Here's where a real jump in power occurs. This morning I got word from one of my affiliates (The Gatekeeper) that blogging is "really taking off" thanks to the "buzz" from the current round of presidential debates. I had already contacted Spider Robinson and recieved a gracious personal email in return...so when I checked at Audible.com (tm) and couldn't find two of the Callahan books I wanted, I decided to contact here instead and check to see whether the contract had closed.
Result: the person who had that infomation was away from her desk. BUT...I was told that if it had not yet closed, it certainly would in the near future...AND I picked up another affilliate program as a result.
This raises a real cutting-edge question about media ethics: is it possible to say ANYTHING about anyone on the internet, WITHOUT "advertising" for them? People are debating that question hotly right now.
That is one reason I try to make sure that I over-deliver and use win-win solutions whenever possible...now, to keep medium or long-term viability in my business, I need to stay compliant with a body of law that *hasn't even been developed yet.*
Thursday, September 30, 2004
What Blogging Does To Copyright (FML #090)
Creativity is not only a learned, practical discipline, it is also the practice of sucessfully implementing stolen ideas. Why does this work? Because no one has a monopoly on any actual idea. Only the coherant, physical forms in which ideas are expressed or organized can be legally protected.
Blogging, as an artform, might well be the worst blow to conventional copyright law since King James broke the Bishop of Rome's monopoly...
Why? Because a good, content-rich blog is almost always made up of a long set of redistributed attributions...and sources vary wildly. Suppose you don't know your ORIGINAL source? Worse yet, suppose the owner of the blog you are reading, or the blog you pulled your last article from, doesn't care?
So...you put a quote into your "hot" Blog...and get sued by the original owner.
Solution: Well, one thing we know... slowing down the exposure rate of the site won't work.
Blogging tends to move at the exact speed at which you can type out a thought into your word processing editor...no more, no less.
When you are attempting to monetize a blog, that is, to generate income from it, the problem of how to handle "fair use" becomes even more intense.
So, the above title link leads to a blog addressing that very subject.
Meanwhile, some very creative people are also hard at work developing alternative forms of copyright.
Blogging, as an artform, might well be the worst blow to conventional copyright law since King James broke the Bishop of Rome's monopoly...
Why? Because a good, content-rich blog is almost always made up of a long set of redistributed attributions...and sources vary wildly. Suppose you don't know your ORIGINAL source? Worse yet, suppose the owner of the blog you are reading, or the blog you pulled your last article from, doesn't care?
So...you put a quote into your "hot" Blog...and get sued by the original owner.
Solution: Well, one thing we know... slowing down the exposure rate of the site won't work.
Blogging tends to move at the exact speed at which you can type out a thought into your word processing editor...no more, no less.
When you are attempting to monetize a blog, that is, to generate income from it, the problem of how to handle "fair use" becomes even more intense.
So, the above title link leads to a blog addressing that very subject.
Meanwhile, some very creative people are also hard at work developing alternative forms of copyright.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Support Your Local Niches (FML#086-087)
Now that I am actively looking for new client referrals, I find them nearly everywhere. Today, since my room-mate needed a checkup, I walked into a dentist's office, and found a brand new magazine which had been handed out as a sample copy by an emerging business. That gave me two excellent local referals, Women Inc. and Silker Photo.
Of course, these are only local to Minnesota...but that shouldn't be a problem for me because I also just found out that Google is beta-testing a more localized search engine for business clients.
The Silker Photo referral also demonstrates how sometimes deals can close well, independent of money considerations. For instance, it's possible that a six-issue advertising deal (or an even longer one) closed because Mr. Silker agreed to work as staff photographer on the new magazine project. That would be a win-win position for him, no matter how established his business was, since it carried the side-benefit of increased publicity to a market segment (business women & working mothers) he definitely needs to reach, to promote his portrait studio.
Maybe he can digitize my photo for me after he takes it...I may even convince him to upload it to the site directly from his office. Perhaps I can contribute an article or two to the new magazine, and get listed as a "contributing writer" in the next issue, or the one after that.
Why did I pick them? Because both firms have a strong potential for "buzz," for word-of-mouth, and both are small and local to my own area. I, on the other hand, have just given them a strongly written, national and international "plug," before they even know I am doing it! :-)
So, if I happen to get big, their small businesses may even get an increase in tourist traffic...and will certainly get a new addition to their "publicity portfolio" with which to impress new clients.
That makes this a win-win-win position...at no cost to the other two providers! I think Dale Carnegie would be proud! :-)
Success,
Wolfspyder
Of course, these are only local to Minnesota...but that shouldn't be a problem for me because I also just found out that Google is beta-testing a more localized search engine for business clients.
The Silker Photo referral also demonstrates how sometimes deals can close well, independent of money considerations. For instance, it's possible that a six-issue advertising deal (or an even longer one) closed because Mr. Silker agreed to work as staff photographer on the new magazine project. That would be a win-win position for him, no matter how established his business was, since it carried the side-benefit of increased publicity to a market segment (business women & working mothers) he definitely needs to reach, to promote his portrait studio.
Maybe he can digitize my photo for me after he takes it...I may even convince him to upload it to the site directly from his office. Perhaps I can contribute an article or two to the new magazine, and get listed as a "contributing writer" in the next issue, or the one after that.
Why did I pick them? Because both firms have a strong potential for "buzz," for word-of-mouth, and both are small and local to my own area. I, on the other hand, have just given them a strongly written, national and international "plug," before they even know I am doing it! :-)
So, if I happen to get big, their small businesses may even get an increase in tourist traffic...and will certainly get a new addition to their "publicity portfolio" with which to impress new clients.
That makes this a win-win-win position...at no cost to the other two providers! I think Dale Carnegie would be proud! :-)
Success,
Wolfspyder
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Weekly Update #8: The Sidebar Developed
Blogging is a kind of "hive mind." Today I took one tiny random jump and discovered a large reserve of blogging tools like BabelFish. Since these required more changes in the template, I was also able to discover the right section of the template to affect my sidebar, which Bryan had been complaining was rather bare up until now.
Babelfish deserves an FML Number of its own, because it is a major language translation tool. So that makes them FML#086.
Hard to believe that another month is about to disappear into the archives.
Now that I have learned how to integrate material into my sidebar (right now it's that bunch of whitespace you see next to my own original text in the "narrative line," the stuff that will form the foundation of my book...) the look of the main site will be changing considerably.
If text appears in black bold like this, it means I haven't had time (or permission) to hyperlink it to another document yet. Of course the site is much larger in Week 8 than it was in Week 1, but that is not necessarily a good thing.
Some of you may have noticed a funny string of characters at the end of my blogger profile. This is my blogging code, a tiny bit of secret code used as shorthand, mostly by super-techies. Some day soon I will decode it for the rest of us, and that will make another fun article.
By now I have also integrated blogchalk and blogsnob at the top of my page as free advertising attractors, but of course the blogsnob code belongs in the sidebar, and looks a bit obstructive sitting on the top of the page.
Some of you are saying, "yeah, yeah, we noticed...shut up and show me the money!"
If so, you are entirely missing my point. Two months ago, this site was tiny. Three months ago, it never existed, even as a single thought in my mind. Now, it's already moving faster than the blogger spiders can keep up with it. Sometimes the difference between one day's productive work and the next is only a few minutes.
For now, I have yet another reason to show off all of these free tools. I want to show you every possible technique to advertise for FREE, before I get into the how and why of spending money wisely in promoting your business. I have no way of knowing how much of your time I am wasting, because you haven't told me yet.
If I have worked this project properly, then I get more source material every time anyone tells me anything. If I'm not doing my job right, then I don't deserve any traffic, let alone money. If I AM providing you with useful information, then both the traffic and the money will begin to flow by themselves.
The money does not come out of the programs. It can only come from your effective participation in the programs. The advantage to producing your own intellectual property, is that after being developed only ONCE, it can be SOLD over and over again...in a multitude of ways. In fact, it can even be sold BEFORE it ever goes into production!
Mention the name Stephen King or Tom Clancy, Anne Rice, Isaac Asimov,Agatha Christie, or Spider Robinson, and people immediately think "Best Seller."
Ron Howard, Stephen Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas, Jim Henson....See? Works for the movies too! :-) Dig deeply enough, and names like Avi Arad and Bob Kane,Bobby Fisher, Buzz Aldrin, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei,Peter Falk, and Mira Furlan begin to come to mind.
Am I self-promoting every time I mention Jesse Ventura or Governor Arnold The Barbarian? No...I may be making a political comment...or I may simply distrust my memory or my own spelling skills. In fact, I've deliberately tried to stay with figures so high-profile that they are "household words."
Now, if I were to ask you what master educator Fred Rogers, singer Della Street,novelist Andrew Greeley,radio host Sean Hannity, and comedian Mike Warnke all have in common, the fact is that to most people I might be pulling names out of a telephone directory at random. But the fact is that each of them shares an unpopular political/philosophical position with me...one which might jeopardize my standing with future sponsors, so I won't bother to mention it any further.
As for popular music, unfortunately I haven't really kept up since the glory days of Starship, Floyd, Moody Blues, or Blood, Sweat & Tears...so I won't bother pressing the point. Most of the artists I like today would leave no name recognition imprint at all.
Today's Lesson: Everything, even physical property, begins with an idea. Everyone, in every niche of every marketplace, is selling the results of ideas, all the time. This is what we call creativity. The PERSISTANCE of those ideas is what we call SUCCESS.
Wolfspyder
Babelfish deserves an FML Number of its own, because it is a major language translation tool. So that makes them FML#086.
Hard to believe that another month is about to disappear into the archives.
Now that I have learned how to integrate material into my sidebar (right now it's that bunch of whitespace you see next to my own original text in the "narrative line," the stuff that will form the foundation of my book...) the look of the main site will be changing considerably.
If text appears in black bold like this, it means I haven't had time (or permission) to hyperlink it to another document yet. Of course the site is much larger in Week 8 than it was in Week 1, but that is not necessarily a good thing.
Some of you may have noticed a funny string of characters at the end of my blogger profile. This is my blogging code, a tiny bit of secret code used as shorthand, mostly by super-techies. Some day soon I will decode it for the rest of us, and that will make another fun article.
By now I have also integrated blogchalk and blogsnob at the top of my page as free advertising attractors, but of course the blogsnob code belongs in the sidebar, and looks a bit obstructive sitting on the top of the page.
Some of you are saying, "yeah, yeah, we noticed...shut up and show me the money!"
If so, you are entirely missing my point. Two months ago, this site was tiny. Three months ago, it never existed, even as a single thought in my mind. Now, it's already moving faster than the blogger spiders can keep up with it. Sometimes the difference between one day's productive work and the next is only a few minutes.
For now, I have yet another reason to show off all of these free tools. I want to show you every possible technique to advertise for FREE, before I get into the how and why of spending money wisely in promoting your business. I have no way of knowing how much of your time I am wasting, because you haven't told me yet.
If I have worked this project properly, then I get more source material every time anyone tells me anything. If I'm not doing my job right, then I don't deserve any traffic, let alone money. If I AM providing you with useful information, then both the traffic and the money will begin to flow by themselves.
The money does not come out of the programs. It can only come from your effective participation in the programs. The advantage to producing your own intellectual property, is that after being developed only ONCE, it can be SOLD over and over again...in a multitude of ways. In fact, it can even be sold BEFORE it ever goes into production!
Mention the name Stephen King or Tom Clancy, Anne Rice, Isaac Asimov,Agatha Christie, or Spider Robinson, and people immediately think "Best Seller."
Ron Howard, Stephen Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas, Jim Henson....See? Works for the movies too! :-) Dig deeply enough, and names like Avi Arad and Bob Kane,Bobby Fisher, Buzz Aldrin, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei,Peter Falk, and Mira Furlan begin to come to mind.
Am I self-promoting every time I mention Jesse Ventura or Governor Arnold The Barbarian? No...I may be making a political comment...or I may simply distrust my memory or my own spelling skills. In fact, I've deliberately tried to stay with figures so high-profile that they are "household words."
Now, if I were to ask you what master educator Fred Rogers, singer Della Street,novelist Andrew Greeley,radio host Sean Hannity, and comedian Mike Warnke all have in common, the fact is that to most people I might be pulling names out of a telephone directory at random. But the fact is that each of them shares an unpopular political/philosophical position with me...one which might jeopardize my standing with future sponsors, so I won't bother to mention it any further.
As for popular music, unfortunately I haven't really kept up since the glory days of Starship, Floyd, Moody Blues, or Blood, Sweat & Tears...so I won't bother pressing the point. Most of the artists I like today would leave no name recognition imprint at all.
Today's Lesson: Everything, even physical property, begins with an idea. Everyone, in every niche of every marketplace, is selling the results of ideas, all the time. This is what we call creativity. The PERSISTANCE of those ideas is what we call SUCCESS.
Wolfspyder
Sunday, September 26, 2004
For Freeware Addicts (FML#085)
This is another attempt of mine to over-deliver. I figure the main site is not going to be worth visiting unless I include plenty of links which will not directly make me any money.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Concept #11: The Lag-Time Problem
8 3 clients developed within 9 weeks. My email boxes have become so clogged with auto-response materials by now, that the most productive change I could make yesterday was to reveal all my draft-stack "hole cards," on the principle that to risk a mistake in doing something productive, is better than to stagnate by doing nothing at all.
So, that is why you have been seeing the recent rash of little red disclaimer notices where some of my articles should be. The actual problem is much deeper...
1. Most of my clients don't yet know that they are my clients.
2. I need to make successful, individual requests, to combine even the licensed promotional materials available on a particular client's replicated website, with my own personally generated copy. I also have to assume that most of the corporate suits I will be talking to have never heard of blogging....
3. Any increase in traffic represents a potential increase in legal exposure/vulnerability...even assuming that NOBODY wants to be foolish enough to make any spurious SPAM reports. The moment somebody does submit something like that, I become vulnerable or liable in several geographic jurisdictions at once.
4. With every article, I gain a new "corporate sponsor"...except that I am not certain whether I am legally allowed, as a writer, to "compromise journalistic objectivity" by ALSO being a company rep for the people I am writing about. I can't afford the lawyer who would be able to tell me how to avoid this potential "conflict of interest."
5. Anything transmitted over a modem is also subject to my country's regulations on "The Telemarketing Sales Rule." I haven't read up on this yet...but I have to assume that it means a profound increase in my already-too-high phone bills.
6. Where I *have* been able to submit permissions requests by email, my relevant sponsors are mostly either too busy, or ignoring them altogether.
The opportunity is being ignored because my traffic is too small, and my reputation non-existant. But if I make it too large too fast, I also exponentially increase the chance of hurting someone else's business.
The Secret: Admittedly, this is a problem. But the advantage to blogging is that legal challenges of any kind move according to two basic things...time, and documentation. I can ONLY be held responsible for my reaction to proven and documented contacts...not for what an individual lurker does with my information.
The chances are that my "burden of proof" in any challenge is much smaller than any individual company's...and more extensively documented, by a faster process. However, I feel it is fair to mention that my legal notes (very specific ones) are stored in another blog file altogether, and I will not reveal any of its designators except in the instance of official inquiries.
TERMS: Article Under Construction=my draft stack has gotten too big lately. Since I know where I want the "storyboard" to go, I have posted this reminder of what work I still have to do for this provider/this subject.
Pending Permissions= I have submitted at least one email request to the provider in question since my last update of the article, requesting permission to use self-developed site copy around the material provided by any sponsor company.
Advanced Processing=The full implementation of this article or source requires an advanced template change or other, lengthier process which I either have not completed, or do not know how to complete yet.
Mentor Article= A brief study or opinion piece on people I personally consider worth studying in order to observe their unique approach to wealth, prosperity, or creative success processes.
Client Vs. Customer= A "Client" always refers to a COMPANY, while a "Customer" always refers to an INDIVIDUAL. As I have already demonstrated, I don't necessarily expect a particular company to know about me BEFORE I write about them or their services...nor do I enter into any negotiations to endorse a company BEFORE I have become a properly registered representative and/or Account User of their services. But you cannot become a CUSTOMER of mine without making an individual contact with me.
Free Money Link/FML Numbers= Represents a company which is FREE to join or use in some instances, in which I may or may not have a stake as an affiliate. This company, of course, is a
third-party provider, and entitled to make money whether I do or not. I do not attempt to establish any prior communication or endorsement deal with any company or product line before writing about them...but I also do my best to make sure trade-names or other sensitive details do not appear outside my draft-stack until full permissions have been secured.
