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November 2002
Print and Go Here
is the entire ezine for you to print and take with you. Simply
print this entire web page by using your "File/print"
command. All of this month's articles are included and there is
plenty of room in the margins for notes
Website Technique
Shopping Systems
The best thing I can do here is to direct you to
http://www.public-speaking.org/ebook.htm where I have a free ebook
for you to download called How to Pick A Shopping System That
Makes You Money. It's in PDF format and will give you the
complete scoop on shopping systems.
Note: Those of you that already have the paid version of
http://www.kickstartcart.com
can now get a FREE three-hour orientation tape that takes you from the
simple set up to advanced selling techniques.
Traffic Generation Technique
Reprint/Resale Rights
One way to create traffic to your site is to write an informative ebook
that you will give away. This ebook must have value and it should not
simply be a big sales pitch. You can see an example of one at
http://www.public-speaking.org/ebook.htm Right click on the link and
download the book, "How to Pick a Shopping Cart System that Makes You
Money."
As you look through the beginning of the book, you will see that I have
noted that unlimited resale and distribution rights are included with
the book. That means as soon as you download it you can sell it and keep
all the money or give it away.
The reason I do this is because the book promotes my shopping system
http://www.KickStartCart.com
and you can do the same thing.
Make sure the book has links in it going the various products and
services you offer. This could create a massive amount of traffic to
your site or it could create just a little depending on how valuable
people think it is. Product Development Technique
Mentor Programs
As usual I almost always do something myself before I try to teach it to
someone else and this topic is no exception. I started my mentor program
back in January so I now have 10 months experience to tell you about.
And yes, even though this is not a physical product, it is a product.
What are the benefits to you?
Mentor programs are a way to help more people in a cost effective
manner, my consulting fee is nothing to sneeze at. This allows me to
attract more participants to the program because it�s a bigger bang for
the buck
It's an additional Revenue Stream for your business.
You can multiply yourself. When you are on the phone with many people
your knowledge is being sold at a cheaper rate, but in more volume.
Similar to doing a speech with potential customers in the crowd.
You create better results for people because you are with them over time
This in turn will create an ever expanding group of people who will
promote you more enthusiastically and credibly because they actually got
good results.
A mentor program provides a group of people under your control for back
end product sales � They are a more qualified and ready group for back
end product sales and recommendations. (You better be darn careful not
to recommend something that is junk or you will lose their loyalty.)
Benefits for Mentees
Access to a credible source that really cares about their success.
Help with the hundreds of decisions that face them.
Networking. -- Many mentees are making deals with other mentees because
they have a complimentary idea.
Synergy � Part of the program to this point is that I talk to mentees
while other mentees are listening. A tremendous number of ideas are
presented in any one session. When I�m talking to Joe, Dan is listening.
When I talking to Dan, Joan is listening, etc.
Discounts � on things they were probably going to purchase from me
anyway.
Freebies
Income Potential
Pricing -- Corporate mentoring can command a higher price from $4500 per
year to $15,000 a month or more. Small business mentoring can be $2500.
Individual mentoring can be $1000 or more a year. All these figures are
just made up but they are generally representative of the relative
amounts you can get depending on your market. Your notoriety, the
service you're offering and many others factors will determine how much
you can charge.
Pre-requisite Sales -- My mentees must have about $300.00 worth of
learning materials before they are allowed into the program. This helps
to insure their success and keeps them from being lost and wasting time
with simple ideas they could easily learn on their own.
Back end Products � Mentees are prime candidates to purchase other
products and services from you and to recommend your products and
services to others.
How to Get Mentees
Recruitment � Try to get the "right" kind of mentees.
Here is my overriding principle- Your mentor program will help quality
people get better and achieve more. It is unlikely you will take
non-quality people and turn them around. (I�m not doing any kind of
judging of people here. I just know that certain types of people have
little chance of success in my program.)
