The Official Internet Marketing Sweetie Blog

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Slacking Off for Greater Productivity

I have been so lazy for the past couple weeks...and somehow more productive than ever. Can you imagine?

The weather's been great, so we've been heading out to the water park, escaping the heat when necessary with an air-conditioned movie, barbecuing with friends and just having a great ol' time. That has left limited hours for work, but the few hours I work are so incredibly productive. Who woulda thunk!

Clearly, if we spend 10 hours a day on the computer, it's tough to stay productive. We start losing focus and becoming less effective, so if we cut that time in half, we're likely to stay focused.

I've also dramatically cut my "to-do" list and this is a tip I shared recently with my IBMoms subscribers and it works like a charm. I expect less of myself and I'm getting so much more.

Here's my challenge to you. Cut your to-do list in half and get out and have some fun. Then let me know what it does to your productivity. You'll be surprised.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Waitressing - The Best Real-Life Marketing School

Last month, when I was at Gary Halbert’s Fusion Seminar, Mark Joyner asked who had ever been a waiter or waitress. A number of hands went up, including mine. Then he asked, “Who thinks it was the worst job ever?”

My hand didn’t go up because waitressing was the best job I ever had outside of being an entrepreneur.

It was only job I had where I had a lot of control out of how much money I would actually make in a day….and where I learned some of the most valuable marketing lessons.

Some of the marketing skills I learned were:

· Networking and interacting with people. Grumpy people don't get far in this business.
· Story-telling (an online marketer’s best friend!). You gotta chat it up for extra tips.
· Listening and understanding my market’s needs. The three young guys who came in for beers every Friday evening needed different attention than Mr. X and Mrs. Y who were having a secret affair and used our cocktail lounge as their meeting place (Yes, I know – it’s shocking!).
· Upsells and backend sales galore….for more tips! Bigger drinks, more toppings…more drinks. You know.
· Time management & organization. Yowsers! How I managed all those people and all those orders at the same time, I have no idea.
· Outsourcing. Be real nice to your bussers and cooks and they’ll work hard for you.
· Joint Ventures with other waiters and waitresses. The real secret to working well as a server is to work as a team with your fellow servers. Bring drinks and food out for your team mates and it all comes back to you…and makes everything fun more efficiently. And oh yeah…you end up making more tips!

Although, I loved my waitressing job, I would NEVER go back. I like sore computer butt way better than throbbing feet. Besides I like making more money at home. ;-) Even if you had a crappy serving job…the marketing lessons were still there, even if the rewards weren’t so great.

And if you’re in a crappy job now – how can you turn this into a marketing opportunity and challenge yourself and your skills? Turn the negative (having a J-O-B) into a positive. Then apply what you learn in your day job to your biz when you’re off work.

Monday, July 18, 2005

The First Step is Admitting That You Have a Problem

I’m not perfect.

I never have been.

I will never strive to be.

As business people, I think it’s crucial that we understand our imperfections. If there’s something in our business we aren’t good at, don’t know how to do or just plain old don’t want to do – we can find others to do it for us.

You’ve probably heard me say this before, but have you started doing it? Or are you still trying to be Mr. or Ms. Perfect with your biz?

Well, I have a confession to make. I’ve been a fool. Although I do a get a lot of help in my business, there is one area where I have always had trouble letting go and I have really been suffering because of it.

It’s partly because I didn’t know who to ask for help.

It’s partly because I didn’t want to give up control.

But it’s mostly because I was ashamed.



Ladies & Gentlemen…the truth is, I have no idea how to manage my business finances. All my 2005 receipts and invoices are still lying in a pile on my kitchen counter (but yes, my 2004 taxes are done). I’m always scrambling to get all my finances in order each month. Yes, I have always had an accountant to help me at tax time, but for some reason, I was doing all the dirty work during the year.

I’ve had this problem (numbers really baffle me!) for as long as I can remember and I thought that if I just made more money in my business, the disorganization would “take care of itself”. Well, that is one of the most moronic thoughts I’ve ever had (and I’ve had some doozies!). The more money I make, the bigger the problem gets. I guess Notorious B.I.G. was right when he said, “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems.” ;-) The fact is, now I have more money that I don’t know what to do with!