Choice of Firms & "non-competition" policy: I reserve the right to choose my own clients.
I make every effort to avoid any competative "conflicts of interest" between services, mostly by attempting to make sure that wherever possible, each company is offering something unique in terms of "niche" or "market sector." I refuse to use EITHER "hype" OR "negative spin" of one company against another.
Self-promotion, Citation, Articles, and "commercials" : I also reserve the right to HOT-LINK anyone who has provided prior permissions, with a standing policy of "one ping, one mention."
The catch is that article context MUST, in my sole discretion after due dillegence, effectively represent some aspect of the "natural flow" of the business process, and each COMPANY or program will otherwise only be mentioned ONCE.
Where an article is identified as an "AD," it means that some or most of the copy was developed by the source company, without necessarily implying that I had any hand in the development or permissions process, whether or not my name appears there.
Other articles are entirely my own copy except where permissions notices or copyright notices have been separately identified.
Fair Use Doctrine & Drop/Add Policy: A policy has been established to drop any article for which full and valid permissions do not exist, and to immediately terminate any relationship with the relevant program or source company if necessary. Customers and Client Managers are urged to remember that blogging is necessarily a very fluid design process, and as such, I can only work so fast in catching any particular error.
The Book Vs. The Thought Experiment: The Thought Experiment is FREE. Participation with third-party providers is (mostly) FREE. By the time the BOOK is completed, the experiment will be OVER...and the book itself will be sold as a separate commercial property.
Delegation & Update Times: Customers and Clients are further advised that until I can delegate such responsibilities successfully, I may not be able to address any support problems encountered OUTSIDE of the MAIN BLOG SITE (http://money4nothing.blogspot.com) and thus you may encounter SIGNIFICANT GAPS IN UPDATE TIME at other sites attached to the project. Please check back early and often, and try to be as brief and specific as possible in any posts requesting such support. Being disabled I only work from home, on a part-time basis, as my own schedule permits, and have no formal employment relationship with any person or agency right now.
I know this has been a long post, and subheadings appear in the order in which they occurred to me, not necessarily alphabetical or the best logical organization scheme. Please forgive any inconvenience.
Success,
Wolfspyder
So, that is why you have been seeing the recent rash of little red disclaimer notices where some of my articles should be. The actual problem is much deeper...
1. Most of my clients don't yet know that they are my clients.
2. I need to make successful, individual requests, to combine even the licensed promotional materials available on a particular client's replicated website, with my own personally generated copy. I also have to assume that most of the corporate suits I will be talking to have never heard of blogging...
3. Any increase in traffic represents a potential increase in legal exposure/vulnerability...even assuming that NOBODY wants to be foolish enough to make any spurious SPAM reports. The moment somebody does submit something like that, I become vulnerable or liable in several geographic jurisdictions at once.
4. With every article, I gain a new "corporate sponsor"...except that I am not certain whether I am legally allowed, as a writer, to "compromise journalistic objectivity" by ALSO being a company rep for the people I am writing about. I can't afford the lawyer who would be able to tell me how to avoid this potential "conflict of interest."
5. Anything transmitted over a modem is also subject to my country's regulations on "The Telemarketing Sales Rule." I haven't read up on this yet...but I have to assume that it means a profound increase in my already-too-high phone bills.
6. Where I *have* been able to submit permissions requests by email, my relevant sponsors are mostly either too busy, or ignoring them altogether.
The opportunity is being ignored because my traffic is too small, and my reputation non-existant. But if I make it too large too fast, I also exponentially increase the chance of hurting someone else's business.
The Secret: Admittedly, this is a problem. But the advantage to blogging is that legal challenges of any kind move according to two basic things...time, and documentation. I can ONLY be held responsible for my reaction to proven and documented contacts...not for what an individual lurker does with my information.
The chances are that my "burden of proof" in any challenge is much smaller than any individual company's...and more extensively documented, by a faster process. However, I feel it is fair to mention that my legal notes (very specific ones) are stored in another blog file altogether, and I will not reveal any of its designators except in the instance of official inquiries.
TERMS: Article Under Construction=my draft stack has gotten too big lately. Since I know where I want the "storyboard" to go, I have posted this reminder of what work I still have to do for this provider/this subject.
Pending Permissions= I have submitted at least one email request to the provider in question since my last update of the article, requesting permission to use self-developed site copy around the material provided by any sponsor company.
Advanced Processing=The full implementation of this article or source requires an advanced template change or other, lengthier process which I either have not completed, or do not know how to complete yet.
Mentor Article= A brief study or opinion piece on people I personally consider worth studying in order to observe their unique approach to wealth, prosperity, or creative success processes.
Client Vs. Customer= A "Client" always refers to a COMPANY, while a "Customer" always refers to an INDIVIDUAL. As I have already demonstrated, I don't necessarily expect a particular company to know about me BEFORE I write about them or their services...nor do I enter into any negotiations to endorse a company BEFORE I have become a properly registered representative and/or Account User of their services. But you cannot become a CUSTOMER of mine without making an individual contact with me.
Free Money Link/FML Numbers= Represents a company which is FREE to join or use in some instances, in which I may or may not have a stake as an affiliate. This company, of course, is a
third-party provider, and entitled to make money whether I do or not. I do not attempt to establish any prior communication or endorsement deal with any company or product line before writing about them...but I also do my best to make sure trade-names or other sensitive details do not appear outside my draft-stack until full permissions have been secured.
Choice of Firms & "non-competition" policy: I reserve the right to choose my own clients.
I make every effort to avoid any competative "conflicts of interest" between services, mostly by attempting to make sure that wherever possible, each company is offering something unique in terms of "niche" or "market sector." I refuse to use EITHER "hype" OR "negative spin" of one company against another.
Self-promotion, Citation, Articles, and "commercials" : I also reserve the right to HOT-LINK anyone who has provided prior permissions, with a standing policy of "one ping, one mention."
The catch is that article context MUST, in my sole discretion after due dillegence, effectively represent some aspect of the "natural flow" of the business process, and each COMPANY or program will otherwise only be mentioned ONCE.
Where an article is identified as an "AD," it means that some or most of the copy was developed by the source company, without necessarily implying that I had any hand in the development or permissions process, whether or not my name appears there.
Other articles are entirely my own copy except where permissions notices or copyright notices have been separately identified.
Fair Use Doctrine & Drop/Add Policy: A policy has been established to drop any article for which full and valid permissions do not exist, and to immediately terminate any relationship with the relevant program or source company if necessary. Customers and Client Managers are urged to remember that blogging is necessarily a very fluid design process, and as such, I can only work so fast in catching any particular error.
The Book Vs. The Thought Experiment: The Thought Experiment is FREE. Participation with third-party providers is (mostly) FREE. By the time the BOOK is completed, the experiment will be OVER...and the book itself will be sold as a separate commercial property.
Delegation & Update Times: Customers and Clients are further advised that until I can delegate such responsibilities successfully, I may not be able to address any support problems encountered OUTSIDE of the MAIN BLOG SITE (http://money4nothing.blogspot.com) and thus you may encounter SIGNIFICANT GAPS IN UPDATE TIME at other sites attached to the project. Please check back early and often, and try to be as brief and specific as possible in any posts requesting such support. Being disabled I only work from home, on a part-time basis, as my own schedule permits, and have no formal employment relationship with any person or agency right now.
I know this has been a long post, and subheadings appear in the order in which they occurred to me, not necessarily alphabetical or the best logical organization scheme. Please forgive any inconvenience.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Become an Expert About Anything (FML#082)
Article Under Construction Pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004.
Find Your Lost Money (FML#081)
Article Under Construction Pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Amazon Ahoy! (FML#080)
Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004
There is Science to Getting Rich! (FML#079)
Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004
The Gatekeeper (FML#078)
Today I recieved only the third personal response in the history of the project.
Let's call him The Gatekeeper.
This man runs a major advice column for a huge portal site.
The link I can use for him is still awaiting his permission, as is the use of his name or company names. I will include it here as soon as I can.
He told me that he had spent about five minutes at my main site, and "just knew" that he had to spend "at least an hour" here. He also said that he had a couple of weeks worth of work to finish first, but then "we need to talk further." To me, that can mean only one thing...I must be doing something right! :-)
How did this happen?
Just like work begets work, opportunity begets opportunity.
I found one of this man's sites in the "normal" course of my own daily research, and discovered an opportunity to generate some "buzz" by accepting the possibility of being listed in one of his book projects.
The Secret:I traded contact, for contact. I ALSO created a win-win situation in which I saved him TIME.
I can hear the objections now.
"Yes, but how do I make MONEY from reading about this tiny little success of yours?"
Simple. Join one of my programs. Then tell me, PERSONALLY, in a phone call, IM flash, snail-letter, fax, or email, that you did so.
You are welcome to cross-pitch me one of your own products, but I have to be convinced first that we have a person-to-person contact...bots and auto-responders don't count.
You see, you have to get my attention.
Right now, I don't care one whit whether you make money or not.
I'm too busy writing this book.
By the time you have the hardcopy book in your hands, all the BEST opportunities in the whole project will already be GONE. I'm not talking about the affiliate programs. I'm talking about the original, quiet wavefront of the "buzz" in my business...the back-end and side-play deals that come *before* all the "public hype."
For me, there is a day-by-day struggle with the dark thought that I will be sued, that everything I have said in this book will be taken for an illegally commercialized, hyped-up exercise in self-promotion. Or that one of my "sponsors," or even the FTC, will decide to sue me before pulling out of the project, over some stupid little "one-click error" or some unintended conflict of interests.
It's even an error-in-concept to CORRECT some of my other errors, because if I slick up the site too much, then some of you won't be able to see, or believe, how or why I made the mistakes in the first place.
It certainly doesn't help my mood, that I have been working on this post for over three hours now, and it's only about 6:30 in the morning. I'm more excited about my old, half-completed manuscript that arrived from New York a few days ago, courtesy of my friend Elizabeth.
As more and more companies are found, even the style of my writing may change, becoming less specific about certain things and more assured about others. Welcome to the real world. At least I am learning how to avoid marketing hype.
And...I have not yet begun to write! :-)
Success,
Wolfspyder
Let's call him The Gatekeeper.
This man runs a major advice column for a huge portal site.
The link I can use for him is still awaiting his permission, as is the use of his name or company names. I will include it here as soon as I can.
He told me that he had spent about five minutes at my main site, and "just knew" that he had to spend "at least an hour" here. He also said that he had a couple of weeks worth of work to finish first, but then "we need to talk further." To me, that can mean only one thing...I must be doing something right! :-)
How did this happen?
Just like work begets work, opportunity begets opportunity.
I found one of this man's sites in the "normal" course of my own daily research, and discovered an opportunity to generate some "buzz" by accepting the possibility of being listed in one of his book projects.
The Secret:I traded contact, for contact. I ALSO created a win-win situation in which I saved him TIME.
I can hear the objections now.
"Yes, but how do I make MONEY from reading about this tiny little success of yours?"
Simple. Join one of my programs. Then tell me, PERSONALLY, in a phone call, IM flash, snail-letter, fax, or email, that you did so.
You are welcome to cross-pitch me one of your own products, but I have to be convinced first that we have a person-to-person contact...bots and auto-responders don't count.
You see, you have to get my attention.
Right now, I don't care one whit whether you make money or not.
I'm too busy writing this book.
By the time you have the hardcopy book in your hands, all the BEST opportunities in the whole project will already be GONE. I'm not talking about the affiliate programs. I'm talking about the original, quiet wavefront of the "buzz" in my business...the back-end and side-play deals that come *before* all the "public hype."
For me, there is a day-by-day struggle with the dark thought that I will be sued, that everything I have said in this book will be taken for an illegally commercialized, hyped-up exercise in self-promotion. Or that one of my "sponsors," or even the FTC, will decide to sue me before pulling out of the project, over some stupid little "one-click error" or some unintended conflict of interests.
It's even an error-in-concept to CORRECT some of my other errors, because if I slick up the site too much, then some of you won't be able to see, or believe, how or why I made the mistakes in the first place.
It certainly doesn't help my mood, that I have been working on this post for over three hours now, and it's only about 6:30 in the morning. I'm more excited about my old, half-completed manuscript that arrived from New York a few days ago, courtesy of my friend Elizabeth.
As more and more companies are found, even the style of my writing may change, becoming less specific about certain things and more assured about others. Welcome to the real world. At least I am learning how to avoid marketing hype.
And...I have not yet begun to write! :-)
Success,
Wolfspyder
Mentor: Rebecca Fine
Mentor Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing and Permissions...Last Update:09/24/2004
Concept #9: Three Currencies of Life
Time. Money. Contacts.
If someone really wants to be wealthy, there's no way around it.
You have to master all three.
Earlier you came here looking for a secret formula to success.
I'm going to give you one.
I'm not just going to give you one, I'm going to give you 1001.
But if you come away with nothing else from this blog, and nothing else from this book...if you never hear or see another word from my taped seminars, ever... Listen up, because here is the master equation for the whole project...
(T+M)-R* A/C=Success.
Here are the variables...
The above equation holds true for anywhere in the universe where:
T= an unknown, fixed amount of Time.
M= an unknown, fixed amount of Money.
(MINUS or "taking away")
R= a known or unknown, variable amount of Resentment
(Multiplied By)
A= a known or unknown quantity of Audacity, or "Attitude"
(OVER or "divided by")
a known or unknown number of Contacts
during your life== Your SUCCESS!
If someone really wants to be wealthy, there's no way around it.
You have to master all three.
Earlier you came here looking for a secret formula to success.
I'm going to give you one.
I'm not just going to give you one, I'm going to give you 1001.
But if you come away with nothing else from this blog, and nothing else from this book...if you never hear or see another word from my taped seminars, ever... Listen up, because here is the master equation for the whole project...
(T+M)-R* A/C=Success.
Here are the variables...
The above equation holds true for anywhere in the universe where:
T= an unknown, fixed amount of Time.
M= an unknown, fixed amount of Money.
(MINUS or "taking away")
R= a known or unknown, variable amount of Resentment
(Multiplied By)
A= a known or unknown quantity of Audacity, or "Attitude"
(OVER or "divided by")
a known or unknown number of Contacts
during your life== Your SUCCESS!
Trade Opinions For Money (FML#076)
Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004
Online Business Networks (FML#075)
Article Under Construction pending conference, Advanced Processing, & permissions...Last Update:09/24/2004.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Concept #8: Everybody Sells
What am I waiting for? I get asked that question several hundred times a week now, mostly by people's auto-response scripts. I'll give you the honest answer...human lag times. For the past couple of months, I have been doing more or less the same amount of work, and learning to treat it more and more like play.
Like this...for a little while now, I have been speaking of the mysterious Marketing Expert "K". If I've done my job right, says "k," then by this time, a lot of you are forgetting that I am a salesman. Any really good salesman would go straight for the money, yes?
Wrong again. A few weeks ago, before I ever joined up with her company, "k" taught me about four critical self-talk agreements and 3 power processes, which completely eliminate the need for any sales "hype" whatsoever. Regardless of company, niche, or product.
Sounds good, right?
Well, I have this tiny little problem...you see, I'm not actually supposed to be mentioning or promoting her yet, even though she is absolutely critical to the success of the project.
And being an expert in linguistics, she can smell a sneaky salesman from miles away...so I can only hope that instead of taking me apart without even using her lawyer, she will be able to recognize a small sample of her own training at work when she sees it!
I promise you...I won't mention her name or her site without her direct permission...and I haven't given you any information she hasn't already splashed into her front page anyhow. I'm not interested in being dismissed from her affiliate program or anyone else's. I'll just leave the one small Title-link open above this post, in case you'd like to know who she is.
If you like what you see, maybe you can put in a good word with her for me, OK?
Thanks.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Like this...for a little while now, I have been speaking of the mysterious Marketing Expert "K". If I've done my job right, says "k," then by this time, a lot of you are forgetting that I am a salesman. Any really good salesman would go straight for the money, yes?
Wrong again. A few weeks ago, before I ever joined up with her company, "k" taught me about four critical self-talk agreements and 3 power processes, which completely eliminate the need for any sales "hype" whatsoever. Regardless of company, niche, or product.
Sounds good, right?
Well, I have this tiny little problem...you see, I'm not actually supposed to be mentioning or promoting her yet, even though she is absolutely critical to the success of the project.
And being an expert in linguistics, she can smell a sneaky salesman from miles away...so I can only hope that instead of taking me apart without even using her lawyer, she will be able to recognize a small sample of her own training at work when she sees it!
