September 10, 2008 By 10 Comments

Cutting Your Own Throat

It was the best of customer service times, it was the worst of customer service times.

In the last two months I have observed companies that are polar opposites in handle their customer enquiries and issues.

The Good (In fact I Would Say GREAT)

The team over at Noble Samurai offer the very pinnacle of customer service. Their product is new, it was launched at the same time that Google made some hefty changes to their data serving (that Market Samurai the application uses) and the user base the product was being offered to was 90% complete and utter newbies in using the tool (and in some cases the INTERNET).

Brent, Eugene and Andrew have a mature outlook when it comes to dealing with customer frustrations. They recognise that the frustration that users are showing when they vent is a “good” thing. It means that their customers are passionate people who really, really want their product.

The Samurai guys do not get flustered or angry at a user who is being less than civil (which by the way was 99.9% of the time is user error in the first place), respond in calm and measured ways. They go out of their way to not only service, but delight their customers with the response they get. It is very obvious that Noble Samurai has a great customer service policy that they ensure is front and centre with any transaction with their customers.

The Bad

In chatting with some of my IM colleagues a conversation came up regarding the affiliate commissions being paid by a membership site. They suddenly said something that rang a bell with me, although they KNEW they were referring new members who were signing up, no commission was being recorded or paid.

Me being me, had not said anything about that because I had automatically assumed I had done something wrong with linking (after all 99,9% of faults are user error), popped it in the too hard basket and went off to do soemthing else. Yet my colleagues HAD done something and placed help desk tickets (no answer), PMd people who ran the course (no answer) and in the end started fuming behind closed doors that they were being ripped off by something they felt was a worthwhile course to recommend.

The Ugly (or You Gotta Be Kidding me?!?!)

One of my IM girl friends had signed up during the 30DC with one of the recommended services.  Where there was the opportunity to take a “free” option, she actually took advantage of one of the special discount monthly continuity plans. While she doesn’t have much cash, she recognised the benefit of the product and the value of the offer.

Come her first bill she realises that she is being billed for $10 a month more (the non-special amount). Like I said, money is tight so she gets onto customer service to ask what is going on and her account to be adjusted. The customer service response to her was, NO, you signed up for the higher amount.

This comapny has just cut its own throat for the sake of $120 a year.

Not only that, the referrals that would have come from my friend would have made them a bucketload MORE money than the $120 they just chose to quibble over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Moral of the story here: Great customer service should be the FIRST thing you think of when setting up a business, not the last…

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September 5, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Diets Only Work If You Start One On A Monday

Seems the same for blog posts for me at the moment. I have plenty to say but am just whizzing around doing stuff and never getting down to actually writing. The only cure for writer’s block is to write. So here I am writing.

The post 30DC euphoria still continues in the forums and it is very exciting to see so many people joining still on a day to day basis. Some pretty amazing results coming out of people who persevered.

Today I was blown away by the fact that the second highest person to introduce people to the 30DC was a 17 year old Macedonian guy (nickname Dare). This kid will be someone to watch.

I am so excited about the secret women’s business project my head is going to explode. This is not a task, this is my passion and by golly gosh I am loving every single minute of it; even the tedious bits (like setting up sql databases).

Hanging out for the update on the Immediate Edge.  C’mon Dan pull the digit from the orifice!

The 12 Week Challenge is rocking along and now that I am back on the planet somewhat after a rocky couple of weeks i will be allocating some time to get back in the swing of things.

And yes… i will be going back to the gym and low-fat eating on Monday.  I might even pop up an accountability plugin if I can find one so you can see me drop some of my excess baggage.

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August 12, 2008 By 6 Comments

Oh It’s True, It’s True

Been watching my tweets today? No? Well if you did you would have seen that I decided to do a speed run at doing the Thirty Day Challenge up to now in one day. If I am too slack to post each day, well i can do 12 days in one and post about it.

You might think something like  “She’s a witch! Burn Her!!”, or that I am insane, or both. Hard to tell at the moment with all of the cough medicine I have been taking.  Still it might seem a big deal to some people to try such lunacy but if you have a procedure you can do anything 10 time quicker than flailing around in the dark.

For 8 years I worked for IBM and in that time I wrote dozens of procedures. I wrote them for people who had no idea what they were doing, I wrote them for highly technical people, I wrote them for managers and I wrote them for people for whom English was a second language. Procedures rock, and this is coming from someone who gets off on chaos.

