It’s been four years now since I’ve been personally mentoring and consulting with Independent Professionals to market their business online and in the beginning, I battled with how to make the marketing process both easier to manage timewise - these are busy folk - and often less technical. 

But there is no getting around it though, marketing online takes work - often hard work - and some people are committed to putting that time in and others just simply struggle because they are having to do everything themselves - which I don’t recommend by the way. 

And, then there is the other problem of the myriad of emails they receive daily about a new way of getting traffic or a new way of doing business online which causes the unseasoned online marketer to think he or she needs every new tool advertised.

Well I’m going to tell you, buying every new course or tool or attending every seminar program that people hail as that latest breakthrough event of your life, is the surest way to end up broke!  Not merely because of the amount of money you spend, but - and learn from me, because I’ve been guilty of this…

YOU LOSE FOCUS!

And soon, you won’t know whether you want to market your products or services online, make money with AdSense, create a membership site or sell other people’s products.

And this is what complicates the process of marketing online more than anything else in my view, because in most cases, if you just followed the step-by-step program that you had purchased, you’ll have a business in less time than it would take you to start the course and then stop to start another course. 

Just follow the process!

The view I started taking when yet another new program was advertised was that “this system I already have worked for someone else, so it must work for me too!” 

So before you can even consider marketing your online business, you have to have a business!  And by this, I mean a business model.  So will you:

• Own a product – sell products or your services online
  
• Own a list – build a list which will be used to monetize later on - for example from affiliate marketing
  
• Own a membership site – receive money through paid subscriptions
  
• Own traffic (advertising) – put Google AdSense or other ads on your website
  
• Own relationships (MLM or Multi Level marketing)
  
• Own your time - consulting

Once you know and understand the business model you are following, the marketing process really does get a lot easier, both in terms of time and technically - even if you are having to do it yourself initially, because you will spend less time learning and more time doing.

So if there is one piece of advice I could give you today about doing business online it’s to…

Decide what business you’re going to be in and then stick to it!  

I don’t even want to fire off now about all the programs recommending Niche Market, Virtual Real Estate building because in my view, this is a recipe for disaster for the newbie online marketer, whether you have an established offline business already or not.

It’s not that I have anything against Niche Marketing or, do I think AdSense is bad, but when people run off in different directions, they fail to get a grip on the process. 

Once your website is up, it’s not okay to write a few pages, or post a few blogs, maybe even send out a few articles and then sit there and expect to get a flurry of traffic.  It’s okay to do it, but just don’t expect that “because you’ve built it, they will now come!” 

This method may have worked many moons ago, but this is the 21st Century and competition online is stiff!  You have to be persistently consistent with your online marketing efforts so you end up with a business and not just a website or, glorified brochure as I like to call them. 

So, whether you spend thousands of dollars on getting your website built professionally by a webmaster or you create a website of your own, as Stephen Pierce would say, “if you don’t have any traffic, you don’t have a business and if you don’t have a business (i.e. people exchanging their cash for your products or services) you don’t have any money!“ .

If you want to simplify the process of marketing online, in the next blog post, I’ll go over the 4 Smart Ways To Market Your Business Online.  So be sure to come back and check it out.

Best of Sucess,

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Not only have I upgraded all of my blogs - except this one for now since time just hasn’t been on my side - and, upgraded some of my clients blogs, I’ve done about 6 brand new installs with very few problems.

Now, I say very few problems because I have encountered one and as yet, I’m not sure about how to resolve it except to clean sweep the server and reinstall wordpress and the theme again (after backing up the theme settings of course!)

The one problem I’ve had with one of my client’s blogs and, I’ve had someone else email me for help on the same issue, has to do with the Featured Content Gallery.  What happens is that there is a narrow rectangle where the Featured Content Gallery should be, but there is a “no show” of the gallery itself.  I have noticed this appears to happen when there has been a change of theme but I can find nothing to support the issue on the developer site.

