April 2002

Print and Go

Here is the entire ezine for you to print and take with you. Simply print this entire web page by using your "File/print" command. All of this month's articles are included and there is plenty of room in the margins
 for notes

You can get all kinds of free content and interactive elements for your website. Although I never advocate making your website a circus arena many of the things I present in this article may make sense for you.

For instance I helped Carolyn White who has the site
http://www.debtnomore.com come up with financial calculators that make perfect sense for her site. She helps peolple find the true cost of their credit card debt, how much they can save by paying their mortgage down faster, etc. These calculators make perfect sense for her to have on her site.

I'll show you were to get lots of this stuff. You must make the decision what, if any of it, makes sense for you to use. In some cases you would simply put a link to the site (in a new browser window so they have to return to your site) or put the code they give you into your website. Plus, don't be surprised if some of the links don't work by the time you get around to trying them. This is the Internet and free sites come and go.

Currency Converters
http://www.xe.net/ucc/ 
http://www.ljsp.com/currency.htm 
http://www.accu-rate.ca/converter/acconv.htm 
http://www.moneyextra.com/rates/currency/converter 
http://www.tradehere.com/calculator/converter.html 
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/currency/currcalc.cgi

Time Converters
http://www.worms-armageddon.de/htm/converter.html 
http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc 
http://www.travelsites.com/timeconverter.html 
http://theage.com.au/info/wtc/agewtc.html 
http://www.eaci.net/chat/converter.html

Metric Converters
http://www.allmath.com/metric.asp
http://www.worldwidemetric.com/metcal.htm 
http://www.onlinedconversion.com
http://www.chinaimporters.com/metrical.htm 
http://www.convert-me.com/en/ 
http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/Humor/Funny-Metric-Chart.html  (Funny)

All Kinds of Calculators
http://www.webwinder.com/wwhtmbin/javacalc.html 
http://autos.yahoo.com/calcs.html  Calculator for leasing or owning a vehicle
http://www.hsh.com/calculators.html  Financial http://www.bankrate.com/brm/calc_home.asp  Mortgage and Cost of Living
http://www.btimes.co.za/calc/calc.htm  Tax Return and Expense

Language Translators
http://babelfish.altavista.com  Online Language translator. Just pop in text from an email or an entire website and get an instant translation.
http://translation.langenberg.com/  Webpage Translator
http://www.tranexp.com / Software
http://www.translation-experts.com/  Software
http://www.alis.com/cgi-bin/transdemo.pl 
http://rivendel.com/~ric/resources/free.html  Lots of online translators
http://www.freetranslation.com/ 
http://www.shortbus.net/dialect.html  Funny dialect translator (Jive, Buckwheat)
http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/  Another funny translator (Redneck, Elmer Fudd, Moron, etc.)

Clocks
http://www.panaga.com/clocks/clocks.htm#sun  Massive number of cool clocks and countdown meters you can put on your website.
http://www.activeearth.com/ 

Free Software for Websites
http://www.bignosebird.com/ 
http://www.tucows.com/ 
http://www.tudogs.com/ 
http://www.reallybig.com/ 

Streaming News
Another way to get them to return is to have news. There are places out there that will send news directly to your site daily or hourly whatever the case may be. This is called "streaming content." So people can simply check your website for their news. There are many different industry news feeds. Many of these news feeds use Java Applets. Just make sure you don't junk up your important search engine pages too much with the code necessary to make these news feeds display.

http://www.webticker.com 
http://www.7am.com/ 
http://www.tickerland.com/  Put YOUR news on other sites
http://kresch.com/resources/Content/News/ 
http://kresch.com/resources/Content/News_Tickers/
http://www.anaconda.net/ 
http://www.wunderground.com/about/faq/weathersticker.asp  (weather)
http://www.weatherbyemail.com/  (weather)
http://oap.weather.com/oap/index.html  (weather)
http://weatherguys.com/webmaster.html  (weather)
http://isyndicate.com/ 
http://www.newsindex.com/ 
http://www.website101.com/freecontent.html 
 

A WORD ABOUT THE WORD "FREE"
When I say you can get most of the above content for free, in some cases that has strings attached. Yes, it's true that lots of the above stuff is totally free. But in some cases the word "Free" actually means "Advertising Supported." This can still be a good deal for you, but you do need to understand what that means.

