From The Desk of David

To Get Business Success You Need to Do This

David — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:54:46 +0000

Plan! Don't Leave Things to Chance.

Go to the Warrior Forum or other marketing forum and you’ll see it.

Go to Facebook or Twitter and you’ll see it.

Heck, look at your hard disk and you’ll see it.

As an entrepreneur and small business owner you know what I’m talking about, it’s been the bane of most of us (believe me, including myself).

It wastes your hard-earned money, it’s distracts your focus, and, worst of all, it wastes the most precious resource, your time.

I’m talking about the non-stop buying of products.

There’s always the “Good Reason” but I’ll say it again, there is no one product or service that will make or break you.

But you can stop and you can start making proper, strategic investments that will help you in your business without distract you or suck up all your money.

Let look at how to do that…

Start with a Plan and Goals

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have strategic plans, goals, and initiatives; review my post on strategic thinking.

Without that, you’ll probably fail no matter what else you do; even if you succeed it will be a much harder job.

“If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Tariq Siddique

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” – Thomas Alva Edison

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow” – General George Patton

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now” – Alan Lakein

“If you fail to prepare then you are preparing to fail” – Benjamin Franklin

“Failures don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.” – Harvey Mackay

“Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought.” – Bernard Baruch

“Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true.” – Lester Robert Bittel

“Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it’s is easy to beat most folks.” – Paul “Bear” Bryant

“Those who plan do better than those who do not plan even thou they rarely stick to their plan.” – Winston Churchill

“Before beginning, plan carefully.” – Marcus Tulius Cicero

“A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” – Confucius

“Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Richard Cushing

“It’s not the plan that’s important, it’s the planning.” – Dr. Gramme Edwards

“Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” – Napoleon Hill

“A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.” – H. Stanely Judd

“Always have a plan, and believe in it. Nothing happens by accident.” – Chuck Knox

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities-never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.” – John Steinbeck

“Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us.” – Richard I. Winwood

This plan will direct and guide you as well as keep you focused on what you’ve defined as important to be able to succeed.

This “road map” is what you must follow and base your decisions on, so without it you’re just stuck in the rut you’ve been in.

How to Use Your Plan

With your plan you’ll be able to make appropriate investments and here’s a way to do that.

Typically, you get dozens if not hundreds of e-mails a day promoting a myriad of different products by some very knowledgeable and talented marketers.

They know all the best ways to get you to part with your cash, which is generally their sole goal.

And it works very well — look again at all the “stuff” on your hard disk if you think it doesn’t

But you can take back control.

First of all, you need to just quickly ignore most of the products no matter how “good” they seem to be.

This is where you can easily use your plan.

If something, no matter what or how attractive, doesn’t fit in to what you are currently doing — what specific project or initiative you are CURRENTLY working on — you immediately reject it and forget about it.

At first it takes some getting used to and may take you some time but you’ll quickly get the hang of it as you internalize your goals and plans and as you get used to holding everything up to the light of those goals and plans.

I can go through 100 e-mails in literally seconds because I know where I am in my business and what’s of critical important to me at the specific time; I also know who consistently gives me things that I never want and I remove them.

This should immediately weed out 99% of your temptations; and that is no exaggeration.

Deciding When to Invest

Now that you have weeded out what is essential “junk” to you, even if it is gold to someone else, all you need to do is decide if something is right for you at the current time.

First thing to do is carefully read the sales letter to get a sense of whether it fits your current goals; just be sure you don’t get into the fine copywriting of the letter.

You can also search for reviews with 2 cautions: (1) most products don’t have any reviews and (2) most reviews are done by marketers who want to convince you to buy the product through their link.

The key is to get a sense of what the product or service is and what benefits it can provide you.

Don’t spend a lot of time on this, enough to get a good sense of the product or service but you don’t need to know everything; after all, almost everything has a trial and/or a refund period which I encourage you to use if you need to.

After you’ve done that then you need to compare the product to your plan and goals but that’s not all.

Until you’re really successful you need to limit your view to no more than 3 months.

By that I mean that if you won’t actively use and profit from the product or service in the next 3 months then you need to bypass it for now; you can always revisit it in the future.

If it fits and you’re absolutely sure you’ll be using it immediately or in the near future then look at the cost and see if it is cost effective for you to invest in it at this time.

Assuming it does – and actually calculate it, how much would you save or how much would you earn – then it looks like an investment you should seriously consider.

You Aren’t Finished

When you decide to invest in something you can’t stop after you’ve finished paying.

You need to document the purchase, when you made it, why you made it, how you’re planning to use it and when you’re going to use it (remember it must be within 3 months)

You can use Google Docs, which is good particularly if you are outsourcing or want to be able to access the information from everywhere, or a spreadsheet on your computer.

Click here for a spreadsheet you can use to keep track of your products and your commitment to use them; here’s what the spreadsheet looks like.

Track Your Investments and Meet You Goals

I stripped it down from what I use to make simple enough to use. When you have some experience with it please customize it to your needs. Let me go over the columns quickly:

Date Bought: the date you brought the product or service.
Product/Service: the name of the product or service.
Specific Goal/Initiative: the specific goal and/or initiative that this will be used for, it might be a product you’re creating or some traffic you’re trying to get or whatever.
How to Use: how you plan to use the product or service to help you achieve your goal.
Usage Deadline: this is calculated from the Date Bought (it’s 3 months from the date)
When Used: this is the date you start using the product or service
Met Deadline: this is calculated and will be green and say “Yes” if the product or service was used by the deadline and white and “No” if it wasn’t.

Conclusion

Understanding how to make strategic investments will allow you to save money, keep your focus, and improve your business in a number of ways.

This article should help you be able to do just that and with the including spreadsheet you’ll be able make and track strategic investments.

After you’ve done it for a while you’ll be able to see how well or poorly you’re doing and make adjustments so that you’ll only be making good, informed decisions that you’ll actually use.
.

To Get Business Success You Need to Do This is a post from: From The Desk of David

Ignore Strategic Thinking at Your Peril

David — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:17:28 +0000

Don't Ignore Strategic Thinking

You may not have heard of strategic thinking or maybe you’ve heard of it but didn’t understand it so ignored it.

If you’re looking to build a successful business, online or offline, the chances of real success, more quickly are greatly increased with strategic thinking.

