Main Index

Sept. 2002
Index Page

Butt Camp Schedule

Butt Camp CD

Butt Camp Audiotapes

TeleSeminar Kit

Publicity Book

Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing

Free Great Speaking Ezine

Kick Start Cart

The Speaker Shop

Free Shopping Cart System E-book

Antion & Associates
tom@antion.com
301-459-0738

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 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
Order Page Selling

Numerous studies have show that the order page is the main page where people bag out of completing a web based transaction. They can get cold feet, confused, and distracted at this critical point in the sales process. It's your job to help them complete the order form and submit it.

There are several things that can ruin a sale for you.

  • Worry that the site is not secure.

  • Pre-buyer's remorse

  • Other reluctance to put a credit card number in a website.

  • Confusion

  • More familiarity with other ordering methods.

Security
I'll combine the bullet points about worry that the site is not secure and general reluctance to put a credit card number in a website.

Security on the Internet has been a big issue blown up by the media. Certainly it is an important issue, but hardly the desperate situation outlined by people who have never sold anything online.

What this means to you as a merchant is that you must put in the normal safeguards, keep an eye out for suspected fraudulent orders and then go on about your business of selling.

The general public, however, looks at this a little differently. Since they believe security is so important you must ease their fears about ordering from you. The first step in this is to smack them in the face with your security measures when they hit the order page. I do this in two ways. 1.) My shopping cart displays the Verisign logo which is a pretty trusted symbol. 2.)

On bigger ticket products, I provide an extra security statement and a pop up box that emphasizes the security  issue even further. You can see an example of this by visiting http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm and clicking on the order button. You will see a special section of my order page pop up that has the all the elements we will be discussing about Order Page Selling.

Note: If this page doesn't show up it's because you have been testing other things in my shopping system. The page I'm discussing today would, however show up for someone who had not been playing around with http://www.kickstartcart.com .

It always cracks me up when people ask me so much about the security of my ordering process when they are at infinitely more risk when they give their credit card to a high school age waiter at a restaurant. But people are generally protective of their credit (at least they think they are) so you have to cater to their fears.

Buyer's Remorse
At your order page people are not really buyers yet. They are really buyer's when your "Thank You" page displays and we'll show you how to sell there too in a future issue.

Since people are not really buyers at your order page it is a good idea to reinforce their good decision to keep them excited about the purchase they are about to make. This is infinitely more important on big ticket products than on small purchases. A customer's worry about the sale increases significantly and in proportion to the amount of money they are spending.

On my order page I use phraseology like "Yes, I want to become a professional speaker," and "Yes, Tom I want you to help finance my speaking education." Generally you can use anything that concentrates on the affirmative and keeps them excited about completing the sale.

This is also a place to add testimonials and reinforce any bonuses you are giving.

Confusion
Making your ordering instructions hard to understand has been the downfall of many online marketers. What would seem to you to be a smooth and easy process could be totally foreign to someone who is not web savvy. It's a good idea to have people test out your ordering system without you holding their hands and telling them where to click. Have them write down the questions that come to mind while they are trying to place an order. You'll probably be surprised at what you hear. Take steps to answer those questions on the screen so people can get their order placed.

Familiarity
To maximize your sales, make every traditional method available to order. Here's what the top of my standard order form says:

To order by FAX, print out this page and fax to 301-552-0225

You can also mail your order to:

Antion & Associates
Box 2630
Landover Hills, MD 20784

For customer service call 800-448-6280 in the Continental United States and 301-459-0738 outside the US.

As you can see I give them every possible way to order and I do get lots of fax and phone orders. It's most likely that I would have lost those sales if I tried to force everyone to order on line.

One other note about order form selling is that anyone in the world can see your order form. Although mine is not available in other languages, I still make it clear that the 800 number only works in the Continental USA and that the other number is good anywhere else. If you have a significant international audience (especially from a particular country or language base) you could put additional instructions in that language prior to the order page to help make those people feel more comfortable.

