Saturday, July 16, 2005
A casserole of a day
Today was a day with a lot mixed into it. Picking up bits and pieces, mostly. So tonight's entry will have a lot of those leftovers tossed into it. Here's a couple of spoonfuls. You're welcome to take it with or without salt.
There's nothing like keyword research to give you a sense of what your audience needs
I spent a lot of time today manually tweaking the keyword research I've been doing for this site. As much as I love Wordtracker for my keyword research, I don't think I've ever found a tool whose results I didn't want to modify or combine with the results of some other tool. I've developed, over the years, some extra data I like to pull out of Google to help me interpret my Wordtracker results.
And with the 1000 keyword list I had developed, that meant a lot of keyword-by-keyword searches to gather that information. But spending the time going from my Wordtracker results to Google and back again so many times really helped me get a feel for what people are looking for.
I found that many of the promotional aspects, such as linking, newsletters, and such, are barely in the minds of searchers. Apparently, they do little searching for these things, but take the recommendations of those whose articles make them aware of the needs for them.
But where there's a tremendous hunger is in the area of search engine optimization. As many people as have gotten into the field, there's still a desperate search going on for better search engine rankings.
The other trend that jumped out at me was the hunger for service. Many of the keywords that were generic in nature were pretty well saturated by competing websites. But when you added the word "service" to those keywords, they turned to gold in terms of demonstrating an unmet need.
There are plenty of information sites (including way too many that posted nothing but recycled search engine results or long lists of ads), but lots of searchers are looking for a more human touch in solving their problems.
In all, a pretty interesting encounter with the collective mind of searchers.
Looking for structure
Another chunk of day went to reviewing a new (to me, at least) product, Clickin' It Rich. The latest update of it came out a couple of months ago, but I finally picked it up because of one of its new features, a 30-page report in which author Michael Campbell details two strategies he would use if he were to start from scratch today to build a successful online business. Excellent reading and very well organized!
I'm looking to do an article soon to help people choose the business-building course that best suits their personality. Clickin' It Rich certainly fits well for someone who likes to work from a broad overview. It very clearly and concisely relates what steps to take, but works in broad strokes, offering links to other tools that can fill in the details on any steps that the reader wants more info on.
Enough of the casserole already
There were other bits and pieces tossed into my day as well, but I see that this entry is already getting long, so I'd best end it before the whole thing gets too big to digest. Good night and bon appetit!
Jeff
Today was a day with a lot mixed into it. Picking up bits and pieces, mostly. So tonight's entry will have a lot of those leftovers tossed into it. Here's a couple of spoonfuls. You're welcome to take it with or without salt.
There's nothing like keyword research to give you a sense of what your audience needs
I spent a lot of time today manually tweaking the keyword research I've been doing for this site. As much as I love Wordtracker for my keyword research, I don't think I've ever found a tool whose results I didn't want to modify or combine with the results of some other tool. I've developed, over the years, some extra data I like to pull out of Google to help me interpret my Wordtracker results.
And with the 1000 keyword list I had developed, that meant a lot of keyword-by-keyword searches to gather that information. But spending the time going from my Wordtracker results to Google and back again so many times really helped me get a feel for what people are looking for.
I found that many of the promotional aspects, such as linking, newsletters, and such, are barely in the minds of searchers. Apparently, they do little searching for these things, but take the recommendations of those whose articles make them aware of the needs for them.
But where there's a tremendous hunger is in the area of search engine optimization. As many people as have gotten into the field, there's still a desperate search going on for better search engine rankings.
The other trend that jumped out at me was the hunger for service. Many of the keywords that were generic in nature were pretty well saturated by competing websites. But when you added the word "service" to those keywords, they turned to gold in terms of demonstrating an unmet need.
There are plenty of information sites (including way too many that posted nothing but recycled search engine results or long lists of ads), but lots of searchers are looking for a more human touch in solving their problems.
In all, a pretty interesting encounter with the collective mind of searchers.
Looking for structure
Another chunk of day went to reviewing a new (to me, at least) product, Clickin' It Rich. The latest update of it came out a couple of months ago, but I finally picked it up because of one of its new features, a 30-page report in which author Michael Campbell details two strategies he would use if he were to start from scratch today to build a successful online business. Excellent reading and very well organized!
I'm looking to do an article soon to help people choose the business-building course that best suits their personality. Clickin' It Rich certainly fits well for someone who likes to work from a broad overview. It very clearly and concisely relates what steps to take, but works in broad strokes, offering links to other tools that can fill in the details on any steps that the reader wants more info on.
