Monday August 6th, 2007: Issue #830
The prizes for the best posts in that amazing Warrior’s Forum thread I told you about on Friday have now been won.
Andy Henry’s generosity really started a ball rolling there, and I hope that it is something that can be repeated sometime in the future.
One person has even copied all the best posts into a PDF file that anyone can download for free - so do yourself a favor and head on over there to grab it for yourself - it is certainly worth a lot more than many ebooks that you could buy!
The whole thread is a great example of how forums can be incredibly powerful forces for good - when people think about helping others rather than squabbling like children.
I was rather pleased to see that two out of the three winners are Kickstart readers! Well done Bev Clement and Dr.Mani! It shows that the old Kickstart quality rises to top!
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=172377
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When my car was vandalized a few weeks ago, my insurance company was fantastic. They took the car away the same day and had it repaired. They asked me for a list of items stolen and sent me a check within a few days to cover the cost, and they sent a man round to my house to replace my radio, which had been damaged.
Fantastic service! They are Saga Insurance (you have to be over 50 to use them - there are some advantages to getting on a bit) and I heartily recommend them.
The replacement radio is a top-of-the-range model that is far better then the basic one I originally had, so it seems a bit churlish to complain - but I hate it!
The buttons are tiny, and the writing on them is miniscule - and in dark red (on a black background). The operation is complex in the extreme, the removable face panel is huge, and when put in its carry case doesn’t comfortably fit anywhere (although if the person who designed it was close by, I’d find somewhere!). Even the instruction manual is printed in 3-point text that I need a magnifying glass to see (even WITH my glasses on!)
I’m sure that anyone under the age of 50, with reasonably good eyesight and the ability to program home electronic equipment, would think this radio is absolutely brilliant. But it is hardly suitable for the typical customers of the insurance company that fitted it!
Funny thing is, having got the wretched removable face panel off, I now can’t work out how to get it back on again, so my radio ‘upgrade’ has left me with an ugly gaping hole in my dashboard. Much the same result that the vandals achieved, really.
Ah, ‘I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.’ (Instant competition: A copy of my Time Management ebook for the first eagle-eyed Kickstart reader who can tell me the poem that comes from.)
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August is traditionally known as a slow month for Internet marketers. I can’t say that I notice all that much difference in my own business, but many other marketers report a big downturn in sales.
A lot of people take vacations in August, or are reeling from their credit card bills for vacations taken in June and July. That may be one reason.
But I am also wondering if it is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I’ve noticed that a lot of the blogs I enjoy have seriously slowed down over the last week or two. In many cases entries have stopped completely, and in others the meaty content is minimal.
Many newsletters have become sporadic and what’s in them is very hit and miss as far as quality is concerned.
I have no doubt that those bloggers and newsletter writers will tell you that August is, for them, a poor month.
On the other hand, there are some blogs that have kept up the pace, and even increased it. There are some ezines that appear to have doubled their frequency (one I receive has started send out twice a day, which admittedly is becoming irritating).
Do you think those ones will be complaining about a seasonal downturn? I doubt it. I bet they are taking all the business that the ones who have thrown in the towel are missing!
My own product recommendation site has broken records so far in August, even though I haven’t promoted it any more than usual! http://www.kickstartrecommends.com/ - take a look, you might find that I’ve reviewed something that you really need!
After this week, there will be no more Kickstarts in August. I’m off on vacation for two weeks. But I doubt that the lack of Kickstarts will seriously affect my monthly income - such is the power of the Internet’s ability to create residual streams of income that keep on going even if you don’t!
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One piece of advice I will give to anyone who has their own ezine is to not be too quick to delete subscribers whose email addresses bounce in the vacation season.
Every newsletter publisher has a problem with getting their words of wisdom through to the people who have asked to receive them. Every time you send out your ezine a percentage will bounce back as being undeliverable.
Most of us periodically clean out the bounced lists and delete (either automatically or manually) the people we can’t reach.
But a word of caution … this time of year a lot of folks go on vacation and while they are away their inboxes quickly get filled up. When that happens your ezine gets bounced.
And if you’ve ever come home from vacation to find 30,000 messages in your inbox, most of which are garbage, you know it can easily take you another couple of weeks to get things straight again.
That’s why I now give people a good 6 weeks of bounces before I delete them. it is surprising how many email addresses suddenly become active again!
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I’ve been monitoring the new subscriptions that Kickstart has received since I put the new ExitGrabber program onto the website.
ExitGrabber is a kind of exit pop up that works by predicting when your visitor is about to leave your site without having taken any of the actions you desire of them. These are visitors who would normally be lost to you, but who, by using ExitGrabber, can be given one last chance to subscribe, or buy, or take whatever action you ask of them.
In theory, this technique is very powerful and because it only appears to people who are about to leave, can massively increase your web pages’ effectiveness. But theory is one thing. Proof is another!
I’ve put the script (it only take a moment) on the Kickstart signup page and on the after you’ve sign up thank-you page.
My results so far show a 34% increase in subscriptions.
On the thank-you page, where I give the opportunity to buy several excellent $7 ebooks, there have been extra sales that I can directly attribute to ExitGrabber, of way more than the cost of the script!
Not bad for just 4 days.
ExitGrabber isn’t by any means perfect. It is a basic solution that happens to be a whole lot more affordable, and almost as effective, as the high price alternative that launched last week. I am sure that it won’t be long before a clever programmer comes out with something even better, but we can’t sit around and wait for perfection. Or if we do, we’ll leave a whole lot of money on the table in the meantime!
Right now, if you want a very affordable way to get more subscribers, more sales and to wring the last bit of value out of your hard-won visitors, then ExitGrabber is the way to go.
http://www.urlnex.us/exitgrabber/
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An Inspirational Thought
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‘The most important moment in your life is this one - right now. Truly it’s the only moment that you have. All other moments are either over and are now just a memory or they are yet to be - a mere speculative thought about some future moment.’
From ‘Slowing Down To The Speed Of Life’ by Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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William Bennett said,
“There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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One of the most frequent comments I hear goes like this:
“I really want to do well, but somehow I always seem to lack the motivation.”
We need motivation to get started. We need motivation to keep going. We need motivation to see us through to the very end.
But what do you do if your own sense of motivation is falling short?
A lot of the time, our lack of motivation is caused by our own lack of imagination. When we stop seeing the benefits that starting, keeping going and finishing will bring us, our enthusiasm wanes.
The imagination is so powerful that we should find ways to exercise it at every opportunity.
Whatever we are doing or planning to do, however dull it might seem, there are ways that we can imagine it better.
Imagine the feeling of joy that reaching the end of a job will bring.
Imagine the satisfaction of beating the challenge.
Imagine the other things that the freed-up time will allow you to get on with.
Imagine the approval from others that your continued motivation will reap.
Imagine how your motivated enthusiasm will rub off on other people, sparking them to achieve more in their lives.
Don’t just pay lip service to your imagination - bring all your senses to bear. See the results, smell them, taste them, feel them, hear them.
The more real you can make your imagined results the more motivated you will be to bring them into your life for real.
After all - when you imagine something THAT good, why would you want to delay its true manifestation?
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Fascinating Facts
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Switzerland can boast the highest per capita consumption of chocolate in the world at 22 pounds per person per year.
Denmark, on the other hand, has the highest consumption of candy in general at 29.5 pounds per person per year.
Sorry to leave out America from those stats, but my US friends can console themselves that their nation tops the Pizza eating chart by munching through the equivalent of 100 acres of the stuff every day.