Dilbeck Marketing – back to business in 2012

December 21, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 10 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Business, John Dilbeck, Marketing, Opinions 

Lots of fun things to do, today.

I’m finally free to update some of the websites related to my marketing business.

For the last several months, I’ve been pulling out my hair and chewing my fingernails trying to decide exactly what kinds of consulting services I’ll be offering. I settled that issue pretty quickly.

The hard part was deciding how I wanted to proceed and what I was going to charge for my time and effort.

Deciding what I WILL DO was much easier than deciding what I WILL NOT DO.

As I get older, I’m getting pickier about the people, products, and services I promote.

In the affiliate marketing side of my business, I’m dropping several companies this week, because I only promote the very best I can find in a particular category.

When it comes to business services, quality and dependability trumps price — every time. Some of the services I’ll be promoting cost more than their competitors, but they are worth it. Some, surprisingly, actually cost less.

In each case, I made my decisions based on quality and dependability, rather than price.

And, I did NOT make my decisions based on how much they are willing to pay me to promote them. I’m dropping several businesses that pay rather high commissions, but I don’t want to earn those commissions by recommending something that isn’t the best in its category.

Yes, it’s possible that I may make a bad decision now and then, but I’ve spent years and thousands of dollars using and testing these products and services. I know — first hand — if they deliver what they promise.

In a couple of cases, there really are two or three businesses that all deliver outstanding quality and return on investment. In one case, it has been very difficult to decide between them. I’m confident, however, that I made good choices for myself, my clients, and people like my clients.

If I won’t recommend something to my brother, daughter, best friend, or most-valued client, I won’t recommend it to you. If I won’t use it myself, I won’t recommend it, either.

That decision may cost me thousands of dollars, but if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

I only promote businesses, and their owners, whose products and services I use and with which I am very satisfied — and that applies equally to affiliate marketing and also to promoting local brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC.

I’ll be stepping up my efforts to a higher notch in just a couple of weeks and I’ve been wrestling with several decisions for a long time.

When I started MurphyGold.com a couple of years ago, I planned to offer my marketing services to only one business in each category. Then, I’ve had inquiries from competitors of the folks I’m already promoting, and it’s been hard to turn them down.

And, in several cases, there are multiple business owners in a particular category who all qualify as top-notch and deserve to be promoted, so it’s been hard to make a decision about how I’ll handle this. In one category, off the top of my head, there are at least four business owners who I’d be proud to recommend to my readers. That is what has made it such a difficult decision.

If I were selling advertising, it would be simple. I’d let all of them buy ads, but that’s not what I’m building with Murphy Gold.

After wrestling with myself about this for months, I’ve come full circle back to my original thoughts. I’ll promote only one business in each category. That way, I can offer ideas for marketing and advertising without having to deal with helping people directly compete against each other.

I feel better about that. It was an ethical, as well as a business, dilemma. I do my best to be open, honest, and ethical and I felt it was wrong to promote two businesses offering the same kinds of services, because I would have inside knowledge of their goals and plans. My gut has known all along that it would open a can of worms, but my head has been arguing that I could deal with it and not do anything unethical or unfair.

I’ve learned — over many years — to pay attention to my gut feelings and finally my big ol’ brain came to the same conclusion.

Looking back on it, I knew all along that it would not be the right thing to do, and, as a result, I haven’t proceeded with inviting new businesses.

Now, that I have locked this “one business per category” policy in place (and have thrown away the key), it frees up a lot of energy to get to work.

Then, this week, I resolved my conflicts about pricing. That’s always a hard thing to set. There are many models and ways of calculating prices, but I tossed them all aside and went with my gut. It has been a good counselor over the years.

Now, I know what I’ll be doing, what I’ll be charging, and a few of the people I’ll accept as new clients. What a relief. Now, I can jump into doing the work — and that’s the part I love.

Normally, in the last two weeks of December, I fire the bottom 10% of my clients. I don’t work with people who are hard to deal with, who don’t do what they say they’ll do, who don’t pay on time, or who are just difficult to deal with.

If I don’t enjoy working with someone, there isn’t enough money on this quaint little planet to convince me to work with them. Life’s too short to deal with difficult people.

The only people I’ll work with are honest, reliable, helpful, friendly, cooperative, happy to see their customers, and very good at what they do.

I’m kind of a strange bird. In a world where most people will work with anyone who has some money and a pulse, I turn away more prospects than I accept.

I’ve been told I don’t have a firm grasp on reality and that I don’t understand business. That may be true.

However, I’d rather work with a few outstanding clients I truly love working with than have hundreds or thousands of clients I don’t like.

Some things transcend money.

This year, I’m happy to say that I don’t have any clients who need firing. I think that’s a first. I love working with great people.

I’ll be sending out invoices for next year, and we’ll see if any of my clients decide to fire me. It’s possible.

It’s gonna be an outstanding 2012! I’m going to have a lot of fun with my business.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: ,

Your Facebook page – what would you do if it suddenly disappeared?

June 5, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 17 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Facebook, Sitesell and Site Build It, Social Media Marketing, Webhosting, Websites 

On Wednesday, I wrote about Sitesell’s Facebook page disappearing. *poof*

You might want to read that before reading the rest of this article.

If you don’t want to go read it, here’s a brief synopsis. Sitesell’s Facebook page was doing very well. They had invested months of time, lots of money, and the energy of several employees to build it to where it was. There were over 16,000 people who Liked the page. There was hundreds of pages of content and thousands of interactions. Interest was growing. Activity was increasing. More people were liking it every day.

Then, Facebook shut it down.

*poof*

No warning. No explanation.

*poof*

Gone.

What would you do if your Facebook page was your primary marketing site for your business? (It wasn’t for Sitesell, but it was becoming a very valuable resource.)

What if all your marketing was to send people to your Facebook page? What if all your marketing suddenly sent people to Facebook’s home page, instead. No warning. No explanation.

I bet you’d be reaching for the antacid to put out the fire in your belly. I know I would.

Ken Evoy, the founder of the company, blogged about it. He linked to other businesses that had similarly had their Facebook page shut down. I urge you to read that blog post: Urgent! We Need Your Help!

Now it’s back again and you can see it here: SiteSell.

Still, there’s been no explanation or apology forthcoming from Facebook.

Think about this.

Don’t put all your promotion eggs in Facebook’s basket. Have at least one website you own and control.

Even if you have your own website and/or blog on a domain you own, you’re still at least a little bit at the mercy of the company that hosts your site for you. But, I think, there isn’t nearly as much of a risk as there is at Facebook.

One of my Facebook pages was shut down

I have a website at Murphy Gold that I use for promoting select locally-owned businesses in Murphy, NC.

As part of my marketing, I set up a Facebook page for Murphy Gold.

I let it languish for a few months, while I was undergoing chemotherapy and just didn’t feel like working on it. One day, when I was feeling relatively well, I noticed that I had over 25 likes on the page. That meant that I could apply to Facebook to get a shorter page URL than the one that is automatically assigned when you create a page.

