In my last email to my newsletter subscribers, I mentioned that Andy Jenkins and I are starting up a new Mastermind training program for information marketers, called the "Guru Therapy Institute."

We're doing a free kickoff webinar next Tuesday at 6pm Eastern (US), and since a lot of readers are in the information business in some form or fashion, I hope you'll be able to join us.

Truthfully, a lot of the information will be useful to anyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur.

I've known Andy since 2004, when I was invited to speak at a 2-day live training for the "Stomping the Search Engines" Apprentice program – which was very similar to the Guru Therapy program that we're starting up now.

When I met Andy, he was wearing… a kimono. I should have known that we'd become good friends, especially when I saw the passion that he brings to his work.

Fast forward to 2006, and it was an easy decision when he asked me and Leslie Rohde to join him in StomperNet as the first two faculty members.

I've learned a lot over the past few years by working with Andy, participating in the "re-engineering" of the company, and getting a chance to "mastermind" with the other faculty members. I doubt that I'd be where I am today, and capable of doing what I am doing now, if I'd kept on going it alone.

The truth is that I need other people in order to do what I do.

Spending time with smart and successful people is probably the #1 reason why I can create the kind of content that I create, and why I can help other people become successful. Guru Therapy is an extension of that.

Anyway, about the webinar:

First of all, we're covering six big topics, and I applied an amazing technique called the "Tom Sawyer Okie-Doke" to get Andy to cover four of them. Okay, all I really did was complain about how busy I was this week and he stepped up.

So you'll hear quite a bit from Andy on "his" topics, with me chipping in, interrupting, and sharing random epiphanies.

"My" part of the webinar is about some lessons learned from my recent Link Liberation promotion, and the logic behind why I spend so much time writing and researching, just so I can give SEO Fast Start to people for free.

I try to make SEO Fast Start, and everything else I do, as valuable as I can. That's a personal pride thing, of course, but it's also smart business in my opinion.

You see, there's a particular type of opportunity that exists in pretty much every market that you can only take advantage of if you're truly an expert, and really put in the time to make something of value.

I call this the Value Gap strategy, and it goes like this.

Any niche that's big enough and important enough to support infoproducts, is big enough to support infoproducts done well. A really excellent overview product can be a springboard for dozens of products that drill down into more detail. For example, "How To Own Your Own Race Horse" leads to "Race Horse Nutrition Secrets." You get the idea.

There's always a demand for more in-depth information, but if your introductory information is garbage, you're not going to get there. It's a Value Gap, not a Garbage Gap.

That's why SEO Fast Start is the perfect lead-in for a very large information marketing business. I think it's damned good, but in order to get people to read it and apply what they learn, I have to keep it down to a certain size, which since 2001 has always been set at "no more than 100 pages."

Although I can't give you every last detail in 100 pages, a lot of readers will never need any more than what I just gave them for free. (And that's OKAY)

There are Value Gaps all over. Don't buy into the hype that the market for information is too crowded.

Thus, Link Liberation (and in 2006, the "link building clinic") is a logical extension of value into a segment of the market that just about screams for more value.

In fact, very often you want to specifically aim for the most crowded segments of the market, precisely because of the value gaps that are created by all the "me too" players.

With all the schemes and scams out there about link building, something of real value stands out loud and clear despite all the noise.

Once you see the larger picture of the market, it was obvious to me, in exactly the same way that it was not obvious to anyone else, that the market needed a good training program on link building.

But I digress, again.

Besides talking about my own business model, I'll also share some important test results from the Link Liberation promotion itself, about "free line" content, where to put the "free line" in terms of what content is given away, and how to optimize the whole thing.

I had a pretty good theory about what to do, but when I put it to the test, the effect was even larger than I had expected.

So I'll explain all that too.

Here's the full list of topics – This could run a couple hours, so plan ahead.

• How to do Profitable Lead Generation – why the promise of "Traffic" is completely empty without the right response mechanisms.
• The Real ROI behind target audience segmentation – how your list of subscribers and customers wants RELEVANT offers from you, and how to give them.
• The Moccasin Method and how "Storytelling" saves you from having to be a good copywriter (Thank GOD for that).
• When to move the free line, and when to pull it BACK (Your market will tell you)
• A "fill in the blanks," Spare-Time business Model for Lazy marketers (just add value and wait…)
• Using "Concussion" planning and the M.E.S. approach to fix multiple problem areas of your business all at once.

Once again, the webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 8 at 6pm US Eastern time, and it's always a good idea to show up a few minutes early.

Here's the link to register: http://gurutherapy.com/webinar/

Thanks!

Dan Thies