Marketing yourself: The 1-2-3 Handshake

photo by shirishbendre

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

If your career depends on meeting people offline (and I think most of us would profit from more offline activity), the first impression is a visual event.

An important part of making that oh-so-important good first impression is the handshake.

Follow these three simple handshake rules to get started.

1. Look your prospect in the eye. Look at the pupil in his eye. Experts say that this is a great way to bond with another person and it will affect that relationship in the future. Say a few words while you are shaking hands. If you say nothing you imply that you are nervous.

2. Make your handshake firm but not too firm and definitely not too limp. Men grow up learning this but women may need more practice. It's a business world, not a coming out party.

3. Smile! Show your prospect that you are really happy to see him. Nobody enjoys a serious sourpuss.

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
Wahm Search Engine

Marketing to the homeless

My wife and I go to Long Beach, CA once a week. We get off the freeway at Bellflower St. A few blocks down is a McDonald's restaurant where we usually stop to have breakfast. This is "our" McDonald's.

Last week I saw an older man in a mechanical wheelchair positioned near the door. For some reason I was drawn to him. I walked up and said, "Nice chair!"

He nodded. The man had a look on him that told me he'd seen and done a whole lot of things during his life and probably experienced as many downs as ups.

"Can you spare some money?" he said.

I reached into my pocket and took out a $5 bill. I handed it to him and smiled. He did not smile. He simply took the money and said "Thanks."

I nodded and walked into McDonald's to order breakfast. On the way out he was still there. I saluted him in two finger style. He saluted back as if to say "Glad to meet you, buddy."

So, what is my purpose in telling this story on a marketing blog? I think it is this:

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Giving that man $5 made me feel a whole lot better about myself. It made me feel fine. It made my day.

With one caveat: Like Schindler, I should have given him more. I had more cash in my pocket. I've been extremely lucky in my life. God has been very good to me, you might say.

Some people would scoff at me for giving money away that way. They might say I should donate to a Church or to the Red Cross to help Haiti. I say, if that makes you happy, then do it.

For me, I'd rather help people more directly. There is a story behind every face. It makes me happy, thus I am acting selfishly.

I've learned to respect the adage "What goes around comes around."

What do you think?

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
20000 Credit Card Debt
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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
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Google cache- what is it?

When you do a Google search for just about anything, you will see the word "cached" on the bottom line of the search result (SERP).





What does this mean?

Googleguide.com (not associate with Google) explains it this way: "Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. The cached version is what Google uses to judge if a page is a good match for your query."

Google saves the cached page with the date saved at the top of the browser window. So, if the result is not what you were looking for the page may have been changed since the day Google cached it. You can see what the page looked like when Google cached it.

You can also use the Way Back Machine to see what a page looked like before Google started caching the pages. I will always appreciate the Way Back Machine because more than once I've deleted important pages on my websites. They could only be recovered there.

So, if you were thinking that the Google cache was a bad place like Purgatory or the infamous Google sandbox, so rest easier.

In fact, it has been suggested that the cached date of the page may be more important than the vaunted "Page Rank" of that page. Think about it. If you see a recent date on the cache page it means that Google spent the time to visit it recently. This impliesmore trust in the site and page. [I did some checking with my own sites and I see that most were cached during the past week whether I changed those pages or any other pages in the site or not. So, I do not think this idea is valid.]

Greg Cryns
The Mighty Mo website design and promotion
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SEO - change is in the air, be ready

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SEO Changes - Are Your Sales Dropping as Your SEO Rankings "Soar high?"

Some claim that SEO is dead. John Alexander, the founder of Search Engine Workshops, disagrees and so do I. Rather than dying, Search Engine Optimization needs to rethink and rework. We should not be surprised since the Internet changes daily.

The warning goes like this: your search engine placement is still high but your sales are declining. What happened? Did your webmaster fail you?

