Saturday, July 09, 2005
Catching up
I got a newsletter today from one of my favorite suppliers explaining why this was their first weekly newsletter they got out in three weeks. I knew the feeling. Although I kept up with the newsletters for the most part, most work has been at a standstill because of spending nine of the past twelve days out of town both before and after my father-in-law's death.
So now it's catchup time. I got this weekend's newsletter queued up and ready to go out early Sunday morning and finally got the newsletter from two weeks ago posted on the site, along with some other minor updates.
This newsletter concludes my three-part series on designing your pages to best match the way people look at webpages. And it has a special, limited offer on "The Insider's Guide to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" and the late Corey Rudl's "Ultimate Seminar Videos" that his company is offering as a memorial to him. I've also included in the newsletter one of my favorite articles of his that I've gotten permission to reprint.
New articles on the site (taken from the June 26 newsletter) include a review of John Alexander's excellent Wordtracker Magic ebook and a critique by eBay expert Jim Cockrum of one successful seller's auctions, pointing out what that seller is doing that makes him or her successful and area's that they could still do better in. Excellent article.
But next week, hopefully, will allow me to get back to tasks with more immediate profit. My two-week invoice for MasterVisions and 1A Gifts is going to be pretty puny Monday, but I'm glad my wife Joanne got the chance to spend the time with her Dad before he died and with her Mother as she settled into her new living arrangements.
The temporary shortfall in income is all in God's hands, and he's handled things pretty well for us all the way along.
Jeff
I got a newsletter today from one of my favorite suppliers explaining why this was their first weekly newsletter they got out in three weeks. I knew the feeling. Although I kept up with the newsletters for the most part, most work has been at a standstill because of spending nine of the past twelve days out of town both before and after my father-in-law's death.
So now it's catchup time. I got this weekend's newsletter queued up and ready to go out early Sunday morning and finally got the newsletter from two weeks ago posted on the site, along with some other minor updates.
This newsletter concludes my three-part series on designing your pages to best match the way people look at webpages. And it has a special, limited offer on "The Insider's Guide to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" and the late Corey Rudl's "Ultimate Seminar Videos" that his company is offering as a memorial to him. I've also included in the newsletter one of my favorite articles of his that I've gotten permission to reprint.
New articles on the site (taken from the June 26 newsletter) include a review of John Alexander's excellent Wordtracker Magic ebook and a critique by eBay expert Jim Cockrum of one successful seller's auctions, pointing out what that seller is doing that makes him or her successful and area's that they could still do better in. Excellent article.
But next week, hopefully, will allow me to get back to tasks with more immediate profit. My two-week invoice for MasterVisions and 1A Gifts is going to be pretty puny Monday, but I'm glad my wife Joanne got the chance to spend the time with her Dad before he died and with her Mother as she settled into her new living arrangements.
The temporary shortfall in income is all in God's hands, and he's handled things pretty well for us all the way along.
Jeff
Friday, July 08, 2005
Distinguishing yourself from the competition
The big buzz in e-marketing is viral marketing, promotions that result in good word of mouth publicity for your business. Flying to and from my father-in-law's funeral this week, I got a good example of that at work in the offline world.
My wife Joanne and I flew on a smaller, regional airline because it was the only one we could catch whose times allowed us to get to the funeral on time. But I'd definitely seek it out again on any flight within its routes.
There was no 1st Class section, but the seats were as large and comfortable as any I have seen on previous walks through the 1st Class section on other airlines to get to the ghetto of Economy. On the flight there, I was pleasantly surprised that we received a soft and tasty granola bar instead of the usual five or six stale pretzels I've received on every other flight I've taken recently.
But what blew Joanne and I away on the way home was the chocolate chip cookies. Yep, chocolate chip cookies baked right on board before the flight. The aroma of them had us both eagerly awaiting them from the time we got on the plane.
And the taste! They compared favorably with my wife's baking, which is an extremely high compliment, considering Joanne's skills in the kitchen.
The airline - Midwest Airlines - has made a conscious decision to abandon the profitable 1st Class seating in favor of setting itself apart as the airline that treats all its passengers like 1st Class, but at economy rates. And that makes enough of an impression to get its passengers telling others about their good experience with them.
It's the same in web business. What are you doing to get people talking? Do something better than anyone else. Surprise people pleasantly with exceptional service. Give them something they never expected to find. And you'll, too, have your customers doing your promotional work for you.
Jeff
The big buzz in e-marketing is viral marketing, promotions that result in good word of mouth publicity for your business. Flying to and from my father-in-law's funeral this week, I got a good example of that at work in the offline world.
