Do New Years resolutions suck?

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that deciding upon some new resolutions at the start of the year is usually a rather silly and pointless exercise. Doesn’t it just set you up for disappointment?

After all, it’s a well-known fact that most people don’t stick to their resolutions for more than a day or two or a couple of weeks at most.

Besides, what makes January 1st such an important day that it alone should mark the new beginning for not only the change of year but also changes in one’s life?

Sure. I suppose it can be a good thing from a symbolic perspective, but isn’t starting fresh and making new beginnings – well…isn’t that what mornings are for? And we each get 365 of those per year! Shouldn’t we be resolving to “______” every single day?

Share your thoughts.

Will Smith’s Wisdom

“I hate being scared to do something.”

One of my favorite quotes from this video compilation. What’s your favorite quote?

Post it in the comments box below.

Google Local Business Center

Google claims now that 82% of people looking for local information begin their search online. Read more

Get All The Silver You Can as Fast as You Can!

A little over a year ago, before the recession hit, I became convinced that investing in Silver would be a much wiser move than leaving cash in any Bank. (We all know what happened to Banks).

I’ve made a lot of dumb decisions in my years, but this definitely  was NOT one of them. (Insert gratuitous self-back-patting here). I had done a ton of research and  knew that the economic “crash” was going to hit in September. By then I was well on my way. With only a tiny investment per month I’ve already managed to acquire a nice little nest egg. (See picture below).

It’s really easy to do and I can show you how you can do it too!

But I’m getting ahead of myself…I’d like to show you something first.

I just discovered some new information in an article that I’d like to pass on to you…

The US mint has diverted all its resources to stamping Silver Eagles and has run out of blanks again.

Click here to see the full report from MineWeb.com website.

(Here’s an excerpt from it)

“Meanwhile, silver producers have found themselves equally frustrated by the inability of the U.S. Mint to meet the demand for silver coins. Production of the American Eagle Silver Proof and Uncirculated Coins has also been temporarily suspended because of unprecedented demand for the American Eagle Silver Bullion Coins.

The product catalog states, “Currently, all available silver bullion blanks are being allocated to the American Eagle Silver Bullion Coin Program, as the United States Mint is required by Public Law 99-61 to produce these coins ‘in quantities sufficient to meet public demand.’”

Thus far this year, silver bullion coin sales total 14,899,500 compared to last year’s total sales of 19,583,500.

While gold and silver producers have repeatedly gone to government officials to get them to authorize an increase in the number of refineries which can produce the blanks and the facilities that can mint the coins, industry sources say they feel they have been stonewalled by mint officials who refuse to budge.

Among the U.S. manufacturers of blanks is Sunshine Minting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Stern-Leach of Attleboro, Massachusetts. Nearly all U.S. Mint gold coins are manufactured at West Point, New York at a remote site on military academy grounds.

U.S. Mint spokesman Michael White told Mineweb refiners are running 24-hours a day, seven days a week trying to meet demand for blanks.”

Get all the silver you can as fast as you can. Silver investors will be the wealthiest members of society when this meltdown continues.

And consider promoting an instant online silver business that pays you silver.

To get silver quickly, I highly recommend Silver Snowball.

I’ve been getting shipments every month for over a year now and it’s my new savings account.

I LOVE IT!!!

Click the picture of me here to see how you can start your OWN Silver Savings Account.

http://www.silversnowball.com/351/

Are SEO Companies Just Con Artists?

Of course not!

That’s just a catchy title to make you read this.

But I do think that some SEO companies are. I’ll tell you why…

Here’s what I discovered yesterday about one of them which still has me hot under the collar.

A colleague of mine is working with a client who contracted one of these “BIG SEO COMPANIES” to optimize his site and supposedly drive tons a new targeted traffic to it.

I took a look at the proposal, which was a bloody 35 pages long, only to realize that it was a giant sales letter in disguise. The “proposal” proposed very little for the client but certainly did talk a lot about how great the Company was. For the novice, non-technical person, it’s rather confusing and misleading as it cites all kinds of examples of high searched keywords in his niche with super high clicks, implying that he was going to get this kind of traffic.  Of course, that’s not what they were promising, but it certainly could have been easily misconstrued to mean that.

