Lessons in Business Naming from Newspaper Headlines

Guest Post

Lessons in Business Naming from Newspaper Headlines
Copyright (c) 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Creative Marketing Solutions
http://www.yudkin.com/



Two headlines in the "Home" section of my local newspaper
caught my eye the other day: "Natural floors can be knotty and
nice" and "Serving cheese with ease." Both headlines involve
enjoyable wordplay of the sort that could easily figure in
business names or tag lines. I can imagine "KnottyandNice.com"
as the domain name for a wooden items crafts shop, and "Cheese
with ease" as the tag line for a cheese lovers' online
community.

So I went looking for some tips on writing news headlines,
thinking they might offer valuable insights for naming, too.
After all, news editors need to come up with informative, catchy
headers numerous times every workday.

Even more challenging, their headers need to fit the available
space. They need to be able to condense or stretch an idea's
expression, depending on how many columns an article spreads
across.

My Google search didn't quickly turn up any such tips, though.
Maybe headline writing is an art passed on in secret by grizzled,
ink-stained veterans during the midnight shift.

Nevertheless, by pondering a couple of dozen headlines, I was
able to observe several key points.

1. Newspaper headline writers collect short, vivid verbs, such as
"mines" ("Obama mines small, red states"), "stirs,"
"pushes," "clings," "set," "edges," "sparks,"
"tosses," "sees," "OKs" and much more. Not only can
headlines with verbs tell a complete story, they convey energy.

Because verbs are frequently overlooked as an element in naming,
these punchy little words can help you come up with a
trademarkable name or a free domain in a competitive industry.

2. Long, vivid words can also come in handy. In the headline
"Super Bowl party can be gastronomical success," the word
"gastronomical" rescues the line from dullness. It's a
wonderful word that could be tweaked in a zillion creative ways
for a company name or tag line.

The lesson: long, vivid words can help you convey a complicated
idea concisely, as long as your average customer has an inkling
of their meaning.

3. Short, vivid words come in useful, too. Take a look at the
word "ire" in the headline "Delay in polar bear decision draws
ire of Senate." This is another kind of word that most people
understand yet probably wouldn't think to use.

4. Combined cleverly, ordinary words can please inordinately.
Besides the rhyme in "cheese with ease" and the homonym in
"knotty and nice," I also found "Hoops and hollers" atop a
photo of kids cheering at a basketball game, which illustrates
alliteration - the repetition of initial letters or sounds.

Another headline, "Bush comes clean with former addicts," used
an expression with two meanings that both tie in with the subject
matter - George W. Bush talking openly about his former drinking
problem.

All in all, your newspaper can serve as a source of instruction
and inspiration for naming. Just make sure you screen out
bloopers like these, which have actually appeared in newspapers:

* Blind Woman Gets New Kidney from Dad she Hasn't Seen in Years

* Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One

* Quarter of a Million Chinese Live on Water

* Stolen Painting Found by Tree

* Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

* Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

* Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

* Kids Make Nutritious Snacks


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that
brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines
for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an
appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of
"19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line"
at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm

Greg Cryns
Expert Wordpress Design and Site Promotion
Work At Home Profiles (membership site for $3.77 per month)
.
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When (and When NOT) to Charge for Your Info Products

Guest Post

When (and When NOT) to Charge for Your Info Products
Copyright (c) 2009 Judy Murdoch
Highly Contagious Marketing
http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm



One of my clients recently asked me whether she should charge for
a series of tip sheets she created for families traveling with
young children. Great question.

There's quite a bit of confusion around whether you should sell
or give away your information products. About half the advice I
hear favors giving information away for free. The other half
favors charging.

The truth is, sometimes you should give information and resources
away and sometimes you should sell them. The real question is
WHEN to charge and when not to.

In this article, I'll give you some guidelines around when to
charge and when to give information away.

=======================================
Start with What Your Business Needs Now
=======================================

Asking where your business is at and what you need to be
successful is a great place to begin.

Every business needs customers, right? So let's look at how
strangers become customers. They go through three stages:

~ Stage One: Visibility (V)

To become a customer a person first needs to know your product
exists. You become visible by getting your product and marketing
message in front of people who fit your ideal customer
description.

~ Stage Two: Credibility (C)

Knowing that your product exists is usually not enough to get
someone to pay cold hard cash for it. Nope, they're thinking
"well, that sounds good but how do I know it will really work?"

