Get Your Business Cards Out There

One of the things people spend a lot of time and money over .. or no time and money at all on … is business cards. It’s timely for me because I’ve just used up my last 1000 cards that I had printed for a conference I did a little while back. So i pulled out my current business card, and the prior one, and the few I used before that. One thing I noticed is that each time I produce a business card it’s never the same look twice! The colours are different, the style is different, the format is different. One thing that never changes is the type of information I put on it.

I know that flies in the face of the marketing experts and the graphic design branding gurus who espouse a consistent look and feel to your business presentation tools. Frankly I’ve never wanted to spend the money on finessing things like that. It’s been more important to me to just get a card n my hand so I can out it in someone else’s or in an envelope or on a platform table or in a book.

My very first business card was from trusty old Vistaprint. It was the cheapest card you could get – I just paid for the postage and it had the Vistaprint branding on the back of the card but it did the job .. I got the card out there and I started to get business.

My next set of cards were from … Vistaprint. This time I could afford to pay more to have content on the back of the card and I put my face on it as well so people would remember me better.

My last set of cards I had professionally done – I used a graphic artist to render a design and had a proper printing specialist produce them on flash cardstock in a satin matte finish. You know what? I didn’t like them. And they cost me more than I paid through Vistaprint for the double-sided version I did earlier.

No surprise that I’m about to hop back on the web and order my next batch of cards through Vistaprint again. I’m happy to promote them because I’ve actually used the product and continue to do so. But here’s the tip .. look out for special offers – Vistaprint. Just watch out for all those add-on extras like increasing the number of cards you order, the back side printing, the premium cardstock.

Pay for what you can afford, give out as many cards as you can to prospects and then, improve your business card when the money is there.

Take Daily Action To Succeed

Some people make internet marketing all sound so simple, and I guess it is when you’ve got a set of products and know what you’re offering to whom.

"Getting it" and applying it are two different things.

Most people are not trying to overcomplicate things. It just takes longer when you have to think through the steps each time. For instance, seemingly simple tasks take on new life when each step is plugged in…

1. Email list about one of my offers
   1a login to autoresponder service
   1b write email
   1c fill out the pages and schedule or send autoresponder

2. Dictate three articles.
   2a decide what to write about/angle
   2b dictate
   2c either transcribe myself or outsource
   2d login in to articles directories and post
   2e post to own websites

3. Clear out customer support.
   3a open emails
   3b respond
   3c fix issues

4. Create PowerPoint for upcoming presentation.
   4a open PPT
   4b prepare slides
   4c open camtasia
   4d record voiceover for slides

Dead easy if you’re a machine and know exactly what you are doing and that is all you are doing! Most budding IM’ers however are faced with the stop-start issue of working and trying to do IM on the side.

A lot of it also depends on the tools you use (some are quicker and easier) and how familiar you are with them. It’s much quicker if you’re using them regularly and don’t have to remind yourself what to do so consistency is key in building skills and your business.

So don’t feel inadequate when one of your guru’s tells you how easy it all is. It may be for them. But we’re all human and we each take different times and approaches.

The key is to making sure you are making plans, not excuses.

Just take action.

Daily.

Domain Name Scams

The internet is a wonderful place and at the same time there are unscrupulous people trying to catch the unwary.

In the mail I have received at various times a notification of my domain names due for renewal. The document looks authentic and appears to be a regular business invoice. I’m confident some of these end up in unsuspecting accounts departments and get paid. The only thing is that what these documents authorise is that you transfer your domain to them as your new registrar and you get to pay 100 times the going cost of renewing a domain!

Another one I got today by email is reproduced here for all to be aware:

From Tom Zu [tom.zu@pubip.org]

Letter to the president or brand owner, thanks)

Dear President,

We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in china.I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on may 7, 2012 that a company which self-styled “WLDC Int’l Co. Ltd ” were applying to register ” mydomainname” as their Net Brand and some asia domain names through our firm.

Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “WLDC Int’l Co. Ltd”.Looking forward to your prompt reply and have a nice day.

Best Regards

Tom Zu

Registration Dept.

Tel:+86-5515184482 || Fax:+86-551-5123308

Address:No.1889 ShouChun Road,luyang District,Hefei,Anhui,China

Firstly, this is not a new tactic. It’s been doing the rounds for a few years from what I can tell.

