Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:12:00 +0000

The Key to Getting Finished
Here's a favorite quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

"What is not started today is never finished tomorrow."

This quote falls into the category of Captain Obvious. Yet as obvious as it is, it reminds us of something many of us too often overlook. If you want to finish something, you first have to start it.

Too often we prefer to daydream about how nice things will be once we're able to see some big project in our rear view mirror. We hesitate, though, to start it.

When we daydream about it, we envision it as having turned out absolutely perfect. The results that come from it are perfect. Our whole world is perfect because of it.

When we actually start, that dream of perfection gives way to reality. Things don't go exactly as planned. The results become not so much a final destination as another step along the journey toward the life we want. It can be more attractive to hang onto the dream of perfect results than it is to actually achieve the positive results that doing the project will bring.

So how can you break out of this rut and get a much-needed (and much-procrastinated) project done? Treat yourself like a little kid.

Have you ever had to guide a small child through picking up a floor full of toys? What's the best way to get results?

Saying, "Pick them all up, right now," will likely get you either refusal or tears. That child, looking at the mess, will feel overwhelmed. That child will likely feel much the same way that you feel as you look at a massive project.

What if you say to that child, "Let's pick up all the dolls/action figures," though? By isolating one piece of the bigger project, it seems more doable. The child will do it willingly.

Once those are put away, you can say, "Now let's pick up the blocks," or "Now let's pick up the..." one group at a time until the whole job is done and you can say, "Great job! I'm proud of you for making the room look so nice!"

You can do the same thing with yourself. Break down the larger task into individual parts. Commit yourself to doing just one part. Then, when you finish that, pick out one other part. Again, tell yourself that you need to do only that one part.

It's easier to commit to one small task at a time than to commit to the whole thing. It's easier, too, to move from one completed task to the next one when you have momentum working with you instead of against you.

What Goethe says may be obvious, but true. You can't finish something you haven't started.

Get started. If you need to play mind games with yourself to get started, play whatever ones you need to play. Whatever it takes, though, get started.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:23:00 +0000

Perfectionism and Your "Happily Ever After"
Throughout the week, I've shared with you thoughts about perfectionism. Perfectionism has both a bright side and a dark side.

Approaching it from the bright side focuses on achieving positive results. This approach may start with a plan of how to obtain those results. The plan remains adaptable, though.

As setbacks block certain routes to the desired goal, this kind of perfectionism seeks new routes instead of agonizing over the one that is blocked. Similarly, as moving forward with the plan reveals even better routes to the desired goal, this kind of perfectionism gladly embraces those better routes instead of feeling tied to the original plan.

In short, the good side of perfectionism focuses on the results instead of on how to reach them. Because my experience with perfectionism has largely been with the dark side of it, I prefer to define the good side of perfectionism as pursuing excellence. I like to keep the two very different mindsets distinct.

The dark side of perfectionism views tasks from an all-or-nothing, one-shot viewpoint. Either everything goes exactly as originally planned, or the whole thing is a failure, no matter how positive the results may be. Each task is viewed as a final destination instead of as a step along a larger journey.

I've found this fragmented way of looking at life harmful. Furthermore, it's based on a fallacy. The rest of our lives is not a destination we arrive at. It is something we have the privilege of creating every day. The joy is in the journey, not in some mythical destination we never reach.

Sometimes, we'll make missteps. Sometimes we'll have to retrace our steps and try again. But if you focus on making the most of the journey instead of on the missteps, you'll get a lot more out of it.

You'll discover things you would have been too busy beating yourself up to see. You'll turn missteps into learning opportunities. You'll gain new insights from overcoming obstacles instead of merely bemoaning them.

You'll enjoy the journey more. And you'll likely will end up with far better results than you originally envisioned.

That brings us around to the antidote for the dark side of perfectionism: gratitude. The dark side of perfectionism is fueled by fear. The dark side of perfectionism is fueled by a feeling of lack. It is fueled by the feeling that if we don't get everything absolutely perfect, we'll remain stuck in that position of lack. We'll remain vulnerable.

Living our lives with gratitude for what we already have and for the discoveries we make along the way drives out that fear. Even obstacles become positives that help us grow.