Put notice on your website
http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/mentorprogram.htm
Put notice in your Ezine
Tell people about it in person
Tell them about it on the phone
Use affiliates to recruit for you (You must be careful that they don't
recruit people that have little chance of success)
Payment
I originally started out letting people pay monthly. I found that this
did not work because people were spending their last nickel to join and
thinking they were going to be rich at the end of the month. They didn't
have realistic expectations and they didn't have the money to build
their sales system.
Now people pay for six months or one year in advance with no refunds. I
have found that this makes for a much more committed mentee who is
infinitely more likely to get good results. I feel like I'm doing them a
favor by pre-qualifying them because it does neither one of us any good
if they don't get results. Sure I get some short term cash flow, but the
long term effects of people telling others that they didn't get results
(even though it wasn't my fault) will hurt my program.
Occasionally I will cut deals, but I make the people write all the
checks in advance and I tell them I'm going to deposit them no matter
what happens. I try to avoid making these deals because the accounting
is a hassle and IN GENERAL I get a lesser quality mentee who is more
likely to drop out. But if I think a person is really serious, I'll make
exceptions.
Communication with mentees
Mostly email announcements
Sometimes it�s easier to call with an answer to one of their questions
than to type it.
The only mail I use is to mail them a tape of any sessions they may have
missed.
Here's what my mentees get
Welcome Email and teleconference schedule
Initial two hours of phone consulting spread out over two or four calls
Unlimited email access to me for questions
Two TeleConferences a month (this may increase to three or four as
program grows.
Discounts 25% off all products and services.
Freebies � Teleseminars, Books, PDF files,
Private membership site (this e-magazine you are reading)
Discussion board
http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/forums
Scheduling:
Theory- If I booked myself solid on the phone and I only told someone
what I know from the past, yes that would be helpful to them, but think
of this. If I didn�t leave anytime to work on my own system and learn
new things, my value to the mentees would DECREASE over time. So I must
leave time to both rest my mind and to learn new things.
On my mentee and consulting calls I try to book one call mid morning and
one call mid afternoon Monday through Thursday. This gives me the rest
of the time to work on my own things and room to fit in urgent
situations for my clients and mentees. Since much of my speaking is on
the weekend, I leave Fridays open to work on my stuff, rest my mind a
little or to travel.
I alternate mentee teleconferences from 1:00 PM Eastern time to 8:00
Eastern time. They are usually on Wednesdays, but that is not carved in
stone. One time I had to reschedule the call because I had to fly that
day.
During the 90 minute call, I do a topic for about 30 minutes and then I
interview individual mentees for the rest of the time. The topics aren't
in any order. I just pick something that I think they need to know
about.
Right now, here are the fees for my program.
$1500.00 six months plus pre-requisites
$2500.00 year
$3000.00 per month unlimited phone consulting
If you would like to join visit
http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/mentorprogram.htm
Email Technique
Bounce Management
Many list management companies provide you with an option that allows
you to choose how many times they will try to deliver to an email
addresses if the email you are sending bounces.
When I first started sending an ezine I set my option to three attempts
to deliver before the address would be automatically removed. You
generally don't want to remove someone from your list after only one
failed attempt to deliver them email. There could be any number of
reasons why a particular good email doesn't get delivered. The server
may be down or there could have been a brief glitch in the Internet
connection. Also, the recipient may be on vacation and incoming emails
exceeded the capacity of their inbox. You wouldn't want to delete the
good address because of a temporary condition.
About a year ago the free email accounts at Hotmail and Yahoo were
experiencing a greater amount of difficulty than usual. My list
management company alerted me to expect a high number of bounced emails
from those companies and suggested that I raise the number of bounces
allowed before they automatically removed the address from my list. This
worked for a while until . . . .
. . . places like Hotmail and Yahoo started calling you a spammer
if you sent too many emails to their systems that bounced. So now I've
come full circle and have my settings back to three bounces before
automatic deletion.
LOW VOLUME
If you have the time and I don't see how you could with a high volume
list like mine, you could go over the bounced emails to see if there is
some obvious reason they bounced. Someone could have accidentally
submitted an address and put .cam instead of .com or something simple
like that. If you can save a few subscribers by noticing things like
that and fixing them, that's great. It's just pretty tedious and
probably not worth your time.