Enough of the casserole already
There were other bits and pieces tossed into my day as well, but I see that this entry is already getting long, so I'd best end it before the whole thing gets too big to digest. Good night and bon appetit!
Jeff
Friday, July 15, 2005
Don't want to talk about it
Today was a big keyword research day, as well as researching some new products that I think are worth mentioning. For some reason, though, I don't feel like mentioning them tonight. Bed calls and I think it's about time I answered. Till tomorrow!
Jeff
Today was a big keyword research day, as well as researching some new products that I think are worth mentioning. For some reason, though, I don't feel like mentioning them tonight. Bed calls and I think it's about time I answered. Till tomorrow!
Jeff
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Mulligans anyone?
I don't play golf, but I hear that a Mulligan is a golfing term for a do-over, a chance to take a shot over without penalty. And today seems like a good day to talk about decisions I've made (or haven't made) that I wish I could do over.
The idea for tonight's blog entry comes from some keyword research I did today for One Stop Web Support. Unfortunately, I saw that very few of the articles I've written really target any keywords effectively. So I decided to look back on my career and discuss some of the lessons I've learned along the way.
Going back to my first ecommerce work, my early work on MasterVisions, two things come to mind.
Mistake #1: I built that site to launch as a completed entity and it took three months to get it launched. But if I knew then what I know now, I would have broken it into modules and gotten the most important product line up in half the time, and then added the other two product lines as I got them done. The site would have broken up perfectly into modules, but I never thought of doing it that way and it cost the site owner a six-week head start he could have had on getting a foothold in the search results.
Lesson #1: When faced with building a large site, split it up into pieces. Especially now with Google downgrading new sites until they've around for a number of months, it's crucial to get something up as fast as possible and add to it as you go along.
Mistake #2: Be focused instead of scattered in your approach. Once the MasterVisions site was up, I generally jumped on whatever promotion technique I happened to read about that week. The result: multiple campaigns started and then put on the back burner in favor of other promotion ideas. The result: again, promotions developed more slowly than they needed to.
Lesson #2: Focus, focus, focus. Don't worry about some great idea getting away if you don't jump on it now. Better to have one campaign carried out to completion instead of ten in varying stages of development.
Mistake #3: Plan carefully instead of letting things develop on their own. One Stop Web Support was in the back of my mind for the last couple of years and I wrote a number of articles in anticipation of it over that time. There never was any set plan for the articles; they were simply topics I was thinking about at the time. When I finally set out to make the website a reality, I took these random articles and developed a structure in which they could fit. The result: a site with a whole lot of articles in some areas and none in others, with weak connecting tissue to bring them into a cohesive whole. In addition, since the articles never considered keywords that people were searching for, very few of them target keywords effectively.
Lesson #3: Take the time to plan how people will find you (by properly targeting your articles to the keywords they're searching) and how they will proceed through your site to the solutions for their problems.
I'll be generous with myself for now and leave it at these three mistakes that have been on my mind lately. May you learn from them and not repeat them.
Jeff
I don't play golf, but I hear that a Mulligan is a golfing term for a do-over, a chance to take a shot over without penalty. And today seems like a good day to talk about decisions I've made (or haven't made) that I wish I could do over.
The idea for tonight's blog entry comes from some keyword research I did today for One Stop Web Support. Unfortunately, I saw that very few of the articles I've written really target any keywords effectively. So I decided to look back on my career and discuss some of the lessons I've learned along the way.
Going back to my first ecommerce work, my early work on MasterVisions, two things come to mind.
Mistake #1: I built that site to launch as a completed entity and it took three months to get it launched. But if I knew then what I know now, I would have broken it into modules and gotten the most important product line up in half the time, and then added the other two product lines as I got them done. The site would have broken up perfectly into modules, but I never thought of doing it that way and it cost the site owner a six-week head start he could have had on getting a foothold in the search results.
Lesson #1: When faced with building a large site, split it up into pieces. Especially now with Google downgrading new sites until they've around for a number of months, it's crucial to get something up as fast as possible and add to it as you go along.
Mistake #2: Be focused instead of scattered in your approach. Once the MasterVisions site was up, I generally jumped on whatever promotion technique I happened to read about that week. The result: multiple campaigns started and then put on the back burner in favor of other promotion ideas. The result: again, promotions developed more slowly than they needed to.
Lesson #2: Focus, focus, focus. Don't worry about some great idea getting away if you don't jump on it now. Better to have one campaign carried out to completion instead of ten in varying stages of development.