If someone gives you a free service, that usually means that they will display some kind of ad near the service. In many cases you can pay them a small fee per month and they will give you the service, but eliminate the ad.

One of the free services I provide is Free Email. You can get an account at http://www.GreatSpeaking.com This is actually a two level deal. A big company in California provides this service to me. I could get it for free, but I chose to pay their small monthly fee so that I would get all the ad space seen by people that sign up for the free email. The people that sign up for the free email get the service totally free, but they have to see my ads as payment for me providing the email service.

Product Development Technique
CD Labeling

CD labeling is much easier than figuring out how to burn a CD. Simple to use software means you don't have to be artistic to have a gorgeous CD label for your product. If you want total hands off, then outside companies are happy to help you.

For most of my short run CDs (short run for me is less than a couple hundred) we do the labels in-house. I have a color laser printer, but I started with a color Ink Jet printer and it worked just fine, but we'll come back to that later. For larger numbers of CDs I use a different method that costs a little more, but I save that in labor.

THE PROGRAM
For the labels you create in-house save yourself a lot of time and frustration and just get SureThing CD labeler. You can find it at most major computer stores or order and download immediately online at http://www.surething.com . Any of their versions are great and you can read about them at the site. The most you'll pay is $39.95 for the deluxe version and $19.95 for the regular version.

I won't get into the details of how to use the program, because it is fairly simple. With no knowledge at all I was making labels in the first ten minutes after installation. I'm going to concentrate on the tips you don't really find in the instruction book.

THE LABELS
I get labels that are compatible with the SureThing program at http://www.labelgear.com They are much cheaper than Avery labels and are very high quality. (remember I do use Avery Label Pro software and Avery labels for Audiotape labels).

Actually the SureThing program is compatible with many different label manufacturers so don't throw away other labels you have on hand. You just might be able to use them up.

The LabelGear labels come two to a sheet and they also have 4 Jewel case spine labels per sheet. Because of the way we package our CDs we don't really use the spine labels, but I save them anyway for use around the office. If you've ever priced a packet of CD spine labels by themselves, you'll see why I save the ones I get from label gear. I recommend you do to.

HOW TO DO IT
Calibration
It's pretty simple once you learn your way around the program. The first thing you do is calibrate your printer. The instructions are very easy for this. The whole idea is to test out your printer to see exactly where it is printing on a page and then set the software so that it prints the labels exactly where they should be. You do this once and it's pretty much set unless you change printers.

Choose a background
The next thing you do is pick one of the gorgeous artistic backgrounds supplied with the program. I think there are 3000 of them, from super plain to super fancy in tons of different colors.

This is where you have to make some practical decisions. If you are going to be making quite a few labels with your Ink Jet printer, you have to consider the cost of ink and whether individual colors can be replaced in your printer. Let's say you wanted a mostly dark blue label with heavy ink coverage. You would run your printer out of blue ink way faster than the other colors. If you couldn't replace the blue by itself, then you'd have to replace the entire ink cartridge which could get pretty expensive and wasteful.

Your options would be to A.) pick a background that had a more even spectrum of colors, B.) buy a printer that had individual color cartridges, C.) use a background that required a much lighter coverage of ink

Choose a text layout
The program includes many different layouts for your CD label text. All you have to do is decide which one you like best and substitute your text where they have sample text. Don't worry you can move the elements of the layout around, but since I'm not that artistic, I tend to stick with their professionally created ones.

Choose font
Simply choose what font you want to use. I don't get too fancy with this because you might use a font that you don't have the right to distribute.

Import graphics
I don't always do this step because it's a little more difficult and the CDs look just great with the nice background and plain text. I actually lucked out the two times that I tried to add graphics and they turned out pretty good. You may want to use some type of transparent background on your graphic because if your background is rectangular it overrides the background of the CD label and could look a little weird.

On my "Wake 'em Up" CD I really lucked out and simply imported my book cover as the background of the CD label and it unbelievably came out beautiful. It bleeds off the edge of the CD and I just moved the graphic around until it looked nice and have been using it ever since.

PRINT
I always print the labels the first time on regular paper and then hold them up to a blank label to make sure everything lines up properly.

Also, you have to find out which way your printer prints. Do you put the label in upside down or right side up. You don't want to put in 25 sheets of labels and find out that they all printed on the wrong side. The labels also have an arrow you need to watch for to tell you which end goes in first. It does matter.

