Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to launch "American Start Up"

Kelly mentioned this in her blog and titled it: Hotties and Entrepreneurs (HEE HEE, She’s so funny! Not sure if they’re hotties, but really cool and giving people nonetheless). 

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are giving 8 start-up businesses 50K to get started and then eliminating the non-performers in a new television series, “American Start-up”. Sounds a little like the Apprentice, but I’ll bet with these two behind it, it will be livelier and complete with some great twists.

Full Story:

USATODAY.com - Affleck and Damon to launch a kinder ‘Apprentice’

IBMoms is Featured on Michael Wong’s Marketing Forum Watch

Pretty cool! Internet Based Moms is the first work at home mom forum to make it onto Michael Wong’s Marketing Forum Watch and his Ecommerce Forum Watch too. Michael has set up a great tool where you can watch all the latest threads on some great marketing and ecommerce forums. It’s where I go when I want to get some good learning and “forum watching” done.

Thanks Michael!

I’m Making an Info Product Course in 4 Days Flat!

Well, Alice “mind like sieve” Seba once again forgot an engagement. My friend, Tracy Lyn Moland invited me to speak at a conference she is speaking at. I could have SWORN, she said the weekend of August 31st.

Nah…ah…She said the weekend of July 31st. GULP!

I can be ready for the event, no problem…but I’m allowed to promote my “wares” at this conference, so I’d better get my butt in gear. I’ve had the shell of the product ready for quite some time and all the ideas in my noggin’, but I just haven’t gotten it together yet.

So, by Saturday, I need to have it all done. The course will include audio, a workbook and tons of other great interactive stuff….think I can do it? Of course, I will be enlisting the help of my cohort, Kelly McCausey to get me through all the little details.

But the race is on…I’ll let you know how I do and tell you all about it when it’s complete.

Why Isn’t Anyone Interested in My Products?

This is one of the most common questions a netrepreneur asks. Sometimes, it’s because you are brand new to the net and just don’t have the traffic yet…BUT…usually, I can visit the website and see some very obvious things:

1. There is no unique selling position (USP). What makes your product unique? This is something that Joe Robson goes into great detail with in Make Your Words Sell (my very favorite web copywriting ebook).

2. Where are the attention getting headlines that draw the visitor into your copy?

3. Why are you talking about yourself? Get rid of all those “we’s” in your copy, rewrite it and talk about “you” (your customer) throughout your copy. Customers care about themselves; unfortunately, you are not really important.

4. Where are the benefits of your copy? Features do not sell —– benefits do! If you buy a drill, it’s not because you want to be able to drill (a feature)…you want to be able to make holes (benefit).

5. Call to action. I mentioned this one a few days back, but don’t forget to ask for the sale or newsletter subscription. Be sure to tell your visitor EXACTLY where to go and what to do once she’s read your page.

It’s not rocket science, but stuff you have to keep in our head. Above all, keep your visitor/targeted customer in mind as you write. You’ll be certain to see almost immediate results!

Just Finished Reading "Blogs to Riches"

Well, I took the plunge and bought another Internet Marketing ebook. I purchased BlogsToRiches and gobbled it all up last night. It was a good read and is recommended for anyone just getting started with blogs and affiliate marketing.

The ebook doesn’t cover how to set up your blog, so if you need that information do a search on Google for “how to set up a blog”…you’ll find some good free resources. This ebook is about how to make money with your blog.

As someone who has been affiliate marketing for a couple of years, a lot of the information in this book was old hat to me…but there were enough little gems in this ebook to make my purchase worthwhile. I’d love to tell you what they are, but those are author Jim F. Krukal’s secrets to tell.

Besides, it was nice to see the affiliate marketing techniques I knew about applied to blogs and Jim also includes some more great ideas on how to make money from a blog. It’s certainly an ideal guide for a beginner!

You can find out more at:
BlogsToRiches

Does This Make Sense? Getting Listed on Google

A fellow business group member posted this article about getting listed on Google. I clicked through to read and was just baffled. I couldn’t figure out why this advice was supposed to work, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard people suggest something like this.

The idea is that instead of submitting your website to Google for inclusion, you submit a page form another website that is linking to you. This doesn’t make sense to me at all and seems like a waste of precious time.

Here’s what I wrote to the group and I’d like to share it with you:

Yikes, that doesn’t seem to be a very useful exercise, but thank youfor sharing the article. Typing in where All the Web (or any other website) links to you into the Google add URL page isn’t going to get you anywhere faster, but this isn’t the first suggestion I’ve heard of this.

Google says:

“We add thousands of new sites to our index each time we crawl theWeb, but if you like, you may submit your URL as well. Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it’s likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form…

…The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites. Google’s robots jump from page to page on the Web via hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to you, the more likely it is that we’ll find you quickly.”

I’d follow Google’s advice, not the article. Google is basically saying the submission service on Google is a waste of your time…so why do it? Get links from other sites, like they say.

I’ll tell you a secret…get a link from a site that gets crawled frequently. This doesn’t mean it has to be a site that has a high rank (assuming the author of the article means PageRank), but a site that has frequently updated content where Google visits often. This can be a blog, a portal site or just any site that updates frequently and is already listed in Google. When I start a new site, I can get it listed in just a couple days…in most cases…with this technique.

