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Kickstart Today
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Thursday July 16th 2009: Issue #1044
Kickstart Today is published more or less twice a week for
opted-in subscribers only. Publisher: Martin Avis. Your comments
are always welcome.
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Greetings !
Thanks to everyone who has sent me in questions about ezine
writing, list management and communicating with subscribers. I’m
trying to incorporate answers to all of them in the presentation
on Saturday, and the video I’ll be producing shortly afterwards.
If you have a question you’d like me to address, it isn’t too
late – get it to me today sometime and I’ll see what I can do.
#~#~#
My poor old cat Simba is in cat hospital at the moment. Tuesday
evening he went lame and couldn’t put any weight on one of his
back legs so we took him to the vet yesterday morning.
It turns out he has badly ruptured his cruciate ligament in his
knee and has had to have an operation this morning to implant a
prosthetic ligament.
We’ve no idea how he did it, but the operation and care is going
to cost well over $3000. Thank goodness for pet insurance!
The vet called us after the operation to tell us that it went
well and that after he woke up, Simba was rolling on his back
asking to have his tummy tickled. Odd, since he normally hates
having his stomach touched!
The vet said Simba is so full of morphine that he is on another
planet.
I doubt he’ll be so happy when the drugs wear off and he finds
out he has to be kept in a cage for the next 6 weeks!
#~#~#
Do you ever look back on something you did way back when and
think ‘If only I’d thought …’
In 1982 or thereabouts I was working in a London advertising
agency as a media manager. That meant I was responsible for
planning where the clients’ money would be spent and then
negotiating the best deals with newspapers and magazines.
It was the age before computers were common in the workplace, and
the paperwork was complicated and easy to get in a mess with.
We had to raise provisional schedules for the client to approve,
and for other departments to begin work from, then when bookings
were firmed up, confirmed schedules and official orders to mail
to the media owners.
Sometimes orders were cancelled or amended and that entailed all
the paperwork being redone.
Eventually, invoices had to be raised.
It was all done manually by several secretaries using old IBM
golfball typewriters.
At that time I was just starting to get into computers, I’d
played with a Sinclair ZX81 for a while and had learned its
rudimentary BASIC language. I’d even taught myself to write
programs in the native machine code assembly language.
When, in 1982 I bought a Sinclair Spectrum, with its huge 48k
memory and the ability to store data on audio cassette tapes it
occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, some of our paperwork
process could be automated.
Remember, at this time I hadn’t even heard of a PC, let alone
used one and my company (which was one of the larger agencies in
London) didn’t have a single computer on the premises.
So in my limited free time I wrote a simple database program for
the Spectrum that would allow most of the process to be handles -
and output onto a primitive dot-matrix printer.
It worked, and I remember well taking my Spectrum in to the
office to demonstrate the system to my boss, the Media Director.
I was so proud of my achievement – but he was less than
impressed.
He didn’t want toys and TVs cluttering up the office and when I
told him how much it would cost to install a Spectrum, tape deck,
TV and printer he muttered that he paid a secretary to do all
that stuff and a box of tricks wasn’t a good use of his budget.
Oh how I wish now that I’d developed my ideas further and
migrated them to a PC. There was nothing around like it at the
time and I’m sure that given the right platform, I’d have cleaned
up!
It was another two years before the day came when the Accounts
Director told me that he had ordered a PC for me ‘to help make
your department more efficient.’
The PC duly arrived, I switched it on … and then nothing
happened. Well, nothing apart from a black screen and a DOS C:>
prompt.
There was no software. It was still a year or so before Windows.
He hadn’t realised that a computer needs to run a program for it
to do anything and when I pointed that out – and asked for the
money to buy Lotus 1-2-3 he said he wasn’t prepared to throw more
money at the wretched thing. So it sat in the corner, unused, for
another year before I managed to get hold of a bootleg copy of
Lotus 1-2-3 on an 8-inch floppy disk!
The full computerization of the British advertising world took a
long time to come, but I often wonder if my little Spectrum
program could have kickstarted it all a few years sooner.
#~#~#
Today’s the day for the ListCrew launch – if you have signed up
for the announcement list, watch out for an email from them in
about 11 hours.
When you get in – my advice is to start using is right away – the
sooner you get started the sooner you’ll see a flow of new
subscribers.
A couple of people have been disappointed that ListCrew doesn’t
currently work with AWeber, GetResponse or EmailAces. AWeber have
flat refused to deal with any co-registration service,
GetResponse have been rather busy with their relaunch and Gary at
EmailAces hasn’t responded to Troy McDonald.
Is that a problem?
Not a bit.
Troy has arranged for everyone signing up with ListCrew to be
give a free copy of AdTrackResponderPro – a fully featured
autoresponder that you install on your own domain. It normally
has a price tag of $197, so it is a great deal.
I use AutoResponsePlus3, which works very similarly to
AdTrackResponsePro. Either one is a good choice (except you’d
have to pay for ARP3!)
One very effective way to migrate the signups you’ll get to your
AWeber, GetResponse or EmailAces account is to initially set up a
series of emails in your self-hosted autoresponder that look and
read exactly like regular issues of your newsletter, and are set
to go out on the same days. In each one, offer your new
subscribers a free copy of an ebook or special report you write
(or acquire). If you make it a good enough offer, a high
proportion of your new subs will want to get it.
Put the book or report behind a squeeze page that has a signup
form attached to your preferred autoresponder service.
