Let’s Talk Offline Marketing
Posted by Mitch on Jun 22, 2008
As my friend Kelvin likes to say, sometimes we’re more suited to offer someone else advice than remember how to use it for ourselves. This happened to me recently, though, to be fair to myself, I’ve done the same types of things.
In a Facebook group, a lady was asking for advice on how to better offer her services, because she worked for herself and was struggling to keep her business afloat. Her business is that she owns a dance studio. She had done a few things such as advertising in the newspaper and putting flyers up around town, and she has a website.
I decided to take up the challenge; I’m such a helpful sort. I asked what kind of ads she had run in the newspaper, then asked if she’d ever run any specials for either visiting or discounts for signing up if they mentioned the ad. I asked her if she’d thought about doing the same type of thing from her website. She also writes a newsletter, so I asked her if she’d ever thought about putting something like that in her newsletter, or offer something to her present customers if any of them brought in a new client who signed up for lessons.
I asked more about her flyers, and wondered if she’d ever contacted any of her local production theaters and asked if she could put flyers up there, even those advertising events she might be putting on such as recitals. I offered a suggestion of putting on an exhibition at some of the local malls, as I know many in my own area who are always looking for some kind of entertainment on the weekends, and if kids are involved, she’s got a winner. At those exhibitions, she could have a table set up to sign up people for either dance lessons, her newsletter, or just to get names and numbers to contact later on. I also suggested the possibility of a dance contest that she could sponsor in some fashion, maybe giving away a free year of lessons to the winner, or maybe something else.
I also made the suggestion that she could offer clinics, more speaking than exhibition, in places such as her local library or chamber of commerce, on topics related to dancing or even physical education or exercise, which would help get her name and face out there. She’s extremely attractive, and I believe people would flock to see her and would at least check out her services in some fashion.
When I look at my businesses, after writing what I have above, I can easily say that I’ve done similar things like what I recommended. I’ve offered discounts from time to time on products I’ve created. I’ve offered special things to people who can get others to sign up for one of my newsletters (my main business). I’ve put on presentations and performed a good number of speaking engagements, both around town and in other states. I’ve actually taken out an ad in the past on an online newspaper, advertising local seminars I was putting on.
I’ve sent out letters, flyers, and postcards. I email people from time to time, though I identify and research who I’m going to send email to so that I’m not accused of spamming anyone. I truly believe that I’ve done as much as one could possibly do when it comes to marketing, other than making tons of phone calls; that probably isn’t going to happen, though. Oh yeah; I’m not launching a thousand ships with my picture either. 
Marketing is definitely something one has to get used to doing if they hope to be successful in some fashion, especially if you’re going to work for yourself. I know my offline marketing has been much better than my online marketing, which is why I read so many blogs that talk about online marketing. I’ve learned a heck of a lot, enough so that I can at least talk the talk with almost anyone.
Now if I can just get over the edge online, maybe I won’t have to work as hard offline. That wouldn’t depress me one bit.
How “Big” Are You Ready For?
Posted by Mitch on Jun 14, 2008
Though I have another career, I really want to make good money online. I was going to add “through whatever means necessary”, but I realize that’s not quite true. I also realize that I’ve probably been limiting myself in some ways, mainly because I’m not ready for the consequences of doing certain other things.
For instance, when one thinks about how big they want to be online, most believe they want to make millions. That’s a laudable goal, but the truth is that most of us are set up right now to possibly make a few thousand, but may not be thinking ahead to what may lie in wait if we did have the opportunity to make way more money. For instance, if you started to get 100,000 visitors a week, or a month, are you ready for the increasing cost of your hosting package? Are you ready to pay more in taxes? Are you ready for any and everything that might come along?
I came across this post by Zac Johnson, known as the Super Affiliate Marketer, called How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months!, and it was amazing reading. He actually got to the point where he had to purchase his own servers to handle his site, and not just one but 17 of them; ouch!
It’s actually a great story. He hit upon a niche, uploaded lots of free content, put the word out and people flocked like crazy. With numbers, people clicked on and bought a lot of his other stuff, but all that traffic comes with a price itself, and he worked a lot of hours both upfront and while it was all going on, and had a lot of worry because he knew he couldn’t afford to let his system go down even for ten minutes.
He also talks about all the different programs he signed up for and tested, and which ones paid him and how. Instead of rehashing his, I’ll mention that I’m with Commission Junction, Google Adsense, Performics, Joel Comm, Shawn Casey, Clickbank, and recently signed up as an affiliate for a niche medical billing site that ties in well with my new medical billing site. I didn’t link to any of those sites here, except for my new medical billing site, since they’re all easy enough to find. I’ve also signed up with TextLinkAds for this blog, but I’ve had to get an advertiser who wants to market on this site, or so I’ve been told when I wrote the company to ask them why nothing was showing up yet.