Reason being, very little “proposing” was actually being done. Only about 5 pages of the document had anything to do with the client. The rest was just boilerplate bullshit. (Hey, this is my blog and I can swear if I want to.)

Most of the work they proposed to do for him could be done in a single day, if not less. It certainly doesn’t require the 12 month payment commitment and a $25,000 price tag.

Yes! $25k for this, and that’s the entry level package. The middle package, which doesn’t include much more, is $35K and the top level package is $76K. Hard to friggin’ believe.

Now I’d show you this comparison chart, but it is copyrighted and confidential, so I don’t want to get myself into hot water over it, but suffice it to say, this is the lamest list of SEO services I’ve ever seen.

Don’t get me wrong…good SEO/SEM work is not cheap. It’s labor intensive and can bring a huge return for the client. But there’s got to be some serious meat in the work they do to warrant that kind of fee.

What shocks me more than anything about their service is what is NOT listed on the things that they do for that money. Even at the $76K level, the foundational stuff that I do in my practice isn’t even included, such as Web 2.0 properties, Social Bookmarking, RSS Feeds, Video creation and Submission, Pinging, and PAD Submissions, just to list a few. I do dozens of things each month for each keyword, so the list can get pretty long.

The reason I even found out about this is because after having contracted them several months ago, the client has yet to see any evidence of any work being done. He’s still not ranking anywhere on Google and no new traffic is coming in from any of the “supposed” new sources.

Bottom line: this guy got hosed! Big time. He’s locked into a 12 month payment plan, paid $5K+ as a down payment and won’t see any ROI from this.

Worse yet, his current website sucks and this SEO Company didn’t even address that issue and offer to fix is up for him FIRST. They just put in a couple of metatags and said that was all it needed. What good does it do to drive a bunch of traffic to a website that’s broken?

So I’m still really pissed about this.

But on the other hand, it’s encouraging to know that people are buying these kinds of services. In their defense, SEO/SEM can be very complicated and if you’re not familiar with all the jargon, it’s just human nature to believe the folks who are part of the big company. So, there’s a ton of business out there, but hopefully the majority of it will go to companies that really can deliver results and make their customers overjoyed by their work.

6 Sure Ways to Increase Sales

Want to increase sales dramatically? Then shift your sales focus from attracting new customers to enticing your proven customers to buy again. The best sales prospect is a prospect that’s already converted – in other words, one of your current customers.

Think of it this way; if your business is located in a small town with a population of 1000 people and you sell a sprocket to everyone in that town, man, woman, and child, you’ve sold 1000 sprockets – and saturated your market. Your sprocket selling days are over. Is it time to pack up and move on?

No! If you start focusing your sales efforts on your proven customers, you’ll be able to increase your sprocket sales dramatically. And these sure ways to increase sales will help build customer loyalty, too. Try some or all of these ideas to increase your sales:

1. Set up a sales incentive program.

Give your sales staff a reason to get out there and sell, sell, sell. Why do so many businesses that rely on their sales staff to drive sales have incentive programs in place? Because offering their sales staff the trips and/or TVs for x amount of sales works. See Paul Shearstone’s Creating Sales Incentive Programs That Work for how to make your sales incentive program “sweet and simple and attainable”.

2. Encourage your sales staff to upsell.

Essentially, upselling involves adding related products and/or services to your line and making it convenient and necessary for customer to buy them. Just placing more products near your usual products isn’t going to increase your sales much. To upsell successfully, the customer has to be persuaded of the benefit. For instance, when I last had my carpets cleaned, the cleaner noticed a pet stain. Instead of just cleaning it up, he drew my attention to it, and showed me how easily and effectively the spot cleaning solution removed all trace of the stain. Did I buy the spot cleaning solution? You bet. He persuaded me that buying it was beneficial to me and made it convenient to purchase it. Result: increased sales for the carpet cleaning company.

