The Booklet Journey Opening a New World
April 30, 2007
1991 was a pivotal year in my life. My professional organizing business was 8 years old.
The sales cycle was getting longer and longer for workshop and consulting work. I had formed these crazy habits called eating and paying the rent and was not eager to break either of them.
That’s when I spotted an offer for a free copy of a booklet called “117 Ideas For Better Business Presentations.” I do business presentations, and the price was right. I sent for it. My first reaction was, "gee, I could knock something like this out about organizing tips.’" Then I threw it in a drawer.
Six months later I was in my office, bored, baffled and beaten down by the slow economy. I had no money. I mean no money!
I remembered that little booklet. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but something hit me, and I knew I had to produce a booklet on organizing tips.
Ezine Advertising Strategy Exposed-15 Tips to Boost Your Profits
April 30, 2007
In my opinion, Electronic Magazine (Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped source of online advertising available today.
The reason: Ezine Advertising (EA) matches your product or idea to people with similar interests.
Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!
The idea of EA is fairly simple - but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce results, and which ones to avoid.
After a year and a half of EA, I’ve created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing the gems.
Strategy for Profit
I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad (and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for the money I paid.
The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and impatience on my part.
Is Now the Time for a Play about the War in Iraq?
April 30, 2007
Everone knows that comedy is mostly about timing. If you hit upon the right nerve (is a funny bone a nerve?) at the right time then, usually, you don’t even have to be original or even marginally funny to win laughs. The audience laughs just at the reference (i.e. “How about Michael Jackson?”) and may fall into hysterics at a gifted comic’s pause.
Of course the other element in comedy is distance. The funniest jokes might fall flat if the audience remains in grief or on edge (it might be too soon for “Now that John Ritter’s dead, can we agree that three’s a crowd?”). We may be past the days of “tarring and feathering”, but if somebody decides to throw something at you, chances are it won’t be a cake or a pie (which used to, at least, be good for laughs). So, it’s important to be able to recognize this.
Mission Possible: Get Published with Goals, Guidance, and Persistance
April 29, 2007
You send me an e-mail. You tell me you’ve written over three hundred poems since you were 16 (in your teenage angst stage). You mention the novel you’ve completed and it’s really good (it really is!!!), and the novel-in-progress. You mention how the International Library of Poetry has published one of your poems. (But, whom haven’t they published?)
However, all your work is stored away, hidden from the public eye on a black little disk.
You have one mission: Getting published.
"How do I get published?" you finally question at the end of the e-mail.
At times, I ask myself the same question.
Is this mission impossible? To many, it seems that way. If you stick with me, I’ll make the publishing process slightly simpler.
On this mission, you’ll need three things: Goals, Guidance, and Persistence.
An unmentioned New York City college (as well as other schools, I’m sure) offered a course on "How to Get Published". Various bigwigs from major publishing houses in New York City were guest speakers on many occasions.
What?s In Your Resource Box (SIG File)?
April 29, 2007
One of the most important things you can do to improve your visibility and connect with customers or clients is to create a strong personal branding statement in your resource box. I’m not talking about adding your job title. I’m talking about including what it is you really do.
* What is the most important benefit you provide to your customers and your company?
* What can you do better than anyone else? What problem or issue can you resolve?
What is your personal branding statement? That’s what I want you to tell me in your resource box or signature file. This is not a one time effort. It will take some time refining your message to its core. Writing a good one-liner is really hard and it will take several attempts to create a good one. Collect outside opinions. What is important to you might not be important to your audience.
I recently struggled with a one-liner for an article I was writing. I wanted to explain what I did as a packaging consultant/speaker/expert. I’m going to share with you some of my labors in this effort. I started out with the typical list: expert, guru, speaker, and consultant. Then decided I needed more of a position statement.
Stop Struggling and Write Your Article - Part II
April 29, 2007
Don’t let overwhelm hold you back- follow this expert advice and start writing your promotional article today.
In Part 1, I talked about the importance of planning and structuring your article. Here are three more essential steps to help you make sure your article is ready to go.
4. Avoid clichés (like the plague). As in, clichéd language, clichéd advice, and clichéd topics. To refresh your memory, a cliché is anything that’s over-used, banal, or tired. It’s anything we’ve all heard 1,000 times before and hoped we’d never hear again.