If anyone knows of a better solution than resetting the server and reuploading all of the WordPress and theme files, I’d love to hear from you.

I must also make it clear that if you are using a custom theme, you must still check with your theme developer as to whether it is compatible with WordPress 2.8.

Other than that, I think it’s safe to upgrade.

Best,

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Now, since I had discussed a similar model to the one Russell lays out in his site with a colleague recently, it made sense for me to get the free ipod on offer and, I purchased some of the upsells.  The long and short is this …

I purchased the product at about 10:00pm on Tuesday evening and by 1:00pm today, I had my first product created … and, I only sketched it out last night.  NEVER have I created a product this fast!

I also confess Russell, as a techie, I started playing with the website and eventually sent it over to my designer!  Slap wrist!  Russell is adamant that as marketers, our job is to learn and then get someone else to implement.  I should know better!

Anyway, by Saturday at the latest (my daughter has a big social life for a 7 year old!) I will have my new product online and ready to market and make money.  Not bad is it?

The thing I liked about Russell Brunson’s offering is that all of his upsells and bonuses are directly related to the free product he is giving away … no taking you off into another direction with a sideline product.

On the other hand, whilst I liked what Mike Filsaime and Omar Martin were offering, as soon as I watched the video and looked at the sales page, my immediate thought was “this is just too much for a newbie to take onboard and this is going to lead to information overload and more Internet Marketers failing.”  Sorry guys, but this is my honest opinion.

The bonuses are fantastic but, in my view, they don’t force the newbie to focus on the one important thing to them right now … getting their first sale, quicktime. 

Unless you’re lazy, don’t have the time or really struggling to get a grip with the process which, is difficult since Russell demonstrates the process in video, audio and written format, your only aim once you have his product in your hand is to get your first product online … fast!  And then watch the money roll in.

If you are new to the online world and want to get off the starting blocks or, you’re not new online but still struggling to make money, you should definately check out both sites and, if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know that I seldom pitch in my posts.

In fact, the links on this page are not affiliate links! 

This was just too big an opportunity not to share because I know the success online isn’t anywhere near as promising as some of online marketers will tell you.

I want you go check out these products … and in particular Russell Brunson’s Micro Continuity which will force you out of your state of inertia and get you making money in your niche in no time. 

Until next time,

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Another article from the old archives today that I hope will help you focus on value when promoting your business. 

Also, there is actually a course called Carbon Copy Marketing, but this blog post makes no reference to that course since I know very little about it anyway.

What I’m really asking is “are you a carbon copy marketer and to what extent is copying someone elses marketing blueprint benefitting or hurting your online business?”

I’m all for copying to a certain extent but as marketing estrodinaire, Jim Connolly and I discussed with the some time ago, following someone elses marketing blueprint can actually be detrimental to your business.

What was interesting from my conversation with Jim was that he has been in marketing for many years and then when he came online, what he did, was applied his knowledge of offline marketing, online.  This is an observation I had made many years ago from the “big guns” in Internet Marketing … most of them worked in marketing prior to making a living online.

Now, I’m not suggesting you give up your online marketing strategies to go learn all about offline marketing since I think perhaps the underlying success factor amongst those who applied their offline strategies online, had something that I believe many online marketing beginners miss ….

They have a real understanding of marketing

They know “how” marketing works … who their target market is, the mindset of their target market and what will make them buy and, they apply these basic principles to their online business.

One of the few things I remember from working toward my MBA, was just how “bad” it was to compete on price only and yet online, whilst subtle, many marketers compete on price!  Have you noticed that all the home study courses cost more or less the same.  Membership sites are popping up all over the place using the same price structure?

The value added bonuses are from the same circle of affiliate marketers and to get the bonus, you have to opt into their list?

If you want to be different, if you want to stand out from the crowd, it’s time to add some value to the products and services you provide.

I stopped competing on price a long time ago but the value I give goes way beyond building a blog.  As I explain to prospects, in the early days when I built blogs, this is as far as most of my clients went with their blogs … the first and last post, was the one I helped them write.