Read more: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/seo-changes.html

Search Engine Optimization has many more factors to consider. Recently Google introduced SearchWiki which has the potential to turn the SEO world on its head by personal search results based on your personal search habits.

Check out this illuminating article: Personalization of Search and its implications for SEO

Advanced competitive intelligence is something you need to learn now before the search world passes you by.

Greg Cryns
The Mighty Mo! website design and SEO promotion

Information Products are powerful money makers

Not everyone is aware of what Internet Marketers know. You can make a nice living creating and distributing your own information product. Here is a look behind the curtain that may give you some ideas. Guest post by my Marcia Yudkin.







Information Products: Fifteen Factors That Boost Their Perceived Value

by Marcia Yudkin

Although the going rate partially depends on the target
market, ebooks currently tend to sell for $29.95 to $49.95.
Single audio recordings fall in the same range. Length
isn’t necessarily a multiplier. For instance, if you
produce an ebook that is three times the typical length,
you can’t necessarily charge $89.95 to $149.95. People
would be suspicious that the additional content was
redundant, or that you’d increased the length through large
type, a lot of white space or wordy writing.

So what kind of magic wand transforms a $29.95 product into
one that people happily pay hundreds or even thousands of
dollars for? It’s not magic. Simply add as many of the
following factors as you can to your offering, and watch
people readily fork over big money.

Fifteen Factors That Boost The Perceived Value of
Information Products

1. Practical focus. People pay more when a product teaches
them something or gives them whatever they need to
accomplish a task. Someone who shares stories about their
summer vacation in France would find it difficult to charge
more than $19.95 for their product, but if the product
enables buyers to speak real estate French in two weeks or
to buy vacation property in France at bargain prices (or
both!), that could easily be worth more than a hundred
dollars to purchasers.

2. Specific outcome. Participants will pay much more for a
product that promises to deliver a result or outcome rather
than merely offering education, insight or support.
Compare “Complete Your Business Plan in 30 Days” or “Get
Booked in Soap Opera Roles,” which clearly aim at a
specific result, with “Managing Difficult Customers,” which
is bound to be helpful but does not target an outcome.

3. Focused guarantee. People expect a money-back guarantee
of some sort, but when you highlight the expected result in
the wording of your guarantee, customers better understand
the value of what they’re getting and become more willing
to pay for it. For example: “If you don’t get booked on a
single daytime soap within six months of buying the course
– or are unhappy with it for any other reason – simply
return it for a 100% refund.” When you analyze this
guarantee logically, it’s not that different from a blanket
money-back guarantee, but emotionally its confidence is far
more convincing.

4. Testimony of results. No one wants to be suckered, and
testimonials reassure the shopper that someone has
purchased and felt good about spending the money. Don’t
even bother with unsigned or partly anonymous testimonials,
which are not believable. Enthusiastic, raving praise
can’t hold a candle to customers signing their name to
specific results they achieved from your product. Indeed,
when I receive a strong testimonial saying exactly what the
customer was able to do or how much more they made after
consuming my product, I have been known to instantly raise
the product price.

5. Hard-to-find information. When a product includes
information someone can’t otherwise buy or that they can’t
normally even find, the price can go sky-high. Smart
information marketers create or acquire a bonus item in
this category, which not only lets them charge more but
also induces more lookers to decide they just have to have
the item. Prior to the Internet, speakers bureau owner
Dottie Walters, for example, offered a directory of bureaus
around the world as a bonus for a two-year subscription to
her magazine. It persuaded people who didn’t necessarily
even want the magazine to keep renewing to get the
directory.

6. Timeliness. Information that is hot off the press and
tied to new developments fetches a premium price. For
instance, when the stock market has just tanked, investors
can be desperate to spend money on a product like
“Investment Strategies for a Down, Down, Down Economy.”
Combine such timeliness with elements #5 and #7, and you
should be able to make a killing.