Well over 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu, a Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher, lived and wrote his masterpiece on strategy The Art of War.

While it was specifically about strategy in war, it is very applicable to modern day business as evidenced by the over 1 million copies that have been sold; I’d bet that most of those by business owners or other business people. In it he explained about maintaining a position of advantage your rivals.

Generally, there’s a lack of understanding of what strategic thinking is and this, of course, leads to confusion.

Below we’ll look at what strategic thinking is, why you’d want to do it and how to do it.

What is Strategic Thinking

Some authors, Ian Wilson for one, have suggested that strategic thinking is merely thinking about strategy.

He says “The need for strategic thinking has never been greater… it is now more appropriate to refer to it as strategic management…”

They attempt to define strategic thinking as some kind of new and improved version of strategic planning and this leads to confusion and ignore the importance of strategic thinking in its purest sense.

Strategic thinking is about focusing on higher level strategies by finding, and subsequently, developing opportunities for you to create value.

It’s a way to focus on and understand the fundamental drivers of your business and continuously have you challenging the conventional thinking about those drivers.

Strategic Thinking: Brainstorming

Another way to view strategic thinking is brainstorming and applying “possibility thinking” with the goal of developing a direction and goals (they need to be strategic goals); it’s a way of thinking that has well defined, and specific purpose, characteristics.

One result of this process is the ability and need to build processes and systems so you can easily make and evaluate decisions and actions so that they all tie back to the strategic direction and goals.

This is important because every issue, every opportunity, every problem, and every action needs to be aligned to the broader context of the strategic goals so you stay focused and you aren’t going off in lots of different directions.

Why You Should Do Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking should be a business priority because it keeps you ahead of your competitors, well positioned in your marketplace, builds and retains a good reputation, and results in a solid road map for you to follow.

It will also help you to keep all your efforts focused towards your goals and help you be more efficient in your day-to-day operation.

A great side effect is that strategic thinking allows you to be more flexible to react to changing circumstances.

A Wall Street Journal study found that the most sought after executive skill by corporation was strategic thinking, but that few people have that knowledge and skill set.

Who Should Be Doing the Strategic Thinking

Contrary to what some “business experts” say, strategic thinking is not just for the boss and it is not just their sole responsibility.

No, it’s the responsibility of every person who works for you; in fact, everyone should be doing periodic strategic thinking so that your strategic plan is kept current; always be re-evaluating, challenging, and adjusting.

How to Do Strategic Thinking

How to Think Strategically

When you do strategic thinking you need to look at all the important aspects of your business including those internal to your company, the market forces outside your company, as well as the economy and global trends; then assess the impact and adjust as necessary.

As you go through the process be sure to do a high level SWOT analysis so you consider the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your company; this will help you make a successful strategic plan.

As I mentioned, on a daily basis you use your strategic plan to consider the impact of your decisions and actions to ensure alignment to the plan.

This may also inspire another round of strategic thinking as new situations arise.

Don’t Ignore Strategic Thinking

While the topic is much too large to do it justice in a single blog post, after all there are numerous books on just this topic, you should have a better understand of what strategic thinking is and why it’s important to do it; it really is critical to the success of your business.

Think you’re not at risk?

Look at this quote from Michael Gerber from his classic E-Myth Mastery, “Of the 1 million U.S. small businesses started this year [2005], more than 80% of them will be out of business within 5 years and 96% will have closed their doors before their 10th birthday.”

Yes, only 4 out of 100 business last more than 10 years.

Rich Schrefren, in his One Step Ahead newsletter, points out that successful entrepreneurs have a vision and a specific end in mind; that they develop different possibilities and choose the most optimal one.

He says that they continually assess and review the very best opportunities and adjust their approach as necessary.

They look at every new opportunity and compare it with their current plan looking to see if it fits their plan, if it’ll make the plan easier or if it will even improve the plan itself.

Those that don’t think strategically just look at whether the opportunity will make them more money today even if it distracts from their plan and, ultimately, cause them to lose more than they’d gain.

They are “shining object” seekers not serious business builders.

If you don’t want to put your business at risk then don’t ignore strategic thinking.

Ignore Strategic Thinking at Your Peril is a post from: From The Desk of David

Stop Letting Them Tell You It’s Hard to Succeed

David — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:22:55 +0000

It Isn't Hard to Build a Successful Business

As the year draws to a close I want to remind you to stop listening to all the negative people who tell you it’s hard to succeed.; they may be well meaning or are trying to “be realistic” but it’s just holding you back

It isn’t hard to succeed.

I also want to remind you that there is no “magic button” or “silver bullet” or “ninja trick” or whatever you want to call it.

There just isn’t.

There are only 3 things you need to guarantee your success, the 3 Pillars:

Products: Good products and services that people want to buy
Traffic: Enough of those people who know about your products and services and come to your Web site (or store location)
Conversions: Be able to convince those people that your products and services are just what they need

That’s all.

Just apply the required time and effort, and maybe some money; they aren’t all that hard to do and are well within reach of virtually everyone.

But that’s not the full story…

What You Don’t Need

Do You Need a Web Site?

No, plenty of successful people did it by driving traffic to other people products.

Online this is commonly referred to as affiliate marketing and your earn money via commissions although frequently calling it a referral fee is more accurate.

Now, at some point you probably want a Web site — just like an offline entrepreneur most likely will want a store front or office — but you can be successful without one.

To be fair, it is rare to be wildly successful without one but we’re just talking about “quit your job” success or make enough to feel really comfortable success not retire to your own island success.

Do You Need a List of Prospects and Customers?

No, you don’t.

Now, don’t get me wrong, having a responsive list is a great thing; you should start building one as soon as possible (even from the very beginning).

It makes it easier to be successful, particularly to be wildly successful, and if you want a real long-term business then I emphatically say build a list of prospects and customers.

But… you don’t need to have one and if having one means you slack off on the 3 Pillars then postpone it for later.

Do You Need to Be “Perfect”?

Good Enough is Good Enough, Weigh the Benefits vs. Cost

No.

As Bill Glazer says “good enough is good enough.”

I had a discussion with him at a Glazer-Kennedy event some years ago and asked him “how do you know when something is good enough?”

He, of course, said it depends and what’s good enough in one situation isn’t good enough in another one.

