Posts Tagged ‘credibility’
How To Sell On Ebay & Keep Your Shirt
Have you ever been delighted after a huge sale on Ebay. . .only to find out that your massive profit margin was whittled away by fee after fee after fee after fee?
Ebay charged you to list your item; they charged you to add pictures; they charged you to add upgrades; they charged you to use a template; they charged you to put your auction up at a certain time; and then, on top of everything else. . .they charged you AGAIN for closing the sale.
At this point, you would have been happy to walk away from your huge sale with the shirt on your back. But no. Paypal arrived on the scene to process your transaction for a small fee – your shirt.
. . .and there you sat at your computer, frustrated and shirtless. You were probably ready to just throw your hands up in dispair and quit selling on Ebay.
But you didn’t. You stuck with it. Maybe you haven’t had any success on Ebay since then, but what matters is that you stuck with it. And that is easily the most important part about selling on Ebay: sticking with it until you get that breakthrough.
And for that, I am going to reward you by showing you some simple tricks I have used to prevent the fee-mongers from extracting all of my profits. Hopefully this will help you to do the same and find your breakthrough.
The first method is using free hosting services for all of your auction pictures. If you sell a lot of small items on Ebay, this will save you a considerable amount of money in fees. If you only sell large items, this will allow you to cut back on unncessary fees on each auction.
I personally suggest using Geocities.com for this. All you have to do is upload the pictures you want in your auctions and then then reference them in the actual auctions.
The second fee-saving method I suggest is creating or purchasing a template for your auctions. I personally suggest learning HTML, which doesn’t take very long, and using it to create your own template.
In the long run, this will save you a lot of time and frustration, as you will be able to create the exact look and feel you want for your auctions.
However, if you don’t have the time to learn HTML, you can either purchase a template online for a dollar or less or you could have one professionally- created to fit your specifications at elance.com.
Not only will this save you additional auction fees on Ebay, but it will boost your credibility as a seller, potentially raising the amount of bids you receive–and subsequently increasing your profit-margin
The third and last method I will go over involves improving the mechanics of your auction, so you can pull just as many customers as a featured listing would, but without using one.
This is actually quite simple. All you have to do is carefully construct your title to accomplish the following two goals: 1) include as many targeted, high-traffic keywords as possible; and 2) form a coherent and compelling message that will entice these new streams of traffic to click through to your auction.
If you can achieve a better balance than what you have right now, you will notice an enormous boost in traffic. In fact, it can easily be the difference between 25 auction visitors and 250!
Some people make a full-time income buying from the auctions that get 25 visitors and then reselling with this tactic, which gets them 250.
By now, you know what you need to do to cut a serious chunk out of your Ebay seller’s fees. Put this to work in your auctions – and you could be seeing that breakthrough I talked about in a matter of weeks.
http://www.workathomerightnow.net/ebay.html – Written by Isaiah Hull, author of “How to Profit on Ebay In Seven Days Without Spending A Single Penny.” For a limited time only you can get a pre-publication copy of his book for ONE-FOURTH the post-publication price!
How to Get More Readers For Your Book
Marketing your own book can seem like a scary task. You poured your heart and soul into the writing of it, and now when you think about marketing your masterpiece, you think, “I’m a writer, not a salesperson!”
But there is a simple way you can get the word out about your book. It takes a little time, but the effort pays huge dividends.
More people will be interested in your book when they are interested in you. Readers become interested in you when they can read some of your writing…for free. You can build your credibility, find readers, and establish yourself as an expert in your field by writing and distributing articles.
(This method works even for fiction writers.)
You accomplish this by these means:
- by publishing articles on your website
- by creating an ecourse or ebook
- by publishing your own ezine or newsletter
- by publishing your articles in someone else’s ezine
Think about that last idea for a minute. Publishing articles in other people’s ezines (or on their websites) is the key, the secret, to creating a viral lead-generating machine.
The popularity of your book website is actually improved when other sites link you to. But Google only likes high-content links. Your articles provide this.
Not to mention that when you have your articles on more and more websites there is a greater possibility that someone will read your articles and do business with you.
The simple system that will market your book for you contains only three steps:
Step 1: Write and Publish Articles
This really is the best way for you to promote your book.
The key is to write a useful, high-content article, and send it to your newsletter and publish it on your website. If you write fiction, write simple short stories or poems, or provide excerpts from your novel.
(For a more information on marketing this way, please read another of my articles, “Online Book Marketing,” at http://ezinearticles.com/?id=45696.)
