How to Get on the NY Times Best Seller List

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Christine

Like most authors I know, Peggy McColl dreamed of seeing her book on the New York Times Best Seller List, the most prestigious bestseller list in the country.

Well, a few years ago, Peggy saw her dream finally come true.

Her book “Your Destiny Switch” not only hit #13 on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover advice, but also #3 on Barnes & Noble and #2 on Amazon.com, just behind Harry Potter. In less than a week, Peggy sold more books than 95% of authors sell in their lifetimes and surprisingly, it cost her practically nothing to do it!

Want to discover how she did it … and how you can use her strategies to make your own book a bestseller?

If so, you’re invited to a free webinar (or telephone seminar) this Thursday, May 3rd on which you’ll hear Steve Harrison interview Peggy about her proven formula for creating bestsellers.

Note: I’m a compensated affiliate for this program.

Regardless of where you are in the publishing process … whether your book is still in the idea stage … just published … or even if it’s been out for years, this is a call you won’t want to miss.

Go here now to register for Thursday’s webinar (or teleseminar).

Here’s just some of what you’ll discover on the call:

  • Peggy’s ingenious yet simple, five-step Bestseller Formula almost any author can use to make their book a bestseller at almost no cost.
  • How she’s used the formula to make numerous books bestsellers.
  • Why her formula works for all types of books,fiction or non-fiction, regardless of subject — whether they’re self-published, POD, ebooks; newly-published or even those that have been out for years.
  • Big mistakes almost all publishers make selling books on Amazon.
  • Case histories of several authors who’ve hit various bestseller lists using this approach.
  • How Peggy uses blogs and social media to sell books.
  • Want big-time publicity? You’ll learn how becoming a Bestseller makes it much easier to get media exposure.

Again, there’s no cost to participate in this webinar (or telephone seminar) except your normal long distance charges.

To register for Thursday’s webinar (or telephone seminar), go here.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be seeing your book on the Bestseller List very soon!

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Get Premise and Forget It

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Christine

I am always on the lookout for tips and tools that can assist me and make my job easier. I don’t know of too many folks that don’t.

So, when I found this Get Premise, created by Studio Press, I just had to investigate it myself.

I find that one of the downsides to working with a wordpress blog platform is that they are normally built to have a sidebar where you can put various widgets and plugins.

I can work my way around a stylesheet, but I am not knowledgable enough to do any real coding. I leave that to the experts.

When creating landing pages, or sales pages, it can be distracting to have all the extranous items that accompany a page on a wordpress site. I have been using a progam from Studio Press, Get Premise. It enables you to create stand alone sales pages, video pages, thank you, etc. It’s a wonderful program. I love using it.

The program also enables you to create your own style and it’s quite easy to do.

I could go on and on about all of the tools that this program comes with, but I will leave it up to you to investigate it.

If you are struggling to create sales pages of any type, Get Premise and forget it!

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How to Fix a Mistake When it Can’t Be Fixed

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Christine

No one likes it when bad things happen. That is true for me as well.

I recently lost a client due to a “perfect storm”. And to say that it was not my fault would be an untruth. It was a comedy of errors, so to speak. It was not “my fault” but a series of them.

Let me start at the beginning.

I left for a convention in Orlando, Fl., Be the Change Event with Suzanne Evans. I left confident that I had informed all of my clients that I would be out of the loop for a few days, but staying in touch via email.

What I did not know, was that a new client was doing a launch and had a number of technical items that needed to be done while I was gone. I did not find this out until I was in FL. So, I put my husband on task. He is my business partner and his area of expertise is exactly what the client needed.

BUT wait, not exactly……to make a long story short, there was formatting, testing, etc. that needed to get done that he was not familiar with and although I did try to talk him through it via phone and online, it just didn’t work. At this point, what I should have done, was put on the brakes, contacted the client and stopped the whole process until I returned and could really dive into it.

To add insult to injury, I got delayed in FL. due to the tornadoes that rampaged through Dallas and that is where I was flying through on my way home.

Needless to say, it was a disaster. Client very unhappy, husband very unhappy and me, well, extremely unhappy.

So, what to do about it. 

