September 2007
Monthly Archive
Fri 28 Sep 2007
Does Madame Ruth with the Big Gold Tooth influence your views?
This issue came up a couple of days ago while I was participating in an conference call with EFT expert, Brad Yates. We were doing a tapping session on success, abundance and attitudes that contribute to success.
Madame Ruth with the Big Gold Tooth is Brad’s way of referencing the subconscious ideas buried deep in the inner chambers of our mind — the ideas, attitudes and beliefs that may be shaped by superstition, fortune tellers, psychics, card readers or even well meaning family members and friends who had similar ideas.
Some very strange believes turned up during this session. It’s not that any of us believe in these things consciously. Quite the opposite. Most of us pooh-poohed superstition and horoscopes and other similar things. But yet — the unconscious beliefs surfaced. Once they came up, we were could examine them and laugh at them — and hopefully get rid of these unconscious thoughts before they damaged our success goals.
Here’s my example. I’m Sagittarian. Our 2007 horoscope says that anything we start this year will be around for years to come. I discovered that unconsciously I was worried that any failures this year would translate into permanent failures. Silly? Of course. But there it was.
Another caller remembered a psychic once telling her that she would always make a living but she would never be wealthy. Who knows how much that little buried belief was holding her back.
What other kinds of superstitious beliefs get hidden in our unconscious minds?
Do you believe that bad luck comes in threes? If you believe that deep down, then perhaps you unwittingly do things to make it a reality.
Has a card reader told you you’re destined to have three great loves in your life? Does that mean that unconsciously you expect the first two to be temporary? How does that impact on relationship success?
The point I hope to stress, really stress, is that you don’t have to believe in these things consciously for them to be influencing you. If they are there in the unconscious, they have an impact. That’s why energy psychologies like EFT can be so effective.
And Brad Yates is not your typical EFT practitioner. He tosses in ridiculousness and humor whenever he can fit it in. Why not? Who says self development has to be a grim and painful process? Not Brad, that’s for sure.
Thu 27 Sep 2007
That was the sad question a young black woman asked on the Warrior’s Forum, a forum where Internet marketers hang out. She wanted to know if putting her photo on her web site would harm her sales numbers. It’s becoming a common practice to put a photo on a sales page these days. It adds credibility by reassuring visitors they are dealing with a real person and not a nameless, faceless entity.
But does it work to everyone’s advantage?
In a perfect world, you’d hope that race wouldn’t matter. You’d hope that gender wouldn’t matter, that age wouldn’t matter, that a physical deformity wouldn’t matter. You’d hope it wouldn’t matter if you’re plain as a box of rocks.
But it’s not a perfect world. To some people, these things do matter. To some, the seller’s appearance and race could create a subconscious reaction. To others, it’s probably more of a direct decision.
Personally, I’m not photogenic. I agonized over putting a picture of myself on this blog and on other web sites. After taking several hundred pictures of myself using the self timer on my digital camera, I finally got an image that I thought was suitable and wouldn’t send people screaming away in fear.
But to what extent does a photo help or hinder sales? One could debate this issue til the cows come home, and you still wouldn’t know the answer.
Doing a simple A/B split test is the only way to know for sure. By using a simple script designed for this purpose, the seller can rotate two sales pages, one with a photo and one without. The best scripts rotate the pages for new site visitors, but set cookies so they always show the same page to the same visitor, should he or she return more than once. Then, over time, you track which sales page performed the best. Services such as Google Analytics will do this for you, and Google Analytics is free to use.
When the human race evolves to the point that no one is influenced by superficial issues like skin color and physical appearance, we won’t need to test. Until then, sad but true, its probably necessary.
Split Test and Increase Conversions by (up to) 734% is an economically priced, easy to use A/B testing script. It comes with a report that explains split testing in considerable detail. Naturally, you can and should test for a lot more than whether or not to use a photo on your sales page.
Wed 26 Sep 2007
Wed 26 Sep 2007
I wish I had a dollar for every time I see somebody asking how to increase their Google ranking and thereby generate web site traffic. Usually, the asker wants to do this without spending any money, and is looking for a magic wand that puts you at the top of Google without doing much work or putting much effort into it.
If only it were so.