Step 2: Distribute Your Articles
Send your articles or stories to article distribution lists and ezine directories. These directories exist for ezine owners and website owners to pick up free reprintable content to use in their ezine or on their website. You can find a list of these sites by searching for “articles sites.”
This helps you, because if your article is picked up and distributed by 10 ezine owners who each have 1000 people in their list, your article will be sent to 10 000 people!
Step 3: Your Articles Continue to be Distributed Virally!
When you submit to an articles directory, your article is there to be reprinted. You can submit an article next week, and ten years later it will still be there. Your article can have a shelf life as long as you want, and every time someone reprints your article, you get free exposure!
Bonus tip: If you include at the end of your article that your article can be reprinted anywhere by anyone, anyone who reads your article can reprint in on their website or in their ezine.
To use the above example, if another 1000 people reprint your article in some form, your business will be marketed to 11 000 people-in a very short period of time!
Imagine this process occurring time and time again, with more than one article! How many interested readers will end up at your site?
This is how you successfully market your book online.
Jeremy M. Hoover helps you market your book. To learn about his book marketing plan vist his website, http://www.jhooverwebcopy.com/bookmarketing.htm, or email him at jeremyhoover AT gmail.com.
Turn Your Old Articles Into Profitable E-mail Courses
If you’ve written numerous articles, you can use them to further promote yourself and your business, e-zine or web site.
You can re-use your old articles by transforming them into another form of promotional tool.
And one way to re-use them is by turning them into e-mail courses. By doing so, you’ll be able to offer a new product that will help you establish your credibility as a business owner, e-zine publisher or web site owner.
Even though you’ll make use of old articles, you won’t be offering a re-hash.
Why? Because once you transform your old articles and gather them together to form an e-mail course, you add a more focused learning dimension to them. For this, you’re able to create a new and effective marketing tool.
So how do you do it? In a nutshell:
1. Gather all your articles and find a common theme among them. If you’ve written a number of articles aimed for beginning online business owners, these articles can make up one e-mail course. Your e-mail course can be a short one (2-4 articles) or a long one (5 or more).
2. When you’ve identified a common theme, arrange your articles in a way that provides some sort of logic or flow to them.
3. Assign one article as one e-mail module or follow up. If you’re using 4 articles, your e-mail course would consist of 4 modules or follow ups.
4. Take a good look at each article. Does it look like you can weave the activities within ‘lessons’ or will it require you to separate the ‘lessons’ from the ‘assignments’ — information first (your re-written article) and then hands-on activities or tests after?
5. Do your articles use the ‘you’ voice? If not, re-write as if you’re telling your friend a story. Do your articles sound formal? Even though you’re ‘teaching’ something, strive to keep it lighthearted. Be engaging and friendly, but never be too flippant or condescending.
6. Include additional resources at the end of each module or follow up. These resources could be online references and researches, and even more intensive lessons.
7. Proofread.
8. Insert your promotional texts in the beginning, middle or end of each module or follow up. However, don’t overdo this. People who will request your e-mail course are going to see through you once they find out that your promotional texts far outweigh the lessons and valuable instructions in your e-mail course. Put value over the content of your e-mail course first and your workshop takers will trust you and believe in your expertise.
9. Put your e-mail course on autoresponder and set the time each module or follow up will be sent. You can use free or fee-based autoresponders.
Before you announce your e-mail course, test and re-test it thoroughly. When you’re certain everything is fine, go ahead and announce it.
About The Author
Copyright (c) Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ
Shery is the developer of creative, motivating and fun e-mail courses for writers. Sign up and take an e-mail course today — free! — at http://WritingBliss.com. She also authored the e-book that lets you create your own original and profitable E-mail Workshops, eCourses and Tutorials in only 3 days! Visit http://EmailWorkshopsHowTo.com for more info.
Top Design and Marketing Tips from a Branding Expert
This month, we wanted to share some general tips relating to your graphic design that we’ve come up with over the past year:
Always include an address on your business card, even if you are operating a small business out of your home – it greatly increases your credibility and makes you look much more established! If you’re concerned about privacy, a Post Office box is a great way to go. When signing up for a Post Office box, consider using a “Mailboxes” store instead of the Post Office – you’ll get a street address instead of the typical “P.O. Box”, and the store will accept shipped packages from UPS, FedEx and other carriers for you, so you won’t need to give out your home address as a shipping address.