Traffic Generation Technique
Contests

People love contests. My most famous one was the "Tom is Single" contest. The way it was run was that the phrase "Tom is Single" was inserted several times in my regular ezine. A person had to count how many times the phrase was there and go to my website to put in their count. The people that got the number correct won prizes.

Besides driving traffic to my website, this contest  had several different benefits.

A. People read that issue of my ezine thoroughly.

B. The contest was crazy enough that it caused viral activity, i.e., people sent it around to there friends to take a shot at winning the prizes.

C. The prizes were advertised because I had to tell the people what they would win.

Another good contest to run is a testimonial contest. You see laundry detergent companies doing this all the time . . . "In 25 words or less tell us what you like about New Improved Albino Creator and 2000 lucky Albino Creator users will receive a year's supply of Albino Creator."

Of course the fine print says they may print or use your comments just about any way they want, but people still join and the Albino company has tons of people going on record saying they loved the product.

Legal Stuff
Here's a link to a good and easily understandable articles about some legal issues both in the USA and abroad. Apparently you have to jump through hoops for the state of Rhode Island so many people exclude them from participating. I wonder what pencil pushing legislators in Rhode Island had nothing better to do than push through this legislation

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question541.htm

Contests vs Sweepstakes
A "contest" is a game of skill and a "sweepstakes" is a game of chance. It's important you know the difference and it's important that you don't cross the line accidentally and do something illegal.

I can't explain this concept any better than the people who run the sites at
http://www.contestcen.com/swcon.htm

and

http://www.arentfox.com/post/forum/csmessages/700.html

For more in depth coverage you can also visit http://www.arentfox.com and click the drop down box for "Area of Specialty" click on "contests and sweepstakes"

Don't let a few legal things stop you from this powerful form of marketing.

Product Development Technique
E-book Conversion to PDF

Now that you have your document formatted properly in Word which was covered in the last issue (click here to review), it's time to convert it to pdf which will be the distribution format.

When I installed Adobe Acrobat 5.0 (the program, NOT the free reader) on my computer it automatically connected itself to Microsoft Word. Right after the "help" drop down menu an "Acrobat" menu appeared. When you click on it a menu appears which includes "conversion settings." This is where you make decisions about security, and usability.

I don't pretend to understand all the options available, so I usually leave most of them at their default settings. I will, however, cover here the settings you need to worry about to make a quality ebook. Below will be a list of those you need to consider and a brief explanation of your choices:

When you click on "conversion settings" you'll get a general screen with some tabs across the top. You can pick different names from a drop down box or create a new name so that the settings for different types of documents can be set and remembered independently.

I just call mine "Ebooks"

Security
The next tab you see is labeled "Security" this is where you decide if passcodes are needed to open or change the document. I do not require a passcode to open the document, but I do require one to change the document. This is one of the big advantages of using pdf over simply distributing in Word. When you send a word document to someone, they could simply replace your name with theirs and replace your sales links with theirs and redistribute the document. In pdf you can shut off that possibility unless the person robbing you is willing to scan or retype the entire document.

In the security area is where I check off that I do want to allow printing, because I know people will want to print out my ebooks to read offline and I also check off "Do not allow adding comments" i.e. I don't want them adding their two cents worth electronically and passing on my work to someone else.

Office
The next tab refers to your Microsoft Office settings. I don't remember what the defaults where, but I do want to make sure the following is checked:

  • Convert document info

  • Convert cross document links

  • Convert Internet links

  • And everything else on this page is checked except "Save file Automatically" (I like to have one more look before I save things)

  • I have zoom set to "Inherit Zoom" this refers to how large the file will appear on the screen (which can always be changed later by the user)

Bookmarks
The next tab is "bookmarks" which refers to what will show up in your clickable index after the conversion. I have a checkmark in the box "Convert word headings to bookmark" Then in the list below I have an "X" in headings 1 - 9 although the most I ever use is 1 - 3. This refers to the heading tags put on Chapters and Subheads in the Word document preparation. Adobe will recognize these and turn them into bookmarks.