My wife Joanne and I flew on a smaller, regional airline because it was the only one we could catch whose times allowed us to get to the funeral on time. But I'd definitely seek it out again on any flight within its routes.
There was no 1st Class section, but the seats were as large and comfortable as any I have seen on previous walks through the 1st Class section on other airlines to get to the ghetto of Economy. On the flight there, I was pleasantly surprised that we received a soft and tasty granola bar instead of the usual five or six stale pretzels I've received on every other flight I've taken recently.
But what blew Joanne and I away on the way home was the chocolate chip cookies. Yep, chocolate chip cookies baked right on board before the flight. The aroma of them had us both eagerly awaiting them from the time we got on the plane.
And the taste! They compared favorably with my wife's baking, which is an extremely high compliment, considering Joanne's skills in the kitchen.
The airline - Midwest Airlines - has made a conscious decision to abandon the profitable 1st Class seating in favor of setting itself apart as the airline that treats all its passengers like 1st Class, but at economy rates. And that makes enough of an impression to get its passengers telling others about their good experience with them.
It's the same in web business. What are you doing to get people talking? Do something better than anyone else. Surprise people pleasantly with exceptional service. Give them something they never expected to find. And you'll, too, have your customers doing your promotional work for you.
Jeff
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Slow down and do things right
I'm still smarting a little from last night's encounter with SiteBuildIt's training manual. I've long preached that you should look for what your audience is looking for when planning a site and offer that instead of building it from the viewpoint of what you want to sell and how you want to sell it.
Then I started planning the website I'm helping my son Joel build with preconceived ideas of what it was going to be about and how he was going to earn money from it. Then as I read through the training manual, I kept finding reminders to slow down, set aside all preconceived ideas, and let the research tell us what would work best. Ouch.
Well, hopefully this old dog can learn some new tricks—especially since he's been telling others about those tricks for years.
I'll be offline again tomorrow night because of my father-in-laws funeral. But I'm leaving Joel with an assignment to come up with enough ideas of themes he'd find interesting to base his site on, so we can start researching the supply and demand for them on Friday (as opposed to committing ourselves to the first idea that came to our heads, like I was previously doing).
It's embarassing to catch yourself doing exactly what you've long told others to avoid. But it shows just how easy it is to fall into that trap. And hey, that's how we grow.
Jeff
I'm still smarting a little from last night's encounter with SiteBuildIt's training manual. I've long preached that you should look for what your audience is looking for when planning a site and offer that instead of building it from the viewpoint of what you want to sell and how you want to sell it.
Then I started planning the website I'm helping my son Joel build with preconceived ideas of what it was going to be about and how he was going to earn money from it. Then as I read through the training manual, I kept finding reminders to slow down, set aside all preconceived ideas, and let the research tell us what would work best. Ouch.
Well, hopefully this old dog can learn some new tricks—especially since he's been telling others about those tricks for years.
I'll be offline again tomorrow night because of my father-in-laws funeral. But I'm leaving Joel with an assignment to come up with enough ideas of themes he'd find interesting to base his site on, so we can start researching the supply and demand for them on Friday (as opposed to committing ourselves to the first idea that came to our heads, like I was previously doing).
It's embarassing to catch yourself doing exactly what you've long told others to avoid. But it shows just how easy it is to fall into that trap. And hey, that's how we grow.
Jeff
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
SiteBuildIt! test first impressions
I'll have to say that my first impression of SiteBuildIt! was not what I expected.
That's not a bad thing, though.
I set my son Joel up with the task of building his first website with SiteBuildIt to see if it lived up to its reputation for being an effective tool for helping even the inexperienced create successful websites.
I expected on his first day that he would jump right into keyword research. As a matter of fact, I had told him that was the plan for today.
Was I wrong! But I really should have known better.
After all, I've seen how many people jump in and try to get a site up quickly with no preparation. And I've seen those people stuck with underproducing sites that, a year later, they give up on, concluding that "all that talk about making money on the Internet is just a bunch of baloney."
SiteBuildIt! starts people out right, helping them understand and develop the totally different mindset they need in order to succeed on the Web.
The first day of the 10-day preparation period is devoted to teaching how to reach people through what they're searching for instead of simply slapping up a site and expecting hordes of people to happily wander in with their wallets open.
It hammers home the need to look at selling on the Web in a totally different way—not as "how can I get them to buy from me?" but "how can I provide them with what they're looking for?"
