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Kickstart Today
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Wednesday July 2nd 2008: Issue #936
Kickstart Today is published three times each week for opted-in
subscribers only. Publisher: Martin Avis. Your comments are
always welcome – to respond to anything you read here, please
click ‘Reply’
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Greetings!
About a month ago all the talk on the Internet (at least within
the Internet marketing circles) was about the launch of
XSitePro2.
A huge buzz was created – not least because everyone’s
expectations of this long-awaited upgrade to one of the favorite
website building tools were very high.
The upgrade had been promised for nearly two years, so it needed
to be good.
It was. Very good.
The only criticism I read was from a guy who said that he could
do almost everything XSitePro could do using Dreamweaver.
Good for him. Personally, I’d much rather spend an hour or two
learning how to use XSitePro than months learning Dreamweaver!
But to each his own.
And I guess that if you are already a Dreamweaver expert, there
wouldn’t be any point to buying another super-powerful tool.
For the rest of us though, XSitePro2 is an answer to a prayer. It
makes building highly professional, ultra modern web 2.0-ready
websites an absolute breeze.
XSitePro2 is incredibly powerful, but frankly, it has so many
features (the list of upgrades from XSitePro1 covered about a
dozen pages!) that telling you about them here would just be like
writing a shopping list. As far as I can see, if you need it,
XSitePro2 has it. And makes it easy to use.
A lot of Kickstart readers upgraded a month or so ago, but I know
a lot more hesitated. And I’m sure that popular as it is, there
are still a huge number of folks who simply haven’t discovered
what a wonderfully useful program XSitePro2 is yet.
You may be one of them.
If so, hold on to your money for a few more days.
The XSitePro team are putting on a series of free webinars that
you can watch that will demonstrate just what XSitePro can do for
you.
I highly recommend anyone who has ever had a desire to build a
website should try to attend one of them. You’ll get ideas like
they are going out of fashion, and a great insight into how this
program can make your life so much easier.
The next two webinars are scheduled for Friday July 4th and
Sunday July 6th and you can book your own place here:
http://www.urlnex.us/xspwebinar/
Incidentally, in case you haven’t been to a webinar before, it is
a seminar that is broadcast live on the Internet. You just sign
in to a special web page and then you can watch as the presenter
talks to you and demonstrates what he or she is talking about on
screen.
It is a great way to learn before you decide to buy.
If you’d rather just see the features and benefits of the new
XSitePro first, here is a link to the regular home page:
http://www.urlnex.us/xsitepro/
Oh, and by the way, there is a special $100-off discount offer in
place for a limited period.
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I’ve just been watching an online video demonstration of the
soon-to-be-launched iPhone3G.
It looks AMAzing. If the price is right when it comes out, I
think that at last something from Apple might just tempt me.
One thing that struck me as I watched the part of the video that
demonstrated web browsing was that Apple have thoughtfully
provided a button that, when you are typing in a website address,
will add the final .com to the URL with one click.
Time saving, maybe, but perhaps a button too far?
It seems to me that already there are a seemingly endless array
of alternative endings for websites. .com may be the most
important at the moment, but it certainly isn’t the only game in
town.
Also, ICANN have just announced a complete overhaul of the system
so that companies (and wealthy individuals) will soon be able to
buy their own suffix.
Apple, for example, will be able to create URLs that end in
..apple or .mac
Google would, I’m sure, love to have an address like
www.search.google
When all this explodes, a key on your iPhone’s browser that adds
..com to the end of everything is going to be pretty obsolete.
But hey – if that was the only thing I could think of to
criticise in the excellent demonstration, I don’t think Steve
Jobs has a lot to worry about.
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I’ve just spent the last couple of days revising and updating my
ebook ‘Unlock the Secrets of Private Label eBooks’.
I’m not silly, so after every page that I changed, I clicked on
the save button. I’m obsessive about that. So when, at 8.30 last
night, I finished the last page and clicked save again, I knew
that I could relax.
Even when, having clicked save, my screen went black, I wasn’t
worried. I’d saved my work. I could be smug.
When, a few seconds later, my desktop reappeared, the fact that
every program I’d had open (including Open Office with my
precious ebook) had mysteriously been closed down, I wasn’t
concerned. I’d saved my work. I knew I could just fire it all up
again and all would be well.
That’s exactly what I did. I opened up Open Office Writer and
went to the ‘Recent Files’ menu to reopen my book.
It wasn’t there. Odd.
I opened my documents folder to manually find the file and there
it was. I double-clicked it to open and up it came … the
original version of my book before I made any changes at all.
Somehow, it seemed as if none of my ’saves’ had taken. Nothing
that I’d done in the two days was there.
To say that panic set in would be an understatement.
I searched my computer from top to bottom. Maybe, I thought, Open
Office had saved it all to some other place without my realizing
it. But no. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
Weird stuff.
I resigned myself to having to start over and set down to browse
a forum or two to take my mind off the tragedy. Better that than
take a sledgehammer to my computer.
Then, about an hour later, an even odder thing happened.
Open Office – which was, as far as I knew, closed at the time
suddenly popped up an alert on my screen telling me that it was
trying to recover a file.