However, one thing he said that I have found true is that the greater the investment you will ask from the prospects the better what you’re giving them must be; and that is beyond the product to include their experience through the sales funnel, their experience with the product or service, their experience with customer service, their post sales experience, etc.

So that mean if you are selling a $7 e-book you don’t need to spend months on a perfect Web site or thousands of dollars on a professional sales letter.

Good enough in this case is to get the thing done and out there as soon as possible, it shouldn’t take more than a day or two (and even less when you have a process and systems in place.)

But if you’re selling a $2,000 hone study course, you better take your time because good enough is a lot more complex.

Frank Kern does this so well.

If you’ve seen his marketing campaigns for things like Mass Control, List Control, etc. you’ll understand.

He has a lot of great content (and fun) videos leading up to product launch; and those videos alone usually give you more than most $97-197 products.

He has a very professional launch with more value just in the sales page and process.

The products are top notch both in content and delivery.

He gives you a free multi-day conference so you can get even more from his products and he makes them fun and memorial and first class; a conference likes he puts on would normally cost $1-2,000 to attend and it costs him hundreds of thousands of dollars and lots of time to put on.

He follows up with additional information (all in a uniquely fun way) and even gifts (I’ve received from physical books, etc.).

But it’s “good enough” because it virtually chemically bonds his customers to him (and sure makes the sales of future products to them a lot easier).

So leave perfect for the people who fail and be good enough all the way to the bank.

Do You Need to Know Everything?

Absolutely not!

You only need to know what you need to know.

Anything else is information overload at best so don’t bother with it.

Don’t buy it.

Don’t download it for free.

Don’t watch it.

Don’t clutter up your hard disk with it.

Ignore it.

When you’re ready for it, what you need will still be available and it will be the best current information (and you won’t waste hours searching for the 2 year old $7 e-book you bought!)

Stop Doing “Things” and Start Succeeding

Success Comes from Focused Massive Action

Stop getting distracted with things and start just doing things.

As I pointed out in my last 2 blog posts, How to Stop Playing Business Russian Roulette and 3 C’s – The One a Day Formula to Success, stop buying things (make only strategic investments) and stick with the Ready, Focus, Fire method.

Don’t do anything that isn’t directly related to the 3 Pillars (and list building is really a traffic getting method so it counts).

If you aren’t:

Finding, researching, creating, setting up products
Generating traffic (via creating opt-in pages, writing and publishing great content (on blogs, article directories, video directories, social media sites, etc.), social media, link building, building relationship, etc.
Creating sales and opt-in copy, split testing sales and opt-in copy, developing/improving offers, etc.

Then you need to stop doing it because it’s just holding you back.

This is one of the key things people who struggle and people who fail do — so stop it!

As you’re doing those above things also remember the 3 C’s I talked about in 3 C’s – The One a Day Formula to Success

Always make sure you understand why you are getting products, getting traffic, and getting better conversions.

If they aren’t for one of the 3 C’s then don’t do it or make changes so that it is.

Are You Saying “Where Does That Leave Me?”

Be a Strategic Thinker and Focus on Your Goals

Be a strategic thinker and planner.

Set strategic goals and make specific plans to accomplish them.

It leaves you to focus on the task at hand and to take quick and massive action so it get to “good enough” and you can start benefiting from it and move to the next task on your way to world domination — or at least success

Don’t fall for the pitch of the day because it’s designed to take your money and not necessarily leave you better off (no matter how good it is, it may not be good for you at the specific time).

Do the things you do best and get someone else to do the things you don’t do well; note this means to stop trying to improve you greatest weaknesses and spend that time on improving your greatest strengths.

As we move into the new year I will be providing a number of the things I use in my business: processes to follow, spreadsheets, resources, even some (free and paid) new products and services.

They will be uniquely different because they are meant to provide you will strategic assets to make next year the best year you’ve ever had.

BUT…

Don’t let me distract you either.

Everything I provide you, whether free or not, needs to be evaluated in YOUR strategic plan and don’t bother with it if it doesn’t. Ignore it.

Protect your time.

Sure, that’s not what you hear from most marketers, but I couldn’t proclaim to be ethical if I cared more about transferring your hard earned cash from your pocket to mine than in helping you stuff your pockets with cash.

So, it’s not hard to success… be a strategic thinker and follow the 3 Pillars, use the 3 C’s to focus solely on the goals you’ve defined. It takes work and it takes time but it easier to succeed than fail!

Have a Happy New Year!

David
The Shameless Ethical Marketer

http://Twitter.com/DavidHusnian

Disagree? Blast away below…

Stop Letting Them Tell You It’s Hard to Succeed is a post from: From The Desk of David

Want Success? Get This Into Your DNA!

David — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:45:46 +0000

Make next year your best year yet!

In this quick video doesn’t help you get in the right mindset then you need to rethink whether you belong in business.

It has a lot of good tips that if you follow will make next year your most successful one ever.

Some of the key points you should seriously take to heart if you want to have a successful business are:

Will points out that greatness is in everyone and that talent is nice but skill is what’s required to be truly successful.
And what is skill? Lots of hard work and practice, it’s developed by working on your craft, whatever that craft is.
You constantly have the choice to be extraordinary or mediocre (or “being realistic” as Will calls it), which will you choose?
Remember, build your success on step at a time, as Will says to build a brick wall, lay one brick at a time.
You must have have a obsessive level of focus in what you do, without it, at best, seriously delays any success and for most block success.
The comment about having a “plan B” is very interesting.
You must believe in yourself, if you don’t well… you know what will happen.
Don’t be afraid, except of fear. Don’t give in to the fears that hold you back, don’t accept your fears, attack them and conquer them.
Make a choice, be in control. If you want something, go get it. Period. Just decide and then act.

Get this into your DNA and it’s virtually impossible for you to fail.

To Your Success,

David Husnian
Twitter.com/DavidHusnian

O.Y. I hope you’ve had a nice holiday season, whatever you may be celebrating. Today is my anniversary so I’m off after posting this.

Want Success? Get This Into Your DNA! is a post from: From The Desk of David

3 C’s – The One a Day Formula to Success

David — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:54:53 +0000

A Formula for Success

If you are any type of marketer then you need to be creating marketing campaigns. In fact, basically all you are is campaign creators and implementers.