When the labels come out of the printer handle them very gently. The should be allowed to dry undisturbed. The more ink coverage you have used, the longer you should let them dry. Fifteen or twenty minutes should be fine, but the longer the better. You don't want a smeary label and don't forget . . .once you put it on the CD it AIN'T COMING OFF, so if you put on a lousy label you have both ruined the label AND the CD because you can't put a new label over the old one and make it look right. If this happens, just throw it away. You don't want to put out home made looking products.

STICK IT
The program comes with a CD applicator. It's a clamshell looking thing that kind of  reminds me of one of the old Mark Eden bust developers hahaha. You put the blank CD on one side and the label on the other. Then you close the clamshell and the label goes on beautifully.

NOTE: One tip when removing the label from it's backing sheet is to remove it slowly. The faster you remove it the more it curls up which causes you a little bit more hassle when trying to put it in the applicator.

LARGE RUNS
Unless you've got an enormous amount of time on your hands, I just can't see how it's worth it to do large quantities of CD duplication and labeling yourself.

For large runs I use http://www.discmakers.com for both the labeling and duplication. They really don't do it the way I've described above. They print right on the CD. They will also design the CD label for you.

Another place I use is owned by National Speakers Association member Sam Silverstein http://www.samsilverstein.com

OTHER
You can purchase printers that will print right on your CDs. You'll have to buy printable CDs. I have not used this method because the printers are relatively expensive and it's easier for me to use the label method for short runs and ship out large orders.

If you're interested in this method check out
http://www.cd-printers.net/

Email Technique
How to Maximize the Ezine Signups on Your Website
 

Email marketing is a numbers game. The more qualified and targeted people you have on your list, the more chances you have to make money. When people find and visit your website you must make every reasonable effort to get them to leave their email address and give you permission to send future emails to them. This article is specifically about maximizing the signups from people that don't know you and happen to find your website in one way or the other. Future articles will address many other ways to get Ezine subscribers.

People visiting your website are the highest quality subscriber you will ever have unless someone has met you in person and signed up because they liked the information you had to offer. Just because they like "you" doesn't make them a great subscriber. A great subscriber is a person who was looking for your information, found your website, fell in love with your information and double opted in to your ezine list. The person who simply likes you may never be a candidate to buy things so they aren't necessarily the greatest subscribers.

Here are the four major things that I do to give me the greatest chance of capturing email addresses without alienating my visitors.

• Sign up area is on every major page of the website.

• Incentives to subscribe are offered

• Pop up boxes are used judiciously

• Privacy policy is available

SIGN UP AREAS
Many people don't realize that visitors can enter your website at any page. They don't necessarily enter through your home page although the home page in most cases does get the most traffic. A search engine may send a person directly to any one of your sub pages if that page has content that suits the web surfer.

If you don't have a prominent signup up area on that sub page, then the surfer may never know that you have an email list. They may never see your home page and will most likely leave without a trace. You have just lost contact with someone that you worked hard to get to your site.

Three types of signup areas

1. If you visit http://www.public-speaking.org you will see that I have a signup area on every page of the site in a prominent area at the top left of each page. People can sign up immediately on any page of the site.

2. If you click on the "more info" button you are taken to a page that has . . . you guessed it . . . more info about "Great Speaking" Ezine. This page is for the people that are less impulsive and who want to see more about what they are getting in to if they sign up and what they can expect to get.

3. I also have a plain text link in the left hand navigation area just below the buttons.

INCENTIVES
It's a good idea to offer something of value free to people to entice them to sign up. I offer two free reports which you can see on the "more info" page. To fully automate the delivery of these reports, I have included them as plain text emails that are delivered along with the welcome letter by my list management company.

POP UP BOXES (more info click here)
If you haven't been to http://www.public-speaking.org in the last 30 days you will get a pop up box promoting the ezine sign up when you enter the home page or any of the article pages on the site. If you've been there within the past 30 days the pop up box recognizes you and doesn't pop up. This is if you have your cookies enabled. (cookies are a small file placed on your computer by a website to recognize you when you return)

I feel that this is a "judicious" use of the pop up box. It's in your face just a little and then disappears for a long time.
http://www.public-speaking.org is a free site and if you are going to get upset with a very unobtrusive pop up box, then you and I are unlikely to get along and I believe you are unlikely to spend much money for what I have to offer.

Pop up boxes can dramatically increase the number of signups you get from your website. You must, however, use them carefully. Click the "more info" link above for a complete discussion.