At this point, there really is nothing we can do. The mistake happened, the client was embarrassed as were we.

This is what I did. When I spoke with the client, I expressed my apologies and offered to “fix” whatever I could. I also emailed my apologies and send an Amazon gift card. The client felt that I “got it”. She felt validated and of course, the gift card went a long way in helping that as well. 

You know, when you make a mistake, own it. That is the most important part. Owning what is yours and letting the rest go.

Yes, I felt bad. I have clients that have been with me for over 10 years and yes, I have made mistakes along the way. I have also learned from those mistakes.

I stand behind our services 100%. No doubt about it. She may come back and again, she may not. I did everything I could to make it better and although the mistake could not be fixed, the relationship was.

 

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Creating Your Own Background Patterns

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Christine

I am all about making things easy and systematic. It not only makes my life easier, but also, the life of my clients (at least I hope so.)

So, I was working with a client, Joyce Dillon, on her new website and we were chatting about changing the background on her WordPress site.

I started Googling and found this really cool, and easy tool. Even better, it’s free.

Now, it’s not fancy, but for us non-graphic designers, this is an easy or even temporary way to change your background without going to a lot of expense.

Here it is: BGPatterns

As you can see by the image below, you can change around color, image, canvas and the rotation of the image as well. Again, this tool has it’s limitations, but for a quick and easy change to your site’s background, give this a try.

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Hands-On with Push Button SEO for WordPress

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Scott

One of the coolest thing about the WordPress platform is the huge number of plugins available to make your job easier. From spam protection through to SEO (and everything in between) there is bound to be either a free or paid plugin available. In fact, SEO plugins are some of the most popular WordPress plugins out there. If you’ve been using WordPress for a while then you will probably have tried a few different SEO plugins – some are bad, some are good, and some are even better.

In today’s Affilorama blog post I’m going to be giving you a hands on look at one of the newest SEO plugin. 

At-a-glance SEO analysisns available. It’s called ‘Push Button SEO‘, and has been developed by a guy called Brian Johnson. What I’ll be doing in this blog post is showing you some of the different features of Push Button SEO. I’ve installed the plugin on one of my personal WordPress blogs, and deactivated any other SEO plugins I had setup previously.

My favorite feature of Push Button SEO is it’s very simple graphical representation of how well your posts are optimized for on page SEO. You can enter the main keyword you are targeting for your post or page, and then see how well your content has been optimized for that particular keyword. This is very handy, as it means you don’t have to crunch any numbers 

Let’s see an example of this in action. I’ve got a post on my blog that is targeting the keyword “gold investment guidelines”. So what I do is enter this keyword into the “Primary Keyword” field of Push Button SEO, and then I press “analyze”:

As you can see, Push Button SEO then returns a graphical representation of my on-page SEO for this post. I’ve got an orange bar that is half full; this tells me that there’s quite a bit of room for improvement here. But what if I want to get more in-depth information? To get Push Button SEO’s full page report I simply click the “Report” tab.

Even more graphical representations here in the in-depth report, which is once again useful for quickly informing you as to what needs work. I can easily see that my URL is matched properly (this is because my post is /gold-investment-guidelines – an exact match for the keyword “gold investment guidelines”)

My META Title, page headings (h1, h2, h3 tags) and internal linking are all good. My META description and outbound links are letting the page down, according to Push Button SEO. A good META description will encourage visitors to click through to my website from the search engine results, and having outbound links optimized for anchor text gives your page more credibility and weight with Google.

This kind of graphical analysis really does make proper on-page SEO much more simple and accessible. In my humble opinion, a lot of people are put off doing proper SEO because they find it confusing. With this plugin, there really is no excuse.

To view the complete post, clink below:

http://www.affilorama.com/blog/hands-on-with-push-button-seo-for-wordpress 

This post is courtesy of Sam Frost, a staff member and blogger with Affilorama. a well known Affiliate Marketing Training. Software and Support company based in New Zealand.

Thank you Sam for your timely and informative post

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My pixels are dangling!!

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Scott

Still hassling with changes to your Facebook timeline cover changes and don’t know how to proceed. Have you put it off hoping that the Facebook bunny with fix in the night!!