No matter what your situation is, all campaigns should focus on one, and only one, of the 3 C’s and every day you need to do something, anything, that is directed to one of the C’s.

The important parts of the above paragraph is to focus on ONLY ONE C and to make this part of your every day process.

I emphasize this because it’s easy to feel like you want all the C’s.

And, focusing on one C will ultimately help get more of the other 2 C’s, but any campaign will be more much more successful than if you try to get more of 2 or 3 of them.

The reason for this is the goals you have, strategies you use, the techniques you implement and, in fact, the specific tasks you perform are generally different for each one and sometimes they are even at odds with one another.

By that I mean that sometimes the things you do that gets you more of one C will get you less of another (at least in the short term).

So, find the single most important, immediate objective of a campaign and focus all your efforts towards it.

I bet you’re wondering what the 3 C’s are…

There are 3 things you REALLY want which you’ll build your marketing campaigns around.

You should always strive to get as much of each of them as you possibly can. They are…

Cash in Your Pocket

Maximize the Money You Make

This C is when you want to make more money and the focus of this C is to maximize the amount of money you make.

Frequently this is for immediate cash – you focus on the “fastest path to cash” – but it can also be for, or include, increased longer term cash flow.

This is a targeted, deep campaign where you emphasize how much better their lives/situation would be with your solution and make sure there are multiple places and ways they can buy.

Therefore, you need to be doing something each day that gets you more cash. This can include:

Contacting existing prospects and customers
Finding and connecting with other people who have strong connections to people who would want your product or service and partnering with them. For example, if you have a solution for a health problem find doctors, nurses, health food stores, bloggers on the topic, etc.
Creating and/or distributing ads
Improving your sales letter or the Web page that you sell from
Finding people who will market your products and services for you
etc.

In general, when you implement this you need to go to where the buyers are and find ways to get your product or services in front of them.

2. Customers

Getting More People in the Door

The focus of this C is getting more people in the door, getting more “foot traffic”.

Of course, this could be actual people walking into your physical store or more people visiting your Web site.

This is a combination of a somewhat broadly targeted, although focused, campaign where you go deep in specific high value areas.

Each day, do something that is getting you more traffic to your store and your Web properties (both for online and offline). For example:

Have a contest or giveaway
Get more links to your Web properties
Update your social media properties like do some Twitter tweets, put something of value on your Facebook Fan pages, create blog posts, put a great tip on your Posterous blog – build or solidify a relationship you have.
Do some other search engine optimization to attract Google
Join and participate in a group or community, online or offline (like the Chamber of Commerce)
Send out an e-mail or a text message or a telephone call or direct mail piece or whatever about something that will be very attractive.
etc.

In general, find out where your prospective customers “hang out” and do something to educate, engage, involve, and entertain them; this will attract them to your online and offline “stores”.

3. Celebrity

Get Exposure and Be Well Known in Your Market Niche

The focus of this C is becoming much more well-known in your market place/niche.

This is a very broad based but shallow marketing campaign where the goal is to get your name and/or product/service name known to as many people as possible; you just want massive exposure.

It’s a long known and proven fact that the more people who know of you and your products and services the more likely they are to check you out and to buy from you.

This is very apparent when you look at all the billions of dollars spent every year for celebrity endorsements.

When people see a celebrity endorsing a product they are more likely to think more highly of the product and more likely to buy it; this is true even if they particularly like the celebrity and, surprisingly, it works for some people even if they don’t like the celebrity!

Each day you need to be widening your exposure, for example:

Create and distribute press releases
Be interviewed as an “expert”
Interview a more well know person in your market niche
Write articles… for a local newspaper, a niche related group, for a guest blog post, to distribute to content sharing Web sites, etc.
Create a video and put it on YouTube and the other video sharing sites
Find a new group or community in your market niche and join and participate by helping members and asking for help yourself
Offer to do a free presentation (either a physical presentation or a Webinar) for someone or some group (local business group, popular blogger, local college or university, etc.)
Go to social media properties of well known people in your market niche and start a beneficial communication. Thank them, add something of value, retweet some of their tweets, like their Facebook pages, and so on
etc.

In general, every day you need to be taking specific action to get as many new people as possible to know about youand/or your products and services.

Know Your A.B.M.

Before starting any campaign make sure you know these 3 things (and create a list of them to use now and in the future):

Know Your Audience

1. Know Your Audience

Make absolutely sure you know who would have a need, want or desire for your product.

And do NOT say everyone is your customer because, unless you sell water or air, that just isn’t true.

Even if it was true, it will greatly dilute your marketing message and efforts and turn them into failures.

Start high level and then refine this into specific demographics.

Generally the more refined and specific this is, the easier they will be to target and the more successful you will be.

2. Know Your Benefits

What are Your Benefits?

You must know what value your product or service brings to a member of your target audience from their point of view; that is, what “problem” does you product or service solve.

This must be something that truly helps them “solve” something they want solved.

To do this take those needs, wants and desires and show the potential customer how your product or service fills their need and solves their problem.

So a benefit isn’t… a “carbon-tipped stainless steel drill bit.”

Nor is it “a way to quickly and easily make holes.”

It is “get that adorable picture of your children up on the wall” or “protect your family by putting in that deadbolt lock”

Another example…

A benefit is NOT, “help you eat less calories”

It is NOT, “help you lose weight”

It is, “look great in that bikini” or “get your life back after your heart attack”.

3. Know Their Minds

Understand Their Minds

This is understanding how a member of your target audience thinks about the need/problem and, particularly, the solution that will help them achieve THEIR goal.

For example, someone might have a pinched nerve in their back that causes them a lot of pain and restricts their activities.

Some people might think of this as, and do a Google search for, in a variety of ways: “pinched nerve back”, “treatment for pinched nerve” “pinched nerve remedies”, “help back pain”, “sciatica”, “back pain relief”, “compressed nerves”, “pain in the back” or any number of different things.

While all those ways of thinking are related to what an ideal customer is looking for, understanding the way they think about it will help you properly attract the attention of the largest number of potential customers and maximize the return on the investment you make in your marketing.

This alone can have huge paybacks in the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and the number of customer you get.

