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Blog Post Worth Reading

Other people's blog posts are frequently so good that I simply must share them with you.  This is one of those posts.

He's Doing His Best is one of Seth Godin's little bits of wisdom.  If we read every blog post Seth writes, we would soon be changing the way we do business and we would be doing it in a way that benefited both the seller and the purchaser. 

This, in my opinion, is the way all business should be done--every transaction benefits all parties involved.

Enjoy the read.

Comments are always welcome.

Independence

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the U.S.  This is when we celebrate the anniversary of going from being a colony to an independent nation made up of many smaller states.  We declared our freedom from England. 

We didn't just tell England we wanted to be free--we had to work for that independence.  The way we worked for it was to physically fight British troops.  We won that fight and began the process of learning what freedom and independence were going to cost us.

What does independence mean to you?  Is it a public display of fireworks, do you go see a parade and have a picnic, or do you actually think about what it's like to have independence?  It's been so long since we gained our freedom that few of us can fully appreciate what that meant back in the late 1700s. 

As a child I thought it meant we didn't have to pay taxes on tea and we had a president instead of a king or queen.  As an adult it means so much more.  There is a depth of feeling about freedom and independence that I couldn't have imagined as a little girl.  Back then freedom meant getting to decide my own bedtime, how late I could watch television, and not having to go to school anymore.  It meant turning 18.

Today I get to have all of that and so much more.  I'm free to choose where and how I live, how I get the money I need to pay my bills, who I choose to invite into my circle of friends, how I spend my time, and just about every other aspect of my life. 

I was also free to step out on my own and start a business where I didn't know what my income would be from one month to the next.  I was free to learn how to succeed or fail based on my marketing ability.  Yes, I said "marketing" rather than "skills."  I already had the skills I needed to get started in my business.  What I needed was to be able to find people who needed those skills and wanted to pay me to provide them.

Whether you already own your own business or are thinking about starting one, this is one of the more important things to remember.  If you're not good at marketing, be prepared to find someone who is.  You can choose how much to invest in both money and time but you have to know what resources are best for you. 

I'd love to give you a half hour of my time to get you started on your journey to find the marketing help you need.  My company might be able to provide some services you want or could use but   what I offer is just one option on a very large menu of opportunities.  There is so much more out there for you to explore and I want to help you discover what will be best for you.

Utilize the resources that support your independence.  You're free to make that choice.

What Do You Do When You Think No One Is Watching?

Seth Godin is my marketing hero.  He says what we wish we had said.  When I read a blog post of his from last month (OK, so I don't read all my RSS feeds every day) I was blown over by what he said. It's definitely worth a read.

Now that you've gone to read it, I'll tell you that for some reason it had never occurred to me that if I knew who they were, they knew who I was.  Ninety nine percent of the time that was good but my confession, and I suspect yours as well, is that there were times when those who knew who I was may not have been inspired.

I'm just glad that's behind me.  Now that I have my own business it's all very different.  This isn't somewhere I can afford to be anything but totally transparent.  I must have integrity at all times. It's fortunate for me that I want to have that when it's my business.  Why was it a bit more difficult when it was someone else's?

What do you think?

Have You Seen FreeIQ?

I'm still learning the ins and outs of FreeIQ but I think there's tremendous potential for marketing there.  By all means go see what you can find on your own (there's a ton of information on their pages) but here's what I learned from just a brief overview of it.

This is a place people can go to find free information about nearly any subject.  There are audios, videos, pdf files, you name it--they have it.  This free information is offered by people who would also like to promote themselves so some of the free material might not have as much value as we would like but some definitely will. 

When we find something/someone we like and who looks like someone we might want to business with, we can go to their very own page on FreeIQ and see what else they have available that we might want to purchase.  Some people won't even have merchandise to purchase--instead they may be looking for coaching clients or business clients. 

There are a couple of things I really like about this.  First of all, I get a chance to "interview" people before I decide if I want to purchase their product.  So often, in order to see a sample of someone's writing, audio ability, video expertise, etc., we have to sign up to be on their mailing lists.  Sometimes I want to hear from them regularly, other times I just want to see a little more about them.  On FreeIQ I can see something about them without the sign-up.  Secondly, I can not only see their FreeIQ page, I can get a link from there to their website if they have one. 