Never be caught anywhere without business cards again! Carry a supply of cards in your car so that if you can restock when purse or wallet stash runs out. The same applies for brochures, articles, promotional postcards, samples, informational flyers, and presentation folders with information about your company and capabilities – you never know when you’ll have an opportunity to hand them out!
Look for ways to make producing your designed materials less expensive. Need a business card and brochure? Why not combine the two into a folding business card and save on the printing costs? Is your logo designed in so many colors that printing becomes too costly? Try having materials printed digitally by an online printing house like psprint.com or vistaprint.com – they’re often much more cost-effective for materials printed on white paper stock. If you want to print on a specialty paper, consider converting your logo to a one- or two-color version just for your printed materials – unlimited colors on a website don’t cost extra! We’re always thinking up creative ways to save our clients money, and we’re happy to offer many more suggestions like these based on your individual needs – just contact us with your questions.
Do you want the professionalism of having a printed letterhead, but don’t expect to write 500 letters (the minimum quantity for most printers)? There are two options to avoid this: Design a letterhead that can act as a base for your printed invoices, flyers, report or proposal covers, articles, client intake documents and everything else! This way, all of your materials will be professionally branded – and you’ll go through “all that letterhead” quicker than you think! Or, recreate your letterhead design as a Microsoft Word template, so that you can print sheets one at a time from your desktop printer. Just pick up a ream of specialty paper from the local office supply warehouse to avoid that “home printed” look.
If you frequently drive for your business, or if your parking spot happens to be on a busy street, make the most of it by having a set of car magnets designed and printed with your logo, phone number and website address on them – they make a big impact, spread the word all over town and, after the initial investment, it’s free publicity!
We hope these tips help you promote your business.
About the Author
Erin Ferree, Founder and Lead Designer of elf design, is a brand identity and graphic design expert. She has been helping small businesses grow with bold, clean and effective logo and marketing material designs for over a decade. elf design offers the comprehensive graphic and web design services of a large agency, with the one- on-one, personalized attention of an independent design specialist. Erin works closely in partnership with her clients to create designs that are visible, credible and memorable ? and that tell their unique business stories in a clear and consistent way. For more information about elf design, please visit: Logo design at http://www.elf-design.com
WhyYouNeedThatPerfectName.com!
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet”
-Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
A rose perhaps but not your domain name!
Welcome to the dotcom bubble! Here, any successful e-tailer should tell you that there’s more to a name than just the name itself. This article serves precisely that purpose ?against the backdrop of quality domain naming strategies and styles, auctions, speculators and court conflicts, to convince you why your online endeavor needs that perfect domain name.
There’s no point in coming up with that absolutely fabulous idea for online selling plus a perfect site to launch from, as long as you don’t have ‘the’ name you need. Choosing a name that will eventually contribute to your brand equity, profits, internet marketing and above all -your online credibility, shouldn’t be done haphazardly. Especially, since it’s so easily purchased (for a low startup capital), easily maintained and one that, if you choose, may be disposed off at a substantial amount. Intentionally or otherwise, your domain name becomes your de facto brand name, a location or an experience your visitors relate to in the long run. Even if you plan to sell it later on to prospective buyers, it is only an asset! Your challenge is to come up with that one name to funnel visitors through.
Brandmeisters today seem to understand the significance of site names, especially since the emergence of a number of me-too sites. Like a Washington Post reporter put it ? “feature for feature, service for service, discount for discount, even annoyance for annoyance”, a number of sites may turn out to be a close match to yours. Quoting Rebecca Saunders, author of the Big Shot series, “Names have to sound fresh and new even if the site duplicates one already on the net. Names should stir the imagination or otherwise gain the surfer’s attention. Further site name should be as simple as possible, they should be believable, and they should be easy to pronounce, pleasing to the ear, easy to spell and therefore easy to look up on a search engine.” Here’s more on building your handle.
The ‘aha’ name
Domain name consultants will serve you innumerable dos and don’ts on internet domain naming ? a feat that could leave you grumbling with limited choices. Personally, your domain naming methodology need not be absolutely conventional, as long as your imagination is not slave to impractical logic and common sense.