I wrote a note about that on my Dilbeck Marketing page: How to get a better URL for your Facebook pages.

Of course, I wanted Murphy Gold to be in the URL. So, I applied for the URL I wanted and it was denied, because it was already in use. Of course, I went to the URL to see it. In this case, it wasn’t a page, it was a personal profile, and it was inactive, having only a couple of status updates from a year earlier. There was no tie between the person using the URL and themselves, and I’ve claimed common law trademark on the phrase “Murphy Gold” as you’ll see on the bottom of just about every page of my site.

So, I filed a trademark infringement claim and requested the URL be applied to my page, since it rightfully belonged to me.

What happened?

The next day my page was shut down for trademark infringement.

So, I know about the fire in the belly when that happens.

Fortunately, it was not a major problem, but it was still wrong.

So, I appealed with an explanation that I was the one who had filed the claim against the personal profile that was infringing on my intellectual property.

I went on to other things, including my next chemotherapy treatment. A few days later, when checking my email, I received a message that my page was restored with the URL I requested.

No apology.

It was just another case of Facebook being the sole judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to their site and all the work we put into building it for them so they can make hugemongous profits.

Fortunately, it worked out for me. It doesn’t for some.

I know that Facebook is a free site and they can (and will) do what suits them. I knew that going in. But, still, I expect them to follow their own terms and conditions as well as the policies they adopt. What we don’t get is clear lines of good communications.

I could have demanded a full refund for what I paid them, but that wouldn’t have helped. (grin)

I urge caution, if you’re using a Facebook page as a primary source of contact with your customers and prospects. Make sure that you have another site where you can be reached and where you can explain what’s happening, if you encounter a situation like this.

In fact, I urge you to use a website or blog that you own and control as your primary marketing venue. Other sites, like Facebook, Squidoo, Hubpages, and so forth, can be good adjuncts to your site, but should not be your only, or even primary, representation of your business.

Likewise, be careful of building your website on a free service using one of their subdomains.

I’ve cautioned about building a site on a free service and promoting it using their url.

For example, I’ve been testing a new site here: johndilbeck.weebly.com

Soon, I’ll be working on that site on a regular basis, but I won’t be promoting it until I set it up as DilbeckMarketing.com. It’s not a lot of work to do. I already own the domain and I want to replace my old site with this new one. It’s just a matter of setting aside a few hours one day when my head is clear and I’m thinking straight and then doing the work.

You can learn more about Weebly here: learn more about Weebly

(Yes, that’s an affiliate link. It’s what I do. It’s how I’ve earned my living for over ten years. Many of the links in this article are affiliate links. When you buy through one of them, I earn a small commission. It’s what pays the bills. Thank you! If you buy direct by going to their site instead of through my link, you won’t save any money. You’ll just let the company keep the commission I might have earned by telling you about these resources that can be very useful for you.)

(By the way, I don’t promote just anything — even if they would pay me a commission. For instance, I don’t promote credit cards, insurance companies, multi-level marketing companies, and many, many others that I could. Yes, they pay very good commissions. However, I decided that I will only promote products and services that I would use myself. Or, which I would recommend to my family and best friends, even if I earned nothing from it. I use all of the services I suggest in this article and I’m happy with them. Now, back to the subject at hand…)

Weebly

Weebly provides both free and pro hosting services. I paid for the pro service and it’s only about $50 per year and offers more features than the free version. I’m not positive, but I think you can host up to five websites on a pro account, for the same price.

I recommend Weebly to my friends, family, clients, and you.

If you want a good looking website with lots of features for a low price (or free), and you don’t want to learn all the technogeek stuff you need to know to code a site from scratch (the way I do some of my sites), then you ought to look into Weebly. After all, it won’t cost anything to sign up for a free account and spend some time learning how it works.

That’s the reason I first signed up for Weebly. Sitesell’s next version of SBI is going to have a greatly-enhanced version of their sitebuilder and they’ve said it will be similar to Weebly’s. So, I initially signed up for a free account at Weebly so I’d be prepared when Sitesell rolls out their new version later this year.

In the process of using it, I really liked it, and that’s when I decided to upgrade to the pro version of Weebly. Now, I just need to knuckle down and build my new Dilbeck Marketing site, there.

Here’s another professional website hosted on Weebly: Images By Courtnie Photography

Weebly offers lots of great features and what I think is the best site builder software on the Internet. By that, I mean the best interface for easily creating HTML pages with all the bells and whistles, without having to learn all the code.

Check it out, if you want to build a website. It’s a great place for personal sites in addition to business sites. Want to build a website for your club, family reunion, church group, or something similar? Try Weebly.

HostGator

I’ve tested dozens of ways to build websites, forums, online communities, blogs, and even obscure things such as an article directory of my own.

After building dozens of test sites, I’ve narrowed my choices, considerably.

I still have some blogs at Blogger.com and WordPress.com and a few other free sites, but they are more or less inactive at this point. Now and then I post something. I mainly keep them around to retain control over the URLs that I have heavily promoted in the past.

These days, I host my traditional sites, including websites and self-hosted WordPress powered blogs (including this one) at HostGator. I’ve been doing this for years and it has been very cost effective and reliable.

It takes a lot more technical knowledge to build a site at HostGator than at Weebly, but HostGator offers features that are great for programmers and developers to add additional functionality to a website. I use PHP and PERL programming on some of my sites to do things I can’t on other webhosting services.

On the downside, we open ourselves up to more security risks when we use scripts — both custom and open source — on our websites. Scripts are the main way in which criminals gain control of our sites and use them for their nefarious purposes, such as hosting phishing pages and/or using them to send spam emails without our knowledge. Or, sometimes, they just like to take control and either deface or destroy the site. I’ve had all of those things happen to my traditionally-hosted sites, multiple times, on HostGator and other similar hosting services.

I can’t think of a single open source script I’ve used, including WordPress, that hasn’t been hacked at least once, over the years that I’ve been doing this. And, to be totally honest, it might be going on right now on one of more of my sites without my knowledge.

The last phishing scam that was installed on one of my sites was caught by HostGator security. They disabled and removed the offending scripts and pages and notified me. Then, I spent the next day or so going over the site looking for other problems. That was a totally non-productive, but necessary, use of my time and energy.

I’ll continue using HostGator for most of my current sites (except for a few, like DilbeckMarketing.com, that I’ll be moving to Weebly.

I have a couple of large websites hosted there…

JohnDilbeck.com (which has lots of custom programming I added over the years)

It used to be a much larger site (nearly 2,000 pages) before the NC General Assembly passed the nexus tax law in 2009 and Amazon.com dropped all affiliates in North Carolina. I lost several hundred dollars per month in income as a result of that decision and removed hundreds of pages on the site that were designed for and had links to products that could be purchased on Amazon.com.