I promise you...I won't mention her name or her site without her direct permission...and I haven't given you any information she hasn't already splashed into her front page anyhow. I'm not interested in being dismissed from her affiliate program or anyone else's. I'll just leave the one small Title-link open above this post, in case you'd like to know who she is.
If you like what you see, maybe you can put in a good word with her for me, OK?
Thanks.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Weekly Update #8: My First Downtime
Sorry I'm late...we had a major storm last week and my cable modem got fried. Thankfully, I was only down for two days. My friend Larry and all his buddies were very excited when I told them that after only 8 weeks, I now have 73 client companies and two actual customers on my site.
What am I actually doing with this site? Well, first off, I am writing a marketing book. I can get away with doing that, because (with notable exceptions) practically anything I post to the internet can be identified as my own intellectual property.
The funny thing is, I never thought I would be writing a marketing book when I started...I wanted to design a successful website. Blogging does both.
No sooner did I come back online today, than within a few seconds I heard from
Anna-Marie Stewart again. Congratulations were in order on the new PDF book she had just completed.
Bryan, meanwhile, is still wondering where the flow of the project is going, and how it is going to position him and his source company for more customers and better income. He still thinks of himself as a "bad distributor" and a "bad promoter," and is unsure of the validity of the endorsement deal we have been quietly trying to put together behind the scenes.
For both of them, the Snowball Effect, built on the simple fact that work begets work, is just beginning to take hold.
They are just now beginning to recognize that effective selling, and effective publicity, are two different processes.
Contrary to what the internet often leads people to believe, publicity is not instantaneous. The actions which lead people to "instant" success are most often small, repetative, un-noticed tasks, practiced and performed over and over again.
What we call "fame" is actually a natural process which happens when a certain critical mass of individuals learn and recognize what work you are already doing, and make the decision to jump on board. We call it "wealth" when the known quality of that work, produces useful GOODS, SERVICES, CONTACTS, or MONEY.
The nice thing about intellectual property, is that as long as you are careful to put things into your own words, you can "steal" all the ideas you want, and it will still look as though you developed them "out of thin air," because copyrights,trademarks, and patents don't apply to IDEAS. They can only apply to the specific physical work a person has ALREADY done BECAUSE of, or in support of, those ideas.
Take George Lucas for example. Most people think he is "famous" today because he is "the man who made Star Wars. " He's on top of a media empire . He "made" Harrison Ford's big break, put the "unknown" Mark Hamil's name on the map, right? WRONG!
FIRST, he had to "re-invent" the ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY.
He did this by "creating" THE #1 special effects house in the world...Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).
The catch: the majority of all his "biggest" business deals, were ALREADY closed well before ANYBODY knew how "big" or "hot" his film would become.
How did he originally raise the money to make this film "nobody wanted" because it was "too ambitious" and required too many things "no one had ever done before?"
He sold off little bits and pieces of his "tiny" pet project, over and over again.
Every time he got to a "no," the next question in his mind was probably "OK, if you don't want it, can you tell me who does?"
The Payoff: Never mind the money for a moment. ILM "had to" be created to solve enough effects problems to execute Star Wars...and when Star Wars succeeeded, ILM was STILL THERE! The franchising process Lucas used was so extensive and "brilliant" in scope that Mel Brooks later lampooned it along with everything else in the movie Space Balls.
The Snowball Effect:Dolby/THX sound processing became an industry standard. The publicity for the film began to feed on itself. Carrie Fisher got her first novel deal. Harrison Ford went on to become an A-list star in his own right, even though his actual craft and work ethic had been AT LEAST as good in several previous films. Mark Hamil got to work with Jim Henson's Muppets(tm).
All of these instances are just off the top of my head...they don't even begin to describe the spin-offs or the sequels, let alone what Mr. Lucas or any of the others are doing now. Today it is just assumed that ANY new cartoon is effectively a 30-60 minute commercial for a new toy line...or that Ted Turner "mysteriously" controls "all" of them anyhow.
The fact is that money doesn't grow on trees...but it can be created out of any situation in which two or more people need to exchange benefits of either time or contacts. A JOB is created by ANY sucessful trade of time for money. A service is created by ANY successful trade of money for contacts.
Eventually, "the rich" come to understand how to trade in all three of these True Currencies.
But that is another post, for another time.
Success,
Wolfspyder
What am I actually doing with this site? Well, first off, I am writing a marketing book. I can get away with doing that, because (with notable exceptions) practically anything I post to the internet can be identified as my own intellectual property.
The funny thing is, I never thought I would be writing a marketing book when I started...I wanted to design a successful website. Blogging does both.
No sooner did I come back online today, than within a few seconds I heard from
Anna-Marie Stewart again. Congratulations were in order on the new PDF book she had just completed.
Bryan, meanwhile, is still wondering where the flow of the project is going, and how it is going to position him and his source company for more customers and better income. He still thinks of himself as a "bad distributor" and a "bad promoter," and is unsure of the validity of the endorsement deal we have been quietly trying to put together behind the scenes.
For both of them, the Snowball Effect, built on the simple fact that work begets work, is just beginning to take hold.
They are just now beginning to recognize that effective selling, and effective publicity, are two different processes.
Contrary to what the internet often leads people to believe, publicity is not instantaneous. The actions which lead people to "instant" success are most often small, repetative, un-noticed tasks, practiced and performed over and over again.
What we call "fame" is actually a natural process which happens when a certain critical mass of individuals learn and recognize what work you are already doing, and make the decision to jump on board. We call it "wealth" when the known quality of that work, produces useful GOODS, SERVICES, CONTACTS, or MONEY.
The nice thing about intellectual property, is that as long as you are careful to put things into your own words, you can "steal" all the ideas you want, and it will still look as though you developed them "out of thin air," because copyrights,trademarks, and patents don't apply to IDEAS. They can only apply to the specific physical work a person has ALREADY done BECAUSE of, or in support of, those ideas.
Take George Lucas for example. Most people think he is "famous" today because he is "the man who made Star Wars. " He's on top of a media empire . He "made" Harrison Ford's big break, put the "unknown" Mark Hamil's name on the map, right? WRONG!
FIRST, he had to "re-invent" the ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY.
He did this by "creating" THE #1 special effects house in the world...Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).
The catch: the majority of all his "biggest" business deals, were ALREADY closed well before ANYBODY knew how "big" or "hot" his film would become.
How did he originally raise the money to make this film "nobody wanted" because it was "too ambitious" and required too many things "no one had ever done before?"
He sold off little bits and pieces of his "tiny" pet project, over and over again.
Every time he got to a "no," the next question in his mind was probably "OK, if you don't want it, can you tell me who does?"
The Payoff: Never mind the money for a moment. ILM "had to" be created to solve enough effects problems to execute Star Wars...and when Star Wars succeeeded, ILM was STILL THERE! The franchising process Lucas used was so extensive and "brilliant" in scope that Mel Brooks later lampooned it along with everything else in the movie Space Balls.
The Snowball Effect:Dolby/THX sound processing became an industry standard. The publicity for the film began to feed on itself. Carrie Fisher got her first novel deal. Harrison Ford went on to become an A-list star in his own right, even though his actual craft and work ethic had been AT LEAST as good in several previous films. Mark Hamil got to work with Jim Henson's Muppets(tm).
All of these instances are just off the top of my head...they don't even begin to describe the spin-offs or the sequels, let alone what Mr. Lucas or any of the others are doing now. Today it is just assumed that ANY new cartoon is effectively a 30-60 minute commercial for a new toy line...or that Ted Turner "mysteriously" controls "all" of them anyhow.
The fact is that money doesn't grow on trees...but it can be created out of any situation in which two or more people need to exchange benefits of either time or contacts. A JOB is created by ANY sucessful trade of time for money. A service is created by ANY successful trade of money for contacts.
Eventually, "the rich" come to understand how to trade in all three of these True Currencies.
But that is another post, for another time.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Friday, September 17, 2004
Shorten your URL! (FML#072)
Article Under Construction pending permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004
AD: Ad-aware Spyware Blocking (FML#071)
Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004.
AD: FreeViral Ad Network (FML#070)
Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
My First Reciprocal Link (FML#068)
=============================================
Avoid scams, shams and spam with Not Just Another Ezine!
Full of free downloads, ebooks and information to maximize your time online. Subscribe free!
http://annamarketing.com
mailto:admin@annamarketing.com?subject=subscribe
=============================================
My new friend Anna,at least, knows that I am for real. Technically, she qualifies to be a
Wolfpack Elite Director, but other than remaining firm in my personal ethical commitment to find her at least 100 paying customers for her own business, neither of us has much idea yet what that means, or even if the position is legal.
Today, after at least two months of effort, I have a confirmed audience of two individuals.
Congratulations, Anna, on becoming Director 068. Even if all it took you was the extra effort of a single personal email.
"Wait a minute!" I hear some of you saying already. "You spent two whole months just to find two customers, and now you are promoting her to a director slot because of one little email? Outrageous! "
No. I am promoting her immediately because her one little email made abundantly clear to me that she implicitly grasps my earlier assertion, that even on the internet, all business must be done by human beings.
I can already hear the next question my other Director,
Bryan Mize will be asking...something along the lines of "what does this have to do with making money for our source company? Is this going to make me any new sales? Is Anna a new sale?"
I can only remind him of what our marketing expert K taught me just a day or two ago, and say, "not unless she wants to be. " Stop feeling guilty because of the 90% of prospects who won't buy from you. Just because I am a salesman, doesn't mean I ought to be thinking like one. People like deciding to buy, not "being sold. "
The secret: Money may leverage your time, but only Time can leverage your contacts. Money will not improve your reputation, but improving your reputation will increase your earning power.
The Texan momentarily forgot this principle in his eagerness to close the deal successfully, and his auto-responder is still annoying me with reminders of how much money and opportunity I am "missing out on" now because I "failed to act." Yes, it's true that big money deals are often time-sensitive, so that is why urgency sells.But in that instance, I already know that I was the better negotiator.
Because I haven't directly mentioned his name , I know he can't sue me. If I were a less ethical person, I might simply change my mind about calling him back. There is no way he can know that if he declines my free publicity, he is actually shutting down two deals at once.
If I play this right, my entry into his business may even be self-funding. Another example of build as you go. I could link him in right now, except that I don't yet have his direct permission to do that. In my mind, that could be construed as spamming him. Meanwhile, I still want to thank him for the two complete articles he has provided me with.
By now, the more observant among you will have noticed that I list several Free Money Links (FML) which at first give the appearance of having nothing to do with direct income generators. That is my way of giving my audience some free leverage on my own contacts. It also defends me against eventual criticisms of "too much self-promotion" since my intent is to promote at least 1001 different people through their businesses, ideas, and organizations.
If you are a new marketer looking to learn how to promote your business, relax...you've come to a right place. I won't say THE right place because I don't believe that one size, or one solution, fits all...real wealth is both a mindset and a team effort.
If you are brand new to all of this, whatever your level of web experience, whether or not you have managed to find your first one-click empire yet...check back often. This resource is free, and will stay free at least until I close the first book deal.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Avoid scams, shams and spam with Not Just Another Ezine!
Full of free downloads, ebooks and information to maximize your time online. Subscribe free!
http://annamarketing.com
mailto:admin@annamarketing.com?subject=subscribe
=============================================
My new friend Anna,at least, knows that I am for real. Technically, she qualifies to be a
Wolfpack Elite Director, but other than remaining firm in my personal ethical commitment to find her at least 100 paying customers for her own business, neither of us has much idea yet what that means, or even if the position is legal.
Today, after at least two months of effort, I have a confirmed audience of two individuals.
Congratulations, Anna, on becoming Director 068. Even if all it took you was the extra effort of a single personal email.
"Wait a minute!" I hear some of you saying already. "You spent two whole months just to find two customers, and now you are promoting her to a director slot because of one little email? Outrageous! "
No. I am promoting her immediately because her one little email made abundantly clear to me that she implicitly grasps my earlier assertion, that even on the internet, all business must be done by human beings.
I can already hear the next question my other Director,
Bryan Mize will be asking...something along the lines of "what does this have to do with making money for our source company? Is this going to make me any new sales? Is Anna a new sale?"
I can only remind him of what our marketing expert K taught me just a day or two ago, and say, "not unless she wants to be. " Stop feeling guilty because of the 90% of prospects who won't buy from you. Just because I am a salesman, doesn't mean I ought to be thinking like one. People like deciding to buy, not "being sold. "
The secret: Money may leverage your time, but only Time can leverage your contacts. Money will not improve your reputation, but improving your reputation will increase your earning power.
The Texan momentarily forgot this principle in his eagerness to close the deal successfully, and his auto-responder is still annoying me with reminders of how much money and opportunity I am "missing out on" now because I "failed to act." Yes, it's true that big money deals are often time-sensitive, so that is why urgency sells.But in that instance, I already know that I was the better negotiator.
Because I haven't directly mentioned his name , I know he can't sue me. If I were a less ethical person, I might simply change my mind about calling him back. There is no way he can know that if he declines my free publicity, he is actually shutting down two deals at once.
If I play this right, my entry into his business may even be self-funding. Another example of build as you go. I could link him in right now, except that I don't yet have his direct permission to do that. In my mind, that could be construed as spamming him. Meanwhile, I still want to thank him for the two complete articles he has provided me with.
By now, the more observant among you will have noticed that I list several Free Money Links (FML) which at first give the appearance of having nothing to do with direct income generators. That is my way of giving my audience some free leverage on my own contacts. It also defends me against eventual criticisms of "too much self-promotion" since my intent is to promote at least 1001 different people through their businesses, ideas, and organizations.
If you are a new marketer looking to learn how to promote your business, relax...you've come to a right place. I won't say THE right place because I don't believe that one size, or one solution, fits all...real wealth is both a mindset and a team effort.
If you are brand new to all of this, whatever your level of web experience, whether or not you have managed to find your first one-click empire yet...check back often. This resource is free, and will stay free at least until I close the first book deal.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Template Shifts
OK. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong about scripting tags. I have also asked for my first reciprocal link. Someone named Anna has also written me a nice, personal note enquiring about how one of my newer programs is working.
The snowball effect is working.
Tonight a very popular software designer wants to offer me some free instruction on affilliate marketing. My guess is that he will also want to pitch a new product or two of his own, but that's fine by me.
Bryan Mize has always been excited about this project, but he strongly congratulated me when he heard about the new affiliate I just acquired this morning. What he doesn't yet know is that there have actually been two of them, and that since work begets work, I still have several accounts which I haven't even begun to promote yet.
By far the most effective work I have done today, was to find out how to introduce some changes directly into my blog's template code. This, combined with a few other simple changes on another site, should begin to introduce genuine traffic into my part of the blogosphere.
Success,
Wolfspyder
The snowball effect is working.
Tonight a very popular software designer wants to offer me some free instruction on affilliate marketing. My guess is that he will also want to pitch a new product or two of his own, but that's fine by me.
Bryan Mize has always been excited about this project, but he strongly congratulated me when he heard about the new affiliate I just acquired this morning. What he doesn't yet know is that there have actually been two of them, and that since work begets work, I still have several accounts which I haven't even begun to promote yet.
By far the most effective work I have done today, was to find out how to introduce some changes directly into my blog's template code. This, combined with a few other simple changes on another site, should begin to introduce genuine traffic into my part of the blogosphere.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Drop/Add
This week I had to decide to drop my first program from the project. The problem was that I could not identify any support address with which to connect their site...and I knew the business had recently changed hands.
This has taught me a couple of very basic lessons.
1. Never, ever, ever, use other people's copy without their explicit permission.
Copyright on the internet is one of the trickiest parts of the whole game. It's very tempting to use a simple "view source" command to grab other people's source links, and a lot of personal pages get "designed" that way.
Notice, I said PERSONAL pages...it will NOT improve your reputation to do this, and it is still illegal. It CERTAINLY will NOT make any money...the only reason more people do not get sued over it is that personal pages aren't usually worth suing over.
Right now I am making references to several more income streams than actually appear on the site, because I have to wait out the lag times between my becoming affilliated with particular programs, and recieving human responses to my permission requests, so that I can respect the responsible party's wishes to be included in the overall project, or not.
2. The net moves faster than we do.
From an ergonomic standpoint, the site design has progressed almost blindingly fast. I am already getting quite adept at placing banners and promotional copy. The more sites I am exposed to, the more diverse my knowledge of the marketplace becomes, and the more comments I can successfully make about this or that contribution to it.