This first day with SiteBuildIt challenged the preconceived ideas I had come in with, namely that Joel would do a website on soccer and monetize it by referring visitors to other sites through affiliate programs. SiteBuildIt encouraged us to keep an open mind on what to do a site about and how to earn money from it and let ideas come out of the brainstorming process rather than trying to force our preconceived ideas to work whether the brainstorming process confirmed the validity of those ideas or not.
In all, we did a lot of reading. And I came out of all that reading even more impressed with SiteBuildIt. Clearly, this is no take-the-money-and-run company or product. They impressed me as sincerely seeking to help their customers succeed. And they have a track record of customer success to prove it.
There is no way you would see a company that didn't truly care about its customers' success go to all the effort of educating its customers to give them every possible edge like SiteBuildIt does. They even go so far as actively pleading with readers to follow through the preparations step by step instead of jumping in and trying to succeed by trial and error instead of following proven processes.
My one concern as we read through the preliminary materials was that it might seem too overwhelming to Joel and lead him to cool on the idea of building his own website. After he called it quits for the evening, I asked him how building a website through SiteBuildIt seemed to him now.
He said it was more reading that he expected, but that it made sense and still seemed like it would be fun. Then he took the next section of preliminary reading off to his room to read later.
So far in my test of how SiteBuildIt works for a sitebuilder who is completely new to ecommerce, I'd say that SiteBuildIt shows a lot of promise as a tool for newbies. It educates and guides new sitebuilders to give them the best chance of succeeding.
I'll keep you informed as I observe Joel continue to build his first site with SiteBuildIt.
Jeff
I'll have to say that my first impression of SiteBuildIt! was not what I expected.
That's not a bad thing, though.
I set my son Joel up with the task of building his first website with SiteBuildIt to see if it lived up to its reputation for being an effective tool for helping even the inexperienced create successful websites.
I expected on his first day that he would jump right into keyword research. As a matter of fact, I had told him that was the plan for today.
Was I wrong! But I really should have known better.
After all, I've seen how many people jump in and try to get a site up quickly with no preparation. And I've seen those people stuck with underproducing sites that, a year later, they give up on, concluding that "all that talk about making money on the Internet is just a bunch of baloney."
SiteBuildIt! starts people out right, helping them understand and develop the totally different mindset they need in order to succeed on the Web.
The first day of the 10-day preparation period is devoted to teaching how to reach people through what they're searching for instead of simply slapping up a site and expecting hordes of people to happily wander in with their wallets open.
It hammers home the need to look at selling on the Web in a totally different way—not as "how can I get them to buy from me?" but "how can I provide them with what they're looking for?"
This first day with SiteBuildIt challenged the preconceived ideas I had come in with, namely that Joel would do a website on soccer and monetize it by referring visitors to other sites through affiliate programs. SiteBuildIt encouraged us to keep an open mind on what to do a site about and how to earn money from it and let ideas come out of the brainstorming process rather than trying to force our preconceived ideas to work whether the brainstorming process confirmed the validity of those ideas or not.
In all, we did a lot of reading. And I came out of all that reading even more impressed with SiteBuildIt. Clearly, this is no take-the-money-and-run company or product. They impressed me as sincerely seeking to help their customers succeed. And they have a track record of customer success to prove it.
There is no way you would see a company that didn't truly care about its customers' success go to all the effort of educating its customers to give them every possible edge like SiteBuildIt does. They even go so far as actively pleading with readers to follow through the preparations step by step instead of jumping in and trying to succeed by trial and error instead of following proven processes.
My one concern as we read through the preliminary materials was that it might seem too overwhelming to Joel and lead him to cool on the idea of building his own website. After he called it quits for the evening, I asked him how building a website through SiteBuildIt seemed to him now.
He said it was more reading that he expected, but that it made sense and still seemed like it would be fun. Then he took the next section of preliminary reading off to his room to read later.
So far in my test of how SiteBuildIt works for a sitebuilder who is completely new to ecommerce, I'd say that SiteBuildIt shows a lot of promise as a tool for newbies. It educates and guides new sitebuilders to give them the best chance of succeeding.
I'll keep you informed as I observe Joel continue to build his first site with SiteBuildIt.
Jeff
Crisis mode
What with the death of my father-in-law, today was largely consumed by making arrangements to get back there for the funeral, and by other non-related mini-crises. Not a pleasant day by any means.
My son, Joel, and I did get a chance to sit down with his new SiteBuildIt site-building tool tonight, though. In the interest of not letting my reports on my tests of SiteBuildIt get lost in unrelated entries, though, I'll share the results of my tests in separate entries.