I also scroll down the list to make sure "HTML Address" is checked. I'm not totally sure what this does, but I want to make sure every link I put in the document is clickable so I keep this checked.

Display Options
This is where I tell the program how to display itself when someone opens up a document. They can always override this opening display later. In this area I choose to open on "Page number 1" and I choose "Default Magnification" and I choose "Bookmarks and Page." The reason I choose "Bookmarks and Page" is that many people are not that savvy or used to reading pdf files and they may not know that a clickable index is available unless I display it for them as soon as the document opens.

The only other thing I check on this page is "invisible rectangle" in the "Link Appearance" section. This is just a matter of preference and you can set anything you want there. It only has to do in what a clickable link inside the document looks like.

Once all the settings are checked, I click "OK" and go back to the document. The only thing you have to do after that is click on the "Acrobat" drop down menu again in Word and then click on "Convert to Adobe pdf." If your document has not been saved, Adobe will prompt you to save it. After you do that a screen will pop up to ask you to save the pdf file as. You will then pick a name for your pdf file and where you want to save it.

That's it. You just created an ebook ready for distribution.

Email Technique
Make Money with Your Sig File

This is one of those work, get paid, paid, paid, paid, paid techniques that I'm always talking about. Don't expect rushes of big money coming in from this one every day, but over time you will profit immensely from this technique.

A sig file (short for signature file) is a brief section of text added to the end of your outgoing emails. It is usually used to contain your basic contact information and maybe a line about what you do. Sometimes it is used to save you lots of repetitive typing as I covered in the Dec. 2001 issue.

In this issue I'll cover some ways that a signature file can make you money.

First things first. You have to be able to create a signature file. I'm going to cover Microsoft Outlook 2000 here. You'll have to look for "signature file" in your help menu if you are using another email program.

In Outlook you click on "Tools" then "Options" then "Mail Formats" then "Signature Picker" then "New." Enter a name for your signature like "Speaking" or "Real Estate Inquiry" or anything that reminds you of what is contained in the signature file. Then pick "Start with a blank signature." You would use the other option of "Use this existing signature as a template" if you already had one that you just wanted to copy from." This would keep you from starting from scratch each time.

Let's say you worked from home as a professional speaker but you sold real estate on the side. You wouldn't want to use the same signature file for a real estate inquiry as you would for a speaking inquiry.

Here's a sample of one of my speaking sig files:

Get your free Subscription to Great Speaking Ezine http://www.antion.com/ezinesubscribe.htm ===========================================
New Speaker Video http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm

Tom Antion Communications http://www.antion.com
A Rare Mix of Business and Entertainment
Keynotes/Seminars and Advanced Presentation Skills

Voice 1-301-459-0738 Fax 1-301-552-0225
Box 2630, Landover Hills, Maryland USA 20784
Trade Links with Us - mailto:Linktrade@antion.com ============================================

Here's how I might change the original if I sold real estate:

I have listings in 12 counties and buyers waiting
===========================================
Search for Real Estate while sitting on your Butt
http://www.ButtEstates.com

Tom Antion 
I can find you a home or sell yours FAST

Voice 1-301-459-0738 Fax 1-301-552-0225
Box 2630, Landover Hills, Maryland USA 20784
Ask me about a free home evaluation guide

============================================

If I got a speaking inquiry, I would simply click a button and the first sig file would pop in to my email. If I got a real estate inquiry, it's just as easy to pop in the real estate one. If you have way more speaking inquiries than real estate emails, then you would set the speaking sig file as the "default" so you didn't have to insert it every time you write an email.

OK so how does this make money?
Believe it or not, people do look at these sig files. Not all people, but some people. You can have links to your products and services in your sig file as long as you don't overdo it. It's a little bit overkill and downright hokey to have a two word email and a 20 line signature file, so don't go wild with this.