When I began adding value by focusing on building an online business using a blog, over 95% of my clients worked their blogs and made it work for them.

The difference … I stopped competing on price and focused on giving value. And for me, this meant increasing my prices, not lowering them.

The likes of Tesco supermarket make value mean “cheap” but we are not cheap!

We are providing a solution to people wants.  And do notice I said “want” and not “need,” since want is actually a far more powerful motivator than need.  This is why the likes of Tesco do well with their “value” range … they appeal to those people who think they need to cut on spending when in fact, most of them want to reserve money for their wants … going to the cinema, eating out, buying their child a new computer game.

So, how do you add value?

You have to be different?

How do you “be” different?

You have to be creative and, you can start this creative process by asking “how do I want people to feel when they consume my product or use my services?”  “What value can I add that my competitors are not providing?”  You can create your niche within a niche just by being different and therefore, even in a so say oversaturated market, you can compete successfully and win.

Until next time,

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I don’t know about you, but the default profile url always used to confuse me and they certainly weren’t memorable.

Well thanks to StomperNet, I found out about the “claim your name” just before 12:00 midnight and set my mental clock to wake me up before 5:00am and grab trishjones.

Twitterville was hot on the subject!  Some disgruntled people didn’t get their names and someone grabbed the name “problogger” before the REAL ProBlogger was able to which, I think is in poor spirit since you have to be blogging under a rock not to link the name ProBlogger to Darren Rowse.

Mashable reported that 200,000 names were taken within the first 3 minutes of the Facebook clock counting down to zero.  I assure you, I was one of the 200,000 after getting confused as to why trish.jones and not trishjones was being displayed as an option.  I soon saw the “more” link and clicked that to type in my own name, trishjones, and have to say I can go back to bed a very happy girl.  Mari Smith, the Facebook Queen says that apparently the trish.jones and trishjones are the same thing but, I would check this out before you choose your name since you can’t change it once you confirm.

No doubt this will make headline news - not me getting http://www.facebook.com/trishjones, but the whole name rush fiasco.  Some people just won’t get it and call us geeks but I assure you, it’s much easier to tell people to go to facebook.com/trishjones than it was with the old profile name which I could never remember.  I used to have to tell people to “just look me up!”

If you haven’t grabbed your unique Facebook url yet, go get it at http://www.facebook.com/username

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But please don’t!

I’m sure I write a similar blog post with each new release of WordPress so for you pros, you can ignore this post but this is a reminder to some and new information to others.

Basically, I’m assuming that most people are not using the standard Classic or Default WordPress themes and so, they have a customized theme created by a developer.  Before you upgrade, you must check with the theme developer first, to find out whether it is compatible with the newer version of WordPress.  If it isn’t and you proceed to upgrade your blog, you’ll break it which, I know will cause you unnecessary hours and days of stress.

By the way, it’s for this reason that I only purchase WordPress themes that come with support.  I don’t want to be in or, put my clients in a situation where they have a theme that is never upgraded - this is all too often the case with free themes.  It just causes too many issues longer term.

The other thing to note is that just because the theme is compatible with WordPress 2.8 does not mean that all of your plugins are compatible and you may find that elements of your blog that worked initially no longer work.  Again, I know it’s an arduous process, but you also need to find out whether the plugins you’re using are compatible with the WordPress version you’re about to upgrade to.

This is another reason I tend to leave upgrading my blog for at least a few weeks. 

Wordpress 2.8 probably still has some bug issues and so right now, my advice to you is …

“if your blog aint broke, don’t fix it!”

Ciao for now,

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Do you know who has the rights and therefore ownership of your domain name?

An even better question if you’re a home owner … would you sign over the deeds to your home and still expect to live there? 

This is a serious issue and if you’ve allowed your webmaster to take control of registering your domain name, you NEED to read this blog post VERY carefully …

I have come across three situations in the past few years where my clients have either allowed their webmaster to register their domain name on their behalf or, in one case, my client was persuaded to sign over his domain name to his webmaster!

