This post is a rant about poor customer service and taking my business for granted.

I’ve been with 2 companies for at least 5 years, and it’s amazing how both of them managed to fail in spectacular fashion at the same time.

First up is hostgator.

For the last few months I’ve been finding that this blog was spending a lot of time “waiting” and that the load speed was slow.

At first I blamed this on my theme, and recently I was blaming it on technical recommendations from pingdom that was not optimised. When I’d asked hostgator support they fobbed me off with excuses about not being able to replicate the issue.

Also I think they increased my invoiced amount on the sly without telling me. When I was doing research about who to switch to I think that they’re actually a cheap webhost in terms of the number of domains I have. So it looks like when you use a cheap host you get cheap results.

The new host also moved over 3 of my sites, and have provided excellent instructions for me to do the rest. I spent last night downloading files and databases, now I need to upload them all to the new server.

I hope that you’re noticing the difference in speed now that I’m using a cloud based service.

Second up is BT

The list of issues here is quite lengthy, so here’s a few of the highlights.

• When watching catch up TV the box would reboot 15 minutes into the show
  
• Rubbish choice of “on-demand” films on rainy days to keep the girl’s entertained
• The wifi would drop and require a reboot, very annoying for a teenager trying to revise
• Customer support – one of them called me on my mobile, and when I told him to call the house he didn’t actually know the number to dial! Funnily enough he didn’t know what gumption was when I asked if he had any…

Then the final straw was a letter stating that if I wanted to continue receiving my bill in the post they would be adding an extra £1.50 for the privilege of receiving the bill.

Even when I phoned to cancel they seemed quite shocked and when I eventually got to a manager they still thought this an acceptable thing to do. Even when I went to the retention team and told them about the half price deals for new customer’s at Sky they kept on telling me how all they did was reconnect people to BT from Sky.

Now if they’d agreed to waive the £1.50 charge, send someone to visit, or just generally be proactive I would still be with them. I didn’t want to change, but I must say I’ve been really impressed by Sky.

All of the installation process has worked as expected, and we even had a man round at 8 am on a Sunday morning to hang the dish and set-up the telly. We now have a HD picture, loads more channels, and today the internet connection was moved over, and it all works with no need to test out their customer service department.

I’m pretty sure that most big companies rely on the “hassle factor” of switching and constantly offer deals to new customers whilst relying on the existing customers to keep on paying for these deals.

So I’d be interested to hear about your experiences, and see who’s learning about how to deal with customers in the digital age.

Andrew Stark

Apologies this is late, I recorded the video on time, but a few other things have got in the way.

One of them was around hosting, this site was taking ~ 30 seconds to load, so I’ve been working in the background to move the site and now it’s coming back at < 3 seconds which is where I want it to stay.

Bit of a mixed month here, at the start of the month I was promoting a splash page for listviral, which shows that a click through is easier to obtain than an opt-in, but that’s hardly surprising.

Next up was the new marketing funnel with the “Matt Baker Interview” where I have a split test between a video and a static page. It looks the video is performing better, but overall this offer is not converting as well as the “Mystery Bonus”

Note – this funnel is leading to more sales and getting people into downlines, so this is where a lower conversion can lead to higher profits as the prospect is of a higher quality. I hope you can see the logic behind that last part.

Lastly the level of traffic was still about 10,000 hits, and it’s worth noting that getting SOTD at Mister Safelist

Top 5 Mailers

If you want to stay here then right click the image in the video and “open in new tab”.

Hope that you’re enjoying the badge hunt, and it would be brilliant if you were to join my list

Andrew Stark

In June a major event is going to be happening – Bill’s Birthday Badge Hunt

Essentially the TimTechTeam are branching out and trying to grow ClickTrackProfit by using the power of badges and a cash prize to bring in new members to the industry of traffic exchanges and mailers. It’s been proven time and time again that scavenger hunts like this increase activity and get people excited to complete the challenge – back in 2010 I spend a fortune to complete the sticker album for the world cup in South Africa.

At the time of writing this I can see that 240 badges will hidden across the internet with a prize pool of $790 cash available.