Begin with a paper, pencil and loads of patience. Consider seeking the advice of kith and kin, while you scramble ideas in your brain. Follow closely on what you ought to and ought not to consider. For example, consider characteristics, features, advantages and possibly anything that relates to your products and services. Now try to come up with a domain name that either addresses that one fundamental concept of the site, or that weds two or more key concepts in a single name. All the while, keep in mind, your site’s goals, the image you wish to portray and your target audience. Don’t compromise on your image-how you want your company to be perceived and it’s relation to your core business memorability. Jot down your list of ideas. Then narrow it down to those names you think are most reflective of your products/services. Most importantly, determine if the domain name you like is available and that it doesn’t violate any existing trademarks or copyrights. The last thing you’d want is your hard thought idea of that domain name accidentally offending a fellow netizen. Make sure that it doesn’t mean something entirely different in another language and that you don’t spare chance for the public to associate anything negative with it (easier said than done!). Care for the ins and outs of classic and non classic approaches in domain naming? Read on.
Unless you are a domain name squatter or a start-up capitalizing on domain names – save those tongue-twisters, masqueraded phrases and unpronounceable names.
Your creativity levels, thought and effort should be directed towards one that’s short and sweet. Though, a long name, embedded with your major keywords, can get your site a high search engine ranking, there is no reason you should take advantage of the 67 character limit provided for domain names. Besides, you are too late now. The record of the longest domain name has been set by a Welsh village, with its registration of llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com.
Concentrate on your visitors comfort levels. Leave them no scope for confusion and no loophole to err. Give them a name they can easily guess (without having to quip over the spelling and the location of hyphens) and hopefully, they’ll reciprocate with more clicks.
You could always rely on those prefixes (e, i, net, web, the, my) and suffixes (world, business, company, store). The power of vowels unleashed, you’d generate a potential brand name. E.g. ebay.com, ivillage.com, pcworld.com, smallbusiness.com
Lucky the business if it’s creator has that perfect proper noun to lend his site a name. Atkins.com named after Dr. Atkins and Dell.com after its founder and CEO Michael Dell. A traditional business moving online could capitalize on it’s established brand name. Even acronyms could yield quick domain names. Microsoft is an acronym for MICROcomputer SOFTware and so is Yahoo for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.
Targeting search engine rankings ? e.g. Yahoo that follows alphabetic classification of websites ? consider site names beginning with the digit 1 or the letter ‘a’. Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon.com, cites this as one of his reasons for the name’s choice.
But for those of you driven by the age old myth ? that search engines have a liking for words that are separated by dashes- wake up! Today, when search engines focus on the site content, hyphenated names have no influence. Domain names with or without hyphens is in itself a topic for a forum. A good idea is to register both options if possible and redirect visitors to one site. Walmart.com never let go off it’s original registration (wal-mart.com), even after it changed name. Now both names take you to the same site.
Think of it on a broader angle. A few dollars spend to secure all possible variants of your name (with alternate extensions) will secure your visitors, otherwise likely to contribute to competitor site traffic. More – register possible names your visitors are likely to associate to your domain. The retailer Buy.com registered the domains: “10percentoffamazon.com,” “10percentoffreel.com,” and “10percentoffegghead.com”. Proctor & Gamble is an extreme case of this blanket approach. It registered hundreds of generic domain names relating to all aspects of personal hygiene and healthcare: pimples.com, badbreath.com, underarm.com, diarrhea.com etc. They advertise only one, but use the others to bring traffic, and point all the domain names to one site.
Though generic names can’t be trademarked, are sources of controversy and usually unavailable (if not, costly), your prospective domain name could sound of the genre of women.com, Hotels.com, Furniture.com, Art.com and shoes.com. Nonetheless, the loss of uniqueness in generic names is a serious reason for their unpopularity among namers. Now guess why Amazon was’nt named book.com and ebay not auction.com.
So, if the dictionary lets you down, do not fret to think of words that are arbitrary, previously unheard of and totally unrelated. Yahoo, Google and BlueTooth.com don’t owe their origins to the thesaurus. Sometimes it pays to be whimsy!
allthegoodnamesaretaken.com
In just around 2 years, the number of website names registered has grown from 200 to a voluminous 125,000 per month. And as yet, already over 1.6 million domains have been registered, including the subtitle above! Chances of you finding a 3 character .com domain name unregistered (not on sale!), are thin? very thin.
Here’s the good news. Everyday, around 20,000 domain names expire and get deleted. In addition to the generic domain extensions such as .com, .net, etc. there are approximately 250 different international domains each with their own two-letter country code extension. Speculations of new TLD (Top Level Domain) names include .firm, .store, .arts, .info, .nom, .biz, .pro, .aero, .coop, .museum and .name.