Copywriting Technique
Why You Should Use Guarantees
by Tom Antion Ok, last month I told you why I
hate guarantees. This month I'll tell you why you should use guarantees
most of the time.
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For people who are on the
borderline of ordering, the guarantee frequently pushes them into the
order column because their risk is reduced.
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When the risk is reduced to
zero, your prospect is hard pressed to find a reason NOT to buy. NOTE: A
guarantee probably won't overcome other things you may be doing to make
the prospect mistrust you like poor quality, homemade looking website,
outrageous claims, etc.
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Guarantees give people a
logical reason to buy. They figure they can always return the item if
they don't like it.
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Guarantees give people an
"excuse" to buy in case they have to justify the purchase to someone
else. "Honey, this fluorescent garden hose will look great in our yard
at night and if it doesn't it's guaranteed, so we can always return it."
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Guarantees reduce people's
fear of ordering.
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If you have a good product,
guarantees will give you many more sales than you would have without the
guarantee. With good products, the increased sales will far outweigh the
number of returns.
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On unique products you can
generally charge more than the standard markup for your product category
because of the guarantee. This will give you more profit per sale.
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In reality, most people don't
return things even if they are junk. This is less true for expensive
products.
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Most people are honest and
won't rip you off.
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Many people simply forget
about your guarantee, so make it as long as you want when you tell them
about it.
Next issue I'll show you different ways to craft a
strong guarantee.
I just completed a two hour audiotape seminar on this topic called
Copywriting 901: The Fast Track to Writing Words that Sell.
It is awesome and could make you a thousand times it's cost by
learning the above technique and all the other techniques I put on
the tape.
Click here to order Search Engine Tips
Keyword Placement Part VII
META Tags
Use META Tags
The next topic in behind-the-scenes page design involves using META
Tags. META Tags are being used less and less, and you certainly
shouldn�t depend on them to get high rankings. There are many places on
a web page that keywords could and should be placed. However, you should
know how to use them as long as search engines are still using them.
If you want to see some samples of META Tags, open your browser (either
Internet Explorer or Netscape) and click on �view.� Then click on
�source� in Internet Explorer, �page source� in Netscape. A new window
will pop up and you can look at all the behind-the-scenes HTML
programming of just about any webpage. You can also see the META Tags of
other webpages if they have them.
Note: The <TITLE> Tag should be the
first thing after the <HEAD> Area of the page and then comes the
�description� META Tag and then the �keyword� META Tag.
Here's an example of what the META Tags look like:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Customer service training</TITLE>
<META name=�description� content=�Customized customer service training
at your location by the person that �wrote the book� on customer
retention�>
<META name=�keywords� content=�customer service speaker, training,
trainer, client retention�>
Making web pages is pretty easy to do now and you generally don't have
to know much about HTML. However, you do have to go a little bit behind
the scenes to learn about META Tags.
Description META Tags
META Tags are a place where you can put a description of your webpage
and your keywords. Not all search engines use these descriptions and
keywords, but some do. On the search engines that use these META Tags,
when your site comes up in search results, it will have the description
that you wrote, which is really nice because that means you can control
what�s being said about your site and entice people to click on your
link.
You should do your best to write descriptions that are compelling. It
would be a shame to come up as number one in a search but have no one
click on your site because your description was so poor. Try to give
them a good reason to click. Search the web to see descriptions of other
sites. Try to evaluate the techniques they use to entice you to click on
their link. Incorporate the same techniques when writing the
descriptions to entice people to click on your link.