Now I’ve spent my $25 to get a badge, and this means that the thousands of people who want to complete the challenge will be actively looking for how to claim my badge. At the moment I have a few ideas, but I am open to suggestions?

I was thinking about creating a video where the badge code appears after a couple of minutes.

My reasoning for this time delay is that I don’t want to force people into joining a list to claim the badge, but I don’t want to have thousands of 10 second visitors. I’m sure that one of the biggest grievance people will have about this contest is having to join multiple sites and then get overwhelmed by the people who just try to sell sell.

I want to build a relationship first, and then have people buy from me because they know, like, and trust me.

So please let me know what you would do with your own badge, and don’t forget you have until the 31st May to invest a small amount of money that should bring you a lot of targeted visitors to your site.

Andrew Stark

I’ve just put the finishing touches to the bonus that I promised people for joining listviral

So I’ve put together the video below that walks you through the 2 squeezepages I have created.

At the moment it seems that the video page is converting better than the static page, but I have noticed that the most sales are coming from the people who used the static page. What this shows me is that giving 2 options is well worth the effort.

Moving back to the subject line, if you take the following actions I will send you $10 to congratulate you, and go towards the cost of adkreator, autoresponder, and time it takes to build the confirm and download pages.

This zip file contains the word document, advert I use on mailers, share code for adkreator, and the follow-up series.

I look forward to sending you some of you that $10

As I type this post I’ve got my headphones on and listening to Random Access Memories which is the new album released by a couple of Paris musicians who call themselves “Daft Punk”

Now this album is going to be a number one seller in the UK and I thought I’d try to reverse engineer what made me pick up my phone today and pay the £4.99 to download it on release day, and how it relates to any niche.

The Lead Magnet

Now like all good launches the best part is released ahead of the bulk so that people know what to expect. In this case it was the song “Get Lucky” and it worked like gangbusters. This song itself has been in the #1 position of the single charts for the past 4 weeks and means that almost every radio station in the UK has been blasting this out non stop.

It shows that if you want people to become raving fans that you should use it up front and get people talking about what’s going to happen next. I know that the radio station I listen to every morning in the car have been talking about this for the whole month of May, so it was a matter of where do I purchase it from?

A Strong Back Catalogue

It’s also worth pointing out that band are not new, they have a lot of older stuff, but the last album was many years ago.

The one thing I have noticed is that in the end aisles of the supermarket were selling off these album’s cheap. This is a brilliant way to convert people into buyers and give them an insight of the type of digital delights that your ears will be left wanting more of.

I also noticed in the digital marketplace that the retailers (affiliates) were doing the same, so this really was using leverage, and means that a good tune will stand the test of time. I really don’t think that the current drivel will be popular in 2020.

Doing Things Differently

As I was already a raving fan I was very much pre-sold, but an advert I saw made me stop and take notice.

I’m pretty sure that Discover was the first physical CD that told me to visit a website and enter a code to download the mp3 version to my computer. This also happened to install a daft punk player that took control of all the audio files on that computer which is some pretty cool branding.

This time around the digital era is totally established, but they again pushed technology forward by allowing people to stream the entire album via itunes. I’m pretty sure this stopped all the piracy as why would you download from a torrent site when you can listen to the real thing?

To do this means you have to have a lot of self confidence that the launch is going to be a success, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of any band doing this. If this is now common place then leave a comment to give credit to the first band who did this.

Multiple Formats

So I bought via the android market place for £4.99 and now it’s available to listen on my computer, download onto my phone, and streamed via the trusty nexus 7.

For the apple fan boys I’m sure that it would be the same on all their devices, just that apple will probably be charging you more for the chance to look cool…

I also checked out amazon, and the physical CD was available for £9.99, and a limited edition vinyl copy for the real music enthusiast who has turntables could spend £17.99

This wide variety of formats means that anyone would be able to buy this and listen to it. When you are selling it’s important to not limit your market, can you image how annoyed I would have been if was only on CD or itunes?

Summary

Don’t just think about product launches in terms of internet marketing.