Google estimates ranking based on a number of (complicated) factors. One of these factors is the density of keyword usage. In other words, if your web site is about growing orchids, Google will analyse the number of times that the phrase “growing orchids” appears in your site. If you use it too often, Google will decide you are spamming and knock you out of the rankings altogether. If you don’t use it enough, Google decides “growing orchids” isn’t relevant and gives you a lower ranking. Keyword analyses is a huge topic.
Google also bases ranking on other factors — such as the amount of traffic you receive and the number of other sites that link to you. The traffic thing is a chicken and egg — you don’t get traffic because you have a poor ranking and you have a poor ranking because you don’t get traffic.
The one thing you can do something about, without spending money, is influence the number of sites that link to you. But by all means avoid the time wasting business of putting up a link exchange directory. Google ranks these things as next to useless and could even penalize you.
There are plenty of ways you can build links effectively Write articles about your topic, and submit them to the article directories. Put a link to your web site in the resource box.
Here is my listing of articles at Ezine Articles, the best directory in my opinion. June Campbell Ezine Articles.com Expert Author
Make blogs on free blogging platforms, or Squidoo lenses, and link to your site. This is my list of Squidoo Lenses.
Post your site to all of the social bookmarking web sites. Use a tool like Social Marker or Social Poster to do this quickly and relatively easily.
The link below shows you 30 ways to attract traffic without spending money. 30 White Hat Ways to Attract Web Site Traffic Without Spending a Cent.
Tue 25 Sep 2007
You’ve heard it said before. Women make the best entrepreneurs. Some guy even wrote a book with that title. I think there is a statistic floating around that says that women who start businesses have a substantially higher success rate than men who start businesses.
At the risk of antagonizing my feminist readers (and not for the first time), I’m going to challenge this statistic.
I believe the statistic that shows women having a higher success rate is skewed. I think the researchers compared apples to oranges instead of apples to apples.
A few years ago, I participated in a research project that studied women entrepreneurs who were starting a business. The researcher was doing a doctorage thesis on this subject.
There were a dozen of us in this group. Of that dozen, two of us were looking at our business as our sole source of income. To call it a business success, it had to generate enough net profit that we could live according to whatever means we had established for ourselves.
The other ten woman in the group were operating a hobby business. It was something they did to bring in a little extra cash. One woman set her business goals as making $6,000 a year from the business. She succeeded, therefore her business was a success.
Let me asssure you, I personally cannot live on $6,000 a year. If my business makes that amount of profit, it has failed and I will be out applying for a job. For my business to succeed, it has to generate much more net profit than $6,000 annually.
I suspect that quite a few woman entrepreneurs are like the ten in this research project. They’re working at a hobby business. Success is measured in small amounts.
I haven’t researched this, but I’d make a bet that very few men start a business with the goal of bringing in a few thousand dollars a year. I suspect most male entrepreneurs intend to make enough profit to support themselves and their families.
Therefore, when we talk about men owned businesses having a higher failure rate than women owned busineses, I think we’re looking at two completely different things.
It would be my guess that if we compared apples to apples — if we compared the failoure rate between men and women who start a business with the intention of generating a decent annual income, we’d have fairly similar numbers.
It’s just my opinion. But I think I’m right
Mon 24 Sep 2007
Posted by June Campbell under
Internet Marketing1 Comment
Internet marketing knows some shady moments. There’s an interesting discussion underway at the Warrior Forum. Somebody asked whether lying about the benefits you’re generated from your product is illegal.
The law is one thing. Whether its illegal depends upon the laws in the country that the seller lives in. I’m fairly sure it would be illegal in Canada, but I can’t speak for all countries of the world.
Therefore, the question becomes, “Is it ethical to lie about the benefits you’ve received from your product?”
Well, no. Clearly it is not. However, where is the fine line between lying and artistic license?
I remember a Chanel commercial on television. A shapely woman in a bikini lay suntanning by the pool while a number of handsome males came swimming up to her like bees to a flower. Supposely, because of her perfume.
Do I honestly believe that this will happen to me if I wear that perfume? Do I honestly believed this event happened to the model in the commercial? If it did, do I believe it was the perfume that lured the male admirers?
No. I don’t believe that and neither does anyone else.
Was the commercial lying to us? Or was it simply selling a dream?