During the Credibility stage you need to give them information
that demonstrates your product will deliver as promised.

~ Stage Three: Profitability (P)

Once your prospect is convinced that your product will, indeed,
deliver the promised value, they will pay you and become a
customer.

=======================================
V to C to P = Marketing Funnel
=======================================

Picture a funnel with lots of people coming in the widest part
(visibility), a percentage sticking around to learn more
(credibility), and a percentage of those who stick around
becoming customers (profitability).

At any given time in the life of your business, there are people
at different stages of becoming customers. Some are learning
about you for the first time, some are checking you out to decide
whether they will buy, and some are deciding to buy and paying
you.

Ideally, you have a steady stream of people constantly entering
and moving through the funnel. If they don't enter or don't
continue through, you have a problem and it shows up in your
bottom line: You don't have enough paying customers.

=======================================
When to Give Away and When to Charge
=======================================

To decide whether or not to charge for an information product, I
suggest you take a look at how many people are at each of the
three stages.

Your goal is to use information products as an incentive for
prospects and customers to take the next step.

~ When You Need More Visibility

If you're just starting your business or you want to enter a new
market, you probably need more visibility. You need people to
know your product exists.

When visibility is your goal, I recommend you give something away
that provides value and introduces people to your product or
service.

Why? The goal for visibility is to answer the following
questions:

1. What is it ("it" being your product or service)

2. Does it help someone like me?

You want to give something away that will answer these questions
while asking for something minimal from the prospect.

A common example is offering a free Ezine subscription or a free
report your prospects can download in exchange for their E-mail
address or phone number.

~ When You Need More Credibility

Credibility is an issue when you're getting a lot of first time
visitors and inquiries but not enough are coming back.

For most products and services, people need repeated
demonstrations of what you can do for them. They need to trust
you.

When you are building credibility, I suggest you have two
information products: one that is free and one that you sell.

1. A free product that allows you to build a relationship with
your prospects. Products like Ezines are great because you get a
chance to connect with customers once a month or more.

2. Product you charge for which offers a higher level of customer
value.

Ideally, this is a "no brainer" purchase. Something for which
the value is so obvious for what you're charging that most
people don't need to think too long or hard about whether to
buy.

Although you will be making some money, the real purpose is to
demonstrate credibility and build trust.

Warning: The biggest complaint I hear is when someone offers a
free report or one-hour teleclass that turns out to be little
more than a sales pitch.

Again, you are creating value and building trust. Doing both will
enable you to convert more prospects to paying customers when the
opportunity presents itself.

A sneaky sales pitch will undermine the trust you are trying to
build.

~ If You Need More Profitability

If you have a large, loyal base of readers, subscribers, or
members who have been hanging out with you for several months and
like what they're getting, some of them will want to invest some
serious time and money for your focused time and attention.

For example, a consultant I know sends out a free monthly Ezine
to her mailing list and sells low cost Tip Sheets, Checklists,
and so on.

Each month 3-5 of her subscribers contact her to learn more about
her workshops and seminars costing $500+. She usually books 6 to
8 engagements this way each year.

She explained it to me like this, "I try to provide something
useful that my readers can apply right away. For example, I sell
a $5.00 meeting organizer they can use to have more productive
meetings. Sometimes this is all they need."

"But sometimes they're in a situation that goes way beyond the
DIY stage. They need someone from outside the company to step in
and help them set up a new system or to help them hire a new
executive."

Allowing your prospects to upgrade (or escalate) and get a higher
level of support is not only profitable, it's how you can really
serve your clients.

=======================================
Bottom Line
=======================================

Whether or not to charge for your information products depends on
what your business needs in terms of developing customer
relationships.

The less known you are to people fitting your ideal customer
profile, the more important it is to offer free or low cost
information products which provide something of value.

As you build trust and as your prospects learn how you can help
them, you can offer more expensive, higher commitment products
for those who want (and can afford) them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost,
effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals,
guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances.
To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt?
Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers
Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@...

Greg Cryns
Expert Wordpress Design and Site Promotion

How to Get Your Blog Published on Amazon's Kindle

Guest post by one of my favorite people, Merle. Kindle is an interesting phenomenon. When the prices come down it will certainly be more widely used. I want to learn more about this.