I mentioned on my 101st post a few days ago that I’d made $8 on this blog thus far. What I hadn’t mentioned is that, across the board, I’ve made around $650 online over the years with all the stuff I sell, which is more than my web costs have been, so I’m slightly ahead of the game. However, I just earned another $100 on Adsense, and the amazing thing about that is that this is the first time I’ve reached that figure in less than a year. Okay, eleven months, to be truthful, but also to be truthful, the amounts have jumped ever since I purchased Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets, which I’m not linking to because it’s over there on the right side, and that was, what, February or March? So, I’m hoping that the next $100 I make is six months or less, and less wouldn’t depress me one bit.
Anyway, I love reading these types of stories and reports of online income. Many of the big time bloggers post their monthly statistics, such as John Chow and I realize I have a long way to go. I only hope that, if things really do take off, I’m ready for the next step in the process.
A Bag Full Of Stuff? I Love Stuff!
Posted by Mitch on Jun 10, 2008
Okay, this is a cheapy, but hey, as the title says, I love stuff. In this case, John Chow found a link to a site called Market Leverage that’s having some kind of special promotion and is giving away free stuff. Some of it is standard logo stuff, but the two big prizes are the $200 Am Ex gift card and a Nano iPod. Hey, with the price of gas, that card is golden, and I could listen to fresh tunes while pumping gas (do kids still use “fresh” as a phrase these days?).
Anyway, visit John’s site for details on entering the contest and getting more than just one entry. And there you go; I’m just sharing the link love tonight! And, since I’m going for the cheapo, let’s go for some sex appeal also:
Another Rant On NYS Internet Taxes
Posted by Mitch on Jun 6, 2008
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how New York state is killing my attempt to try to do more business on the internet. It’s all about New York state deciding it has the right to taxes that many companies don’t charge for doing business on the internet.
Since that time, six of the companies that I’ve been trying to promote have decided to drop me from participating with them because I live in New York state; isn’t that a blip? In their minds, they don’t want to have to deal with having to be responsible for collecting, then paying, taxes to the state of New York, and would rather not do any business with anyone in the state, which is still number two or three in population across the country, than collect these taxes.
It brings up the conversation of whether states have the right to collect taxes on its citizens who decide to buy their products elsewhere, whether it’s on the internet or not. For instance, if you’re in Ohio and decide to buy a car, then come back to New York, are you supposed to pay taxes on that car, even if you happened to pay the taxes in Ohio? Or, if I’m in an airport in Chicago and decide to buy a few tee shirts, when I get back into town am I supposed to declare those purchases and pay New York the taxes I’d have to pay if I’d bought those same items here?
I have a friend who bought her cigarettes online to try to save some money, through one of the Native American websites. Two years later, she received a bill from the state of New Jersey for the taxes on those cigarettes, even though she wouldn’t have had to pay taxes if she’d bought them on the reservation, for almost $1,500. Personally, I think that’s outrageous, and it’s seems to be a restraint of trade issue of some kind.
I know that while I live in New York that any products that I create and sell to other New Yorkers has to be taxed, and I don’t really have a problem with that. It’s the cost of living here and doing business here. But if I had to suddenly start collecting sales tax for people who lived in other states and then sending checks to those states, I know that I wouldn’t be selling to anyone in those states, or else I’d sell and just not pay; what’s another state going to do other than possibly sue me, and I know they’d be going after much bigger game than me. However, just having to even have that as something I might have to consider isn’t fair to me, or anyone else donig business online.
Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck with it at this point in time. I hope Amazon’s lawsuit against our state ends up in their favor, but I don’t have high hopes for that happening. Andrew Cuomo isn’t as much of a bulldog as our previous Attorney General (who shall remain nameless since he disappointed me as our previous governor), but he’s had a couple of big time wins against insurance companies, which proves he’s more than up to the challenge.
So, I guess I’ll just pout a little bit, deal with the defectors, and see how it all falls out. I’m still going to continue trying to find more affiliates that aren’t ready to defect just yet, like the one below. Let’s see how it all ends up in the end.
Sean Branagan Talks About Marketing
Posted by Mitch on May 29, 2008
I went to a presentation here in the Syracuse area today for a series called “Talking Business: A Conversation With…” Basically it’s a monthly interview series with local business people who’ve done well. They’re interviewed by a moderator, then questions are allowed to be asked by the audience.
Today’s presenter was a gentleman named J. Sean Branagan, president of a company called Communigration, which is a PR & marketing firm for technology companies.
