Saturday, January 21, 2006
Optimistic Marketer or Pessimistic? Why Not Be Both?
Optimism can kill your business. Sound harsh? But it's true. Many people try to run their business on pure optimism. They keep a positive outlook that everything will turn out all right. And they hang onto that positive outlook until their business is beyond hope of ever succeeding.
The key is in the way you apply optimism and pessimism to your business.
You want to be optimistic about reaching your goals. You need to have your goals be well thought out, measurable, and attainable. They shouldn't be pie-in-the-sky daydreams, but specific targets that you can reach—step by step.
Once you have those kind of goals and a plan to reach them, you need to be optimistic about succeeding. You'll need optimism to keep you going when things go wrong.
But the problem comes when when business owners let their optimism cloud their view of the steps that are taking them to their goals.
There's a saying in the military that "a battle plan becomes obsolete the instant you engage the enemy." In other words, the best thought out plan of attack can never anticipate every single variable will come into play as soon as the other army starts reacting to your plan.
The same goes with your marketing plan. The instant you start to carry it out, things are invariably going to go differently than you expected.
That's where pessimism becomes an essential tool. When you have only one set of plans and reality doesn't follow them, pushing on as if everything is going according to plan with an outlook of, "Well, things will still turn out all right," is deadly.
Optimism won't change the unexpected setbacks. You need backup plans—and backup plans for your backup plans—to counteract the negative effects of the unexpected.
Be optimistic about reaching your goals. But be pessimistic about the steps it will take to get you there. Expect that some, or even all, of the steps you planned for getting to your goal won't go as you plan. Anticipate all the things you can think of that can go wrong and have alternatives in mind for if they do.
But what about those things that take you completely by surprise? If you've planned enough alternatives, you'll have enough options to choose from and the flexibility to combine them in ways you never would have thought of until the situation inspires you to take a creative approach.
Now keep in mind that there's a big difference between being pessimistic and being fatalistic. I'm not saying you should approach the details of your plan with a mindset of, "This is never going to work; I might as well not even try." That's fatalism. The kind of pessimism you want is the kind that says, "Now how can I fix it if this goes wrong?"
Be an optimist in looking at the big picture. But be a pessimist in planning all the unexpected what-ifs that you'll invariably face. Sure, being both optimist and pessimist sounds like a contradiction. But it's the approach that successful businesspeople have taken throughout history.
Jeff
Optimism can kill your business. Sound harsh? But it's true. Many people try to run their business on pure optimism. They keep a positive outlook that everything will turn out all right. And they hang onto that positive outlook until their business is beyond hope of ever succeeding.
The key is in the way you apply optimism and pessimism to your business.
You want to be optimistic about reaching your goals. You need to have your goals be well thought out, measurable, and attainable. They shouldn't be pie-in-the-sky daydreams, but specific targets that you can reach—step by step.
Once you have those kind of goals and a plan to reach them, you need to be optimistic about succeeding. You'll need optimism to keep you going when things go wrong.
But the problem comes when when business owners let their optimism cloud their view of the steps that are taking them to their goals.
There's a saying in the military that "a battle plan becomes obsolete the instant you engage the enemy." In other words, the best thought out plan of attack can never anticipate every single variable will come into play as soon as the other army starts reacting to your plan.
The same goes with your marketing plan. The instant you start to carry it out, things are invariably going to go differently than you expected.
That's where pessimism becomes an essential tool. When you have only one set of plans and reality doesn't follow them, pushing on as if everything is going according to plan with an outlook of, "Well, things will still turn out all right," is deadly.
Optimism won't change the unexpected setbacks. You need backup plans—and backup plans for your backup plans—to counteract the negative effects of the unexpected.
Be optimistic about reaching your goals. But be pessimistic about the steps it will take to get you there. Expect that some, or even all, of the steps you planned for getting to your goal won't go as you plan. Anticipate all the things you can think of that can go wrong and have alternatives in mind for if they do.
But what about those things that take you completely by surprise? If you've planned enough alternatives, you'll have enough options to choose from and the flexibility to combine them in ways you never would have thought of until the situation inspires you to take a creative approach.