How to Get Your Blog Published on Amazon's Kindle
By Merle http://Merlesworld.com

When Oprah announced on her show that she "LOVES" Amazon's
Kindle, millions of people rushed out to get one. First
introduced in 2007, the "Kindle" is Amazon's electronic
replacement for books. It's a portable, wireless device
that allows you to download books, magazines, newspapers,
even blogs instantly and take them with you anywhere.

Since the Kindle can hold over 1,500 books, that's like
carrying around an entire library in the palm of your
hand.

The wireless connection is built in and provided at no
charge by Amazon. There's also a built in browser for
viewing websites and reading emails.

Amazon's Kindle Store has over 230,000 ebooks to download,
plus U.S. and International newspapers, magazines, even blogs.
Almost all of the ebooks sell for $9.99 or less. The latest
model is a larger more improved Kindle DX which was made
available this year. Boosting a bigger screen and longer
battery life, it can even read to you out loud. Now that
makes for a nice bedtime story. It also holds over 3,500
books and sells for about $489.00.

The Kindle can also display PDF's which you can transfer
from your computer with a USB cable. The older versions
of the Kindle could read PDF's and Word documents, but
they had to be emailed to Amazon first to convert them
to a format readable by the Kindle. This option is
still available as well.

So what does all this mean to you? Well, if you're a blog
publisher you can now publish your blogs in the Kindle
Store where users can subscribe to them for a monthly
fee. This is a great way to make some money and increase
your subscriber base all at the same time.

First you'll need to go to http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com
to set up an account and submit your blogs for approval.
Once approved your Blog "goes live" in the Kindle Store
within 12 to 48 hours.

The Kindle gives the user full text and images from the
blogs they are subscribed to, which unlike an RSS feed
only gives you the headlines.

When submitting your blog for approval here's the information
you'll need:

1) Blog Title
2) Blog Tagline
3) Description
4) Image from top of your blog (banner or masthead)
5) Screenshot of your blog (optional)
6) Posting Frequency

It's really pretty simple to get your blogs listed.

So how does the payment process work? Good question,
nice to see you're paying attention. You'll be paid
30% of the monthly blog subscription price. Amazon
sets the price, not you. It's priced on what they think
is a "fair value" for their customers. For example,
my two blogs were set at $0.99 a month.

All blog subscriptions are free for the first 14 days.
Then they're billed at the monthly subscription price.
Blogs are wirelessly updated throughout the day.

You'll be paid by check or EFT, your choice. Electronic
Funds Transfer has no charge, but if you opt for a
paper check and live in the U.S. you'll have an $8.00
fee attached. Payments are sent once your earnings
reach $50.00.

If you publish a blog I'd strongly encourage you to
get it listed in Amazon's Kindle Store. It won't
cost you a thing but a few minutes of your time and
makes for great free exposure..

For more on the Kindle see:

http://tinyurl.com/lqhcug

There's a forum for issues related to Kindle for blogs
at http://forums.kindlecentral.com/forums/index.jspa

------------------------------------
By Merle- The pay-per-click Authority when it comes
to paid search engine advertising. With helpful articles,
how-to's and tips that will help you make the most from
your advertising investment. Download a FREE "How To"
ebook by subscribing to our ezine at
http://www.PayPerClickResearch.com

Photo by JingleFly

Greg Cryns
Beautiful WordPress Websites for YOU
.
.

Handling Twitter followers

Why do you follow people on Twitter? I mean, really, if you have more than 200 people you follow then it is near impossible to see all of their posts or even a small portion of them. If you do have time, then you are spending (wasting) too much time on Twitter IMHO unless you are wealthy with nothing else to do.

I can tell that I follow people hoping that I can eventually meet up with them on the phone or in person some time. I believe that email just does not hack it for really getting to know someone. But sometimes they don't follow me in return.

I used to get angry at those people but now I realize that they are not rejecting ME, especially since they know very precious little about me. They are just keeping their channels clear so they don't waste much time.

There are people who you want to check in on occasionally. I suggest that you keep their Twitter name handy in an email file folder. You can check that folder as often as you have the time and desire to see what they are posting about.

Another thing you can do is send them a direct message (DM). Then they will always be available in your DM page but that can get hard to manage unless you reserve DM just for this purpose.

Yet another technique would be to keep a list of these special people in a reserved section of your blog or website. This way you would have a constant reminder of their presence as well.