7. Reputation. If the author or presenter is well-known,
impressively credentialed or highly respected by the target
audience, the package can cost much more than for a no-name
unknown. Add a factor of exclusivity to increase the
premium value even further – for example, the product is
available to newsletter subscribers only.

8. Tangible materials. When an information product
includes printed materials and CDs or DVDs that come in the
mail rather than just downloadable stuff, the perceived
value rises greatly. Buyers appreciate having a physical
copy of what they’ve bought, not simply a bunch of files on
their computer. This doesn’t mean the materials have to be
glossy or expensively packaged. Indeed, a very simple yet
professional design emphasizes the specialized, exclusive
nature of the information.

9. Access to the guru or expert. You can easily raise the
price of an information package $300 or more if it includes
the right to ask questions or interact with someone who is
looked up to and not generally accessible. The access can
come in the form of a buyers-only forum, consulting time, a
telephone conference call, a critique coupon or buyers-only
call-in hours. And guess what? Most people who pay extra
for this sort of option do not actually use the access, yet
they consider it worth having spent more money on.

10. Consulting, coaching or mentoring component. Here
there’s a more formalized kind of one-on-one help or advice
included with the product, prompting a steep rise in
perceived value, even if, as with #9, few participants take
advantage of the opportunity. Since they figure that’s
their own fault, they’re still willing to pay the premium
fee for something that makes coaching, advice or feedback
available.

11. Community or support. Customers may feel isolated and
unsure how to find others who share a particular challenge
or achievement. If so, providing access to a group of
people who, let’s say, are running a third-generation
family business or recovering from a rare kind of abuse has
extra value for people.

12. Additional services. My $795 home-study course on
presenting profitable teleseminars includes having me
distribute a press release for them at no charge – a $149
value. Here you’re not simply piling on downloadable
bonuses, which everyone knows cost next to nothing to
deliver, but bundling in an extra service that would
normally cost extra, such as free proofreading or a free
reality check for the participant in “Complete Your
Business Plan in 30 Days.”

13. Tools. Include software, spreadsheets, calculators,
checklists, scripts, templates, samples, workbooks and so
on as another way of increasing perceived value. These
items aren’t informative so much as useful in accomplishing
tasks. To the extent that the average buyer hasn’t
encountered the tools elsewhere, perceived value rises.

14. Certification. Participants adore it when satisfactory
completion of your program entitles them to call themselves
a certified something or other. Because this beefs up
their credentials, they’re happy to pay more for a program
that includes certification.

15. Continuing education credit. Some professionals have
to earn a certain number of education credits each year to
keep a license current. If that applies to your content
area, investigate which organizations hand out the credits,
then apply for inclusion in their program. The very same
content is worth more to participants who can satisfy
continuing education requirements by buying your
information.

Along with increasing the perceived value of information
products, these fifteen factors strongly reduce refund
requests, too. Now go back through the list and think
about which elements you can incorporate to boost your
infomarketing profits!

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
The Mighty Mo Website Design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Prospecting in the local search market

I run a local website for my area called All About Paso Robles. This is a multi-purpose website.

First, the site lends credibility to my work as a search engine expert in my town. I also earn some Adsense income from visitors. As the visitor count rises and awareness of the site grows (it was established no too long ago) I am hoping local businesses will want to buy banner and text ads.

This week I closed a refinance mortgage on my house. The refi was a no brainer with the current rates dropping over 2% from a year ago.

My mortgage banker, Jessica, works for a local bank. She is not a mortgage broker in her own business, but the bank now provides a personal web page for her. This is interesting because my experience with banks is that in the past they are not particularly customer oriented. Banking is one of those businesses that thrive by placing advertising in the right spots at the right time. The sales efforts are limited to offering special interest rates and unique financial services.

Personal sales skills are not a bank's strength.

I gave Jessica a front page button ad and followed that up with an email:

<>

Hi Jessica,

Your ad is up on my website: http://www.allaboutpasorobles.com

As we discussed, it is essential for mortgage companies to get a high placement on the Google page for the search term "mortgages in paso robles". You have a nice web page but if no one visits that page what's the point? People use the web more often now and they also use Google most of the time to find information.