Your Golden Take Away

Discover the Gold in the 3 C's

The 3 C’s is a huge topic and I’ve only been able to go into the topic at a high level but the important things to remember are…

Focus on ONLY one of the C’s in any specific campaign, no matter how tempting it is to do more, and be sure you do something every single day that make progress with that C.

Even doing just one thing a day will help you be much more successful over time.

Any questions or comments? Leave them below…

3 C’s – The One a Day Formula to Success is a post from: From The Desk of David

How to Stop Playing Business Russian Roulette

David — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:32:44 +0000

Don't Commit Business Russian Roulette

You’ve probably heard about the concept of Ready, Fire, Aim that was first popularized by the book of the same name from Michael Masterson.

Some people think it’s junk but lots of people, including some very successful ones, talk about it and teach it.

The concepts talked about in the book are great…

The idea behind the catchy title is a powerful one to help you break through one of the biggest reasons for failure.

However, the problem is that most people don’t read the book or do they understand what’s really being said.

Lots of people, including some very successful ones, talk about it and teach it.

Essentially, they hear the title and basically stop there.

That’s a massive mistake and one that even many successful people have made.

Why?

Using Ready, Fire, Aim Wrong Costs You Big Time

The reason is because those people don’t actually practice what Ready, Fire, Aim teaches.

In fact, if I totaled up the total dollar value that just the 6, 7 and 8-figure marketers have personally told me they’ve lost when they did improper Ready, Fire, Aim, it would add up to many millions of dollars.

For some people, doing it wrong actually works (sometimes) but for most others it hardly ever does.

And, of course, some people don’t mind the many successes and many failures — usually those people are pretty rich and can withstand it — but for most people the failures far outweigh the successes and they can’t really afford the cost of large failures.

Here’s how it all goes wrong…

You see, on the surface, the way most people talk about it is that Ready, Fire, Aim makes it it seem like you just come up with an idea and take immediate action to implement it in the hopes of quickly getting success.

However, that’s not what the book advocates, study the book if you think differently, but that’s what so many people are led to believe.

It’s sort of a “shoot first and ask questions later” mentality and, to continue the gun analogy, it’s the equivalent of taking an Uzi and holding down the trigger in hopes you will actually hit your target.

Sure you get off 10 rounds a second but you’ll quickly run out of bullets without even knowing if you were close to hitting your target (that is, until they get you

Another way I like to think of it, is that it’s like playing Russian Roulette with a gun that has a whole lot of bullets in it! The chance of hurting yourself is greatly increased.

Now, one of the many strengths of Ready, Fire, Aim is that it helps overcome a problem that the majority of people have with the standard Ready, Aim and Fire.

That problem goes by many names — like analysis paralysis or perfectionism — but the bottom line is that many people just won’t pull the trigger and get things completed.

You can see it plainly because they plan and build and plan and rebuild and spend all their time doing this and that and making everything perfect and they rarely, if ever, actually get something out to sell.

Here’s a true story…

I remember, maybe 3-4 years ago, a women telling me about the online business she’d started.

As we were talking she mentioned that she had been working on her Web site for over a year. Yes, over one full year!

I was shocked.

We talked more and it became very obvious that she was caught in the “plan, build, make it perfect” trap and, while she didn’t like that she wasn’t making money, she didn’t consciously realize that actually finishing her site got her out of her comfort zone, so she kept finding reasons to keep delaying.

I told her that, for most small businesses like she had, the tools available meant that a Web site could be built in a day or two and for a more complex membership type or e-commerce site it might take a week or two, particularly if you have all the content and products ready like she did.

In fact, I told her to immediately stop doing what she was doing, to stop working with her “Web developer”, and I’d help her get it something done, and selling, within a couple of days and then help her finish it over the next few weeks.

She become quite uncomfortable, got upset and wouldn’t talk to me again.

She was stuck somewhere between the Ready and Aim phases and just couldn’t get herself to actually Fire.

If that sounds like someone you know — and maybe that someone is you — you now know what the problem is.

And it truly is a serious problem because if you don’t actually finish and get something for sale I can guarantee you will fail.

One very key point made in the Ready, Fire, Aim book is how tremendously important it is to be selling (it sounds obvious I know, but when you see so many unable to get to this step you see why a book like this can help).

It Even Makes Business Russian Roulette Attractive

This woman, and the millions of people like her, are why many people say even doing Ready, Fire, Aim WRONG is better than never finishing at all.

They say it’s worse to do nothing than to do something and fail.

While I agree with that, neither approach is the best way to do things.

You see, however important it is to take action — and I CANNOT over emphasize how important it is to take action — with just little thought, you can be even more successful than the other methods.

I Call This Ready, Focus, Fire

Ready, Focus, Fire

What it means is to just do a some thinking, intelligent focusing, and due diligence before you act; at least you need to find out about where your target is!

You don’t over think.

You don’t spend months (or years like that woman) thinking and planning and making things perfect.

You just focus on finding a target that has good odds of success and then get it done; if you can’t find it quickly (or it fails), drop the idea immediately and move on to the next idea.

Here’s an example of doing it right that you’ve probably heard time and time again but never realized it was Ready, Focus, Fire.

Simply put, do appropriate research to find a profitable niche/market before you plunge in wasting time and money (that is, before you press the trigger and waste all your ammunition).

That’s it.

As I said, it’s simple, and it’s well known, and it’s proven.

The key work is to properly define “appropriate”.

The “can’t get to Fire” people don’t get too much past the research step and, if they finally do, then they catch CTPP syndrome (that’s the dreaded disease of trying to “create the perfect product”).

The people who practice Ready, Fire, Aim incorrectly, either don’t do the research or, at best, they do cursory research and may not pay attention to the results and do whatever they want to anyway!

The Ready, Focus, Fire people do reasonable research (hopefully following a proven method) and then take quick and massive action to optimize the advantage of the opportunity.

This balanced (Goldilocks-style) approach are why they are the people who build long-term, successful and sustainable, businesses.

Which Type of Person Do You Want to Be?

You can be a “Ready” person who gets so bogged down in the Ready and Aim phases that you rarely get anything done and, truthfully, you are doomed to failure.
Or, you can be a person who does Ready, Fire, Aim incorrectly and have some successes and some failures and hope for the best.
Or, you can take more control of your success and be a Ready, Focus, Fire person who starts with small focused successes and continually builds to bigger and bigger ones. Sure, you’ll have some failures but they’ll be smaller and less frequent and, at the end of the day, you’ll have a real, thriving business.