Mistake #3: Plan carefully instead of letting things develop on their own. One Stop Web Support was in the back of my mind for the last couple of years and I wrote a number of articles in anticipation of it over that time. There never was any set plan for the articles; they were simply topics I was thinking about at the time. When I finally set out to make the website a reality, I took these random articles and developed a structure in which they could fit. The result: a site with a whole lot of articles in some areas and none in others, with weak connecting tissue to bring them into a cohesive whole. In addition, since the articles never considered keywords that people were searching for, very few of them target keywords effectively.
Lesson #3: Take the time to plan how people will find you (by properly targeting your articles to the keywords they're searching) and how they will proceed through your site to the solutions for their problems.
I'll be generous with myself for now and leave it at these three mistakes that have been on my mind lately. May you learn from them and not repeat them.
Jeff
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Everyone knows something
I found a great story while browsing through the SiteBuildIt! forums today. It seems one couple had worked for 20 years trying to build a real estate investment business, buying old houses, renovating them, and selling. They studied every real estate investment book they could find, went to every real estate investing seminar they heard about. They knew the theories, knew the techniques.
But bad decisions dogged each house they bought—the wrong place, the wrong time, falling in love with the wrong houses and putting more money into renovating them than they had any hope of recouping, renting out to tenants who trashed the newly renovated houses even as the couple was lining up buyers. Nothing ever went right for them, and after 20 years of hard work, they had nothing—absolutely nothing—to show for their efforts.
Frustrated with their lack of success, they decided to try one last seminar—this one on web marketing—to see if there was anything new they could learn that might salvage their smoldering dreams. There, they had a chance to talk to one of the speakers, marketing guru Sean D'Souza.
They told him their story. They told him how there was so much the books and seminars hadn't prepared them for, so much they learned from their own mistakes, so much they would do differently if they could just do it all over again. And they asked D'Souza if there was any hope of salvaging their dreams.
Their conversation went something like this:
D'Souza said, "Why not write an ebook about it?"
They balked. "There are so many books written by successful investors out there. Why would anyone buy a book by a couple of failures?"
"Because no one has written a book from your perspective," D'Souza answered. "You said yourself that the books you read never prepared you for the situations you actually faced. Wouldn't other investors like to know what pitfalls are out there and how they can avoid them?
"Tell your horror stories. Explain what you did wrong and what you now know you should have done. Interview successful investors and have them comment on how they would have handled your situations. You'll be providing other investors with a book that's ten times as valuable as all of the idealized books that assume that everything will always go as planned."
Now, I don't know how the couple has done with this excellent idea; the story of their new venture is still unfolding. But it does show one thing: everybody knows something that's of value to others. I've heard dozens of stories just like it:
I found a great story while browsing through the SiteBuildIt! forums today. It seems one couple had worked for 20 years trying to build a real estate investment business, buying old houses, renovating them, and selling. They studied every real estate investment book they could find, went to every real estate investing seminar they heard about. They knew the theories, knew the techniques.
But bad decisions dogged each house they bought—the wrong place, the wrong time, falling in love with the wrong houses and putting more money into renovating them than they had any hope of recouping, renting out to tenants who trashed the newly renovated houses even as the couple was lining up buyers. Nothing ever went right for them, and after 20 years of hard work, they had nothing—absolutely nothing—to show for their efforts.
Frustrated with their lack of success, they decided to try one last seminar—this one on web marketing—to see if there was anything new they could learn that might salvage their smoldering dreams. There, they had a chance to talk to one of the speakers, marketing guru Sean D'Souza.
They told him their story. They told him how there was so much the books and seminars hadn't prepared them for, so much they learned from their own mistakes, so much they would do differently if they could just do it all over again. And they asked D'Souza if there was any hope of salvaging their dreams.
Their conversation went something like this:
D'Souza said, "Why not write an ebook about it?"
They balked. "There are so many books written by successful investors out there. Why would anyone buy a book by a couple of failures?"
"Because no one has written a book from your perspective," D'Souza answered. "You said yourself that the books you read never prepared you for the situations you actually faced. Wouldn't other investors like to know what pitfalls are out there and how they can avoid them?
"Tell your horror stories. Explain what you did wrong and what you now know you should have done. Interview successful investors and have them comment on how they would have handled your situations. You'll be providing other investors with a book that's ten times as valuable as all of the idealized books that assume that everything will always go as planned."