PRIVACY POLICY
Although I've had one for a long time, I never used to think that this was that big of a deal. . . probably because I'm pretty laid back and don't spook easily. But I referred someone to some other site a couple of weeks ago and they called me back refusing to accept my suggestion. The reason: -- no privacy policy.

It's hard to tell how many other people feel the same way. It only takes a little bit of work to formulate your policy and post it on your website which will keep you from losing visitors and subscribers.

So look around at lots of other privacy policies and formulate one of your own. I've got one at both
http://www.public-speaking.org/ezinesubscribe.htm  and

http://www.antion.com/ezinesubscribe.htm The one at antion.com is more extensive because it also covers ecommerce. Nothing is actually sold at http://www.public-speaking.org because it is a feeder site.

I'm not a lawyer and my privacy policies have not been reviewed by a lawyer. I'm also not giving you legal advice. I'm just suggesting that you have a policy and stick to it so that you don't alienate potential subscribers.

Take care of the above four signup functions and watch your subscriber to visitor count raise significantly

My copywriting skills are getting better all the time because I work at it, but one of the easiest long sales letters I ever wrote came from ethically copying another sales letter. This letter that has been very successful for me came before I had much experience at all in copywriting so I know this technique will work for you.

WHAT IS ETHICAL COPYCAT COPYWRITING?
This is using another successful sales letter as a template to build your sales letter. You don't copy the actual words. You copy the intended use of the words. Let me explain.

In most professionally written sales letters each paragraph has an intended use. It might be to build rapport, or move someone to action or to build the reader's desire for the product or service. When you locate a sales letter that has been running a long time (which pretty much tells you it works) or one that particularly moves you to want to buy, use it as a template.

When I find such a letter, I print out a copy. Then I go paragraph to paragraph trying to figure out why the writer put that paragraph in the letter. I simply jot down my thoughts in the margin next to each paragraph.

Then I go back an start writing my first paragraph using my information and my words while trying to accomplish the same purpose as the first paragraph in the sales letter I am using as a template.

Here's an idea of what I mean:

Below are two short sentences from the first paragraph of the letter I'm using as a template:

I'm writing this letter to you after coming back from the race track. I just love fast cars.

(I felt that the author of the letter was trying to build rapport by giving a little slice of his personal life)

Below is my first paragraph:

I'm writing this after getting back from a long bike ride. I have a really cool high-tech bike that I just love. Plus it gives me some exercise after I've been sitting too long in front of this computer.

You can see the entire sales letter that I wrote at http://www.antion.com/public-speaking.htm If you have a product or service that would fit the format of my letter, you are welcome to use the same technique that I used. Just don't copy it word for word and I hope you realize that I'm saving you thousands of dollars by giving you this letter to use as your template so now's a good time to upgrade to a yearly subscription to this private membership site hahahaha Just email me at tom@antion.com if you want to upgrade.

Copywriting is always hard work and you will still have to add elements that are particular to your product or service and to transition smoothly, but being an ethical copycat will get your on your way to great sales quickly.

Search Engine Tips
Side Doors

Use Keyword Side Doors
A "side door" (aka splash page, gateway, and doorway) page is tuned to a specific search engine in an effort to get you a high ranking in searches.

My friend Steve Epner explains this best. Many magazine publishers put out the same magazine, but use a different covers to please different markets or to test which cover gets the most newsstand sales. TV Guide is aggressively doing this (not to mention selling more TV Guides to collectors, but that's a different story).

Side Doors are different covers on your website designed to please a particular search engine. Each page is designed to have just the right number of words in the right places to get a high ranking in a particular search engine.

There are links on the page that direct the visitor to your homepage or to other sub pages of your site. You can have hundreds of these side doors for a single website, each one custom-tailored to suit different search engines.

How does this work?
Let's make up some numbers. Let's say there are 100 words on your homepage and 5 of them are keywords. Therefore, you have a 5 to 100 ratio or 5 percent of the words on the page are keywords. This ratio is called the "keyword weight" or "keyword density." Maybe Alta Vista loves 5 to 100. Maybe another search engine doesn't like that; they want a 7 to 100 or 7 percent keyword density on a page.

You create individual pages that have the right keyword density and submit them to the search engines (click here to learn how to submit)  Basically you have many different covers to your website. You could end up with hundreds of these pages as you continue to develop your website. By doing so, you give the search engines a bigger target to try to hit.