Living with a viewpoint of gratitude for what we have lets us build our lives. Each resource we already have, each discovery we make, each obstacle we overcome becomes another brick with which we build a happier, more secure life.

Living with a viewpoint of fear and lack actually causes whatever feeble structure we already have to crumble. It robs us of seeing the building materials that lie all around us. It chips away the mortar that holds together the bricks we have already put in place.

When we pursue the dark side of perfectionism, we do it in the hope that one, big push will rescue us from our lack and give us a "happily ever after." We want a "happily ever after" to our lives. We should seek the courage to live our lives "gratefully ever after," no matter the circumstances. Only when we live "gratefully ever after" will we see all that we have to be grateful for.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:44:00 +0000

You Might Have Trouble with Perfectionism If...
... whenever your plan hits a bump, you immediately assume that something is wrong with YOU.

... when something positive happens from something you didn't expect, you are tempted to reject it in favor sticking with the original plan.

... when you have to change your original plan and the results end up positive, you focus on what went wrong instead of on what went right or what you can learn from the experience.

What do you think? What other examples of problematic perfectionism can you add to the list?
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:37:00 +0000

Does Perfectionism Sometimes Need to Be "Perfect?"
Yesterday I described how a positive approach to perfectionism often is pursued best by adapting to changing circumstances and resetting expectations to produce the best possible outcome under those circumstances. Resetting expectations isn't always possible, though.

Sometimes, you don't control the expectations. Sometimes you have to conform to an external, preestablished standard that somebody else sets.

An Olympic figure skater can't reset expectations and accept missed jumps or changes in routine as acceptable. They're being judged on the basis of set requirements for their performance. Does that mean that perfection is an absolute after all?

It certainly is in the eyes of the judges. They judge on established guidelines. The "good" and "bad" perfectionism still comes into play in the way they approach their performance.

The figure skater who approaches the performance focused on fear of mistakes won't get far. By focusing on possible mistakes, they will find themselves making them.

The figure skater who falls will lose some points. If they get up and focus on making the rest of the performance the best it possibly can be, they will salvage something out of that opportunity, even if they can't get a perfect score. If they get up, though, and focus on thinking, "how many points will I lose?" or, "I'd better not make any more mistakes," they will make even more and lose more points.

You might say that the victim of "bad" perfectionistic thinking replaces the preestablished standard with their own, even higher standard. Agonizing over every minor glitch along the way overrules any more constructive approaches that would let them fix the current effort and improve future results. They settle for a dead end instead of a deeper exploration.

The "bad perfectionist" figure skater never even makes it to the Olympics. They give up before they can achieve their actual potential. They give up before they get the chance to compete at that level because they were discouraged over not being "perfect" immediately and always.

Meanwhile, "good perfectionist" figure skaters become masters of their craft because they focus on what it takes to excel rather than focusing on their mistakes.

What do you think? Is there such a thing as absolute perfection? How have you approached situations where you were expected to perform to someone else's standards?
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:09:00 +0000

When Being a Perfectionist Means Settling for Other than "Perfect"

Like I've said the past couple of days, I'm a perfectionist in the bad sense. I'm a perfectionist who agonizes over getting everything to match my preconceived idea of "perfect" even when the results I've gotten are more perfect for the current situation than my preconceived one is.

So it threw me for a loop in the discussion about perfectionism I was in a couple of weeks ago when others brought up examples of "good perfectionism." Perfectionism, in its good sense, has to be ready to accept results that, ironically, are less than perfect.

One person brought up an example of preparing a three-course dinner and finding that he didn't have the time to prepare everything exactly the way he had planned. His solution was to adapt.

He said he would most likely eliminate one of the courses so he could have the dinner ready at the time he had told his guests. He said his wife, on the other hand, would be more likely to prepare all three courses, but explain to the guests that the dinner would be slightly delayed.

In both cases, they sought to prepare the meal they had promised as well as possible. They sought excellence. They sought perfection. But both of them sought the best possible results for the circumstances rather than bemoaning the fact that they had "failed" to produce the exact results they had originally intended.

They adapted to the circumstances. They redefined their expectations on the fly to still produce a favorable outcome.

Not only that, but they likely would take away from the experience some ideas of how to improve the next time. They enjoy what they accomplished and use the setbacks to make the next time even better.

