The Internet Marketers Belly Epidemic

I haven't been to an Internet Marketing seminar in a little while, but when I did there was a common phenomena - The Internet Marketer's Belly.

It's kind of like a beer belly, but it grows through countless hours of sitting in front of the computer. I suspect that some even have the beer belly / Internet marketer's belly combo and that's a doozie.

The first seminar I went to, I had my own Internet Marketer's belly...and arms...and butt...we'll, you get the picture. It's so easy to let it happen, put off the gym and other physical activities because we're "too busy".

But an amazing thing happens when we take the time to exercise:

- We reduce stress
- We think more clearly and we're more productive
- And gosh darn it, the belly starts to shrink!

I take time out of most work days to exercise, even when I don't think I have time. I bring a notepad, my PDA, an audio course or a book to read on the cardio machine. I call it my working workout.

Just like during my pedicure, I've come up with some great plans and ideas while sweating away on the elliptical machine. And yesterday, I completed my goals and business plan for the rest of 2006 and most of 2007.

Now that's productivity! If you've been putting off working on that Internet Marketer's belly, think you could set aside an hour today?

Come on...okay? Don't end up like John Smith in the newspaper article.

Don't Worry - The Internet Isn't Going Anywhere

Forums are abuzz with people worried about the possible coming web toll that ISPs want to charge companies for fast-loading of their websites. There would basically be a fast lane for companies that could afford it and a slow lane (and even a no-go lane!), says the article on CNN.com:

Coming Soon: The Web Toll

Personally, I think this story been sensationalized. I am not defending the proposed toll at all, but I think online busines owners are getting pretty freaked out by the exaggerations. Rightly or wrongly, ISPs are doing this to save on resources. I'm guessing the difference in load times on each website would be negligible, but on the whole would save them plenty of money and company resources. I highly doubt that ISPs would keep their customers from viewing sites or causing them any huge delays in getting to their sites. Yes, I know that Save the Internet gives isolated examples on it's FAQ page and we know that ISPs prevent their customers from reading some of their email in the hopes of eliminating spam, but I'm looking at the big picture here.

I just don't think we should be spreading the doomsday message that our businesses will be dead if we can't afford the toll. Email isn't dead. I don't think our websites will be either.

I definitely think this is a cause worth fighting and you can go to Save The Internet to find out what you can do about it. Sign the petition, send letters and don't forget to watch the video from Ask a Ninja...but try not to freak out. :-)

Internet Marketing News Resource

I've been watching this site for a little while, and since they've been sending readers my way, I think it's about time that I return the favor!

I'm talking about Internet Marketing News Watch, created by Mike Mograbi and Stephen Boutelle. It's a portal for Internet marketing-related news. They keep tabs on a variety of blogs and newsletters. There's a lot of great information provided and I've even found the blogs of people I admire and respect - I just didn't know they had blogs.

It will also satisfy the "product hungry" IM'ers as many of the posts on Internet Marketing News Watch are about the latest and greatest product launches. Just don't lose your shirt picking them all up! ;-)

Is it Worth It? Tagging & Social Bookmarking?

I'm still on the fence on this one, but may give it a shot...just so I'm not talking out my rear end (since I haven't tried it). Still, in my few years online, I've come to value my instinct and experience when it comes to assessing new online opportunities.

I'm talking about tagging on your blogs. You know those keyword links you see on blogs to Technorati or wherever. Here's an example from my techy friend Lynette Chandler's blog:



Personally, I think these links are a distraction...particularly to your non-tech savvy readers. For Lynette's market, it may be appropriate, but if you don't reach blogging geeks, you'll likely send your readers clicking through to all these places and they won't really know why.

I note that my friend Lynn Terry says we should stop the fear about linking out when it comes to blogs. I agree, but I believe in linking with a true purpose that is useful to your visitor.

Plus, a tag is just a temporary measure to get some traffic from a blog search site. From what I can see, if you keep these links on your site for a long time, they'll be helping Technorati (or whomever you're linking to) and not likely doing you much good - especially for popular topics.

From reports of other people using the tags, the extra short-term traffic doesn't seem to be worth cluttering up my blog for. And besides, it's tough to measure if the extra traffic came from the tag or just because you pinged the web logs...and pinging doesn't create any reader distractions.

