icemanbaldy

Don't Let Distractions Become Your Undoing

This is a post that I began writing some time ago and then I got caught up in other things and don't believe it was ever posted to my blog. As you can see, I've been busy and haven't had an update here in a few days. I was busy doing productive and profitable stuff but far busier wasting time on socializing and not striking the right balance between making conversation and making money. When I read this post as a note in my to-do file, I was inspired to complete it and post it here as a reminder to myself and advice for others.

It's so easy to get caught up in developing new business and working on new projects that you may not realize how much you're neglecting your current clients and loyal customers. We've all been guilty of losing track of time and not keeping in contact as much as we should. It seems the busier you get, the easier it is to stay busy but you've got to make the time to keep in touch.

It does take discipline. It also takes an organizational system. Whether a calendar, electronic organizer, contact management system or assistant (real or virtual), you need some help to make sure that you are an effective manager of time and relationships.

Some of the best ways to stay in touch with your customers leverage what you're already doing. Here are a few quick ideas:

• If you have a website that features news or a current events or topical weblog, either syndicate your best items or posts from a specific period of time and send those to your customers in an email summary.
• If your product or service would be even better if your customers only knew of some common shortcuts or tips that would help them analyze, evaluate, install, own or use (A, E, I, O, U) your product, send these tips over a series of notes or messages or offer it as a free and helpful guide. This might also be a way of generating some viral traffic by including a link to your site and products throughout the compiled document.
• Use an email service to offer a course or series of articles that your customers would find helpful. Like the shortcuts and tips idea above, this offering shows for concern for your patrons and builds some reciprocal goodwill that will pay dividends in the future.
• Commit to an editorial calendar and publishing schedule that makes sense for you with all you have going on. Track the frequency of your messages and try not to lose touch with your customers for more than a month. Find complimentary offers and products that you can offer for free so that your messages are received positively and eagerly.
• Respond to comments and messages from others on your social networks at one time during the week during a period dedicated to this activity. It's important that if you join these networks that you also contribute and communicate with friends but you have to manage the time you spend on this or you won't get anything else done.

Effective communication is an art but the systematic efficiency of your communication is where you need to apply some science. Create a methodology that works for you and as you follow through on keeping in contact, you'll create a networking habit that will become second nature and solidify your bottom line.

Explaining How You Make Money Online

Because there will be doubters.

When you tell people that you're an internet marketer or online entrepreneur, most will assume the worst. If they believe that you do make a decent income through your internet efforts, they will probably think that you engage in spam techniques or that you run some type of adult website or online gambling operation. They might figure that you just sell a lot of stuff on Ebay.

You can educate those who don't know while further developing your business in the process. Spammers are a small percentage of those individuals who make money online and because spamming is largely ineffective, those folks don't stay around long. Explain this fact to those who you believe need to be armed with accurate information.

Use your own email marketing as an example. Explain that each and every person that receives your email messages has signed up and provided their specific approval to be sent your email messages. Your subscription process is a lot like receiving a newspaper or magazine. Once an individual becomes a subscriber, they receive valuable information in addition to some advertising that is targeted to meet their needs and expose them to other opportunities that you recommend.

If you sell eBooks online, you can explain to people that you're a bit like a book publisher, but all of the books you publish are in digital format. You can tell them that instead of paying a lot of extra money for the printing, binding, marketing, and shipping of a physical book, you eliminate those costs by selling all of your books as downloadable products.

If people still don't understand, you could even show them what an eBook is by letting them view one on your computer. If your main business is advertising affiliate products, you can tell people you're in advertising.

Explain to them that you run a website (or websites) and you place advertising on that website. Every time someone clicks an ad and purchases something, you receive a commission. If you make most of your money through AdSense or selling advertising on your sites, you can simply tell people that you place advertisements on your websites, and you charge advertisers for that ad space.

If you want to, you could show them some of your sites or blogs to illustrate the point. Some people feel more comfortable just telling people they design websites. If you're a decent website builder, this will probably really impress people, but be prepared to get requests from people asking if you'll make them a site, too.

If you don't want to deal with all of the questions about spamming and porn, just telling someone you design websites will usually be enough to throw them off your trail. If people are particularly persistent with their questions, you can start to point out some examples of people who have been very successful making money online.

Don't just use examples of famous Internet marketers like John Reese or Yanik Silver! Use some examples with verifiable "proof" in mainstream media. For example, the famous "make money" blogger John Chow has a number of stories out there about him.

There's also teenaged entrepreneur Ashley Squalls who has made mainstream news in a big way by making over $70,000 per month with advertising on her site that gives away MySpace layouts. And of course, the infamous Perez Hilton - a celebrity blogger who cashes in on the ad space his blog has.

You should try to realize that some people will just never understand what you do. Try to explain it the best way you can, and if it doesn't work, accept it. Some people just won't get it. If the in-laws or your spouse are nagging you because your money isn't yet streaming in, and you feel pressured, put together a simple presentation that answers all of their questions and puts their minds at ease.

The more you can include people in your business or provide some ways for them to see and experience what you do, the more your work become legitimate and credible until the money begins to flow. Once you start living the internet lifestyle, you'll be surprised at how fast the questions go away.

