Interview Excerpt…

Posted by Laura Bergells

September 20, 2005

Gordon Penza of UniBlue.com contacted me yesterday…his company is launching an e-book about Affiliate Marketing. He interviewed me for one of the chapters of the book.

Here’s an excerpt from the opening of my interview:

I’m Laura Bergells, and I manage the marketing efforts for quite a few websites. Maniactive.com is my “living laboratory” – it’s where I test new ideas in attraction and internet marketing.

I started the Maniactive site in 1999 as a mere portfolio for some of my written and
spoken work. I’m a writer and marketing consultant, so I thought the web would be a handy place to show prospects samples of my articles and presentations.

And it was! But then something really interesting happened. I noticed that in a few
months, about 1,000 people a day were downloading my PowerPoint presentations.

I didn’t expect that. So I got to wondering “where are all these people coming from, and how did they find me? And since I have such a nice-sized audience, how can I
best profit from it?”

So really, I come from a completely different perspective than most people. Many sites have little or no traffic, and want to know how to get more. Me, I accidentally fell backwards into traffic without really trying — so I had to figure out what I had done right, so that I could replicate it. And I had to figure out how to monetize
the traffic.

Since I started with the luxury of being able to reverse engineer marketing strategies, Maniactive is the place where I still relentlessly and fearlessly try new things. If it works on my site, I have a story…and often a new product or service…to tell my clients about.

And if it doesn’t work: I still have a story to tell. And telling a story about the failures is still content —- which I can also post at the site and monetize! So really, I’ve found a unique place on the web where I win… no matter what I do.

As for the rest of the story…I suppose you’ll have to wait until the book comes out! Gordon says it should be in a few weeks.

Stay tuned!