Side doors can be housed on my main website, or on a different website under my control. They are just different content pages that when someone finds them in a search, allow the them to click to my homepage or another page in my site.

CAUTION: In the old days (two weeks ago hahaha) these side doors were created generically with a template. You just put in any old words and the right number of keywords and submitted them to the search engines. You would have put an "automatic redirect" script on the page so the person clicking on the link listed in the search results would never even see the side door page. They would be automatically "redirected" to your real website.

This will not work anymore for two reasons: 1. The search engines are looking for template pages and refusing to give them high rankings; and 2. The search engines are looking for any pages that have an automatic redirect script and refusing those pages high rankings because it knows that the page is a "fake" designed to beat the system.

Side door pages now must appear to be a normal page in your site. Do not use an automatic side door generator like you would find in a program called "Web Position Gold" (although this is still a great program to own for other web promotion tasks) and don't even think about using a redirect script.

Counting KeyWords
You can use the "page critic" function of "Web Position Gold" to help you with this, but I have found another tool for quick and dirty analysis. It's called the Keyword Density Analyzer http://foreverweb.com/proshop/kda/  . It checks the keyword density (ratio of keywords to total number of words on the page) instantly and saves me lots of time.

Make sure they are significantly different
If you get too crazy with this side door strategy you could cross over the line and get accused of spamming the search engines which would get your site banned. You can avoid this by making sure that each side door page is not an identical copy of another page that only has a few words replaced to change the keyword density.

How to create hundreds of side door pages efficiently
The first round of pages is the toughest unless of course you have already written a book or lots of articles. Then it is pretty easy to take very tiny portions of the book or articles and make a mini article page (side door) for your website. I created about 150 of these pages in one three-day weekend based on my book "Wake 'em Up."

I then gave them to a part time employee. The part time employee took each article and changed it enough so that the page was not identical. This can happen very quickly because the article is already written. You are just making minor changes.

I am currently putting the same 150 articles on another website. After that the employee will change the articles again and put them on a third website. This gives me 450 side door pages from the same body of work. (I could actually put them on the same website if I only had one.)

Don't I look stupid having multiple copies of the same article on my site?
No I don't because a person on my site only has a chance to click to one version of any articles. All the changed versions of the article are not linked FROM the main site. They are only linked TO the main site if someone finds that article in a search engine. It's kind of like a one way valve that sends people TO my main site or sub pages on my main site.

SUB PAGES 
These side door pages don't necessarily send people to my home page. They can and should link a visitor to the exact sub page in my site that they were originally looking for.

Let's say someone happened to be looking for phone skills training in a search engine. They find one of my article pages about phone skills and click on the link that says "Click here for a top notch customized phone skills program." This link SHOULD NOT take the person to my home page. It should take them directly to the "Phone Skills" training program page in my website. I don't want the person to go to my home page and then have to search around for the phone skills area. I want to send them directly there.

This means that any important sub pages in your site can and should have their own set of side door article pages.

LASER STRIKE
What I have been describing above is the bulk side door method. I put out hundreds and hundreds of pages that have a keyword density roughly between 2 and 8 percent because that's roughly where the search engines operate. This method better suits my personality because I'm not tremendously patient and meticulous.

The other method for creating side doors (a combo of this method and the above bulk method is best) is to create laser strike side door pages. This method requires much more time and patience in creating each page. You won't end up with hundreds and hundreds of these unless you have way too much time on your hands or can afford to hire the work out.

To create a laser strike side door page you use a program like "Web Position Gold" http://www.webposition.com You would use the program's "Page Critic" function. This function goes to a particular search engine on a particular keyword and analyzes the top pages that came up in the search. It then reports back to you all the details of keyword density, total word count etc. that those top ranking pages have. You must then create a page that mimics the keyword density, total word count etc of the top ranking pages and submit it to that particular search engine. This gives you the highest statistical chance of getting a high ranking.

I have done this and achieved good results. The problem is that I hated every minute of it and when the search engine changed it's criteria for high rankings I had to do it all over again. If you like tweaking and playing with this stuff, then this method can be very effective. My bulk method is lots easier and takes away the problem of redoing the pages every time the search engine changes a little because I've go so many pages out there that if one drops down in the rankings, then another one usually picks up.