A word of caution, though...and again, this is purely my speculation...is that I expect that this method will lose it's effectiveness. People are gearing up to teach people about tagging and you can expect plenty of hyped up products. And just like any traffic generation method that gets pumped up, it will be abused by people who don't believe in adding value to the blogosphere, but prefer to produce garbage for a quick buck. And when it's abused, the people who created the technology have to make changes and the original method will no longer be so effective.

But back to the topic...

Through a discussion on the private Reese Report forum, Charles, posted a little video about using tagging, if you're not familiar with it. I asked Charles if he was going to perhaps show a more meaningful example because I believe the same results could have been achieved without tagging Technorati. A simple, automated ping would have been sufficient with his fictional topic. I'll let you know what he says. He does also have a free newsletter that I've taken him up on (the link as the bottom of the video page)...and we'll see what other information he can provide us with.

Along the same lines of tagging, my friend Lynette also has an interesting article on social bookmarking. Near the end of the article, you'll see that Lynette has requested some help for an experiment. I'm willing to help her on this experiment, but I'm waiting for more results before I move ahead on my own.

I'm also interested in learning more and hearing your experiences...so share them please. :-)

Edited to Add:
I thought I should post this from the Technorati site:
















So you don't really have to link to Technorati, but that still doesn't seem to eliminate the excessive links on a blog. Or if you're blog supports categories, then you can use your categories as your tags. But how many categories does a focused blog really need?

*Source: http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

Have a Good Weekend And...

...Take some time off, okay? :-)

The Million Pixel Body - Now That's Fun!

I don't know if remember the kid that set up the pixel advertising site with a million pixels of advertising available at $1 a pop. It was a unique idea at the time, especially since the kid was getting plenty of publicity, so if you bought an ad from him, it might get seen.

Then a bunch of copycat sites came, but they just didn't offer any spin on the idea to make it unique and exciting. It seems like a bunch of people were making pixel ad scripts and everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and trying to create the same sites.

But here's a unique twist from some people in Germany. It's called Million Crystal Body and it's a photo of a German model covered in a million Swarovski Crystals. Buy one for a Euro and the crystal is removed from the photo and a crytal actually comes you in the mail.

Apparently, the model herself will be personally delivering the pixel to the person to buy the last one. I assume she'll be wearing clothing, but I'm not sure. :-)

Anyway, ideas are everywhere and we're smart to get our ideas from other businesses (As John Reese says when it comes to online business,"Don't try to reinvent the wheel."). But try to take those ideas and make them better and more unique. Not saying you have to strip down and have crystals virtual placed on your body, but you get the picture.

It's Wear Your Bare Feet to Work Day - Every Day

This morning I was listening to the radio and the DJ claimed that this was the first official day that you can wear open-toed shoes to work. Not sure exactly where he got the idea, but I'm guessing that this is the time of year when the weather in rainy Vancouver starts to turn warmer (but not always drier).

I giggled because I wear open-toed shoes outside all year and, of course, I wear bare feet at work all the time! I guess it's easy when you're not trudging off to the bus stop to get to work.

What do you wear on your feet, while you work?

Yes...this Thursday.

As you may know, we've been talking a lot about information products - a bit on this blog, on my FAQ and I also have the free information products tips list.

A few people have asked me if this means I'll be releasing a course on the topic soon. The answer is yes.

I've also been asked when it's ready. It will be ready for the general public on Thursday. However, if you want to get it before everyone else AND get a discount, sign up for the free information products tips list.

And then, the most important question - "Is this going to be one of those over-priced home-study courses?" Nah...not at all. If you get on that tips list, you'll get a nice discount and even if you don't...you can still expect to pay less than most marketing ebooks cost.

Of course, it doesn't matter too much how much it costs if you don't know what's in the course, right? Well, it's not just an "ebook"...I've got plenty more goodies included. I will save some details for Thursday, but I'll be giving you ideas on how to get started without spending a lot of cash, showing you how you can position yourself as an expert (and it's way easier than you think) and how to position yourself in a competitive market. I'll even give you 53 pages out of my own business manual that shows you how I easily complete many information product creation tasks.

Have more questions, feel free to ask in the comments area. Here's to getting started with your first (or second or third) information product!