3. Every product or program which is not actually illegal, is working for someone.
Even if it isn't you.
Advertising copy is rich with the opinion that Gimmick XYZ is "the best thing out there." What they really mean is "this thing makes me money if I can convince you to try it, so it's the best thing FOR ME to promote." One size nearly never fits all, or else we would all be using the same sorts of things eventually, and the marketplace might die of boredom. This is another bit of wisdom I picked up from "K" just yesterday.
How do I get around obstacles like these? The process is not quite as simple as it looks on the page, but it goes something like this. Ask yourself how many other people you can help or promote today.
Once I have that clearly in mind, the rest falls into place. I repeatedly bring references to certain people into the articles in this site, not only because they have helped me in the past, but because I hope it greatly enriches the content I can offer to my audience. The more I can help new people to understand what I have gained from listening to and observing these mentors, the more those people will begin to respect my own reputation...and the more often they will want to buy.
Success, Wolfspyder
This has taught me a couple of very basic lessons.
1. Never, ever, ever, use other people's copy without their explicit permission.
Copyright on the internet is one of the trickiest parts of the whole game. It's very tempting to use a simple "view source" command to grab other people's source links, and a lot of personal pages get "designed" that way.
Notice, I said PERSONAL pages...it will NOT improve your reputation to do this, and it is still illegal. It CERTAINLY will NOT make any money...the only reason more people do not get sued over it is that personal pages aren't usually worth suing over.
Right now I am making references to several more income streams than actually appear on the site, because I have to wait out the lag times between my becoming affilliated with particular programs, and recieving human responses to my permission requests, so that I can respect the responsible party's wishes to be included in the overall project, or not.
2. The net moves faster than we do.
From an ergonomic standpoint, the site design has progressed almost blindingly fast. I am already getting quite adept at placing banners and promotional copy. The more sites I am exposed to, the more diverse my knowledge of the marketplace becomes, and the more comments I can successfully make about this or that contribution to it.
3. Every product or program which is not actually illegal, is working for someone.
Even if it isn't you.
Advertising copy is rich with the opinion that Gimmick XYZ is "the best thing out there." What they really mean is "this thing makes me money if I can convince you to try it, so it's the best thing FOR ME to promote." One size nearly never fits all, or else we would all be using the same sorts of things eventually, and the marketplace might die of boredom. This is another bit of wisdom I picked up from "K" just yesterday.
How do I get around obstacles like these? The process is not quite as simple as it looks on the page, but it goes something like this. Ask yourself how many other people you can help or promote today.
Once I have that clearly in mind, the rest falls into place. I repeatedly bring references to certain people into the articles in this site, not only because they have helped me in the past, but because I hope it greatly enriches the content I can offer to my audience. The more I can help new people to understand what I have gained from listening to and observing these mentors, the more those people will begin to respect my own reputation...and the more often they will want to buy.
Success, Wolfspyder
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Hunting Customer #65
Bryan just came through for me again. No sooner had I read his email advising me that the marketing book he ordered for me would "probably" arrive today, then a friendly delivery person was knocking on my door.
Today I get to make him happy, because now he and referrals to his company's products are hot-linked all over the site.
What makes me happy is the number of different ways in which people are finding me new customers without even knowing they are doing it. K is one of these. The Texan is another.
As I write this entry, a telemarketer calls from a local siding company. I live in an apartment, so I am not a qualified prospect. K's book allows me to hang up on him without feeling any guilt whatsoever, even though I have done his job in the past, and can sympathize with the sting of such abrupt personal rejections.
Even on the internet, sales- rejection is a common response . An effective auto-responder can only do so much for the progress of your business. What I like most about this book is how simply and effectively it has taught me why such rejections take place, and the things you and your business can do to avoid them.
Two chapters in, I can already see that I want to affilliate with the author immediately. The formal email request will go out later today.
My strategy...stay with my main focal point, which is writing a saleable book of my own, just as I always wished to do. The rest will take care of itself.
Sucess,
Wolfspyder
Today I get to make him happy, because now he and referrals to his company's products are hot-linked all over the site.
What makes me happy is the number of different ways in which people are finding me new customers without even knowing they are doing it. K is one of these. The Texan is another.
As I write this entry, a telemarketer calls from a local siding company. I live in an apartment, so I am not a qualified prospect. K's book allows me to hang up on him without feeling any guilt whatsoever, even though I have done his job in the past, and can sympathize with the sting of such abrupt personal rejections.
Even on the internet, sales- rejection is a common response . An effective auto-responder can only do so much for the progress of your business. What I like most about this book is how simply and effectively it has taught me why such rejections take place, and the things you and your business can do to avoid them.
Two chapters in, I can already see that I want to affilliate with the author immediately. The formal email request will go out later today.
My strategy...stay with my main focal point, which is writing a saleable book of my own, just as I always wished to do. The rest will take care of itself.
Sucess,
Wolfspyder
Site Pro News (FML#064)
This is a fine resource for new developers and webmasters...I have a lot of "homework " from them already this morning.
Mentor: Molly Gordon (FML#063)
Learn to Love Marketing
Is your livelihood and satisfaction limited by your inability to self-promote with ease and grace? Let internationally acclaimed business and marketing coach Molly Gordon show you how you can market your work and love doing it! Visit www.authenticpromotion.com for a FREE weekly newsletter, hundreds of FREE resources, and the Authentic Promotion (TM) tapes, teleclasses, and e-books that have helped hundreds of independent professionals build thriving businesses
Is your livelihood and satisfaction limited by your inability to self-promote with ease and grace? Let internationally acclaimed business and marketing coach Molly Gordon show you how you can market your work and love doing it! Visit www.authenticpromotion.com for a FREE weekly newsletter, hundreds of FREE resources, and the Authentic Promotion (TM) tapes, teleclasses, and e-books that have helped hundreds of independent professionals build thriving businesses
Monday, September 13, 2004
Mentor: Spider Robinson
Callahan's Place is the most unusual bar in the known galaxy. I am proud to think of Spider as one of my creative mentors. Most of the SF community acknowledges that he is the closest thing to a "son and heir" that Grand Master Robert Heinlien ever had...me, I just consider him a rousing good read, even where I don't necessarily agree with him.
Weekly Update #7: Advanced Processing Needed
The Draft Stack has now jumped to about 62 company/client items, and I am currently trying to determine whether at least one company will need to be dropped from the project. Bryan Mize tells me that the sales training book he ordered for me should be here by about next week.
The best news this week is that Robert Kiyosaki's people have reviewed the site and accepted my affilliate application. I discussed Robert's work as a wealth mentor a few days ago, with another personal friend who is considering getting into site design.
Meanwhile, The Texan thinks he has been back to me, but he hasn't. This isn't a bother to me, except to mention that I haven't given him the phone call I promised a few posts ago either.
I don't have quite as much new email as I supposed once the duplications of effort are counted out of the process. I am having to develop some new proceedures for processing the emails that I do have.
Weekly Update #6 has been held up because some of the permission questions I wanted to address in that article still remain unresolved. So far my policy of not backtracking any more than necessary until my 1001 income streams have been found, appears to be successful.
Rumors are reaching me through back channels, that more and more of the people who know about me have actually seen the site in one form or another, but so far all I can be sure of are a few random lurkers. This too will change with time and practice.
Success,
Wolfspyder
The best news this week is that Robert Kiyosaki's people have reviewed the site and accepted my affilliate application. I discussed Robert's work as a wealth mentor a few days ago, with another personal friend who is considering getting into site design.
Meanwhile, The Texan thinks he has been back to me, but he hasn't. This isn't a bother to me, except to mention that I haven't given him the phone call I promised a few posts ago either.
I don't have quite as much new email as I supposed once the duplications of effort are counted out of the process. I am having to develop some new proceedures for processing the emails that I do have.
Weekly Update #6 has been held up because some of the permission questions I wanted to address in that article still remain unresolved. So far my policy of not backtracking any more than necessary until my 1001 income streams have been found, appears to be successful.
Rumors are reaching me through back channels, that more and more of the people who know about me have actually seen the site in one form or another, but so far all I can be sure of are a few random lurkers. This too will change with time and practice.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Bryan Gets Excited...
Bryan Mize just called again from my anchor company. He and his upline are very excited about my emerging proposals. The emails that have significance to me by this time are not simply the ones I can use to mine promotional links from, but those which represent person-to-person contact.
As I have said before, and will say again...in a real business, online or ofline, all the real work must still be done by humans. A human being taking an attitude of personal responsibility who is willing and able to answer the right questions, will trump the need for a lawsuit any day.
Today I have 233 emails to process. Most 0f them are bot-generated. Some of them represent accounts I opened months ago, before I knew what I was doing.
To make matters worse, new online marketers often judge the "success" of a lead-generation program merely by the technical factors: persistence of cookies, the SEO ranking, or the so-called "effectiveness" of their "upgrade now!" messages.
I am firmly convinced that this is why 95-98% of them fail.
As I have said before, and will say again...in a real business, online or ofline, all the real work must still be done by humans. A human being taking an attitude of personal responsibility who is willing and able to answer the right questions, will trump the need for a lawsuit any day.
Today I have 233 emails to process. Most 0f them are bot-generated. Some of them represent accounts I opened months ago, before I knew what I was doing.
To make matters worse, new online marketers often judge the "success" of a lead-generation program merely by the technical factors: persistence of cookies, the SEO ranking, or the so-called "effectiveness" of their "upgrade now!" messages.
I am firmly convinced that this is why 95-98% of them fail.
The VIP Site Group (FML#061)
Article Under Construction pending Permissions...Last Update: 09/29/2004
Mentor: Robert G. Allen (FML#060)
Mentor Article Under Construction pending Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004
Mentor: Wade Cook (FML#058)
Mentor Article Under Construction pending Advanced Processing & Permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004.
Mentor: Julia Cameron (FML#057)
Mentor Article Under Construction Pending Permissions...Last Update:09/29/2004
Mentor: Brian Tracy (FML#056)
Mentor Article Under Construction pernding permissions...Last Update: 09/24/2004
Get Paid to be Online (Exchange) (FML#054)
I promised these nice folks I would put their link up within 3 days, so here it is.
Laying Down Tracks to Profit...
Already the number of identified FML's in the Draft Stack has grown to 53. My efficiency in analyzing them is also growing. I had a restless night last night, keyed up and worried about whether Blogger was going to hold me in violation of Terms of Service.
Let me make something clear: I am absolutely paranoid about fraud. The circumstances of my extended family were such that I grew up constantly thinking of myself as "a fraud" and/or a "pathological liar" even when it wasn't true.
Today, this even makes me super-cautious in my attempts to build up traffic at this site.
I have an ongoing nightmare, that one single "wrong click" of my mouse could somehow catapault me into a lawsuit.
This site is actually built on the stream-of-consciousness rantings of an overcompensating, obsessive "training junkie" trying to gradually "self-improve" his way across the e-commerce jungle.
Sooner or later, I know that I am going to get it wrong somewhere.
Maybe I won't get it wrong, but I will just run into a bigger and more powerful fool than I am.
Perhaps I will fail to notice in time when someone is actually attempting to defraud me.
THAT is why I want to be accountable to 1001 different companies.
It's not about the income streams. It's about helping the next Joe off welfare. It's about finding myself 1001 partners so that when someone does decide not to like what I'm doing, maybe the other 999 CEO's will rally to my defense. It's about a solid reputation, built one step at a time.
53 down.
Only 947 more to go.
Wolfspyder
Let me make something clear: I am absolutely paranoid about fraud. The circumstances of my extended family were such that I grew up constantly thinking of myself as "a fraud" and/or a "pathological liar" even when it wasn't true.
Today, this even makes me super-cautious in my attempts to build up traffic at this site.
I have an ongoing nightmare, that one single "wrong click" of my mouse could somehow catapault me into a lawsuit.
This site is actually built on the stream-of-consciousness rantings of an overcompensating, obsessive "training junkie" trying to gradually "self-improve" his way across the e-commerce jungle.
Sooner or later, I know that I am going to get it wrong somewhere.
Maybe I won't get it wrong, but I will just run into a bigger and more powerful fool than I am.
Perhaps I will fail to notice in time when someone is actually attempting to defraud me.
THAT is why I want to be accountable to 1001 different companies.
It's not about the income streams. It's about helping the next Joe off welfare. It's about finding myself 1001 partners so that when someone does decide not to like what I'm doing, maybe the other 999 CEO's will rally to my defense. It's about a solid reputation, built one step at a time.
53 down.
Only 947 more to go.
Wolfspyder
AD: Get Your Book Written Fast(er)! (FML#049)
Have you ever wanted to write a book, fiction or non-fiction, but
you just couldn’t get it started, or didn’t have the time, or couldn’t
think of a plot or had writer’s block, or didn’t think you had
anything important to say, or didn’t think you had the writing
talent, or had something else that was stopping you?
Well, I’ve just discovered a web site that is specially designed to
help you write your book faster than you ever thought possible.
In fact, there’s information here that will lead you to write your
book in 14 days!!
Now, I know that seems hard to believe, but when Mark Victor
Hansen (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and dozens of
other books) saw the information, he not only said it was some
of the best stuff he’d ever used, he even asked the owner of
the website to speak at his next seminar! And Mark is using this
information to crank out still more books!
This stuff is so powerful that folks all around the world, even
absolute novices, are using these techniques to write books faster
than they ever thought possible. There’s even a free email course
that gets you started FAST! So if writing a book has always been
your goal, your dream, your desire, get yourself over to:
http://www.mcssl.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=168571
you just couldn’t get it started, or didn’t have the time, or couldn’t
think of a plot or had writer’s block, or didn’t think you had
anything important to say, or didn’t think you had the writing
talent, or had something else that was stopping you?
Well, I’ve just discovered a web site that is specially designed to
help you write your book faster than you ever thought possible.
In fact, there’s information here that will lead you to write your
book in 14 days!!
Now, I know that seems hard to believe, but when Mark Victor
Hansen (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and dozens of
other books) saw the information, he not only said it was some
of the best stuff he’d ever used, he even asked the owner of
the website to speak at his next seminar! And Mark is using this
information to crank out still more books!
This stuff is so powerful that folks all around the world, even
absolute novices, are using these techniques to write books faster
than they ever thought possible. There’s even a free email course
that gets you started FAST! So if writing a book has always been
your goal, your dream, your desire, get yourself over to:
http://www.mcssl.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=168571
My Support Requests...
Article under construction...answered 08/09/2004 with a rudimentary request to look over the terms of service agreement. Of course, since my site has not already been pulled, it is also logical to assume that I am not in violation, until or unless advised otherwise.
Quotable Heinlien (FML#041)
Article Under Construction...pending outcome of my Permission Request in Re: Weekly Update #6. Last Update: 09/24/2004.
Safelists, Part 2
Muchomail
DCemail
www.bitwiser.com
moomia
Article/Retraction Under Construction...The above names (if they still exist) represent an old source note I wanted to integrate here into my next article on safelists. Last Update: 09/24/2004.
DCemail
www.bitwiser.com
moomia
Article/Retraction Under Construction...The above names (if they still exist) represent an old source note I wanted to integrate here into my next article on safelists. Last Update: 09/24/2004.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Advanced Email Mining
My draft stack has become at least twice the size of the previous one, and that doesn't count the emails I have not processed yet. The thing I really appreciate about blogging is that it naturalizes the online work-flow. Today I have already discovered how to set up in-text links, so that is already a major victory.
Considering that I am only able to work part-time. If anybody needs me, email me right HERE.
Considering that I am only able to work part-time. If anybody needs me, email me right HERE.
Concept #7: Work Begets Work
Last night I got my first phone call from a potential affilliate, who wanted to bet me more than $200 of my own money, that I could not make this project work. The catch...he also gave me his phone number, in case I ever wanted to "get serious" about making money (by joining his powerline program, naturally! )
There was only one problem: Five minutes before that, he had just finished explaining to me why he thought powerline programs (such as the one he was currently participating with) "don't work!"
"The problem with joining a powerline program, is that people (I could almost hear the like you he didn't bother to say) don't want to put their money where their mouth is. "
The most effective such program he had ever found, was an easy anagram to my hypothetical example, which we will call "Making Internet Billions on only $6.17 a Day..."
The basic secret to that program, said my friend, was that an effectively written auto-response bot, which you as the end-user had of course OPTED INTO, would pepper you with several daily emails about the people who had "upgraded" (READ: PAID MONEY) before you. This powerline technique was flawed, because it generated millions of these "potential" members and then automatically "annoyed" you into participating because their exposure was "everywhere" anyhow.