Send me your suggestions for future Search Engine related articles for this section. mailto:tom@antion.com  

Cool Software and Gadgets

Software

http://www.surfsaver.com/  More convenient way to save entire webpages for off line viewing. Handy for taking websites along with you on your laptop so you can review them on the road.

http://www.ztrace.com/ Lojack for your laptop. It runs silently and then locates your stolen computer the next time it is connected to the Internet

http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ I just installed Front Page 2002 only because a client of mine needed some training. I kept my copy of Front Page 2000 and it seems that 2002 does everything faster.

http://www.surething.com CD Labeling software that I use

http://www.labelgear.com (companion site to Surething . . . CD labels are cheap and good quality)

Gadgets

http://www.melard.com/ All terrain computer that can really take a beating.

http://www.eye-trek.com/ Watch movies on a pair of glasses that make the screen look like a 62 inch TV

http://www.avshop.com/avshop/pathfinder-gps-watch.html
Casio Global Positioning System on your Watch

http://www.electronicsonic.com/casio.html Another Casio watch that's a digital camera. ....Dick Tracy here we come

http://www.logitech.com  Freedom Pro cordless keyboard

http://www.trackitcorp.com/ Sounds a loud alarm if someone tries to steal your laptop.

THE ULTIMATE GADGET

L.G. Electronics will soon release a networked refrigerator. (It's already in use in South Korea) You can download recipes, watch TV, and do a I-need-help-with-this recipe video conference with your mother with it's built in camera and ethernet connection. . . . I hope it can email me my dinner hahahaha

http://www.man-machine.com Laptop Screen Repair

http://www.laptoprepair.com Three guesses what they do here hahahaha

http://www.batteriesdirect.com Laptop batteries

http://www.cd-recordable.com Big selection of CD-Rs

http://www.mobileplanet.com All kinds of stuff for computing on the road

http://www.listpartners.com/cgi-local/cashpartner?406 We pay you to give us subscribers to Great Speaking ezine

http://www.listpartners.com/  You use this free site to offer the same thing as above to people you know.

http://www.ezinfo2000.com/online/i654p/ Tremendous Internet marketing resource

http://www.mastermind2millions.com/index.html?id=antion I couldn't stop watching the videos in this course. A tremendous plan to presell your information products.

Miscellaneous Stuff You Need to Know

• Data recovery services are expensive and should be a last resort when your hard drive crashes (YOU DO HAVE CURRENT BACKUPS THAT WORK DON'T YOU?) If you are really stuck and have to retrieve critical data check out http://www.drivesavers.com , or http://www.actionfront.com Get your wallet out and be prepared to pay dearly.

• Make sure all the links in your site that are going to other sites which are out of your control open up in a "new browser window." This way people that visit your suggested links have to come back through your site.

• Recurring billing services can save you an enormous amount of time when you have customers that are billed monthly for the same amount. I use http://www.netbilling.com for this site, but http://www.kickstartcart.com integrated shopping system will have that capability within a couple months.

• When working on your website and checking the results of your labor by looking at your site on the Internet, don't forget to "refresh" your browser window. When I first started, I couldn't understand why changes I made to the site apparently weren't showing up on the net. It was because the browser had saved the previous version of the page. Refreshing solves the problem.

• When sending out ezines/enewsletters be careful what you put in your subject line and in the body of the email. If you use
  $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ as a divider bar or multiple dollar signs or the phrase FREE, FREE, FREE or something like that, email filters may delete your newsletter automatically because it looks like SPAM. I write the word Buttcamp as one word so that I don't isolate the word "butt" which could be filtered as sexual content. In many cases I don't use that name at all. I don't mind being on the edge by having the name, but I have to be sensible about when to use it and when NOT to use it.

• Watch your translations if you are doing business in any foreign language Here's a funny article about it http://www.marketingprofs.com/Perspect/delany2.asp

• Don't fall for the latest sick web scam. Two British guys and who knows who else have been trying to capitalize on 9/11 by selling bogus domain names with the ending .usa This doesn't exist so report any emails you get to the FTC or FBI.

• Research.net reports that 72% of the Chief Executive officers they polled prefer to find out about new products on line

Dan Janal is an interesting case because he was already an established Internet Marketing expert to business before he started doing it for himself. Dan is the author of "Dan Janal's Guide to Marketing on the Internet," a speaker who has talked about Internet marketing all around the globe and he taught classes at Berkeley on Internet marketing. Dan says about himself, "The things I was doing prior to starting my own information publishing business were baby steps compared to what I'm doing now."