The above is an excerpt from "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic
Marketing for Speakers"
http://www.antion.com/click.htm
Send me your suggestions for future Search Engine related articles for
this section. mailto:tom@antion.com
Cool Software and Gadgets
Software
No new software to report this month. Gadgets
http://www.computergear.com/rolcal.html Roll up calculator
http://www.spylife.com/tmachine.html Pocket size lie detector
http://www.spylife.com/alcotest.html Keychain breathalyzer
http://www.spylife.com/faces.html Face composite sketching software
in case you see a sniper
http://www.beachcomber.com/Gadget/Cool/hokeysp.html The coolest bike
accessory I've seen in a long time
http://www.beachcomber.com/Gadget/Electron/shake.html Can't get up
in the morning? This gadget will shake you awake.
http://www.greatbigstuff.com
Lots of cool props Useful Websites
http://www.dell.com
Build your computer to suit and then lease it.
http://www.davesite.com/ Beginner tutorials
http://www.atomz.com
Put a "search our site" box on your site for free. I use it at
http://www.public-speaking.org
http://www.jpegwizard.com Make your photos more suited to the web.
http://www.coolarchive.com/logogen.cfm Make your own logo and
banners in seconds.
http://www.award-it.com Free website award submission. Watch out!
You could get awarded lots of spam email from worthless award sites.
http://www.linkpopularity.com Find how many sites are linking to you
in three major search engines.
http://affiliateprogramsthatsuck.com/ Check this site before you
join an affiliate program Computer / Automation Technique
Email Extraction
More techniques
When you get serious about Internet and permission based
email marketing you will run into many situations where you will want to
create a nice, clean list of email addresses that are scattered about in
a file and lumped in with lots of other text. You would want this list
of email addresses so you can easily use them in one of your bulk mail
software programs or to upload to your list management company.
For instance, you might have a bunch of email addresses
that you exported from a database program that looks like this:
"[name]","[email]"
"Gary","tummytuck@xyz.com"
"David","facelift@abc.com"
"Wendell","boobjob@hottermail.com"
"Marlyn","hairtransplant@yahole.com"
"Maxine","lipo@artificiallyskinny.com"
"Carolyn","rhinoplasty@hair.net"
After using an email extractor program you would end up
with a list like this:
tummytuck@xyz.com
facelift@abc.com
boobjob@hottermail.com
hairtransplant@yahole.com
lipo@artificiallyskinny.com
rhinoplasty@hair.net
Can you imagine how long it would take you to clean this
list up by hand? What if you had a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand
addresses?
Email extractors do this within seconds or maybe as much
a couple minutes or so for a long list.
I got the one I use from
http://go.to/eextractor It cost
$24.99. If you have a smart kid working in your office you can probably
find one for free that will probably work just fine.
I have lots of lists and sublists and legitimate sources
for email addresses and this tool saves me hours and hours of work to
use those addresses.
Warning: Some of
these tools are designed to be used by spammers to grab email addresses
off of websites, newsgroups, etc. I do not condone the use of these
tools for that purpose.
More
automation techniques:
This section will be an ongoing effort to keep you
from grabbing your mouse which slows you down, and is bad for your
wrist.
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In Internet explore simply type
"my documents" or "my computer" in the address line and hit enter and
you will be taken directly to the respective area of your computer.
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Also in Internet explorer
simply type "go" or "find" and then a search term and you will be
taken to a set of search engine results based on your search terms.
Miscellaneous Stuff You Need to Know
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Mike at
http://www.soundpages.com is a great guy and I just bought an
Edirol computer recording system from him. It's great and easy to
install and I can do studio quality work right at my desktop. Tell
him I sent you.
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Make sure your shopping
system has a setting that alerts the visitor to call, fax or email
in case a problem arises with your connection to your credit card
processor. You don't want to miss a sale because something out of
your control fails.
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Make it a regular habit to
check to see if your websites are functioning. You can do it
yourself or you can have an assistant do a random or a regular check
daily.
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When considering an Inkjet
printer check out the ink consumption and cost of ink. Many of these
printers have an enormous cost per page.
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You can purchase the
Copywriting Combo which includes 2002 instantly usable
headlines at
http://www.professionalspeaker.com/catalog.htm Scroll down to
"e-books."
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I use this book all the
time "The 2002 edition of the Little Black Book of Cheap
Tricks."