The Texan's program was supposedly "easier" because two of "the big boys" were ALREADY promoting the end-product...DVD movies. For a fixed monthly fee, I could have all the movies I wanted, AND a lucrative income stream to boot.
I will be calling him later tonight, to discuss promoting his powerline for him.
Because he was lazy enough to ignore my program in favor of his own, he just generated at least two new articles for my book.
Work begets work.
Ask any successful actor.
The catch is that for your business to succeed, the work still needs to be done BY HUMANS.
The Texan's refusal to listen to me is the main reason it isn't his link, which appears at the top of this article.
By contrast, let's consider my friend Bryan Mize.
Several years ago, Bryan was a struggling rep for a very well-known multi-level marketing company. The company and it's products were something he would strive to bring into every conversation, just as a lot of "warm market" trainers will tell you to do. Now, Bryan had me sold on the company and the opportunity from the third day or so of our relationship.
There was just one problem...I didn't have the starting money.
So Bryan made a mistake...he FRONTED me the starting money for membership and my first product order. Honestly he shouldn't have been talking to me at all...after all, the best sales prospect is always the man making MORE than you are, not less.
Fortunately for both of us, Bryan's source company has an established reputation for consistently valuing PEOPLE over products. That's one reason I can't mention the company name publicly just yet...but some of you would be shocked with recognition if I did.
Because of Bryan's "mistake," we became fast friends. The relationship has lasted for years since.
Yesterday, he got excited at the volume of new posts I had added to the project...so excited, that I have had half a dozen emails from him already today. Bryan is telling his uplines. He contacted his source companies corporate office on my behalf. We are already discussing the possibilities for endorsements and co-branding...proposing possible changes in corporate internet policy.
cholesteroldown@catholic.org
If you'd like further details, just email the above address.
We might even come to the personal attention of the CEO of this multi-billion-dollar company, all because of ONE article, on ONE day, detailing my firm commitment to work with PEOPLE instead of software.
Remember: Work begets work. Only HUMAN work begets success. If it isn't illegal, then it probably works for SOMEONE, even if that person is not you.
Wolfspyder
PS: HEY BRYAN...I JUST DISCOVERED HOW TO DO IN-TEXT LINKS! :-))))
There was only one problem: Five minutes before that, he had just finished explaining to me why he thought powerline programs (such as the one he was currently participating with) "don't work!"
"The problem with joining a powerline program, is that people (I could almost hear the like you he didn't bother to say) don't want to put their money where their mouth is. "
The most effective such program he had ever found, was an easy anagram to my hypothetical example, which we will call "Making Internet Billions on only $6.17 a Day..."
The basic secret to that program, said my friend, was that an effectively written auto-response bot, which you as the end-user had of course OPTED INTO, would pepper you with several daily emails about the people who had "upgraded" (READ: PAID MONEY) before you. This powerline technique was flawed, because it generated millions of these "potential" members and then automatically "annoyed" you into participating because their exposure was "everywhere" anyhow.
The Texan's program was supposedly "easier" because two of "the big boys" were ALREADY promoting the end-product...DVD movies. For a fixed monthly fee, I could have all the movies I wanted, AND a lucrative income stream to boot.
I will be calling him later tonight, to discuss promoting his powerline for him.
Because he was lazy enough to ignore my program in favor of his own, he just generated at least two new articles for my book.
Work begets work.
Ask any successful actor.
The catch is that for your business to succeed, the work still needs to be done BY HUMANS.
The Texan's refusal to listen to me is the main reason it isn't his link, which appears at the top of this article.
By contrast, let's consider my friend Bryan Mize.
Several years ago, Bryan was a struggling rep for a very well-known multi-level marketing company. The company and it's products were something he would strive to bring into every conversation, just as a lot of "warm market" trainers will tell you to do. Now, Bryan had me sold on the company and the opportunity from the third day or so of our relationship.
There was just one problem...I didn't have the starting money.
So Bryan made a mistake...he FRONTED me the starting money for membership and my first product order. Honestly he shouldn't have been talking to me at all...after all, the best sales prospect is always the man making MORE than you are, not less.
Fortunately for both of us, Bryan's source company has an established reputation for consistently valuing PEOPLE over products. That's one reason I can't mention the company name publicly just yet...but some of you would be shocked with recognition if I did.
Because of Bryan's "mistake," we became fast friends. The relationship has lasted for years since.
Yesterday, he got excited at the volume of new posts I had added to the project...so excited, that I have had half a dozen emails from him already today. Bryan is telling his uplines. He contacted his source companies corporate office on my behalf. We are already discussing the possibilities for endorsements and co-branding...proposing possible changes in corporate internet policy.
cholesteroldown@catholic.org
If you'd like further details, just email the above address.
We might even come to the personal attention of the CEO of this multi-billion-dollar company, all because of ONE article, on ONE day, detailing my firm commitment to work with PEOPLE instead of software.
Remember: Work begets work. Only HUMAN work begets success. If it isn't illegal, then it probably works for SOMEONE, even if that person is not you.
Wolfspyder
PS: HEY BRYAN...I JUST DISCOVERED HOW TO DO IN-TEXT LINKS! :-))))
Monday, September 06, 2004
Estimate: Project Prelims now 20% Complete!
I have yet to spend any of my own money, or generate any significant traffic. But if the present volume of my email is any indication, I now have somewhere between 150-200 different clients, in various stages of development, after only six weeks work.
I still haven't recieved any word from either Blogger or Google about the stability of the project. I am only sending out about one or two new emails a day. But I now know that word about the site is getting out, because I am handing out my links and address information to every professional provider I can lay my eyes on.
I need to slow down and do some maintainance and development on the sites which are already here. By now the work is accelerating even faster, as if I were laying down railroad track.
If every one of my emails contained even one useful link (and most of them do) then the preliminary work on the project is at lease 20% complete, even without one single newsgroup posting or personal letter.
The secret: once the writing is done, it stays on the net, forever. I am actually using only a few minutes, or a couple of hours, each day. With each new contract I develop, a few more people get access to a larger and larger area of webspace.
Meanwhile, I can get back to work behind the scenes.
Wolfspyder
I still haven't recieved any word from either Blogger or Google about the stability of the project. I am only sending out about one or two new emails a day. But I now know that word about the site is getting out, because I am handing out my links and address information to every professional provider I can lay my eyes on.
I need to slow down and do some maintainance and development on the sites which are already here. By now the work is accelerating even faster, as if I were laying down railroad track.
If every one of my emails contained even one useful link (and most of them do) then the preliminary work on the project is at lease 20% complete, even without one single newsgroup posting or personal letter.
The secret: once the writing is done, it stays on the net, forever. I am actually using only a few minutes, or a couple of hours, each day. With each new contract I develop, a few more people get access to a larger and larger area of webspace.
Meanwhile, I can get back to work behind the scenes.
Wolfspyder
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Weekly Update #6: A Question of Balance
Work on my new advertising empire is proceeding, quietly, but much faster than expected. I've tried to be deliberate about avoiding Viral Marketing systems, at least at this site, and this stage of the business development. The last thing I need is for Blogger Support to come down on me for over-loading servers.
I submitted my request for a site review several weeks ago, but no one has answered it yet.
I know very well by now, that "the pros" look at a site like this and cringe...no site map. No easy navigation. Too many emphatic markings or fancy fonts in my text. Too many pages to slow the download times for the dial-up crowd. No sidebar links, no in-text hot-links.
I'm a sponsoring nightmare as well...I have no relationship to Google (tm) because so far I can't verify my email for their data-base. I seem to be running two browser packages at the same time, only one of which (the wrong one) is recognizing my cookie for PlugUsin4Cash.
Only one of the three PlugUsIn4Cash audio files I have tried to include here is still being recognized as a hot-link.
I am not sure that I haven't mistakenly established two Clickbank accounts instead of one, and I AM sure I just tried to pay for a hot beta-tested product in three separate places to three different people, and been blocked by Paypal all three times.
Something like 200 messages have "passed" in my audit stack in the last 6 weeks, meaning that I need to do depth-work on them to gather useful information and links before deletion. Most of these represent new client-firms which haven't yet been listed with the project. Some are repeat requests for me to "close" interesting money deals "right now, before they are all gone!"
The fact is, I want to close with just about everybody. I want to pay them all for the fine delivery of goods and services they are providing...I like to see people prosper at doing what they love. But so far, the only way I can do that, is to keep to the single strongest leverage I have...the discipline of my writing, itself.
My strategy: Obviously, I need to email Eric Case & Biz Stone directly with my questions as to the "excessive self-promotion" language in their TOS (Terms of Service) articles. It's possible they can help expedite the problem I have been having with entry into the Google AdSense program. It's a certainty that they will want me to pay upgraded hosting fees...the only question on that point is "how soon, and from which revenue stream?"
The Secret: People are lazy. Auto-responders work because the machine can outlast human sales resistance. Banner ads are ignored for the same reasons. Pop-ups and pop-under ads annoy us because they *force* action in inappropriate moments and contexts... they only excite us if, and when, we are ready to take action anyway.
Most people don't want to be rich, as Robert Heinlein so eloquently demonstrated to me years and years ago....
"Captain, you don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. Its owner is beset on every side, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious -- honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could be friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.Worse yet, his family is always in danger. Captain, have your daughters ever been threatened with kidnapping?... If you possessed the wealth that Mike had thrust upon him, you would have those girls guarded day and night -- still you wouldn't rest, because you could never be sure of the guards. Look at the last hundred or so kidnappings and see how many involved a trusted employee... and how few victims escaped alive. Is there anything money can buy which is worth having your daughters' necks in a noose?"
Source:
Jubal Harshaw to Captain Van Tromp in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land
But I have decided that I want to be. For me, it wouldn't be any LESS restrictive than my disability already is...at least until some fool raises the idea of giving me direct political power.
I started this project with a very strange set of assumptions.
1. I would have to find at least 1000 people to become interested in providing the minimum $2,000 USD per month I need to break out of SSI.
2. I would have to make the project something I could sustain on my own, at minimal expense.
3. I could not believe the claims of any particular program at face value.
4. Sooner or later, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
5. Sooner or later, someone is going to tell me that they do not like what I am doing.
6. The legal stability of the project varies in roughly inverse-square fashion in proportion to the number of people who actually know about it.
7. Despite any public propaganda to the contrary, it is not the function of any government or governmental agency to "help" anyone to do anything. What governments are good at, is weighing, measuring, analyzing, regulating, and sometimes applying certain leveraged economies-of-scale to, INDIVIDUALLY processed work which has ALREADY BEEN COMPLETED.
I can use both my trained precision, and other people's natural laziness, to my advantage.
Thus: There are only 3 possible outcomes for anyone who actually finds this site.
1. You aren't interested and you go elsewhere. You have just identified yourself as being uninterested in your own financial progress.
2. You join one of "my" affilliate programs and I get paid. The payment then accelerates the pace of the project. Or, equally effective, you "detour" into one of my free links, and come away with a slightly better opionion of my site...or you eventually join the same program(s) under someone else, and my affilliate clients are still being supported by your efforts.
3. You get seriously ticked off with me for being a "mercenary" thinker who is "only" interested in money. You try to get the project suspended or a particular client removed, generating FURTHER WORD-OF-MOUTH publicity for me in the process. Any public accusation you make becomes answerable IN REALTIME and IN WRITING. THANK YOU for helping me complete the project EVEN FASTER and more effectively...my response goes straight into my manuscript as a datapoint for what works/what doesn't.
In the meantime, I have about 175 links to classify yet.
Update (09/24/2004): Several weeks ago, I made an open request to www.quoteableheinlien.com, seeking permission for commercial use of the above quote. They have not responded to date, nor have they referred me to any authorized representative of the RAH estate. I would like permission to include them as a sponsor of my project, and it is not my intention to violate any copyright, TOS, or "fair use" policy. Unless otherwise advised, I must assume that my "fair use" compliance is therefore not in question, and that the above quote is properly attributed. If fair use compliance is contested or denied, the article will be pulled from project development immediately.
Thank you for your attention.
I submitted my request for a site review several weeks ago, but no one has answered it yet.
I know very well by now, that "the pros" look at a site like this and cringe...no site map. No easy navigation. Too many emphatic markings or fancy fonts in my text. Too many pages to slow the download times for the dial-up crowd. No sidebar links, no in-text hot-links.
I'm a sponsoring nightmare as well...I have no relationship to Google (tm) because so far I can't verify my email for their data-base. I seem to be running two browser packages at the same time, only one of which (the wrong one) is recognizing my cookie for PlugUsin4Cash.
Only one of the three PlugUsIn4Cash audio files I have tried to include here is still being recognized as a hot-link.
I am not sure that I haven't mistakenly established two Clickbank accounts instead of one, and I AM sure I just tried to pay for a hot beta-tested product in three separate places to three different people, and been blocked by Paypal all three times.
Something like 200 messages have "passed" in my audit stack in the last 6 weeks, meaning that I need to do depth-work on them to gather useful information and links before deletion. Most of these represent new client-firms which haven't yet been listed with the project. Some are repeat requests for me to "close" interesting money deals "right now, before they are all gone!"
The fact is, I want to close with just about everybody. I want to pay them all for the fine delivery of goods and services they are providing...I like to see people prosper at doing what they love. But so far, the only way I can do that, is to keep to the single strongest leverage I have...the discipline of my writing, itself.
My strategy: Obviously, I need to email Eric Case & Biz Stone directly with my questions as to the "excessive self-promotion" language in their TOS (Terms of Service) articles. It's possible they can help expedite the problem I have been having with entry into the Google AdSense program. It's a certainty that they will want me to pay upgraded hosting fees...the only question on that point is "how soon, and from which revenue stream?"
The Secret: People are lazy. Auto-responders work because the machine can outlast human sales resistance. Banner ads are ignored for the same reasons. Pop-ups and pop-under ads annoy us because they *force* action in inappropriate moments and contexts... they only excite us if, and when, we are ready to take action anyway.
Most people don't want to be rich, as Robert Heinlein so eloquently demonstrated to me years and years ago....
"Captain, you don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. Its owner is beset on every side, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious -- honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could be friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.Worse yet, his family is always in danger. Captain, have your daughters ever been threatened with kidnapping?... If you possessed the wealth that Mike had thrust upon him, you would have those girls guarded day and night -- still you wouldn't rest, because you could never be sure of the guards. Look at the last hundred or so kidnappings and see how many involved a trusted employee... and how few victims escaped alive. Is there anything money can buy which is worth having your daughters' necks in a noose?"
Source:
Jubal Harshaw to Captain Van Tromp in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land
But I have decided that I want to be. For me, it wouldn't be any LESS restrictive than my disability already is...at least until some fool raises the idea of giving me direct political power.
I started this project with a very strange set of assumptions.
1. I would have to find at least 1000 people to become interested in providing the minimum $2,000 USD per month I need to break out of SSI.
2. I would have to make the project something I could sustain on my own, at minimal expense.
3. I could not believe the claims of any particular program at face value.
4. Sooner or later, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
5. Sooner or later, someone is going to tell me that they do not like what I am doing.
6. The legal stability of the project varies in roughly inverse-square fashion in proportion to the number of people who actually know about it.
7. Despite any public propaganda to the contrary, it is not the function of any government or governmental agency to "help" anyone to do anything. What governments are good at, is weighing, measuring, analyzing, regulating, and sometimes applying certain leveraged economies-of-scale to, INDIVIDUALLY processed work which has ALREADY BEEN COMPLETED.
I can use both my trained precision, and other people's natural laziness, to my advantage.
Thus: There are only 3 possible outcomes for anyone who actually finds this site.
1. You aren't interested and you go elsewhere. You have just identified yourself as being uninterested in your own financial progress.
2. You join one of "my" affilliate programs and I get paid. The payment then accelerates the pace of the project. Or, equally effective, you "detour" into one of my free links, and come away with a slightly better opionion of my site...or you eventually join the same program(s) under someone else, and my affilliate clients are still being supported by your efforts.
3. You get seriously ticked off with me for being a "mercenary" thinker who is "only" interested in money. You try to get the project suspended or a particular client removed, generating FURTHER WORD-OF-MOUTH publicity for me in the process. Any public accusation you make becomes answerable IN REALTIME and IN WRITING. THANK YOU for helping me complete the project EVEN FASTER and more effectively...my response goes straight into my manuscript as a datapoint for what works/what doesn't.