GeorgiaDragRacing.com (which will be taken down one of these days due to my brother’s bad health)

I seem to recall something about drag racing in my senior yearbook entry when I went to Campbell High School in Fairburn, GA. (Howdy, class of ’70!) This website proves how much David and I loved drag racing. There are some great photos of the Houston Brothers and their ‘vettes. They owned and operated Houston Brothers Dragstrip in Fairburn for a number of years.

(If we were going to keep that site up, I’d add lots of videos of drag racing from YouTube. I think that would make an even more interesting site.)

My three active blogs will continue to be hosted on Hostgator:

John Dilbeck And Friends

21st Century Affiliate Marketing (you’re here right now. Thanks for reading!)

and the smaller, and less active

Murphy, NC 28906 (It’s being replaced by my MurphyConnections.com social networking site.)

All three of those sites are powered by WordPress and some custom programming I’ve added here and there.

I like HostGator and all they provide at a very reasonable cost, but their hosting service takes more technical skill and savvy to use than Weebly.

Sitesell and SBI

Now, if you’re very serious about building an online business and you want the best combination of tools, training, support, and an outstanding members-only forum for helping and being helped, then the only company I suggest is Sitesell.

(By online business, I don’t just mean making money online. See: Make money online vs. Build a business online for more of my thoughts on this subject.)

Yes, Sitesell is the company that had their Facebook page taken down for almost two days and that’s what prompted this long post.

Here’s the link to their blog post about this episode: Urgent! We Need Your Help!

and here’s a link to Sitesell’s Facebook page.

A little history, if you’re new to reading my scribblings…

I would not have been able to build my online marketing empire (grin) had it not been for what I learned from Ken Evoy (founder of SiteSell and the visionary behind SBI).

I found him over ten years ago, when I had quit programming and consulting and returned to blacksmithing — an old family tradition.

I enjoy making things and I was planning to make custom-made arms and armour. I did some of that, but along the way, I took a path less traveled and made a steel rose for Dena, my beautiful daughter.

My friend George Kelischek, a master violin maker in Brasstown, NC once told me, “Anyone can learn to make something, but you can’t build a business until you learn how to sell what you make.”

Truer words were never spoken.

So, since the Internet was starting to get popular, I went searching for information on how to build a website that could help me sell my roses that never wilt.

I already knew how to build websites, and I was already an Amazon affiliate, earning a hundred or so dollars a month, so I already knew a little about the subject.

What made the difference was finding Ken Evoy and buying his book, Make Your Site Sell! That was by far the best $20 (or so) I ever spent. I’ve recouped that investment and much more, many times over, and I’m still earning from work I did years ago. (I love passive residual income. I wish I had a lot more of it!)

The book cost about $17, if I remember correctly, and with the second edition the price was increased, to around $30. That was for three volumes and about 1,500 pages of very good information.

Now, you can get it as a free PDF download of Make Your Site Sell!

That book changed my life. It took a lot of studying and a LOT of work, but before long, I was selling all the roses I could make to people all across the USA and Canada and made some lifelong friends in the process.

I was getting inquiries from Ireland, England, Australia, New Zealand, and other far-off lands.

I was even getting requests for custom-forged daggers, crowns, jewelry, and other items from people as far away as California. A good website that could be found in the search engines really extended my marketing reach.

Then, Mom got sick with cancer. I’ve written about that over the years, so I won’t repeat the story here. I cared for Mom for years following her cancer surgery and then spent a couple of years fighting my own battle. Thankfully, Dena and Stacey cared for me when I needed it.

Here’s something I wrote about Mom, following her death: In memory of Mattie Lee Dilbeck

Here’s something I wrote following Mom’s death (before my cancer fight started) that shows some of my thinking and the state I was in: Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

It’s safe to say that the last nine years were devoted to caring for Mom and fighting my battle with cancer. What little free time and energy I had, I continued to maintain my sites and company as well as I could. If it had been anything but an online business that mostly ran on automatic (except for the research and writing, of course), I would have had to shut it down. That came very close to happening last March. It looked like I wouldn’t live much longer and I didn’t have the strength to work on it. I came very close to pulling the plug on Dilbeck Marketing and shutting down all my sites.

Even without much input from me, there was enough income to cover the expenses, so I left it running. Good thing. I didn’t have the energy or enough of a clear head to shut it down gracefully. All I would have been able to do was cancel the hosting accounts and stop paying the expenses. That would have left remnants all around the Internet from all the work I’ve done over the last 10 years.

So, I left all the sites up. Now, we’re continuing to kick cancer’s butt and I’m getting stronger every day. There’s a lot already in place, but it feels a lot like I’m starting a new business. I have to clean things up and start running on the treadmill that powers everything. Fortunately for me, the treadmill is actually the keyboard I’m pounding on right now.

Make Your Site Sell! and all the work I put into building these sites and relationships kept me going financially, even when I could not leave home for more than an hour or two to run errands the last few years I was caring for Mom, and the last couple of years while Dena and Stacey were caring for me.

But, a lot of people who read MYSS! did not have the technical skills to follow the advice in that book, so Ken Evoy took it up a notch and created Site Build It, now referred to as SBI! ver 2.

Now, back to the present…

Henceforth, I’ll be putting about 80% of my efforts into building two sites I own that are powered by SBI: Act on your dream! and Murphy Gold.

I believe that almost anyone can make their life better by choosing their most important dream (not sleeping dream, but something you want to achieve), and then making it real. I think you can be well along the way to realizing your dream, once you’ve made that decision, in as little as a year from now.

For the last year, my dream has been to kick cancer’s butt and get back to work. (check)

Now, my dream is to do what I can to inspire others to live their dreams (using the first site) and to promote some of the very best business owners in Murphy, NC (the second site).

I’ll be spending about 15% of my work time on Act On Your Dream!, 65% on MurphyGold.com and MurphyConnections.com, and the remaining 20% of my time on running the business, accounting, maintaining all my other sites and blogs, occasionally updating my profiles and interactions on sites such as LinkedIn, MerchantCircle, and Squidoo, posting updates and teasers on Twitter, and playing — with a little work — on Facebook.

The plan is in place and the goals are set. Now, it’s time to start working on each of them and drawing a big heavy black line through each item when it is completed.

Ken Evoy and SBi have given me the knowledge, tools, and guidance I need to live my dream, just as they have done for thousands of others around the world, including a few who are reading this right now. They continue to evolve their product, let us know about new techniques that have been proven to help us build our business, and provide ongoing support and encouragement through their newsletters and forum.

Right now, I’m sitting on the front porch in the mountains while I’m working on my blog. That’s the life I love.

If I had to focus on just one thing, and that may very well happen one day in the future, I’d focus on promoting the people of Murphy, NC on MurphyGold.com and MurphyConnections.com.

And what’s going to make that possible? Yeppers! That’s right, Sitesell and SBI. (And Ning, for hosting Murphy Connections.)

Oh, yeah, LinkToDetails.com is a domain powered by SBI that makes it possible to have my own link shortening service like tinyurl.com, or bit.ly, or the others — but it is one I own and control, so I’m not subject to any whims or changes of direction on their part. Don’t bother going to look at it, I use it only for redirecting links, mostly affiliate links, to the businesses I promote.