I can make this happen for you but I must charge a fee for that service as it is time consuming to put into effect.The fee is $195 (one time). I guarantee you will be on first page of the Google Local listings and possibly at or near the top of those listings. I will guide you through the process.

Let me know if you are interested. I will be working with other mortgage people in Paso starting next week. I am sure they are not yet aware of the potential provided by the Google listing but they will know very soon.

Thanks for your assistance in obtaining our refi. We are very happy with the result.

greg
|
< /snip >

I don't know if Jessica will take me up on this offer but I do know she is very interested in attracting new mortgage customers. Let's see what happens.

This post is intended to help you see that you can make money on the web in many different ways.

Greg Cryns

Work at home profiles

Teleseminar Security Tips

Guest blog post by my friend, Marcia Yudkin

Teleseminar Security Tips
Copyright (c) 2008 Marcia Yudkin
Creative Marketing Solutions
http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm





How do you prevent people who have registered for your
teleseminar from passing around the teleseminar call-in
information to those who haven't paid for it?

This question came in from someone preparing to launch her first
teleseminar. Based on my years of experience leading teleseminars
and my conversations with other teleseminar presenters, this
worry has little foundation in fact. In most niches, this kind of
dishonesty simply does not happen.

Even so, there's no sense in tempting fate, so there are a few
steps you can take to minimize the odds of non-legitimate
participants calling in to your telseminar.

First, provide the call-in number and access code for the
conference-call line by email rather than posting it on a web
page, where some Internet-savvy people and search engines can
find it even when you haven't publicized the page.

Second, tell your paying participants exactly what to do if they
know someone else who's interested in the teleseminar. Even when
it's a free teleseminar, I tell registrants to direct friends to
the signup page rather than give them the call-in information,
because there are a limited number of slots for the call.

(Studies show that if you provide a reason for something, people
are more likely to comply with your request.)

Third, you'll most likely be able to see for yourself whether or
not unregistered people are calling in to your teleseminar. Most
bridge line providers either routinely provide you with a list of
those who called in or will do so upon request. You can simply
compare the number of people signed up with the number of people
who called in.

What you'll see, I predict, is that there are people who paid
for the call but don't show up (and do not ask for a refund)
rather than people who called in but did not sign up and pay. You
thereby come out ahead, not behind.

One firm that has a teleseminar admission fee in the hundreds of
dollars told me that they once noticed an unauthorized company
dialing into an event. If I remember correctly, they noticed it
because of an unfamiliar area code showing up in the participant
list. After investigating, they approached the interloper
afterwards in a low-key manner, telling them that someone had
called in from their company without registering, and the
offender quickly paid up - probably never to try to pull that
move again. Note that while this situation did occur, it happened
only once for this company that presented a couple of dozen
teleseminar events each year.

A last bit of advice: If you're concerned about teleseminar
gatecrashers, provide your handouts by email also, rather than
posting them on the web. Otherwise the handouts can become
accessible in web searches. See this for yourself by typing
"teleseminar handout" or "teleclass handout" into Google.
Thousands of handouts come up, some of them for courses that cost
many hundreds of dollars to attend. I believe that most of those
who posted those handouts did not intend them to be publicly
available.

Generally, however, all you have to do is simply provide the
call-in information and handouts to registrants via email and
then concentrate on delivering the very best program you can.




---------------------------------------------------------------------
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high-
ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about
your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66
Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause,"
go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan,
promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an
entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit
organization or corporate marketer.

SEO - embrace the changes

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.
~Wikipedia

Fasten your seat belts. There are major changes coming down the search engine pipes soon. What used to be accepted as SEO good practice will need to be overhauled.