3. Give your customers the inside scoop.

Recently I was shopping at a retail housewares store. I had picked out an item and was mulling over whether to buy it or not when a salesperson came up to me and said, “I see you’re interested in that blender. We’re having a sale next week and all our blenders will be 20 percent off. You might want to come back then.” Guess what? I did – and bought two other items as well. Lesson: if you have a promotion or sale coming up, tell your customers about it. They’ll come back – and probably bring some friends with them too. (And don’t forget – you can give your customers the inside scoop by emailing or calling them, too.)

4. Tier your customers.

There should be a clear and obvious difference between regular customers and other customers – a difference that your regular customers perceive as showing that you value them. How can you expect customer loyalty if all customers are treated as “someone off the street”? There are all kinds of ways that you can show your regular customers that you value them, from small things such as greeting them by name through larger benefits such as giving regulars extended credit or discounts.

5. Set up a customer rewards program.

We’re all familiar with the customer rewards programs that so many large businesses have in place. But there’s no reason that a small business can’t have a customer rewards program, too. It can be as simple as a discount on a customer’s birthday or as complex as a points system that earns various rewards such as discounts on merchandise. Done right, rewards programs can really help build customer loyalty and increase sales.

6. Distribute free samples to customers.

Why do so many businesses include free samples of other products when you buy something from them? Because it can increase sales in so many ways. As the customer who bought the original product, I might try and like the sample of the new product and buy some of it, too. Or I might pass on the sample to someone else, who might try the product, like it, and buy that and other products from the company. At the very least, the original customer will be thinking warm thoughts about your company, and hopefully telling other people about your products.

Attracting new customers is a good thing. But attracting new customers is not the only way to increase your sales, and is, in fact, the hard way of going about it. Shifting your sales focus to enticing your current customers can make increasing your sales easier – and best of all, build the customer loyalty that results in repeat sales.

Source: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/salesselling/a/increasesales.htm

How To Increase Your Sales with Search Engine Marketing

The Internet has broken down many barriers that traditionally existed between people and technology.

However, the irony is as more information is loaded up onto the World Wide Web the harder it is to find it a 1.6 billion people go online.

In the United States, over 250 million people everyday are looking for products and services online.

Ninety percent of these people won’t go beyond the first page of search results. You might ask the question, how do you get seen in front of this captive audience? How do you get seen in front of these thousands of searches everyday? Well, that’s where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes into play.

The practice of Search Engine Marketing is having your website presented on the first few pages of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN).

The wonderful thing about our Search Engine Marketing is that you are attracting your ideal prospects at the precise moment they are looking for your products and services.

This means that your website is being sifted and sorted through the clutter of millions of websites and screaming out loud, “Hey, this is the product you are looking for! This is the service you seek! Come have a look!”

This is the beauty of Search Engine Marketing.

Get Your Website In Front of Some Eyeballs

We all know that the Internet is here to stay. Anyone who doubts that is probably still telling tales of the good ol’ days when they walked ten miles to school in four feet of snow. We’ve evolved!

Whether we like it or not, there’s been a huge shift in our culture pertaining to how people solve their problems and get their questions answered. We no longer feel obligated to pay attention to all the marketing messages that bombard us all day long. We’ve simple tuned out. That’s because we know that when we need/want/must have something, we’ll be able to find it by googling it. Easy as that.

We know that we are now in charge of what we take into our brain and not those damn marketers!

But with all the competition vying for the same sets of proactive searching eyeballs, how in the hell do you get your business front and center? People are in a hurry and want solutions fast. After someone has typed in a search for a local plumber, the first one to pop up that looks good is most likely to get the call for some new business.

When 49 plumbers are fighting for the same business, how do you get yours up there so they see it first?

It’s not easy, but it is very possible.

We’ve gone virtually underground for the past few months to learn and test methods of search engine marketing that give our local business owners a new opportunity to not only survive, but THRIVE! Now we’re ready to help you move your business away from the brink of extinction.

It’s not hard to understand since most people already know that they are first looking online for products and services they need locally before even considering the Yellow Pages or even the local newspaper. It’s become second nature for us to Google it. So why aren’t more local business owners catching onto this? Why aren’t they doing all they can to make sure that they are being found when their potential clients are first searching for their services online?

Well, the answer is probably as simple as either they are unaware of it or they just don’t know how to get their website to come up on the first page of Google. Yes, it’s not all that easy to do, but that’s where we can help you.