The biggest and best "little" book ever. Over 150 pages of
undocumented secrets for Windows 95, 98, Me and XP, plus tricks and
tweaks for applications, the Internet, Easter eggs and more. Most of
these tricks are new and many have never been published before -
anywhere.
Order it online now and pay no shipping, handling or postage. Only
$19.95 at
http://www.EditorEric.com/sales/lbbct.html .
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You can search for
images/pictures, etc at Google based on keywords.
Case Study
Tom Antion
(Your faithful publisher)
OK. It's October 31st and I got so busy this month that I forgot to
arrange a case study. So, I thought I'd tell you a little about what
I've been doing to keep learning the newest and most profitable Internet
marketing techniques and give you a little idea of significant events on
my 2002 calendar the past year.
January 19th -- I did a Butt Camp in Vancouver, BC Canada. Dealing with
product shipping across the border was a real hassle and UPS totally
screwed things up and we're still fighting about it in November. They
have now lost all my International and domestic shipping business and
most of the UPS people I've had to deal with are pencil pushing idiots.
January 28th -- I conducted my first TeleConference for my new mentor
program
http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/mentorprogram.htm
February 7th -- Butt Camp in Hawaii before the Western Workshop of the
National Speakers Association. Almost a total waste of time.
Businesspeople in Hawaii are a different breed and just don't get it. I
also made the BIG MISTAKE of using a fax broadcast service. I got
nothing but Irate calls.
February 28th -- Butt Camp in Atlanta before the Eastern Workshop was a
big success as are most ButtCamps.
April 20th -- Butt Camp in DC
April 26th -- Had lunch with Yanik Silver an extremely bright Internet
marketer. We always kick around great ideas.
April 27th -- Did a survival skills workshop for NSA DC
May 30th -- Conducted a 2 hour TeleSeminar with storytelling expert Doug
Stevenson
May 31st -- Did a beginner speaker TeleSeminar "Top Ten Ways to Make
Money Speaking"
June -- Cancelled out of my first speaking engagement in over 2100
performances because of improprieties in the commission system. I
donated all my commissions to the five speakers who sold the least at
the event. Each speaker got nearly $700.00.
July 12th -- Did ButtCamp in Orlando before the NSA convention. It was
the biggest one ever with about 55 participants including an entire row
of past NSA presidents.
July 12th -- Totally destroyed two laptops within five minutes when a
bad power supply zapped the mother board of my brand new Sony and then
zapped the mother board of my back up Sony. Had to borrow a laptop from
an attendee and then go to Office Depot to buy another one for two
presentations at NSA
July 15 -- Had a standing room only crowd at Mega Monday at NSA. I gave
away $60,000.00 in prizes during my session and shot money into the
crowd with a giant leaf blower.
July 16 -- I did the sales trainer's PEG at NSA
August 27 & 28 -- Did two TeleSeminars and can't remember the topics.
September 13th -- Visited Alcatraz prison and most people said I should
probably live there. Also my host took me on a ride on a cable car in
San Francisco and tried to kill me hahahaha
September 14th -- Spoke at Northern Cal. NSA
September 15th -- Largest NSA chapter fundraiser ever. Chapter earned
over $2800.00 above the cost of bringing me in.
September 12th -- Spoke at South Florida NSA for the fourth time.
Septermber 13th -- Did a fundraising ButtCamp for the chapter.
October 19th -- Spoke at Virginia Speakers Assn.
October 20th -- Did a fundraising ButtCamp for the chapter.
That's not much of a schedule. So what did I do the rest of the time?
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A few corporate speaking engagements
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Tons of phone consulting
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Created and refined many new products
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Developed my one-page website technique
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Still working on a deal to create a new small business Internet
marketing program for a major player in training that must go unnamed at
this point in the deal.
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Landed a deal with an Internationally known author to adapt the Click
book for the legal market
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Worked on a deal that fell through on creating a version of Click
for the medical market.
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Reviewed hundreds of Internet marketing ezines and websites to glean the
best techniques.
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Took a Teleseminar from Alex Mandosian on conversion strategies.