So, don’t settle for the first domain name you think of! Although the supply of domain names is diminishing daily, it’s better to expend more thought at the beginning and save money later. Don’t let the gold rush skate your decision (and later leave you to regret over an unmarketable name). Then again, don’t sit just hatching ideas. Even as you read this, someone halfway across the globe might be beating you to your choice!
Some are just registered by entrepreneurial opportunists hoping to make a fast buck by selling it on. If your choice is taken, the easiest, cheapest and most reliable solution would be to register another name. Did you know that the auction site eBay.com was the second choice of it’s creator after his initial pick EchoBay.com was taken? A good name is a legal name!
Nonetheless, if you own a successful site, that just can’t do without that colonized ideal name, you better ensure your pockets are deep because the owner at the other end knows that there’s nothing quite like the commercial value of a domain name. The highest publicly known sale of domain name was the sale of Business.com for $7,500,000 to eCompanies, a business incubator.
Domain names have been turned into a marketing bargain with its parking capability. A business can register or buy a name for later use. And there are sites that do nothing but park potential names mostly sold for fire-sale prices later on! A Belgian doctor, Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste owns well over 200,000 domain names. It’s a fine pursuit, if you care to keep your distance from brand infringement. In the past, speculators have faced legal charges on trademark violations from the bigwigs (including Microsoft) for having registered microsoftwindows.com, microsoftoffice.com, AirborneExpress.com, CitibankMasterCard.com, HewlettPackardss.com, and Wall-Mart.com. Domain name conflicts that grabbed headlines – Yahoo vs. “yahooka.com” (a marijuana site), Nissan Motors vs. Nissan Computer Corporation. One that caught my personal appeal – Archie Comics company’s trademark driven domain dispute with Veronica.org, a website set up by a loving dad in honor of his 2-year-old daughter Veronica!
From McDonalds to MTV, a lot of press on online brand infringement ( the hijack of popular brand names) has filled the air. Even as I write this, Google Inc. is being challenged the right to use the name “Froogle” for its online shopping service (a New York based carpenter owns Froogles.com – web shopping site).
Each year, about 250,000 cases are decided by the US federal courts. If you have no time to sort it out the good old fashion, you should consider devising a strategic approach for domain naming, reflected in sound corporate policy and executed with effective management. Toady it’s a topic of senior boardroom meetings where competent professionals are assigned to conduct name searches (a less costly venture compared to the possible consequences of dealing with a complaint of infringement.) Take lessons from corporate folklore on the long term effects of a carelessly chosen domain name. People who learnt things the hard way include Art-U-Frame.com that paid $450,000 to acquire the name art.com.
The crux
Your domain name is more than a ubiquity. You have no other billboard or bypass to your site. Statistics prove that direct navigation or guessed URLs account for majority of the traffic to a site (64.43%), much more than the search engines can bring (35.55%). Eat, drink and sleep on your idea before you move to register that killer name. Don’t hassle, thinking there are nodomainnamesleft.com (that’s taken too!). Your share of homework should save you a lot of misery down the road.
Besides, if you can’t trademark your design scheme, product idea and marketing strategy, here’s something you can. Your domain name is perhaps the only thing that you can own on the Internet. Remember, there’s always more to a name than just the name itself! Happy naming!
Liji is a PostGraduate in Software Science, with a flair for writing on anything under the sun. She puts her dexterity to work, writing technical articles in her areas of interest which include Internet programming, web design and development, ecommerce and other related issues.
A Lesson In Email: The Money Is In The List… With The Back-End Sales
Firstly, back-end sales is eMail Marketing at its best, so for this to work you need to already have a list of customers that have bought from you before.
The reason for this is because Back-end sales, are the ultimate way to realize the true ‘life-time value’ of your customers/list. Once someone buys from you, and if their experience with your product is good, then you will have no problems selling to them again and again.
Back end sales will equate to about 75-85% of your overall income. This is how important and powerful this marketing method really is.
But first, to accommodate you if you are totally new to this whole internet marketing thing.
A back-end sale is simply a sale you make from a customer who has purchased from you in the past. Meaning, lets say a first time buyer orders your new ebook. You find a way to collect their email address (through your newsletter, or have them fill out a form during the order process) so you can eMail them promos in the future. Now every time that same customer buys something from your eMail promotions– –that is a back-end sale, and more profits in your pocket.