In the meantime, I have about 175 links to classify yet.
Update (09/24/2004): Several weeks ago, I made an open request to www.quoteableheinlien.com, seeking permission for commercial use of the above quote. They have not responded to date, nor have they referred me to any authorized representative of the RAH estate. I would like permission to include them as a sponsor of my project, and it is not my intention to violate any copyright, TOS, or "fair use" policy. Unless otherwise advised, I must assume that my "fair use" compliance is therefore not in question, and that the above quote is properly attributed. If fair use compliance is contested or denied, the article will be pulled from project development immediately.
Thank you for your attention.
Saturday, September 04, 2004
FML-030: Learning Pays!
This is a fun site where it is possible to earn money by a combination of taking trivia quizzes and reading commercials.
FML-028 :Ethical Internet Training (iwanet.org)
As more and more people learn what I am doing here, it will become increasingly important to make sure that I have some objective training, standards, and accountability for my emerging business. I am already committed to the provisions of the IWA Pro-Ethics Pledge, and I hope to become a full member of the organization as soon as my funds allow.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Success,
Wolfspyder
FML-027:AD-- Keyboard Cash
You're here to make money online, one way or another, am I right?
- Do you have a website?
- Do you promote a website, or program, perhaps a niche product or service?
- Do you have an online shopping mall?
- Do you have a web design business?
- Do you have a consulting business?
- Do you publish a newsletter? (Ezine)
- Do you have a site for kids?
- Do you have a site for parents?
- Are you an affiliate or member of a website you are promoting?
- Do you have your own group of affiliates promoting your site/program?
- Do you have a site for almost ANY Topic you want to promote?
Keyboardcash wants YOU. Reach countless INTERESTED people... passively... NOW.
http://www.keyboardcash.com/members/wolfspyder/options.html
- Do you have a website?
- Do you promote a website, or program, perhaps a niche product or service?
- Do you have an online shopping mall?
- Do you have a web design business?
- Do you have a consulting business?
- Do you publish a newsletter? (Ezine)
- Do you have a site for kids?
- Do you have a site for parents?
- Are you an affiliate or member of a website you are promoting?
- Do you have your own group of affiliates promoting your site/program?
- Do you have a site for almost ANY Topic you want to promote?
Keyboardcash wants YOU. Reach countless INTERESTED people... passively... NOW.
http://www.keyboardcash.com/members/wolfspyder/options.html
FML-026:Think! Right Now!
I've now presented at least two essential motivation programs that were part of my
own wealth process.
Here is another one...
Think Right Now!
Friday, September 03, 2004
The Pandora Problem
All right, all right, enough already. It's become painfully obvious that looking for marketing information on the web is like opening Pandora's Box. I am calling a halt to further affilliate-finding operations until I can centralize my passcodes and dress up the look of the sites I already have.
There is also an emerging legal concern that I am simply not allowed to offer free directorates, since they constitute an "additional benefit" (read: BRIBE) for joining up with my affilliates.
The update as of this weekend (09-04-2004) is that my affilliated programs list (those with identified FML numbers) has now grown to 35. This does NOT count anything I can pull from my current email stack.
Developing the book will be absurdly easy from here....managing the connections between these businesses is the hard part.
By now it should be clear what my strategy has been. The main secret to building any business empire is to begin with an attitude of 100% responsibility for your own work. What the rich man knows that most of the poor never learn, is how to allow investments of his money, time, and energies to feed off each other.
The phenomenon of "instant fame" and "overnight success" in any field is an illusion.
Fame is what happens naturally when a certain critical mass number of people begin to notice your work. The work itself may have been going on in "unsuccessful" fits and starts, with mistake after mistake, for years...then "suddenly" fame catches up to you.
What am I doing on welfare, when I have just demonstrated that I own a stake in something between 20-35 legitimate businesses? Simple: none of them are making any money yet. By the time I finish this project, the chances are that many of them will be. Some will make more, and some less. I may even run into some statutory limits as to how many I can have at one time.
But it's going to be an awfully fun race!
SUCCESS,
Wolfspyder
There is also an emerging legal concern that I am simply not allowed to offer free directorates, since they constitute an "additional benefit" (read: BRIBE) for joining up with my affilliates.
The update as of this weekend (09-04-2004) is that my affilliated programs list (those with identified FML numbers) has now grown to 35. This does NOT count anything I can pull from my current email stack.
Developing the book will be absurdly easy from here....managing the connections between these businesses is the hard part.
By now it should be clear what my strategy has been. The main secret to building any business empire is to begin with an attitude of 100% responsibility for your own work. What the rich man knows that most of the poor never learn, is how to allow investments of his money, time, and energies to feed off each other.
The phenomenon of "instant fame" and "overnight success" in any field is an illusion.
Fame is what happens naturally when a certain critical mass number of people begin to notice your work. The work itself may have been going on in "unsuccessful" fits and starts, with mistake after mistake, for years...then "suddenly" fame catches up to you.
What am I doing on welfare, when I have just demonstrated that I own a stake in something between 20-35 legitimate businesses? Simple: none of them are making any money yet. By the time I finish this project, the chances are that many of them will be. Some will make more, and some less. I may even run into some statutory limits as to how many I can have at one time.
But it's going to be an awfully fun race!
SUCCESS,
Wolfspyder
FML-025: Matthew Lesko Government Giveaways
Here's another expert on free money... The catch is that he has a very fast, frantic voice on tape and almost no teaching style at all.
Success!
Wolfspyder
FML-024: The Adbar Exchange
Here's another creative advertising exchange... this one looks pretty hot. As always, the Directorate is currently open.
Join AdBar Exchange
Join AdBar Exchange
Concept #6: The Snowball Effect
Yesterday (09-02-2004) I told you that my business was worth about $4.00.
After more than a year's worth of effort behind the scenes, that figure represents my total known positive cash-flow.
So why am I now so confident of success?
Because I am starting to notice a pattern. The more companies I look for, the more of them want to GIVE me free websites.
Like this...find a new company from their website link. (FREE) Click another link to sign up... (FREE). Create a username/password combination. (FREE) Log in with your new code. (FREE) CONGRATULATIONS, you now own another new business!
What you get is "special" VIP access to promotional resources, forums, content, banners, and links for your website(s) to promote, with company permission and according to their terms of service, their PAID products on your own website. The links lead back to a professionally written, replicated website, living as a single digital account code number, somewhere on THAT PARTICULAR COMPANY'S SERVERS, at THEIR expense.
The downside: You have to be prepared to accept the terms of the "ongoing commercial relationship" with that company. This generally means more email to process each day, most of it leading back to an opportunity to SPEND money rather than earn it.
Because of the "ongoing commercial relationship" between you and the company you are partnered with, their email cannot be dismissed or ignored as SPAM...whether or not it still contains information useful to you or your business.
Generally the larger a firm is, the more restrictions it will place in an affilliate contract. Amazon.com, for example, would not accept my affilliate contract if, in the opinion of their lawyers or responsible company officers, I made too many deliberate on-site references to being a Muslim, a Jew, or an Evangelical Christian.
The secret: EVERY money payment ever made, in every transaction, everywhere, represents someone's desire to take a TIME SHORTCUT toward meeting their needs. MONEY buys CONTACTS easily, because it saves TIME.
TIME trades easily for money. It does not trade as easily for CONTACTS, because effective contacts,whether they are business-related or personal, are TIME-INTENSIVE.
The real catch is that successful MONEY deals are also CONTACT-INTENSIVE...if you can't find the right CONTACT, you can't close your sale!
The internet is actually a CONTACT-POOR environment. Worse yet, learning to use it effectively is most often a TIME-INTENSIVE process with MONEY-INTENSIVE side effects. That's why making yourself an "internet guru" is not very hard at all...just find somebody an effective, repeatable process, for making the most possible PAID contacts with the least amount of individual effort.
The fact is that in terms of intellectual property rights, hundreds of thousands of internet users are being robbed blind every day, and consenting to it to boot!
Want proof? Three simple words....PERSONAL WEB PAGES!
The popularity of these pages is the foundation of some of the world's largest internet firms.
They are taking full advantage of what I like to call, "The Snowball Effect."
Take one small snowball, and roll it slowly down a snowy ski-slope. As it rolls, it gets bigger. As it gets bigger, it rolls faster. As it rolls faster, it gets even bigger...and so on, and so on, and so on.
Result? AVALANCHE!
A personal page firm usually keeps a kind of contractual firewall in place, which says, in effect, "OK, we will grant you so much free webspace/bandwidth to put your personal page on, as long as you grant us the right to use and quote it as part of our overall site content, don't use our servers to promote anything illegal, and give our client companies the right to advertise on your site without any interference."
What have they just done? Traded the company's TIME (the man/hours of all those hard-working, code-crunching support geeks) for YOUR contacts, by limiting or circumventing YOUR right to earn your own money from YOUR own intellectual property, in favor of their own.
Why do people let this happen? Because creating any piece of intellectual property, let alone a saleable one, is both a time-intensive and a passionate process. Most of them don't know the full extent of their rights to this material...and people naturally like to chatter. Chatter creates rumors...rumors create publicity...publicity creates internet traffic...and traffic creates advertising revenues. And the beat goes on....
How did I defend myself against this sort of robbery?
By asserting my copyright up-front. By declaring my intent to publish elsewhere, from the beginning.
You see...I have my own little snowball. Every post that I make contributes a little more momentum to this slowly developing piece of intellectual property. One company or more every day. When I hit 1000, I will publish offline. When I publish offline, I am guaranteed to make some money, whether any of my online advertising has succeeded or not....
And then I re-invest in something else, and write about THAT.
And I will STILL have all those contract rights, just waiting to be given away to someone.
Meanwhile, I will just keep on talking to all those avalanche salesmen....
Success!
Wolfspyder
After more than a year's worth of effort behind the scenes, that figure represents my total known positive cash-flow.
So why am I now so confident of success?
Because I am starting to notice a pattern. The more companies I look for, the more of them want to GIVE me free websites.
Like this...find a new company from their website link. (FREE) Click another link to sign up... (FREE). Create a username/password combination. (FREE) Log in with your new code. (FREE) CONGRATULATIONS, you now own another new business!
What you get is "special" VIP access to promotional resources, forums, content, banners, and links for your website(s) to promote, with company permission and according to their terms of service, their PAID products on your own website. The links lead back to a professionally written, replicated website, living as a single digital account code number, somewhere on THAT PARTICULAR COMPANY'S SERVERS, at THEIR expense.
The downside: You have to be prepared to accept the terms of the "ongoing commercial relationship" with that company. This generally means more email to process each day, most of it leading back to an opportunity to SPEND money rather than earn it.
Because of the "ongoing commercial relationship" between you and the company you are partnered with, their email cannot be dismissed or ignored as SPAM...whether or not it still contains information useful to you or your business.
Generally the larger a firm is, the more restrictions it will place in an affilliate contract. Amazon.com, for example, would not accept my affilliate contract if, in the opinion of their lawyers or responsible company officers, I made too many deliberate on-site references to being a Muslim, a Jew, or an Evangelical Christian.
The secret: EVERY money payment ever made, in every transaction, everywhere, represents someone's desire to take a TIME SHORTCUT toward meeting their needs. MONEY buys CONTACTS easily, because it saves TIME.
TIME trades easily for money. It does not trade as easily for CONTACTS, because effective contacts,whether they are business-related or personal, are TIME-INTENSIVE.
The real catch is that successful MONEY deals are also CONTACT-INTENSIVE...if you can't find the right CONTACT, you can't close your sale!
The internet is actually a CONTACT-POOR environment. Worse yet, learning to use it effectively is most often a TIME-INTENSIVE process with MONEY-INTENSIVE side effects. That's why making yourself an "internet guru" is not very hard at all...just find somebody an effective, repeatable process, for making the most possible PAID contacts with the least amount of individual effort.
The fact is that in terms of intellectual property rights, hundreds of thousands of internet users are being robbed blind every day, and consenting to it to boot!
Want proof? Three simple words....PERSONAL WEB PAGES!
The popularity of these pages is the foundation of some of the world's largest internet firms.
They are taking full advantage of what I like to call, "The Snowball Effect."
Take one small snowball, and roll it slowly down a snowy ski-slope. As it rolls, it gets bigger. As it gets bigger, it rolls faster. As it rolls faster, it gets even bigger...and so on, and so on, and so on.
Result? AVALANCHE!
A personal page firm usually keeps a kind of contractual firewall in place, which says, in effect, "OK, we will grant you so much free webspace/bandwidth to put your personal page on, as long as you grant us the right to use and quote it as part of our overall site content, don't use our servers to promote anything illegal, and give our client companies the right to advertise on your site without any interference."
What have they just done? Traded the company's TIME (the man/hours of all those hard-working, code-crunching support geeks) for YOUR contacts, by limiting or circumventing YOUR right to earn your own money from YOUR own intellectual property, in favor of their own.
Why do people let this happen? Because creating any piece of intellectual property, let alone a saleable one, is both a time-intensive and a passionate process. Most of them don't know the full extent of their rights to this material...and people naturally like to chatter. Chatter creates rumors...rumors create publicity...publicity creates internet traffic...and traffic creates advertising revenues. And the beat goes on....
How did I defend myself against this sort of robbery?
By asserting my copyright up-front. By declaring my intent to publish elsewhere, from the beginning.
You see...I have my own little snowball. Every post that I make contributes a little more momentum to this slowly developing piece of intellectual property. One company or more every day. When I hit 1000, I will publish offline. When I publish offline, I am guaranteed to make some money, whether any of my online advertising has succeeded or not....
And then I re-invest in something else, and write about THAT.
And I will STILL have all those contract rights, just waiting to be given away to someone.
Meanwhile, I will just keep on talking to all those avalanche salesmen....
Success!
Wolfspyder
FML-023: Meet Jeff Meyer
Success News:
Selling Isn't About Closing, It's About Opening
by Jeffrey Mayer - 312-944-4184
SucceedingInBusiness.com
LINK to STOP receiving this newsletter
You are currently subscribed as:
************************* (Blocked for Privacy-WS)
For subscribing info see the end of this message
For reprint info see the end of this message
Phil, one of my tele-mentoring clients, and I were talking
one afternoon about how to improve his selling skills. He's
been in financial services for 18 years, but as of late his
business has been slow.
He was telling me how dejected he felt because he wasn't
getting many appointments. People weren't returning his
phone calls. And the few people he was speaking to weren't
interested in meeting with him.
In the next sentence, however, he perked up and said - with
a great deal of pride, "I'm a great closer. Just put me in front
of a prospect, and I'll walk away with an order eight out
of ten times."
Invite Jeffrey Mayer to speak at your next business meeting,
sales conference or convention. He'll help you grow your
business, close more sales and make more money.
Call 312-944-4184 for more info.
"Then why isn't your business growing by leaps and bounds? Why
aren't you making tons of money? Why aren't you spending more
time with your family and friends instead of spending
so much time at the office?" I asked?
A perplexed look crossed Phil's face as he pondered my question,
the kind of look that says "If I'm so great, why ain't I rich?"
He furled his forehead, bit on his lip and rubbed his chin
with his left hand.
He looked out the window. He stared at the ceiling. He gazed at
the floor. And in a soft voice said, "I don't really know why I'm
not doing better. I guess I'm just too busy to be calling on people."
And that's Phil's problem. He didn't realize that selling isn't about
being a great closer. Selling is about being a great opener. It's about
creating opportunities. It's about discovering what people want
and need, and then giving them the solution to their problem.
Selling is about making the customer's life better, easier.
"Closing More Sales By Asking Better Questions" is
my newest training manual. In it I walk you through my
step-by-step process for quickly finding the customer's
needs, wants, desires and problems.
You'll also learn how to discover who the decision makers
are, their decision making process, and much more.
"Closing More Sales By Asking Better Questions" will
dramatically change the way you sell, save you hours of
time, and make you much more successful. I guarantee it!
Here's the link to order your copy:
Closing More Sales By Asking Better Questions
But when you're not opening cases - creating opportunities
- you've nothing to close.
"What kind of customer contact records do you keep?" I asked.
I then asked these questions:
* How many times do you dial the phone each day for the
sole purpose of scheduling an appointment with a prospect?
* How much time do you spend dialing for appointments
each day? Do you block out time to call on your calendar?
* Where are you getting your leads from?
* How many times do you attempt to reach a person before
you decide they aren't a prospect and you move on?