Now, I don't know how the couple has done with this excellent idea; the story of their new venture is still unfolding. But it does show one thing: everybody knows something that's of value to others. I've heard dozens of stories just like it:
- the mother of a disabled boy who thought she knew nothing of value because she had devoted 20 years to tending him, but found she had a wealth of information that others who had just been thrust into that situation desperately needed
- the truck driver who thought he knew nothing of value because he had spent his life on the road, but found he had a wealth of information about long distance driving that many travellers found invaluable
Everybody knows something of value, even if it comes so naturally to them that they dismiss it as nothing more than common knowledge. But don't ever think that you can't provide information or a service that others won't find useful. Look at how you've spent your life. Look at the situations you've had to deal with. Look at your passions and where they've led you. There are others out there who can benefit from your unique knowledge and experience.
Most people, when they go into business on the Web, assume they'll have to fit into somebody else's mold. They look for a generic product to sell and then struggle to make a living doing what they feel everybody else is doing, in exactly the same way as everyone else is doing it. But look at yourself and what you have to offer and you'll find a much more profitable and much more enjoyable way of earning a living—by doing what you were uniquely designed to do.
Jeff
P.S. Happy 24th birthday to my daughter Rachel!
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Growing pains
The more I look at One Stop Web Support, the more I see areas for improvement. Not that I'm dissatisfied with the content, but more and more I find myself wishing I had put it together differently.
For the most part, it grew out of notes I had written on various topics as those topics were in my thoughts. But, as such, they tend to be disconnected and (sometimes) a little repetitive.
I got that feeling especially as I was trying to integrate a dozen new articles into the site tonight. I, ahem, didn't get them up, because at each step I took toward fleshing my notes into articles, I found some point where I said to myself, "This point really needs to be taken farther in a separate article," or, "I really should link to one of the tools that helps to solve this problem instead of talking about the problem in isolation."
So writing quickly turned to researching tools or planning additional articles to truly complete the ones I was writing.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the articles themselves. But it would be a whole lot better if they had a more planned set of courses to the meal instead of a pick-and-choose buffet.
The site will be moving more in that direction as I go along, reassessing the existing articles for how they can fit better with everything else as well as setting up future articles to bridge the gaps instead of just to reflect what subjects happened to be on my mind.
Well, I promised that this blog would show both my successes and blunders. Let this be a reminder to take the time up front to plan things out instead of jumping in before you had thought it through entirely.
Jeff
The more I look at One Stop Web Support, the more I see areas for improvement. Not that I'm dissatisfied with the content, but more and more I find myself wishing I had put it together differently.
For the most part, it grew out of notes I had written on various topics as those topics were in my thoughts. But, as such, they tend to be disconnected and (sometimes) a little repetitive.
I got that feeling especially as I was trying to integrate a dozen new articles into the site tonight. I, ahem, didn't get them up, because at each step I took toward fleshing my notes into articles, I found some point where I said to myself, "This point really needs to be taken farther in a separate article," or, "I really should link to one of the tools that helps to solve this problem instead of talking about the problem in isolation."
So writing quickly turned to researching tools or planning additional articles to truly complete the ones I was writing.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the articles themselves. But it would be a whole lot better if they had a more planned set of courses to the meal instead of a pick-and-choose buffet.
The site will be moving more in that direction as I go along, reassessing the existing articles for how they can fit better with everything else as well as setting up future articles to bridge the gaps instead of just to reflect what subjects happened to be on my mind.
Well, I promised that this blog would show both my successes and blunders. Let this be a reminder to take the time up front to plan things out instead of jumping in before you had thought it through entirely.
Jeff
Brainstorming (SiteSell report 2)
Today, my son Joel and I started on the brainstorming phase of the website he's building with SiteBuildIt! site-building tool. I'm observing him to see how well a novice at site-building can work with the tool.
We started out with the Brainstorm It! (the folks at SiteSell! certainly like to put exclamation points in their product names, don't they) research tool that's included in SiteBuildIt!
Brainstorm It! is a handy, multi-purpose research tool that, with a couple of clicks, quickly brought us data about the most highly searched keywords for the site concepts Joel was considering. Once we had sorted through the data and determined which keywords fit best with his interests, we added the supply data of how many sites were competing for those keywords.
The processing time for this step took a while, but really was comparable to the time you would spend researching the same number of keywords on Wordtracker. The only difference was that the processing time was all in one lump rather than spread over several steps.
My overall impression of the BrainstormIt! function so far is that it isn't a magic wand that suddenly makes it clear exactly how to organize your site. But, then again, anyone looking for a magic wand to do this isn't going to find it anywhere.