The self-destructive side of perfectionism would try to present the full three courses at the appointed time. That kind of perfectionist considers nothing more than the fear of losing face if everything is not exactly as planned.

Unfortunately, that leads to shoddy work. The dinner gets done poorly and probably a little late anyway. Then the cook spends the whole meal either apologizing or eying the guests for any sign of displeasure.

The self-destructive perfectionist finds no enjoyment in what they accomplished and learns nothing that can lead to future improvement because they are totally focused on themselves.

Positive perfectionism can view any experience as part of a learning process that leads to ever improving results.

Striving for perfection in a good way has to be divorced from self-worth. It has to focus on results. And it has to be willing to see each effort as a step on the journey to perfection instead of as one effort that needs to lead to the final destination. Seeking perfection has to be a habit, not a one-time shot.

Let me know what you think. What role does adaptation play in perfectionism, whether in the positive form of perfectionism or the self-destructive form? How have you found yourself adapting your expectations? How have you gotten yourself out of negative forms of perfectionism into good ones?
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:33:00 +0000

The Sure Sign that Perfectionism Is Hurting You
Yesterday, I told you about a discussion I was in a couple of weeks ago about perfectionism. Many in that discussion saw themselves as perfectionists. And they saw their perfectionism as something that helped them get things done and done well.

As someone who has struggled all my life with the destructive aspects of perfectionism, I see a very dark side to it. That dark side is fear based.

I see it in myself and I see it in many others with whom I have worked. I see it used as an excuse for procrastination: "Oh, I can't let anyone see this until it's perfect." Or I see it used to justify inaction: "I just can't get this perfect, so I won't even try."

I've seen it affect self-worth: "If I don't get this perfect, people won't accept me." And this dark perfectionism is often the doorway into self-destructive behavior and even addiction: "I don't measure up. I can't measure up. I can't stand the pain of not measuring up. I need something to dull that pain."

Whether that dark side of perfectionism is limited merely to fear of trying something new or goes to the extreme of being the root of behavior that destroys lives, fear is the clearest sign that the kind of perfectionism you experiencing is destructive rather than constructive.

Fearful perfectionism, ironically, keeps you from getting results that come anywhere near perfection. It locks you into predetermined ideas of what the results should be. Those predetermined ideas prevent you from finding true excellence. They focus you so much on making everything turn out exactly the way you envisioned it at first that you overlook opportunities that could lead to even better outcomes.

And those predetermined ideas are almost never attainable. They rely on everything turning out exactly as you originally envisioned, every step of the way. And anyone who has tackled any kind of project knows that nothing ever turns out exactly as planned in every detail. Adapting to what happens along the way is essential to any endeavor.

So what do you think? Have you seen this kind of destructive perfectionism in yourself? In others? What have you or others done to overcome it? I'd like to hear your insights on this.

Tomorrow, we'll look at being a perfectionist and still adapting to changing situations.

Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:05:00 +0000

Is Perfectionism Helping or Hurting Your Business?
I've long been aware of the self-destructive effect of perfectionism. I've seen it lead to tremendous damage in my life and in the lives of many others.

I've written about the difference between perfectionism and pursuing excellence in the past. And if you scroll through my tweets on Twitter, you'll see plenty more insights into this often misunderstood difference sprinkled throughout my other insights on running a business.

So when I spotted a discussion of this subject a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't resist chiming in. Throughout this week, I'll bring you some of the insights on that subject from that discussion, as well as expanding on it further.

First off, the discussion surprised me with how many people saw perfectionism as a good thing. As someone who has long struggled with the destructive aspect of perfectionism, that floored me.

I had trouble seeing anything good to perfectionism. The positive aspects that others described I would define as pursuing excellence or displaying admirable focus on obtaining the best possible results.

The fact remains, though, that a lot of people see perfectionism as an admirable thing. What do you think? Is perfectionism good or bad? Beneficial or destructive?
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:03:00 +0000

The Only Way You Can Ever Be "Whipped"
Here's a favorite quote from Napoleon Hill:

"No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind."

What's the difference between a setback and a complete failure? With a setback, you pick yourself up and start moving forward again. With a complete failure, you stay right where you were knocked down.