The primary work I do is done on my own domains. The ones I own and control and over which I set my own policies. (I may be vulnerable to my own capricious or birdbrained decisions — like almost shutting all of them down last year — but not to anyone else’s.)

Facebook can be like that. They can be capricious and they can make mistakes. Sometimes, but not always, those mistakes are resolved properly. Unfortunately, they can be very difficult to communicate with and many of their communications are less than forthcoming and can be difficult to decipher.

In the case of Sitesell’s page and all the great community interaction there, it was a good outcome — but terrible communications.

Today, I took most of the thoughts I wrote on a thread on my Facebook profile and reworked them into this blog post on 21st Century Affiliate Marketing. I want them on a site I control. I want them where I can find them in the future. I want them on a site where YOU can find them.

Do you own a business?

Where and how are you promoting it? If Facebook or another free site is your primary marketing venue for your business, I think you’re making a big mistake.

It works great as an adjunct to your main site(s), but not as a primary contact point.

Facebook is great when used as another entry point to your marketing funnel, as long as you’re bringing more people to your main site(s).

If you want to learn more, but not spend any money on it, download and read Make Your Site Sell!

That book is excellent, even though a lot of things have changed over the few years since it was last updated. Still, there is some outstanding advice about researching, understanding your clients/customers, talking to them, and promoting the services and products you offer. That information and those techniques will never go out of date.

If you want to learn more about how to build a real online business and get all the tools, support, training, and a great community forum all for the ridiculously low price of only $300 per year (or $30 per month), the primary business I will recommend is the one I use myself, Sitesell.

They offer the best tools, best service, and best communications (even from the founder and department heads) of any company on this quaint little planet that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

As with anything else, it takes a combination of work, time, money, tools, strategies, and help to build a successful business. Don’t you owe it to yourself to use the best tools to help you do the work?

Please, don’t put all your eggs in the Facebook basket.

That’s a huge risk to take if you are serious about building a real business.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , , , ,

Facebook plus Google equals Business

May 18, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Business Networking, Facebook, Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It 

Where are the two best places to promote your business if you want to be found by new customers?

Think a moment. Where do you search for things you want?

That’s right. Facebook and Google.

Sitesell will help your business get found on these two sites.

Sitesell has tens of thousands of customers around the world who use their tools and strategies to build websites that get found. They’ve been doing this for over 10 years — and that’s how long I’ve been one of their very satisfied customers.

I personally recommend Sitesell. I’m a satisfied long-term customer and a happy affiliate.

Their new service is targeted to people who own traditional offline brick and mortar businesses and want to be found in their local area.

I think it could be useful to some online-only businesses, if you want to target a local area, instead of globally.

If you own a business and want to promote your products and services locally…

Sitesell has introduced a new service to help you market your business on Google and Facebook.

Facebook has become the most popular way to promote your business by engaging with your customers and prospects using a Facebook page for your business. There are a few things you need to know in order to use Facebook effectively for this type of marketing, and there is a bit of a learning curve.

Sitesell offers two levels of service. One helps you get started. Or, if you prefer, someone at Sitesell who already knows how to do all this will work with you to target your market and offer and then do the tech work for you.

I think it’s priced very reasonably. If I were doing this type of service, I’d charge more than they do.

The more I know about building an online business, and promoting offline businesses online, the more I value what I’ve learned from the talented folks at Sitesell.

It’s also why I use their tools to promote the businesses that are owned by my clients. For example, Murphy Gold is powered by SBI, one of the services offered by Sitesell.

You already know how important it is for your business to be found on Google when someone is searching for the products and services you offer. Right?

Now that Facebook has exploded onto the scene, it’s time to promote your business where people are flocking.

Look over the offer. If you have questions, call the number listed on that page. They will answer your questions for free. Really.

No obligation. Really.

They WILL NOT stick you on a mailing list and bombard you with offer after offer, never-ending upsells, and breathless hype about new product launches, as we see so many other companies doing.

These folks are the real deal. They specialize in helping people build online businesses and now they’re extending that service to helping you promote your business on two of the most popular sites in the world: Facebook and Google.

Right now, before you forget or get distracted by all the other things you have to do, go and check out their offer.

Is this something that will help you promote your business better?

You’re a responsible business owner. Due diligence is important, and I always recommend researching a company before doing business with them. You can learn more about Sitesell on their Facebook page.

See why thousands of people “Like” Sitesell on Facebook and read what they are saying about the company and the services they provide.

If you have specific questions about Sitesell and their services, their Facebook page is a good place to ask. (It also lets you experience how a company can engage with prospects on a Facebook page.)

If you are an affiliate marketer and want to earn commissions while helping local business owners…

You can earn a commission by becoming a Sitesell affiliate and promoting their services and products to people you know in your local area who want to use Google and Facebook better.

Most small business owners do not have the technical skill and knowledge that’s needed in order to get the most out of Facebook. Some do very well on their own, and others do not.

It’s that second group that you can help the most by letting them know how Sitesell can help them.

I use Sitesell’s tools every day to promote my business and those of my clients, and I’ve been considering helping them do a better job with their Google and Facebook presence. Now, I don’t have to do it. I can just explain how it will help them and then refer them to Sitesell Services.

It’s a win-win-win situation.

Tags: , , ,

Brand new 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

April 7, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 14 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Business Networking, Marketing, Social Media Marketing 

Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, just now released the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Regardless of whether you are primarily an online marketer or the owner of a brick and mortar business, if you want to effectively present your wares to prospects who are increasingly moving online, you should download and read this report. It’s a free download, and you don’t have to subscribe to a mailing list to get it. (Isn’t that refreshing?)

Here’s his overview of the report…

Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2011 from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

I have not had time to study the report yet, but it’s on my schedule for this evening. The information in the video has increased my interest.

I am a firm believer in social media marketing and look forward to doing a better job of it now that I’m feeling better.

You can read more about the report and download it on their blog post: 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, compiled and published by Social Media Examiner.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , ,

How do you manage your email marketing lists?

November 3, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 9 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, MailChimp, Social Networking, email marketing 

I’ve had an account at Aweber for a long time, but I’m almost embarrassed to say how little I use it.

Recently, I learned of MailChimp and I’ve been reading their PDF books and watching their videos.

One thing I really like about MailChimp is that they really understand and use social networking and provide a lot of tools that are not available with Aweber.

I’m going to make a concerted effort in 2011 to greatly improve my email marketing and help my consulting clients do better with their efforts, or teach them how to get started.

MailChimp has increased the numbers of subscribers and total emails you can send every month on their free account and I think that is a good thing. Let people learn how to use the system for free, and when they start reaching the limits of the free account, then — if the email marketing is producing profits — it’s an easy choice to upgrade to one of the paid plans.

Small businesses can easily run several campaigns and lists in the free account before they start hitting the limits.

Have you used either Aweber or MailChimp?

Which do you prefer? Why?

Or do you use a service that you like better? Why?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags:

Why hide who you are?