The Thirty Day Challenge lays out the steps so clearly and simply that once you have done it once, you can easily replicate again. Now I don’t expect a new person to all of this to be able to do what I did in one day, but you can definitely chop in half the time it took the first time, and the time after that probably halve again.

So what did I achieve?

7am started research using Market Samurai. I picked a high end market and drilled down to a three word micro niche.  Seriously with this tool you can pick ANY word and find a niche waiting for picking. That is just what i did, picked a word out of the air that I knew would like writing about. Simple.

Stats:  Searches 2433/SEOT 1021 SEOC < 50k cheated a little because I know I can  OCI 96%

Speed Niche Before

Speed Niche Before

The SEO page shows a lot of big name sites that you would probably know that sell or link to a page selling the physical item or a variation of it.  The parts of this table I personally thing are important are the BLP  (which the competition is sorely lacking in) and the BLEG (again lacking). The on page SEO title, URL etc I can kill easily having a blog set up, rather than an eCommerce site.

7:30am I bought the domain name. Now this might interest you, or it may not, but when I have a niche term that ends in an S (Market Samurai will tell which term is searched for more) naturally say like British Bulldogs I will buy a domain that goes like this www.britishbulldogsite.com . See what i did there? BOTH search terms british-bulldog and british-bulldogs are in the domain name. Google will usually be able to figure out plurals but I like to make absolutely sure that I am SEO ready for anywhere :)

8 am Dropped kids to bus stop while DNS resolved and returned to write content and eat breakfast

8:30am Blog is up using WordPress Direct dead easy (though they still need to work on cleaning the crap out of their templates)

9 am starting sourcing affiliates from Share-a-Sale who I use for my affiliate testing stuff  (and a couple of sites that sell pretty well).  Like i said, this niche is a physical product and there were a few good affiliate deals that pay 10% or more on pretty high ticket items.

10 am Affiliate pretties added, site proof read again (to be sure, to be sure) and then the bookmarking began. I manually used Digg, which I have to admit is something i would NOT normally do, good content will mean that people will do this for you, but this was for speed … erk ends justifying the means was never my strong point, must pay back my social networking karma on that one . I also fired up Traffic Android (wait for tomorrow on that one *wink) and went to town.

11am BOOYAH!! Site is ranked 5 in broad match (I don’t really care about exact match because I look at #1 broad as THE goal). That’s the site, not any of the social bookmarks. so 4 hours from NOTHING to a top 5 raking. Shit hot stuff!

Speed Niche after ranking

Speed Niche after ranking

12 noon broke for lunch.

1pm Site moves to 4th in Google. I write more content and post a second story. Set off Traffic Android to bookmark second page in a couple of hours.

2pm Nap time…yep still sick and rest and fluids are important

4pm Wake up and check site.  Ranking is now 3 for domain name and 5 for first post awesome!

5pm read more stuff for content, spend some quality time with family and order dinner

6pm Write this blog post before going to create Squidoo page and Hub Page.

7pm Up to date with the Thirty day Challenge and have a site already dominating the search term in 12 hours.

Not a bad day all in all.  Yep, the goal is still the same with this one. Get it earning cash and then flog it off… which reminds me about a little thing i pointed out to my 30DC team mates about Market Samurai… but I will leave that post for another day.

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August 7, 2008 By 2 Comments

Remember Me?

Yeah me….the annoying one. The one that promised some kind of regular posting since the beginning of the month but did not quite make it heh.

So the story so far.

Market Samurai ILOVE this tool. You can expect me to be posting more about what it does, shows and why if you are into website building, you should buy it.

Pros

  • easy to use
  • looks great
  • gets information from various sources
  • very versatile in what information it provides
  • more features still to come

Cons

  • Everyone will be using it and making SEO that much more competitive

Ed Dale Mankini as I mentioned on the Ed Dale Mankini Terapad blog I have stopped posting there for the time being due to focussing on the 30DC.  If you are following on with the 30Dc you will know NEVER to try and break into a search phrase that looks like this

Ed Dale mankini all SEO pimped out

Ed Dale mankini all SEO pimped out

The BLP and BLEG will be the decider in this one; but like I said, i am busy for this month :)

WordPress Direct is the blogging tool that is being used by the 30DC and to be honest I am still not sure about this one yet as I have not had enough time with it.  One day of use and I can see the great benefits it will add to those who want to set up blog clusters around various niches.