I advocate the latter (duh!), it’s a more balanced approach and the real approach that most successful people actually use whether they know it or not.

To Your Success,

David

O.Y. If you interested in the “Ready, Fire, Aim” book (the Kindle version is $10) you can click my affiliate link http://dahsu.com/1a5EFmw

Or, if you’re feeling mean and ornery and don’t want to use my affiliate link , just go to Amazon and search for Ready Fire Aim.

Of course, I told you to stop buying stuff and that would apply to this also. When I go into how to think and invest strategically then you’ll be able to decide whether this would be a correct strategic investment for you or not.

It doesn’t mean you can’t go check it out, you might even learn something helpful!

How to Stop Playing Business Russian Roulette is a post from: From The Desk of David

Why You Should Not Buy Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code – Really!

David — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:43:04 +0000

I’ve been getting a number of questions about the free Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code release Mike Filsaime is currently doing, see http://dahsu.com/sE4dLFq.

Below are the reasons you would NOT want to get this.

To quickly refresh your memory, the Butterfly Marketing software is one that lots of very successful marketers, including Mike Filsaime, have used it to manage their product sales process and memberships.

Normally, it came with the $2,000 Butterfly Marketing course and you didn’t get PLR rights to it, Mike is now giving the source code with PLR rights to you for free.

Here is why you should NOT get it…

Reason 1: Happy with What You Have

If you already have, and are happy with, some existing software that lets you create both simple and complex sales processes then, while Butterfly Marketing may of may not be better, it will just be a distraction to you.

The only reason to get it in these circumstances is to put it on your hard disk for future use.

Reason 2: Just Sell Front-End Products

If you don’t, and aren’t interested, in doing more than a simple sell a front-end product, collect the money, create/find another front-end product and do it all again then Butterfly Marketing is definitely overkill.

Many people just find or create a product, put up a sales letter and drive traffic to it.

This works fine, sure you can make a lot more money doing it differently, but just doing a single front-tend product is simple and easy to do and can make you a nice income.

Again, the only reason to get Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code in these circumstances is to put it on your hard disk for future use.

Reason 3: Don’t Sell Your Own Products

If you only sell affiliate products, that is, if you don’t sell your own products, you just don’t need software that will manage the sales process or membership sites.

The only reason to get Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code in these circumstances is if you want to sell your own products, now or in the future.

Reason 4: You’re Happy with Your Membership Software

If you have membership software that you are happy with then stay with what you have.

It can be hard to switch from one membership software to another so if you are happy with what you are already using there’s no reason to switch even if Butterfly Marketing is better.

Like before, the only reason to get Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code is if you think you’ll need something more powerful than what you have, then get it, and put it on your hard disk for that future day.

Reason 5: You’re Already Overwhelmed

If you are already in “overwhelm mode” and don’t want to add to the pile.

It is easy to get overwhelmed with all the information, offers, software and other things bombarding online marketers every day and you certainly don’t want to add to “the pile.”

If this is your case it makes sense to skip this opportunity and not add to the “insanity” that is your hard disk.

Again, the only reason to even consider it is that maybe someday in the future you’ll want something like this AND you can tuck it away on your hard disk without it adding to your burden.

Reason 6: You Don’t Know How to Install Software

If you could use it, but you don’t know anything about software or haw to install and customize it then getting the free Butterfly Marketing can be too daunting for you to get.

This is a really good reason but needing or wanting something that you can’t use is just a waste of time (and I’d say money but the Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code is free .

If you did purchase it you’d have one of 3 choices:

Put it on you hard disk and never use it until some distant time
Spend time to go through tutorials and other resources learning how to install and use it; note this might include some “techie talk.”
Hire someone to install it. This is not a bad solution if you could find someone reliable and had the money.

The only reason to get it would be to do either option 2 or 3 above or, as before, put it on your hard disk for future use.

Conclusion

There you go; 6 reasons why you should not get the free Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code.

If you don’t fit into those categories you really should give it a look before the opportunity slips away.

Can you think of any other reasons not to get Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code? If so, please put it in the comments below.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (“Ethical”) Marketer

http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian

O.Y. Don’t get Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code if your situation matches one of the 6 above, otherwise go to http://dahsu.com/sE4dLFq and check it out.

Why You Should Not Buy Butterfly Marketing PLR Source Code – Really! is a post from: From The Desk of David

Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page, Part 2

David — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:28:32 +0000

Last year I wrote a blog post about how to get affiliates to promote your squeeze pages, Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page — see http://fromthedeskofdavid.com/blog/tips/affiliates-promote-squeeze-page.

It included the instructions and JavaScript code how to capture an affiliate ID and send it to your autoresponder account and store it there for later use during promotions.

It was a popular post and I received a lot of e-mail about it thanking me and asking questions.

Recently I was asked for some help by Fendi on how to make it work with a different format for the affiliate ID.

The way I had originally set it up the affiliate ID had to be in this format: http://YourDomain.com/?[YourCode]=[AffiliateID]

Some examples of the affiliate ID portion would be:

aff_id=340987
hop=theboss123 (ClickBank)
InvitedBy=DavidHusnian

This worked great and covered a lot of ground but Fendi wanted to know if it could work with this format: http://YourDomain.com/?[AffiliateID].

It doesn’t but I’ve made some modifications so that now it does and this post explains those and gives you updated JavaScript source code and instructions.

The first parts of setting this up, the Aweber autoresponder and putting it on the squeeze page parts, remain exactly the same; read about that at Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page.; click here to download the JavaScript and instructions.

What’s Changed…

But a ways down that blog post it says “At the bottom of the squeeze page HTML, add the JavaScript code, here is what to add:” is where the difference begins and where I will start…

At the bottom of the squeeze page HTML, add the JavaScript code, here is what to add:

You’ll notice now that there are 2 options, the first is the original option for the http://YourDomain.com/?[YourCode]=[AffiliateID] format and the second option is the new option for the http://YourDomain.com/?[AffiliateID] format.

As the instructions say, delete either option 1 or option 2 depending upon your situation.

Since Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page already explains what to do for option 1, I will focus on option 2 and delete option 1, giving:

You’ll notice I also deleted a bunch of comments too.

