.

While the results you’ll get are worth much more than $35, I wanted to price these products (I’m calling them Ability Widgets) in line with Paraliminals which are $30 a pop.

The regular price on Copywriter’s Mind is now $35 as well. I sent those folks who took advantage of the last 24 hour special for $35 a free copy of Graphic Designer’s Mind to say thanks and to keep things fair.

If you go to the site, you’ll see the before and after pictures for both the hypnotic writing course and Copywriter’s Mind.

The full description is here:

http://graphicdesignersmind.com

After giving it some more thought, I realized that my modeling products are most like Paraliminals in nature. The main difference of course is that mine are abilities rather than subjective qualities like self esteem.

Even so, Paraliminals sell for $30 each. To be more fair, I’ve decided to reset the modeling products to be around that level.

If you paid that much for Copywriter’s Mind during the 24 hour special last time, I’ll send you a link to download Graphic Designer’s Mind when I release it. If you paid the current $100 (which is still a bargain given what you get out of it), I’ll send you a copy of “Be a Hypnotic Writer” free of charge. The price of that course will remain a steal at $100.

Watch this blog for the 24 hour special release of Graphic Designer’s Mind.

I’ll also be releasing a new cover for Copywriter’s Mind as another example of what the process of modeling a graphic designer did to transform my ability in that area.

These have been my experiences so far:

• I’ve followed his blog(s) for approaching 2 years.
• I proofread his first two books and was one of only two people who actually proofed all of the first book. I opted not to do the third because I got tired of correcting the same grammar mistakes over and over AND I’d already read all those blog posts AND I’d finally created a solid product at that point.
• I’ve purchased most of his products.
• I’d considered going to Costa Rica to model him (his personal blog said he’s moving so I doubt that’s a possibility).
• I’d participated in his intern/contractor program on 3 different occasions. The first time, I did every task for about five weeks and then the autoresponder ran out of emails/I quit doing them because there weren’t any new tasks. My two ghost written blog articles were published on his blog.

The thing that gets me about James’ business is that he refuses to communicate with his customers. I can appreciate his motivation to do the most immediately profitable thing. But as one of his most loyal customers I’m really frustrated with my experience.

Some grievances I have (only because I have no other way to contact his business):

• On two occasions, I wasn’t paid for my contractor work.
• His Life Management 101 product was an absolute waste of money. I don’t need to pay for a half hour audio telling me not to watch TV.
• His DVD creation product was mostly a waste of money too. It’s a video version of the instructions you can get for free from Kunaki. Robert Phillips has a more thorough video for half the price if you want help via video. I’d pass on his cover creation product though. If you want to learn to do covers, get my graphic design product coming out soon. The rest of the info is available via Kunaki.
• James has been fairly incindiary to his customers and even peers online. He had a couple of posts back in the day accusing one of his students of lying and stealing one of his products. If you went and read the accused person’s blog it seemed like the story didn’t line up as he’d actually purchased the product in question and had gotten permission IN PERSON to do what he did. It seems like if James hadn’t sequestered himself and refused to communicate with anyone, that could have been avoided.
• I personally got flamed by James’ blog once too for saying something regarding TV. When I read the post response to my comment I thought who in the world would have said watching TV was okay. I went back to the comments they referenced and realized they must have meant me even though I said nothing of the sort. I realized it wasn’t James that wrote that so I wrote a tongue in cheek response saying his contractor in India was overreacting to what my contractor in India said.
• His business’ posts have become 80% junk since diegonorte.com started. They’re obviously written as filler. Most aren’t even worth the time it takes to scan and figure out they’re junk. The fact that he obviously isn’t concerned his business is cranking out junk concerns me as a business practice.
• A couple of times, his franchise system didn’t give me another viable task. I clicked through to the next task and it wanted me to critique and article for example. But there was no article. Another time, it wanted me to comment on something like 20 blogs. I combed through the list of 100+ urls given and found that most of them either 1) weren’t blogs, 2) weren’t in English or 3) hadn’t been posted to in several months. There was literally no way for me to complete the task or to tell them I couldn’t.
• I purchased MuVar 2009 but it didn’t include complete directions. Some features mentioned in the sales letter I got via email weren’t even mentioned. I really don’t like learning from video for most things but what I’ve heard is those videos are the exact same ones as for the prior version of MuVar. I think the software must work, I just don’t know how to do it. I did spend 2 full days trying to set up one page. After the video instructions way didn’t work, I tried everything else I could imagine with nothing to show for it.
• I must have subscribed to a trial version of James’ newsletter last year. I recall receiving a couple of issues and thinking they weren’t worth $25. It was mostly his MuVar testing results which I’d already seen elsewhere. I only received a couple of issues so I forgot about it. Turns out that right around Thanksgiving I get an unexpected $300 charge for subscribing to his newsletter. I might be mistaken but it seems that I subscribed to a one year trial but only got 2-3 months of it. I sent an email to get a refund but never heard back. No doubt they don’t offer refunds and I don’t want to argue with PayPal at this point. I just got the first issue in the mail so I’ll check that out before I do anything else.
• His business offered a Christmas special. I missed it last year so I made sure to check it out this year. It was supposed to be most of his products on sale plus a free trial of his Ranking Factors software. I plugged my url into Ranking Factors and it didn’t work. Great. Thanks. I checked out the rest and the only actual discount was on his email customer service – did I mention that? If you want customer service, you have to pay for it. I was intending to wait until Jan to start working on MuVar again and pay the $25 for them to help me work my $50 MuVar product. Hopefully I don’t have to explain the ethical problem I have with that but it’d still be worth it monetarily to get MuVar working. The customer service option was only $1 so I figured why not. The form only allowed something like 62 characters so I did my best to explain my MuVar delimma. Here’s the response I got back yesterday:

Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.

You asked the following question:

I can’t get MuVar 2009 to work. Not enough space to explain.

It wasn’t presented in the form of a question or it wasn’t gramatically
correct so we first had our team reword your request into a gramatically
correct question format.  Here is what we were able to reword it to:

How can I get MuVar 2009 to work without enough space on my server?

Here is our response:

MuVar 2009 doesn’t take very much space at all on your server.  The script
files are less than 100K.

MuVar does store data about all of your visitors and sales but even the
most modest hosting plan should be able to handle tens of thousands of
visitors and hundreds of sales.

With hundreds of sales, you can easily upgrade to a most robust hosting plan.

MuVar 2009 is extremely simple to use.  It is sold on a CD with all of the
script files and step-by-step videos showing every step of installation
and setup.  Most people are able to install MuVar 2009 in less than an
hour the first time.  After the first time, 10 or 15 minutes is much more
typical.  There is nothing complicated at all about installation or
configuration.

It’s really that simple.

We also offer an email consultation service and a monthly coaching service
if you ever have any specific questions.  Training is never an issue with
any Diego Norte product including MuVar 2009.

I hope this answer helps.  Please contact us at this URL if you have any
other questions:

http://www.DiegoNorte.com/prd/1002/

Sarina Hendrickson
Nashville, Tenessee, USA Office
http://www.DiegoNorte.com

If you missed that, they not only didn’t answer my question, but reworded my question into a ridiculous question and answered that instead. All I can say is I’m really glad I didn’t shell out $25 for that.

I’d wanted to invest in James’ franchise system now that I’ve gotten a grip on how to create some unique products. I’m not going to though because my experience with it as a user has been so poor. Even so, I’m still interested in seeing how his latest experiment with homepages goes. And even after all that, I still took advantage of his 24 hour special yesterday to add another 10K publishers to my article marketing database.

I have really mixed feelings about Diego Norte. On the one hand, I really admire the hands-off systems style business James has built. I gather he’s now a multi-millionaire because of it.  On the other hand, I think half of what his business is churning out is junk and damaging to the relationship his business should be trying to cultivate with its customers. I agree it’s good to be profitable but not at the cost of cheating people out of money and spreading ill will. That doesn’t seem like it’d be profitable long term.

I’d normally avoid saying anything negative about anyone in particular. James just doesn’t have any other way to give feedback except product purchase. I guess the only feedback he wants is product purchases through MuVar. I’m pretty sure the flaw in that thinking though is that MuVar doesn’t measure repeat purchases and lifetime customer value.

Any comments? I don’t want this to be a rail against James post but I’d like to hear any thoughts regarding business systems, product creation, profitability, longevity, etc.