At this stage for me

Pros

  • removes the need the manual searching for relevant content
  • Can be used to set and forget to keep blogs fresh

Cons

  • Site looks god awful (geeze guys surely you could have grabbed a better theme for yourself)
  • Blog templates still need to be edited to remove backlink links and crud from them
  • Still waiting to be cached (but I am spoiled by Terapad’s 2-8 hour ranking)

Still in this business test, test, test is the mantra and that is what I will be doing.

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August 2, 2008 By 5 Comments

I Don’t Know How Ed Dale Does It.

Warning you may see a more direct side of me in this post you might not have wanted to see.

My goodness me, how on earth does he survive this part of the challenge every year? After spending a metric shitload of time (and I bet money as well) getting the whole event up running and with absolutely no hitches (well apart from kicking the power out on the first live video presentation) some people feel it is absolutely fine to get on the forums and bitch about the most petty of things.

I really do not understand people who choose to be like this (probably my very polite English upbringing). What does it benefit them to be seen as whiny complainers?

Talk about pearls before swine. The Market Samurai tool is a fabulous piece of work that will save people hours of drudgery. Last year we were measuring lines on our screen with bits of paper we had drawn on; this year we have an awesome project tool that looks great and works even better. I cannot sing its praises high enough.

Last year I could not believe that Wordtracker GTrends was released for free and said so, this year it seems that a group of people think that although they are getting better for FREE that they have the right to make demands about it. I would like to see them say the same to anyone else who offers a free sample of a product.

Really in the end, all the complaining is a smoke screen to cover the utterer’s own insecurity. The old “I knew it wouldn’t work because blah blah blah” …sheesh where is taking personal ownership and making the best of whatever is offered? I am compassionate, but not very forgiving when adults act like this.

Congratulations to Ed Dale and the team, to bring another great teaching event for free for those who want to take the opportunity. If only everyone was as grateful!

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August 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Thirty Days Of Focus

So you have seen me banging on for the last month (?) or so about the Thirty Day Challenge. Well it has kicked off and all my focus will be on getting the tasks done and completing the challenge. Fear not! i will be including my progress here as part of the projects space of the blog because in the end it is the long and short of how to start making money online.

I can’t guarantee that the posts will be daily because I still have the job-kids-partner-cat-World of Warcraft to fit into the day.  I do hope though to blog most days with my stuff…with pictures!

If you haven’t signed up for the thirty day challenge it is not too late to start.

So day 1. Getting Ideas

Getting ideas is my favourite part and even though I have done this many times before, I am doing it JUST as I am being shown by Ed.

So I have popped into Amazon and checked out the magazine section and DELIBERATELY looked at things that I enjoy.  Some great ideas there! Magazine.com is another online magazine listing.

Magazines are a great way of seeing what people will pay money for to get information. If there is no money in that market there wont be a magazine there (for long!).

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July 21, 2008 By 2 Comments

Quality Is Not A Dirty Word

Inspired by a question from the Thirty Day Challenge forums.

Why is it that Internet marketers who are not huge names in the business seem to think that getting their work socially bookmarked by any means is more important than actually creating something of quality that will be naturally bookmarked by the people interested in their subject?

The “get ranked quick” crew seem to think that getting on the board quickly is the goal. But why? If your product/blog/article is excreta, you have just ensured that your reputation in the eyes of your audience has been tarnished. Same with social bookmarking and aggregators, you will lose anyone who is genuinely interested in what your subject is. And this is most likely to be a permanent thing.

Think about RSS feeds and FriendFeed. Have you ever gone back to somewhere or someone that produced crap and re-subscribed after dropping them? I know I haven’t as yet….if I think you are spouting rubbish then you are gone…. for good. It would take 100x more effort for those people to get back in front of my eyes than if they had written something decent in the beginning.

This is why I am against self-bookmarking*.

There is no better way to see what your audience wants. If you have done something that strikes a chord with your audience and they bookmark all over the place, you should be examining your piece to see what it was they liked. Was it the subject matter, the way you wrote it, the product they really want? Then reproduce it.

There is no reason why quality output will not rank as quickly as self-bookmarked, and the benefits will be million times more valuable than ruining your own reputation by doing it yourself.

