Stompernet SMARTS Launch Analysis

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Stompernet SMARTS Launch Analysis...

By: Andy Beard
2008-01-11

...and Purchase Bonus. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know that one of the things I love to demonstrate is how well...

...an authority blog can rank in the search engines for high profile product launches.

It has been a while since Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon have launched something new, Stompernet in 2006 raked in over $18M in the first 24 hours, with the help of many top name marketers working being the scenes including John Reese, Jeff Walker and Frank Kern, along with their exceptional faculty trainers.
The most important factor - despite a significant monthly fee, I have met many people who have been members since the very beginning, and are delighted to have joined at an early stage.

Stompernet has grown since then, with a relaunch in January 2007 and the introduction of many more faculty members such as Sherman Hu, Dan Thies and Leslie Rohde.

Introduction to Stompernet Smarts

Stompernet SMARTS is their new program focusing on Social Media Marketing and over the last month or so the Stomper team have been pumping out some of the most well produced videos on Social Media that I have seen:- compelling, down to earth professionally produced content that you just can't help watching all the way to the end.

What I haven't seen up until now are any of their affiliates making use of one of the most powerful tools they provided, which was the ability to embed all the videos in their own website or blog.

This isn't your normal video player from YouTube, Stompernet are serving the videos using their own bandwidth (well via Amazon S3) and using a custom video player that was developed for another site they created, FreeIQ.

There are some special features of the video player, though not all are obvious

* Author Sales Message - if you click on the author button you get to read a special message from the Author of the video. Clicking it actually reveals a huge whoopsie made by the Stompernet launch team, the information listed is for their primary Stompernet University, and not for their new offering, Going Natural 2.0 and the Stompernet SMARTS program.
* Playlist - accessed via a tab, you get to see a list of other videos from the same author, thus you only need one player to show all 4 videos they have released over the last month, though there is no way as an affiliate to select which one is shown. I would actually have preferred to list 4 players in this post highlighting each of the videos, possibly along with some additional notes and observations
* Affiliate Cookies - just playing a video actually tags viewers with an affiliate cookie ;)
* Viral - whilst not available as an option for the special Stompernet Affiliate player, the standard FreeIQ video player allows video to be shared, and when it is shared, your affiliate link goes along with it - this is serious technology, and as far as I am aware, it is totally unique to FreeIQ.
* Domain Based Tracking - again, not being used for the Stompernet SMARTS promotion, possibly because of the predominant use of email promotion by many of their largest affiliates, and because it is slightly less accurate, it is possible to link through to the FreeIQ site without using a referral ID or special affiliate link - you might have noticed one of the questions I have been trying to get Google to answer over the last 12 months was regarding affiliate links that pass pagerank, well I am not worried about those that Google might identify with something akin to &aff=Andy - affiliate tracking doesn't need junk after the URLs, it can be based upon HTTP_REFERRER, though as I say, it isn't quite as accurate.

The videos are well worth watching, and I picked up a couple of useful tips, though I do have one huge bugbear - the amount of time it takes to get a new indented result in Google from the time an article is indexed.

If you have an authority blog that already ranks well for a particular term, you are likely to pick up an indented result in minutes or hours, and not days. I have seen this happen recently with my writeup of Social Power Linking, and it might well also happen with this post for search results about Stompernet or Stomernet SMARTS I do have one 1st page result for Stompernet, so we will see what happens after I have posted, and I will include an update.

Stomper Scrutinizer

This is actually a very clever and useful tool, though I wish it was possible to use it within my normal browser somehow using DHTML and possibly Greesemonkey. It does however demonstrate that the technical guys at Stompernet are very up on the latest technology, being one of the few application I know of that was created using Adobe's new "Air" web development platform.
What it allows you to do is a little like eye-tracking, in that it demonstrates the field of view that the human eye actually sees when looking at a website. Combined with the excellent videos explaining how this works, I can see some significant improvements I can make to my own blogs.
I certainly haven't taken as much care about this on this blog, and it is something I plan to rectify.