If I’m not mistaken, some years ago, there was an American lawsuit concerning an advertising issue that skirted around the truth. The judge ruled that exaggerating in advertising was admissible if a “reasonable man” would understand the exaggeration. In the US, this ”reasonable man” defense has become the criteria for determining what is legal in advertising and what is not.
So let’s use the reasonable man argument to examine some of the Internet marketing sales letters that we see today. Among the biggest offenders are the people who are trying to sell a product to the newcomers who hope to discover the secrets of making money online.
We see these sales letters in which the marketer claims to have made a whopping big bunch of money in a short time, usually without doing much work. Would a reasonable person belive this to be true?
Yes. They could. Because some people really do make a big sum of money online. Therefore, its not impossible that the statement could be true and that a reasonable man might believe it to be true. Moreover, there is still a misconception out there in the real world that you can toss up a web site and start raking in the bucks all night as you sleep.
The marketers further support their stories by showing alleged screen captures of bank accounts, Clickbank accounts and Paypal accounts. These screen captures show huge sums of money coming into the accounts over a short period of time.
Those of us who are familiar with digital imaging know how easy it would be to fake these screen captures using Photoshop or some other image editing software.
Those of us who aren’t that familiar with digital imaging are likely to think these screen captures are genuine.
Then, they further back this up with falsified testimonials from their friends and from people who stand to benefit from this in some way. I’ve seen a guy make a post to an Internet marketing forum offering to give a testimonial to anyone who wanted one. In return, he’d get a live link back to his web site — which helps get a higher ranking in the search engines.
My take on this is that the marketers doing this sort of thing are indeed using unethical practices. They’re not selling a dream. Showing a picture of a guy or gal driving an expensive car would selling a dream. Making false claims about income generated and backing it up with manipulated digital images is lying. It’s unethical. And I hope to God its illegal.
Fri 21 Sep 2007
Fri 21 Sep 2007
Today at Yahoo! Answers, somebody asked the number one mistake that people make when starting a new business.
In my view, its jumping in with both feet without doing a decent business plan. A good business plan takes several weeks to research and write. It covers every angle of starting a new business, including market research, competitive analyses, pricing analyses and financial projections. It sounds like an overwhelming task, and it can be overwhelming when you first consider how much work it entails. However, once you get started, you just chip away at the research bit by bit and it falls into place. There are many guides available to developing a start up business plan, including my own guide, Business Plans Made Easy.
I remember when I took my business training before I opened my business. The instructor’s mantra was, ‘It you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
All too often, I find people who make the mistake of falling in love with their business idea. Not that its a bad thing to fall in love with your business idea. In fact, if you don’t, you probabably won’t have the drive to make it work. But as they say, love is blind. Your business plans should not be based on blind love.
By being blindly in love with your business idea, this is what I mean. I mean getting a business idea and believing that it will succeed wildly simply because you think it is going to. You “know” that people need this thing. You “know” they will realize it is as wonderful as you think it is. You ‘know” they will break down the doors to buy this thing at almost any price you care to charge.
So based on this “knowing”, and without doing any market research, you set up shop and wait for the stampede. It doesn’t arrive. Turns out people aren’t really that interested. At least not at the price you are charging. Or in the way you have packaged your product. Or maybe they don’t really want it in the first place. There’s a big difference between “needing” and “wanting.” I know that a lot of my friends need certain things. Problem is they don’t “want” these things, so it doesn’t matter how much I think they need it. So it is with your customers.
Developing a good business plan will alleviate this all-too-common problem. When you do your market research and your analyses, you fully identify your target market. You determine if they are interested in this product, and how much they would be willing to pay. You find out how they want it packaged and delivered. You analyze your competition and develop strategies. You analyze your numbers and find how to set your pricing so you can make a profit, and you find out whether your target market will pay this amount. If not, its back to the drawing board.
When developing your business plan, you also develop your strategy for marketing and promotion. I am astonished by the numbers of people I encounter who say, “I have this business or this online business set up, now how do I promote it? That’s something to be determined during the planning stage, not after the business is created.
Spend the time now doing your planning and you’ll save yourself countless hours later on when you discover that things aren’t working and you have already invested good time and money.
Thu 20 Sep 2007
Tue 18 Sep 2007
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