How do you handle this situation?

Greg Cryns

Information Products: The Limits of Repurposing

Information Products: The Limits of Repurposing

by Marcia Yudkin

Today I visited the giveaway page of a group promotion and have a lesson to share about do's and don'ts in reusing previously created material for purposes such as this. Simply put: Make sure reports and recordings present you in the best possible light to first-time readers or listeners. Don't go rummaging among the content you have hanging around without first considering whether or not the material makes sense apart from the occasion for which you created it.

The first recording I listened to from this giveaway page was a preview
teleseminar for a weekend workshop that took place last February. The recording
did have some useful content. However, at least 35% of the audio consisted of
promotion for an event that took place last year. This created a poor
impression by wasting my time. It made the person who had selected this item to
be given away now seem thoughtless and absentminded.

The second recording made an even worse, self-sabotaging mistake. It was a
teleseminar interview of an expert in which the interviewer did not introduce
himself. He merely introduced the expert. In the original context, this may
have made sense, if those who signed up for the call knew who he was. (Note,
though, that on professional radio and TV, even the most famous interviewers
always introduce themselves or are introduced.) On the giveaway page, the
interviewer is named and appears to be the one who contributed the interview.
But when listeners hear the interview, they are normally far away from the
giveaway page, making this contributed item useless for the interviewer’s
self-promotion.

I am pretty sure that both of these giveaway participants did not take the time
to listen to what they had decided to give away. The presentations were
probably originally well received, so they figured they could reuse them for the
current purpose.

Four Repurposing Criteria

Don't make their asinine assumption! Before reusing something you previously
created, take another look or listen with the following questions in mind.

1. Audience. Compare the original audience for your item with the proposed
repurposed audience. Did you present your ideas in a way that made sense for
the first and will equally make sense for the second? You may think that
dentists have the same cash flow problems as acupuncturists, but if the
acupuncturists keep hearing or reading “dentist, dentist, dentist,” they
might not be receptive. If the new audience won’t know you, are you properly
introduced in this piece?

2. Promotional offer. Normally it’s rude to reuse material designed to
promote an event that is no longer valid and expect that readers or listeners
won't mind. I always edit promos out of teleseminar recordings before
repurposing them, out of consideration for the audience, unless the promotional
offer remains in force. You should do so, too.

3. Content. Besides an offer, is there anything else that’s now seriously out
of date in your product? To take an extreme case, something discussing online
marketing that refers to CompuServe and Prodigy (services that were popular in
the early 1990s) would be dismissed as dinosaur food now. Likewise, repurposed
material should make little or no reference to current events.

4. Quality. Is the technical level of your product either adequate or
excellent? Sometimes things work well for one purpose but backfire in another
setting. A video that explains something well within a longer how-to product
might not be looked on as kindly out of context, or vice versa. People who
already know and trust you may hardly notice sound interference or garish images
that distract and turn off strangers.

"Create it once, reuse it a thousand times." This saying contains important
wisdom for information marketers as long as you also stop and think before
repurposing!

The author of 11 books and five multimedia home-study courses, Marcia Yudkin has
been selling information in one form or another since 1981. Download a free
recording of her answers to the most commonly asked questions about information
marketing by entering your information into the privacy-assured request box at
http://www.yudkin.com/informationempire.htm .


Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles - $3.77 per month with great benefits
.

My Live Signature review

You've seen those fancy signatures. You wanted one but thought it would take too much time.

Well, here is My Live Signature to the rescue!

They have scads of fonts and sizes and colors, too! So, jump on your keyboard and head on over to My Live Signature.

I am not an affiliate of this company, just a grateful admirer. How do you like my new signature?

Link Search Tool - very handy for SEO

This bird knows how to search for food, for sure.

If you are searching for blog ideas, you may want to try this nifty online (free) tool.
Solo Seo Link Search Tool

For example, this is what it returns for "network marketing" blogs and forums.

Do you know what "inurl" and "intitle" mean for search? Try it as in a search and you will not need more explanation.

Terms found for "network marketing"

network marketing forum
"network marketing forum"
intitle:network marketing forum
inurl:network marketing forum
network marketing blog
"network marketing blog"
intitle:network marketing blog
inurl:network marketing blog
"add comment" network marketing
"post comment" network marketing
network marketing members
network marketing join
network marketing tag
intitle:tag network marketing
intitle:post network marketing
network marketing guest writer
network marketing guest blog post writer
network marketing submit content
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network marketing add content
network marketing guest blogger wanted

Another tip: check out the SEO Chat Forums.