Now keep in mind that there's a big difference between being pessimistic and being fatalistic. I'm not saying you should approach the details of your plan with a mindset of, "This is never going to work; I might as well not even try." That's fatalism. The kind of pessimism you want is the kind that says, "Now how can I fix it if this goes wrong?"
Be an optimist in looking at the big picture. But be a pessimist in planning all the unexpected what-ifs that you'll invariably face. Sure, being both optimist and pessimist sounds like a contradiction. But it's the approach that successful businesspeople have taken throughout history.
Jeff
Friday, January 20, 2006
The Secret to Getting Customers
Everybody wants to know THE secret to getting customers. Everyone wants a single, magic technique that, once put in place, will gain limitless success.
The problem is that such an animal doesn't exist.
A master marketer once was asked, "What's the ONE thing I need to do to get 50 new customers each month?"
He replied, "Frankly, I don't know any ONE thing that will get you 50 new customers. But I know FIFTY things that will each get you ONE new customer. I simply do them all."
Jeff
Everybody wants to know THE secret to getting customers. Everyone wants a single, magic technique that, once put in place, will gain limitless success.
The problem is that such an animal doesn't exist.
A master marketer once was asked, "What's the ONE thing I need to do to get 50 new customers each month?"
He replied, "Frankly, I don't know any ONE thing that will get you 50 new customers. But I know FIFTY things that will each get you ONE new customer. I simply do them all."
Jeff
Thursday, January 19, 2006
The Effectiveness of Article Marketing
Just an update on my article marketing efforts. Each of the articles I submitted through Article Announcer show up on anywhere from 50 to 500 sites. Even the articles that I have only submitted to the two sites that I have a special position on have been picked up—just from those two sites—to appear on as many as 80 other sites.
Consider that most of those sites (alas, there are some who ignore the reprint rights agreement)retain the link that leads from my About the Author box to my site, and that's a whole lot of sites linking to One Stop Web Support.
And if that wasn't enough exposure, my article syndication has gotten one article a reprint request from an offline magazine with a subscription of 10,000. And today I got a request to include another of my articles in an upcoming ebook that compiles articles from 50 top marketing experts.
Naturally, I feel honored by the attention. But it's attention my business never would have gotten without me syndicating my articles. I think article marketing is a strategy any site should be using. I won't repeat my full scale review of Article Announcer here, but I couldn't have gotten a fraction of the exposure without it.
Article Announcer makes it possible to submit articles much faster than I ever could have manually. It provides a full set of everything you need to submit successfully. And if you're intimidated by the thought of writing articles, it gives you hours of audio training to teach you how to write articles that get picked up by other sites and can give you massive exposure.
Article marketing—with the help of Article Announcer—has been a huge boost to my business.
Jeff
Just an update on my article marketing efforts. Each of the articles I submitted through Article Announcer show up on anywhere from 50 to 500 sites. Even the articles that I have only submitted to the two sites that I have a special position on have been picked up—just from those two sites—to appear on as many as 80 other sites.
Consider that most of those sites (alas, there are some who ignore the reprint rights agreement)retain the link that leads from my About the Author box to my site, and that's a whole lot of sites linking to One Stop Web Support.
And if that wasn't enough exposure, my article syndication has gotten one article a reprint request from an offline magazine with a subscription of 10,000. And today I got a request to include another of my articles in an upcoming ebook that compiles articles from 50 top marketing experts.
Naturally, I feel honored by the attention. But it's attention my business never would have gotten without me syndicating my articles. I think article marketing is a strategy any site should be using. I won't repeat my full scale review of Article Announcer here, but I couldn't have gotten a fraction of the exposure without it.
Article Announcer makes it possible to submit articles much faster than I ever could have manually. It provides a full set of everything you need to submit successfully. And if you're intimidated by the thought of writing articles, it gives you hours of audio training to teach you how to write articles that get picked up by other sites and can give you massive exposure.
Article marketing—with the help of Article Announcer—has been a huge boost to my business.
Jeff
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Why the Internet is Dangerous for New Business Owners
Not exactly the title you'd expect from someone who helps new business owners set up successful businesses, is it? Yet there is a very insidious danger that lurks within the Internet for prospective business owners: the fact that building a business online looks so easy.