I can’t think of any other way of saying this so I’m just going to stick to Trish style …

Allowing your webmaster or anyone else to register your domain name is like signing
 over the deeds to your house and still expect to have all the same rights to live there!!

In the event that you were allowed to live in your home after you sold the deeds you’d be a tenant right?  Yes … and, you only have tenants rights … right?  Which means the landlord can sell at any time.  And when the landlord sells you have to take all of your belongings and find another address to live.

Well imagine your webmaster has registered your domain name and puts themselves down as the administrator … who do you think the Registrar is going to contact when it’s time for the domain name to be renewed?  Yes, it’s the administrator and NOT the registrant!

So despite the domain name being registered in your name (making you the registrant) it’s the admin contact who is the person or entity if it’s a corporation, who is entrusted with the power to make significant changes to a domain name such as transferring ownership of that domain name to a different party,  or moving the domain to a new Registrar - with or without your knowledge.  And if your domain name Registrar does not have additional security measures implemented, such as notifying the registrant in the event of these changes being initiated, you could wake up one morning and find that you’ve been evicted while you slept.

In other words, the address still exists but you just no longer have access to it.  

Fortunately, all of my clients have achieved successful outcomes, but I didn’t hold out much hope for one of my clients initially since their domain name, which seemed to have been renewed without their knowledge (in fact, they didn’t even know the domain name was due for renewal because they were not down as the administrator) had disappeared from their Registrar account.   The hosting account was still active and they could see all of their files on the server, but without that domain name - the address - having an active hosting account was meaningless. 

Thankfully, this is resolved and they have their domain name back.

So, what do you now need to do?

1. Go and check the ownership of your domain name … Go to www.WHOIS.net and check the registration details.  What you want is for the admin details to be the same as the registrant name - i.e. YOURS!!  

    

   
   

2. Make any necessary changes to the admin if the registrar allows you to or, contact your webmaster or the person who registered your domain and arrange for them to update the admin details
     
3. If necessary, move the domain from it’s current registrar and ensure that when you complete the registration information, you put yourself down as the admin contact for your domain name
    
4. If all else fails, seek legal advice

If you’re facing this situation right now, I wish you every success for a favourable outcome.

And please, don’t penny pinch when getting your blog or website built by asking the webmaster to include the cost of domain name.  They’re less than $10 from GoDaddy.com and for $10, you get to have “dominion” over your domain!  With this, you can build Kingdoms!

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Why I’ve Changed My Stance On Publishing Full RSS Feeds

I received a very nice email from one of my subscribers some months ago asking why I had decided to publish only the links to my post rather than the entire article.

My response was simple really … “I was experimenting” since I wasn’t sure which format gave the biggest benefit.

In truth, I had noticed that whilst I received way more trackbacks from suspicious sources when publishing full feeds, my RSS subscriptions increased.

For those of you who read my blog via RSS reader, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m going forward “Full Feed Ahead” from now on.

So, what changed my decision?

Two blog posts really, one from Marie Langer at http://www.marialanger.com/2007/01/31/full-text-vs-summary-feeds and of course, it wouldn’t be right to make such an important decision before going and checking the site of the “Mighty Blogger,” Darren Rowse. I had already made up my mind prior to reading this blog post, but this was the clincher.

I’m satisfied that whilst there are some negatives to publishing full feeds, the benefits far outweigh them. Since I don’t sell ad space on my site at the moment, it’s not such a big deal to me to get people to the site but besides this, I’m of the opinion that when subscribers are ready, they will come!

If you’re a blogger and you’re either sitting on the fence about publishing full feeds or, you’re adamant that your subscriber just has to be satisfied with the Feed format you decide to serve up, it really would be worth your while checking out the above posts.