We gathered a very attractive set of 198 keywords to fit Joel's preliminary concept in about an hour's time (minus the time we took a break while it was crunching the numbers). There's more steps we'll take in finding related keywords tomorrow. But organizing them logically will be a human endeavor. Or I may apply a few other tools to the data to massage it into a form more familiar to my set-in-their-ways eyes.
But the test so far continues to show SiteBuildIt! to be a well-conceived tool that can quickly put a lot of essential data in the hands of inexperienced site-builders who might not know how to get it otherwise. Checking out the SiteBuildIt! forums, I got the sense that some were expecting it to do their thinking for them, but no tool will that.
I continue to be pleased with SiteBuildIt!
Jeff
Today, my son Joel and I started on the brainstorming phase of the website he's building with SiteBuildIt! site-building tool. I'm observing him to see how well a novice at site-building can work with the tool.
We started out with the Brainstorm It! (the folks at SiteSell! certainly like to put exclamation points in their product names, don't they) research tool that's included in SiteBuildIt!
Brainstorm It! is a handy, multi-purpose research tool that, with a couple of clicks, quickly brought us data about the most highly searched keywords for the site concepts Joel was considering. Once we had sorted through the data and determined which keywords fit best with his interests, we added the supply data of how many sites were competing for those keywords.
The processing time for this step took a while, but really was comparable to the time you would spend researching the same number of keywords on Wordtracker. The only difference was that the processing time was all in one lump rather than spread over several steps.
My overall impression of the BrainstormIt! function so far is that it isn't a magic wand that suddenly makes it clear exactly how to organize your site. But, then again, anyone looking for a magic wand to do this isn't going to find it anywhere.
We gathered a very attractive set of 198 keywords to fit Joel's preliminary concept in about an hour's time (minus the time we took a break while it was crunching the numbers). There's more steps we'll take in finding related keywords tomorrow. But organizing them logically will be a human endeavor. Or I may apply a few other tools to the data to massage it into a form more familiar to my set-in-their-ways eyes.
But the test so far continues to show SiteBuildIt! to be a well-conceived tool that can quickly put a lot of essential data in the hands of inexperienced site-builders who might not know how to get it otherwise. Checking out the SiteBuildIt! forums, I got the sense that some were expecting it to do their thinking for them, but no tool will that.
I continue to be pleased with SiteBuildIt!
Jeff
Monday, July 11, 2005
Favorite free tools (part 4)
It's Sunday again and time to share some of my favorite bookmarks. Let's look at other newsletters this time.
Grokdotcom
Perhaps my personal favorite, Grokdotcom deals with how to convert your traffic to sales. Not only to they consistently give good ideas to get you thinking about your own site's conversion process, but they do it with a dash of humor, speaking through their resident Martian spokesmartian, Grok, who always has an amusing outlook on the foolish things humans do in the interest of trying to get people to buy.
Psychotactics
The Psychotactics newsletter also has consistently good articles on improving your conversion process mixed with a quirky sense of humor. Writer Sean D'Souza has a gift for relating everyday situations to improving your sales in a way I really enjoy.
The Newbie Club
OK, the newsletter isn't all that great unless you're inexperienced with computers or the Internet. That's its main focus—to provide tips in dealing with basic computer knowledge.
But the resource center you get access to by signing up has a number of gems in it. Look especially under the free ebooks. Founder Joe Robson has reprinted some timeless classics about advertising, and about developing an entrepreneur's mindset that, even though they were written 100 years ago, offer essential advice for entrepreneurs today.
Marketing Profs
I'll swallow my pride on this one and recommend it. It's a subscription site, but it's free to sign up. Some of the articles may be a little more technical than someone starting out in marketing may want, but I always found some that work for marketers at any level of experience.
I speak in the past tense about it because I'm not currently subscribed to it. I had some technical problems with their login interface and found their technical support staff to be so much less than helpful in resolving those problems that I finally gave up on logging in rather than continue to deal with the problems. But the articles are good and, hey, you might never have any technical problems at all.
One Stop Web Support
And if I'm going to mention free newsletters, of course, I don't want to neglect this one! With articles and product reviews, it covers a lot of areas of interest to anyone starting a business online.
Jeff
It's Sunday again and time to share some of my favorite bookmarks. Let's look at other newsletters this time.