In the past when you hired a SEO expert you looked for someone who knows how to edit the content and the HTML within your website to provide a reason for search engines to respect your website. Good SEO work pushed your website toward the top of the first page in results.

Other SEO techniques include local search (by city or region), image searches and searches by industry.

The term "search engine friendly" is often used to refer to the design of a website including its navigation menus, shopping carts and content management systems.

There are many opinions in the SEO community about how to improve your search engine ranking. This is because there is not one, simple, road map to search engine optimization success. Why? Because the search engines often change their algorithms (rules for ranking websites)because they are always looking for ways to improve the results for its customers, the people searching the web.

Never think of your website as a search engine customer. Your site is search engine inventory. In the effort to make their customers happy campers, search engines can be ruthless toward websites that do not follow their rules. Your website can drop from #3 to #568 overnight.

My experience is that if you are not in the top 10 for a search term you effectively are excluded from the results. Searchers sometimes will go no further than the top three results.

So, it is not good business to take the word of someone who achieves good results for a specific SEO technique as the golden rule. There are plenty of reasons why one or two tweaks he made will not improve your ranking.

Take everything you hear about SEO with a grain of salt, especially in 2009.

There will be a reshuffling of the results based on what search engines know about your personal preferences. Yes, the search engines will know a lot more about you and what you want to see based on what you searched previously (if you have personalization turned on - this happens when you sign up for Google tools and even Gmail).

Traditional ranking methods will not go away completely, but if you depend on the past you risk being invisible in the future.

You will be served better by thinking of higher quality of traffic, talk more conversions, talk more about gaining better "visibility".

According to SEO expert John Alexander, "search ranking has always been about 'top visibility' to the correct searching audience PLUS being able to 'compel the visitor to respond' or take action. The truth is that in the future the question will be more about what percentage of your web pages are being found, by your most correct target audiences, using the right keyword phrases AND for what percentage of the time."

John Alexander believes (and so do I) that we need to learn "why" more than "how" search engines do things.

Embrace the change!

Photo by Danard Vincente

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles

Best Buy video interview with CEO Brad Anderson

20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online

Best Buy CEO Interview on Use of Social Media


Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in conversation with Peter Hirshberg at Google Zeitgeist from peter hirshberg on Vimeo

Some people miss the boat on Twitter

Don't kid us. If you are frequenting Twitter and you are older than 20 years old, then it is likely you are interested in marketing something. I think that is a fair assessment.

If you do what I do, you look to find "worthy" people to follow. You want to find people who are movers and shakers in your niche. You hope to learn things from them.

This morning I clicked on the link of one of the people I follow. She is known as "the communicatrix". In her link she was promoting a video she made that expresses why Southwest should pick her as their New Southwest Airlines Blog-O-Spondent.

Here is the link:
http://southwest.spigit.com/Sector/ViewThread?threadid=429

I think this is a great use of video to get viral attention. It is lots of fun to watch and it may even earn the communicatrix a new job. I hope so.

But here is my beef. I was about to send out a "retweet" that would show my 454 followers the link to this video. I don't know, but I believe this would help the communicatrix somehow, some way.

Golldarnit! She is not following me. So, what's the point of helping her? I am not saying that I am the most worhty person to follow, but that's what I thought. Eventually I decided to help the communicatrix anyway by putting the link on this blog. I think a retweet would have been more powerful since I know I won't get 453 crossovers to my blog from Twitter very soon.

Not only that, I could not send a message through Twitter because she chooses not to follow most of her followers.

My point is, don't be so stingy about following people. Some great people follow everyone who follows them. I think these people understand the inherent value.

Perhaps the handle should be changed to "The noncommunicatrix"?

Unless you are fearful of stalkers? If so, then you better just leave the Internet alone?

Please leave your comments. What is your opinion? I think it is bad form not to follow people who follow you. It is just plain snobbish. Should we limit the people we follow?

Greg Cryns

http://www.workathomeprofiles.com
http://www.wahmsearchengine.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/calgreg