When you pick yourself up, you haven't been stopped. When you try again, you haven't been whipped.

As Napoleon Hill points out, what stops us isn't the setback. It's how we respond to it.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:48:00 +0000

Google AdWords Tips: Best Resources for PPC Advertising
I promised yesterday that I'd share my favorite AdWords resources. I'll start with the free ones:

Dr.Glenn Livingston free training package -- I haven't met many people I would unhesitatingly call a genius. Dr. Glenn Livingston is one of those few. I met Glenn at a seminar and he wowwed me with his grasp of how to discover your market's hot buttons.

He is also a whiz at AdWords, and he combines his knowledge of both on a free giveaway that he agreed to let me offer you. He provides 17 free AdWords cheat sheets, MP3s, and videos to show how to find and convert the customers who have the greatest value to you.

It's a whale of an offer and one you don't want to pass up.

Perry Marshall free adwords cheet sheet and ecourse -- I met Perry at the same seminar. He was hosting it, and he is considered by many the leading expert on Google AdWords.

His Definitive Guide to Google AdWords is pretty much what the title says: the most complete training you'll find on the ins and outs of succeeding with AdWords.

I'll tell you more about "The Definitive Guide" later, but first I want to point your attention to what he gives away for free. He has a 1-page cheat sheet on AdWords that he gives away as part of his free "5 Days to Success with Google AdWords" ecourse.

Sign up for his ecourse and you'll get his five-day course and his cheat sheet.

Perry Marshall Definitive Guide to Google AdWords -- If you like what you see with Perry's free training, don't hesitate to get "The Definitive Guide." Like I said before, it's the most complete treatment of AdWords I've ever seen. And Perry has kept it right up to date, so it never contains any outdated material.

As a matter of fact, he has expanded it to provide more specific tips to marketers with special needs when it comes to AdWords. These extra modules are available on a buffet basis. Pick and choose which modules you want and pay only for them.

It's a great approach that I wish more online marketing teachers would use. If you like what he offers with his free ecourse, check out "The Definitive Guide." You won't find a more complete resource for learning PPC.

PPC Kahuna -- Finally, I'll recommend a resource that gives you a hands-on approach to learning. PPC Kahuna helps you learn how to do AdWords as you actually do it, using some pretty effective proprietary tools.

This has the advantage of getting you going the fastest of any the resources I recommended. Instead of learning and then doing, you learn while doing.

The software you get helps remove the risk of AdWords draining your bank account while you learn how to find the sweet spots in your market. The tools find the sweet spots for you.

It helps you select the best keywords. It helps you optimize your ads. It actually can help you in more stages of your business than just AdWords.

It's geared mainly for affiliate marketers, so if you don't do affiliate marketing, you might find some of its tools don't apply to you. You'll find plenty that do apply, though, to make PPC Kahuna worth your while.

PPC Kahuna is not without downside, though. It isn't always open for new members. It operates under a strict membership limit and, when they reach that limit, they close the doors until space is available again.

On the bright side, they do have a waiting list. You can sign up and be notified as soon as they have space for you. It's worth waiting for.

Perry Marshall 3-Day Maui AdWords Workshop -- For some comprehensive AdWords training, AdWords master Perry Marshall plans to open a big window into his AdWords skills at the beginning of next month. He is preparing an intensive 3-day workshop in Maui with some of his best students. He will go into depth with all his strategies for winning the AdWords wars. And he plans to stream and record the vast majority of it.

He's offering a stream of the entire workshop and the DVD recordings for a limited time discount. You won't get the sunny beaches and the surfers, but you'll get pretty much everything else. If peeking over the shoulder of the best AdWords guy in the business for an entire workshop appeals to you, I encourage you to check out Perry's Maui AdWords Workshop.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:17:00 +0000

Google AdWords Tips: Deciding What to Do with PPC Advertising
Before you decide to venture into PPC marketing, consider these questions carefully:

Are you confident enough of your sales funnel to commit hundreds of dollars a month to PPC ads? Or, can you absorb a short-term loss while you get your ads, and your site, performing profitably?
Do you have enough time to invest on testing and tracking and tweaking your ads so they bring you a profit?