November 1, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 12 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Blogging 

I’ve been noticing something for awhile and this morning seemed like a good time to comment on it.

Why do so many blogs have posts from “Admin” rather than a real person?

How can we tell if “Admin” is a person or a robot?

I was reading a blog this morning, and I’m pretty sure that it was written by a real person, but I could find no information on who that person might be. No name, no “About Us” page, no nothing.

So, instead of subscribing to the RSS feed (as I was about to do), I moved along and probably won’t go back.

If you’re putting so much effort into blogging or building a website, why don’t you put some effort into sharing who you are and what you’re all about?

Tags: , , ,

Focus, planning, and implementation

October 13, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 2 Comments
Filed under: Act On Your Dream!, Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Downline Builders, Musings, Network Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Traffic Exchanges 

It’s a beautiful rainy day in the mountains of North Carolina. All the trees are taking a shower before putting on their finest Autumn party leaves and painting our mountains with spectacular color, making them even more beautiful than they are the rest of the year.

Today, I’m sitting at home, sipping some hot coffee, and I’m focused on planning the changes I’m making in my online marketing business.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that focus. Now, I’m working hard to regain it.

I understand business, at least enough to do well enough so that I can live as I please, set my own schedule, and be my own boss.

When I started out with online marketing over a decade ago (way back in the 20th century!), I was fully focused on business. I knew what I wanted to accomplish and I was working hard to implement the plan. It was easy for me and there were few distractions along the way.

However, a few years ago, things changed. I began to get distracted by new technologies, new social networking sites, new marketing techniques, new toys to learn and use, new this, new that, and I lost focus of my plan and many of my goals.

It’s easy to do.

I’ve written about this before, and I’ll probably write about it again. Focus and a well-thought-out plan, with goals to achieve, and milestones to gauge progress are necessary for every business that is oriented to long-term success.

When plowing with a mule or horse, we put blinders on them so that they can only see straight ahead and focus on where they are pulling the plow. That way, they don’t get distracted by other things that may be going on around them.

These days, in regards to my business, I put on metaphorical blinders before working. It helps me to focus specifically on what I want to accomplish during the next few hours.

If you are involved in online marketing in any way, you already know what I mean. All of your friends are doing different things. One suggests that you do something, another invites you to do something different, you get a newsletter in your inbox that tells you that something (like email, Google, etc.) is dead or dying and you have to do what they’re advising (and you can learn all about it by buying their new (ebook, membership site, webinar, course) product for only $47 (or $97, or $197, or $497…).

Before you even get started with what you were going to do, you’re already being pulled in multiple directions. Soon, self-doubt sets in. Are you doing what you should be doing, or do you need to do something entirely different? The more distractions, the more self-doubt. The more self-doubt, the less progress you will make.

I know this for a fact. I’ve gone through it and I’m looking back on much of what I’ve done over the last few years with a sense of amazement. I’m amazed that I let myself forget good common business sense and well-established marketing techniques and spent my time chasing all the shiny, new, red balls that kept bouncing along all around me.

One of my friends was talking to my daughter a few months ago about a mutual friend of theirs. He said she was suffering from ADOS syndrome. My daughter asked, “What’s ADOS?”

He replied, “Attention Deficit…Oh, Shiny!”

Many of us are suffering from the same thing. We’re losing the ability to focus. We expect immediate (or at least very fast) gratification. We want sound bites that coincide with our prejudices and predilections rather than in-depth knowledge and understanding. We want easy money with the least amount of work possible.

That’s no way to build a business. It might be okay for a hobby or a temporary distraction, but it’s a sure-fire way to fail in business.

Ken Evoy wrote in a recent blog post, Focus and Determination, “Very few small businesses go straight up like a rocket. Some businesses go faster, some take longer. And when you’re all by yourself at home, working and building content and getting links and progress is slow, it’s easy to have some doubt about your niche or your ability to make your website ‘work.’ Work through the doubts. Like every business, success goes to those who persevere… ”

Perseverance without a plan and tight focus isn’t enough.

You also have to put your words in front of someone who is in the mood to buy, has the resources, and finds the information you offer reliable enough to make the decision.

Whether we choose to build content-rich, hierarchically-organized websites or write a blog, we need to create something that ranks well in the search engines, and even more importantly, is something that people are looking for with a mindset of buying. It does us absolutely no good to attract a loyal group of readers, friends, and associates who like to read what we say and join in the conversations, but who are never going to be a customer or client. You need to attract people who are interested in what you’re writing about and want to buy something related to it that either solves a problem they’re having or links to something they want to buy.

Marketing to other marketers is a huge waste of time and energy. We are sellers, not buyers, for the most part. Now and then, we may find something we want to buy, but many of us are do-it-yourselvers and would rather spend the time and effort in learning something for ourselves rather than purchase something that you are offering.

You know what I’m talking about.

Compare that with someone who has a passion for a hobby or other interest. They have a good job and love spending money on their hobby. Whether it be raising dogs, gardening, travel, camping, fishing, weddings, photography, games, movie collectibles, dolls, or anything else in which they are passionately interested, they want to do more of it and they have the money to spend.

Most of them don’t care if they ever get their money back or make a profit on their “investment.” The purchase is part of the enjoyment. It’s part of the anticipation of enjoying more of what they do.

Those are the people you want to attract. People are searching billions of times a day for something in which they are interested. You need to learn what they are looking for, evaluate your competition, and then do a better job of providing information, products, and services that all these people want.

The best way to do that is to identify something for which you have a passion (or at least a strong interest), research the topic, identify what people want related to that niche, and then find a way to be found by them.

There are many ways to be found. The least expensive and often easiest is to rank well in the search engines for the terms for which they are searching.

Other ways include traditional advertising, coupons, newsletters, mailing lists, interviews, radio, TV, and all the other ways of inserting yourself and what you offer into their attention.

If you haven’t read “Guerilla Marketing” by Jay Conrad Levinson, do it this week. It was written before the Internet and the Web, and it still offers outstanding advice for selling what you are offering.

With my Murphy Gold site, I’m focused 100% on locally-owned small businesses in the rural area surrounding Murphy, NC. Most of my marketing will be done online, but I’ll also be using what I’ve learned about local offline marketing, too.

Most people do not live in the online world as much as many of us do. They don’t spend hours on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever.

No. Really. I’m serious.

They have real lives that don’t involve blogs, websites, social networking, social bookmarking, and may not even know what an ebook is.

And many of them could become your best customer if you find a way to offer what they want and put yourself in front of them when they’re ready to purchase.

One way to do that, in both the offline and online world, is to offer something free.

In Internet Marketing, people offer free ebooks in return to get you to sign up for their mailing list. This has been effective in the past, but is getting less effective as time goes by.

How many free ebooks or reports do you have on your computer that you’ve never read or even skimmed? I’m willing to bet there are quite a few. If you ever took the time to read them, you’d quickly discover that a very few are outstanding and offer great information. Some are good and worth a read or quick skim. Others, and I’m willing to bet they are the majority, are worthless. They were put together quickly with little quality control, lack of any depth of knowledge of the subject, or any other intention other than offering you a bauble to get you to sign up to their marketing list.