I love going to things like this, but especially today I enjoyed it because he talked about his concepts of marketing for small businesses. This is what he does, but those small businesses have very expensive and specific technology, which of course means he’s competing against fewer people for very big dollars, and he has to find ways of standing out from the crowd while still addressing the potential clients needs.
He talked about his process for coming up with the right message to get across. He starts out by writing a 50 word statement of some kind. Then he whittles that down to 25 words. Next he whittles it down to 10 words, and finally he shoots for 3 or 4 words that fully capture just what a company does. His thought is that if you can come up with a way to tell people what you can do for them with a super short statement, and are ready to back it up with more information once you’ve hooked them, then you’ll succeed where other businesses that do what you do fail.
It makes a lot of sense, especially if you pay attention to TV commercials. Nike’s “Just Do It” is probably one of the best known 3-word phrases in the world today. “Coke Adds Life” was one of my favorites from way back in the day. One of our local community colleges has the phrase “We Build Futures” that’s very popular. Remember State Farm Insurance, “Like A Good Neighbor”? And even Mazda’s “Zoom Zoom” stands out; you know what the commercial is about as soon as you hear that, even if you never hear the name of the product.
Can this same model work with an online business? Unfortunately, no one thought to ask this question, including me, while he was up there. I tend to believe that branding of some fashion is imperative to helping one establish an identity of some sort, though. Google’s first page is unique with only their name; so is Yahoo’s. YouTube might have been as popular a site if it had been called “Upload Your Movies”, but it might have been overlooked also. Trying to find a way to capture the eyes and attention of a visitor to your site just may help them stay for a little while, and if it does, you’ll have the opportunity to make money in some fashion, and that’s never a bad thing.
It was a wonderful presentation, and it got me thinking more and more about what I can possibly do to make my sites visually more interesting, as well as finding something more to captivate their eyes. I’m Just Sharing,… heck, I still like that!
FreeCreditReport.com Really Works
Posted by Mitch on May 27, 2008
Different kind of post today. I’m hawking FreeCreditReport.com because they really work. How do I know this? I’m a member, of course.
Here’s my story. I went to this site last September and signed up to get my free credit reports, just like the commercial stated. Then I went ahead and signed up for the monthly credit alert. This followed my wife and I being turned down for a line of credit at the bank where our mortgage is.
Then I started noticing different agencies looking at my report. I knew this because FCR (that’s what I’m calling them for now) sent me alerts each time there was an inquiry. Next thing you know, I started getting phone calls and letters from collection agencies, even though I knew I didn’t owe anybody. So, I finally took a good look at the report. I noticed that there were two derogatory reports on there, and I knew I had paid at least one of those for sure. I thought I’d paid the other one, but I wasn’t sure.
The one I was able to take care of fairly quickly, as I had something proving that the account had been settled years ago. The other one, in my heart I knew I’d settled it, but I wasn’t sure I could prove it. Credit agencies are wild, though. They don’t wait too long to decide to get to the escalation process. What’s also funny is that multiple agencies will be going after the same amount; I believe that’s fraudulent, but so be it.
Then I got a break. I found a letter that showed that I had set up the agreement to pay back an outstanding debt. I remembered the phone call and I remembered the guy, and I had his name on the letter outlining the agreement. Now I was set. I contacted Experian through FCR, and I also contacted the company that I’d paid this account to, back in 2004, of all things. Like the other company, they had never reported it as being satisfied, and, of course, now I know why we got turned down. Sheesh!
Now, here’s the upswing. Just by sending my request through FCR that I was disputing the derogatory statement, my credit score jumped up 60 points. I now have the letter proving that, indeed, the account is satisfied, though the weasels didn’t back date it because they said they didn’t have full access to records that old (yet we’re supposed to have everything if they happened to contact us, right?), so the letter is dated fairly recently. My credit score should jump up a bit more, as this will mean I have nothing bad on my report. Course, it would be great if their letter showed that it was taken care of four years ago, but hey, we take what we can get.
So, it’s been worth it for me to have FreeCreditReport.com following the activity on my account, and I can wholeheartedly recommend them. Of course, you don’t have to pay anything if it’s your first inquiry, or if the last time you checked was more than a year ago. Per federal law, we all get one free credit report a year. But these guys have done well for me; and there you go.
How Far Are You Willing To Go For Promotion?
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2008
A friend of mine Sue Tosto, a relationship coach, recently wrote a post in her blog titled What Kind Of Attention Do You Want. Her basic lament is how these days one goes onto a site such as Facebook or MySpace and sees these young girls barely dressed and wondering if that’s really how they want to project themselves.