Same goes for link begging. Wasting your reputation asking people to bookmark or link to your work is a stupid, short term gain for long term pain. Imagine you are a “normal person” who is using social networking tools as they should be used, and they see something like “Bookmark love please!!!!”. What are they going to think? Certainly they know that you are not writing for them, or  for any reason that would be beneficial for them.  I really dislike seeing people whore themselves out for a link like that… yech!

Create quality for your audience/market as your first priority, always.

* Disclaimer – I have self bookmarked some of my items for various reasons in the past. Mostly for testing or fun (like Ed Dale Mankini :) ). But 99.99% of the time I leave what I do to the whims of those I am writing/producing for.

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May 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Projections

Time to narrow the focus on my projects down a bit as we come up to June 1st and pre-season for the 30 Day Challenge. If you have read the About Me section you will know that I have Multiple Sclerosis and this can, and does, interfere with how much I can output. As much as I want to go at a million miles an hour, the body/brain need to be frequently rested.

So there is one single goal this weekend and that is to finish the e-Book. That’s it.

My inner voice is yelling out about other stuff like writing some great content for Knewsroom, or finishing off some of the other sites I have, or playing around with the Storestacker app, but I have to tell it to shut up. If I keep going too hard I am going to be in all sorts of trouble physically, and that just won’t do.

On another note I have been flabbergasted as to why Project Supernova has faltered somewhat. The CTR has remained high (20%+) and the cost of a click is down to 32c but these buggers are not buying anything.

Then it struck me, I am only getting 32 visitors starting at whatever time Google considers start of day . So if I get 32 people between midnight and 6am for example, how many of them are really “buyers” and how many are just “lookers”. To test my theory, I have upped my maximum daily spend to $25 which will give me 75 new people a day. If this does not prove to be successful by Sunday night US time then i will close the whole thing down as too costly for this niche (but oh so good for say my ebook niche maybe?)

So don’t worry if you don’t see me saying much on Twitter over the next couple of days, I will probably be enforcing some bed rest with a good book for much of the weekend.

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May 16, 2008 By 2 Comments

Defending The Indefensible

Sometimes i KNOW I am wasting my time. It is usually when I am commenting on blogs or in forums about certain issues.

Take this year’s Thirty Day Challenge.

Now I know what it is and what it isn’t. I know that it will be automatically, in the minds of many trigger the SCAM button. Why?

  • people evangelise about it
  • it involves making money
  • evangelising + making money = MLM
  • everything on the internet is a scam
  • it’s free, it has to end up costing something

I am all for people being naturally cautious. Everyone should be responsible for their actions. I am naturally cautious, but I funnel that into finding out about the opportunity first before making any form of decision.

I guess for some it is easier to dismiss something out of hand than go research, even if it is potentially beneficial.

So no more time wasting! Say my piece, get in and then get out. It is not benefiting me one iota getting into an argument on the internetz

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April 17, 2008 By 5 Comments

Review: The Immediate Edge

Name: The Immediate Edge

Media: Membership Site

Cost: US$97 p/m

immediate edge logo

Please note this review has been updated here – Immediate Edge Review

I have been a member of The Immediate Edge since it opened almost 12 months ago. At US$97 a month is the most I have ever invested in anything to do with internet marketing. So is it worth it?

Let’s look at the names behind the Edge. Ed Dale and Dan Raine.

Ed Dale is the super nice guy with gorgeous kids and a pedigree in being a “real” person who has made it through being smart and in the right place at the right time (and not by accident).

Dan comes across to me as the one that knows the dark side and would use it if necessary to achieve his goal. Sort of like Professor Snape in Harry Potter.

Together they make a quite impressive team.

BUT they are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Being excited by the lure of the “new” it often seems that projects trail off into the ether and no satisfactory closure takes place. Several sweeteners for joining, such as the share issue, seem not to have got off the ground at all.

If you are looking for a step 1, step 2, step 3 = profit! You mostly won’t get that in the Edge.

What you will get is some great thought provoking ideas to build on for yourself. The Edge is not a place for the faint hearted, or the unmotivated. There are no “lessons” at the Edge, you learn by watching projects evolve, you apply what you have learned to your new or existing projects.

I advise you not to jump straight from your first Thirty Day Challenge straight into the Edge. You will be disoriented if you do. Go off and put into practice what you learned in the 30DC for at least 6 months. Get a grip on working unsupervised, and learn where your true passion is. Then sign up if you still want to.

In short: not for the beginner but great for those who can adapt and apply concepts to existing businesses.

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