Jeff
What with the death of my father-in-law, today was largely consumed by making arrangements to get back there for the funeral, and by other non-related mini-crises. Not a pleasant day by any means.
My son, Joel, and I did get a chance to sit down with his new SiteBuildIt site-building tool tonight, though. In the interest of not letting my reports on my tests of SiteBuildIt get lost in unrelated entries, though, I'll share the results of my tests in separate entries.
Jeff
Monday, July 04, 2005
Creativity
On my way to see my wife's parents last week, we stopped to see our son Jon. As usual, we got into our usual conversation about his freelance art and acting and eBay work.
I had to chuckle as he talked about how much fun he was having building his eBay business. He was talking like an entrepreneur, which he had always sworn he would never become.
I had always urged him to add some affiliate links to his website to bring in a little income. But, no, that wasn't for him. He wanted to be creative, not a businessman.
So now he's carving out a niche for himself on eBay with mystery auctions and looking at ways to promote them and build his audience. I pointed out the incongruity with his long-stated desire to avoid thinking like a businessman. He laughed. "I just never realized that building a business is just another way of being creative."
I guess I had the same misapprehension when I was younger. I saw merchants as simply out to get my money while giving as little as possible in return. That's the way that TV and movies often picture businesspeople, as thieves in fancy suits, out to rip as many people as they can.
But while there are definitely some that fall into that category, I've found most entrepreneurs to be quite different. It really is a creative field, and a field you can't survive in for long unless you are willing to give more than you get.
So here's to the creativity of entrepreneurs, finding new ways to solve the problems others experience!
Jeff
P.S. The two SiteBuildIt websites I planned to buy on the special offer I described last week are now in my possession. The first one, I'll observe my son Joel develop a soccer-related site to see how easily someone with limited experience on the web can build a site with this all-in-one tool.
The second one I'll start on later this summer, most likely with a romantic theme that my wife and I can work on together. On that site, I'll focus on comparing SiteBuildIt's integrated tools to the individual tools I've always used to build my sites.
I'll keep you informed on my findings as I go along.
Jeff
On my way to see my wife's parents last week, we stopped to see our son Jon. As usual, we got into our usual conversation about his freelance art and acting and eBay work.
I had to chuckle as he talked about how much fun he was having building his eBay business. He was talking like an entrepreneur, which he had always sworn he would never become.
I had always urged him to add some affiliate links to his website to bring in a little income. But, no, that wasn't for him. He wanted to be creative, not a businessman.
So now he's carving out a niche for himself on eBay with mystery auctions and looking at ways to promote them and build his audience. I pointed out the incongruity with his long-stated desire to avoid thinking like a businessman. He laughed. "I just never realized that building a business is just another way of being creative."
I guess I had the same misapprehension when I was younger. I saw merchants as simply out to get my money while giving as little as possible in return. That's the way that TV and movies often picture businesspeople, as thieves in fancy suits, out to rip as many people as they can.
But while there are definitely some that fall into that category, I've found most entrepreneurs to be quite different. It really is a creative field, and a field you can't survive in for long unless you are willing to give more than you get.
So here's to the creativity of entrepreneurs, finding new ways to solve the problems others experience!
Jeff
P.S. The two SiteBuildIt websites I planned to buy on the special offer I described last week are now in my possession. The first one, I'll observe my son Joel develop a soccer-related site to see how easily someone with limited experience on the web can build a site with this all-in-one tool.
The second one I'll start on later this summer, most likely with a romantic theme that my wife and I can work on together. On that site, I'll focus on comparing SiteBuildIt's integrated tools to the individual tools I've always used to build my sites.
I'll keep you informed on my findings as I go along.
Jeff
Family Update
My father-in-law died this morning. He had been so adamant about not leaving his home of 55 years. Now he's in a far better one.
Jeff
My father-in-law died this morning. He had been so adamant about not leaving his home of 55 years. Now he's in a far better one.
Jeff
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Favorite free resources (part 3)
This week, let's look at linking.
Linking Matters
An interesting site that started out as an experiment to see how much incoming links affected traffic. The site offered (and still does) a report on creating an effective incoming link campaign and encouraged people to link to the site. They would then report on how traffic grew as their incoming links grew. Their experiment has been a success as they are now one of the most well-known sites on the web for their expertise in linking campaigns. I've linked to their site map to give you the best view of their excellent collection of articles (and, oh yes, the report that started their site).