Grokdotcom
Perhaps my personal favorite, Grokdotcom deals with how to convert your traffic to sales. Not only to they consistently give good ideas to get you thinking about your own site's conversion process, but they do it with a dash of humor, speaking through their resident Martian spokesmartian, Grok, who always has an amusing outlook on the foolish things humans do in the interest of trying to get people to buy.
Psychotactics
The Psychotactics newsletter also has consistently good articles on improving your conversion process mixed with a quirky sense of humor. Writer Sean D'Souza has a gift for relating everyday situations to improving your sales in a way I really enjoy.
The Newbie Club
OK, the newsletter isn't all that great unless you're inexperienced with computers or the Internet. That's its main focus—to provide tips in dealing with basic computer knowledge.
But the resource center you get access to by signing up has a number of gems in it. Look especially under the free ebooks. Founder Joe Robson has reprinted some timeless classics about advertising, and about developing an entrepreneur's mindset that, even though they were written 100 years ago, offer essential advice for entrepreneurs today.
Marketing Profs
I'll swallow my pride on this one and recommend it. It's a subscription site, but it's free to sign up. Some of the articles may be a little more technical than someone starting out in marketing may want, but I always found some that work for marketers at any level of experience.
I speak in the past tense about it because I'm not currently subscribed to it. I had some technical problems with their login interface and found their technical support staff to be so much less than helpful in resolving those problems that I finally gave up on logging in rather than continue to deal with the problems. But the articles are good and, hey, you might never have any technical problems at all.
One Stop Web Support
And if I'm going to mention free newsletters, of course, I don't want to neglect this one! With articles and product reviews, it covers a lot of areas of interest to anyone starting a business online.
Jeff
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Catching up
I got a newsletter today from one of my favorite suppliers explaining why this was their first weekly newsletter they got out in three weeks. I knew the feeling. Although I kept up with the newsletters for the most part, most work has been at a standstill because of spending nine of the past twelve days out of town both before and after my father-in-law's death.
So now it's catchup time. I got this weekend's newsletter queued up and ready to go out early Sunday morning and finally got the newsletter from two weeks ago posted on the site, along with some other minor updates.
This newsletter concludes my three-part series on designing your pages to best match the way people look at webpages. And it has a special, limited offer on "The Insider's Guide to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" and the late Corey Rudl's "Ultimate Seminar Videos" that his company is offering as a memorial to him. I've also included in the newsletter one of my favorite articles of his that I've gotten permission to reprint.
New articles on the site (taken from the June 26 newsletter) include a review of John Alexander's excellent Wordtracker Magic ebook and a critique by eBay expert Jim Cockrum of one successful seller's auctions, pointing out what that seller is doing that makes him or her successful and area's that they could still do better in. Excellent article.
But next week, hopefully, will allow me to get back to tasks with more immediate profit. My two-week invoice for MasterVisions and 1A Gifts is going to be pretty puny Monday, but I'm glad my wife Joanne got the chance to spend the time with her Dad before he died and with her Mother as she settled into her new living arrangements.
The temporary shortfall in income is all in God's hands, and he's handled things pretty well for us all the way along.
Jeff
I got a newsletter today from one of my favorite suppliers explaining why this was their first weekly newsletter they got out in three weeks. I knew the feeling. Although I kept up with the newsletters for the most part, most work has been at a standstill because of spending nine of the past twelve days out of town both before and after my father-in-law's death.
So now it's catchup time. I got this weekend's newsletter queued up and ready to go out early Sunday morning and finally got the newsletter from two weeks ago posted on the site, along with some other minor updates.
This newsletter concludes my three-part series on designing your pages to best match the way people look at webpages. And it has a special, limited offer on "The Insider's Guide to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" and the late Corey Rudl's "Ultimate Seminar Videos" that his company is offering as a memorial to him. I've also included in the newsletter one of my favorite articles of his that I've gotten permission to reprint.
New articles on the site (taken from the June 26 newsletter) include a review of John Alexander's excellent Wordtracker Magic ebook and a critique by eBay expert Jim Cockrum of one successful seller's auctions, pointing out what that seller is doing that makes him or her successful and area's that they could still do better in. Excellent article.
But next week, hopefully, will allow me to get back to tasks with more immediate profit. My two-week invoice for MasterVisions and 1A Gifts is going to be pretty puny Monday, but I'm glad my wife Joanne got the chance to spend the time with her Dad before he died and with her Mother as she settled into her new living arrangements.
The temporary shortfall in income is all in God's hands, and he's handled things pretty well for us all the way along.
Jeff
© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Jeff Baas, One Stop Web Support