Work At Home Profiles - $3.77 per month with great benefits .
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Help! I want to make money fast!

Picture: Chinatown in San Franciso


I received a letter from a nice lady today. She wants to learn how to make money on the Internet as soon as possible.

So, I promised to guide her through the process and I will continue to do so. I am very encouraged by her message since she did take a look at Twitter, as suggested. She is interested in blogging as well. If you want to sell a product or service on the Web, it is highly encouraged to have a blog or website, though there are ways you can sell stuff without those (think eBay and Craigslist). Wisely so, she is concerned about Internet safety.


Here is her message:

I talked to you on the phone earlier this week. I signed up with Twitter, so far I have 32 following and 27 followers, what exactly does that mean. How exactly do Twitter work and is it safe. How often do you have to do updates? Why people want to know what are you doing? It is kind of scary to me, how I know that some of these people are not serial killers. Do I have to email any of them back like the emails I receive stating "thanks for following me and I will follow you back". Do I have to send any of these people emails.


When you stated in the email earlier get a blog, do I have to have my pictures on there. What exactly is a blog and what do I talk about. What exactly does this mean when you stated..... Put the blog link up in your profile on Twitter and visit the profile of someone else (who is business oriented) who has a lot of followers. Then follow his/her followers. I've found that about 70% of those you follow will follow you back. How do you make money with Twitter, that is my main question.

Here is my response:

If you post something, 27 of the 32 people you are following will see it because those 27 chose to follow you as well. Twitter is as safe or not as any other place on the web. We have the choice to worry about it or not. I don't worry, but I do not take chances either. There are no direct emails to your email unless you send them your email address. Otherwise they can send a DM (direct message) to you via Twitter, but they don't know your email address.

Blog: you can write about anything you want to write about. Hobby? News? Business? I write about Internet Marketing on my blog: http://gregcryns.blogspot.com

If you don't like to read swears, don't look at this excellent mommy blog: http://www.TheBloggess.com Jen is one of the web's most successful mommy bloggers.

Twitter: you need to fill out a Profile page where you can also put a link to your website or blog that people can click on. So, if you are selling something, for example, that would lead them right to your business website.

How do you make money on Twitter? It's a long and laborious process at best. You can meet a lot of people who can help you make money and you can learn a whole lot about making money, but, trust me, the social networks are not fast ways to make money.

I'll go out on a limb: there are NO fast ways to make money on the Internet. If you need money immediately, you can sell stuff on eBay or find an offline job. But to make money legal and fast, I am clueless.

****************************
Greg Cryns
Expert WordPress Design at The Mighty Mo

Check out these Gift card Incentives




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Want good SEO? Read Google's recommendations

Here is a brief summary of Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide published in November 2008. If you want to learn the basics of SEO - search engine optimization - you will want to study this guide. Below are the Headlines in the article. You can download the .pdf file HERE.

1. Create unique, accurate page titles

2. Make use of the "description" meta tag

3. Improve the structure of your URLs (keywords in the link)

4. Make your site easier to navigate

5. Offer quality content and services

6. Write better anchor text

7. Use heading tags appropriately

8. Optimize your use of images

9. Make effective use of robots.txt

10. Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links

11. Promote your website in the right ways

12. Make use of free webmaster tools - Google's Webmaster Tools

13. Take advantage of web analytics services - Google Analytics

Greg Cryns
The Mighty Mo Wordpress Design and Promotion

Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing Questions

Guest post

What is Pay Per Click Marketing?
By Christopher Castillo

How Does Pay Per Click (PPC) Work?

Advertisements are developed that market a particular product or service. These ads are then place into a major search engine such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. The search engine then places the ad as a sponsor link on their page whenever certain key words are typed into their search terms. If you notice on Google, the ads on the top and right hand margins state that they are sponsored links. These are pay per click advertisements. The remaining results below the ads are organic results, or results that are not paid for.