Link to Scrutinizer update

Don Crowther's Report

I linked through to this the other day, and that wasn't using an affiliate link - I thought it was truly useful content and well worth reading. The opt in page had a great 50 minute video which itself was of exceptional quality, and is actually the 4th one that shows on the player above.

Crowther PDF Opt-in Page

Among what is covered is how you can multiply the value of Hubpages and why it is so much more useful for marketers than competing sites such as Squidoo which has so many limitations for lead generation these days.

Now whilst I would much rather you opted in to read the report (affiliate tracking is via cookie and email address), I know many people these days don't like giving people their email address until some level of trust has been established. That was something discussed heavily in a post I wrote before the holidays for the launch of Rich Schefren's program.
Because most of my subscribers haven't given me their own email address, I haven't broken down the trust barrier fully, and thus it is hard for me to transfer that trust to others.

So what I have done this time around is got hold of a special link that gives you direct access to the report, no email required.

Crowther PDF Download Page

Stompernet Smarts Product Breakdown

Here is the jist of what you really get with Stompernet SMARTS, in the words of Don Crowther who will be running the "Lion's Share" of the training (with the support I am sure of other Stomper faculty members, and Brad & Andy themselves)

1. This is a 10-week coaching course

2. Each week we will cover the strategies to spike your traffic and search engine rankings using a different category of social media sites (we've provided a full outline in the downloadable PDF special report, right at the end)

3. I will host a live question and answer call every week giving you the chance to get all of your questions covered, plus to listen to issues that others think of that you may not have yet encountered, so you'll learn as much listening to the answers from others as you will from getting your own questions covered.

4. We will have periodic teleseminars/webinars with major industry experts and people who are top of their class in specific strategies (very cool calls!)

5. There will be an amazing community forum, where those who are members of the SMARTS program can ask questions, get answers, weigh in on other people's questions, share experiences, get their frustrations answered, and build relationships. This is one of the areas that I'm MOST excited about. Remember that one of the essences of social media is "WE are smarter than ME." I'm really looking forward to not only giving you my strategies, techniques, and ideas, but building new techniques as a group. This has never been done before, and should be a key element of this powerful program.)

6. Each week you will receive a series of videos that focus on that week's strategies, followed a few days later by the coaching call. The forum will always be open.

There - details galore! I look forward to seeing you in the course!)

In some ways this reminds me of Ed Dale's 30 Day Challenge, but that was just 30 days, and Stompernet SMARTS is a 10 week program with more in-depth training and support. A lot more time has been invested in preparation, and I am sure a lot of time and money has been invested in the backend tools.

Tools?

I am a bit in the dark about what tools they will be providing. There seems to be something to help your with your promotion of content on social media sites, and also for networking with other "friends" in the program.

Social Media is very much about friends. Not only for promoting specific content, but also building up strong profiles on various social sites that attract attention.

Intended Market

Stompernet has always been a fairly exclusive program, and whilst they have created materials for beginners, I think ultimately the people who get most out of it are existing small business owners who have a little experience of running a business online and want to take it to the next level.

I also think this would be an ideal opportunity for highly experienced social marketers and consultants for 5 very good reasons.

* Building a relationship with the Stompernet team
* The possibility to use the Stompernet tools to make processes more efficient than can be achieved with generic tools
* To learn a little about how these memberships are put together and maintained.
* To potentially pick up clients who don't have the time to carry out everything themselves and need to hire an expert
* Possibly to learn a few extra things about Social Media Marketing in various ways - I don't know anyone who can't benefit from learning new things - you can't be an expert in everything - not many firms have the resources Stompernet can put into researching new marketing methods.

Stompernet SMARTS Purchase Bonus

For the last 8 months I have been emailed on a frequent basis regarding the potential to do some consulting, and generally I have declined and just offered free help if they were a regular reader or friend on various social networks. I have just been too busy with my own projects.