* How many new people do you call each day? People
you've never attempted to reach before?
* How many people are you calling from your database that
you've called on five, ten, fifteen times but have never bought
from you? How do you feel calling on the same people who
- even though they may be friendly - always tell you
that they aren't in the market?
* What are your annual sales goals? Quarterly goals?
Monthly goals? Weekly goals? Daily goals?
* What daily activity must you generate to achieve these goals?
With each question Phil was getting more nervous and fidgety. He was
beginning to squirm like a worm on the end of a hook. His body
language told me that he didn't have any systematic methodology
for looking for - and finding - new customers.
"What's keeping you from looking for new customers?"
I asked. "What do you do every day?"
Phil explained that he comes into the office at about 7:30 am each day
and spends most of the morning doing paperwork and reads e-mail.
He works on client proposals. Does service work. Makes telephone
calls. Goes out to lunch with his colleagues. Has meetings
with his assistant and the other people in his office.
"Making More While Working Less" will show
you how to set your priorities and stay focused.
If you're tired of wasting your time - and spinning
your wheels - take a look at my new training manual
"Making More While Working Less."
You'll learn how to leverage your time so you can get
extraordinary results without working 10 to 12 hours a day.
TWO THUMBS UP. "Making More While Working Less"
is great. It is life changing material that will help you change
the course of your career... especially if you've hit a plateau.
- John Angsman, Sales Rep, Magic Coil Products
Here's the link to order your copy:
Making More While Working Less
By the time he leaves at about 5:15 pm he's put in a full day of doing
"stuff," but there is one thing he never gets around to doing: Calling
on new prospects. He avoids the phone like the plague.
Ever since I started in sales, I always wondered why bright, talented,
knowledgeable and successful salespeople never continued to
grow in their businesses and further their careers.
Why were they always struggling? Why were they always experiencing
high peaks and low - below sea level - valleys? Why were they
living a feast <==> famine existence?
I've watched salespeople start their careers like a rocket roaring into
outer space. But within a few short years their business had leveled
off. Their meteoric rise to stardom had stopped. and their sales
volume and commission level never grew by more than
five, ten or fifteen percent a year... at best.
With the passage of time their business started a slow decline as their
best customers moved on or retired and the person who took their place
put the old contracts out for bid, or brought in a preferred supplier.
Why did this happen? Because the salesman stopped looking for new
business. He stopped being a hunter-gatherer. He stopped prospecting.
Sales is about being a great opener, not just being a great closer.
* Sales is about looking for prospects every day.
* Sales is about getting on the phone every day.
* Sales is about solving problems every day.
Phil had tried everything he could think of so he wouldn't have to get
on the phone. He sent out letters, post cards, flyers and other
advertising, promotional and marketing pieces, and then
sat by the phone waiting for it to ring.
It didn't!
Every once in a while he would phone some people he had called on
before, but more often then not, they weren't around. So he would
leave a voice mail message that said something like,
"Hi Joanne. This is Phil Johnston. Was calling to see if you
would like to setup a date to discuss your financial planning.
Give me a call at 888-423-1234."
But Joanne never called Phil back, nor did any of the other people that
Phil left voice mail messages for. This got him even more discouraged.
Unfortunately, Phil had forgotten that a salesman's job is to track down
the prospect. And in today's busy world most of us don't have time to
return the calls of the people we do want to talk to, let alone
return the call of someone who leaves a poorly worded
message that basically says, "Please call me back."
So Phil and I went to work.
1. We changed his attitude. He began to see the telephone
as his friend, instead of his mortal enemy.
2. Phil developed a great Elevator Speech which enabled him to
keep his conversations going. His days of having five to ten
second "We aren't in the market." phone calls were over.
3. Phil started prospecting and looking for new people to call on.
He attended networking events. He began asking for referrals.
And even started calling on people whose names and photos
had appeared in the business sections of the local paper.
Within a month Phil had turned his business around. He was meeting
with new people, asking great questions, solving problems, closing
sales and making money.
Phil had learned a very important lesson: Selling isn't about closing
sales, it's about opening and creating new opportunities.
I've two training manuals that will help you create
more opportunities and generate more business:
Want to save time, open doors, close more sales,
and make more money? If so, you'll find my new
"Cold Calling" training manual to be invaluable.
You'll learn how to use the telephone to reach decision
makers, create more opportunities, and get better results.
Here's the link to order your copy:
Overcoming The Fear Of Cold Calling
If you've no trouble cold calling, but are unhappy with
your results, you should take a look at my newest training
manual "Getting Better Results Over The Phone."
Here's the link to order your copy:
Getting Better Results Over The Phone
NEW: Sales Training, Coaching,
and Mentoring Programs from Jeffrey Mayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Customized Sales Training Programs are available for
CEOs, business owners, corporate executives, sales
managers and salespeople.
Learn how to improve your prospecting & networking skills.
Cold calling & telephone techniques, and time management skills.
Learn how to ask better questions, reach decision makers,
overcome objections, and more.
We can also help you with your strategic business planning.
Jeffrey Mayer coaches CEOs, Corporate Executives,
Salespeople and Entrepreneurs on how to grow their
business, close more sales, and make more mo ney.
Call 312-944-4184 for more information. Or visit
http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com/mentoring.shtml
* * * Jeffrey Mayer really understands the essentials of running
a successful and profitable business. He knows how to focus in
on the key business issues to generate maximum profitability.
Norman R. Bobins, Chairman, President & CEO
LaSalle Bank, N.A. Chicago IL
* * * Since I started working with Jeffrey Mayer, the past three months
have been the most profitable we've ever had in my company's history!
Pauline Lally, President, Piping Systems, Inc.
* * * Every month is my best month. Since I began working with
Jeffrey Mayer, my sales are up four-fold, and my profits are even higher.
Kim Camarella, President, Kiyonna Klothing, LA
* * * My monthly profits have increased 50 percent since I began
working with Jeffrey Mayer. He showed me how to reach
decision makers faster.
Eric Manting, President, Find IT Corporation
* * * Jeffrey Mayer, is "The Answer Man." He is so totally amazing.
After our conversations, I always wonder how can we bottle or
clone this man's brain. I sell to the manufacturing industry which
is so cyclical it makes me wonder why I do it, but Jeffrey,
always gives me creative, insightful advice that actually
turns my doldrums into profits every time! In the worst
times ever, this is the man to call!
Judy Griggs, President, Preferred Machine Tools
* * * Jeffrey Mayer has become my "Agent of Change." His
concepts are intense, thought provoking, deep and far reaching.
Over the past year I had tried a bunch of things. Nothing worked.
Out of desperation I called Jeff. In the first month we worked
together, I tripled my business. If you want to grow your
business, give Jeff a call!
Mark Pallar, President, Paller Financial Services
* * * My monthly sales doubled from $20,000 to $40,000 after
working with Jeffrey Mayer for only three weeks. His up-selling
techniques helped me increase the average size of my sales
from $2200 to $3200. This was a great return on my investment.
Dave Boekholder, Sales Manager, Digital Canal
* * * My sales have doubled, my profits have tripled, and I'm
working fewer hours, since I started working with Jeffrey Mayer.
Gregg Russell, Owner, Hopps Colonial Pharmacy, Homer MI
* * * I had my best year - ever - because of Jeffrey Mayer's help. Jeff
showed me how to ask better questions and I doubled my business.
Jeff Brodien, President, BEI, Inc.
* * * I doubled my business in - my biggest year ever - with
Jeffrey Mayer's help. Jeff taught me how to ask great questions
& stay focused, so I closed the business a lot quicker.
Charley Meyer, Managing Director,
Bush O'Donnell Investment Advisors
* * * Every penny was well spent. With Jeff's help, the sales process
is no longer a mystery to me. It's become something I look forward
to instead of dreading.
Cheryl Burkhalter, VP, ESII
* * * Jeffrey Mayer has a very broad range of experience. He's helped
me become more focused. Working with Jeff as a coach/mentor,
strategic advisor and sounding board was incredibly gratifying.
Wesley Ley, Vice President & Regional Manager
Chase Manhattan Corp., Chicago IL
* * * Jeffrey Mayer's techniques are so simple they're brilliant.
He teaches you the essence and depth of how to find
worthwhile opportunities, and then shows you how to capture them.
Steve von Berg, President, Synergy, Rochester NY
Help Your Friends Grow Their Businesses
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have any friends who want to grow their business? Close more
sales? Make more mo ney? I'll be happy to send them my
Succeeding In Business newsletter.
Visit http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com
Reprint Permission
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reprint permission granted in part or whole when the following
credit appears: "Reprinted with permission from "Jeffrey Mayer's
SucceedingInBusiness.com Newsletter. (Copyright, 2003, Jeffrey J.
Mayer, SucceedingInBusiness.com.) To subscribe to Jeff's free
newsletter, visit http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com."
Published By
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeffrey J. Mayer
SucceedingInBusiness.com
50 East Bellevue Place - Suite 305
Chicago, IL 60611-1129
312-944-4184
Change E-Mail Address
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the link to change your e-mail address
http://list.succeedinginbusiness.com/
cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=successlist
---
You are currently subscribed to successlist as:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (Blocked for Privacy-WS)
Here's the link to leave this newsletter:
http://list.succeedinginbusiness.com/cgi-bin/
process.pl?id=XXXXXXXXXXXX
*************************************************************************************
Unless otherwise advised that this practice constitutes fraud, after all applicable due dilligence,I will grant a free Wolfpack Elite Directorate to the first interested person to try out a Jeff Meyer course, in connection with any primary marketing program whatever.
Disclaimer: as of my last update on 09/22/2004, Jeff Meyer is not affiliated in any way with my "company" or the Wolfspyder project. My attempts to contact him by email have either failed to move far enough up the regular chain of authority on his site to merit his attention, or have yet to recieve a valid response, which should not be taken for any negative opinion regarding him or his business. Any errors in securing permission or notifications rquired by law, are therefore my own. The above article was reprinted "with permission" in good faith, on the assumption that the above-stated open-licensing requirements had been met as of the date of my original post.
If anyone knows anything different, please do not hesitate to contact me at wolfspyder100@yahoo.com, preferably before I get sued! :-)
Success!
Wolfspyder
Selling Isn't About Closing, It's About Opening
by Jeffrey Mayer - 312-944-4184
SucceedingInBusiness.com
LINK to STOP receiving this newsletter
You are currently subscribed as:
************************* (Blocked for Privacy-WS)
For subscribing info see the end of this message
For reprint info see the end of this message
Phil, one of my tele-mentoring clients, and I were talking
one afternoon about how to improve his selling skills. He's
been in financial services for 18 years, but as of late his
business has been slow.
He was telling me how dejected he felt because he wasn't
getting many appointments. People weren't returning his
phone calls. And the few people he was speaking to weren't
interested in meeting with him.
In the next sentence, however, he perked up and said - with
a great deal of pride, "I'm a great closer. Just put me in front
of a prospect, and I'll walk away with an order eight out
of ten times."
Invite Jeffrey Mayer to speak at your next business meeting,
sales conference or convention. He'll help you grow your
business, close more sales and make more money.
Call 312-944-4184 for more info.
"Then why isn't your business growing by leaps and bounds? Why
aren't you making tons of money? Why aren't you spending more
time with your family and friends instead of spending
so much time at the office?" I asked?
A perplexed look crossed Phil's face as he pondered my question,
the kind of look that says "If I'm so great, why ain't I rich?"
He furled his forehead, bit on his lip and rubbed his chin
with his left hand.
He looked out the window. He stared at the ceiling. He gazed at
the floor. And in a soft voice said, "I don't really know why I'm
not doing better. I guess I'm just too busy to be calling on people."
And that's Phil's problem. He didn't realize that selling isn't about
being a great closer. Selling is about being a great opener. It's about
creating opportunities. It's about discovering what people want
and need, and then giving them the solution to their problem.
Selling is about making the customer's life better, easier.
"Closing More Sales By Asking Better Questions" is
my newest training manual. In it I walk you through my
step-by-step process for quickly finding the customer's
needs, wants, desires and problems.
You'll also learn how to discover who the decision makers
are, their decision making process, and much more.
"Closing More Sales By Asking Better Questions" will
dramatically change the way you sell, save you hours of
time, and make you much more successful. I guarantee it!
Here's the link to order your copy:
Closing More Sales By Asking Better Questions
But when you're not opening cases - creating opportunities
- you've nothing to close.
"What kind of customer contact records do you keep?" I asked.
I then asked these questions:
* How many times do you dial the phone each day for the
sole purpose of scheduling an appointment with a prospect?
* How much time do you spend dialing for appointments
each day? Do you block out time to call on your calendar?
* Where are you getting your leads from?
* How many times do you attempt to reach a person before
you decide they aren't a prospect and you move on?
* How many new people do you call each day? People
you've never attempted to reach before?
* How many people are you calling from your database that
you've called on five, ten, fifteen times but have never bought
from you? How do you feel calling on the same people who
- even though they may be friendly - always tell you
that they aren't in the market?
* What are your annual sales goals? Quarterly goals?
Monthly goals? Weekly goals? Daily goals?
* What daily activity must you generate to achieve these goals?
With each question Phil was getting more nervous and fidgety. He was
beginning to squirm like a worm on the end of a hook. His body
language told me that he didn't have any systematic methodology
for looking for - and finding - new customers.
"What's keeping you from looking for new customers?"
I asked. "What do you do every day?"
Phil explained that he comes into the office at about 7:30 am each day
and spends most of the morning doing paperwork and reads e-mail.
He works on client proposals. Does service work. Makes telephone
calls. Goes out to lunch with his colleagues. Has meetings
with his assistant and the other people in his office.
"Making More While Working Less" will show
you how to set your priorities and stay focused.
If you're tired of wasting your time - and spinning
your wheels - take a look at my new training manual
"Making More While Working Less."
You'll learn how to leverage your time so you can get
extraordinary results without working 10 to 12 hours a day.
TWO THUMBS UP. "Making More While Working Less"
is great. It is life changing material that will help you change
the course of your career... especially if you've hit a plateau.
- John Angsman, Sales Rep, Magic Coil Products
Here's the link to order your copy:
Making More While Working Less
By the time he leaves at about 5:15 pm he's put in a full day of doing
"stuff," but there is one thing he never gets around to doing: Calling
on new prospects. He avoids the phone like the plague.
Ever since I started in sales, I always wondered why bright, talented,
knowledgeable and successful salespeople never continued to
grow in their businesses and further their careers.
Why were they always struggling? Why were they always experiencing
high peaks and low - below sea level - valleys? Why were they
living a feast <==> famine existence?
I've watched salespeople start their careers like a rocket roaring into
outer space. But within a few short years their business had leveled
off. Their meteoric rise to stardom had stopped. and their sales
volume and commission level never grew by more than
five, ten or fifteen percent a year... at best.
With the passage of time their business started a slow decline as their
best customers moved on or retired and the person who took their place
put the old contracts out for bid, or brought in a preferred supplier.
Why did this happen? Because the salesman stopped looking for new
business. He stopped being a hunter-gatherer. He stopped prospecting.
Sales is about being a great opener, not just being a great closer.
* Sales is about looking for prospects every day.
* Sales is about getting on the phone every day.
* Sales is about solving problems every day.
Phil had tried everything he could think of so he wouldn't have to get
on the phone. He sent out letters, post cards, flyers and other
advertising, promotional and marketing pieces, and then
sat by the phone waiting for it to ring.
It didn't!
Every once in a while he would phone some people he had called on
before, but more often then not, they weren't around. So he would
leave a voice mail message that said something like,
"Hi Joanne. This is Phil Johnston. Was calling to see if you
would like to setup a date to discuss your financial planning.
Give me a call at 888-423-1234."
But Joanne never called Phil back, nor did any of the other people that
Phil left voice mail messages for. This got him even more discouraged.
Unfortunately, Phil had forgotten that a salesman's job is to track down
the prospect. And in today's busy world most of us don't have time to
return the calls of the people we do want to talk to, let alone
return the call of someone who leaves a poorly worded
message that basically says, "Please call me back."
So Phil and I went to work.
1. We changed his attitude. He began to see the telephone
as his friend, instead of his mortal enemy.
2. Phil developed a great Elevator Speech which enabled him to
keep his conversations going. His days of having five to ten
second "We aren't in the market." phone calls were over.
3. Phil started prospecting and looking for new people to call on.
He attended networking events. He began asking for referrals.
And even started calling on people whose names and photos
had appeared in the business sections of the local paper.
