Marketing Elves Make the Holidays Profitable!

While I’ve been writing and studying marketing, few of you know about my secret career as a marketing elf.

In this recently released video, you will see me (I’m the one in green) providing all the solutions to the average businessman’s marketing needs.  With just a wave of my elfin fingers, voila!  He has the promotion he dreamed of.

Do Marketing Elves Really Exist?

Wouldn’t we all love to had a marketing elf come and solve our problems for us?

The best real life marketing elf I know of is Renegade Professional.  This elf shows you the way to buid your business using the internet.  Just like the elf in the video, there are step by step tutorials, clear instructions and lots of help.

Renegade Professional Brings Marketing Cheer

When you join Renegade Professional, it is just like Holiday Bounty.  Here is a list of just some of the resources:

YouTube Tutorials:  21 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

Squidoo Tutorials:  23 tutorials coming to over 5 hours of instruction

Google Adwords Tutorials:  9 tutorials coming to over 2 hours of instruction

Lead Capture Page Tutorials:  21 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

Email Marketing Tutorials:  8 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

Writing with Pull Tutorials:  44 tutorials coming to over 7 hours of instruction

Attraction Marketin over the Phone Tutorials:  7 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

…And this is just a partial list.

It’s Like Having X-Ray Vision…

My personal experience with Renegade Professional has been amazing.  When I joined, I already had 2 websites started so I thought I was hot stuff.  I thought I knew my way around internet marketing.

Renegade Professional showed me how the internet really works.  It was like getting and xray of the internet and seeing the inside.  Internet marketing involves a web of connections and links.  This is everything from backlinks (for the spiders), to social media links (for real, human relationships).

While this may seem obvious, its deeper meaning has changed the way I think of business.  Before Renegade Professional, I had lots of separate pieces of marketing knowledge.  The tutorials brought them all together into a full picture.   Building relationships became more than just keywords and traffic statistics–it became meeting real people.

Not for Everyone

But of course, it’s not for everyone.

If you don’t want to learn internet marketing, and it amazes me but not everyone does, then this is not for you.

And if you don’t like having someone show you what you need to do to get internet marketing to work, then this is not for you.

If you insist in figuring everything out yourself, then this is not for you.

And if you don’t have the time or ambition to learn internet marketing, then this is  not for you.

Contact Me for a FREE 45 Minute Consultation

Renegade Professional is the most complete internet marketing training that I know of, but honestly, it is not for everyone and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.

Contact me and I will give you a FREE 45 Minute Consultation.  During this consultation, I will assess your business challenges and give you may recommendations to build your business.  No, I will not recommend Renegade Professional if I don’t think it will meet your needs.  Each plan I give will be personalized to your needs and situation.  By the end of the consultation, you will have an Action Plan to get your business growing.

Contact me today and get your business off the ground.  It will be like have 8 strong reindeer, lifting you into the sky.

Small Print:  With the dawn of a new era in internet marketing, led by our dear FTC, I will disclose that, of course, I make a commission if you sign up for Renegade Professional or any of the other products I recommend.  I am running an internet business, so money must be made.  But I can assure you that I only recommend products that I believe are the best out there.  And in my consultations, I only recommend what I believe would serve you best.

One more note:  I belong to a business group which supports buying locally.  This video was made to get our members to join our Holiday Promotion and get all the local businesses of Dane County, Wisconsin participating.

When you shop this year, Think Local First!

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If you have ever wondered about the power of really owning your niche, you will be convinced of its importance in this video.

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA.  He stocks over 500 types of soda–everything from rose petal soda to cucumber soda to a cola cream soda.  He knows the difference between the bubbles, the ingredients, the types of glass that the bottles use–he can even quote health facts about why sugar is better than corn syrup.

This guy knows soda.

And if you want soda, you’d go to him.

Watch this fascinating video to see a true master at niche business.  He found a niche and he went deep instead of wide.

You want juice?  Go somewhere else.

You want Pepsi?  He’ll point you to the store down the road.

But if you want soda made from small breweries, he’s got it for you.

Niches work.

It’s important to remember to keep the human touch when you build your business.  Ustream can help you do that.