If you answer "yes" to both questions, start learning PPC marketing. Don't go into it cold. This is NOT something for you to learn by trial and error while money is pouring out of your bank account.

Check back tomorrow for my recommended resources to help you avoid the mistakes that cost you dearly. Or check out some of the PPC resources on my website. Start knowledgeably right from the start and you'll take most of the risk out of PPC.

And for some comprehensive AdWords training, AdWords master Perry Marshall plans to open a big window into his AdWords skills at the beginning of next month. He is preparing an intensive 3-day workshop in Maui with some of his best students. He will go into depth with all his strategies for winning the AdWords wars. And he plans to stream and record the vast majority of it.

He's offering a stream of the entire workshop and the DVD recordings for a limited time discount. You won't get the sunny beaches and the surfers, but you'll get pretty much everything else. If peeking over the shoulder of the best AdWords guy in the business for an entire workshop appeals to you, I encourage you to check out Perry's Maui AdWords Workshop, too.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:09:00 +0000

Google AdWords Tips: Avoiding the Killer Mistake that Most Advertisers Make
Always keep track of your results when you do any type of PPC advertising. All good PPC sites offer tools that help you track visitors from your ads and determine how many buy.

It's also a good idea to add a bit of tracking code to the end of the URL that you send your PPC visitors to. This involves adding a little tag that allows you to identify your PPC traffic from the rest of your traffic.

Adding tracking code to the end of your URL is as simple as adding six characters to the end of the URL that you tell your PPC provider to send that ad's traffic to. I suggest adding "?ref=g" (without the quotation marks) to identify Google ads, "?ref=y" (again, without the quotation marks) to identify Yahoo! ads, and "?ref=b" (without quotation marks) to identify Bing ads.

You can actually go well beyond just a single letter to create even more specific referrer codes. For now, though, we'll stick to simply identifying the PPC provider who sends a particular visitor.

Don't worry, either, about the referrer code "breaking" your link. The code has no effect on people being able to find your page. It merely enables your tracking software to identify which ad referred that visitor.

If you're interested in some advanced tips on Google AdWords, AdWords master Perry Marshall is holding a free teleseminar Thursday, February 11, at 3 PM EST, 2 PM CST, and noon PST. He plans to unveil a new, "Bionic" method writing AdWords ads that he says has dramatically boosted AdWords traffic while cutting the cost per click for everyone he has had use it.

This is a great opportunity to learn from the best and to do it for free. I encourage you to check it out!

Perry plans to open another window into his AdWords skills, too. He is preparing an intensive 3-day workshop in Maui with some of his best students. He will go into depth with all his strategies for winning the AdWords wars. And he plans to stream and record the vast majority of it.

He's offering a stream of the entire workshop and the DVD recordings for a limited time discount. You won't get the sunny beaches and the surfers, but you'll get pretty much everything else. If you think peeking over the shoulder of the best AdWords guy in the business for an entire workshop appeals to you, I encourage you to check out Perry's Maui AdWords Workshop, too.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:59:00 +0000

Google AdWords Tips: Three Basic Rules for PPC Advertising
Here are three basic rules to follow when writing PPC ads.

Put the specific keyword you are targeting in the title of your ad
You want your ad to jump out at the people who see it. The best way is to have your keyword in the title. When your ad appears for a search, any keywords the searcher used will appear in bold. This draws more attention to your ad than to other ads that don't have those exact keywords.

Take the searcher to the exact page that deals with the topic of her search
Most marketers, amazingly, don't follow this simple, but essential, rule.

They funnel ALL traffic to their home page and expect their searchers to hunt their way through the site to find what they're looking for. WRONG!

All you accomplish by dumping everyone on your home page is to irritate your searcher into clicking back to the search page to find another site.

Despite the fact that you lost the customer, you still pay for the click. In other words, you get charged for ticking a potential customer off and sending them to your competition. Not smart.

So how to you avoid this costly mistake? Link directly to the page that continues the conversation that your ad started.

Always lead your searcher DIRECTLY to the page that their search term demonstrates that they want to find.

Bid only on keywords that directly apply to your site
It does you no good to bid on slightly related terms in the hope that someone, when they see your product, will be so smitten by it that he will abandon what he was searching for and buy.

