ProBizTips Newsletter
** ISSUE #262 **
September 26th, 2003
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Hey!
Good Day to you and I hope your day is going well so far! :)
Welcome to all our new subscribers this week and I hope you grow
to love us as so many have ... we couldn't do this without you!
I've had a pretty normal week ... nothing odd or crazy happening here. Just working hard, as usual. :P
I think the only thing that keeps me sane is the 3 bowling leagues I bowl on and golf on the weekends! Keeps me active and gets me out of the house and away from the computer ... :)
I'm having a GREAT time with Net Profit Secrets (formerly known as ProBizTips Premium), though. It hasn't been so fun doing all the upgrading and bug-fixing, but I love the "community" feel of it.
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In the meantime ... sit back, relax and enjoy today's issue!
Your Friend,
Diane Hughes
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| ProBizTips Feature Article |
What to Do When People Want Everything for Free
by Diane Hughes
It's a sticky situation. A prospect, a site visitor, or just a casual acquaintance asks for your help or advice on something. You gladly give it, thinking it's a one-time "favor." But instead of providing a little free advice, you've opened the door to an onslaught of mooching! Now, every time you check your email, you find question after question. What do you do?
This is a problem many online business owners face. You want to appear friendly and helpful, but the person on the receiving end of your favor is draining you dry. After all, these are services you charge for. This is how you make your living.
Like many folks, you don't want to appear rude or unprofessional. But the time you take to answer questions and provide help is taking away from your ability to earn an income. Let me tell you about one approach that seems to work wonderfully.
Minimal Information
When the repeat offender asks for help, offer a minimal response to the question. For the sake of illustration, let's say your are of expertise is in Web site design. If the person asks for information on making his/her site design more professional, you might consider saying that adding a top border to the site would create continuity. You might also mention that having black text on a white background makes for easier reading (as opposed to white text with a deep purple background). However, don't go into details.
This lets you give an answer to the question (instead of just ignoring them), but doesn't reveal any information you might charge for.
Honesty Is the Best Policy
Next, be honest. Explain that designing Web sites is what you do for a living. It's how you earn your income. Let the person know that you would be more than happy to offer consulting services or full-fledge design and maintenance services, but these would come at a cost. Outline your pricing structure for people so they'll know exactly what each service costs.
This action gets you "off the hook" (so to speak) and frees you from having to answer any future questions.
Provide Alternative Resources
Go one final step further and find some alternative, free resources the person might check into for additional information. By offering a list of design forums, free ebooks, or information-packed sites, you're getting yourself out of the picture in a kind and professional way.
Nine times out of ten, "moochers" either don't have the money to pay, or they are unwilling to pay for products and services. In either case, you're unlikely to make a paying client out of such people. By using the steps above, you gain your freedom, and at the same time provide helpful resources where the moocher can get free information.
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Diane Hughes is an accomplished Internet entrepreneur and editor
of the popular ProBizTips Newsletter. Subscribe to her newsletter
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BizTips by Dr. Kevin Nunley |
Is Your Website Too Generic?
If you visit a lot of sites on the net, you'll begin to notice that most of them are exactly the same. Sure, they are selling different products and services, but on the surface they are about as different as the Olsen twins.
But there are plenty of things you can do to personalize your website while still maintaining user-friendly familiarity for your visitors. With the help of a designer, you can use these methods to spice up your site:
*Have a web designer set up sound effects on your buttons so every time a visitor clicks on something, there is a fun noise. But choose your effects wisely. Some sound effects sound like error messages. Pick something light and fun so your visitors know they are headed in the right direction.
*You can also have a designer create a flash presentation about your product or service, or design motion elements into the site so graphics move when the cursor passes over them. Additions like this give visitors a thrill, like they are experiencing something new and interesting, instead of just the tired old stuff they usually see.
*Your site can have its own soundtrack. Pick a few of your favorite songs and have a designer create an application that allows your visitors to choose which song they want to listen to while they peruse your site. Few people are doing this, not because it's too hard to do, but because they don't know it's an option. It will certainly make you unique on the web.
------------------------------
Kevin WRITES your professional copy--web site copy, sales
letters, ads, press release and more! See http://DrNunley.com.
Reach Kevin at kevin@drnunley.com or 801-253-4536.
How to Organize Your Email Without Losing It (Part 1)
by Herman Drost
Do you often get bogged down with too much email to handle, chewing up your valuable time online? With email being one of the most popular forms of online marketing you can be sure you are going to receive much more email in the future, wanted and unwanted.
Picture this scenario:
You receive 40 new emails in your inbox each day:
1. 10 are from personal friends.
2. 10 are requests for more information from potential clients.
3. 10 are new newsletters that must be read.
4. 10 are junk mail
So how do you deal with it?
1. Create different email addresses using domain forwarding.
If you have your own web site, your web host allows you to forward all your email from your domain (domain forwarding) to an outside address (ie james@aol.com). This is called your "catch all" address ie set up your email aliases (info@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain.com etc) so when you receive email from any of these, they will be forwarded to your "catch all" address.
The limitation of this method is that you can't send email from your alias addresses. It can only be sent form your "catch all" email address.
2. Set-up separate email accounts.
To also send mail from each new email address, you need to set up a separate email account for each address. Usually your web host will give you a number of free email (called POP3) accounts that come with your hosting package.