Now we need to set just 1 value “[*Form Field Name*]“.

This is set to the name Aweber gave the affiliate ID form field, assuming we did the same as the prior blog post that line would be:

We need to get the name, in this case it is “custom AffiliateID”, yours will be whatever you called your customer field in Aweber.

For our purposes here I’m going to use the affiliate link http://GetYourBonusesNow.com/?DavidHusnian.

Here is the code modified to make that change and removing the remaining comments:

The final squeeze page will look like:

Name:
Email:
AffiliateID:

Trying it Out!

You can now try it out for yourself in the same way I did previously in Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page.

You can see it works and now if a customer clicks the links in your e-mails to purchase it will credit the affiliate with the sale.

So now you can get affiliates to promote to your squeeze pages because you can promise them that any future sales will earn them checks!

Additional Comments

You might have noticed I didn’t mention the 2 new variables dhCookieDuration and dhCookieName.

I had a number of people ask if a cookie could be written with the affiliate ID in it so I added that.

It’s easy to use, just follow these steps:

Set dhCookieDuration to be the number of days you would like the cookie to be saved/valid. For example, if you wanted the cookie to have the affiliate Id in it for 90 days then you’d use: var dhCookieDuration = 90;.

Set dhCookieName to be the name of the cookie, it can be anything but if you don’t know what you want it to be I’d suggest you make it something you’ll remember and will remind you of it’s purpose; something like AffiliateID. If you leave it blank – that default of “” – then it will not create a cookie.

I also included some JavaScript functions to read, write and erase cookies which you can use if you want to manage you Web site’s cookie; like read back the cookie that has the affiliate ID in it.

I’m not going to explain that here but if can’t figure it out and you have questions about how to do that, just leave a comment below.

Conclusion

Again, it is harder to explain than to do but now you can get affiliates to promote your squeeze pages using 2 different formats and with the option of saving a cookie also.

Remember that this ability opens up lots of new channels where you can get prospects from and could really accelerate your success.

So, by just adding one custom field to Aweber and hiding it on you’re the Web forms for your squeeze pages and adding a little JavaScript (which you can download from here) you can do this.

This is so good that I’m been using it myself on every squeeze and sales page I create. I like it and my affiliates like it!

Click here to get the new JavaScript code and instructions.

Just leave me a comment if you have any questions or would like help setting this up on your page.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (“Ethical”) Marketer

http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian

O.Y. Be sure to download the JavaScript code to insert into your squeeze pages at http://www.FromTheDeskOfDavid.com/FreeStuff/GetAffiliatesToPromoteYourSqueezePage.zip

Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page, Part 2 is a post from: From The Desk of David

How to Build a Web Site, Part 2

David — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:57:42 +0000

Last time we started looking at how to build a Web site – see http://dahsu.com/wM3WXG9 — including the main ways to get it built.

The last option we looked at was building the site yourself. We’re going to look at how to do that in more depth.

Before we get started let’s do a quick review…

To build a Web site you need to have a domain name (1&1) and a Web hosting account (Blue Host and HostGator links).

You also need software to be able to design and create the Web pages that are part of your Web site; I recommended KompoZer – it’s HTML editor freeware.

After you have that here is what you do…

We’re going to do 2 things, look at making a Web page and learning a little bit of HTML so you can understand enough if you come up against problems.

Note, that this isn’t going to be a detailed tutorial on KompoZer (click here if you want that)

Getting Started with KompoZer

But let’s look quickly at KompoZer.

When you first open KompoZer you’ll see something like this:

KompoZer’s Opening Screen

You can start creating your page immediately; just start typing in your content. I’ve put a few things to show you, see this screen shot:

KompoZer Screen After Creating a Small Web Page

You will immediately see 5 things:

A big heading at the top
A smaller heading under it
Several paragraphs
A link to the free gift
An image that was placed on the page

It took me all of 1 minute and 42 seconds (I timed it) and half of that was finding a nice picture.

(Very) Quick Intro to HTML

I now want to take that and show you the HTML code behind it but first a very quick primer to help you learn about HTML and how to create an HTML Web page.

It is the language of the Web, it is the instructions or blueprint to make a Web page look the way it does, including the page you’re reading this on!

HTML is a “markup language” – that’s what the M and L start for and it means that your “markup” the contents of a Web page so that the Web browser understands how to display it properly.

If has a bunch of “tags” that are used and almost all tags are paired with a start tag and an end tag; the end tag using the same tag name but with a forward slash “/” in front of it.

Each tag starts with a less than sign “<”, has the tag name, has some optional attributes and ends with a greater than sign, here the format of a starting tag:

and an ending tag:

So every Web page is just a whole lot of some content groups (let me make up a name “tag groups”) and since the tag groups can be nested inside other tag groups to an unlimited depth you can make a pretty sophisticated Web page.

I know it is rushing it but let’s look at the HTML behind the page above and I think it will be clearer:

David’s Web Site

This is the World’s Best Web Site

Welcome!

You’ll find lots of fabulous information and gifts.

To get you started,

click here for your first free gifts

Isn’t this a nice picture…

src=”pictures/101_0050.jpg” width=”220” />

If you aren’t at all familiar with HTML code it probably looks pretty intimidating but it fairly easy to understand with just a little knowledge but, you know what, in general, you won’t need to understand but it always helps if you know a little bit.

Okay let’s start with the code that reads:

  

This is the World’s Best Web Site

You see on the screen it makes the words bid and bold and on a line by itself…

Results from using a Heading 1 Tag

Notice that the tag part of it (which doesn’t show on the screen) using our less than sign-tag name-greater than sign: < then h1 (which is the tag name) and then > followed by the content and then the ending tag.

This tag is called a “header tag” and there are 6 header tags named h1 to h6 (each smaller than the previous one); you can see the h2 tag above and see that it products smaller text.

Next, let’s look at the HTML code that made the link:

  

click here for your first free gifts

This tag, called an anchor tag (don’t ask!), creates the link like:

Results from using a Anchor Tag to Create a Link

He’ll you see our first use of an attribute with the “href=FirstFreeGift.zip”; this says ‘when the link is clicked load the file name FirstFreeGift.zip’ which, in essence, starts downloading the .Zip file but if the file name had been a Web page then it would have loaded the Web page.