It is within the terms of the affiliate program to offer a bonus, and they recommend that it is something related to the product, Social Media Marketing of various kinds, and of course blogging.

However the affiliate program is based upon cookies, so you might need to clear your cookies before making a purchase, and then there is the question of email tracking if you have already signed up to the Stompernet mailing list through someone else's affiliate link, I can't really offer you any advise.

What I am going to offer is some of my time, though how much will really depend on price and the price is currently being kept a secret, and I can't honestly give away hours of consulting time if the price is set the same as a $7 ebook ;)
I am sure that StompernetSMARTS is going to offer exceptional value, but with the offer of some additional direct support time I can make it a more useful and productive investment.

In many ways I am an example of what can be achieved with blogging and social media, having gone from totally unknown to a recognised name in 5 seemingly intertwined but polarized online markets, though I wish there wasn't the apparent divisions that sometimes seem like chasms.

* The Internet Marketing Community, such as those who started out on the Warrior Forum
* Affiliate Marketers, such as those on Bumpzee and attend Affiliate Summit
* SEO and SEM, such as patrons to Sphinn
* Blogging
* Web2.0 and Technology

I am not going to start name dropping, but my readership in many ways is a "who's who" in each of these categories, and that was the result of a focus on a particular type of content, and specific targeting. I actually have a list of names pinned up from over a year ago, and most of them have now heard of me, and I would estimate 70% of that target list I now have direct contact with, or would return my call promtly.
I know even the guys from Stompernet, including Brad and Andy read my blog. How? Because they have told me directly in private email.
They are both probably going to read this - Brad, Andy you were both on that list ;)

Stompernet SMARTS goes on sale FRIDAY, JANUARY 11th - 2 PM EDT!
SMARTS Sales Letter

Stompernet SMARTS - don't forget to check up on exactly what you will receive as a bonus if you buy through my link when the sales letter goes live, and don't forget to watch the existing videos.

So now the big question, can I grab some serious search traffic despite leaving this post until just 4 hours before the launch of Stompernet Smarts?

Update 1: How Long Does It Take To Get A Top Ranking?

Note, this isn't an indented listing yet on a search for "stompernet" where I already have an old first page result, but it is a listing for the current Stompernet SMARTS product.

How long did it take?

15 minutes to get a #2 listing

It will be interesting to see how long it lasts over time, and whether Google will also replace or enhance my current listing on "Stompernet".

Update: Stompernet SMARTS Purchase Bonus

You know what, I am shocked. I actually expected a higher price tag.

I really wanted my bonus to make a significant difference for a number of readers, and that requires enough time allocation to really achieve something.

I also made a New Year's resolution not to sell myself short in 2008 and to allow more time for friends and family - 70 hour work weeks are not sustainable even if you enjoy what you do so much.

So here is what I am going to offer even this is probably discounting my time by more than 50% of what I could easily be charging, and probably a lot more.

Everyone who purchases Stompernet SMARTS though my link (remember about the cookie and email tracking), who is verified as a sale to me will be entitled to 4 Support instances each of which is 1 hour long +- 30 minutes. Thus you will get approximately 4 hours of dedicated support on any topic I can help you with, be it blogging or social media related. You can use those support sessions any way you like, all in one go on a major project, or spread out over a few months, though I feel using them during the time of the course would be preferable.
Obviously things like submitting quality content on a specific social media site occasionally isn't going to use up any credit.

You will have direct access by email and/or IM, and if necessary we can arrange telephone support.

I am using this as a potential loss leader if I ever decide to do some full time consulting, and it will make an interesting change of pace. I love challenges and sometimes the best ones are the ones other people come up with that need to be solved.

Here is the link again

SMARTS Sales Letter

p.s. oh and one last thing, there are only so many hours in the day, so this will have to be a limited offer. I don't think I can cope with more than 20 people so make sure you grab a slot quickly if it is of interest.

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About the Author:
Andy Beard - Niche Marketing - Blog search engine perfomance, Wordpress and general niche and affiliate marketing tips


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