Twitter as Art. Check out My Twitter Mosaic

Thanks to twitter.com/tiffani for tipping me off to Twitter Mosaic.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

The Best Kept Secret in Internet Marketing: The Internet Marketing Files

I've been quietly working on a real sweetheart of a website and it's time to take the wraps off and release it to the public. Join now before I close the doors as I prepare for Phase 2. Phase 1 members will have access to all three phases!

This is a copy of my introductory letter:

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Well, we've spent the last two years doing the work for you and I've compiled a repository of resources of personal resources that will ensure that you become an instant marketer who enjoys success and profits while building your expertise and product porfolio. I've filled my hard drive with stuff that I can't possibly find time to create separate product pages and market and it's easier for me to provide you access to these outstanding finds so that you can use them to grow your business.

We've done all the work for you and collected the best products together in one place!

PDF's, MP3 Audio, Video, tools, templates, graphics, scripts--it's all here!

This is one of the only place on the internet where you are provided access to hundreds of resources that I’ve culled through months of intense internet marketing research. Some are original content by myself or other proficient marketers that are exclusive to this site, others are selectly distributed private label rights content that you are free to modify and use under your own name as you wish. Still other resources here are hard-to-find complete product packages that you can upload to your server and begin selling immediately with sales letters, email messages, graphics, and everything else you need to become an instant internet marketer.

We have gigabytes of actionable files and information for immediate profit.

Bookmark this site and Be Warned: You can spend days going through the information contained in the Internet Marketing Files. The key is to use a few resources to assist you in taking action, gaining traction, and producing profit. Return to your files as necessary and use more of the information there to take your growth to the next level. Get a preview of what's Inside our Files.

Most marketers don't pay for online content and spend their nights trying to produce products that pale in comparison to what is available in the Internet Marketing Files. Fewer still take the time to maximize the value they can get out of products that they purchase with rights to rebrand, repackage, reproduce, reconfigure, or resell their purchased product as email courses, seminars, MP3's, PDF, email autorespnder messages or any other number of ways to multiply the value of these products.

This is it--content you can use for years and no worthless junk.

This site will provide you with core content that you can use for years. I love to learn and research the latest and greatest information on internet marketing--I mean the real substantive material, not worthless junk--and I will upload all of what I develop, purchase, and repurpose here with appropriate rights for your use (Resell Rights, Master Resell Rights, Private Label Rights, etc.).

Feel free to let us know how you like our Files. We’re happy to add new categories or other resources that you don’t see here to our continuously growing repository of hundreds of files. Take advantage of an excellent opportunity to expand your internet marketing education by using our files for your own benefit and then sell your own version of this branded knowledge to others. We provide you all the licenses and tools that you need to start immediately! It's the ideal personal investment that provides long-term returns.

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All the best,

Iceman Baldy, The Internet Marketing Files

Why Do I Publish IMTips on Twitter?

Twitter is a great platform for connecting with others and engaging in quick conversations or sharing useful information. Many celebrities and businesspeople use Twitter to provide fans and followers with updates about appearances or new products and ventures. Using simple text messages, Twitter has become the networking nervous system for millions of of 140 character messages sent around the planet every day all day.

Many people weren't sure what if any benefit Twitter could provide for productive use. Sure, there are lots of people who provide "tweets" that are nothing more than global greetings or updates about what they just ate or where they happen to be the moment. Some of these tweets are interesting, and many are not but most of the time these tweets provide some background personality that helps the sender connect with others who are using Twitter and considering becoming followers.

Value in Twitter occurs when important and helpful information is provided in a tweet. I've received value when someone has posted a link that I've found helpful or when someone has shared an opinion or review that was particularly pertinent.

IMTips (use #IMTip in a Twitter search) is my way of sharing value through sharing brief but substantive internet marketing tips with the Twitter community. By sharing these tips, I establish myself an an expert that others follow. Once they follow me and visit my profile, they get a sense of my others sites and I receive increased traffic and exposure as a result.

Hopefully you've seen my IMTips and find them helpful. If you would like a copy of all the tips, please subscribe to my feed as discussed later on this lens at http://feeds.tweetlater.com/17/icemanbaldy/.

iTouch Internet Marketing

This isn't a long post as it's really a test of the Typepad iTouch application that I just downloaded from the iTunes Application Store. My earlier attempts to blog remotely with a smartphone were never too successful so I'm hopeful that things have improved.

The iTouch is a perfect companion to a smartphone and laptop computer. I was and still am a fan of converged devices, but only to the extent that technology and mobile provider contracts make convergence practical. If my converged device means I'm stuck with the same hardware for two years with limited memory and battery life, then I'd rather have a separate, large-memory, long-battery life iPod for multimedia and a powerful phone for high-speed Internet access and texting. Nothing beats having all your music and videos/movies with you all the time. Wifi on your media device is an added bonus and it seems that the iPod is becoming an outstanding gaming platform in it's own right.

If this post appears in the same fashion as those I post from my desktop, you can expect that I'll be making several more whenever the mood strikes me.