As chair, I took a large role in the marketing as you can imagine. Our typical attendance over the past few years has been 80-100 people. Most of those conference lost a substantial amount of money. We budgeted for 125. People were saying we were too optimistic and needed to make plans for what to do if fewer people showed up.

I put NLP marketing to the test… and we ended up with 202 paid registrations. I credit much of that to the quality of the speakers, the offer we created and that we focused on creating a good value for people. Of course people wouldn’t have known about all that without the marketing.

You might be surprised to know we had no budget for marketing. We’re a non-profit. We were supposed to break even for the conference when it was all said and done. So far, we’ve made a profit and will have more money coming in from audio recordings we’ll be offering our members. Our biggest problem now is what to do with the extra money so we can bring it back down to break even.

This event consumed most of my time the past couple of months. I should be done with all the final wrap ups in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a model for graphic design. I’m actually meeting with my exemplar for the last look at the model to make sure it’s all an accurate representation of what she does. It includes everything from project planning and management to what she actually does to make it look good. I’ve learned a lot about it myself.

I’m also going to be working on a model of using violence to save your life. I realize it’s not marketing but I’ve had an interest in self defense for years. I’ve found a couple of fighting systems that are principle rather than technique based so I can model them. The trick to this one will be connecting kinesthetic knowledge through hearing. I think as long as it’s anchored to movements the listener is already familiar with, it will work. One idea I’ve been wondering about is whether “muscle memory” is simply subconscious knowledge.

I’m thinking of doing another business skill after that. I haven’t settled on one in particular so if you have any preferences, let me know – either comment or email me.

That’s all for now.

Louis

PS. If you’re wondering how I got so many links to my prior post, I submitted it to a bunch of blog carnivals. I’ll do that again for the next post with more universal appeal.

I’m going to be selling it for $100 but for the next 24 hours you can buy it for $35. That’s my way of thanking you for reading this blog.

If you missed the discussion below, I used David Gordon’s NLP modeling protocol (enhanced by some other modelers) to create a model of direct response copywriters. There were about 68 copywriters worth of interviews that I combed through with an eye to the essential features required for a complete model.

If I were to name the copywriters, you would probably recognize many of their names. If you want to know if a certain top copywriter was included, I can say there’s a 95% chance they were.

What I ended up with is a complete model for anyone who’s ever wanted to learn copywriting. Normally you’ll read a book or take a course and pick up some skills and techniques but you won’t really have the ability or the confidence that a pro has. This model bridges that gap.

In addition to it being a model, I took the acquisition protocol and turned it into a dual induction hypnosis session like Paraliminals. One ear has the modeling protocol and the other has a therapeutic metaphor containing the optional strategies, beliefs and emotions. While most people will go into trance easily with a dual induction session, I made sure of it by overlaying the audio with theta brainwaves. As long as you’re really listening and using headphones, your brain will go into that meditative state.

Since the sequence matters and the copywriters I modeled use a set procedure or checklist, I included one as well. It will help activate the model that your subconscious learned while listening to the audio. As with hypnosis, it’s possible that it might take more than one listening to get the full effect. I’m really not sure.

If you’re not a fan of hypnosis, you can use the included model and acquisition instructions to run the the entire process consciously. You can also listen to one track at a time of the audio. So whatever your learning preference is, there’s a solution for you here.

The link to Copywriter’s Mind is:

http://copywritingmind.info

The sales page says $100 but if you click through to Kunaki, you’ll see the 24 hour special price of $35. Once the special is over, I’ll change the price to $100. I intend to do that around 10 am CST tomorrow.

Specifically, I:

• Added a strategy checklist to tie everything together
• Added an audio to put your brain into a relaxed/flow alpha state
• Added an audio to put your brain into a brainstorming/creativity theta state
• Turned it into a physical product through Kunaki

If you’ve already purchased the course, I’ll be sending you the upgrades sometime this week. If you took advantage of the previous $1 trial offer and you’re still in the trial period, I’ll send it after your trial is over.

The upgraded version is at:

http://hypnoticwriter.org

I plan to release the copywriting model this week sometime too. I plan to offer it for $100 with a 24 hour $35 special. Watch this blog for the announcement. That’s my thanks to you for reading the blog.

If you’d like to see the sales page so far, it’s at:

http://copywritingmind.info