Create a new email account for different categories ie
firstname@yourdomain.com - for emailing your personal friends.
newsletters@yourdomain.com - for subscribing to newsletters.
articles@yourdomain.com - for submitting articles.
ads@yourdomain.com - for advertising information
ads1@yourdomain.com - a public email address you use for forums, newsgroups and SPAM. If the spam gets too much you can dispose of this address and set-up a new one.
3. Create new inboxes for each of these separate email accounts.
Set-up your corresponding email accounts (as above) in your email software (ie outlook express, eudora etc).
You will need this information:
incoming mail (POP3) = mail.yourdomain.com - incoming mail server
(SMTP) = mail.yourdomain.com or your ISPs - outgoing mail server
account name = newsletters@yourdomain.com
password = the password you select
Do this for each of each of your email accounts.
4. Create folders and subfolders in your inbox.
ie. newsletters
- marketing tips newsletter
- web design newsletter
- forum newsletter
This allows you to immediately categorize your incoming email by dragging and dropping it into each of these subfolders. Now you know instantly where to retrieve your past correspondence.
5. Set-up filters (message rules) for receiving different emails.
Most email clients have filters or message rules you can set-up to filter your incoming email. For example to make sure you don't ever receive emails from a specific email address again, you can block the sender.
To do this in outlook express, highlight the email address you received, go to message - block sender. That's it!
For a more extensive tutorial on setting up extensive message rules in outlook express, go to:
http://familyinternet.about.com/library/weekly/aa020603a.htm
6. Periodically delete your received email.
Soon you will get into the habit of automatically hitting the delete button as you recognize email that is obviously spam. This means your inbox will fill up very quickly with deleted email and will slow down your email software. Therefore clean out your inbox at the end of every day.
---------------------------------
Herman Drost is the author of the NEW ebook
"101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site"
a powerful guide for attracting 1000s of visitors to your web site.
Subscribe to his "M.arketing Tips" newsletter for more original
articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more
of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
**We're interested in your comments, questions, and suggestions.
Do you enjoy this ezine? Do you have an Internet marketing or
e-commerce related question? If so, feel free to submit it to us.
We may publish your question and response in the next issue.
ProBizTips Tip of the Week |
Handle Your Distractions to Keep Focused
by Wendy Hearne
You've chosen to be more focused, you've discovered what you want to focus on, and you know what you need to do to maintain that focus.* So that's it, job done; you're totally focused. Well that may be true for the moment, but there are still distractions which may get in the way. Although you've taken all the critical steps, there are still many things that can stop you being focused. Why not approach it like a game you're playing? This enables you to keep experimenting, evaluating and improving parts of it. It's an ongoing process. Part of this process is to become aware of any distractions that are either there now or may come up in time. When you're aware of these, you're more likely to notice them for yourself and find a way to handle them.
So, what sort of distractions could get in your way? There may be external factors such as interruptions, your environment, conflicting directions from different people or other people's expectations.
There may be distractions in your mind, such as the voice that's reminding you what else you need to do. Your mind may also justify to you that there's something else necessary for you to focus on. Being more focused takes you outside your comfort zone and your ego will object. Your ego will do anything to prevent this and will create numerous distractions. It will try all sorts of things to unfocus you and sabotage your success. As you become more focused, you may find that initially your ego objects even more and you may notice more distractions than before. Life is full of distractions. However, what if your ego isn't to blame? Maybe your intuition brings to your attention some other things you need to take care of.
What is often needed is enough space to see and acknowledge all this, and to understand whether it's a distraction or something you need to pay attention to. Being focused doesn't mean working hard all the time; it's also about having the space and time to be with everything and see it for what it is. Distractions won't just go away; they need identifying and they need solutions.
I've always been pretty good at jumping from one thing to another! Since paying more attention to what's been happening these past few weeks, I've realised that I often justify what I need to focus on, even when it's really a distraction. Because the things I focus on at these times fit into the bigger picture somewhere, I justify to myself that they're still worth doing and I'm not that far off track. However, they aren't where my focus needs to be if I'm taking the most effective action.
In order to have the space, I've decided to challenge myself to do nothing when my focus is slipping. I choose to sit quietly, do nothing and be with whatever is going on in my mind or notice whether it's my intuition. This prevents me from jumping from whatever I was focusing on to something that may only be a distraction anyway. Or there may be a really important message that I'm missing. It's about being in the moment, trusting myself and seeing what's needed.
Being focused takes practice. Keep identifying what stops your focus and experiment with ways of overcoming this. Only you can discover what you need to do through experimenting and evaluating. No one else can tell you what you need to do. What works for one individual, doesn't work for another. What are you willing to experiment with when your focus is slipping?
What I want for you is to handle the distractions that keep you from accomplishing what you want to achieve.
* see previous articles
http://www.WendyHearcn.com/ThePowerOfFocus.html
http://www.WendyHearcn.com/KeepYourselfFocused.html
---------------------------------
Wendy Hearn works with business owners, professionals and
executives to discover and unlock their own inspiration, to
effortlessly take the actions required to have the success they
desire. To receive Wendy's free newsletter, send an email to:
newsletter@wendyhearn.par32.com
http://www.Business-Personal-Coaching.com
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