Kurt Steele put this great short course out on his channel today. In the short time I've been working with him he has shown some great strageties for organizing your time.  He call's it RPM, basically he breaks down a long task list into chunks as he calls it.

Kurt and I in a lots of ways work very much the same and his explaination of this RPM method is really good. He is using the technology we have in DeskView and Qstudio to deliver the content too.

I highly suggest you suscribe to his channel and follow some of this techniques for time management. Here is the link to the post I'm referring to: http://quikonnex.com/channel/link.php?id=23058

To suscribe to his channel just click on the little gold Q in the top RT hand corner.

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation  Barefoot Marketing System

Very soon Tom could be laying out in the grass on his own ranch doin trainings for us. He has some ranch land in San Diego County pegged with his name on it. I'm so happy for him to be moving away from the rat race in the city to a quiet peacful place in the country.

It's so nice to have Tom back in the Veretekk Training Room again. This guy is an awesome trainer I've learned so much from him. The first recording is his basic HTML training. I have to admit I'm not into writing webpages from scratch, but it sure helps to know this stuff. As I continue to expand my online marketing skills learning html is something that just goes with marketing on the internet.

 Tom Prendergast's HTML Training RECORDING

Tom did a training last night on Search Engine Optimization(SEO). Talk about an excellent training! If you are new to all of this online marketing stuff it might stretch you a little, but just keep listening over and over... then it will all start to make sense.

 Tom Prendergast's SEO Training RECORDING

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

I had someone ask me some questions about blogs and how I set mine up. As I was answering his questions I decided why not just share my answers here to help everyone with this great Marketing Strategy that I use.

Cindy:
Of all the many people I've spoken with (including --- who won't
leave me alone) I have selected you as my mentor. Some people are just born
lucky!! ha, ha, Please tell me what you think of my first attempt at the
blogs I have attached. ( 2 and 1/4th pages)
I am new to blogging, and would appreciate your comments and alignment. I
have Rhino skin so don't worry.
Tell me where you and your husband would like to have dinner and I will
accomodate. My priorities are family  first and then my dogs, but not
necessarily in that order.
Thanks,
Rick

Rick, If you look at all of my blogs they are targeting a specific market. So that is the first step. And to be honest I would just go ahead and put the content up on the blog.. you can always edit it.. that saves time in the long run.

When defining your target market think of keywords people might be typing into the search engines to find you. I bet Matt and Ricky (his son's and experienced online marketers) could give you a few pointers on keyword research or there are several online classes in both the predator and veretekk system that talk about it too.

Try to keep your content scaled down so the average 6th grader can easily read it... I know that sometimes isn't easy given your level of education, but that's the reading level that will appeal to the masses. Or if your target market is "highly educated people who read books" don't worry about it.

For instance.. I have many misspelled words on my blog and that's Ok because there are people misspelling those same words in the search engines... that's how they find me.

People are drawn to you for the qualities they believe exist within themselves. In a similar way people are pushed away from the qualities they fear most in themselves. We want to attract people into our business that are like us, it sure makes doing business more fun.

Hope this helps give you some direction...

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

Many have asked me about setting up your POP 3 and configuring your outlook express using message rules. So yesterday I recorded at training that Pat Hoffman did on this.

Pat Hoffman's POP3 and message rules training RECORDING

Personally I would like to see a detailed training on message rules and examples of catagories, if anyone has detailed message rules already set up in outlook express I want to talk to you. I know that Tom Prendergast has over 250 folders set up in his outlook express account. Gosh that's what I call detailed, really it's just nice to see some other systems out there and how they are set up. As most of you know I'm not big into email, but I get this question all the time.

My thanks goes out to Pat Hoffman for training and letting me record her.

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

Do you have a brand new site? How long will you have to wait before it appears on search engines? The truth is, that it could be several months. If you do nothing, it could be years. We offer a couple of suggestions for getting you started on launch day.

One important thing I should mention is that I assume you have a website that is SEO friendly. If it is completely designed in flash, it is not. If it is made up of images, it is not. This will make things a lot harder. I have seen some websites that are beautifully designed in flash or contained within frames that have been invisible on search engines. Even after 3 years, their sites did not appear anywhere. The content of this article actually assumes that you have appropriately designed your website.

One of the main things you need is to start building a network of incoming links. We'll tackle relevancy later on but for now, let's focus on ways for getting sites to link to you.