And it is quite convincing – hey they even include a phone and fax number as well as an address. If you do your due diligence and look up the pubip.org website, it seems to be legit. A deeper search shows their domain whois details do not match those in the email and further in, one finds the domain is listed as a scam site. They seem to have a number of websites which are cloned as legit web businesses.

BEWARE

What will happen if you respond? They will attempt to sell you a bundle of associated domain names at highly inflated prices.

Steer clear.

If you really really want a bunch of hk,cn, or other domain names then go get them from a reputable domain name provider.

We recommend Namecheap. They’ve been around a long time, are easy to deal with, and … are cheap. Namecheap.

How To Be More Successful in Business

Here are my notes from a recent presentation …

People want to know why your product is better – show it to them

People want to know 5 reasons why they should buy your product – tell them the essentials

Be seen and get featured in a magazine – write an article and include your pic – it builds cred

it helps if people see your name and news in the papers – send press releases

Share your knowledge on the internet – share your expertise – give away tips and tricks

People need to know how to reach you – publish an ezine weekly

Double Your Income : Double Your Time Off

If you could design your ideal life all over again, would it have more work days or more free time?

Dan Sullivan’s technique for substantially increasing your income is based on increasing your time off and working more intensely when you are at ‘work’. For entrepreneurs and executives the principle is to develop and train others to progressively require your input less and less.

To get more free days or time off, plug it in your diary and make it non-negotiable. Schedule in the days and weeks you want off ahead of time.

Sullivan allocates time according to three types:

Free Days – a period from midnight to to the next midnight when you are not accessible to work and do no work related activity. No ‘checking in’, no checking emails, no reading professional magazines or books, no mobile phone or cell phone. This is time you are literally “off limits”
Focus Day – do work that exhibits your unique talent and abilities for which you get paid. This needs to be at least 85% of your time spent on this direct income-earning activity. The trick is to make sure you get results from the time spent in this area.
Buffer Days – chores, planning, prep work, administrivia and other tasks or activities you don’t get paid for but which need to be done. Days in this category need to be maximised. Work with the efficiency and intensity you apply to the day just before taking off on holidays or vacations!

For workaholics, they take off little time and so doubling it is relatively easy! For others, it’s about being clear on what your day is structured around and dedicating your energy to that.

I have friends who have never heard of Dan Sullivan or this method. Yet if I analyse their application to their business and life, they apply similar principles. They have established a great reputation in their field so attracting business is not an issue. When they are ‘at work’ they are highly focussed and productive. Their incentive for doing so is that they schedule time out every week and in some cases (especially in summer when the surf is up), daily! They have a very balanced lifestyle.

Keep track of how many days you have now – free, focus and buffer. Then work at increasing Focus Days, Reducing Buffer Days and having more Free Days.

ACTION

Meet with those around you at work to discuss how to create and maximise more Focus Days where you can apply your expertise and talent to get the best results and revenue
Set up a time to meet with family and friends to plan more Free days in your life
Schedule at least 4 vacations over the next 12 months – long weekends, a weekend drive to the wine district, a week holiday on the Coast, whatever, just book them into your diary

To make the days even more effective:

List the 3 best results days you’ve had. Identify the common elements in those best days. Plan to include more of those elements in your future Focus Days and that will improve your results more
List the 3 best Free Days you’ve ever had and , look for the common elements then schedule more of these elements into your future Free days.

What Do I Need to Know To Build An Online Business?

Forget all the hype and flamboyant promises. Here is an online business in a nutshell:

you need to sell something
what you sell needs to be something people want and/or need
for them to buy from you they need to get to know you
for them to get to know you you need a way to contact them
for them to give you their details you need to have them find you

It’s not so different to a traditional business, really. The principles are the same and you have probably heard these lines before:

“Nothing happens until you make a sale” (point 1)

“People buy on emotion and purchase on logic” ie they rationalise their gut reaction (point 2)

“People buy from people they know, like and trust” (point 3-5)

So, fill in the blanks for yourself:

what can you sell?
how do you know people want or need what you have to sell?
have you got an autoresponder?
where can I sign up?
how will they find you?