Building your business with the internet can mean that you gain your lead, build trust with them, complete a purchase with them and never interact personally.

Sometimes this works well for people.  They want to buy what they need and move on.

But when you business involves service (and even if it doesn’t), it is a good thing to remember peraonal, human interactions.

Ustream.tv, a website which allows you to stream live video to the internet in real time is a great solution.

With Ustream, you can interact with your customers, answer their questions and build your rapport with the;m.

I’ve made a short video on  how Ustream.tv can help your business.

When your customers have a question, need to see a demonstration, or just want to see who your are, Ustream is a great solution.

And if you’re feeling tech-challenged or don’t know how to apply Ustream to internet Attraction Marketing, I recommend Renegade Professional for your one stop shop for internet marketing training.

The best Wordpress themes are easy to find.  Themes are everywhere.

Different colors…different numbers of columns…fixed width or variable…

One of the fun things about Wordpress blogs is that they are so easily spiffed up.

How do you find the best Wordpress theme?

This video will get you started finding exactly what you need.

When you’re a beginner at Renegade Professional, it is so easy to be overwhelmed.  Dozens and dozens of videos on all types of subjects can distract you.

If you manage to make it through Renegade Professional, then there are all the other distractions on the webs–the newest launch from the latest internet guru, the latest changes from Amazon and Google, the emerging social media tools.  It’s a jungle to get lost in.

And if you manage to stay out of that, the final and most devasting distraction can hit–the voices in your own head.  The constant dialog telling you why you can’t do this, why you’re making mistakes, why it will never work, why you’re wasting your time.

The distractions are endless.

Stay Focused

Mike Klingler has great advice for Renegade Professional beginners.

Stay focused.

And if you need help, get a coach to help you.

It’s a big job handling everything it takes to get an internet business started.  The technical learning curve alone can be overwhelming, but the emotional battles can take you out.

Find a coach to help you wade through it all.

A chai wallah does one thing: he makes tea.

He makes tea day in and day out. Over and over.

I remember when I was in India how the chai wallahs would enter the trains at every stop and each had their own way of calling “chai”. They would squeeze up and down the aisles with their pots and glasses, at all hours of the day or night (you never got a quiet time). They would shout about their chai is such a way that the words ceased having meanings and became a song.

They were all experts at the same thing, making tea, but they each had their own way of doing it.  (For a wonderful website devoted to the chai experience in India, visit chai pilgrimage.)

Are You Willing to Become a Wallah?

To become a wallah, you must specialize.  Avoid distraction and do the same thing over and over until you become good at it.  And after you have repeated it over and over, your own unique mark will develop.

Focus on one thing and ignore the rest until you become good at it.

“When you go all in, it focuses your attention and effort, doesn’t it?”

—Seth Godin in his blog post Chai Wallah

If you focus your attention, practice until you’re crazy, you come up with your expert call.  You will become a internet business wallah.

You can’t reach success without failure.

I never knew that you had to fail to succeed.

When I was growing up, I was taught that failure was, well, failure.  Failure was not supported.  Failure was something to be ashamed of.

It has only been though building a business that I have made friends with failure.  I fail.  I get up.  I move on.

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Rosalind Gardner is an esteemed affiliate marketer and she’s always giving great tips in her blog NetProfitsToday.com.  Her post about “How To Get Expert Content for Free” is a wonderful how-to about scoring an interview with an “Expert”.

Rosalind has many great tips, but one I would like to stress is how human even an “Expert” is.  Rosalind has been in this business from the early days and her success is well known.  Still, she expresses pleasure at being asked to be interviewed.  She is helpful for the newbie interviewer.  And she reveals her own worries about not giving good interviews.

So the lesson for anyone looking for an interview is to not assume that someone is unapproachable.

I understand the intimidation.  Frankly I would never have had the guts to ask Rosalind for an interview.  But as I read this I asked myself “why not?”

If going to an Expert is just too intimidating, then I suggest starting with your peers.  Interview each other.  Find a friend who is also starting out and create content with each other.

