Well I say a year, but really it’s only 9 months, but I’ve still got a few books to read and I’ve only got 3 months to go (plus I’ll be reading the new Discworld shortly after Christmas – whether someone buys me it or not *hint hint*).

Anyways, I can’t believe how much I have learned – despite my previous knowledge of Internet marketing techniques and my business degree. Seth takes a concept, pulls it apart and analyses it and then puts it back together the way it should work. From coming up with great ideas, to spreading the word about your business to fixing your site so it is more user friendly – he really can apply himself to anything.

For those of you who don’t know Seth Godin, he is the founder of Squidoo and he was previously in charge of marketing at Yahoo (not sure what his title was, but he was at the top). I think all his books have been Amazon bestsellers, and he’s sold millions of books.

Anyways, if you’ve not read Seth Godin, or if you perhaps have and weren’t impressed, I’d like to recommend the books I think are worth reading:

• Unleashing the Idea Virus – Download the ebook for free here
• Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
• Free Prize Inside: The Next Big Marketing Idea
• Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

To be honest though, some of the ones I didn’t find so useful, may actually be very useful for you, so it might be worth getting them all!

By the way, all those links to Amazon are affililate links, so if you do buy them I will get commission But really, you won’t regret it!

Anyways, if you would like to watch a video of Seth, try this one (I’ve only watched part of it, but it was pretty interesting)

A Year Reading Seth Godin is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

This book was the second book I have read on copywriting. The first book (which I got half way through) was more for offline print advertising – where as this book is specifically for online.

I must say I found this book difficult to get into and a long hard read. The book is written by a copywriter – but unfortunately they lack the ability to write text in a way that makes it easy for you to learn. With that said I did come away with an overall understanding of how I should write for the web – although there weren’t many explicit rules, it was one of those books where you either “get it” or you don’t (similar to some of Seth Godin’s books). Personally I feel that a good author should be able to take their knowledge and explain it simply – Nick doesn’t seem to be able to do that (like many copywriters). Which is a shame.

On the whole though – this book is definitely worth reading, and towards the end Nick does give some more useful, specific advice. I’ve also come to understand that the best way to learn how to copywrite is through split testing – which is what I plan to do from now on.

Overall I give it a 7/10.

If you are interested in buying a book on copywriting, then I would recommend this book:

Review of Net Words, written by Nick Usbourne is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

I’ve just finished reading All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin. Well, I say “finished reading” but I should actually say “prematurely abandoned”.

I was reasonably satisfied with Permission Marketing, it had some reasonable advice, if not a bit waffly, but this book just had nothing useful to say.

It was boring, tedious and “just a waste of my ever more valuable time” as Seth would put it.

Can anyone recommend an author that perhaps can give me something more useful than “tell stories”?

A Review of All Marketers Are Liars is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

So I’ve just finished reading Permission Marketing by Seth Godin, after hearing his name mentioned so much over the past few months I decided I best read one of his books. Permission Marketing was really the book that seemed to make him – the first successful one.

I must say I thought the book was interesting, it talked about how most marketeers are interruption marketeers, whereas he was suggested that they should become permission marketeers. It had a few interesting ideas and some practical tips too, but on the whole the book did go on more than it had to in order to get the point across. Here is how I understood it:

If you do an advert and expect to sell to someone just from one advert then you get bad results, if instead you use the advert to begin a relationship with someone then you can teach them over time about your product, getting more and more trust, until one day you have permission to buy things on behalf of your customer. Amazon seems to be the best example he refers to.

In Internet marketing terms that means attracting people to your site, with the sole aim of getting them to subscribe to your email list/blog. Then over time teaching them and building their trust and then eventually selling to them.

It is also a bit of an old read now, this was before Google AdWords became popular and the big player seems to be Yahoo at the time. I would recommend reading it though as the principles still apply.

On the whole I’d give it 7.5/10. If you want to order the book, you can use the link below to take you to Amazon:

Review of Permission Marketing is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

I’ve been reading a very interesting book named Future Files: The 5 Trends That Will Shape The Next 50 Years written by Richard Watson. The book has given me a good insight into what the future could be like, some of the things in the book could go either way, but in some cases I think they are almost certain. An excellent book if you need to consider long term strategy for your business, or if you are trying to think of business ideas, this book can definitely give you that spark you need.

See In To The Future is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

In Get to the top on Google, David Viney goes into great detail with a step by step approach to SEO, both methodical and detailed this book is all you need to create a website that attracts thousands of customers.

Written with the online business in mind in talks about which keywords to target, how to target them and how to monitor. I’m already considering the area I want to go into, some of my ideas so far are:

• Yachts and Sailboats (I would love to own my own yacht, and can you imagine how much fun it is selling them!?)
• Some kind of Estate Agency service, like listing houses for sale – I imagine the comission is pretty high
• Financial products – life assurance, pensions, savings, mortgages etc. although I may not be able to promote this kind of thing as I previously worked for a large insurance company, so I need to check that out.

I’ll keep thinking of a few more, but I’m confident I can do well in the natural search listings on Google.

The Best Book On SEO I Have Ever Read is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

I’ve just finished reading the new book Enter The Dragon by Theo Paphitis, one of the investors from Dragon’s Den.

Really enjoyed it, I’ve also read the Tycoon and the generic Dragon’s Den books, but I wouldn’t recommend them as they are not very engaging or useful. I was going to pick up James Caan’s book too for a discount price of £10, but decided against it, although I think when I get back to the UK I’ll probably give it a try as I’ve been impressed so far.

Definitely worth reading, he even managed Millwall FC for sometime and manage to get them into Division one, and into the final of the FA cup against Manchester United! He was also the person that instigated the change of division 1 becoming the champions league sponsored by Coca Cola (or something to that effect). Highly recommended.

Enter The Dragon is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.

Ok so I’ve been reading Duncan Bannatyne‘s (the Scottish one from Dragon’s Den) excellent book, Anyone Can Do It: My Story, which has really impressed and inspired me. I’ve been looking at how all the Dragon’s got their money and I’ve decided I want a piece of the action, hence the reason I am trying to do stuff like “talk my way into a business”, writing my own ebook and bid on project on elance.

My plan is to get some money, invest it, get more money, invest that and so on until I have a large Internet business empire. Simple huh?

Dragon's Den is a post from: David Whitehouse a digital marketing consultant from the UK, based in North Yorkshire.