So, here I am with a thriving business – but with my finances in complete chaos. It’s quite embarrassing to admit this, but I can do it because I’m on the road to recovery.

I am finally giving up control of my finances (ummm…like I had any control anyway!) and as a first step, I found the most fantastic bookkeeper/accountant to keep me ultra-organized. She understands how online business works, currency conversions and all the details I struggle with. I've been searching for someone like her for soooooo long and I procrastinated because I couldn't find the "right person".

When I first talked to her on the phone and told her that my business stuff was in complete disarray, you know what she told me?

She said, “This kind of stuff excites me!”

WHAT?

It excites her? Well, then she is the perfect woman for the job and I am officially fired.

So, let me ask you? What is holding you back in your business? What do you keep doing poorly in your business…to the detriment of its long-term success? Or are you just doing too much, preventing you from moving ahead?

I made my confession and I have made steps to make changes…BIG changes. I’m leaving the handling of money to the experts. What are you going to do now?

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Google Speaketh & I Confusedeth

I think this is kind of funny, so I thought I'd share it with you and also give you an update on where I am with the Malcolm's Web Revival Project. After I discovered the site was dropped by Google, a number of people asked what I would do about it and if I would contact Google. I wasn't really interested in contacting Google and after reading their webmaster guidelines about sites that have been removed, I figured contacting them would be a pretty useless exercise.

But I did it anyway, to see what they would say. I wrote to them and said I went through the guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html thoroughly and made sure my site was complying with everything. I asked very nicely to be reindexed.

Well, about 2 weeks later I got a reply from Google...that was yesterday. They told me that they were unable to help me at this time, but that I should review the guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html to ensure that I was complying with all their guidelines.

HUH? Isn't that what I said or am I the one who's crazy?! ;-)

Obviously, I got the standard response...so let's just move onto other things.

Work on the article & press release distribution project has begun. I just got the first batch of 30 articles back from my article writer. I'm just crafting some compelling bylines and working some of the articles into newsworthy press releases. I will provide more details soon.

Friday, July 8, 2005

Viral Marketing At Its Absolute Finest

Click here to see me in the upcoming Wedding Crashers movie. I love Owen Wilson & Vince Vaughn...what an honor to be in a movie with them. They might let you in too if you ask nicely! :-)

Whatcha think? Am I Oscar-winning material?

Monday, July 4, 2005

Google, Will You Love Me Again?

Here's an update on MalcolmsWeb.com being banned from Google. It seems that Google now has a cache of the main page again and I now have a PageRank of 0 (woohoo!) instead of being greyed out.

However, when I search for site:malcolmsweb.com, Google says they have no pages listed for the site. I'm thinking this is either a temporary thing and I'll see pages listed soon enough (and maybe be the time you click that link there will be pages) ... or maybe Google will decide she (or is it a he?) really hates me and kick me out completely again.

Either way, I suspect that when my pages get back in, it will take a while before my rankings get back to what they were so I can start seeing good traffic again.

Well, I'm not waiting for Google to love me like it used to. This afternoon, I was just sitting here re-reading through the ArticleAnnouncer call transcripts with John Reese & Jason Potash and crafting a plan to revive the site, with or without the help of Google. I'm planning to launch a major article campaign using Jason's techniques and software -- plus I'm going to couple that with a press release campaign with the techniques I teach in my Press Release Profits course.

And then to add to my excitement for my plan, I just got my copy of the 2nd edition of Joel Comm's ebook What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense ...which you may remember got me off my duff to earn an EXTRA $50/day with AdSense (it's now over an extra $60/day and I'm still not even half-way through working on my sites). So, I am arming myself with a lot of great strategies and I'm going to show Google that MalcolmsWeb.com doesn't need her...well, except to send me AdSense checks each month. ;-)

I'm documenting the whole journey and it may be a while before I can produce some really good data, but I promise to share all the juicy details with you as soon as I can. If you're interested in hearing more, be sure to leave a comment so I know I'm not just doing this for my own benefit, okay?

Saturday, July 2, 2005

Havin' a Great Weekend














We're having lots of fun this long weekend...hope you are too! Talk soon.