An Easy First Interview Tip: Use a Script

I recommend writing a script which covers all the points you would like to make for your content.  The interviewer will introduce the “expert” as if starting a newscast.  She will give an outline of some of the expert’s achievements and how the expert could help the viewer.

The questions and answers should be planned ahead of time.  You should do dress rehearsals for practice.  When you do the interview, you should know what you want to cover, but it should remain a real interview–in other words, it must still be spontaneous and interesting.

Once you get a few interviews under your belt this way, you can begin to be a little more unplanned.  Practice interviewing a friend when you don’t have a pre-planned script.  Gradually you will feel accomplished enough to take on a real “expert”.

Tips for Unscripted Interviews

In the interviews I have done, there are a couple of key points to make it flow:

• You must listen but also guide the conversation.  It takes a knack to learn how to allow the expert to answer in their own words, but also keep the pace and flow of the interview going.
• You must add your own comments but not take over.  It is nice to hear the personality of the interviewer.  Oprah is a master at this.  But too much and it’s all about the interviewer and not about the expert.
• You must learn to ask questions which lead to interesting answers.  Limit the yes or no questions.  And practice questions which will gently guide to an answer that flows with the rest of the interview.
• Be ready to be off the cuff.  In an interview, you never know where the answers will take you.  Be ready to improvise when your expert reveals an interesting tidbit.  Follow up on it and you may get an unexpected surprise.
• Learn how to use audio or video editing software so if things go really awry, you can edit the video and it will look great.  Sneeze in the middle of a question?  Restate the question and later you can take the sneeze out.

Rosalind Gardner gives great tips on getting an interview with an expert.  With her advice, you don’t need to feel intimidated asking for an interview.

Study Rosalind’s Affiliate Writing Style

There is one final thing you can learn from Rosalind Gardner’s excellent post.

If you want to do affiliate marketing, then observe the beautiful skill Rosalind used to write this article.  She gives great advice; she tells a personal story; she builds trust in what she has to say and then at the end–she gracefully ties it to a product which may help you if you would like to do interviews.

Her writing style is honest, clear and elegant.

The flow of the article is superb.

If you want to recommend affiliate products in your blog, study this post.  In fact, you should hand write it.  By hand writing exactly what Rosalind wrote, you will learn the structure and see how she sells.  Rosalind is an expert affiliate marketer and you can’t learn from anyone better than her.

Envelope stuffing, daycare, making candles…  What is the best home business for Mom?

The best home business for mom is an internet business.  With the internet, you can reach people world wide who want exactly what you have to offer.

Are you selling all natural make-up?  Use the internet to find the women who want just that.

Do you know the best way to arrange flowers for wedding centerpieces?  Use the internet to teach what you know and sell supplies to brides.

Gone are the days psyching yourself up to face rejection about the products you know are good.

While there are many businesses for a work at home mom, all of them could benefit from an internet presence.  By using the internet either as your sole marketing tool, or as an addition to what you already have, the best home businesses use the internet.

What if I have an MLM?

Many wahm moms already have a network marketing or multi-level marketing business.  Some of these companies have a marketing plan built into their structure–a party plan, or training in using the “3 foot rule”, expos or cold calling.

For some, this marketing really works.  I have met women who build a thriving MLM using these techniques.

But for many moms, this type of marketing fails.  The party plan means that Mom must be out of the house and away from her family during the nights and weekends.  The 3 foot rule means that Mom must be comfortable pushing her products on anyone near her.  Expos are exhausting and expensive.  Cold calling is relentless.

The beauty of an internet home business for Mom is that Mom can attract the customers who want her.  When you build a well-constructed website, full of good, valuable information, the women wanting the information will be attracted to your site.  Most of your work is already done.  And you do the site building when you want to–you can be home kissing you kids good night.

So even if you business is already thriving, an internet business is an excellent addition to your marketing plan.  Build a blog or website showcasing your niche, and you will have even more customers coming to you.  Use online social networks to compliment your offline networks.  Use the power of the internet to build your lead list.

I have done many home businesses and know the pros and cons of all of them.  By far, the best home business for mom, the most flexible and substantial is an internet business.