I’ve been reading things lately where both men and women are losing the opportunity for getting some pretty good jobs because more and more companies are hiring someone whose responsibility it is to go online and look for information on these applicants, and they’re going to sites like those above and not liking what they see, and turning down those applicants. It’s not only about qualifications anymore, especially as the web has given everyone the opportunity to express themselves in whatever fashion they so choose. Not only that, but as we learned from the Miss New Jersey situation last year, setting those pictures up as private means literally nothing anymore. I have enough knowledge to be able to figure my way into a lot of things; I just don’t (cough).
I think about that sort of thing all the time as I work towards promoting all of my businesses. In Hollywood, agents may say that any publicity is good publicity, but most of us don’t have the luxury of trying to recover from negative publicity, especially when it gets out to a large audience. And, truth be told, negative publicity doesn’t mean you did anything wrong either; some marketing ideas just don’t work.
For instance, think about your image of a lawyer. Now try to think of that same lawyer wearing baggy sweats and a baseball cap. Now imagine you’re in deep trouble of some sort, and need a very good lawyer to get you out of trouble. Who are you going to when you need help? If you didn’t already know the guy in sweats, you’re going to someone who looks the part, right? If you saw a commercial on TV from a lawyer wearing sweats and a baseball cap and he or she was telling you how good their law firm is, how much credibility do you think that would carry, whether it was true or not? Memorable, sure, but credible?
For my “day time career”, there’s a certain standard that’s expected for me in order to get contracts. Consulting has its own set of rules, and the kiss of death would be to decide to be far away from the norm. I already have an uphill battle, being one of a very few minorities who do what I do, so the last thing I can afford is to be seen as too much of a radical or party guy, both of which aren’t my nature, but on my business blog I will tackle issues that I won’t address here.
I met one guy locally who’s a millionaire, and he was telling a group of us some of the things he’s done over the years in promoting his businesses. Some of those things make good business sense; some of them would basically end the careers of the rest of us.
So, let’s relate this to being online. We all want traffic and visitors, and we all want to be credible. At the same time, all of us knows that if we can find a way to stand out from the crown that we might increase the number of our visitors even more, because people might want to see what the heck you’re going to do next. Now, Rich Jerk might be able to get away with abusing visitors, but most of us can’t do that sort of thing. We also can’t, or shouldn’t, have all sorts of bells and whistles when people visit our site, because those things get really irritating. I talked a couple of posts ago about how much I hate popups, but something else I can’t stand is either music or video automatically playing when I visit a site; irritating as sin. I also don’t like flash start up pages; get me to the content quickly.
So, how far will you go in promoting your business or blog in order to achieve a substantial online status? How far should you go? What kind of attention do you want? Hey, that’s how we started, isn’t it? 
No Pop-Ups From Me
Posted by Mitch on May 21, 2008
On Michael Fortin’s blog, he recently wrote a post called Customers Won’t Discount Your Dishonesty, and it’s a very good read, something I agree with wholeheartedly.
Though he’s basically talking about internet tricks such as when you try to leave having a pop up window stop you with a discounted offer, I believe it applies to so many different types of companies, and I for one don’t like it, and, he’s right, you lose respect for them. I remember when my wife and I first moved into this house and we thought we needed new windows. This guy came to the house and was here for 3 hours, first measuring the windows, then supposedly doing all the calculations he had to do so that he could talk to us further. He then dropped the price on us; $36,000. I actually laughed out loud, which is so unlike me, but it was more than 1/3rd of what we’d paid for the house.
He left, but three days later we got a call offering the same package for $16,000; one again we said no. Then four days later we were offered the same package for $9,000. At that point I told the person that I didn’t want their company calling me anymore because I didn’t trust them. A couple years later, my wife contacted one of the big home improvement chains and asked someone to come look at our windows. This guy gave us a quote where most of our windows came to $70 each, with the big bay window coming to $1,000 on its own; I could understand that, as it’s a different style. We didn’t go for that one, but we did replace a lot of the other windows, at a very affordable price.
Some of these guys are obviously making a lot of sales, otherwise they wouldn’t persist in using the tactic. Personally, when I’m ready to leave, that’s that, and if I see a pop up window, it just irritates me to no end. But when I see the pop up window has a discounted price, well, I start worrying even a little bit more about the product, and I wonder about the old bait and switch; why didn’t they just offer it at that price to begin with, right?
Well, no matter. I will guarantee you that I won’t have any of those types of tricks on this blog. Just your average everyday rant, rave, or affiliate marketing link; no tricks.