Yes, it was my ebook file.
Naturally I said yes, proceed.
And back came my book with all the changes intact.
You can imagine I saved it into several places pretty darned fast
including two different memory sticks!
I don’t know if I was AMAzingly lucky or if the latest edition of
Open Office is just brilliant.
Or, if I have a particularly mischievous gremlin in my PC.
Either way, I’m a tad relieved. (That’s British understatement,
by the way.)
Incidentally, if you already own ‘Unlock the Secrets of Private
Label eBooks’ you are welcome to download the updated edition
from the same URL you will have been previously sent.
And, if you’d like to buy a copy, you can do so from
http://www.plrsecrets.com
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A couple of people have emailed me to say that for one reason or
another they missed the deadline to get into PLRpro before it
closed its doors to new members. They wondered if I have any
inluence with the owners.
Well, I called Daniel and as chance would have it he told me that
they have kept back just eight places for emergencies. Actually,
I think the truth is that they miscounted, but let’s be
charitable! 
He says that if any Kickstart reader would like to take up one of
those final, final slots, to let me know and he’ll see what he
can do.
It is clearly a first come, first served situation.
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In Robert Cialdini’s classic book, Influence: Science and
Practice, he talks about the law of reciprocation. That is the
idea that when you do a favor for someone, or give them a gift,
they feel obligated to you and will be more likely to do
something for you when you ask.
You can see that law in action every day – the Kickstart Loyalty
Bonus was an example of it. Store coupons are another. Websites
that let you take a trial first, or give you a free bonus before
you buy follow the principle too.
It works.
But in Cialdini’s latest book, YES!, he explains a related but
seemingly opposite concept – that a person is more likely to do
you a favor, or think well of you, if they have already done
another favor for you in the past.
It seems that if, for example, I were to ask you to help me out
by filling in an online survey, you would be mentally programmed
to feeling more positive about me if I later asked you to
consider buying a new product I’d launched.
Don’t worry – this isn’t some underhand psychological trick – I’m
not trying to put it into action!
The reason it works, according to Cialdini, is that when we do
something for someone else our subconscious mind has to put that
person into a category of ‘people I like and trust’. Otherwise,
doing a favor for someone you didn’t like or trust would be
illogical.
And once the subconscious has filed something away, it is very
difficult to get it to unfile it.
It’s fascinating how our minds work, don’t you think?
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The Quote of the Day
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Maxim Gorky said,
“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands,
but let it go and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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How do you react to change?
I must admit that I am not totally comfortable with things
changing around me. When I worked in offices the hardest thing I
had to deal with was when things I’d become comfortable with were
altered in some way.
I suppose that in some subconscious way I felt out of control and
that pushed me outside of my carefully created comfort zone.
Yet, nine times out of ten, the very changes that I internally
and externally fought against proved to be changes for the good.
Eventually, I came to understand that the world does change, that
situations do shift around and that it isn’t all some giant
conspiracy to make me uncomfortable.
I’m much more able to embrace change now that I’ve stopped being
quite so paranoid about it.
Are you feeling on edge today because things seem to be changing
around you and you have no control over it?
Here is a method of coping that I have found very helpful:
When change is threatened, your initial reaction may be to stick
your head in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening. Perfectly
natural, but ultimately pointless.
Instead, muster up all your courage, go against all your
instincts and seek to learn everything that you can about the new
ways. Become an expert in the changes.
There is no doubt that once you take an objective view, you will
find something about the change that you actually agree with.
Grab hold of that thing and become its greatest advocate.
Once you’ve found one positive thing to hook your mind onto, the
rest is easy.
Sure, there is always good and bad with change, but unless you
are in there approving and working with the good, your voice will
never be heard about the bad.
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The Foolproof, No-Nonsense,
Kickstart Guide to Making Money Online
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*** Catch up with parts 1-26 of the Foolproof, No-Nonsense,
Kickstart Guide to Making Money Online at http://imkickstart.com
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Fascinating Facts
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Thanks to my wife Delia for sending me these thought-provoking
questions:
* Why is “abbreviated” such a long word?
* Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavour, while
dishwashing liquid is made with real lemons?
* Why isn’t there mouse flavoured cat food?
* Who tastes dog food to know when it has a “new & improved”
flavour?
* Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
* Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?
* If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of
progress?
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Products you may enjoy AND make some money with!
by Martin Avis
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* ‘Unlock the Secrets of Private Label eBooks’ (Ideal for
anyone who is a member of the excellent PLRproEbooks site):
http://www.plrsecrets.com
* ‘You CAN Write Articles’ – Anyone can write articles to make
money online. This $7 ebook shows you just how easy it is.
http://www.youcanwritearticles.com
* ‘14 Days to Total Time Control’ – The book that will help
you control the time IN your life, so you can get on with having
the time OF your life. http://www.totaltimecontrol.com
* ‘Keyword LSI Spy’ My new script that lets you find the exact
words that the search engines love to see on your web pages and
in your articles – and a whole lot more!
http://www.keywordlsispy.com
#~#~#
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http://www.kickstartdaily.com
Let me know what you think – about anything! To contact me,
please reply to this email and remember to put ‘Kickstart’ in the
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