The marketer then pays that search engine accordingly by rate that the search engine charges per click on the ad. The more frequently that a particular key word that is related to the ad is clicked on, the higher the price that the search engine will charge for each click. PPC is a great way for people to pay to drive targeted traffic to their website. A marketer can bid on certain key words as well. The more money that is payed per click, the better the placement the marketer will obtain on the search engines listings for a given keyword search.

How easy is it to create a PPC campaign?

Website traffic is the bottom line for all marketers on the internet. A large amount of traffic can be directed toward a particular website fairly quickly if a quality PPC campaign is established. It does take a fair amount of research of a campaign to get to the point where the cost per click is worth while for the amount of traffic, and revenue generated from that traffic, to make a successful profit. It may take some trial and error methods to obtain the sales that one anticipates with regards to the budget they are working with.

Who can benefit from having a PPC campaign?

Paying by click works well for companies or individuals interested in marketing a product or service where the "natural" website traffic they may receive without a PPC campaign is not enough. Also, many people new to online marketing, or just beginning to start affiliate marketing, can benefit from this type of campaign. Reason being, the only other option to drive web traffic to a site would be to research the multitude of traffic driving techniques and tools for obtaining high rankings for a certain keyword, and then utilize the techniques that one feels will produce the best marketing strategies for that particular campaign.

On Google for example, Google webmasters changed their algorithms over 4,000 times last year. What does that mean in respect to website marketing? Basically they manipulate the way that Google decides how and why it will rank one website over a competitors site. The most basic way to gain a higher ranking is by having as much "gravity" to ones campaign sites as possible. Gravity in this respect refers mostly to how much valid content is actually available online. The more sites one has that link to their mainpage, the more gravity they are said to have.

However, this is just the basis for how Google ranks sites. They also use social networking sites, social bookmarking, original to redundant video/article ratios, popularity of one particular visitor to your site, (for example, if President Obama visits the website via his own Facebook page,) quality of articles and related sites, how long someone visits a site, and countless other ways that keep marketers guessing as to how they can obtain the top rankings.

What is the best way to begin a PPC campaign?

In my opinion the best way to begin marketing via this type of campaign is through the aid of a PPC software product. There are many products available (some at little or no cost,) that can help one significantly both in setting up their campaign as well as in understanding the basics. Doing good competitive research is also highly recommended.

Expert Author Christopher M. Castillo of http://www.HomeMarketingGuru.com is a top internet marketing guru who works with industry leaders in developing the best tools to automate making money online. His real passion is for helping others achieve their goals, dreams and aspirations of earning a full time living online with his methods. Christopher is also known for small business consulting, business plan creation and for teaching others how to make business success. Christopher M. Castillo is an expert in marketing holds a BBA and MBA in Marketing and has decades of experience in Marketing for corporations, small business and non-profit organizations. To learn more how Christopher M. Castillo and his team of Mentors can teach you to make money online today, visit them at http://www.HomeMarketingGuru.com and take a FREE TEST DRIVE!!!

Numbers in your domain name

Guest post

The Mystique of Numbers in Company Names
Copyright (c) 2009 Marcia Yudkin


While visiting the House of the Seven Gables in Salem,
Massachusetts two weeks ago, made famous in the 1851 book by
Nathaniel Hawthorne, I mentally tried out other numbers to see if
they would sound as spooky and portentous.

To my ear, House of the Five Gables sounds all too ordinary,
while House of the Eight Gables lacks anything that would send a
chill up someone's spine. Both the sound of "seven" and its
properties as both odd and prime give it a reverberating ring.

I would go so far as to say that numbers have personalities that
you need to be aware of when using them in company or product
names.

Motel 6: Here, "six" comes across as routine and humdrum, very
much like the rooms and prices in this chain.

Super 8: If this motel chain was trying to convey higher quality
than Motel 6, it works. Note too that with two long and one short
vowel sounds to its competitor's one long and two short ones,
the name Super 8 commands more attention while taking up no more
space.

Heinz 57: Company founder Henry John Heinz engineered the
company's address at PO Box 57 in Pittsburgh in addition to
using this number in the corporate slogan ("57 Varieties") and
in the name of its steak sauce. I doubt it would have lasted
since 1896 as Heinz 28 or Heinz 91 or even Heinz 37.

Note that you don't have to provide an explanation of a number
you include in a business name. The Heinz company web site says
only that the numbers "5" and "7" had a special significance
for founder Henry John Heinz and his wife, not what that
significance was. Likewise, the bottle of "Formula 3" shampoo
that my hairdresser recently sold me says nothing about what the
"3" means.