How to Find Profitable Keyword Lists

After reviewing the stats of some of my mom-targeted websites, I had this idea on finding profitable keyword lists. I'm not trying to offend anyone by what I say, but if you've ever had pages on your site related to moms in anyway, there are some pretty dirty and non-family-friendly keywords that seem to pop-up.

I have tons of seemingly untapped (because I'm certainly not optimizing for them) keywords in my logs. It would make sense for some of these adult sites to try to approach these mom website owners and pay for the lists. These are keywords they'd probably never find through their own traditional keyword searches.

And no, mama, if you have mom-targeted blog, I'm not suggesting you sell off your dirty keyword lists...I'm just making a comment that there are other possibilities for keyword research than we may have thought of.

What off-topic keyword lists do you have in your web logs, whatever your topic, and how could you possibly use these to your advantage?

Community Blogs & Podcasts - Fun & Great for Added Exposure

Over the past few weeks, I've been trying my hand at more "communal" online projects. For example, I've turned my one-woman baby & toddler blog to a 4-mommy project at BecauseMomSaidSo.com. Now, Kelly McCausey has invited me to join her in her new podcast project at Baby Talk Radio (which is part of her bigger communal podcast/Internet radio project at Moms Radio Network).

I've been approached to be a "contributing writer" to other projects in the past and I've usually declined the offer. In these cases, people were looking for writers to contribute full articles to a newsletter and/or website. I declined on these because writing complete articles is a tremendous amount of work and it was never really certain how much my work would pay off or if my efforts would receive a decent amount of exposure on the website iself.

I think the blog and podcast set up is idea for these type of situations. A blog entry doesn't have to be long and whipping up an interesting post just takes a few minutes or I can go and write whenever I feel inspired to do so. Plus, when I add a new entry, it is featured on the home page, instead of hidden somewhere within the website.

Kelly's also set up her Baby Talk Radio project in a similar way...but instead of writing, it will be in audio. And add to that, all her podcasters have to do is phone a telephone number to make all their recordings. All the techy details are taken care of.

This idea isn't new and there are plenty of "communal" projects out there (writingup.com and blogit.com come to mind), but many of these are on all kinds of topics and aren't so focused. The advantage of being involved with a highly-targeted project is the highly-targeted traffic which grows because the contributors are working to get exposure for the project as a whole. And when the project is so highly focused, word-of-mouth flies much more quickly. It's easy for people to say, "Go listen to Baby Talk Radio," than to say, "Go to writingup.com, search for babies and then...."

And by the way...before I go...mommies and DADDIES, Kelly's looking for podcast contributors. Sign up here to learn more. Or start your own highly-focused communal project and see how your exposure grows.

Awesome Work Day! Try This Outside Your Home.

Who says that you have to work IN the home when you have a work from home business?

Today, the boys were at preschool all day, so I had the entire day to get some work done...and I had plenty to do with upcoming products and other projects. But it's been so hot here the past couple days, I thought I'd take my work day on the road. I have to say, it was such a fun AND productive day.

It went something like this:

9:00 - 11:00 AM - Went to Starbucks for a Raspberry Green Tea Frappucino and used their wi-fi.

11:00 - 11:30 AM - Off to the spa. Not for anything too exciting - just an eyebrow and upper lip waxing. It hurts a bit, but it's good to get rid of the mustache and the uni-brow. ;-)

11:45 AM - 1:45 PM - Drove over to De Dutch Pannekoek House (it's a local chain of Dutch pancake restaurants and I used to work at one as a college student) for lunch and to use their free wi-fi.

2:00 - 3:oo PM - Back to the spa. This time for a pedicure. They always laugh at me when I bring in my big binder full of business idea, but I love doing some thinking and planning while I relax during the pedicure.

So, what did I get done today?

I created a free affiliate managers report, set up 2 new tips lists (including the sign up pages and autoresponder series) and made plans for 2 more. I also caught up on email, planned a monthly schedule and finalized some details on a product. I even had time to catch up on a few of my favorite forums cuz sometimes we need a little distraction?

So, what about you? Do you ever take business on the road? Where's your favorite place to work.

Need More Performing Affiliates?

People constantly ask me how to set up and run a good affiliate program...and I've seen this question pop up on forums all over the place. They've asked if there is a course on the subject, but I haven't been able to find one yet.