Some typical examples of overworked expressions (and there are thousands):
… bring you up to speed, at the end of the day, since time immemorial, chilled to the bone, a gleam in his eye, her heart leapt into her mouth, a level playing field, when all is said and done, on the same page …
Clichéd language can be fixed with a good edit. First, determine whether you really need that phrase. If you do, express the concepts in ordinary terms. So, for “see if we’re on the same page”, substitute “see if we all agree”.
Clichéd advice and topics might include:
How to Write Bad Poetry
April 28, 2007
So you’ve decided to crown yourself with a title that a million other people (just like you (yes, just like you!)) give themselves every day. Some people believe giving yourself such a title is equivalent to, and just as beneficial monetarily, as naming yourself Queen of England. But, there is no grace, rarely enough publicity, and only the title of Court Jester seems to be becoming for you because you are a fool among others.
What is this sacred title? Poet.
Why does titling yourself a "poet" make you a Fool? Well, it doesn’t, not in and of itself. But if you’ve only been published online, never in print-that could be a sign of your well-earned Fool status. To be blunt-that is a sign that you write bad poetry.
Why would these sites accept your work if it sucked, you ask? Maybe to raise their quota, maybe to get more submissions of the site’s particular interest, but mainly to actually HAVE something to post-most (but not all) sites are desperate for submissions. Or maybe they’re out for a profit. Come on, who among us HASN’T had something accepted by the National Library of Poetry, and then gotten all the brochures for expensive products featuring our work?
Some Important Tips On Proposals And Price
April 28, 2007
Here’s a critically important copywriting technique I use when writing sales letters and proposals for our own direct marketing services and for our clients.
It’s all about “price”.
I see it all the time. And perhaps you do too. Letters and proposals that bury the price at the very end of the document. By explaining all the benefits in the first few pages and then leaving the price for last, people believe that buyers will be pleasantly surprised when they see how much it will cost.
In actual fact, it doesn’t work that way.
Think about it. What do you do as a buyer?
I know I flick through the document until I find the price. Then, if it’s more than I want to pay, I put the document away, never to be seen again. I don’t bother going back and reading from the beginning.
Instead, what well written proposals do is tell the person up-front, how much something will cost. That way the reader doesn’t need to go digging.
They see how much it is, have an instant reaction to the amount and THEN … if it’s more expensive than they thought, they’ll keep reading through the document to look for ways to justify the price in their own mind.
Documenting Everything: Your Journal is Your Logbook
April 28, 2007
Sailors had it for years. Great explorers had it as well. If you go on an expedition to an ancient Aztec mound, more than likely the archaeologist will have one too - so, why shouldn’t you own one?
No, I’m not speaking of the scurvy that plagued the sailors! No, I’m not speaking of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, whom explorers claimed to have seen in snowy Manitoba winters. Nor am I speaking of a lost city, which was never truly lost, but simply buried under mounds of earth and recently dug up by an archaeologist.
I’m speaking of journals. Journals? Yes! Keeping a journal can be just as much of an adventure as sailing the high seas, exploring unknown Canadian wilderness or digging in the dirt to find buried treasure.
Journals have been a source of reflection for centuries. My suggestion is to look at your writing career as if you’re an explorer analyzing new-found land; an archaeologist digging up new artifacts and renaming them and so on…
How can you do this? Well, view your journal as a logbook and document your daily happenings. Here is a suggested format for keeping your captain’s log.
Why We Dont Write Our Books
April 27, 2007
In the ten years that I’ve taught people how to get on with their books, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that I’ll call "Author’s Block." Would-be writers can, indeed, sit down and work when pressed to it. The problem is that they’re not so sure they want the pressure of being an author. But they do want to. But they don’t. And so on.
Ah, the agony of getting on with your book.
Well, I’m here to diffuse that situation with a list of what I think are the key reasons we don’t immediately set down to write. Perhaps this will help the next time you find yourself polishing doorknobs instead of sitting down to write.
* We lie to ourselves about why we can’t write the book. We think our stalling is about lack of time, or too much pressure at work, or not enough solitude in the evening. But guess what? Chances are a deeper, darker reason may be at play, like ‘I’m not supposed to be bigger than Mom’ or ‘What if this thing really takes off?’
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