So what does Google Do with All Those URL Submissions?

Well, I’ve shared this theory with a few of my colleagues before (hee hee hee) and here it is. I believe that Google takes all those submissions, prints them out and lines all those pigeons cages with it. You can learn more about Google’s Pigeon Rank from Google. Enjoy!

My Favorite Business Forums

I go through phases where I hang out at forums a lot…and then I go into a cave and just work, work, work. But I love the social aspect of talking with like-minded people and love to share ideas and learn. Learning and sharing knowledge is my passion!

So, when I do hang out at forums a lot, these are my favorite places to go:

> Internet Based Moms - Hee hee, yeah…I own it, but it’s a great place for discussing all aspects of Internet Marketing in a friendly environment.

> Of course, I’m also enjoying hanging out with my new friends at Mom Masterminds. Kelly McCausey and I just launched this online business mentoring site last month and are having a blast.

> Okay, maybe I’m a forum junkie because I actually own three. This one isn’t mom-related and is for people who love writing online. Come visit us at Web Writing Profit

All biases aside for my own forums….here’s some more great ones:

> SelfStartersWeeklyTips.com: This is a great place to discuss Internet marketing and is ideal for those involved with or just getting started with affiliate marketing. The forum owner, Lynn Terry is a great friend…and an awesome forum owner.

> TurningIdeasIntoDollars.com: This is a paid membership forum started by Lynn Terry and another good friend Andre Chaperon. They do online training and have tons of great resources inside…it is highly recommended. If you visit the main page…you’ll see me telling you all about the wonderful things going on inside.

> WAHM.com: WAHM is the original work at home mom site and they have a really active forum. The discussions are really varied and range from people who want teleworking jobs to those with home businesses. I usually just stick to the Business Advice & Business Topics forum.

The only complaint I have about WAHM is that people should not be able to delete their posts. It causes a number of people to post things they may not normally say if they didn’t have the option do delete. There’s also been a number of times when I wrote a very detailed answer to a question and then the first person who posted deletes her post…and POOF! the whole thread is gone.

IM4Newbies is run by Mike Merz and is a very friendly place to get some good learning done. I don’t go there as much as I’d like, but Mike deserves a mention for sure!

Just for Learning Forums

I must say that I learn tons at IBMoms, SSWT, TIID and Mom Masterminds too…but I listed them first because I love the social aspect of those forums. However, if I’m just looking to just read posts, here’s where I go:

> ALWAYS…I go to Michael Wong’s Marketing Forum Watch. You can scan through posts from many great marketing forums. You can even save your settings to view only the forums you want to watch. It’s awesome.

> Webmasterworld: This is an awesome forum filled with tons of smart cookies. I just go there to read because I don’t really like the anonymity of the forums. I like to get to know the people I’m speaking with and using real names myself.

There’s a lot of other good ones, but scanning Michael’s forum watch will you give all the latest and greatest juicy posts. You can also watch Webmasterworld from the forum watch.

To Your Learning!

Traffic Equalizer Review - What the HECK?!

Okay, for a long time I’ve seen people piggy backing on my good search engine rankings and creating pages that basically copy search results pages from Google. They choose a phrase - ex. “work at home moms” and set up a page with links to and descriptions of the top ranking sites. Then they put their ad at the top.

I guess the idea is that these pages are optimized for the chosen phrases and should rank well because of it. I have yet to see pages like this that get any serious search engine rankings (I’m just talking about their location in the search results pages here - not PageRank or link popularity).

I also assume that the other objective with this method is to boost their actual Google PageRank by creating thousands of extra pages that link back to your home page. Okay, I’ve seen this work on a handful of sites. But let’s be very, very serious…PR has very little to do with where you appear on the search results pages.

AHA! And it’s Done with Traffic Equalizer

Today, I found out that many people use a program called Traffic Equalizer to do this (yeah, it’s been around for a while, but I never actually checked it out). I’m not going to link to them, but you can find them by adding a .com to the end of their name. First, I have to say…I haven’t used the program, so my Traffic Equalizer review is of the concept…not the actual product.

But the concept is ICK! It allows you to create tons of search engine spammy garbage pages…yucky, yucky. And let’s say it increased your traffic, who cares? You have people visiting these garbage pages and perhaps clicking your ad at the top, but outside of that it’s totally untargeted traffic. People make all these crazy pages targeting every keyword under the sun, but ultimately it does little for their actual businesses.

But most importantly..if you care about your reputation, why would you do this?

And yes, I know many webmasters don’t care about their reputations, so I’m not speaking to them…I’m speaking to you, the person who does care.

When your visitors / customers do find these junky pages…how do you think it reflects upon you? I have come across these pages on websites of other Internet Marketers that I respected…but when I saw these pages, I thought - HUH??? Why are they doing this?

One of these Internet marketers appears to banned by Google now. Now, of course I don’t know if it was because of this tactic. I doubt it, but this is just such a shady neighborhood to get involved in.

The web is made better by great websites like yours…don’t get caught up in the hype.

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