That isn't realistic. Sure, some circumstances exist where you want to expose your product to people who don't necessarily know about it. When you're paying for each click is not the time to reach out to the curious, though.

Follow these simple rules and you can have potential buyers to your site within hours.

If you're interested in some advanced tips on Google AdWords, AdWords master Perry Marshall is holding a free teleseminar Thursday, February 11, at 3 PM EST, 2 PM CST, and noon PST. He plans to unveil a new, "Bionic" method writing AdWords ads that he says has dramatically boosted AdWords traffic while cutting the cost per click for everyone he has had use it.

This is a great opportunity to learn from the best and to do it for free. I encourage you to check it out!
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:35:00 +0000

Google AdWords Tips: Best Sources of PPC Traffic
I'll focus mainly on Google AdWords. Most of my experience with PPC has come on AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search.

The third of the Big 3 advertising sites is Bing. I've found AdWords more profitable, for me, than Yahoo! Sponsored Search. I've also found it much easier to use. Although Bing is intriguing, I'll have to admit I still haven't tried it for PPC. I just haven't gotten around to it.

I've tried some of the smaller PPC providers. I won't even mention them because, in my opinion, they aren't worth the effort. They've never produced anywhere near what AdWords, or even Yahoo!, have.

So, as I said, I'll focus mainly on the one with which I am most familiar, Google AdWords. Google Adwords is set up to let you split-test ads for each set of keywords you target. That lets you run two, slightly different, ads for the same keyword. Google then splits the number of times each one appears so you can see which one does better.

That way you can learn as you go how to make your ads more effective. As a matter of fact, don't run PPC ads unless you're tracking and testing them. Setting up ads by guesswork and then letting them draw money out of your account has been the downfall of many new PPC marketers.

I can't stress enough. Always keep testing your ads. Always keep improving them. That's the formula for PPC success.

If you're interested in some advanced tips on Google AdWords, AdWords master Perry Marshall is holding a free teleseminar Thursday, February 11, at 3 PM EST, 2 PM CST, and noon PST. He plans to unveil a new, "Bionic" method writing AdWords ads that he says has dramatically boosted AdWords traffic while cutting the cost per click for everyone he has had use it.

This is a great opportunity to learn from the best and to do it for free. I encourage you to check it out!
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:59:00 +0000

Google AdWords Tips: When You Want Traffic FAST!
Getting targeted traffic is always on every business owner's mind. So we'll take this week to look at the absolute quickest way of bringing visitors to your site, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Of course, that speed in attracting visitors comes at a price. You can't do PPC marketing without spending any money. You pay for every visitor you receive through these ads.

This strategy, therefore, is not for you if you have no money to invest in promotion. It is not for you if you're starting your business on a shoestring and need strategies that rely on investing your time instead of your money.

That said, though, it is almost impossible to beat when it comes to how quickly it can generate traffic. Set up an account in the morning and you can be seeing visitors from it by noon.

That's why it's the strategy of choice for many established marketers when they enter a new market. I'll give this warning, though. It can also be an enormous money drain if you go into it blind and don't consistently track and improve your ads. You have to approach AdWord intelligently.

Over the rest of the week, I'll share tips about using PPC profitably. I'll share:

The best sources of PPC traffic
The three key rules for keeping your PPC advertising profitable
An absolute must for PPC advertising that almost all beginners overlook
The essential questions to ask yourself before starting PPC advertising
My favorite resources for PPC marketing

Admittedly, this week will be a basic-to-intermediate look at PPC advertising in general and Google AdWords specifically. I won't go all the way back to ground zero and explain, "This is what Google is," or "This is what an ad is."

I'll assume you know enough to set up your ads without me walking you through the basic steps. This will be more along the lines of what to do to keep your bank account from being drained by common AdWords mistakes.

I won't go into advanced strategies, though. If you're already fairly advanced in Google AdWords and want to step up to play with the AdWords big boys, you might want to check out a very special event that is starting soon.

One of my mentors, Perry Marshall, is teaming with copywriting legend John Carlton to hold an eight-week, online workshop called Adwords Copywriting Intensive that starts next week.

This workshop will apply all of John Carlton's copywriting genius to Google ads, opt-in pages, sales letters and email followup (the killer "sales funnel" developed by Perry that STILL is the top producing formula online).