And, then, to top it off, most of those marketing lists are just as bad. In fact, I’ve seen more than one “marketing guru” advise giving anything away to get someone to sign up for your list, and then you can “market” to them (nearly) for free until they buy what you’re selling or unsubscribe from your list. When they do buy, add them to the next list in your marketing funnel and repeat the process with something more expensive that offers more profit. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Don’t fall for that.

Yes, some successful businesses have involved and very profitable marketing funnels and they do well for the owner. I am not disputing that. If that’s the way you want to live, then go for it.

I don’t.

When I talk about offering something for free, I’m not talking about giving something away to get your readers to sign up for your mailing list.

I’m talking about building a site with lots of free, high-quality, authoritative information about a topic you really know and in which you and your reader are both interested.

I want to develop real relationships (perhaps friendships) with real people about something I really care about. I want to offer the best information I can to them for free and also give them ways to purchase things they want.

I have not done a good job of that. Why? Because I was not focused on doing business. I was distracted by “online marketing.”

I’ve come to view affiliate marketing as more than just advertising. You probably will disagree with me on this, and feel free to do so.

Over time, I’ve promoted a lot of things. I had to learn the ropes, make my mistakes, learn from some of them, and try not to repeat those same mistakes.

I got sidetracked into downline builders, traffic exchanges, and social networking on lots of sites that produced no (or very small) results. I tried multilevel marketing. I tried all sorts of ways to build traffic and turn visitors into dollars.

Then one day, I put on my blinders and walked off those treadmills. I was making what lots of people would call a good income, but none of us were getting anywhere from it. It was a treadmill that lead to nowhere and all we were doing was trying to run fast enough to bring in a trickle of income.

Yes it works. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m saying it’s bad for me. It’s not something I can look back on with pride and satisfaction knowing that I helped others. If anything, I’m responsible for sucking some of them into that same “running on the treadmill to nowhere” scenario and calling it a business.

I stopped doing all of that and I’m canceling accounts on hundreds of sites.

Mea culpa.

Would I want to get my best friend, parent, sibling, or child doing all of that just to earn a few (hundred) dollars per month? No.

So, I asked myself, what DO I want to do? What can I do that will be satisfying, helpful, and real?

I took a close and not-too-comfortable look at myself and started shedding lots of things I had “learned” from “marketing gurus” and “online business mentors” and “coaches.”

My new criteria is this: Would I offer something to my mother or my daughter?

If the answer is no, then I won’t offer it to you.

That greatly simplifies things for me.

Getting back to Murphy Gold for a moment…

I will only promote businesses on that site that I would recommend to my mother or daughter. Each business on that site is a personal recommendation from me. I’ve turned down several business owners because I don’t like the way they run their business or treat their customers.

I only contact business owners with whom I’ve had good, long-term relationships, or who were recommended by more than one person I trust who lives in the community and has done business with that business owner. I offer to promote them online for a fee. In the future, as I get healthier, I’ll also be promoting them offline in our community (and it won’t cost them any extra).

I have a lot of work to do on that site. I started in one direction, learned from a few mistakes, and now I’m tweaking it to make it better. I still have hundreds of pages to write, but I’ve already done the majority of the research and I’ve developed a site blueprint. I know where it’s going and how to get there. I’ve focused and planned.

Now, it’s time for implementation.

I have to knuckle-down and do the work. It’s going to take time to write those hundreds of pages and then promote them where the residents of our community (and those who are interested in visiting and/or moving to Murphy, NC) will find them, and that means both online and offline promotions.

Focus, planning, and implementation.

While most of my other sites rely on Google Adsense and affiliate links for monetization, Murphy Gold will focus on introducing real people (customers) to other real people (business owners) so that they can do what people have been doing for centuries — trading money for goods and services.

It’s real business. It’s real people. It’s real relationships. It’s real.

It’s something I’ll be able to look back on in twenty years (if I make it) and be proud of doing.

Affiliate marketing will play a very small part in monetizing visitors to Murphy Gold.

Google Adsense will play some part in monetizing some parts of the site, as long as it doesn’t conflict with the main goal of promoting local business owners who deserve it. Anyone can buy ads on Google Adwords and I don’t have much control of that, so I’ll only be putting Adsense ads on some of the pages. I don’t yet know exactly which pages that will be and it’s going to take some testing.

On other sites, such as Act On Your Dream!, Adsense and affiliate links will play a bigger role. I’ve been developing a new blueprint for that site and it will be reorganized and revitalized as I have the energy. It’s never been a huge monetary success, but it’s about a topic in which I’m extremely interested and I have some ideas on how I want to proceed with it.

Other sites will be taken down, including GeorgiaDragRacing.com, which I built for my brother. It has been a very profitable site, but his health problems have gotten to the point where he can no longer go to the drag racing events and publish the photos and information he once could. So, he wants me to burn it to a DVD and take it down. It’s his site, and I’ll do what he wants as soon as I can. (I have some technical problems involving old software and new computers to solve before I can get the database to generate a complete local copy of that site and burn it to a DVD for him.)

Over time, most of what’s in JohnDilbeck.com, MurphyNC28906.com, and other smaller sites will be moved into AYearFromNow.com or MurphyGold.com. Part of my focus is to keep the best and toss the rest. I’ll be consolidating information from my blogs and some of my websites into sites that are powered by SBI, because it works best for me.

Eventually, I’ll be off the blogging treadmill, too.

In the short term, I’ll lose some income as I take down sites that have lots of visitors and make money. In the long term, I’ll be able to focus more on what I’m doing and to implement the plan I’ve developed.

If you’re still reading this, you’re one of the few who have a reasonable attention span and I applaud you.

I know that I’m moving in a different direction than most affiliate marketers and I’ll probably move some of the information from here into AYearFromNow.com and take down this blog, too. I’ll miss some of the social interaction that comes from the comments on this blog, but — again — I’ll be able to focus more on my new business plan.

Affiliate marketing has been good to me for over a decade and will continue to be one of the larger streams of income, but it is going to change and I’ll only be promoting products and services that, get ready for it, here it comes…I’d recommend to my Mom or daughter.

I learned a long time ago to write a page with one main objective. Simple pages that offer quality information and which lead to a desired action step or alternative backup action that I want the reader to take.

Some pages are purely informational. Google Adsense is a good way to monetize them (as long as someone is advertising using the keywords for which the page is built).

Some pages are designed to get people to drive to a business, get out of their car, and go inside a store. I won’t have anything competing with those.

Some pages are designed to promote things to do in surrounding cities and they’ll have Adsense and some affiliate links on them.

For each page, I’ll have one thing I want the reader to do. Failing that, I’ll link to other pages on the site.

Keep it simple. Reduce distractions. Make it easy to read, tightly focused, and easy to navigate.

Will I be the best at doing this? Probably not. In my heart, I’m a techno-nerd, not a businessman.