I have several variation of sig files to promote different products and services. The first one above promotes four things. My "Wake 'em Up Video Professional Speaking System" http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm , my link trade program, my ezine and the little blurb about speaking. This is all in one concise package, but just pushes the limits of acceptable size.

A good email program will allow you to make as many different sig files as you want. Here's how I might use different sig files depending on how busy I am when I send an email.

If I know you already bought a particular product or service, then I'm most likely to send you a sig file that promotes a different product or service that maybe you didn't know about. I've had lots of people over the years say to me, "I saw X in your sig file. I didn't know you did that/sold that etc."

Affiliate Programs
Sig files are another good place to put affiliate links when you don't have lots of your own products to sell. This way you still have a chance to make money if someone clicks and buys something from your affiliate vendor.

Copywriting Technique
Features and Benefits
by Tom Antion

This one concept of copywriting made me $10,000.00 in one day.

When I first rolled out my "Wake 'em Up Video Professional Speaking System" http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm I went through the entire course and wrote down all the features of the course, i.e. everything you would learn if you had the course. I was really proud of myself for writing a long sales letter that had bullet points with all these great features. I sent a notice of the new product to my ezine list which drove the readers to my long sales page. Ooohh boy! I was about to make a ton of money . . .

Well not that day. Not one order came in. I was really shocked and disappointed after all the work I had put into the product and all the work I had put into writing the sales letter. So what was wrong.

I obviously didn't have a clue so I turned to a professional copywriter and had him look at my work. He said, "It's all great Tom except you didn't put any benefits in the sales letter."

Hmmmmmm. I had no idea what he meant by that. He went on to tell me that I had done a stellar job of listing all the "features" of the product, but a lousy job of listing the "benefits" of buying it. The copywriter told me what to do to fix the problem.

My task to fix the sales letter was to match each feature with the corresponding benefit.

For instance. One of my original first bullet points was.

  • You'll get Push Marketing Techniques

Here's the same bullet point with the benefit added.

  • Push Marketing Techniques. You'll reach thousands of prospects at virtually no cost to you.

I did the best I could at going through most of the bullet points and adding the benefits to the features. I sent the announcement again to my list and sold $10,000.00 worth of videos in one day.

The lesson I learned from this is to never overestimate the intelligence of your audience. You must tell them exactly how your product or service will benefit them.
 

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 V
URL
 

Another place to put keywords is in your URL. URL stands for Unique Resource Locator and basically means the exact address to a particular webpage on your website. Here's an example:

http://www.antion.com/public-speaking.htm Even though my main domain name "antion.com" is not a keyword, I can still get a keyword in my URL by putting a forward slash after the main domain name and naming an exact page on my site using keywords. The dash between the keywords in the keyword phrase "public speaking," although not great when someone has to remember the URL to type it in, is actually better for search engines because it clearly separates the words.

I could take this even further by naming all my pages on public speaking http://www.antion.com/public-speaking-otherpage.htm. This way I could have the keyword phrase "public speaking" in every single page I have on my website that has anything to do with public speaking.

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

Cool Software and Gadgets

Software

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/default.asp Windows XP
Since I upgraded to this operating system I can work my computer to death and virtually never have to reboot. Windows 98 had me rebooting 4 or 5 times a day.

Link hiding software -- contributed by
Jeanatte Cates http://www.techtamers.com and
John Cantu http://www.humormall.com

Some of the links you want to promote may be ridiculously long and many savvy web surfers know that they can cut off your affiliate link and still get to where they want to go which cuts you out of a commission.