As Netrepreneurs, we all know that to acquire our FIRST TIME customers is where the majority of our marketing budget goes. We have to some how direct them to our website, persuade them to sign-up for our mailings and entice them with our sales copy to purchase one of our products.
With all this time, money and energy being spent drawing these first time customers to our website and sales copy it’s no wonder why you cannot over look the power of following up and back-end sales–if you want to make substantial profits.
You see when a prospect finally makes the conscious decision to buy from you, then you have succeeded in:
1) Establishing your Credibility to that person
2) Building a mutually beneficial relationship with him/her.
3) (obviously) Closing the FIRST sale.
Now after the first sale, IF your product or service:
1–Comes with SUPERB customer service (from you)
2–Lives up to your promises and their expectations
3–Is of exceptional quality
4–Offers them great value
Then…
This is the time to take ADVANTAGE of this relationship and offer this person more value.
Now since they have bought from you in the past and enjoyed the product–selling to them again and again will be so much easier than acquiring a totally new FIRST TIME customers.
The reason for this, is because your customer base will already trust you and feel bonded with you on some level.
So if you want to really succeed online you MUST focus on your current customer base. Like I said earlier, they will make up the bulk of your profits (75-85%).
How do you do this?
Well for starters you can simply offer them another product, related to their first purchase, at a “Valued Customer” discount.
Try doing this for your attempted second sale from them..anythng for them to purchase from you again. And if that products lives up to The first one:
1–Comes with SUPERB customer service (from you)
2–Lives up to your promises and their expectations
3–Is of exceptional quality
4–Offers them great value
This will make the subsequent sales much, much easier to close..because you have:
1) Overcome the obstacles of the first sale.
2) Reinforced your Value to the customer with another excellent product.
Now…on to offers. Another important segment of back-end sales is.. well, What are you going to sell them? (after you run out of your own products?)
Well after you sold them your featured product, your discounted product, your new product and so forth.
Where do you get more products to continue to capitalize on your customer’s “life time value”?
If you don’t want to go into the whole expenditure of developing another product: Time, Money, Research, Headaches, etc.
Just join an affiliate program. This is what I like to refer to as being the ‘ultimate back-end.’
YOU WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF PRODUCTS. Only thing is, make sure the affiliate products are of the same great quality as yours. Also, make sure they are somehow related. If you need help finding affiliate programs to join and promote as back-end product, contact me and I will give you some valuable recommendations for hot new products and services out there.
I truly hope you found this writing enjoyable and informative.
Remember:
You spend all your time and money on getting that first sale. Once you have overcome this, you have that person’s trust–so they will be much more open to your recommendations.
Realize this. And then Profit from your customer’s “Life Time Value” through your powerful back-end products.
Thanks again for reading. I hope you see now that Back-End Sales are the way to go for financial independence from your eBiz.
To your Success,
Anthony L. Davenport
About The Author
I have been online for 2yrs and I will help you the best I can, just visit and email me.
Kill the Hype
She was waiting for me when I returned from a meeting. Standing outside my office door, I could tell by her downward glance, Jodie was not there to give me good news on the project. Despite her confident, enthusiastic and definitive style, she failed to deliver what she had pitched. It was not the first time.
Jodie operated counter to the Scottish proverb advising: “Never let your feet run faster than your shoes.” She was full of ideas, full of promise, full of idealism, and short on results. Her over-promising was stalling her career. You see, results are what differentiate people who are winning at working from people who aren’t. Results are how both companies, and people, prosper. As much as Jodie talked, with absolute confidence, about what she was going to do, she didn’t do it.
There’s no shortage of Jodies in the workplace. There are too many people talking about what they’re going to do, want to do, or are thinking about doing. They paint intriguing pictures with their exuberance and that helps them get the assignment. But they fail to deliver on the promise. In my twenty years in management, I found them in both consultants and in-house staffs. I’ve even hired a few. I guess I wanted to believe they could do what they said.
But I learned they’re much like town billboards claiming “best hamburger in the world,” or books and magazines touting that I can have flat abs in five minutes a day, build self-esteem in ten days, and become a millionaire in five easy steps. While promises may be the essence of advertising, and over-promising may get books, magazines, products and services sold, they cause disappointment. Unfilled promises build our hopes and diminish our trust.
So, when you find someone who builds your hopes and enhances your trust, take note. You see, there’s one talent that defines people who are winning at working. They don’t disappoint. They deliver. They consistently produce what they say they will. And they do it again and again and again. They may pitch their ideas with passion and exuberance, or caution and logic, but they don’t hype them.