I’ll do my best and continue living in a place I love and telling the world more about it.

Hopefully, it will provide a comfortable income, too.

What about you?

Have you planned your business and decided what you want to accomplish?

What is it?

Do you agree or disagree with my belief that what I promote on my site (other than Adsense ads) is a personal recommendation?

I’m interested in your thoughts about focusing on your business and achieving your goals.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags:

When email becomes overwhelming

September 29, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 10 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Musings, email marketing 

When email becomes overwhelming, it becomes a time waster and an obstacle to doing anything productive.

Normally, the most productive time in my whole day for writing and accomplishing a marketing goal is the first two or three hours of my day. Most days, I wake up around 4 or 5 am and work for two or three hours while I drink a pot of coffee. Then, it’s time for breakfast and dealing with the daily chores, such as checking the social networks I manage and moderate, responding to comments on my blogs, playing on Facebook for awhile, making sure none of my major sites have been hacked (by looking at their home pages), and dealing with email.

I’ve tried for over a decade to make it easy to find me and contact me via email. I’ve put my email address all over the web, in more places than I’ll ever remember, and now it’s coming back to bite me in the butt.

I started with email on the old ARPA network, before the Internet, before the Web, before Google, before most of the things we take for granted now. I remember when I knew (personally) only three people with email addresses besides myself. It wasn’t unusual back in those almost-prehistoric days to send an email and then call them on the phone to see if they got it.

I remember being happy when I got an email from a friend. It was a joy that was almost like receiving a birthday or Christmas card in the mail.

Those days are long gone, however.

As useful as email is, now it has become an anchor around my neck. A weight I pull uphill every morning. A cool drink of water just out of my reach. A chore to be endured rather than enjoyed.

This morning, I waded through 2286 emails (that is not an exaggeration — it’s the actual count) and deleted all but 66 of them.

I have all sorts of spam blocking rules in place, I’m using two spam blocking services, and I still manually go through all the subject lines on my email account in my browser to delete all the ones that are of no interest, are spam, or otherwise just clutter my inbox.

It took over two and a half hours just to scan all the subject lines and pull the gold nuggets out of the mud hole. (I was going to say something else a lot more gross, but I went back and edited it before publishing.)

Then I deleted and purged all those I didn’t want.

From that point, it took less than 30 seconds to download all the little gold nuggets into Eudora, my business email client of choice. Later today, I’ll work through those emails. Some I’ll read and discard. Others I’ll read and save. Others I’ll skim and save for later.

I’ve already responded to the three that needed a response and replied to a friend with a personal email.

Without all the damned spam and garbage, I could have done this task in less than five minutes and enjoyed it.

So, the time has come to get this millstone off of my neck.

Before the end of the year, I’ll be closing my public email account and I’ve already switched to two new email services. One will be a strictly private address for good friends and family, only. If I tell you that email address, it’s because I like corresponding with you and I trust you not to give it to anyone else. Not many will ever know that address. I’ll check it a couple of times a day and respond as quickly as possible.

I’ve set up a new business email address and I’m not sure how I’m going to use it yet. One thing I know, I’m never going to make it public, in an effort to avoid the spam harvesters out there and the lowlifes who use them.

I will go through my contact list and I’ll be sending some of you one or both of my new email addresses. Before the end of the year, I’ll change my old address and put an autoresponder on it saying that the account is closed and referring someone to my Contact Us page on AYearFromNow.com.

I’m hoping that this will slow down the torrent of unwanted email to a trickle, but I don’t believe it will stop all the spam.

When I first set up my public email address, it was a real status symbol to have not only your name as a domain, but your name as the email account on that domain. Now, everyone who has thought ahead has their name as a domain, even if they do nothing with it other than to keep it out of the hands of those who would pretend to be someone they aren’t.

I’ll be unsubscribing from all lists and RSS feeds and resubscribing with my new address. I’ll go through the 1,314 online accounts I have and either close them or change my contact address. (Now, you know why it probably won’t get done until near the end of the year.)

I narrowed my focus earlier this year, and I’m going to narrow it again over the next few months.

I may never get all of this back under control, but I intend to do my best.

What about you?

How do you manage your email?

Do you have multiple accounts for different purposes? Do you use one good client and filter incoming email into multiple inboxes based on subject and/or priority?

Do you fight the spam you receive or endure and ignore it?

I’m looking for real advice here.

I’ll continue using Eudora for my business email and I’m using Apple’s Mail program for my private friends and family account. So, don’t suggest that I switch desktop clients. It ain’t agonna happen.

I’ll be using gmail.com as part of my business email solution and another service I won’t mention for my private email.

So, what works for you? Do you have something that works, or are you as overwhelmed as I am right now?

What’s your story?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , ,

Building a serious business website that gets results

March 17, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Attracting Visitors, Sitesell and Site Build It, Web Services, Webhosting 

I have people asking me all the time how I get so many people to visit my websites every month, and I think most of them think I have some kind of magic trick up my sleeve. That’s not it at all.

The secret?

Hard work, lots of content that people want to read, pages optimized on particular keywords and phrases to help the search engines know what they are about, and continually updating the information as it ages and things change. That’s all it takes.

No tricks. No fancy SEO techniques. Just simple HTML pages (on my big static sites) that are each built around a particular topic that fits within the site’s main topic.

As you may know by now, if you read my blogs or sites regularly, I learned what I know about this (over a decade ago) by studying Ken Evoy’s Make Your Site Sell ebook and putting into practice what I learned.

In the interim, millions of people have visited my sites and many of those visitors have made purchases based on my recommendations for what I think were worthy products and services. That’s how I’ve earned my living for the last decade or so.

I have one website that attracts thousands of visitors per month and remains a profitable site, even though it hasn’t been updated in over a year. It remains my top-earning site for Adsense income and it is a basic HTML-only static site built on the principles I learned from Ken Evoy’s ebook way back in the 20th century.

Since then, I’ve built many websites, most of which failed, using a variety of content management systems (CMS) and blogging software.

There is a lure that’s hard to resist when it comes to blogging and using a CMS system. They are easy to install and start. You get a big rush from registering a domain name and putting up new information in a few hours or days.

The problem is that the rush you get from starting the site isn’t enough to keep up the enthusiasm for continuing to build the site, and there probably was not enough good planning and research put into the topic of the site to see if it was going to be profitable or not before starting it.

At least, that has been my experience.

I’m learning that the same thing can be true when hiring someone else to build a site for you.

I’ve talked to quite a few small business owners who have wasted thousands of dollars and years of their time because they hired someone to build their website who knew how to build it but had no clue about how to attract free traffic from the search engines.

A nice site with no visitors will never be successful. A large and growing number of visitors each month is the lifeblood of selling anything on the Internet.

So, what are you to do if you know nothing, or very little, about websites, but you need one that will help you generate income and not just be a constant money drain?

You could do what I did and spend ten or more years of your life reading and studying everything you could get your eyes on and building dozens of sites to test what you learned, or you could hire someone with the experience and tools to do the job right the first time — while you concentrate on running your business and satisfying your customers.