Let’s Talk About Commission Junction
Posted by Mitch on May 20, 2008
As you’ve noticed easily enough, with most of my posts I have some sort of affiliate link or product at the end of each one of them. Most of them come from Commission Junction, and that’s who I’m going to talk about this evening.
Commission Junction is one of the largest big name affiliate programs out there. There may be affiliate programs that have more products, but Commission Junction deals with some of the biggest name companies and personalities. For instance, I’m an affiliate marketer for products from companies such as 1&1 Hosting, Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Crayola, GoDaddy, Kodak, NBC/Universal and Time Warner Cable. They have almost 2,200 different companies that people can do advertising for, including the one at the end of this post.
Now, here’s the thing I’ve noticed about affiliate marketing thus far; I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it. I know we’re not really supposed to talk about things we haven’t done well yet, but so be it; the fourth wall is down, and I’m now George Burns talking to the audience.
I haven’t made a lot of money through CJ, their nickname. I’ve made some, enough so that I even got a check once. Truthfully, you don’t have to sell a lot of product in order to make some money. However, you have to sell some, and it would seem to be much harder than just putting up a link of some kind that looks pretty, possibly flashes, and hoping people will click on it. I know this because I check the statistics, and I see very few clicks on these bad boys ever. As a matter of fact, almost all the money I’ve made has come through 1&1, which probably means someone who knows me needed hosting and decided to help me out a little bit; thanks friends!
For one of my sites, I’ve created pages that highlight some of the products, and tried to show a nice range of prices. On another site, I’ve put a couple of products on one side of each page, hoping the picture might entice someone to click on a product to see what else a site might have. And here, as well as on other sites, I’ve posted the affiliate links with the company name, figuring one of them might click with someone one day.
Of course, sometimes CJ, or their affiliates, don’t help me much. For instance, companies are known to move around their images, and of course sometimes they discontinue a product, or a link. It’s easy to always check the links on your own website, but I don’t go around testing the links to the products on a regular basis because I don’t want to skew the numbers that tell me how many people are checking stuff out; not like it’d be all that many anyway.
Still, I can’t say any of this is Commission Junction’s fault. I know there’s a formula somewhere, and I’m going to keep trying to figure it out. However, I will say that CJ has some wonderful companies it represents, and if you’re a true affiliate marketer, and know better than me what you’re doing, you should check them out.
How Far Will You Go To Brand Yourself?
Posted by Mitch on May 1, 2008
Last week I went to this presentation which was the beginning of a local interview series with successful entrepreneurs in town. The first guy on the list is a millionaire many times over, but he’s done it the unconventional way. In his life he’s owned maybe 20 or so businesses, at one time 12 at once but now is down to “only” 4. He hasn’t known anything about a single one of the businesses before he bought them, but learned early on that hiring people who do know about those businesses and that he could trust went a long way towards making them successful. And he did all of this without a college degree, and he still shuns, as much as possible, computers; doesn’t even own a cell phone.
However, he said his biggest boost comes from self promoting himself as often as he can. To whit, one thing he does is hands out at least 500 business cards a month. Now, this works out better for him that for most of us because on all of his business cards are at least two pictures of these custom cars he makes for celebrities and rich people all around the world, with the least expensive being sold for $90,000, the most expensive going for $300,000. I’d be handing out my cards at a rapid pace if I had that as part of my legacy also.
He also has two other things that most people don’t. One, he wears an ascot and always wears very bright colors. Two, he wears an engraved gold name tag with his name and the name of his most visibly prominent business on his jacket at all times. He said this gets people talking to him instead of him having to open up conversations, which then gives him a reason to pass his card along to them, and because of the cars he knows people will share the cards with others, and it’s possible that they’ll end up in the hands of someone who wants to do business with him. It certainly makes him memorable; no one who meets him forgets who he is.
It’s all about branding, and trying to decide how far you’re willing to go to brand yourself. I think about myself when this issue comes up. Online, I have articles of all types all over the internet, I belong to a bunch of online networking groups, and I have 3 blogs, yet I’m probably still not all that well known because, after all, the internet is in this big place called the world. Offline, I belong to some organizations that have the same people there all the time, I’ve been in some specialty magazines but those people don’t really ever know who I am, I’ve given some presentations here and there, but otherwise I might as well be called Anonymous, just like everyone else.
So, the trick for all of us is to determine how far we’re willing to go, and of course, depending on our business, just what’s appropriate to help us stand out. For instance, if you’re a lawyer, walking around in a clown suit may not get it done. But we all have to find our way of advertising ourselves if we hope to make it big in this world, especially if we want to work for ourselves.
I'm Just Sharing is a blog about sharing my thoughts about internet marketing and other things. Read, enjoy, and buy! :-)