Just be mindful that certain numbers carry heavy baggage to
members of some ethnic and religious groups. For instance,
"four" is unlucky to many Chinese because in their language
it's a homonym for death. And to Christians, the sequence
"666" signifies the devil. "Thirteen" is shunned in many
cultures for reasons unknown.

Be mindful also that for a local business, people don't know how
to look up company names starting with numbers. If you heard the
name "18 Candles" for a party products company, should you look
it up in the telephone directory under "E" for "eighteen" or
in the front of the book, before the A's? When the number comes
after a regular word, as with Studio 54, you avoid this problem.

Finally, when it comes to web domains, most people hearing a
company name with a number in it will assume it's written with
the numeral rather than in words. They'd look up motel6.com
rather than motelsix.com. Even so, you'd be smart to reserve
both versions. Motel6.com indeed corresponds to the motel chain,
but motelsix.com goes to a site for finding a cheap motel room.
Likewise, the founder of fivethirtyeight.com, a political web
site referring to the number of seats in the U.S. Congress,
thought the written-out-words looked more elegant and neglected
to reserve the domain 538.com.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that
brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines
for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an
appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of
"19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line"
at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm

When (and When NOT) to Charge for Your Info Products

When (and When NOT) to Charge for Your Info Products
Copyright (c) 2009 Judy Murdoch
Highly Contagious Marketing
http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm



One of my clients recently asked me whether she should charge for
a series of tip sheets she created for families traveling with
young children. Great question.

There's quite a bit of confusion around whether you should sell or give away your information products. About half the advice I hear favors giving information away for free. The other half favors charging.

The truth is, sometimes you should give information and resources
away and sometimes you should sell them. The real question is
WHEN to charge and when not to.

In this article, I'll give you some guidelines around when to
charge and when to give information away.

=======================================
Start with What Your Business Needs Now
=======================================

Asking where your business is at and what you need to be
successful is a great place to begin.

Every business needs customers, right? So let's look at how
strangers become customers. They go through three stages:

~ Stage One: Visibility (V)

To become a customer a person first needs to know your product
exists. You become visible by getting your product and marketing
message in front of people who fit your ideal customer
description.

~ Stage Two: Credibility (C)

Knowing that your product exists is usually not enough to get
someone to pay cold hard cash for it. Nope, they're thinking
"well, that sounds good but how do I know it will really work?"

During the Credibility stage you need to give them information
that demonstrates your product will deliver as promised.

~ Stage Three: Profitability (P)

Once your prospect is convinced that your product will, indeed,
deliver the promised value, they will pay you and become a
customer.

=======================================
V to C to P = Marketing Funnel
=======================================

Picture a funnel with lots of people coming in the widest part
(visibility), a percentage sticking around to learn more
(credibility), and a percentage of those who stick around
becoming customers (profitability).

At any given time in the life of your business, there are people
at different stages of becoming customers. Some are learning
about you for the first time, some are checking you out to decide
whether they will buy, and some are deciding to buy and paying
you.

Ideally, you have a steady stream of people constantly entering
and moving through the funnel. If they don't enter or don't
continue through, you have a problem and it shows up in your
bottom line: You don't have enough paying customers.

=======================================
When to Give Away and When to Charge
=======================================

To decide whether or not to charge for an information product, I
suggest you take a look at how many people are at each of the
three stages.

Your goal is to use information products as an incentive for
prospects and customers to take the next step.

~ When You Need More Visibility

If you're just starting your business or you want to enter a new
market, you probably need more visibility. You need people to
know your product exists.

When visibility is your goal, I recommend you give something away
that provides value and introduces people to your product or
service.

Why? The goal for visibility is to answer the following
questions:

1. What is it ("it" being your product or service)

2. Does it help someone like me?

You want to give something away that will answer these questions
while asking for something minimal from the prospect.

A common example is offering a free Ezine subscription or a free
report your prospects can download in exchange for their E-mail
address or phone number.

~ When You Need More Credibility

Credibility is an issue when you're getting a lot of first time
visitors and inquiries but not enough are coming back.

For most products and services, people need repeated
demonstrations of what you can do for them. They need to trust
you.

When you are building credibility, I suggest you have two
information products: one that is free and one that you sell.