WARNING: this workshop is NOT for beginners. But if you think you have what it takes to boost your AdWords skills to the upper echelon, by all means check it out!
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:18:00 +0000

Are You Giving Up Too Soon?
Here's a favorite quote from H. Ross Perot:

"Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown."

How true this is! We've grown up with instant this and instant that. We've come to expect instant success.

If we don't achieve business success on the first try, we give up. We complain about our "bad luck." We complain that the "system" is holding us back.

Or we assume that the fault lies with us. Something is lacking in us that "successful people" have.

In reality, most of our "failures" are simply a case of giving up too soon. We try something to promote our business and don't get instant results. So we abandon that and try something else.

Or we wait until our backs are against the wall and we need that success RIGHT NOW just to survive. We look for the easy switch to turn on success. Then when we find that there's no switch for us to turn on, we find ourselves with no resources left to keep us going what we get our business going.

The key is to choose a direction and then follow it through to success. Build momentum. Give it time to grow.

You don't plant an acorn in the ground and expect a 40 foot oak tree to be there the next morning. You watch it grow at its own rate.

The same thing goes with businesses. You don't cut them off because they're only shoot and haven't grown into a tree yet.

Hang in there! Keep moving forward. Learn from your mistakes when momentum slows. But DON'T GIVE UP!
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:20:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Being Observant
This is one of my favorite ways of finding a topic for articles -- and an absolute staple of my blog. I love to find connections to new business insights in such mundane things as watching a bridge being built, walking past an unrented storefront, passing a business sign that someone has covered with a tarp, or the change in household duties required by my wife's broken wrist.

If you can keep track of the ideas that unconnected events trigger in your mind, you can have an almost unlimited supply of engaging article ideas that you can share with others.

The problem is not that no ideas exist about which you can write an article. The problem usually is that we simply haven't trained our minds to recognize the multitude of article ideas that bombard us every day.

Train your eyes to see those ideas. Then, go out and write some articles.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:24:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from PLR Content
If you have trouble coming up with ideas for articles, Private Label Rights (PLR) content is a great way to get ideas. Most people feel more comfortable editing content rather than writing it from scratch. PLR content gives you prewritten content that you can edit to make it uniquely your own.

The temptation with PLR content is to take the prewritten articles and submit them -- as is -- to article sites. The problem with that is that many other people buy those same articles and submit them to the same directories.

It doesn't take much for the article directories to catch on that article A is identical to article B. Once they find that, you can forget about them accepting that article. You could even find yourself banned from submitting to that directory ever again.

Use PLR articles to get you started. Get your idea from the PLR article and then take it from there to make your article unique. I'm not talking about changing a word here or there. I'm talking about making your article completely UNIQUE.

Most PLR articles I've seen are pretty lame, anyway. Most are pretty generic. They desperately need better writing and more useful content.

Take the PLR articles you buy and make them your own. You're much more likely to get them accepted that way.

By the way, if you'd just as soon outsource your article writing to someone else, check out Spin Ready PLR. You work with writers who write specifically for your niche (as opposed to most PLR sites who write articles for a variety of niches that might not always be a good fit for you). And they present your finished articles to you in a way that makes it extremely simple to "spin" them into a completely unique article.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:09:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Old Books on Your Market
Unless your niche came into existence yesterday, you can step back into the past for an article topic. Look at older books about your niche. Consider what has changed and what hasn't.

Those changes (or lack of them) give you several angles to use in approaching your topic.

What has changed and how those changes affect your readers
Why things have changed
What those changes suggest about the future of your niche
What hasn't changed and remains as a timeless value to you and your readers
What things that have dropped out of favor are ripe to be rediscovered

Does this work only if your niche has been around for 3,000 years? Absolutely not. Any niche that has changed over any period of time is ripe for this approach.

Consider the Internet. It has been commonly used only for the past 15 years. Yet look at how much it has changed over that time!

Any niche that has grown and developed gives you a chance to use this approach. Things DO change in virtually every niche. Take advantage of that fact.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:15:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Classic Stories
Another good source for articles is by taking a universally known story, like a fairy tale, and drawing a connection between it and your area of expertise.