Sure, you’ll lose a few of the subscribers along the way, but
your list will be populated with those who are motivated to take
action – and will be all the stronger for it!
New subscribers from ListCrew cost you nothing, so you can afford
to filter out the very best.
http://www.listcrew.net
#~#~#
I’ve been getting a flood of emails about a new product called
MME4 (Marketing Main Event 4) and so thought I’d throw in my
two-penneth (2-cents) worth.
I don’t have the product, haven’t seen it or been sent a review
copy and I’ve been way too busy this week to buy it – so I won’t
be giving you a link to buy it. I’m not an affiliate anyway.
All I can comment on are the people involved in creating it and
the appearance of what the product is from its sales page and the
emails I’ve read.
Unusual, I know, but if you are considering buying it it may help
to make your decision slightly more informed.
First of all, I’ve met the creator of MME4, Simon Hodgkinson, a
few times at seminar and he always struck me as a very
straightforward guy who really – and I mean really – knows his
stuff. He is very successful and has the reputation of being a
good teacher too.
The membership site marketing model is a very good one. Not only
do people really like to join membership sites, but they often
stay as members for many months – meaning that you can earn many
times over from a single sales effort.
Residual income is a huge powerhouse. It is truly one of the best
ways to do business because you multiply your initial efforts
over and over again.
What Simon and his partner Jeremy Gislason seem to have done is
create five very different membership sites that are packed full
of content that people will really want to get hold of. And woven
into the top-class content are multiple moneymaking
opportunities.
Simon and Jeremy have loads of experience profiting from
membership sites and know exactly what they are doing.
Your job is to either sell memberships (or give them away free).
Each one you sell will result in you getting 100% of the fees,
and any and all upsells, cross sells, add on sells and
incentivized offers made to members within the sites will also
put money in your bank account.
I really can’t see a downside. It is like having your own product
- five times over – without any of the hassle.
The product is relatively expensive up front, but I’d think that
you could make that back quite quickly. The only potential
problem is that you do have to drive traffic to the membership
sites and if you either don’t have a list, or don’t know how to
write articles or drive traffic, you might find it difficult.
On the other hand, if you don’t have any of those skills, and
can’t quickly earn them, then maybe Internet marketing isn’t for
you anyway.
I have no stake in this one way or another, but MME4 does look to
me like a genuine product with real money-making potential.
And having written all that, I might just go and buy it myself!
#~#~#
Frank Garon’s Internet marketing seminar is in London this
Saturday and Sunday and Frank has very kindly given me permission
to offer you a free ticket to the entire event (worth £197).
The only catch is that you have to let me know before Frank
catches his flight to the UK later this evening.
If you can email me in the next few hours, I can get you in to
the seminar for free, after that, I’m afraid the doors will be
closed.
There is no catch. Frank will even provide tea and coffee and
snacks.
And you’ll get to see me present on Saturday.
All the details are on the web site at
http://www.moretrafficbiggerlist.com/index.htm where you can book
a ticket if you want to pay £197. But if you’d rather get in
free, drop me a line right now.
#~#~#
That’s it folks – nothing to buy here today!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Recommend Kickstart To a Friend!
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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Henri Deterding said:
“There is a master key to success with which no man can fail. Its
name is simplicity … reducing to the simplest possible terms
every problem.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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What does it say on your label?
Each and every one of us goes through life with a big label
pinned to our back. We don’t see it, but everyone else does. And
the way other people respond and react to us is determined by
what they read on that invisible label.
Every action you take in life serves to make certain comments on
your label bigger and bolder or smaller and harder to read. It is
like having your whole personality laid bare.
But sometimes the words on our labels are not the words we would
like the world to judge us by.
How many times have you bristled because somebody has prejudged
your responses?
It could be simple things like:
‘I KNOW you won’t do the washing up.’
‘I KNOW you won’t be polite to my mother.’
‘I KNOW that you’ll spend more than you earn.’
Or important things like:
‘We KNOW he won’t be up to the job.’
‘I’m SURE he isn’t trustworthy.’
‘He NEVER tells the truth.’
None of those things may be true. You may have deserved them once
or twice, but on the whole you are not that person. But what
matters is what the other person reads on your label, not what
you would like them to see.
The more people do see these attributes in you, the more likely
you are to live down to them. It is human nature to
subconsciously adapt our behavior to make ourselves fit into
whatever mold other people establish for us.
And that way leads to mediocrity.
Success, on the other hand, is reached by tearing off the label
that has grown on your back and taking control of the pen that
writes the new one.
Success is about becoming the person YOU want to be and showing
the world that negative images don’t fit you at all.
Everything currently on your label is about the past. Tom Hopkins
writes, ‘The past is a bucket of ashes – throw them out instead
of trying to reburn them.’
Make your label about who you really are now. And who you intend
to become. We all have to have labels, so live UP to your ones.
Show the world that you are even better than they think.
If you make a decision right now to change your labels for the
better and do one thing every single day to live up to them,
success will find you – you’ll never need to go looking again.
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The Foolproof, No-Nonsense,
Kickstart Guide to Making Money Online
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*** Catch up with parts 1-30 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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Which weighs the most, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?
That may sound like a stupid question, but it could win you money
in a bar bet.
The answer is a pound of feathers.
Feathers are weighed by avoirdupois weight which has 16 ounces to
the pound.
But gold is weighed by troy weight which only has 12 ounces to
the pound