People who are winning at working deliver what they promise. If anything they under-promise and over-deliver, without ever sandbagging. Every time they do what they say they’re going to do, they build their credibility. And credibility builds careers. But, there’s another benefit too. Self-esteem soars when you surprise and delight a boss, a client, or a teammate by delivering more than you promised. Want to start winning at working? Don’t promise more than you can deliver. And kill the hype.
(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.
Sign up to receive Nan’s free biweekly eColumn at http://www.winningatworking.com. Nan Russell has spent over twenty years in management, most recently with QVC as a Vice President. She has held leadership positions in Human Resource Development, Communication, Marketing and line Management. Nan has a B.A. from Stanford University and M.A. from the University of Michigan. Currently working on her first book, Winning at Working: 10 Lessons Shared, Nan is a writer, columnist, small business owner, and speaker. Visit http://www.nanrussell.com or contact Nan at info@nanrussell.com.
Write Your eBook Fast: First Steps to Finishing Line
Why write an eBook?
You want ongoing, lifelong multiple streams of income. You want to raise your credibility and trust ratings with clients or customers. You want to get your message out so the world can be a better place.
You want to spend only a little time on it. (Would you be willing to spend 4 hours a week?) You want to get it out fast (Would 4-8 weeks be OK?) You want to market for a low-cost investment. And, for some of you, you are ready to be innovative and even take a small risk to get your eBook read by hundreds of thousands, rather than hundreds!
Where are you now?
You have an idea for your eBook; you have a lot of ideas! Take a moment and decide which one you are most passionate about now and will be for the next year or two. Focus on one great idea, where you know what the audience needs or wants– your solutions to their problem.
Or, do you have your eBook well on its way, but aren’t finished. You need advice on how to get it done, what’s needed to publish (not much!), and how to distribute it to pull continuous monthly sales that can be 1/3 to 1/2 your income?
Who Should Write an eBook?
- If you want to share your unique message world-wide to help people create a better life.
- If you are ready to invest a little to reap a great deal.
- If you are a business person who want to expand your business and be a leader in your field.
- If you are willing to move much faster than traditional publishing to sell faster, more, and create more cash flow for marketing.
What do I Need to Know Before I write this eBook?
1. To help make your eBook successful apply the essential “Seven Hot-Selling Points.” These include title, table of contents, thesis, “60 second tell and sell,” one preferred audience, introduction and the back cover.
Why? Every part of your book can be a sales tool. When you include the above “hot-selling points” you will have a roadmap to guide you to writing a focused, organized, compelling book that you will only have to edit a few times.
2. You also need to know how to write a focused, organized, chapter each time. Think format. Each chapter should have approximately the same number of pages if it is a self-help book. Each book chapter may need an introduction, an opening few questions or shocking facts to hook the reader to keep reading, a few stories or analogies to illustrate your how-to’s, and an ending that may be a summary, questions to ponder, or action steps to take.
Designing every chapter and knowing your essential “hot-selling points” are your eBook’s 24/7 sales team and a beacon that brings out your best: writing a compelling, easy to read, inspiring and informational eBook that hundreds of thousands of buyers will want.
About The Author
Judy Cullins: 20-year author, speaker, book coach
Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams
eBk: “Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Online”
www.bookcoaching.com/products.shtml
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Ph:619/466/0622
Promote Your Business and Get Paid for Doing It!
How can you gain credibility and exposure for you and your business, reach a motivated audience, develop a far-flung network, hone your presentation skills — and get paid to do it?
Many writers, artists, speakers and entrepreneurs have found an answer: they teach classes in adult education programs.
Adult education is big business. In the new century, “change” is a hot topic and learning is no longer confined to traditional degree programs. As people want to grow their careers and enrich their lives, specialized programs have evolved to reach this market.
Some teaching venues require at least a master’s degree. Others allow you to share your unique skills, from designing brochures to tarot reading. Temple University’s continuing education program has offered a half-day class taught by a cleaning lady. The subject? Speed cleaning. If a target market exists for your business or if you have knowledge that people can use on the job, chances are a target market exists for you in the world of adult education.
By entering this world, you can demonstrate your skills to a receptive audience, meet some terrific people, learn more than you expected and even have some fun. Teaching requires more than a good speaking voice and a knowledge-filled brain. Every minute you are in the classroom, you are marketing yourself to your students. You must keep students involved for up to eight hours. Since the average adult attention span is about fifteen minutes, you have to design exercises, activities and questions. You have to deal with the unexpected. Students will arrive late, ask off-the-wall questions and challenge your expertise. Occasionally, students will be rude, insulting or even abusive.