Incoming Links: (external links)
Significant links are those who have a Page Rank in excess of 3/10 (as determined by the popularity of a website). Yahoo.com, for example, has a Page Rank of 10/10, which is very valuable. Consider getting additional links to your site by submitting to directories that have a high page rank like Yahoo! (Page Rank - 10), Superpages.com (Page Rank - 8) or Dmoz.org (Page Rank -9) to take advantage of valuable incoming links. Some of these are free, others charge a nominal fee while Yahoo! charges $299 for submission to their directory. A better place to start is http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php where you can find a list of directories, paid and free, that could be valuable to you.

Optimized Press Releases:
When launching your website, it's a great idea to prepare a press release to let people know. If you're not planning on doing a full press release, we encourage you to consider an optimized press release online. Often more valuable than regular press releases, those that have been optimized can really boost your visibility online. In addition to the increased visibility, we like to select those services that offer the ability to set anchored links. One of these is PRWebdirect.com. Not only is it important to choose your keywords appropriately, but to set your anchored links to offer greatest value to both the user and your website. Others include:

www.prleap.com
www.i-newswire.com
www.webwire.com
www.pressbox.co.uk
www.24-7pressrelease.com
www.clickpress.com
www.przoom.com
www.pr.com
www.marketwire.com

Some of these are free, others will charge a small submission fee.  The key is first of all to write the press release, secondly to set the anchored links and the final one is to add tags below the article. To learn more about Press Releases check out the Press Release catagory on this site.

Buy Text Links:
While you should be careful not to overdo this, there are some benefits at least initially, that you could gain from purchasing text links. One of the more predominant ones is http://www.text-link-ads.com/.

Link Exchange:
Another good way to generate links is to tap into your existing network. You may want to consider having a links page set up. While you are probably only offering a 0/10 link exchange, many of your partners would not mind the additional exposure on another site.

Making your own Link Popularity: (Daisy Chaining)
Personally I think this is more powerful than recripoical linking any day, but that is just my opnion. I have posted articles on daisy chaining under the Veretekk catagory on this blog that explains how this is done, or just come to my training classes.

Articles:
Positioning yourselves as the experts is the field is not only valuable for your brand but it can also garner some good incoming links. Writing an article on "Selecting a Widget" or "Widget Solutions: Renting vs Buying" can be very useful for generating online visibility. These articles can then get picked up through a variety of sources but should be submitted to as many content hubs as possible. Some of the better ones are:

www.goarticles.com
www.isnare.com
www.submityourarticle.com
www.articlecity.com
www.exchangenet.com
www.article-directory.com
www.freezinesite.com

In addition, there are article distribution services like isnare.com plus writing articles on about.com.

Forum Participation:
One method that can be more time-consuming is to participate in user forums. Essentially there are a lot of relevant sites out there to encourage user participation. When adding a post or responding to one, make an attempt to place your signature with a link to your website, preferably using some of your top keywords. Check out my catagory for forums for some time saving software that I use to save time.

Pay-per-Click, Paid Inclusion:
A good way to kick-start your new site and launch your online marketing campaign is to establish an online advertising program. Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are two of the first places that should be considered.

Google Sitemap:
Google offers an xml generated sitemap tool that let's GoogleBot (Google's spider/crawler) know when your content is updated or pages have been added. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap and follow the instructions for creating one.

These are just a handful of ideas to get you started. It can be a time consuming, but can also be very valuable. You already know that people are out there looking for you or a company like you. Hopefully they don't find a company like you first...

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

Have you ever run a one time ad and then wondered why you didn't get much response?  Advertising and marketing almost always takes repeated use to work properly.  Once in a while
you will get a product or service that sells with the first ad, but most take time to sink in with customers.

There's an old newspaperman's joke that dates back more than 100 years that illustrates how ads work.

1.  The first time a man looks at an ad, he doesn't see it.
2.  The second time, he doesn't notice it.
3.  The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
4.  The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it.

The joke continues on until the sixteenth time has him thinking he'll buy some day, and the twentieth time he sees the ad he asks his wife to go out and buy the product. Consistancy is the key, so when your looking at your marketing budget decide on what works for you over a long period of time.

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

Those of you who attend my trainings know I'm a fan of Alexandra Brown's marketing strategies and image she has created for herself. When I got her latest Straight Shooter newsletter today I just had to share this article with you.