That’s it, in a nutshell.

Be open. Be honest. Avoid the hype and follow good marketing practice.

Make a decision on one thing and stick to it. Don’t switch and continually chase rabbits down holes – you might find you are leaving the money on the table right under your nose.

Refresh! It’s EOFY – Kick Start Next FY

We all get caught up in our businesses – planning, executing, fire fighting, celebrating and the other 1001 things we do day to day. With the end of the financial year looming, it makes sense to take time out to think about what we could outsource to get set up better going forward:

bookkeeping and records maintenance – get someone else to handle all the fiddly stuff. Just bundle it up and send it off to your VA or scan in the receipts and let your bookkeeper tidy it up and account for your money
website configuration – has your website become untidy as you’ve added content and other tools? Let a web master get it back in shape
web redesign – time for a new look? adding new products or services – get a web designer on the job to refresh or design a new look for you that will fit with all the functionality you need
brand yourself – get some professional looking graphics for your website, business cards, stationary
get your product completed – got lots of undeveloped idea or works-in-progress? We think we can do it all but time gets away and meanwhile your bright idea languishes on your hard drive – ship it off to someone else to develop the idea to publication or research components you haven’t finished yet

Where can you find people to do these tasks? Put a notice up at your local uni for students ; ask around your friends and family for referrals of people who might be looking for some extra work; use services like Odesk, Elance, Guru etc.

Or, you could just keep working even more hours through the night and try to keep doing it yourself and end up about where you are now this time next year

What else can you do to get the next financial year off to a great start?

The Secret of Success Online

Reading a recent post on Yaro starek’s blog I was intrigued by how his colleague had come to enjoy the success he had. I have a theory.

When I was purely focused on bricks-and-mortar business and earning a living from that, I used to teach people starting up new businesses. They were all starry-eyed and enthusiastic about the prospect of their future. They were excited about their product or service. And as I glanced around the room as I was training them I could tell with a certain degree of certainty who were the ones most likely to succeed and who was going to struggle and probably not survive at all.

One of the indicators for success was

(a) if they had a family member who had a sucessful business and

(b) if they had previous experience running a business.

Same seems to hold in the online business world – if you were successful offline and can adapt to the online then your chances of success are high.

The good news is that those who have a clue about how to run a business, even if they haven’t run one, can also enjoy online success. It just may take a little longer.

The secret is not in the systems and methods and processes (although these are essential). The real secret is in how you operate and what goes on in your head.

Behaviours, attitudes and actions.

Get these syncing and you’re success ratio is very high.

Just So You Know…

I use this site to Continue reading →

How NOT To Backlink

Getting backlinks is a key strategy for building traffic and search engine ranking.

There are tried and tested ways to get backlinks. One of these is to comment on blog posts.

Most people are responsible and do this in a diligent way. They choose quality websites ( the better the quality the better the backlink ‘weight’). They actually read the blog post. Then they give a related comment that contributes to the post and hence the community.

I get tons of comments, but most of them are spam and get caught in my detectors. Here’s one that I thought worthy of using as an example because it was a bit different to the rest:

It’s so hard to get backlinks these days, honestly i need a backlink by comments on your blog / forums or guestbook to make my website appear in search engine. I am getting desperate Now! I know you’ll laugh while reading this comment !!! Here is my website (link removed) I know my comments do not relate to the topic, but PLEASE HELP ME!! APPROVING MY COMMENT!
Regards: Poorman (rest of handle removed)

This ended up in my spam files and did not get approved. Firstly, pleading is not going to help. Active contribution is. Second, shouting is not going to get you far. Finally, when you have an undesirable product site that is totally unrelated to the community of the site you are commenting upon then your chances of getting backlinks is probably going to be limited (hint try men’s sites and health sites – you might get a better reception!)

Dear Poormanxxxxx, I empathise with your plight but this is a business and you need to learn how to do business better. There exists a wealth of information on this site and others on how to market, including receiving backlinks. Yes, your product will hamper your efforts. At least read posts and add comments of value. If that continues to fail you then maybe look for a different niche that will not get automatically caught in spam filters. All the best.

Red Hot Internet Marketing

… online business for the rest of us

Category Archives: Business