Best,

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Recently on Zoey 101 as their assignment, the class are asked to come up with a TV commercial for a new scooter called the “Jet X” and I learnt some important marketing lessons whilst watching that I wanted to share with you …

One of the developers from the Jet X company rides into the classroom on this super cool motorized scooter and asks the class “who want’s this scooter?” And of course, they all put their hand up.

He then tells them that they do have an opportunity of owning their very own Jet X, but first, they have to come up with a commercial to sell the scooter and goes on to explain that there are three things needed to sell a product:

1. great hair - a joke obviously
2. a great product - which he was very confident in and,
3. great advertising

But one of Zoey’s classmates is confused … she asks “don’t they have special people who get paid to do this kinda stuff, like make these kinds of commercials”

He said “that’s the point …”

“They Think They Know Teeneagers And They Don’t, But YOU Know Teenagers”

So now these teens are pumped because they want a Jet X which, they can win if their team comes up with the best TV Commercial and, they get a little bit of fame because the the ad will also be aired on TV.

So here’s what happened next …

The girls team up as do the boys but Logan, one of the classmates is loaned all the props for a movie set and even gets an actor for his commercial because his dad is a TV producer and he all but leaves his team-mates out of the project because they know nothing about TV right?

As for the girls, they’re struggling. They find out about Logan and his fancy equipement and complains to their teacher who gives them an important tip ..

“It’s Not About The Fancy Equipement or What You Put On The Screen, It’s About The Content”

Logan overhears this conversation which is when he introduces the oh so handsome Jeff Garrett, a celebrity spokesperson who will appear in their TV commercial and this of course make the girls even more upset and feeling they have even less chance now of ever owning a lovely pink Jet X.

I’m going to skip chunks of the program now and take you right to show time.

It’s the night before the viewing of the teams DVD movies and the boys have their professional cut movie whilst the girsl have nothing but some disasterous clips from about 20 different shoots and some uncut footage where the camera girl didn’t know how to turn it off.

Zoey decides she’s going to stay up all night and go through the entire video and cut and paste to come up with some content but, by 7:00am in the morning, they still have nothing.

Everyone except Zoey is now in class watching the boys movie complete with great graphics, props - including the bikini girl since of course an ad for a motorized machine would be no good without the shapely blond right?

At the end everyone claps and the producer tells them well done. But now the girls look embarrassed and Zoey hasn’t turned up so they start making excuses. They’re about to say they have nothing when Zoey runs in with her DVD and puts it into the player.

She has put together a movie from the 20  or so clips they shot of the girls having conversations about what the Jet X means - freedom, go wherever you want whenever you want, you look cool and will get noticed and it’s about being in control.

All of these clips are actually from the footage “camera girl” (not sure of her name) shot when she didn’t know how to turn off the camera but Zoey also included the clip that was scripted … the shoot of Zoey meeting her friend riding her new pink Jet X:

“Wow, is that a Motorcycle?” (friend)
“No” (Zoey)
“Is it a scooter?” (friend)
“No it’s a Jet X” (Zoey)

The screen goes black and in red text it says “did you get that?” Meaning, it’s not a motorcycle or a scooter, it’s a Jet X.

Now there’s silence from everyone except the guy from Jet X who can’t clap loud enough. He says “oh my gosh, this is it! This is exactly what we need!”  But shocked Logan exclaims “you liked that?” To which the Jet X developer answered …

“Yours was entertaining, yes … for Hollywood.”

The girls on the other hand spoke to their audience - high school teens which is exactly what the makers of the Jet X were after and why they didn’t pay thousands of dollars to a company to create the ad for them.

In wanting the best equipment, props and of course the Celebrity who would kiss the half naked girl, Logan lost the plot. He forgot his audience and went for the “look good, sex appeal.”

Zoey and her team-mates on the other hand talked about what it would mean to them to own a Jet X - the freedom, looking cool and getting noticed etc. And from whose point of view were they speaking? Other High School teens like themselves … the target audience for the Jet X.