Through my experience as an affiliate marketer and managing my own affiliate programs, I've learned a thing or two...and I'd love to share them with you. That's why I've put together some free tips to help you get started. You can grab yours here.

For the Marketing Night Owls

Lynn Terry is certainly enjoying her discovery of WordPress - especially the scheduled posting. See, I use Blogger and I gotta go in and publish all my posts manually. With WordPress, you're able to write and schedule your blog entries for later publishing.

Well, Lynn has come up with a creative idea (that you might scoop up for your own target markets) and that's her new blog at Midnight Marketing Snack. Each night, at midnight, a new quick marketing tip is posted to her blog - perfect for all those marketing night owls who can surf by her blog and get a tip each night.

I'm For Sale on eBay!

I love these keyword-generated text ads that you find all over the place. For example, search for my name on Technorati and you'll find that if you're looking for Alice Seba, you can find what you're looking for on eBay. You can even compare prices on Seba (I gotta get some more for my collection!) at NextTag.

I sure hope they don't pay-per-impression!

Your Offer Has to Actually Match Your Product

Earlier today, during the Information Product teleseminar (if you missed the call, sign up here - I'll be sending the mp3 and transcript soon...but it won't be a longstanding offer, so do it now), I answered a question about how long an ebook or other information product should be. I know many people have this idea in their heads that an ebook has to be a certain length for it to be true ebook, but it's just not so. My advice is to make sure your ebook is just long enough to deliver the information you promised in your offer or on your sales letter.

The example I gave is if you made an ebook about making an origami swan. In your sales letter, you promised to teach people, step-by-step to make an origami swan. So you make an ebook with all the steps with diagrams or photos for each step until you had a completed swan. Or you might even make a video showing people exactly how to do it. The point is, that's what you need to provide. You don't have to talk about the history of origami or teach people to make an origami frog if that is not what you promised in your offer.

People are busy, so give them what they're looking for. You don't have to add extra fluff, just to make your ebook or product longer. Anyway, there are more details in the teleseminar recording, so I won't go on and on here. That is not the point of this blog entry.

As you probably know, I work very closed with moms who want to make money from online businesses. Well, some of the moms I work with pointed out a new information product that is targeting WAHMs (work at home moms) and it is so over-the-top. The product is called the "The Rich WAHM" and I guess it's just one of the many "Rich XXXXX" products that are popping up all over the place. I'm not going to link to the site, but if you use your noggin, I'm sure you can find it.

Anyway, the sales letter for this product has words like:

"Moms can get rich too"
"You can start earning $500-$1000 every week working from home less than 30 minutes per day"
"99.9% automatic cash machine"

There's even bigger promises in what this course will teach you - everything from making an automatic money-generating website, a complete blogging package, how to get free traffic, a complete guide to create your info product without writing any of it, SEO, how to make weekly money with domains, how to write effective ads...and much, much more.

That's a lot of stuff and it sounds great doesn't it? I can make money automatically too?! Wowee.

Well, in the interest of my community of work at home moms (by the way, I don't believe this ebook was written by a work at home mom because someone was peddling this exact same stuff on my forum a couple months back, but under a different name), I purchased the ebook and proceeded to read all 31 pages of it.

Yes, this Rich WAHM showed me how to make an automated cash machine, how to do SEO, complete information on how to create a blog, how to get free traffic, etc. etc., all in 31 pages. Sure, you could touch on all those topics in 31 pages...but this information ain't making anyone rich.

Basically, it was a guide that told you how to sign up for affiliate programs (and some of the ones that were recommended would certainly make many WAHMs blush), how to get a website and how to get some traffic. The Rich WAHM even threw in a few programs of questionable legality into the mix to spice it up.

Now, I must admit that it's not THE worst ebook I've ever read about Internet marketing. Sadly, I've read many that are worse. But the reason I bring it up here is because if there ever was an example of an offer not living up to its promised offer, this is it.

Anyway, Rich WAHM if you're out there, we'd love to know more about you. Your domain is privately registered and there's no name on your website, so we're not sure who you are. If you really are a mom, you know better than to promise the moon and the stars to moms and not back it up with a more solid product. Let's make sure your offer matches your product!