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Bought a new fancy sound card to do more audio editing on the computer.
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Try to find time to evaluate the hundreds of joint venture deals I'm
offered.
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Started searching for a retreat center or "Bed and ButtCamp" hahaha to
live in and have weekend guests who want to study Internet marketing.
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Leased my first computer from Dell and I love it and I love the concept.
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Upgraded to Windows XP Professional and I love it because I can run it
really hard for days at a time and it virtually never crashes.
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Got a tremendous number of new mentees who are making good progress and
learning a ton.
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Continue to work on and refine my own sales process.
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Will be on the cover of Sharing Ideas speaking news magazine in
December.
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Also booked as the headliner of the September 2003 Magnificant Marketing
Seminar in Beverly Hills, CA
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Booked as a featured speaker at the Mark Victor Hansen Mega Book
Marketing University in March, 2003
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Started working a set of Magic tapes for speakers, but did not have time
to finish it.
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Got
http://www.professionalspeaker.com up and running with Bill Brooks
and Jim Cathcart just before the NSA convention. We now have a
streaming, video, audio and ebook membership site.
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Bought nearly 300 domain names this year.
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Got married and had three kids . . . hahaha NOT!
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Did a bulk email to an opt in list for $1500.00 and DID NOT GET ONE
RESPONSE . . . .NOT ONE!
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Slowed down on the purchase of opt in subscribers and cleaned out about
15,000 bad addresses from Great Speaking list.
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Have a new TipZine at
http://www.professionalspeaker.com run by Will Brooks who is doing a
wonderful job running it and running the site.
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Was featured on NSA's Voices of Experience CD
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Sold over 1000 ebooks in the past couple months
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Hired an assistant from India who is back in India for six weeks to pick
his bride.
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Took the guarantee off the "Wake 'em Up Video Professional Speaking
System" because I got tired of tire kickers and worthless slugs wasting
my time and then returning the product. Sales are just as good.
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Haven't visited the
http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/forums for a long time.
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I'm discontinuing the free email at
http://www.greatspeaking.com
because of poor service from the provider.
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Spend about $5000.00 a month on pay-per-click search engines.
Plus lots more that I just can't think of right now. I'm really smokin
and will promise to bring you big things in 2003.
Tom
TRENDS
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Beyond Interactive found that 69% of men prefer news or compelling
information in the subject line of a permission based email and 64%
of women preferred a discount offer.
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CustomerRespect did a study of the Fortune 100 websites and found
that 45% of them forced customers to opt out from unsolicited email
(Don't you try this. They have enough money to buy themselves out of
any trouble. Also noted was that 83% do not have autoresponders
letting a customer know their correspondence has been received and
37% did not respond to general inquiries. As a small business person
you should be able to really shine and help customers much better
than the big boys and girls are.
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ILogos Research found that 91% of Fortune 500 companies are
recruiting employees on their company website up from less than 33 %
in 1998. If you need a job to finance your Internet start up, you
now know where to look.
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Outlook 11 has a new feature that will not download unwanted spam
beacons when viewing an html email in preview mode. Spam beacons
tell the sender that they have landed on a good email address. How
much this cuts down on spam and damages legitimate email remains to
be seen.
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The UK is experimenting with Cell Phone antennas being hidden in
lamp posts to increase the coverage. Health advocates are up in arms
citing health dangers from the microwave radiation.
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In a related case in my home state of MD a case was thrown out that
alleged a man got cancer from his cell phone.
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http://www.adsx.com/faq/verichipfaq.html You can now legally
have a chip implanted in yourself which carries scannable
information about you.
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READ THIS GREAT ARTICLE ABOUT EMAIL --
http://internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=7992
End of this issue You will have to print out
the following reference pages separately. They are included in each
issue, so there is no need to print them out every time. Do,
however, check them frequently because I will put new additions to
these pages at the top of each page until the next issue comes out.
Recommended Learning Tools
Search Engine
Resources
Suppliers
Back to November 2002 Index page
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