I see this as one more way we can learn more about people we may want to do business with, a great way to obtain no-cost information, and, even more importantly for those of us who would like to earn a little money through Internet marketing, a way to provide another avenue for people to find our products and services.

They have done a great job of making everything easy to do--great help menu, intuitivel design pages, audio tutorials, the works.  I'm still learning about them.  I'll be building my own page so I have more expertise to share with my clients.  As I learn more, I'll be sure to share it with you.

Sometimes it's Not the Content

I finally bit the bullet and decided to learn what the heck Digg and del.icio.us were all about.  I know, I know, everyone knows that--but I didn't, so I went in search of answers.  I got some and it's pretty interesting.  While searching for answers, though, I came across a guest post on Guy Kawasaki's blog, How To Change the World.  No, this isn't all that interesting except for one huge thing.  Guy wrote a post about how easy it is to make millions of dollars on the web, No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem.   The guest post, On the Other Hand: The Flip Side of Entrepreneurship by Glenn Kelman, talks about how hard it is to make millions of dollars on the web. 

So what?  When Guy Kawasaki wrote his post about making money, he told us what he believes to be true.  When Glenn said whatever he said to Guy in disagreement with the post, Guy either offered to take something Glenn had already written or perhaps asked Glenn to write something original to address that.  Hang on--the point really is coming. 

Here it is:  Guy got more visitors to his blog as a result of that guest posting--the one that totally disagreed with what Guy wrote--than he probably got from his original post.  I'm one of those people.  I went there because, while researching Digg, I found a list of posts that had big Digg numbers.  Hundreds of people have voted for that post.

My point?  Guy Kawasaki is someone who is confident enough in himself that he can allow someone to not only disagree with him but to publish that disagreement on his blog.  I always say it's important not to feel threatened by people who disagree with us but I've never really been faced with anything like this and now I have a real-life example of how this can be done--graciously and with a great unexpected results.  Good going Guy!

More on Article Marketer

I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago about signing up for Article Marketer.  Since then I've been using it for two of my clients (there will be three of them any second, now) and I've learned a few things that might help you compose your articles before submitting them that will keep you from being as frustrated as I was at first.

1. If you have Word 2007, don't compose there!!!!  Any specially formatted text (like those pretty quotation marks, or when 1/2 turns into the cute, little thing you see in real, printed books) won't change to ASCII text no matter what you do to them. (I'll probably do a quick blog post on how I sort of got around that but not today.)  Compose in Notepad.  Then you can copy and paste it into Word to see if it finds any misspelled words or possible grammar problems and you can fix those and then copy and paste it back into Notepad where you save it.
2. You can only have 300 characters in your Bio (Resource Box).  This isn't much so make it count!  If you can have them link to a page that packs a punch, that's far better than just linking to your home page (unless your home pages packs a real punch).
3. You get a few more characters in the box where you can put html text for an alternate Bio.  They use that for sites that accept html.  Copy and save this Bio because, unlike the text one, it doesn't get saved from one article submission to the next.
4. I haven't actually counted the number of characters allowed for keywords or the summary but it isn't as many as some sites allow.  Be sure to keep them short and to the point.  In both, make your more important points (or your most important keywords) the first part and if it cuts off any, you can just clean up the end of it and go on rather than having to re-write the whole thing.
5. Go back and check out your account shortly after posting an article there.  If there are any problems, they will actually tell you what they are so you can go in and fix them rather than just deleting the article as some sites do.  I'm very good at formatting articles for submission since I've been doing it for so long and it was very frustrating for me to see three or four things I needed to change before it could be accepted.
6. Do not send people to anyone's web site.  On the same general subject, do not suggest people go buy a book (a "call to action").  It's annoying not to be able to recommend someone else's stuff but I understand why they instituted that rule--many people were top-loading their articles with self-promotion.  This prevents that.  You can always direct them to a specific blog post where you discuss the subject of the article, complete with links to how to purchase or what to read or whatever else you want and put that in your Resource Box (Bio).  Of course you would definitely want to make a very prominent link for how to get to your main sales page or whatever but this is a way to get around that rule.
7. This one is pretty petty but here it is:  You can't use Title Case in the body of your article.  I actually sent in a trouble ticket over this one because one of my clients used section headings.  They really need to be capitalized the same way as the title but I had to find a way to rewrite it so those were no longer section headings and had standard, text capitalization.
8. OH!  This one probably should have been the very first one!  When you get ready to sign up for Article Marketer and you want to pay them for it, be sure to have at least one article ready to submit because that's the easiest way to do it.  Just click on the "Submit an Article" link and put everything in.  Then, at the very end, it will ask if you want to sign up for lifetime, two year, or quarterly (I recommend two years unless you know for sure you're going to be doing this for a very long time).  There is a free option but I don't think you get nearly as much exposure with that option.