Classic stories resonate with people because they touch a familiar chord in their own experience, even if they've never stepped through a looking glass, or done a taste test of porridge in a house built by three bears, or accompanied a Jedi knight on a quest to save the universe.

Tap into the shared experience that cause people to connect with those stories. Tie those shared experiences in those stories to your topic and you'll engage people's curiosity to see what new insights you're leading them toward.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:12:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Quotes, Products, and News
Another place to get article ideas is from quotes that strike you. You can use an insightful statement from someone in your industry and create an entire article off of your reaction to it. What emotional response does it trigger? What further insights does it generate in you?

If your industry isn't one in which insightful quotes abound, you can write about your reaction to news, to products, to trends. If you have a good pulse on your industry, you should find no end of topics to write about.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:07:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Other People's Lists
Look for a topic you'd like to write about. Find an article that is written in list format - " Five Ways to...," "Seven Best Tips for...," "Three Little-Known Ways to..."

Look at the items in the list. Chances are that each of those list items could be fleshed into a solid article all on its own.

Focus on whatever items you can cover in more depth than the original list did. Write a complete article on that one item.

As I've said in other article idea tips, don't copy. Don't even paraphrase. Use what you found in the other writer's article strictly as an idea from which you provide your own, unique viewpoint on the issue.

By hunting for these list-type articles, you'll get ideas for not just one, but multiple articles that you can write.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:14:00 +0000

From Opposite Points of View
Here's a favorite quote from Winston Churchill:

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

I'm not sure what I can add to this one. Its blessed simplicity says it all. Two people looking at the exact same situation can see two different things based on their point of view.

In reality, I'm not sure there even is a difference between difficult and opportunity. They are two sides of the same coin. They always come joined as one.

The key is to look at the side of the coin that serves you best. And by that, I mean to see the opportunity. I am firmly convinced that all difficulties are just a kind of school bell ringing to tell you it's time to learn something.

Train yourself to look for that lesson when you experience difficulty. Train yourself to look for the opportunity. It's all there. You just have to look for it.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:53:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas by Creating a List
Take a topic that you can easily break down into a list – " Five Ways to…," "Seven Best Tips for…," "Three Little-Known Ways to…"

Readers love this kind of articles. It suggests to them that the subject is simple to understand and easy to break down.

It doesn't even matter if you know that more list items could appear on your list. As a matter of fact, being able to come up with more is even better.

Include in your article the number of tips you chose in your title to cover. The fact that you know of even more that could have been included in your list gives you an opportunity to encourage readers to visit your site to find out the rest.

Put more tips in a special report. Then, in your resource box, tell readers that they can get however many more tips in your special report that they can get from your site. This gives them an incentive to visit your site and sign up for "the rest of the story."
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:46:00 +0000

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Other Writers
You can get ideas for your own articles from other people's articles. Don't get me wrong on this. I'm not suggesting you plagiarize other people's work. You can, however, take an IDEA from somebody else's article and take that idea in your own direction.

Don't copy their words. Don't even paraphrase them. Take the idea and use your own experience with the subject to give it a completely different perspective.

I find that doing this not only gives me a lot of article ideas that I wouldn't have identified on my own, but it keeps me from beating to death a lot of the pet subjects that jump into my brain when I try to generate an article idea off the top of my head.
Jeff

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noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Baas) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:53:00 +0000

Time to Set Sail
Here's a favorite quote from Mark Twain:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover."

This one has a lot more meaning for me as I grow older. Some things have already passed me by. I always wanted to rock climb. I always wanted to explore caves. I never did either, and the chances of doing that now are pretty much gone.

With my wife now being limited by a bad knee, athletic activities like those are not likely, unless I choose to do them on my own. Frankly, starting hobbies that would exclude her don't interest me. But I sometimes wish I would have done them when I had a chance -- and when I could have shared them with my children.

Even if some of the things you once wanted to do have passed you by, there are still things that haven't. You have things right now that are ripe for you to do. But the time may come when those things pass out of possibility for you. Don't make the mistake of letting that pass by, too!

Throw off the bowlines! Sail away from the safe harbor! Catch the trade winds in your sails! Explore, dream, discover!

There's still time. And that time is now!
Jeff

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