Also, you may not want to make it so obvious that you are promoting an affiliate link. Sometimes the affiliate program to which you belong puts your name in the link to identify you. I have been given lots of links like this. The sites below will let you hide the real link and will also let you make a much shorter and easier to use link that can be put on flyers, handouts, business cards and spoken very easily.

http://www.techtamers.com/linkto.htm

SnipURL

http://snipurl.com/

TinyURL

http://tinyurl.com/

MakeAShorterLink

http://makeashorterlink.com/

Gadgets

http://www.xybernaut.com/newxybernaut/home.htm Wearable computers.

http://www.scottevest.com/versiontrackerpop/versiontrackerpop.htm
A vest/coat with over a million pockets (not really) to carry all your wearable computing accessories AND a bottle of water to keep you hydrated while lugging all the stuff around :)

http://www.microopticalcorp.com/ Another wearable computer eyepiece

http://www.worldonline.co.za/tech/tech_center_Stealt.504762.html
Stealthcam allows you to view what's going on in your home or office from anywhere in the world you can connect to the Internet.

http://www.brookstone.com/shop/product.asp?sku=348540 Too lazy to rewind your water hose after you were too lazy to water your plants? Get an automatic hose rewinder.
For the lazy person who has everything :)

http://www.global-merchants.com/home/solars.htm A bunch of cool solar-powered stuff

Useful Websites

 

http://aolsvc.pcworld.aol.com/computercenter/aol/article/0,aid,93283,00.asp
Funny but instructive article about disastrous emails people accidentally sent.

http://www.smallbiztechtalk.com They have a new book out "What Your Computer Consultant Doesn't Want You To Know" This is a great book that helps you do lots of things in house that would be very expensive otherwise.

http://www.affiliateadvisor.com/main.html Great resource to teach you all about marketing your products using affiliate programs.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/ Free site that gives you lots of broadband options and specials from the providers.

Computer / Automation Technique
Ad Tracking
More techniques

Let's say you wanted to promote one of your products by placing a classified ad in someone's ezine. How would you know if it was a successful ad or not?

You could watch your sales and see if you got some extra sales when the ezine came out, but how would you know for sure if the ad pulled in more sales than it cost? How would you know exactly how profitable the ad was or how much it lost? What if you had several ads running in different ezines and you also sold the same product off your own website? How would you know where the sales came from?

The Hard Way
The hard way would be to put a separate page on your website for each ad you are running. You would then count the number of people who came to that page by using some kind of statistics package to track the number of times that page was viewed. This will give you the number of people that actually came from a particular ad. This presumes that they didn't trip on your page accidentally from a search engine listing if an engine somehow indexed your page.

If you only had one ad running and you didn't have your product promoted on your website, then you could compare the number of sales that came in the first few days after the ad ran to the cost of the ad and maybe even the number of visitors from the ad and get a fairly accurate picture of whether the ad was worth it or not.

The problem with the above method is that it's unrealistic to take that kind of time and effort to test just one ad. Also, the accuracy would be really questionable if your product was available even one other place because you would never know for sure where any sales "actually" came from.

Software to the Rescue
So what do you do? Well you're probably getting tired about hearing about http://www.KickStartCart.com but it has an awesome module that automatically tells you if your ad was worth it in no time flat with no effort or hoops to jump through. Also, it's not limited to one campaign at a time. You could have 50 different ads running concurrently and you would know exactly which ones are worth it and which ones aren't.

Here's my latest real life example:

I have been selling wedding speech and wedding toast ebooks at one page websites that I own like http://www.wedding-toasts.org and http://www.wedding-speeches.org Most of my traffic has come from purchasing pay-per-click ads at Overture.com and Google.com.

Here are some figures I got from my http://www.KickStartCart.com ad tracking module on the day this article was written.

A winner
One of the Google Ads produced 3499 clicks, 58 E-book sales, Revenue of $1002.75, which represented a conversion rate of visitors to sales of 1.7 percent. The conversion tracking aspect of this also told me that each click to my Wedding Toast site from that ad was worth 27 cents. The cost per click at Google to get people to this site is only 5 cents, so this is an extremely profitable ad that I want to run, run, run with.