Need a graphic artist or just some one to do a quick fix. It’s not too late…

Thanks to Denise Wakeman …..AKA The Blog Squad. 

Just follow this link to find a list of resources that are willing and able to assist you in your project. DO get caught with your pixels dangling!!

Connect with Denise on FB http://facebook.com/BlogSquad

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Where Did Everybody Go?

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Scott

You’ve got your ducks in a row, developed a new dazzling product and conduct a screaming product launch that is well received. Now how do I reach my audience and more important what must I do to hold onto my reader’s attention long enough to get my message across. 

Rich Schefren of Strategic Profits  shares some interesting thoughts and presents some suggestions to increase your engagements.

In today’s ever-hectic world, getting your prospect’s attention is harder than ever.

But it gets worse – because once you get attention, your job has just started.

Well-known copywriter and blogger John Carlton says:

“The most common blunder rookie copywriters make is to assume the reader will ‘hang in there’… Your reader will not hang in there. At the very moment you bore him, confuse him, or ask him to ‘bear with you’…he’s out of there.”

Does this sound familiar? Has it happened to you?: Doesn’t your own experience confirm it?

The truth is, readers don’t bail on your blog post, email, or newsletter and then come back to it again later. Just check your website’s bounce rate.  Nope. Once you lose them – chances are they’re gone for good.

Now don’t get bent out of shape about this just yet.  Because here’s something for you that’ll instantly make it easier for you to hold on to your readers attention. And today it’s my gift to you.

Have you ever heard of the Bucket Brigade?

You’ve been reading it, all through this blog post.

Phrases like: “But it gets worse”, “You see”, “Think about it:”, “The truth is”, “However”, “First” and “Frankly” are phrases that are referred to as the “Bucket Brigade”.  They are phrases and words that keep the reader moving forward, providing a constant momentum.  When done right, they make your writing seem more conversational. Even better they’ll turn your writing into a greased slide, making it almost impossible to stop reading until the end.

John Carlton said one of the easiest ways to come up with them is to “use the old journalism trick of ‘who, what, where, when, why and how’. For example: ‘Who else uses this secret?’ ‘What does this mean for you?’ ‘Why would I share such a valuable tactic with a stranger?’ ‘Where did I find this information?’ ‘How would you like to see it for yourself?’ “

Rich Schefren of Strategic Profits has put together a list of phrases that will help hold your readers’ attention. 

You can grab your copy of the 

Phrases That Keep Attention swipe file right here.

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5 Proven Tips to Make Money from Your Creative Ideas

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Christine

This guest post is written Nancy Marmolejo, an award winning business owner who teaches entrepreneurs how to stand out as experts in their fields. The founder of the highly successful Viva Visibility, Nancy recently launched a free virtual chat series “The Wild Idea That Paid Off” to encourage entrepreneurs to think broadly and to encourage curiosity. With 8 forward thinkers joining her, this series is designed to give concrete steps to turning your wild ideas into profitable, lucrative payoffs.

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By nature, entrepreneurs are highly creative thinkers. Every aspect of a business - from filling a need, to solving a problem, to marketing, to selling, to serving customers - is an expression of creativity.

But for every great idea that gets launched, millions more go the wayside because entrepreneurs simply don’t know how to take action, how to decide if something’s worth pursuing, or if the time is right.

Wild ideas are GREAT for business… and now more than ever is the time to take action. Why? Because so many people are playing it safe, the playing field is wide open for wild ideas.

This is the time to be bold and brave, to lean out instead of leaning in, to move into the unknown rather than stay in the familiar.

But how do you do that without losing your shirt? Follow these tips, inspired by real-life
success stories, and see your wild ideas pay off!

1. Don’t wait until you know everything
The time it takes to become perfect at something is a surefire way to miss an opportunity.
Never stop learning, but at some point you must take action before- even before you know
all the details. Entrepreneurs are fast learners- never underestimate your ability to learn on
your feet while you’re taking action. As Michael Port shares in “The Wild Idea That Paid Off”
virtual chat series, “Be a blank piece of paper with a beginner’s mind.” Let the knowledge fill
you as you go along.