Could Your Non-U.S. Business Tank Along with the U.S. Dollar?

Since I began my online business in 2002, I've been losing money. Yes, the numbers have been getting higher, but because I'm Canadian and earn U.S. dollar commissions and sell in U.S. dollars...I've lost a huge amount of money.

In 2002, I was making approximately $1.60 CAD for every U.S. dollar I made. Things were awesome. Then on November 3, 2004, I lamented on my blog about the dropping exchange rate, which was 1.191 that day. That meant, I lost about 40 cents per dollar at that time.

And it's getting worse and worse.

According to a number of forecasts, including this one at Bloomberg.com, they expect that the Canadian dollar to gain even more in relation to the U.S. dollar. According to the article:

Canada's dollar may extend gains from a 28-year high toward C$1.09 versus the U.S. currency, said RBC Capital Markets, citing charts that predict currency movements.

I'm no economist, but losing another 5% of my income isn't too cool with me. I have considered charging Canadian dollars for my products - but the majority of my customers are American. I wonder if the potential loss in sales would exceed the loss in the currency exchange. Then, a huge chunk of my income is from affiliate sales, and with very few exceptions, they all pay me in U.S. dollars. Even the Canadian companies I'm affiliated with pay in U.S. dollars.

If you're a non-U.S. business person, dealing in U.S. dollars, how do you plan to handle this? And if you're a U.S. reader, how do you feel about making purchases in other currencies?

Bitter about Information Products?

Tomorrow, I'm holding a free information product teleseminar and I asked attendees to submit questions that I could answer on the call. I received plenty of great questions and I'm looking forward to talking about them tomorrow (sign up, if you haven't already).

Still, there were a few questions that stood out to me. I actually sensed a sort of "bitterness" when it came to information products. Some people had tried it before and didn't think it could be done. Others thought you could only sell products about how to make money on the Internet and that market was too crowded. It's not the questions themselves that were bitter, but the way that they worded their questions that made me wonder.

They had phrases like:

"Most I've seen are colossal time wasters in my opinion."

or

"But because there is so much info out there, most people have becomed burned out. They don't want to pay for yet another info product."

Here's the thing...yes, information product publishing is a great business to be in. The costs involved are low and the profit is extremely high. But writing one ebook is not likely to make you rich and you will have to do plenty of hard work.

I'm going to be talking about product research and development on the call and you can also read a short article here. But let's get rid of the misconceptions when it comes to promoting your information product.

- If you haven't done your research, you can expect your product to flop. Just because YOU think it's a good idea, doesn't mean it will be a big seller.

- If you don't have a decent mailing list and/or a healthy number of website visitors from your product's target market, you'll have to either invest a decent amount of cash into advertising and/or you'll have to aggressively pursue affiliates. If you're not up for that, then don't do it.

This really IS the information age and people are buying information everywhere. They're buying books, courses and seminars on all kinds of topics. If it weren't true, there would be no bookstores (on and offline), private schools teaching specialized topics wouldn't exist and the word seminar would be wiped from the dictionary. Okay, I'm exaggerating on the dictionary thing, but just do a search on your favorite search engine for books, courses or seminars on a few popular topics...you'll see a ton of opportunities and many of them online.

So, if you tried the info product thing and it didn't work out for you, look back and see if you really did what you needed to do to make it a success. If not, that's totally okay because we can all learn from our mistakes...just go back and fix them.

For Parents Who Need Work Time

Today, I emailed this to my Internet Based Mom's list because I knew they could certainly use it. Since I know there are plenty of Dad's who read this blog who might be in need of the same thing...I'll post this offer here too:

------------------------------------

Oh boy...it's not always easy running an online business
with kids underfoot, is it? If you have little ones like me,
they're probably trying to hammer on the keyboard as you're
trying to type out an important email. My 3 year old's
favorite trick is to push the power button, while I'm in the
middle of something that I didn't get a chance to save. But
you still gotta love those kids!

I was talking to an Internet Based Mom's forum member,
Ellen C. Braun, about the craziness with kids and business.
She told me that had created a downloadable product to
entertain the kids while you get a bit of peace and quiet.
And no...don't worry, you're not going to be asked to pull
out your wallet!