My wife checked out a new shopping district being built near our home. It's still in progress and only about half the shops are occupied. The old world look of the shops, though, got her thinking about her long-time daydream of starting her own chocolate shop.
She's a highly skilled chocolatier who has for years sold her upscale line of chocolates on a small scale strictly by word of mouth. And for years she's daydreamed of opening her own shop in just the type of charming little area that's growing nearby.
The only thing that has stopped her is her own lack of interest in putting aside all of her other interests to devote her whole attention to chocolate-making. When she spots a promising location, she daydreams for a moment, but then starts thinking about the commitment of money in renting the space, the equipment she'd have to buy, the time she'd have to put in, and the intensive planning and promoting she'd have to do to ensure it made money and didn't turn into just an expensive hobby.
When your thoughts of starting a business include a physical location, startup costs, devoting specific times to running it, and the number-crunching to determine if you can make a profit, the barriers to starting a business force you to do some genuine planning. The risks are simply too high if you don't.
That's why the Internet can be a dangerous place to start a business. The barriers to succeeding aren't very obvious and you can be tempted to overlook them.
You don't have to commit hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month to securing a physical location; a few bucks for a domain name and some cheap hosting takes care of that.
You don't have thousands of dollars invested in equipment or inventory; in some Internet business models, you can start without paying a cent for either.
You don't have specific store hours to keep; you're free to assume (and many scammers online are quick to assure you) that a few hours of "spare time" will generate a hands-free money machine that requires no further effort.
And with that kind of illusion of easy money, the tough work of actually planning how you'll make your business profitable seems totally unnecessary.
Saying that the illusion of no-effort success makes the Internet a dangerous place to start a business, though, does not mean you shouldn't do it. People succeed at building profitable businesses on the Internet. They're the ones, though, who put the same effort and planning into it that a prospective business owner would put into starting a brick-and-mortar business.
Plan for your success instead of expecting it to come up and bite you on the butt. Recognize the costs you'll have to face and the effort you'll need to put into promoting your business to make it succeed. Become a true businessperson and not just a tirekicker.
You can succeed starting out your business in your spare time, but you have to use that spare time with a purpose and a plan. Now, that may sound too hard to those who cling to the dream of no-effort riches. But there's very little that I know that can match the sense of accomplishment that comes from actually guiding a business through those barriers to profitability. And it's there for those who are willing to make the effort.
Jeff
Not exactly the title you'd expect from someone who helps new business owners set up successful businesses, is it? Yet there is a very insidious danger that lurks within the Internet for prospective business owners: the fact that building a business online looks so easy.
My wife checked out a new shopping district being built near our home. It's still in progress and only about half the shops are occupied. The old world look of the shops, though, got her thinking about her long-time daydream of starting her own chocolate shop.
She's a highly skilled chocolatier who has for years sold her upscale line of chocolates on a small scale strictly by word of mouth. And for years she's daydreamed of opening her own shop in just the type of charming little area that's growing nearby.
The only thing that has stopped her is her own lack of interest in putting aside all of her other interests to devote her whole attention to chocolate-making. When she spots a promising location, she daydreams for a moment, but then starts thinking about the commitment of money in renting the space, the equipment she'd have to buy, the time she'd have to put in, and the intensive planning and promoting she'd have to do to ensure it made money and didn't turn into just an expensive hobby.
When your thoughts of starting a business include a physical location, startup costs, devoting specific times to running it, and the number-crunching to determine if you can make a profit, the barriers to starting a business force you to do some genuine planning. The risks are simply too high if you don't.
That's why the Internet can be a dangerous place to start a business. The barriers to succeeding aren't very obvious and you can be tempted to overlook them.
You don't have to commit hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month to securing a physical location; a few bucks for a domain name and some cheap hosting takes care of that.
You don't have thousands of dollars invested in equipment or inventory; in some Internet business models, you can start without paying a cent for either.
You don't have specific store hours to keep; you're free to assume (and many scammers online are quick to assure you) that a few hours of "spare time" will generate a hands-free money machine that requires no further effort.
And with that kind of illusion of easy money, the tough work of actually planning how you'll make your business profitable seems totally unnecessary.