Looking at it the opposite way, I'd say Dan has taken Giant Leaps in his marketing efforts and knowledge of the down and dirty I-don't-have-a-big-corporation-behind-me kind of marketing. Dan is now creating and maintaining his own websites, has an e-newsletter, does telephone seminars, and runs an awesome info publishing business right from his home office. 

I asked Dan how being in his own Internet business has changed his life. He said, "I actually work longer than I did before, I make alot more money, but I don't have to travel which is a nightmare these days." He also said that he is not pursuing speaking engagements anymore although he doesn't turn down requests either. 

So what's he doing?
Dan came up with a unique fee-based service to provide customized targeted publicity leads to business people. He created a website to promote the service http://www.prleads.com , a free newsletter to teach people how best to use the leads and a shopping system to sell products and to virtually automate much of the process. 

He told me, "I am making extremely good use of autoresponders and sequential autoresponders provided by my shopping system (he's using a version of http://www.kickstartcart.com ). I use them for automated customer follow up, signups and reminders for my telephone seminars, and lots of administrative details that I formerly had to do by hand. My shopping system is one of the best bargains I've ever gotten. It used to cost me $50.00 per month each to get programs to do just one of the many functions I use it for.  Now it costs me $50.00 per month total and it's all integrated. Right now I'm working into getting the upsell module going to increase the individual sale when people buy products and seminars."

I asked Dan what were some of the main problems he's had in creating this new business. He said laughingly, "TYPOS." Dan has actually hired a copy editor/proofreader to catch the things that spellcheckers won't. He also said that about the hardest thing to do is to learn the software. Most software programs are so feature rich you really have to calm down and implement one feature at a time and get comfortable with it. Then you can move on and learn another feature. Dan' advice on this,

"Don't bite off too much at once, but definitely keep on learning your software which will save you tons of time, money and effort in the future."

Dan sounded really excited about his new business. I'm excited too because I was among some of his first clients and as I mentioned in the traffic generation article in this issue. The first day after I used his service I was being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal . . .now that's Great Internet Marketing 

• Newspapers are experimenting with electronic editions. Check out http://www.newsstand.com Where you will find fee based editions of the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

• New Zealand is experimenting with Internet terminals in bars. I guess that would be like surf and slurp hahahaha. The "Nice Bar" in New York City is trying it too. Check out http://www.realdevelopments.net

• Free ISP users went from 14.8 million in 2000 to 4.1 million in 2001. This is primarily because giving everything away for free is a dumb idea.

• In a related story Hotmail free email subscribers are being strong armed by Microsoft to upgrade to a paid service. Subscribers are basically being hounded and they are having their inboxes swept clean with little or no warning. If you have an enewsletter and if you are paying attention you will notice many more bounces than usual from Hotmail accounts and in some cases you won't even be alerted of the bounce.  Read the full story at http://news.com.com/2100-1023-866086.html

• AOL / Time Warner is finally admitting trouble with it's Email system which yours truly reported to the "Washington Post" over a year and a half ago (my credible report with proof went unheeded) I absolute did not get two emails yesterday that I absolutely know where sent because I sent them myself. I keep my AOL account for an Internet connection on the road, but it's time to graduate if you've got important orders and customer correspondence.

• Surfers aren't happy with outdated content. Keep yours up to date here's the story http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16726.html

• 101 Dumbest moments in business. Don't make these mistakes:
  http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/print/0,1643,38604,00.html

• GartnerG2 in March 2002 released findings that the average direct mail promotion costs between $500.00 and $700.00 per thousand. Permission email marketing costs between $5.00 and $7.00 per thousand. Click through rate for permisson based targeted email was 6-8%. Gartner claims that email marketing is threatening the direct mail industry . . . I've been preaching for three years now for you to grab those email addresses in any legitimate way you can. It can mean the difference between a wildly successful business and total failure.

• Bizrate did a survey and found that 43% of online shoppers have used a shopping bot to price compare.  . . .  Your unique information product will not be subjected to this "commodity" style of shopping so you can keep your prices as high as the market will allow.
  

You will have to print out the following reference pages separately. They are included in each issue, so there is no need to print them out every time. Do, however, check them frequently because I will put new additions to these pages at the top of each page until the next issue comes out.

Recommended Learning Tools

Search Engine Resources

Suppliers

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