How to Charge More and Work Less
By Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"

I remember when I first launched my first business as a copywriter seven years ago, I had no clue what to charge. Without putting hard thought into what type of results my work gave my clients, I started out with an hourly rate that didn't scare ME! I would still even stutter when I said to clients, "My rate is si- si- si- sixty dollars an hour." Deep down, I wasn't confident in myself, so of course I wouldn't let myself charge more. And of course, as a result I attracted lame clients, worked like a dog, and stayed broke all the time.

Well, things are VERY different today. I have no problem sharing my consulting rate is $1,000.00 an hour, or that a private consulting day with me goes for $10,000.00 And, here's the best part: Because I take on so few clients now, at higher rates, and the bulk of my income comes from information products and programs, I work LESS than I used to!

Obviously this shift didn't happen overnight. Here are a few things you can do NOW to move in the same direction:

1. Become an expert in something.

Experts are more respected, get media attention, get paid more, and get less price resistance (meaning people are happier to pay you what you ask). I went from being a general copywriter to one who specialized in newsletters. Then in email newsletters.

Then I dubbed myself "The Ezine Queen". I had no idea at the time how much that would help me get famous and be remembered. Did you know that Muhammad Ali became known as "The Greatest" because Ali himself said it? Yep -- he just kept saying it, and then eventually so did the media!

There's a reason people happily pay more to get to the wise man at the TOP of the mountain! (Meanwhile the man at the bottom can't even seem to give it away.)

2. Raise your rates.

This may seem like a given, but you wouldn't believe the resistance I get from clients when I poke and prod them about this. Last year, I hired a personal trainer for a few months who only charged $50 an hour. Honestly, because his rate was so low compared to other trainers in the area, I was worried he wouldn't be that good. I learned he was actually great.

He often complained that his schedule was so jammed it was killing him. To make a living at that rate, he obviously had to take on clients morning, noon, night, and weekends. He was also disorganized, frazzled, and late most of the time due to his schedule.

He was such a good trainer I would have been happy to pay him $75 or even $100 an hour for his time. I remember suggesting he raise his rates, and he replied, "But Ali, then not as many people would work with me!"

Well of COURSE! That's the idea. Let's say he decided to double his rates, and half of his clients dropped off. Why wouldn't you want to work HALF as hard as you are now for the same money? This also opens up more time for you to work on new projects, like creating lucrative new information products and programs. (See #5.)

If you're having trouble raising your rates across the board, bring in fresh clients your new rate, maintain old clients at current rates, and drop the clients that are pains in your bum.

3. Restructure how clients can work with you.

For many solo-professionals, a much better way to approach working with clients is on a project basis, or "flat fee". That way you simply assign a value to the *results* you're giving them. For example, my friend Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero is a copywriter who charges $15,000.00 to write a sales letter. Does that price-out some clients who can't afford her? You bet. But that's the idea... she much prefers to work on a few projects at a time with stellar clients who truly value her work.

Another idea: Instead of taking on one-shot projects, work with clients on retainer (a set fee per month) or require them to sign up for a number of months with you. One trend in coaching and consulting right now is moving toward six-month or annual contracts with clients. Not only does it help guarantee your cash flow, but you attract better, more qualified, and more committed clients.

Example: After I tired of doing so many one-shot consultations, I created my $15,000 Platinum Mastermind program, so I could only work with 10-12 select entrepreneurs at a time and coach them closely for an entire year. It's especially rewarding for me to see them implement the recommendations I make, watch them grow their businesses so quickly, answer their ongoing questions, and share in their successes!

4. "Clone" Yourself.

Have you ever wanted a "Mini Me?" Or a whole team of them? Well there's no reason you can't. If you have a duplicatable system or process you use in your work, why not teach others how to do the same? Then have them work for you on a freelance basis, or consider "licensing" people to use your method or teachings.

Consider working with a team of other coaches and consultants. For example, one of my early life coaches, Talane Miedaner, offered me this choice when I was interested in coaching: Be coached by her personally for a high fee, or work with one of her associate coaches at a lower rate. Because I wanted her personal help, I paid her the higher fee and she did all the work. But if I chose one of the other coaches, I'd still pay her company, the associate would do all the coaching work, and Talane would keep a good portion of the fee. (Smart lady!)

5. Create and Sell Information Products

If you've read other articles of mine, you know I'm a big fan of transcending the exchange of time for money. You simply will never make the big bucks if you keep getting paid solely for your time. I'm at the point now that about 90% of my income comes from selling my knowledge via information products such as ebooks, manuals, courses, audio programs, membership programs, and occasional live events. This has helped me QUADRUPLE my income over the past three years!