A loser

Thinking that a very targeted wedding site would generate tons of sales, I advertised at a site that had a pay-per-click program. I could buy 1000 clicks for $300.00 or 30 cents per click. I dutifully put my ad tracker on the ads and when the program was finished found that the wedding speech ad was worth only one cent per click and the wedding toast ad was worth only six cents per click. These ads were big losers. When the company came back trying to get me to go with a bigger program whereby I would get 10,000 clicks for only 15 cents per click. guess what I said . . .Thanks, but no thanks. I would still be losing 9 cents to 14 cents per click.

Had I not had the exact figures, I would not have been able to make that quick decision to cut my losses and if I hadn't had the software to automate the entire process, I would never have taken the time to track so closely.  . . .I might have taken the 15 cent deal because sales were increasing, but I wouldn't have know the sales weren't profitable.

So, automate the process of tracking your ads and you will identify the winners and the losers quickly.

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.

  • Use ctrl-home to go to the top of a web page. Use ctrl-end to go to the bottom of a webpage.

  • ctrl-N opens a new window. For years whenever I wanted to visit a webpage and then come back to the one I was looking at, I would lose the first one.  I didn't know you can have more than one browser window open. How dumb I was! Now I routinely have six or seven open.

Case Study
Rick Butts


 

I have to be honest and tell you that I cannot remember signing up for Tom Antion's Great Speaking FREE eZine. I'll also tell you that it came in for several months and I only read a bit, rarely all of it, and then I deleted it. Other than a few mental a-ha's, I will bet I never took even the tiniest baby step of action for what I read until one day...

Tom sent out an ad for "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Speakers" http://www.antion.com/click.htm  and I bought my first eBook. Without question this book changed my business, opened up my creativity, and literally changed my life.

AT the time I was a 100% bureau booked keynote speaker, selling my self published personal development adventure novel, CDs and tapes and making about $300K per year. I thought I was sitting on the top of my game, but I was sitting on a lot of planes, too.

I would have to take up every page of this issue to tell you how many things I've put into action since beginning with Tom, but here are a just a few:

  • Changed my business name to http://www.RickButts.com  LLC and printed it on everything. This single shift has driven so many more people to my site as buyers and subscribers.
     

  • Began sending out a regular eZine to the 2000 people who had signed up to get it - people who had already bought from me and were begging for more stuff I WASN'T producing. The first time I mailed to it, over 600 emails were old and dead! Using Tom's techniques, I've got just shy of 5000 now, and growing all the time. Each time I send out an issue, I get money into my account in seconds.
     

  • Produced two new books in regular and eBook form.
     

  • Set up online real-time credit card processing.
     

  • Hosted two tele-seminars, (yes, people will pay to listen to motivation and personal development on the phone,) and still sell cassettes and CDs from it.
     

  • Got http://www.KickStartCart.com  and have made big use of the auto-responders, add on sales. I've also launched 4 mini-courses which are terrific for getting new subscribers and sales.
     

  • Developed a "keyword strategy" and began maximizing my sites for search engine traffic.
     

  • Bought WebPosition Gold and learned more about search engines in 2 hours than I had in 2 years. Used it to get my site listed on the first page for Google and Yahoo and others.
     

  • Built a one page web site at http://www.customerservicevideos.com  and promptly sold a $697 set using Tom's strategies for Google Ad Words Select.
     

  • Did 2 joint venture e-mail ads resulting in new sales, customers, and more joint projects.
     

  • Bought http://www.eBookSource.com  and overhauled it. Now there is a place where anyone can sell their ebook (even fiction!) online and earn 60-70% commissions and more. Tom really saved my bacon on this because I was trying to do it as a subscription site and Tom showed me how it was going to cost way too much money and time. I made the mentor fee I paid Tom back on that one alone.
     

  • Renegotiated the hosting deal I have with my hosting company to go from $14.95 per web site, To a flat $75 for a big slab of bandwidth. Now I've learned how to buy domains for $9.95 and essentially host them at no extra charge.
     

  • Currently own more than 30 domain names.
     

  • Picked up my first two telephone consulting clients at $100 per hour. (I never did a shred of consulting before.)
     