131 (Legitimate) Link-Building Strategies
Another excellent linking resource is an article by Chris Sherman from 2002 on link-building strategies for Search Engine Watch. Yes, it's not totally up to date. I believe he mentions leaving links in address books as a viable strategy. It no longer is. But it's a great article for getting you thinking about ways to bring visitors into your site. And it gives some excellent advice about reciprocal link exchanges.
Value Exchange
Ordinarily, I avoid link exchange programs like the plague. I've found too many that turn out to be nothing but link farms that encourage indiscrimintate linking that does youmore harm than good. I've found Value Exchange to be a huge step above the other link exchange programs, though. It actually puts some teeth into its encouragements to link only to other sites that share the same topic, removing those that try to abuse the system to get links to minimal-content sites or to sites that consistently link indiscriminately. It's the one link exchange directory I don't hesitate to recommend.
And while you're there, pick up their excellent free ebook on successful linking strategies, "Make Your Links Work!"
Link Popularity Check
The folks at MarketLeap have made it possible for you to check how many backlinks Google, MSN and Yahoo report your site as having. Google, as you may know, reports only a small sample of the links to you that they know about. Checking MSN and Yahoo on Link Popularity Check gives you a fuller picture of how well you're linked. And, if you want, you can even compare your incoming links to three competitors' incoming links.
OptiSmarts
The people who brought you OptiTools got so tired of answering the same questions about linking over and over again that they started a blog to put them in. And a really nice part of it is that you don't have own their tools to learn from their long experience with linking. I notice there hasn't been too much new added for a while, but it has a lot of valuable tips and answers to frequently asked questions about linking in general. And I'm sure they'll add more info as new questions come up that they get asked a lot.
Jeff
This week, let's look at linking.
Linking Matters
An interesting site that started out as an experiment to see how much incoming links affected traffic. The site offered (and still does) a report on creating an effective incoming link campaign and encouraged people to link to the site. They would then report on how traffic grew as their incoming links grew. Their experiment has been a success as they are now one of the most well-known sites on the web for their expertise in linking campaigns. I've linked to their site map to give you the best view of their excellent collection of articles (and, oh yes, the report that started their site).
131 (Legitimate) Link-Building Strategies
Another excellent linking resource is an article by Chris Sherman from 2002 on link-building strategies for Search Engine Watch. Yes, it's not totally up to date. I believe he mentions leaving links in address books as a viable strategy. It no longer is. But it's a great article for getting you thinking about ways to bring visitors into your site. And it gives some excellent advice about reciprocal link exchanges.
Value Exchange
Ordinarily, I avoid link exchange programs like the plague. I've found too many that turn out to be nothing but link farms that encourage indiscrimintate linking that does youmore harm than good. I've found Value Exchange to be a huge step above the other link exchange programs, though. It actually puts some teeth into its encouragements to link only to other sites that share the same topic, removing those that try to abuse the system to get links to minimal-content sites or to sites that consistently link indiscriminately. It's the one link exchange directory I don't hesitate to recommend.
And while you're there, pick up their excellent free ebook on successful linking strategies, "Make Your Links Work!"
Link Popularity Check
The folks at MarketLeap have made it possible for you to check how many backlinks Google, MSN and Yahoo report your site as having. Google, as you may know, reports only a small sample of the links to you that they know about. Checking MSN and Yahoo on Link Popularity Check gives you a fuller picture of how well you're linked. And, if you want, you can even compare your incoming links to three competitors' incoming links.
OptiSmarts
The people who brought you OptiTools got so tired of answering the same questions about linking over and over again that they started a blog to put them in. And a really nice part of it is that you don't have own their tools to learn from their long experience with linking. I notice there hasn't been too much new added for a while, but it has a lot of valuable tips and answers to frequently asked questions about linking in general. And I'm sure they'll add more info as new questions come up that they get asked a lot.
Jeff
Back again
I'm back from dealing with my father-in-law's hospitalization. It came to the point where the doctors said there was no hope of recovery and that keeping him alive would require him to be kept alive artificially, which he always adamantly opposed.
In keeping with his stated wishes, he was removed from the respirator and, as of Sunday, is still holding on. It's a matter of time, though.
In the meantime, I'll get back to blogging.
Jeff
I'm back from dealing with my father-in-law's hospitalization. It came to the point where the doctors said there was no hope of recovery and that keeping him alive would require him to be kept alive artificially, which he always adamantly opposed.
In keeping with his stated wishes, he was removed from the respirator and, as of Sunday, is still holding on. It's a matter of time, though.
In the meantime, I'll get back to blogging.
Jeff
© 2005, 2006, 2007 Jeff Baas, One Stop Web Support