Instead of "work, get paid" ... you want "work, get paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid!" I may spend a good chunk of time creating a new product, but then it can sell forever. I may put a lot of effort into creating a one-time seminar, but I also record it and create a home-study version that can sell forever. (I do this with my annual LIVE Online Success Blueprint Workshop.)

I hope you get the idea! There are many other strategies to restructure your fees and leverage your knowledge, but these are great ways to get started.

© 2005-2006 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexandria's Small Business Marketing Blog.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," publishes the award-winning 'Straight Shooter Marketing' weekly ezine with 20,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.EzineQueen.com

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

1. CUSTOMER: In this day and age, a company's marketing strategy needs to be customer focused. It's about understanding the target consumer; their wants, needs and motivations. Not as demographics, psychographics or any other graphics, but as real people. Its understanding why customers do what they do (or don't do),when they do it and why they do it. Such knowledge is critical in marketing since having a strong understanding of buyer behavior will help shed light on what is important to the customer.

2. CONSISTENCY: Companies need to maintain consistency in their message; a practice called integrated marketing communications - from packaging and advertising to sales promotion and publicity. This will maintain and reinforce a brand's personality and image in a real life context and avoid doing something brainless like changing the distinctive color of the UPS truck to orange. I am sure it's been talked about.

3. CREATIVITY: Creativity is imperative to attract attention in a world cluttered with thousands of messages. Creativity means laying aside the rules, and engages in out-of-box thinking so that marketers can reach beyond logic and structure and tap into their imaginations.

* Creativity Informs: Marketing's responsibility to inform is greatly enhanced by creativity. Creativity makes marketing more vivid, and many researchers believe vividness attracts attention, maintains interest, and stimulates consumers' thinking.

* Creativity Persuades: The ancients Greeks created legends and myths about gods and heroes -symbols for humankind's instinctive longings and fears - to influence human behavior and thought. Today's marketers are doing the same thing; they are creating new myths, heroes and symbols like Ronald McDonald, the "Can You Hear Me Now" guy from Verizon, and more recently the Gecko from Geico Insurance.

* Creativity Reminds: Imagine using the same invitation, without any creativity, to remind people to try a particular product everyday for a month. The invitation would become stale very quickly. Only creativity can transform boring reminders into interesting, entertaining marketing communications. Nike is proof. Several commercials in a Nike campaign never mention the company name or even spelled it out on the screen. Each communication told a story. And, the only on-screen cue identifying the sponsor was a single "swoosh" logo inscribed on the final scene.

4. CULTURE: All marketing communications needs cross-cultural research to be able to succeed. It's simple to see things from your own perspective, assuming that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like you and should understand what's so great about your product or service. Just reading about all the mistakes made by large corporations proves that even the most sizable and experienced marketers have made errors time and again.

One of the most famous examples is Coca Cola translating the name into Chinese without back-translating it ("bite the wax tadpole"), ultimately resulting in a horrible response from an insulted society. Marketing books are full of examples like these. As David Ogilvy, known as the Father of Advertising, states, "If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think".

5. COMMUNICATION: This one is basic. Consumers don't want to be "marketed to". Rather, they want to be "communicated with". Good marketing communication creates value with target customers, speaks in their language and tells your story. It's about building long term, trustworthy, and profitable relationships with your customers. As Seth Godin states, it's about reinforcing the lies that consumers tell themselves everyday (i.e. I look much better in these jeans from Abercrombie; they make me look sexy).

6. CHANGE:  Marketing is not just a business function, but a process. There is a beginning, middle, but there is never an end. Marketers must constantly CHANGE as society changes. They should never be afraid to try something new. Marketing today is not what it was 2 - 5 - or even 20 years ago. Marketing needs to be an evolving process that considers change in the world, economy, market, consumers; as well as internal change within the organization.

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

I'm going to try not to get too techie here, but as I learn new ways to optimize my site's for the Search Engines I try to pass on this knowledge to you.

When you think of building a search engine friendly site you probably don't think of optimizing your images. Title tags and META tags probably come to mind first, but optimizing images can attract more visitors to your site and enhance their experience when they get there. Properly optimized images will decrease page load times, allow people with disabilities that use screen readers to understand the content that they can't see, and bring new visitors to your site from image searches.