Next time you find yourself pre-sold on buying something take a minute to think about how the company behind the product was able to get inside your mind and try to apply some of the same tactics in your own marketing efforts.

Andrew Stark

Being busy is often used as an excuse for not gaining traction with an online business.

I mean life does just in the way of all the tasks you need to achieve, here’s a list of all the things that I need to do right now to make it feel like I’m in control of my life.

1. Deal with fiverr gigs
2. Reply to all the starred e-mails in my inbox
3. Visit the blogs of the awesome people who commented on my last post and I’ve not thanked.
4. Complete static squeezepage so I can deliver on my listviral bonus
5. Drive multiple traffic sources to get placed in the listviral contest
6. Sort out this blog via localhost to improve loadtime
7. Create a new version of Safelist Secrets
8. Use buzzinar and claim bonus for buying EasyVideoSuite
9. Look after the kids, and make sure they do homework / don’t batter each other.
10. Go to work and make drugs that could save lives and make patients better.

Notice how as you go down that list the really small things playing on my mind and making me feel busy are actually not that important. For example if I achived 1-8 but messed up 9 & 10 my life would be pretty crap.

By trying to keep on top of the little things it can be easy to forget about the bigger things.

Most of these tasks are caused by the internet, and whilst it allows me the freedom to earn extra cash working on my computer under the stairs it does mean that I’m always feeling busy.

In the process of writing this down I’ve had another 2 messages relating to fiverr that need action (one was a 6 gig order) and I’m getting requests for supper. So I’d best sort out supper, then complete my fiverr tasks, and send out a broadcast to let you all know I’ve created this post.

Andrew Stark

p.s. If you do have more time than me at the moment please take time to check out what looks like another awesome blog post from Sergio Felix - How To Achieve The “Know, Like & Trust” Factor Almost Instantly

p.p.s. Only visit Sergio’s site after you’ve left a comment here… Is it any wonder that we’re all so busy!

Last week I went on a course through work, and for once it had nothing to do with chemistry.

This 2 min 24 second video will give you a very obvious change that could make a massive difference to you.

When I went away and thought about this I started to realise that just by slightly altering your mindset can have a huge impact on how your day and life will pan out.

If I look out the window and it’s raining I will now think about “How great an investment my goretex jacket was” rather than “Crappy UK weather, why can’t I afford to jet off to Barbados”. It may not sound like much, but if you give out happy vibes you are far more likely to achieve success.

Think about what you have now, and enjoy the moment rather than being miserable and hoping that something will happen to make you happy. Take action right now, and do something amazing.

Andrew Stark

Please excuse the brevity of this message, but it is a bank holiday here in the UK, and for once the sun is shining.

At Noon EST a new mailer is being launched by Matt Baker, and it’s using the same technology as listnerds, so that means it looks and feels like a million dollars. To join click the big banner in the sidebar under “Product Of The Month”

The reason I know this site is worth joining and promoting heavily is the Matt Baker factor.

When I surf traffic exchanges he stands out like a sore thumb, his creative adverts are something I look forward to viewing, and when you have an owner like this it means that fresh new members will coming into the site, and for me as an advertiser that’s brilliant news. I also know that in 6 months time Matt will still be promoting this, and it’s not a cash grab launch.

To celebrate Matt’s achievement of winning the listnerds launch contest, where he managed to refer ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDERED AND EIGHTY members in 14 days I asked him some questions about how to achieve such awesome sauce results.

These anwers have given me a new affiliate landmine that I’m going to create a new marketing funnel around.

Now rather than just give you the pdf full of my links, I’m going to give you the word version so that you can edit the content and add in your own links.

I will also be testing a static squeeze page vs a video squeeze on adkreator. I will give you a share code for the static version, so all you need to do is add your own picture and autoresponder code. I will also give you a video of the site flow that the visitors will see, and what offers I’m putting in the follow-up series.

If you want to claim this bonus then just leave a comment here, and I’ll get in touch later in the week when I’ve completed everything.

Here’s to some stunning results.

Andrew Stark