Saying that the illusion of no-effort success makes the Internet a dangerous place to start a business, though, does not mean you shouldn't do it. People succeed at building profitable businesses on the Internet. They're the ones, though, who put the same effort and planning into it that a prospective business owner would put into starting a brick-and-mortar business.
Plan for your success instead of expecting it to come up and bite you on the butt. Recognize the costs you'll have to face and the effort you'll need to put into promoting your business to make it succeed. Become a true businessperson and not just a tirekicker.
You can succeed starting out your business in your spare time, but you have to use that spare time with a purpose and a plan. Now, that may sound too hard to those who cling to the dream of no-effort riches. But there's very little that I know that can match the sense of accomplishment that comes from actually guiding a business through those barriers to profitability. And it's there for those who are willing to make the effort.
Jeff
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
The Key to Getting Better Than Average Results
Want to get better than average results? The secret to it is so simple you'll slap yourself on the head. Simply don't do what the average business does. Do things smarter, more efficiently, better.
Direct marketing guru Dan Kennedy has a phrase for that. He says, "You know what it takes to hit the industry norm? Simply do what everybody else is doing." But the industry norm is the industry average. And average results are just that: average, ordinary.
Think you'd be pleased with average results? Then consider this.
I did some research on a manufacturer that sells its products through dropship arrangements with retailers. The retailers take orders through their websites or auctions. They then forward the orders on to the manufacturer. The manufacturer ships the order directly to the customer. The retailer gets the difference between the retail price they set and the wholesale price the manufacturer charges them.
Dropshipping is definitely a sweet deal for the retailer! No inventory to store, nothing to ship. But here are the stats for that manufacturer.
Of all of the people who inquire into becoming a dropship retailer, only 10% even bother to take the next, basic, step of providing their tax ID. In other words, only 10% of those businesses even take it beyond the tire-kicking stage of starting a business. And only 10% of the 10% who take that step are currently on the manufacturer's books as having forwarded any orders.
That means that 10% of 10% - a paltry 1% - of all the people who approached this manufacturer and said, "I'd like to start a business and resell your product in it," have gotten their business far enough to as much as obtain one order.
Still think that "average" results sound good?
Now, granted, this is results from one manufacturer, but from what I've seen, I don't think it's too far off from the norm for those starting a business online. But those kind of results are why you can't afford to do what the "average" businessperson does.
Where the "average" person zigs, you need to zag. Where the "average" person gets bogged down in the details of starting a business, you need to cut through the details and take action. Where the "average" person painstakingly follows all the "rules" that multiple experts tell them, you need to look at all the advice with a critical eye and determine for yourself the straightest line to take you from where you are to where you want to be.
Because in a world where the "average" businessperson bails out within a couple of years, simply being "average" won't get you where you want to go.
Jeff
Want to get better than average results? The secret to it is so simple you'll slap yourself on the head. Simply don't do what the average business does. Do things smarter, more efficiently, better.
Direct marketing guru Dan Kennedy has a phrase for that. He says, "You know what it takes to hit the industry norm? Simply do what everybody else is doing." But the industry norm is the industry average. And average results are just that: average, ordinary.
Think you'd be pleased with average results? Then consider this.
I did some research on a manufacturer that sells its products through dropship arrangements with retailers. The retailers take orders through their websites or auctions. They then forward the orders on to the manufacturer. The manufacturer ships the order directly to the customer. The retailer gets the difference between the retail price they set and the wholesale price the manufacturer charges them.
Dropshipping is definitely a sweet deal for the retailer! No inventory to store, nothing to ship. But here are the stats for that manufacturer.
Of all of the people who inquire into becoming a dropship retailer, only 10% even bother to take the next, basic, step of providing their tax ID. In other words, only 10% of those businesses even take it beyond the tire-kicking stage of starting a business. And only 10% of the 10% who take that step are currently on the manufacturer's books as having forwarded any orders.
That means that 10% of 10% - a paltry 1% - of all the people who approached this manufacturer and said, "I'd like to start a business and resell your product in it," have gotten their business far enough to as much as obtain one order.
Still think that "average" results sound good?
Now, granted, this is results from one manufacturer, but from what I've seen, I don't think it's too far off from the norm for those starting a business online. But those kind of results are why you can't afford to do what the "average" businessperson does.