2. Turn past failures into future successes
Thomas Edison took over 1000 tries to invent the lightbulb. You might fail at something too…
but that failure could be the path to your next big success. Branding expert Kim Castle turned
a disastrous financial situation into multi-million dollar business by simply plucking out the
lessons and spinning them into gold. (Kim shares her entire story in an interview we did).
Where there’s failure, there’s opportunity!

3. Step out of the safe and familiar
Trailblazer coach Shawn Driscoll hung out mostly in the background until one day she decided
to break out and fully express her talents through her business. It frightened people around her,
but the bold steps have paid off. Productive Flourishing’s Charlie Gilkey walked away from an
established career and doctoral program to begin a business that served the needs of creative
entrepreneurs. Social media pioneer Jack Humphrey gave away an extremely valuable product
for free at the risk of losing $100,000 in sales. Marketing expert Ellen Britt chose to brand her
business with an unconventional, regional twist. They each were told not to take the risk but
they did… and it paid off. Get out of the safe and familiar and take bold steps into the unknown.

4. Live a creative life
Creative people don’t just summon up their creative juices when needed. They show curiosity,
try new things, and embark on new adventures. Business coach Andrea Lee views life as a
creative adventure and puts what she learns into her business and live events. Author and
coach Pamela Slim is drawn to great ideas in all aspects of her business and life. The creative
life is a way of seeing possibilities and taking action on them.

5. Make a plan
Taking risks and being spontaneous can still follow a plan, which is what 9 innovative thinkers
all agreed was the key to success in these conversations on creativity and innovation. Being
able to put your creative ideas into action is what separates wild ideas that go nowhere from
wild ideas that pay off. Look at the big picture. Chunk it down into action steps. Map out the
details and set deadlines. Stay accountable to yourself and someone else so things get done.
This is where the rubber hits the road and where the success stories are born.

There’s a big difference between a wild idea that pays off and a distracting bright shiny object.
Follow these tips to turn your wild ideas into profitable paths to happiness, prosperity, and
innovation.

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LinkedIn Recommendations: You Must Give Before You Receive

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Christine

The value of recommendations and testimonials cannot be underestimated or taken for granted. Recommendations are similar to testimonials of your good name, good product(s), or expertise. Recommendations enhance your credibility as an expert similar to how quality content, quality presentation of that content and frequency of content enhances your page rank and authority status for your website. Recommendations also raise your credibility.

Recommendations in LinkedIn are social proof. They tell a LinkedIn candidate that the person is qualified or recognized as a valued colleague that has or will add value to your business. As you interact with connections, you become more familiar with their areas of expertise and perhaps are able to use this knowledge in your business execution. Once you can recommend a connection, you proceed with some expectation that they will reciprocate. However, do not expect that all people that you recommend will in turn write a recommendation for you. As you proceed in building your connections, keep in mind that your connections are the source for your recommendation and focus on those contacts that have the potential for directly (or indirectly) enhance your business or expertise. After all, one of your goals in LinkedIn is becoming a recognized expert in your field. A good place to find contacts that will give you outstanding recommendations are your satisfied customers. Go through your customer base and connect with everyone who has purchased your products; multiple sales recipients are better.

The best way to ask for recommendations is not to ask, i.e., the best recommendations most often come from a good recommendation that you have written for someone. Recommendations are the next step of engagement after you connect with someone on LinkedIn. It is a quid pro quo of sorts, but don’t write a recommendation for someone just to get a reciprocal recommendation. Be sure that you can personally vouch for them. As such, be very clear about what you’re recommending. Don’t forget your keywords when you are writing recommendations!! Search engines love keywords!

As you evaluate your LinkedIn strategy, make sure you include a profile of your ideal connection and how you can get a recommendation from them. Make sure that your have clear goals and objectives. A good review for being successful using LinkedIn can be found in Wayne Breitbarth’s best seller, The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success or by purchasing the replay of Joan Stewart’s webinar, Your LinkedIn Power Formula

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The Inbound Marketing Process Infographic

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Christine

The Inbound Marketing Process Infographic

The Inbound Marketing Process Infographic

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