  • Set up numerous joint ventures with other businesses, writers, and speakers for profitable web deals.
     

  • Got the electronic rights to a phenomenal book by a Psychiatrist on a tightly niched topic, bought five related domain names, found the keywords that will sell it well, and will launch it next week as a 24/7 cash register selling a downloadable product I won't have to touch, on a one-page website. Every bit of this from concept to implementation I learned from Tom 100%.
     

  • Created a compilation-author eBook on Customer Service and implemented an affiliate strategy that pays the contributors 100% of the sale price, and $100 if the referral customer buys a higher priced product.
     

  • I just got off the phone before I began writing this article with a writer from New York I met because of Tom and Debbie Allen, and put together a joint venture to market a Kids Party book as a one page downloadable product.
     

  • Okay, I also finished the sequel to my first adventure novel three nights ago, and I have to say all the creativity and passion to write was a result of all the reading and typing I've done for Internet marketing.
     

Through my work with Tom, and the subsequent learning experiences generated by this experience, I have effectively blitzed through a master's level education on marketing, Internet selling, copywriting, technological awareness and savvy that has transformed my speaking career, (I bumped my fee up 50% in May,) and in my whole entrepreneurial focus.

Rick Butts


Just a few of Rick's Web Projects

http://www.RickButts.com
http://www.ZapTheGap.com
http://www.CustomerServiceVideos.com
http://www.MotivationalKeynoteSpeaker.com


ATTN: Authors, Writers, Speakers!
If you have information that solves a problem, sell your book at
http://www.eBookSource.com  and earn 60%-70% commissions! We will even help you convert your manuscript into eBook format.

For your FREE 5 Day Mini-course and learn how to create, publish,
and profit from the information you have that people are already
searching for... mailto:mini-course@eBookSource.com  and put eBook
Power in the Subject line.

Get Rick's Internet Magazine and get a free copy of the new book
The Big BUTTS of Life - Get Off Your Excuses and Do Big Things -
FREE!

http://www.RickButts.com/ezine

Rick Butts
9070 N 82nd St
Scottsdale, AZ. 85258
480-596-2691 voice
480-596-8019 fax

 

TRENDS

  • DVDs have taken over the consumer video market by storm and sell and rent way more than the video tape. Think about that when producing your products and demo materials because there may not be a VCR around to view them.

  • A survey by Reveries  found that only 3% of people involved in marketing believe that online marketing is difficult to measure.   34% say that traditional mass-media advertising is difficult to measure. I tend to think the figures about online marketing being easy to measure are true. Online advertising appears to me to be a much safer way to go when you can't afford major mistakes.

  • Websense found that 25% of the employees surveyed considered themselves addicted to personal net usage at work. I'm considering putting keystroke analyzers on all my in house computers although I recognize it may be more difficult to find people to show up at all if they know they are being scrutinized.

    Here are a couple programs you might consider
    http://www.hackerprograms.org/keyboard_monitor.asp
    http://www.hack-passwords.com/eblaster.asp
    http://www.adavi.com/default.cfm
    http://www.keyghost.com

    You may have to get a professional opinion about the legality of using such software in your business and you most likely would need to announce the installation of the software to your workers. From what I have read the courts have upheld the fact that a company can restrict it's use of the computers it supplies and has a right to know how they are being used.

  • WebSideStory reports that Netscape's share of the browser market has dropped to only 3.4% from 13% this time last year. You can pretty much quit worrying if your site shows up on Netscape at all because no one is using it. (note: you should still check your statistics package to tell you if your website visitors are comprised of a high percentage of Netscape users)

  • Camera phones are sweeping Japan and Korea and will no doubt soon catch fire here. The camera phone allows the user to take a picture and email it directly from the phone.

  • Here's a great example of how fast you can make money on the web. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,53827,00.html

  • Self publishing no longer has a stigma attached to it. In fact it can get you a bigger advance than you ever would have gotten from a traditional publisher had you not self published. check this out. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,53996,00.html

 

 

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

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