Where the "average" person zigs, you need to zag. Where the "average" person gets bogged down in the details of starting a business, you need to cut through the details and take action. Where the "average" person painstakingly follows all the "rules" that multiple experts tell them, you need to look at all the advice with a critical eye and determine for yourself the straightest line to take you from where you are to where you want to be.
Because in a world where the "average" businessperson bails out within a couple of years, simply being "average" won't get you where you want to go.
Jeff
Monday, January 16, 2006
Growing Through Growth
I've watched an interesting phenomenon lately on my site. I haven't done much from an optimization standpoint on One Stop Web Support because of some general renovation of the site that has kept me fully occupied.
Yet, while not doing anything specific with optimization in mind, search engine spidering has increased, rankings have risen, and traffic has grown steadily.
Lacking any moves of seo brilliance to attribute this to, I fall back on a simpler explanation: search engines like quality sites with lots of useful content.
My renovation work has involved reorganizing pages to make them clearer for users and adding pages to fill in gaps that I felt needed to be filled. Hmm... clearer pages, more useful content... could it be that trying to fool the search engines into thinking you have a useful site is actually a harder task than simply creating useful content to begin with?
It's just like Ken Evoy describes in his classic C-T-P-M process for building a profitable business online.
The key is to keep building quality content. It may not be as glamorous as chasing after some mythical Holy Grail of optimization trickery, but it works.
Jeff
I've watched an interesting phenomenon lately on my site. I haven't done much from an optimization standpoint on One Stop Web Support because of some general renovation of the site that has kept me fully occupied.
Yet, while not doing anything specific with optimization in mind, search engine spidering has increased, rankings have risen, and traffic has grown steadily.
Lacking any moves of seo brilliance to attribute this to, I fall back on a simpler explanation: search engines like quality sites with lots of useful content.
My renovation work has involved reorganizing pages to make them clearer for users and adding pages to fill in gaps that I felt needed to be filled. Hmm... clearer pages, more useful content... could it be that trying to fool the search engines into thinking you have a useful site is actually a harder task than simply creating useful content to begin with?
It's just like Ken Evoy describes in his classic C-T-P-M process for building a profitable business online.
The key is to keep building quality content. It may not be as glamorous as chasing after some mythical Holy Grail of optimization trickery, but it works.
Jeff
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Researching How Well Your Site Is Spidered With SearchIt! Free Internet Marketing Research Tool
The SearchIt! free search tool consists of a window with two dropdown boxes and two text boxes. In the two dropdown boxes, you select the type of search you want to do. In the two text boxes, you select the search criteria (such as keywords or URLs) you want to use.
Rather than repeat the introductory info about SearchIt! that I shared previously, I suggest that you see the October 2nd blog for this information. Or simply realize that it is important to click all the links and read all the instructions that SearchIt! tells you to do.
You'll find SearchIt! A LOT easier and more valuable to use if you do that.
Using SearchIt!
Last week we continued covering some site research tools, including ways that SearchIt! can help you find related sites for joint ventures or link exchanges. This week we'll look at how SearchIt! can help you keep track of how well the search engines are spidering your site.
In the Step 1 dropdown box, scroll down under Site Research and select Indexed Pages.
Click the dropdown box for Step 2: Select Search Type. You'll see the following options.
All of these options, except the "Date Last Spidered by Google" option, are almost identical except in the search engine that it queries. So, rather than repeating exactly the same information for each of them, I'll deal with them all as one.
Type the domain name (without the http:// or the www.) in the Step 3 box. Click the SearchIt! button.
The intro page talks mainly about how SiteBuildIt! takes care of all of your submission needs for you automatically, even monitoring pages to determine -- automatically -- which need to be submitted and which don't.
When you're ready to view your results, click the link at the bottom of the intro page. Toward the top of the results page you'll see a message that states how many pages it is showing out of the total number that the search engine finds in its database for the site. Take note of the number of pages that the search engine says it found. That is the number of your pages that that search engine has spidered.
Date Last Spidered by Google
Type the the full url of the page (although without the http://) in the Step 3 box. Include the www. and include the page name after the domain name (for example, www.domain-name.com/page.html) Click the SearchIt! button.