Even with all the little rules we have to deal with, I still think Article Marketer is the very best way to submit articles!  I can submit one article to hundreds of sites in the time it would take me to submit to just one (possibly two when I have to go back and make a few changes).  That saves my clients a ton of money and it saves me a ton of time.  Even if you're doing your own article submissions, your time is worth so much more than $8.30 a month to get this kind of coverage.  Go get 'em!

The eBook Coach

I know many of you are in businesses other than information marketing but for those of you who want to have a book to help promote your business or to BE your business, here's the woman you need to know:  Ellen Violette, The eBook Coach. 

I've been taking Ellen's eBook Profit Marketing Secrets Hom-Study Course.  Actually, I opted to take a private coaching with Ellen as we go through the course.  When I talked to her about which would be best, she said it depended on my personality.  Many people have great discipline and can go through each of the segments in a week or two and others just aren't good at that kind of thing and need help getting through it.  I know how I am--I can be disciplined when I need to be but that generally translates to when I need to get something to a client.  I knew which method was going to be best for me--Ellen and I work together every week or two so I can have someone I need to "report" to.  If I haven't read/listened to my materials before we talk, why in the world am I going to be there?  I won't know what she's talking about and I would have wasted that time. 

Oh, she does all kinds of other programs, too.  There's pretty much something for everyone.  If you click on that link up above it will take you to the sign-up for her no-charge hour-long teleclass.  She gives a ton of great information in that call, alone.  Even if you don't want to write an ebook, I recommend it. 

It's because of Ellen that I'm writing not one, but two ebooks.  I have no idea what will become of them but I know that I can make either (or both) of them into a viable business as soon as I get make the time to get busy.  I would have thought it would take months and months but Ellen showed me how I can do this in less time than I ever would have thought possible.

I know you'll enjoy her information and her energy!

Until next time...

Promote Your Business by Writing Articles

I've been doing my readers a disservice by not sharing one of my favorite marketing resources--Jeff Herring, The Article Guy.  Jeff offers a few different teleclasses and programs I can't possibly say enough about.  OK, it's pretty impossible for me to stop talking about something when I really like it and these classes and programs are the very best!

Jeff has only been submitting articles and using them as a springboard for marketing for a year and he is amazingly successful at it.   You might want to start with the Express-Start Article Writing & Article Marketing TeleBlast but if you really want to get the very most from your experience with Jeff, I recommend the Article Empire Mentor Program.  I've been hearing some of the wonderful things happening for folks participating in that program.  I'm lined up to take it just as soon as I finish my ebook publishing program (I'll be telling you more about that later but in the meantime, check out Ellen Violette's site because she's totally awesome--tell her I sent you if the two of you have a chance to chat.)  I can hardly wait!  Not only does he have great information to share, he's just generally a very nice guy.  Isn't it lovely when someone who can help you improve your business is also a very nice guy?  I love it!

Until next time...      

More Marketing Stuff

Why don't I read Suzanne Falter-Barnes' blog more often?  No idea!  What I know is that every time I go there I find something I really like, like this post about sales pages.

Are you planning to write a sales page?  I'm not going to be doing that today but I know I will be doing it very soon and I wasn't happy about the typical pages that everyone seems to use.  Do they use that style because it works or because that's what everyone else uses?  Can I get the same (or better) response from using something different?  I suspect we'll see because I'm going to do something that doesn't include a lot of red and all caps.

I'll let you know how it works out.  In the meantime, be sure to drop by Suzanne's site on a regular basis and see what she's up to. 

Article Submissions

I just took the most exciting class on writing and marketing articles on the Internet. 

You know how I've talked about the Blog Squad and the Ezine Queen?  Well, there's also The Article Guy.  I learned more from Jeff in the four hours of class we had than anyone I've ever taken a class from.

I'll be writing more about Jeff and his classes and how to learn more about him but in the meantime, feel free to check out some of his classes and, at the very least, sign up for his fabulous newsletter.

Until next time...