What a start to the week in good old blighty. London awoke on Monday morning to a six inch dousing of snow. Apparently the worst to hit the capital for 18 years. And the result was utter chaos. This being the same city that survived the blitz. I guess that’s where the Gerries had it wrong, they should’ve dropped snow and not bombs.

reflectionsAll the buses were taken off the roads and a lot of the trains weren’t running – the wrong kind of snow on the tracks (sorry a London joke that one!). The schools were mostly closed prompting even more people to stay at home. And stay at home they did; both on Monday and Tuesday. Businesses says they lost billions whilst families built snowmen.

I just happened to have both days off as I’m working next weekend. So I got to watch the snow fall from my study window. And here’s the view I enjoyed.

I heard today that the London Borough of Camden had shut their parks both days for health & safety reasons. Yes things really were mad! But it was back to work today when overnight the Tuesday slush had turned to ice. And as Janet my wife reflected this evening, conditions today were far more treacherous underfoot than on the two days of powder.

More snow is forecast for Friday, which probably has the kids hoping for another day off school and the parents already mourning the Christmas holiday hoping for another excuse to wag off work.

One thing is certain – come rain, shine, snow or high water I guess nothing’s going to excuse me from work in front of this PC. Here’s to success and as always…

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: idle reflections, London snow, snow days

Well it was webinar number six presented by my coach Alex last night, which was about affiliate marketing and email marketing. Late into the session we started getting into the meat of the topic. And I picked up a number of good tips that both reinforced prior learning and added to my knowledge.

Again the concept of building a relationship with the people on your list came across strongly. Built into this were the following do’s and don’ts:

• Do be personal
• Do create your own story
• Do always give more value than expected
• Don’t just hard sell all the time
• Don’t promote people or products you haven’t checked out yourself

On the topic of writing your own killer solo emails it was the same advice you often hear concerning learning to write sales copy. And that is to ‘swipe’ good stuff and learn from it. Alex’s advice was to look at the emails that we all receive in our own inbox and analyse the ones we open and analyse the ones we click through.

I’m already one step ahead there as I’ve subscribed to a few lists of some renowned email marketers to look at what they send to their lists and learn from it. I can swipe the good subject lines and swipe the good body copy for my own personal swipe file.

But the killer part for me was when Alex highlighted a fairly recent addition to Aweber’s arsenal. And that’s the ability to target your list based upon whether they opened your last solo mailing and whether they clicked on your link. That way you can follow up specifically based upon each subscribers response to your initial mailing.

Now I’ve heard about this before from a presentation given by another online marketer a while back. But I haven’t seen anyone show step by step how to do this. So when I’ve checked it out and worked out how to do it I’ll record a ‘how to’ video and post it here.

That’s all from me for this update.

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, email marketing, swipe file

You may notice something a little different with this video. I’m trying out the ‘blog’ setting in Camtasia Studio v6 that’s supposed to produce a video optimised for embedding in a blog. So if all goes according to plan you should be able to view the video on this page instead of in another window as with my previous screencam tutorials.

Woohoo!

Strap yourself in, hold onto your hat and when you’re ready click on the play button…

Well I hope you found this video useful. Leave a comment and let me know. Don’t forget you can also suggest a topic for the next video you only have to ask.

Feel free to share this post with your friends if you think they’ll find it useful. Share the blog love!

Until next time – be successful.

Technorati Tags: how to, How To's, server logs, track visitors, tracking, tutorial, video

Hi There, I have another video packed with marketing tips for you. But first let me tell you a few of the trials I went through to get this video done.

You’ll see that for the first time I’ve jumped in front of the camera instead of recording a screencast. Well that turned out to be the big problem. You see I wasted a good couple of hours trying to arrange my video studio – the spare bedroom really but don’t tell anyone. I couldn’t find a position in the room where I could stop the window reflecting on the lenses of my glasses.

Even if I moved the floodlight I was using, the light from the window was so strong there were still dirty great reflections right across my eyes. I tried positioning sideways on but then half of my face was in shade and it looked weird.

So the final solution was just to remove my glasses. So if you see me glancing down or squinting in the video it’s because I couldn’t see my notes clearly.

Anyway, enough about my problems. Here’s the video; I hope you like it?

OK, so I messed up at the end and forget to mention the example in the main presentation. I had to add it at the end. But if you want to see the examples that I set up there’s no need to go type in the URL I gave. Instead just click on the free report image in the right sidebar and you’ll get taken straight there.

Please let me have your feedback. What did you think? Are my front-of-camera days numbered, or should I do more like this? Let me have your comments.

Well that’s all I’ve got for now, so as usual…

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, email deliverability, email list building, email marketing

I haven’t posted to this blog for a while. There’s a good reason why, which I’m going to tell you about in a moment. But first…

Last Thursday and Friday evening were two webinars hosted by my coach Alex. The webinar on Thursday was about using video to market yourself and was presented by Maria Andross who’s called the ‘Video Marketing Queen’.

Her enthusiasm is quite infectious so she’s very easy to listen to. It was reassuring to hear that the few videos that I’ve already loaded to YouTube and other video sites already conform to the tips and guidelines that she suggested. These included adding your website URL both within the video presentation and the video description, to drive traffic to your site.