The intro page discusses some of the reasons that it can be useful to know when Google last spidered that page. When you're ready to view your results, click the link at the bottom of the intro page.
Your results will show the most recent version that Google has of that page. Near the top of the page, it identifies the most recent date that Google spidered the page.
One glitch about this, though. If your site uses css and you have designated your page heading to start at the top of the page, it may cover Google's heading and the date. You can still find the date, but will have to view the source of the page to find it.
Next week
This Sunday, we looked at how SearchIt! can help you keep track of how well the search engines are spidering your site. Next week we'll look at how SearchIt! helps you learn how many other sites are linking to you (backlinks).
All in all, SearchIt! can find you lots of valuable information. The main thing to remember is to READ THE DIRECTIONS. With as many tools packed into this one interface, you're not going to take one look at it and intuitively understand how to use every one of them. But the directions they give are easy, and they do more than just tell you how to use each tool; they also throw in tips on how to use the results you receive to make your site more successful.
SearchIt! is one of these free tools that really produces value for you. I recommend that you check it out and make it a part of your web marketing arsenal.
Jeff
The SearchIt! free search tool consists of a window with two dropdown boxes and two text boxes. In the two dropdown boxes, you select the type of search you want to do. In the two text boxes, you select the search criteria (such as keywords or URLs) you want to use.
Rather than repeat the introductory info about SearchIt! that I shared previously, I suggest that you see the October 2nd blog for this information. Or simply realize that it is important to click all the links and read all the instructions that SearchIt! tells you to do.
You'll find SearchIt! A LOT easier and more valuable to use if you do that.
Using SearchIt!
Last week we continued covering some site research tools, including ways that SearchIt! can help you find related sites for joint ventures or link exchanges. This week we'll look at how SearchIt! can help you keep track of how well the search engines are spidering your site.
In the Step 1 dropdown box, scroll down under Site Research and select Indexed Pages.
Click the dropdown box for Step 2: Select Search Type. You'll see the following options.
- Pages in Google
- Pages in Yahoo! Search
- Pages in MSN
- Pages in Teoma
- Date Last Spidered by Google
All of these options, except the "Date Last Spidered by Google" option, are almost identical except in the search engine that it queries. So, rather than repeating exactly the same information for each of them, I'll deal with them all as one.
Type the domain name (without the http:// or the www.) in the Step 3 box. Click the SearchIt! button.
The intro page talks mainly about how SiteBuildIt! takes care of all of your submission needs for you automatically, even monitoring pages to determine -- automatically -- which need to be submitted and which don't.
When you're ready to view your results, click the link at the bottom of the intro page. Toward the top of the results page you'll see a message that states how many pages it is showing out of the total number that the search engine finds in its database for the site. Take note of the number of pages that the search engine says it found. That is the number of your pages that that search engine has spidered.
Date Last Spidered by Google
Type the the full url of the page (although without the http://) in the Step 3 box. Include the www. and include the page name after the domain name (for example, www.domain-name.com/page.html) Click the SearchIt! button.
The intro page discusses some of the reasons that it can be useful to know when Google last spidered that page. When you're ready to view your results, click the link at the bottom of the intro page.
Your results will show the most recent version that Google has of that page. Near the top of the page, it identifies the most recent date that Google spidered the page.
One glitch about this, though. If your site uses css and you have designated your page heading to start at the top of the page, it may cover Google's heading and the date. You can still find the date, but will have to view the source of the page to find it.
Next week
This Sunday, we looked at how SearchIt! can help you keep track of how well the search engines are spidering your site. Next week we'll look at how SearchIt! helps you learn how many other sites are linking to you (backlinks).
All in all, SearchIt! can find you lots of valuable information. The main thing to remember is to READ THE DIRECTIONS. With as many tools packed into this one interface, you're not going to take one look at it and intuitively understand how to use every one of them. But the directions they give are easy, and they do more than just tell you how to use each tool; they also throw in tips on how to use the results you receive to make your site more successful.
SearchIt! is one of these free tools that really produces value for you. I recommend that you check it out and make it a part of your web marketing arsenal.
Jeff
© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Jeff Baas, One Stop Web Support