How much would you be willing to pay to have a website that attracts serious visitors — potential customers — every month for years to come?

As a serious business owner, you probably would not throw out a number at this point, because you’d want to know more. How many visitors? How much income? What are the initial costs? How much does it cost to maintain it? Who’s going to do the work? What are the monthly hosting fees? How much trouble will it be to modify the information on the site when things change?

There are a lot of things to consider and most of them have nothing to do with HTML, CSS, FTP, and all the other alphabet-soup of acronyms associated with the technical side of building a site.

(You might be surprised at the number of websites I’ve looked at in the last couple of years that did not immediately tell what the owner was offering and why you would be better off buying from him or her. People on the web have short attention spans and they are generally in skimming mode when they first visit a website. You only have a few seconds to state your case and give them a reason that will benefit them in order to get them to slow down and actually read what you have to say. Don’t waste your visitors’ time with non-essentials — give them a reason to consider buying from you so you’ll have time to persuade them. Of course, how you do this differs with the type of site you have — sales, informational, and so forth — and the type of business you run.)

One of the things I’ve learned about most of the small business owners I’ve talked to is that the most prosperous of them are not “do it yourselfers.” They don’t have the time, energy, or desire to take on more tasks and responsibilities, because they are already doing all they have time for just running their business.

Most of them depend on others who specialize in things they need.

If they want legal advice, they hire a lawyer, or have one on retainer — they don’t go to law school at night for several years just to learn how to write their own contracts or deal with litigation.

Most of them hire an accountant and/or bookkeeper to keep their business on track and help with financial issues and taxes — they don’t become a CPA just to do it themselves.

Most of the small business owners I know who have survived the recent economic downturn have learned the hard way that there are times when it just makes sense to hire someone with experience and expertise to get the job done quickly, efficiently, and right the first time.

Perhaps you’re one of those successful small business owners who knows how to prosper by running your own business, but who feels clueless when it comes to evaluating people who claim to be experts at building websites. After all, every town has people who claim to be able to build good business websites, and some of them really do know what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, most of them don’t.

You don’t have the time and money to pay someone to learn what they’re doing at your expense.

How do you separate the experts from the want-to-be herd?

That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it?

This can be especially difficult when you don’t have the experience to know whether what they tell you sounds reasonable, or not.

One way to separate the experts from the herd is that they tend to spend more time asking you questions about your business and the results you want from your website than they do telling you how good they are at building them.

Another way is to talk to someone who has already been vetted by others who do have the experience and expertise to know.

That’s why I’m personally recommending Sitesell Services to you.

Sitesell is the company that Ken Evoy founded and which has grown into a top-notch service over the years. The Services part of the business is for business owners like you who want to hire someone to build an effective business website that is custom-tailored to market your business around the clock.

The people at Sitesell hire only experts with demonstrated ability and experience, and they help you select the right person to build your site for you.

Here’s a short video about how they can help you…


Once one of these experts is working for you, they follow a time-tested system to build a custom site that will market your products and services to people who are looking for what you have to offer, and these are the hottest prospects.

Is Sitesell Services for everyone? Obviously, the answer is no.

Is it appropriate for every business? Again, no.

But, you’ll never know if it could be a good match for your business unless you learn more about it and contact them.

Of course, there is no obligation.

If you’re interested in hiring someone to help you build your business online, watch the video and see what they offer.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, you can download a free copy of Make Your Site Sell! and learn more about what I’m talking about, or you can learn about SBI version 2.0 and see if it offers the tools you want to build and host your own site. I use SBI to build and manage some of my sites and it is easily my tool of choice for any new business sites I may build.

Tags: , , , ,

I will be moving away from blogging in 2010

December 19, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 18 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Sitesell and Site Build It 

I enjoy blogging and I’ve been doing this for a long time, back before the words weblog and blog were even coined.

This is the last year where blogging will be part of my marketing plan, however.

The plain truth is that blogging hasn’t been worth the time and effort in terms of receiving an income from all I’ve done. So, since I’m going to be concentrating on increasing my revenue next year, I’m going to focus almost entirely on what works for me and I’m dropping what hasn’t been fruitful.

There is a good chance that this blog won’t be here a year from now.

I’m turning my attention back to what does work for me – what pays the bills – and another thing I enjoy, which is building static, hierarchical websites focused on particular topics.

I’ve been building websites since shortly after the introduction of the world wide web and I have used lots of different tools to build sites that attract visitors and earn money from sponsorships, advertising, affiliate sales, and in other ways.

One site, that I’ve sadly neglected because of health issues that have interfered, still earns more in one month than all my blogs earn in an entire year — and I haven’t done much to that site at all in the last year.

That should be a lesson to me. Concentrate on what’s working and stop playing with all the shiny red balls that bounce by.

I enjoy blogging

I enjoy blogging and the social aspects of commenting on other blogs. These discussions have been fun and I’ve met some great people around the world as a result.

But, let’s face it. We talk to each other, but we don’t buy from each other. You don’t buy from me and I don’t buy from you. That’s the bottom line when it comes to a marketing business.

I’m still going to follow blogs and bloggers that I like and I’ll still have something to say now and then when Mitch or AussieSire, or several others I enjoy reading, writes something of interest, but I’m not going to spend nearly the time and effort that I have in the past on my own blogs.

I don’t like being poor

My goal in having an online marketing business is to earn a good living at it, not just barely get by.

This has been an unusually hard year for me, but that’s the way life happens. I’m hoping that it was just the bottom of a bad cycle and that things will start moving upwards, soon.

That’s another reason to concentrate on what’s working.

The majority of my income this year has been from a brand new site I started back in July when I had to replace the affiliate income I lost.

I’ve been playing around with promoting my adopted home town and the people and organizations here, but I turned that into a business this year when I launched Murphy Gold and its companion social networking site at Murphy Connections.

This is a more-traditional business structure.

Local business owners pay me to promote them and I write about the products and services they offer and other things they do throughout the year, such as special events.

Over time, even in a small town like Murphy, NC, this can be profitable.

Now that I have all the infrastructure in place, it’s time to hunker down and focus on that.

So, you’ll see less of me here. I’ll still drop in on your blogs now and then and I’m following some of them in email and RSS, but I won’t be saying much, unless you write something that really captures my interest and I think my comment may add value to what you’re saying.

This answers my question: WordPress or SBI?

I can clearly show on my profit and loss statement that SBI delivers much more income and more visitors who actually buy something than all of my blogs put together.

SBI takes less work, doesn’t have to be updated every time I turn around, and now with Content 2 being available to all of us who power our sites with Site Build It, it gives me an easy way to let others write pages for the site and comment on them.

That adds the social aspect to SBI sites that I’ve enjoyed on blogs.

So, there you have it.

I’ve been promoting SBI for years and telling you how much I love it, so I’m going to go back to using it and rebuilding my online marketing business.

Blogging has been a fun experiment.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags:

Next Page »