Both teams were given a Jet X for the purposes of the ad and had Logan and his team spoken to a dozen of his peers, he would have known that it was less about getting the half dressed chick and more about freedom and image that would sell the Jet X to High School teens.

Logan’s team may have overheard the teachers comment regarding it not being about the fancy equipment and what you put on the screen that matters but, the content, but in the end, Logan and his team did exactly the opposite and focused on “look good” rather than content.

What’s my point …

Before you go spend a penny on a product launch or even write the copy for your next product, give away some copies and ask for feedback.

Better yet, don’t even create the product until you survey your prospect users.  And, if you have a limited budget spend less on the look of your blog and more on creating great content.  Once you start getting traffic and making money, you’ll be able to afford to spend money on a more professional looking blog.

A blog post with a difference today but I hope you get the idea.

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***This is actually an old post - post site hacking!  But, I thought it worthy of publishing now for those struggling to get traffic to their site. ***

It wasn’t actually deliberate since I decided that every one of my readers needed to watch those preview videos whether they intend purchasing the final product or not. I’m still not sure what this product is by the way … a home study course, membership site … no idea.

Anyway, before going to bed last night, around midnight actually, I decided to go see where I was in Google for the term “John Reese Traffic Secrets” - without the quotes by the way. I was kinda shocked to see I was on page 2 of Google:

This morning when I checked, I was on page 1 of Google for the term “John Reese Traffic Secrets,” page 2 for the term “traffic secrets 2.0″ and page 3 for the term “traffic secrets.”

Not bad for just one post eh? But still, what did I do bearing in mind every man and his dog seems to be blogging about this upcoming program right now?

The first thing I have to tell you is that the blog post was not a fabricated nicety to get votes … It really came from my heart because a) I was narked about all the emails I had received overnight going on about how “bad” the videos were. Like I said in the previous post, “who cares!” I really do not expect home made video standard from someone like John Reese … and b) John Reese always seems to inspire and motivate me to do so much more and, he doesn’t discourage you from entering the Internet Marketing space either.

His videos made so much sense as to why people were struggling online and I still believe that every struggling and newbie Internet Marketer, whether you are promoting Internet Marketing products or your own niche product or service, go watch the videos.

I’ll probably get a few copycats now try to push me out of my no. 8 spot in Google but, I really want to hightlight to you that hitting the first page of Google does not have to be that hard … not all the time anyway.

The first thing to note is my title … It’s not your boring “Go Watch John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 videos.” I was controversial … I wanted to know if these other marketers really thought that people would watch the videos for their “wow” factor. And, I’m still asking this question!

The second thing was I had the keywords in the title and early on in the blog post. Despite people saying keywords don’t matter, it does! Google may not give them as much weight as good quality links, but they are still interested in serving up relevant results for their searches. Can’t do this without a combination of a sensible distribution of keywords and, similar words … synonyms! My English teacher will be proud.

Third, I made use of my tags. It took me a long time to get this, but many people search social networking sites as well as Technorati using tags so though a late adopter, I do focus on adding tags to my blog posts and pages now.

So what about the overnight shift from page 2 to page 1?

I stayed up until 1:00am submitting my post to the social networking sites using Web2 Submitter (now only available via Blog Success) … even got a little “slap wrist” email from NewsVine for submitting my own article … so don’t do it! They were very forgiving though and I really didn’t know not to submit my own article.

After I used Web2 Submitter to submit my post to the social networking sites, I headed over to Jonathan Leger’s AutoMarker software and submitted it there too … after I voted for a few sites though and now, I enabled others to vote for my post.

I could kick myself though since I’ve had Web2Submitter for months and never used it and, I was one of the very first to sign up to AutoMarker and never used this either. It’s like breaking up the foundations of a wall with a hammer when right next to you is a jack hammer. If you’ve ever had to take on this task, you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I’m not going to go into detail right now about either of the above two pieces of software I mentioned because I know that on both sites, the authors have a great video explaining what they do and how to use the software.

So, throw down the hammer and grab your jack hammer now!

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