Most people who teach find themselves exhausted after even a short class, yet also exhilarated. Teaching can be a high when everything goes well. The secret of successful part-time teaching is to identify your purpose in teaching and fine-tune your skills to your target market.
You want to reach students who are also potential customers. If a school features astrology and visualization, your course on finding the lowest mortgage rate won’t fit, unless you suggest people consult the stars to meet their financial goals.
People who have added teaching to their promotional toolkit report finding success and fun along the way. One public relations consultant gets forty percent of her clients from adult education classes. A writer has developed a secondstream of income and a never-ending source of ideas. The opportunities are available to everyone, everywhere.
Want to learn more? Read Cathy Goodwin’s ebook, published by intellectua.com: How to get started teaching in adult ed programs. For more information, contact Cath.
About The Author
Cathy Goodwin, Ph.D., is an author, speaker and career/business consultant, helping midlife professionals take their First step to a Second Career. http://www.cathygoodwin.com.
“Ten secrets of mastering a major life change” mailto:subscribe@cathygoodwin.com
Contact: cathy@cathygoodwin.com 505-534-4294
8 ?Thurvival Skills? for 05
Just what is a “thurvival skill?” It’s a skill that let’s you thrive and survive at the same time. In today’s economy it’s not enough to just be good. You need to be better than your counterparts and colleagues. It’s all about creating an action plan to keep you name in the limelight and on the top of the list. What list am I talking about? The one that says call X, hire X or X is the best person for the job. Or event he list that reads we can get rid of everyone but X. Is this person you? It could be.
It takes a particular skill set.
1. Flexibility-You need to go with the flow. There are things you can’t change so be prepared to accept the consequences and move on. Be adaptable no matter what the circumstances and don’t let adversity get you off your game plan.
2. Accessibility – Opportunities happen in a flash. You need to be where people can reach you: cell, phone, fax, and email, whatever. Let you number two person know how to reach you in case that once in a lifetime opportunity presents itself. If people need you, respond that day if at all possible. If you don’t, someone else will and you will have lost your edge.
3. Visibility – Who are you? Can people find you? Do an ego search on GOOGLE. Type in your name and see what shows up. At the very least, you should see some basic listing about yourself. So you want to improve the odds of your being found? Get a personal website and use your name as the domain.
4. Credibility – Are you an expert at something? If not, why not? It’s easy to become one and then use need to use that expert status to your advantage. The more credentials you have in your CV, the more power it wields when you seek out opportunities.
5. Connectivity – Who can you call when you need help? Remember it’s a quid-pro-quo world so just don’t start calling people when you are in a bind. They probably won’t call back if you already haven’t established a relationship.
6. Your Me-factor – You simply have to think about yourself. Yea, I know the cheers for the team and all that stuff. Well, the cold hard truth is that the team isn’t going to cut it when your you-know-what is on the line. You need to look out for numero uno. Allocate time for personal enhancement and enrichment every day. Don’t get caught up in the party line that you are too busy to manage your own career.
7. Technologically savvy ? Big deal. Do you know how to use email? Do you know how to use it to your advantage? Do you use it to keep in contact, solidify a relationship, alert someone as to how and where you can be reached or get new business? Your technology skills will make you or break you in coming years so spend a little time developing this particular knowledge base.
8. Investment programs-Not your 401K or IRA investments, but investments in you as a person. What’s going to affect your bottom line? Have you kept up with current industry technology? Do you know what skill sets are in demand for today’s top employers? Keep that knowledge base at the cutting edge and you will have leverage over your competition.
If you hone these skills, you are on your way to successfully negotiating the balance of the year both employed and enjoying your job. Invest in yourself as part of your personal portfolio. Make 2005 the year of you where you can both thrive and survive.
JoAnn Hines’ specialty is PACKAGING PEOPLE.
Whether you want to be paid more, you just lost your job, or you want to progress in the one you have, Ms. Hines advice and expertise can help you transform your personal brand. She can show you how to package yourself and make your brand a hot commodity. It’s easy once you know the ropes and begin to utilize her insider’s secrets. She shows you step by step how to increase your visibility, credibility and marketability with easy to use tutorials and templates.
It is time to get started “Packaging Yourself.”
Email me the Chief People Packager @pkgcoach@aol.com