There are several important factors to consider when optimizing images on your site:

File Names:
Giving pictures an appropriate filename will help search engines determine its contents, especially for image specific searches like Google's Image Search. For example, naming a picture of a mule "mule.jpg" is better than naming it "5515.jpg".

Image Size and Quality:
The fact that both image size and quality are important causes problems for site owners. Lower quality images increase loading speed, but hurt rankings in image searches and detract from the overall user experience. Higher quality images help in image search rankings and look great, but cause pages to load slowly, which can be a problem for visitors with slow connection speeds.

A way to get the best of both worlds is to have a small, lower quality image on the page that links to a higher quality image file. That way the page can be loaded and viewed quickly, but users wanting a closer look can click the image, and image searches will have a high quality image to index. Really it's all what you are wanting to do. Rank high for image search or have fast loading pages. 

Alt Text:
All images should include short alt text that describes the image. Alt text helps search engine spiders understand what your image contains, which will help them to understand the context of your page better, and in turn pass you more targeted traffic via search and image search. Alt text also helps screen readers tell disabled visitors what the image contains, enhancing their experience on your site.

A properly formatted HTML image tag with alt text looks like this:
<img src="image_title.gif" alt="Descriptive alt text here" />

Surrounding Text and Captions:
It is important that the surrounding text and image captions are consistent with the content of the picture. According to the Google Images FAQ:

"Google analyzes the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content. Google also uses sophisticated algorithms to remove duplicates and ensure that the highest quality images are presented first in your results."

Avoid Putting Text in Images:
There are some occasions where text in an image is necessary, but in general it should be avoided. It's common practice to use images with text in headers or other important parts of the page, usually because of the background or surrounding logos. While alt text certainly helps, it's best to have the text actually readable by search engine spiders and screen readers.

A simple alternative is to create your graphic with everything but the text, write the text by itself (formatted to your liking using CSS), and then make the graphic a background image of the text (also using CSS). This makes it look like the text is part of the graphic, when in reality it is part of the HTML. just an idea, I know I have plans to change some of my images so they are readable to the search engines and screen readers.

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

Sometimes I get so side tracked teaching people my online marketing strategies that I forget to mention my primary business. I've been a Shak*** Distributor for over 10 years and have built a large stable, reliable customer base onine.  This company has been in business for 50 yrs. and I fully expect it to be around in 50 more years.  Unlike many company's online today you can feel confident that any work you do promoting this company will still be paying your future generations.

For those of you who don't know it... I have a blog set up just for Shak*** Distributors.  Most of you know I'm not big into email and haven't been for a long time, this is one way I educate my team of Shak*** Distributors. Here is the link to this special blog: http://barefootmentor.tblog.com/

For people who have joined my Shak*** Distributor team, I've set up a private team test channel to teach you how publish on deskview channels. Once you have mastered co-publishing on our test channel you will be given access to our powerhouse Shak*** Distributor Online Team Channel.

Just in case you didn't realize this is REALLY POWERFUL! It's not by accident that I'm in the top of google for my desired keywords... it's taken lots of strategies, planning, posting and linking to get there. What I'm offering you as part of my Shak*** Distributor team is a chance to join me at the top.  It's really up to you...

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System

Keywords:  Marketing Strategies, Shak*** Distributor, Cindy McAsey

I was baffled the other day when one of my newest students submitted a press release and it didn't get approved. The press release company said they would have to get permission from the company she was promoting. That was a new disapproval that I hadn't heard before.  Then last night in my training class it dawned on my training class what had happened.... the new student hadn't used her name and business in the company conact information... She had used the company name she was promoting.

The very first step in starting your own business online is to create an image or brand for your business. I have training classes on how to do this. There is a book out written by Seth Godin called the "Purple Cow," that is all about remarkable marketing and making your business stand out in the crowd. Well that is exactly what we want and need to do on the internet is make our businesses stand out above the rest. This book is available at a the book stores and you can't miss it. The outside of the book looks like a holstein cow, only instead of being black and white it's purple and white.

Once you have a business name be sure to check the rules and regulations in your area to register that name. Then apply for a tax ID number (EIN) for your business. This can be done online. Here is an article that explains how to do this:
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html 

My question for you today do you have the cart before the horse starting your business? If you have started promoting online and don't yet have a business name for yourself then it's time stop and get your horse in the right spot.

Cindy McAsey | Phone:888.272.6701 Veretekk Automated Lead Generation Automated Marketing System