A little bit down the page we see this code:

  
src=”pictures/101_0050.jpg” width=”220” />

It displays the picture on the Web page:

Results After Adding a Picture

This tag has 4 attributes and NO closing tags!!!

The attributes are the “alt text” which display if someone hovers their mouse over the picture (and it read out by the screen readers that people that have trouble seeing use.

BUT the alt test is also the place to put some of your keywords, Google uses it as part of their ranking algorithm.

The other 3 attributes of the image tag are about the picture itself: it’s name and location (the src or source attribute); it’s height and it’s width.

There is one more prominent tag on the page the “break” tab (
); it’s like hitting the Enter key when typing in a word processor (like Word) or a text editor (Notepad).

So you’ll see that there are 2 break tags to separate the paragraphs.

One final thing I want to point out is that the image tag () and the break tags (
) do not have closing tags as it makes no sense to have them in situations like this because there can’t be any content in between.

Conclusion

It isn’t that hard to create a Web page or an entire Web particularly with a tool like KompoZer.

HTML isn’t that hard to learn and use unless you need to get real fancy or complex. For the average sales page or Web site though something like KompoZer with some HTML tweaking if necessary is more than sufficient.

Knowing how to use a tool like KompoZer and learning HTML at least a bit is very useful even if you hire people from places like Elance and Rent-a-Coder or if you start with a Web template and you need to fill it in.

If you want to jump start your learning of how to build a Web page, particularly KompoZer tutorials, you can go to How to Make Your Own Free Website

Of course, if you have an online business you are an Internet Marketer and you shouldn’t be spending a lot of time creating Web pages and writing HTML code!

Leave me a comment below.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.MadMondaySale.com

O.Y. My friend John Delavera has something that can quickly and easily create complete Web site; smaller ones of course, it’s not going to create a great 1,000 page Web site , check it out at his Web page.

How to Build a Web Site, Part 2 is a post from: From The Desk of David

How to Build a Web Site

David — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:57:45 +0000

Web pages are the basic form of communication for the World Wide Web.

Every Web site is made up of Web pages, so everyone who wants to market online needs Web pages; without cash-sucking, profit-pulling Web pages you’ll soon be out of business.

I get a lot of questions about Web pages and how to make your own free website.

So I’m going to do a short series on how to make your own website, one Web page at a time.

It will be for people who don’t know how to create a Web site or who have a Web site and want to be able to make changes to it without have the trouble and expense of hiring someone to do it.

It will be kept simple and basic and afterwards you should be able to get regular sales pages and Web sites done including formatting text, adding pictures and other graphics, and having links to other Web pages (like a shopping cart!); you’ll be making your own website in no time.

If you’ve checked at how much it cost to create a Web site you’ll see people charging less than $100, many charging thousands of dollars and, for large complex sites, it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or more; I’ve charged close to $100,000 for complex, custom-made Web applications.

So being able to make your own free website can save you a lot of money, particularly for new online business owners or those still struggling.

If you want to have a Web site there are 4 main ways to get one:

Hire someone to do it for you
Use a Web template
Use a free Web building tool
Build it your self.

Hire Someone to Do It for You

The advantage of this is that you can get a really nice customer Web site done and you don’t have to spend time struggling to get one done.

The disadvantages are it can be more expensive and you have to find someone to do it; reasonably priced people can be found at places like Elance and Rent-a-Coder just be sure to check the individuals out first.

This can be the best choice because you can spend you time marketing and growing your business not fumbling around trying to make a Web page.

Just beware it is easy for unscrupulous people to take advantage of your lack of knowledge; be sure you have planned out exactly what you want,

Use a Web Template

A Web template is a Web page (or a mini-site) that is already created but is incomplete.

You take a Web template and finish it by adding your content and images.

It’s sort of like an unfurnished apartment, you’ve got the basic structure but you need to decorate and furnish it on your own.

The advantage is that you get a professional Web page or site much more quickly and for less cost than hiring that same professional.

The main disadvantage is that you still have to know enough to “furnish” the Web site.

Use a Free Web Building Tool

Some companies provide free “wizards” to lead you through the process of creating a Web site; they usually come with free or paid Web hosting.

The main advantage to this Web site builder software is you really don’t have to know much about how to create Web pages as you just answer a series of questions and the software builds your Web site.

The main disadvantages are you are usually stuck with the style and types of pages they offer and you have to have the pages on their computers.

In general, I don’t recommend free website making software to online marketers.

Build It Yourself

Many people, particularly people who haven’t had much, if any, success online, are interested in creating your own website to save money.

While, it may not be the best use of your time, if that sounds like you then there are some things you need to know to easily build your own website.

First, there are a number of tools to help you create Web pages from the high end tools like Microsoft’s Visual Studio and Adobe’s Dreamweaver to a mid-range tool like Microsoft’s Expression Web (formerly FrontPage) and Adobe’s HomeSite down to free Web page editors like KompoZer and NVU.

Whatever you do, use a tool.

Hand coding HTML using Notepad, while possible, is not something a marketer needs to be doing.

Truthfully, I own all the above tools and more but, for a free and simple tool, I like KompoZer the best because it’s been around for many years and handles a lot of the other tasks besides creating the actual Web pages.

The main advantages of building your own Web pages are that you get total control and you have minimal cash outlay.

The main disadvantages are that you may be losing opportunities to make more money than the cash outlay and it is easy to get sucked into spending days, weeks or months creating perfect Web pages particularly if you don’t know much about how to do it.

Conclusion

Virtually all successful online businesses and Internet Marketers has at least one Web site, so you need to have one too.

There are 4 main ways to create a Web site:

Hire someone to do it for you
Use a Web template
Use a free Web building tool
Build it your self.

Each ways has pros and cons, although I do not recommend #3.

While #1 requires you know certain things, places like Elance and Rent-a-Coder help protect you with information and other means.

For #2 and #4 you need to have some additional knowledge of how to build a Web page.

In the next part we’ll look at details of how to do just that, so if you want know how to make your own website then watch for it.

If you want to jump start your learning of how to build a Web page you can go to How to Make Your Own Free Website

Leave me a comment below.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.MadMondaySale.com

How to Build a Web Site is a post from: From The Desk of David