1. A free product that allows you to build a relationship with
your prospects. Products like Ezines are great because you get a
chance to connect with customers once a month or more.

2. Product you charge for which offers a higher level of customer
value.

Ideally, this is a "no brainer" purchase. Something for which
the value is so obvious for what you're charging that most
people don't need to think too long or hard about whether to
buy.

Although you will be making some money, the real purpose is to
demonstrate credibility and build trust.

Warning: The biggest complaint I hear is when someone offers a
free report or one-hour teleclass that turns out to be little
more than a sales pitch.

Again, you are creating value and building trust. Doing both will
enable you to convert more prospects to paying customers when the
opportunity presents itself.

A sneaky sales pitch will undermine the trust you are trying to
build.

~ If You Need More Profitability

If you have a large, loyal base of readers, subscribers, or
members who have been hanging out with you for several months and
like what they're getting, some of them will want to invest some
serious time and money for your focused time and attention.

For example, a consultant I know sends out a free monthly Ezine
to her mailing list and sells low cost Tip Sheets, Checklists,
and so on.

Each month 3-5 of her subscribers contact her to learn more about
her workshops and seminars costing $500+. She usually books 6 to
8 engagements this way each year.

She explained it to me like this, "I try to provide something
useful that my readers can apply right away. For example, I sell
a $5.00 meeting organizer they can use to have more productive
meetings. Sometimes this is all they need."

"But sometimes they're in a situation that goes way beyond the
DIY stage. They need someone from outside the company to step in
and help them set up a new system or to help them hire a new
executive."

Allowing your prospects to upgrade (or escalate) and get a higher
level of support is not only profitable, it's how you can really
serve your clients.

=======================================
Bottom Line
=======================================

Whether or not to charge for your information products depends on
what your business needs in terms of developing customer
relationships.

The less known you are to people fitting your ideal customer
profile, the more important it is to offer free or low cost
information products which provide something of value.

As you build trust and as your prospects learn how you can help
them, you can offer more expensive, higher commitment products
for those who want (and can afford) them.




---------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost,
effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals,
guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances.
To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt?
Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers
Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@...


Greg Cryns The Mighty Mo Website Design and Promotion
.

Is this a useless email response?

How many times have you received an email reply like this:

"Thank you for contacting us. We will answer your message soon. Sincerely, (whoever)"

Now, what is the good of that email? Does it warm me up to the person who sent it?

Not really.

In fact, it pisses me off that I had to open the email to read the useless message.

So, please don't use this type of email in your business. I can see the value of telling people you are on vacation, but not this.

What do you think?

Greg Cryns
Need to order a nice gift quickly?

A few good ways to promote your website

AD: Ribbon Gift Incentives

Create a Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/) in the niche your site sits.

Set up your own bulletin board at http://www.ryze.com

Create a Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) account and "claim" your blog.

Conduct a survey.

Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree (http://www.gumtree.com/).

Submit an article about your niche to http://www.ezinearticles.com

Sign up to StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com) and get your friends to Stumble your site.

Set up a 301 redirect to take traffic from your non-www address to your www address.

Add a link to your site in the signature of any forums you post on.

Advertise your site on Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org).

Create an XML sitemap (http:/www.xml-sitemaps.com/) of your site and submit it to Google (http://www.google.com).

Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.

On your Contact Page ask people if they mind receiving your newsletter.

Use YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) to talk about your site in a video

Donate money to a charity and most will place a link on their site back to you.

Abide to W3C standards (http://www.w3.org/) - it will help your site in the long term.

Greg Cryns

The Mighty Mo Website Design and SEO Promotion

Ribbon Gift Incentives

20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online
.

Customer service story

20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online

My wife bought an item on eBay. Cost: $98.

She meant to send it to another postal address but somehow that did not register when she received an email notification.

So, she emailed the seller and received no response. Send email sent said "Next time I may consider putting in a negative comment."




An hour later the owner of the eBay store called her. He said he would catch the item at the UPS station and divert it to the desired address.

Moral? If you want to effect change you need to know where their HOT BUTTON is. Fairly easy to see it at eBay but not in other places. You need to refrain from being overbearing or downright rude, though these tactics can be helpful some of the time.

The rules of engagement demand that you need to know the rules. He or she who knows the rules, WINS.

Know the rules.

Greg Cryns
20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online
.