Friday’s session was a different story though!

Now I signed up with Alex with one specific objective in mind; I needed to learn more about driving traffic. I can create great products and build converting websites till the cows come home, but I absolutely suck at generating traffic to my sites. The session was titled ‘Traffic Tornadoes’. So I was like a coiled spring. This was what I was waiting for; something to get my teeth into. Then I waited…

One hour in and I was still waiting. Now normally I would have been quite patient, but it was already gone 12 and I had to be up for work in the morning. Now Alex comes across as a great bloke and I bet he’s great company in person, but getting to the point doesn’t seem to be one of his strong points.

Anyway to cut a long story short ‘Traffic Tornadoes’ should have been called ‘Traffic Farts’! LOL. To put it simply I was expecting a little more than I got and felt a bit short changed.

Perhaps I’m being a bit paranoid, but I also detected a more sinister intent for Alex starting this coaching. It was when he was talking about using Twitter. Now I can’t remember his exact words, but it went along the lines that he would only reply or make a tweet if there was some business advantage in it for him. Perhaps I misinterpreted? But it got me thinking about his business advantage in running the program?

At the end of the session Alex announced two new competitions; one to do with video marketing and the other to do with blog positioning.

The first is to create a video on YouTube, but it must include Alex’s name and website as well as your own. The second is to position your blog as high in the Google listings as you can using Alex’s name as the keyword term. Get where I’m coming from?

Now I said at the start I was going to tell you why I haven’t posted. It’s because I couldn’t make my mind up whether to post about this and my concerns in public or not. I mean chances are that if any of the ‘Fortunate 500′ see this they’ll call me a heretic for criticising Alex or questioning his motives and I’ll be thrown to the wolves. But the simple fact is I’m here to build my own business, not somebody else’s.

So I won’t be entering the blog positioning competition, because my blog is here to build my own rapport and reputation with people not someone else’s. I will however be recording a video as I have some great new content you’re going to find super useful when building a list. Watch out for that one!

Am I sorry that I started this coaching thing with Alex? Absolutely and one hundred percent NOT! Here are the reasons why:

1)  I wouldn’t be as productive as I am now (gotta love my kitchen timer).
2)  I probably wouldn’t have posted as much to this blog as I have.
3)  I wouldn’t have got my new project to launch stage – it should have been completed 12 months ago.
4)  And I wouldn’t be as highly motivated and focused as I am right now. Probably more positive and focused than I’ve ever been since I started my online business all those years ago.

I guess it’s quite normal for ups and downs in any relationship, including one with your coach. If I have the wrong end of the stick here then I apologise. But I’m putting this behind me and moving forward with the intention of getting as much out of the deal as I can to build MY business.

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: business building, business coach, business coaching, paranoia, video marketing

A small agricultural community was suffering from a severe drought. If the rains didn’t come soon the crops would be ruined and the farmers and their families would most likely starve. The people turned to their preacher for a solution.

The preacher told them all to “come to church on Sunday”, when they would all join together and pray for rain.

Sunday came and the whole community turned out for the church service. There was hushed quiet as the preacher climbed up to the pulpit to speak.

He looked around the expectant faces of the congregation and studied them pensively. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak: “I suggest that you all go home” he said “there will be no rain today.”

The congregation were aghast. “But you promised us rain” they cried.

The preacher turned to address them again and said: “I see that not one of you has brought an umbrella or a raincoat with you today. How can you hope to pray for rain, if in your hearts you have no faith that it will come?”

Think about that message for a moment. How can you hope to achieve anything, if in your heart you have no faith that you’ll actually achieve it?

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definitions for the word ‘faith’:

– trust, things believed, loyalty, fidelity, confidence.

Well these cover all the angles!

To succeed with anything you first need to trust in your own ability to succeed and be loyal to that trust. By that I mean don’t go changing your mind every five minutes. You know the drill ” Yes I know I can achieve that!” one minute and then “Well now I’m not so sure!” the next.

Stepping on from this you also need the confidence and self belief to see the thing through to its completion.

Let me paint another image of faith for you, again involving the rain.

You’ve probably heard stories of the legendary ‘rain dance’ carried out by the American Indians. Apparently they could dance to make it rain.

“But!” I hear you cry, “They just danced until it began to rain. There’s nothing mystical about that!”

No my friend you’re right. But they had the faith to continue dancing, knowing that if they danced long enough the rain would come.

Take a look in the mirror. Do you have enough faith to continue ‘dancing’ until you achieve the dreams you desire?

Do you have enough faith to ‘carry your umbrella’ even though your associates may have fallen by the wayside. Certain in the knowledge that good fortune will rain down upon you?

If you don’t have faith in yourself and your ability to succeed, then you’re sunk even before you launch your boat. Faith is a very powerful emotion that can conjure up all sorts of amazing phenomena. Remember, that faith requires trust, self-belief, loyalty to yourself and above all confidence in your own abilities. If you’re ‘packing’ all those weapons then you’re really a force to be reckoned with.

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: confidence, faith, loyalty, self-belief, trust