It's an activity book called, "Twenty-Four-Hours of Peace
and Quiet" that will keep your kids engaged in an
educational and enjoyable activity while you finally get
some work done. Kids of all ages will be fascinated by the
optical illusions and geometrical shapes found within this
ebook.

I remember coloring pages like this for hours and hours when
I was a kid. I had NO idea my mom was probably just trying
to keep me quiet for a bit. ;-)

Kind soul she is (and mom of 3 youngters herself), Ellen has
offered to allow you to download the gift at no charge - but
it's just a limited time. Grab yours at: 24 Hours of Peace & Quiet

Print out a few copies, grab the felts or crayons and enjoy
the silence.


Alice Seba

P.S. After you grab yours, check out the "Animal School"
video at http://www.raisingsmallsouls.com.
Just click the purple button to watch it.

---------------------------------

Have fun and maybe color a few yourself. ;-)

LOL - I got banned cuz I use Explorer

I was just surfing around Technorati and went to visit a blog by Matt Selznick that came up in my searches. And LOL...he kicked me off his site because I use Internet Explorer! Apparently, Explorer "not compatible with this website" and I should instead use Firefox.

At first, I thought he really just hated Explorer, but then I noted the little graphic he used to get people to download Firefox. Yowsers, hope that's within the guidelines.

If you go to his site with Firefox, I assume you'll be able to see it. Try Explorer and you'll be asked to download Firefox because:

"It keeps Microsoft from controlling the future of the internet. "

LOL...clever little bugger.

Who's Got the Time to Save Time?

We online business owners are always so busy and there never seems to be enough time to get everything done.

Or are we really so busy?

I rather think we sabatoge our own time by getting ourselves into the "I'm too busy" rut.

I wrote about this today on the Mom Masterminds blog I run with Kelly and Lynette, but this isn't something that just affects mom's in business - I dare say it affects most online entrepreneurs.

It started out by Lynette posting an entry that went like this:

"When I started advocating technology in ... forums a few years ago, I was often met by a lot of resistance. ..

...No, we don’t have a robot typing our newsletters, human personal interaction is still a huge part of our businesses but the difference is in using technology to speed up, improve and make our business more efficient without being a hands on micro manager all the time.

I just came from the [Mom Masterminds] forums and am so proud of the moms who are giving tech a chance to help them. [They] are thinking about:

- Help desks
- Collaborate on blogs without adding more work on their plates
- More effective ways or using autoresponders
- Scripts that’ll help them achieve a often repeated task like copying and pasting.

These are just small things but if that small something can shave of just 5 minutes of your time a day, hey there’s 5 minutes more for playing with your kids. "

This prompted me to take this a little further with a blog entry of my own. I wrote:

"If you’re [an online entreprenur], doing things the hard way…definitely listen to what Lynette has to say. Please!

From my experience talking to [people] who are resistent to technology, it sometimes comes out fear (I hear you! Technology CAN be scary and so can learning new things)…but often times it comes out of thinking they don’t have enough time to learn or to put the processes in place. WHAT? That’s kind of silly, but I’ve said it before, “Sure it might save me time, but I just don’t have the time to set it up.”

The reason we’re all too busy is because we’re doing things the hard way. Yes, there’s a learning curve to everything, but the time you spend setting things up now will save you so much in the future.

And it’s not just technology. It’s everything we do in our businesses. Have you ever said:

“I’m too busy to train an assistant.”
“I’m too busy to write out a detailed work or business plan.”
“I’m too busy to….you fill in the blanks.”

It’s important to take the time to streamline our businesses because when we do something once, it saves us time over and over again.

Sure, it would take me 20-30 minutes to write a detailed schedule for the coming work week, but I’d be more organized and would eliminate time-wasting activities. Because let’s face it, if you don’t have a plan, you can become easily distracted and much of your work time is wasted.

And yeah, it would take me 5 minutes to answer a support ticket from someone who couldn't find their ecourse download instructions OR I could take 15-20 minutes to write up detailed instructions for my assistant. Seems like doing it myself would be the easier thing to do, right? Well, if I wrote out the instructions and gave them to my assistant, I could save myself that 5 minutes over and over again. And even when my assistant no longer works for me, I still have those instructions saved and written to pass onto a new assistant. "

So what about you? Will set aside 20 minutes today to save yourself hours and hours in the future?