Within a month Phil had turned his business around. He was meeting
with new people, asking great questions, solving problems, closing
sales and making money.
Phil had learned a very important lesson: Selling isn't about closing
sales, it's about opening and creating new opportunities.
I've two training manuals that will help you create
more opportunities and generate more business:
Want to save time, open doors, close more sales,
and make more money? If so, you'll find my new
"Cold Calling" training manual to be invaluable.
You'll learn how to use the telephone to reach decision
makers, create more opportunities, and get better results.
Here's the link to order your copy:
Overcoming The Fear Of Cold Calling
If you've no trouble cold calling, but are unhappy with
your results, you should take a look at my newest training
manual "Getting Better Results Over The Phone."
Here's the link to order your copy:
Getting Better Results Over The Phone
NEW: Sales Training, Coaching,
and Mentoring Programs from Jeffrey Mayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Customized Sales Training Programs are available for
CEOs, business owners, corporate executives, sales
managers and salespeople.
Learn how to improve your prospecting & networking skills.
Cold calling & telephone techniques, and time management skills.
Learn how to ask better questions, reach decision makers,
overcome objections, and more.
We can also help you with your strategic business planning.
Jeffrey Mayer coaches CEOs, Corporate Executives,
Salespeople and Entrepreneurs on how to grow their
business, close more sales, and make more mo ney.
Call 312-944-4184 for more information. Or visit
http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com/mentoring.shtml
* * * Jeffrey Mayer really understands the essentials of running
a successful and profitable business. He knows how to focus in
on the key business issues to generate maximum profitability.
Norman R. Bobins, Chairman, President & CEO
LaSalle Bank, N.A. Chicago IL
* * * Since I started working with Jeffrey Mayer, the past three months
have been the most profitable we've ever had in my company's history!
Pauline Lally, President, Piping Systems, Inc.
* * * Every month is my best month. Since I began working with
Jeffrey Mayer, my sales are up four-fold, and my profits are even higher.
Kim Camarella, President, Kiyonna Klothing, LA
* * * My monthly profits have increased 50 percent since I began
working with Jeffrey Mayer. He showed me how to reach
decision makers faster.
Eric Manting, President, Find IT Corporation
* * * Jeffrey Mayer, is "The Answer Man." He is so totally amazing.
After our conversations, I always wonder how can we bottle or
clone this man's brain. I sell to the manufacturing industry which
is so cyclical it makes me wonder why I do it, but Jeffrey,
always gives me creative, insightful advice that actually
turns my doldrums into profits every time! In the worst
times ever, this is the man to call!
Judy Griggs, President, Preferred Machine Tools
* * * Jeffrey Mayer has become my "Agent of Change." His
concepts are intense, thought provoking, deep and far reaching.
Over the past year I had tried a bunch of things. Nothing worked.
Out of desperation I called Jeff. In the first month we worked
together, I tripled my business. If you want to grow your
business, give Jeff a call!
Mark Pallar, President, Paller Financial Services
* * * My monthly sales doubled from $20,000 to $40,000 after
working with Jeffrey Mayer for only three weeks. His up-selling
techniques helped me increase the average size of my sales
from $2200 to $3200. This was a great return on my investment.
Dave Boekholder, Sales Manager, Digital Canal
* * * My sales have doubled, my profits have tripled, and I'm
working fewer hours, since I started working with Jeffrey Mayer.
Gregg Russell, Owner, Hopps Colonial Pharmacy, Homer MI
* * * I had my best year - ever - because of Jeffrey Mayer's help. Jeff
showed me how to ask better questions and I doubled my business.
Jeff Brodien, President, BEI, Inc.
* * * I doubled my business in - my biggest year ever - with
Jeffrey Mayer's help. Jeff taught me how to ask great questions
& stay focused, so I closed the business a lot quicker.
Charley Meyer, Managing Director,
Bush O'Donnell Investment Advisors
* * * Every penny was well spent. With Jeff's help, the sales process
is no longer a mystery to me. It's become something I look forward
to instead of dreading.
Cheryl Burkhalter, VP, ESII
* * * Jeffrey Mayer has a very broad range of experience. He's helped
me become more focused. Working with Jeff as a coach/mentor,
strategic advisor and sounding board was incredibly gratifying.
Wesley Ley, Vice President & Regional Manager
Chase Manhattan Corp., Chicago IL
* * * Jeffrey Mayer's techniques are so simple they're brilliant.
He teaches you the essence and depth of how to find
worthwhile opportunities, and then shows you how to capture them.
Steve von Berg, President, Synergy, Rochester NY
Help Your Friends Grow Their Businesses
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have any friends who want to grow their business? Close more
sales? Make more mo ney? I'll be happy to send them my
Succeeding In Business newsletter.
Visit http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com
Reprint Permission
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reprint permission granted in part or whole when the following
credit appears: "Reprinted with permission from "Jeffrey Mayer's
SucceedingInBusiness.com Newsletter. (Copyright, 2003, Jeffrey J.
Mayer, SucceedingInBusiness.com.) To subscribe to Jeff's free
newsletter, visit http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com."
Published By
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeffrey J. Mayer
SucceedingInBusiness.com
50 East Bellevue Place - Suite 305
Chicago, IL 60611-1129
312-944-4184
Change E-Mail Address
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the link to change your e-mail address
http://list.succeedinginbusiness.com/
cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=successlist
---
You are currently subscribed to successlist as:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (Blocked for Privacy-WS)
Here's the link to leave this newsletter:
http://list.succeedinginbusiness.com/cgi-bin/
process.pl?id=XXXXXXXXXXXX
*************************************************************************************
Unless otherwise advised that this practice constitutes fraud, after all applicable due dilligence,I will grant a free Wolfpack Elite Directorate to the first interested person to try out a Jeff Meyer course, in connection with any primary marketing program whatever.
Disclaimer: as of my last update on 09/22/2004, Jeff Meyer is not affiliated in any way with my "company" or the Wolfspyder project. My attempts to contact him by email have either failed to move far enough up the regular chain of authority on his site to merit his attention, or have yet to recieve a valid response, which should not be taken for any negative opinion regarding him or his business. Any errors in securing permission or notifications rquired by law, are therefore my own. The above article was reprinted "with permission" in good faith, on the assumption that the above-stated open-licensing requirements had been met as of the date of my original post.
If anyone knows anything different, please do not hesitate to contact me at wolfspyder100@yahoo.com, preferably before I get sued! :-)
Success!
Wolfspyder
A Free Article
Don't Ever Apologize for Your Small Business!
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Don't Ever Apologize for Your Small Business!
"We're just a small business," you mumble apologetically. In this world where big seems better, small business owners have developed a strangely distorted self-image. Small feels ... well, inadequate. But small business is great business, and I'll tell you why. I want to lead a grand cheer for small business owners and employees. You, my friends, are the salt of the earth.
Now I don't want to downplay the role of big corporations. We need their economies of scale to build efficient automobiles, commercial aircraft, and a communications infrastructure. But sometimes we overlook the fact that huge businesses have serious weaknesses in areas where small businesses shine.
Small Businesses Are the Backbone of the Economy
The US Small Business Administration says that small businesses create two of every three new jobs, produce 39% of the gross national product, and invent more than half the nation's technological innovation. And this kind of statistic could be repeated in country after country around the world. Just because you work for or run a small company doesn't mean you are unimportant. Your contribution to your country's economy is huge.
Small Businesses Demonstrate the Essence of Political Freedom
The ability to develop and conduct your own small business is a wonderful expression of your freedom as a citizen. You may complain about government regulations, but the fact is that small businesses are less regulated than large firms. This gives small businesses the freedom to focus on what is really important -- caring for customers.
Small Businesses Provide Better Customer Care
I'm sure you've noticed that the larger a company grows, the harder it becomes to provide good customer service. Just try to find the right person to help you on the phone in a huge corporation -- it'll drive you batty. But when you ask for the owner of a small business, chances are you'll be speaking to her or him within a few minutes. Marketers toss around buzzwords like "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)," but it's the small business not the megacorp that really excels at it. Small businesses know that their livelihood is based on their customers. Small is great for customers.
Small Businesses Encourage the Passion Needed to Succeed
Apathy doesn't breed nearly as well in small businesses as it does in big business. Small business owners and their workers are focused and immensely proud of what they do. Small business owners are passionate about their businesses. How many employees in bureaucratic organizations can say the same?
Small Businesses Owners Are Highly Skilled
In a small business, you have to excel at a lot of things to succeed. Small business owners and their key employees are masters of dozens of disciplines and perform their intricate balancing act like pros. So what if they wear more than one hat? Whom should we admire more -- the corporate manager or the jack-of-all-trades small business owner, whose skill-set is sharpened to a razor's edge, and who survives and succeeds and serves? My vote is with the latter.
Small Businesses Allow Owners the Freedom to Innovate
Small business owners learn to be risk takers and innovators. Corporate employees, on the other hand, too often interpret their prime directive as keeping their jobs. Risk-taking can get in the way of career-building. Innovative small businesses are prize targets of larger corporations that often find it more cost-effective to acquire than to innovate on their own.
Small Businesses Can Change Course Rapidly
Large corporations can be adverse to change, while small businesses know that their ability to make rapid decisions and implement course corrections is their key to success. In the ocean of business, mega-corporations turn like tankers, while small businesses can zip around them with the agility of a speedboat.
Small Businesses Can Be Quite Profitable
Small business is not a synonym for small earnings. In fact, many small businesses are extremely profitable. Their advantages of leanness, maneuverability, innovation, and customer focus mold them into steady enterprises that earn a significant return on investment year after year after year.
Being big isn't a worthy goal. But delivering top customer service, a passion for excellence, a willingness to dream and create, and the freedom to make timely decisions -- these are worthy of acclaim.
Small businessperson, I salute you for your dedication, your intelligence, your business acumen, and your contribution to society. Be proud of your small business. Stand tall, free, ... and unapologetic. Don't offer excuses for the size of your business. Small businesses make the very biggest impact of all!
Copyright © 2002, by Ralph F. Wilson, http://www.wilsonweb.com All rights reserved.
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson is one of the world's top Web marketing and e-business authorities and author of Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy (Wiley, 2002). He is founding editor of Web Marketing Today, Web Commerce Today, and Doctor Ebiz and recipient of the Tenagra Award for Internet Marketing Excellence.
This 750-word article may be reproduced in a website, e-zine, CD-ROM, book, magazine, etc. so long as these four conditions are met: (1) It is reprinted in full with no editing. (2) The byline "by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson" is left intact. (3) The copyright information is included at the end of the article, preserving the "hot" hyperlink. The biographical information may be retained or omitted at your discretion. (4) You e-mail me at rfwilson@wilsonweb.com letting me know the URL on your site where the article appears, or the medium used to distribute the article. (Note: I do NOT allow other articles on my site to be reproduced.)
A clean HTML version of this article is available at http://wilsonweb.com/wmt7/smallbiz1.htm
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Weekly Update #5: Welfare Payday Again...
I usually do these updates on a Monday, but this week has had an unusually heavy workload, and a bit of carryover since I went to the retreat over the weekend. I appointed a new Interim Director for Charitable Operations this weekend, under Wolfpack Elite Directorate #100.
This is a larger step forward than you might believe at first.
Some of you might be thinking, "Did he just hire somebody? How can he possibly hire somebody when he's broke?" Nope. I didn't just hire Larry...I created him a new job, out of thin air. In the words of Robert Kiyosaki...
"Rich people don't work FOR money. Rich people work because they see a job that needs to be done." (Emphasis mine.)
Most jobs are originally created to be either training spaces, or TIME-RICH environments.
By "time-rich," I mean an environment where the emotional satisfactions of actually doing the job, at some level, outweigh the financial rewards.
When people have the right job fit, it is usually because they are being PAID to do all or part of something which they would otherwise WANT to do, even without being paid. Sometimes things like medical coverage, in-house child-care programs, insurance breaks, company shareholder programs, or pay scale can tip the balance toward one job or another.
Sometimes people have the WRONG job, but feel trapped in it by the ongoing necessity to generate enough income to support themselves and their families. I believe the descriptive technical term for this phenomenon is The Rat Race!
Funny thing about being disabled...
The government wants me to prove myself in dozens of extra ways, to scads of extra people, before even joining the Rat Race in the first place!
Me, I just want to write. Always have, always will...whether I ever get paid for it or not. Poetry. Children's books. Novels. Maybe even Sci-fi.
The trouble is, writing is one of those strange professions where you FIRST have to do ALL the hard creative work, before you get paid, AND THEN you have to prove yourself and your skills to several people, before you can even cut the final sales deal that will get you paid.
That's how my money dreams began...with the desire to write, without having it get in the way of my equally strong desire to eat.
What you are seeing today, will eventually become my first book.
So far, my business is worth about $4.00 and change. But I have valid contracts with more than 21 companies, each of which is potentially worth millions. I average 1 or 2 new contracts every day.
My room-mate is also working for me. She's developing a small book of family recipes so that we can sell it through E-bay(tm) or Paypal (tm). My first Elite Director is definitely working for me...he just put up about $150 of his own money, so that I could take a new course in effective online selling.
Work begets work.
The real trick to being rich, is in finding the
most genuine and ethical ways to make sure that other people's work can also beget YOU some CASH.
Success,
Wolfspyder
This is a larger step forward than you might believe at first.
Some of you might be thinking, "Did he just hire somebody? How can he possibly hire somebody when he's broke?" Nope. I didn't just hire Larry...I created him a new job, out of thin air. In the words of Robert Kiyosaki...
"Rich people don't work FOR money. Rich people work because they see a job that needs to be done." (Emphasis mine.)
Most jobs are originally created to be either training spaces, or TIME-RICH environments.
By "time-rich," I mean an environment where the emotional satisfactions of actually doing the job, at some level, outweigh the financial rewards.
When people have the right job fit, it is usually because they are being PAID to do all or part of something which they would otherwise WANT to do, even without being paid. Sometimes things like medical coverage, in-house child-care programs, insurance breaks, company shareholder programs, or pay scale can tip the balance toward one job or another.
Sometimes people have the WRONG job, but feel trapped in it by the ongoing necessity to generate enough income to support themselves and their families. I believe the descriptive technical term for this phenomenon is The Rat Race!
Funny thing about being disabled...
The government wants me to prove myself in dozens of extra ways, to scads of extra people, before even joining the Rat Race in the first place!
Me, I just want to write. Always have, always will...whether I ever get paid for it or not. Poetry. Children's books. Novels. Maybe even Sci-fi.
The trouble is, writing is one of those strange professions where you FIRST have to do ALL the hard creative work, before you get paid, AND THEN you have to prove yourself and your skills to several people, before you can even cut the final sales deal that will get you paid.
That's how my money dreams began...with the desire to write, without having it get in the way of my equally strong desire to eat.
What you are seeing today, will eventually become my first book.
So far, my business is worth about $4.00 and change. But I have valid contracts with more than 21 companies, each of which is potentially worth millions. I average 1 or 2 new contracts every day.
My room-mate is also working for me. She's developing a small book of family recipes so that we can sell it through E-bay(tm) or Paypal (tm). My first Elite Director is definitely working for me...he just put up about $150 of his own money, so that I could take a new course in effective online selling.
Work begets work.
The real trick to being rich, is in finding the
most genuine and ethical ways to make sure that other people's work can also beget YOU some CASH.
Success,
Wolfspyder
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
FML-022:Free Hit Counter!
I need a way to track unique hits to my site. I know that since this is a sponsored service, they will not have any problem with commercial use of the counter.
This counter also sponsored by...
AND...
http://www.blogrank.net/cgi-bin/blogs/rankem.cgi?id=Doulos1
Email Audit Day 3
So far, I have now completed the first stage of auditing for all three of my email addresses. This still leaves about 150 messages to process for inclusion in the main site.
Over the weekend, which I spent on a spiritual retreat, I was also able to appoint someone to a new directorate, #100.
Plugusin4cash just paid out 39 cents in monthly commissions.
My draft stack also tells me that I have 8 new client-programs ready to be introduced.
That doesn't even count the ones I can find "on the fly."
Things are definitely starting to snowball...
Wolfspyder
Over the weekend, which I spent on a spiritual retreat, I was also able to appoint someone to a new directorate, #100.
Plugusin4cash just paid out 39 cents in monthly commissions.
My draft stack also tells me that I have 8 new client-programs ready to be introduced.
That doesn't even count the ones I can find "on the fly."
Things are definitely starting to snowball...
Wolfspyder
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
