My sister and her family came to visit from Ohio. They’re Catholics and very right wing. They live on a farm and have guns and shoot varmints.
They home-school their children and have a goat share where they sell shares of a goat in exchange for a certain amount of goat milk each month. They do this to get around a law prohibiting the sale of unpasturized milk.
My sister tells me with grim seriousness “Oh you don’t understand…Obama is a bad bad man…he’s not who you think he is. He’s not …

Information - can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
An interesting book came out a few years back by a guy named Andrew Keen called the Cult of the Amateur “How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.” While I didn’t agree with everything in Keen’s biting critique of what he considered the “Cult of the Amateur,” I found the book thought provoking.
Ever read forums? I sometimes read marketing and copywriting related forums. Often I can see Keen’s ideas played out -  amateurs distributing information second or third hand without stopping …

Effective communications strategy…do you have one?
In my former life as creative director we would always start with the defining project document known as the “Creative Brief.”
This document also known as a “Design Brief” , “Project Brief” , or “Marketing Brief” is crucial. It is the bare minimum requirement for any creative project and will always come in handy.
Here’s why a creative brief is important. The brief outlines the communications strategy and should be used as a beacon to direct company wide communications doctrine and critical to your brand.
Some of you …

This is a question I have been hearing a lot lately. How can I get more people to respond to my website? This is a good question and one I’m sure I’ll keep hearing until the internet goes away or I croak.
Much of it depends on the website. Take this site for instance. It’s like pulling teeth to get any of you readers to do anything. Why am I saying that? I’ll tell you.
About three or four posts ago I had a challenge (which is still open here) where I …

I was someone who struggled with math growing-up. I liked math and wanted to do well  but had horrible test anxiety. My college math experience was so bad. One day I went to my instructor and plead with him to pass me through my final math class. I had already taken the class and dropped it two or three times.  I was doing okay on the homework but I was bombing the tests. Much to my terror my pleading didn’t work. My instructor told me the worst thing possible. “Hmm…Well…let’s …

You probably already know there are only three ways to grow your business.

Get more customers
Increase the per sale profit margin
Increase the purchase frequency of existing customers

Getting new customers is always a challenge. Increasing profit margins can be done any number of ways with upsells, point of purchase displays, extended warranties, coupons, discounts, etc…
Increasing the purchase frequency is something can be handled with frequent mailings of new and exciting offerings, scheduling followup services in advance, memberships, cross promotions etc…
But how do you get new customers? Here are five ideas to add …

That’s right, you should test everything and make sure every advertisement you run has some key code. It’s really the only way to know if money you spend on advertising is well spent.
I am used to testing ads online, but it’s been a while since doing much offline advertising. Today however as I was mulling over what to write about a situation arose. I noticed my supply of business cards was getting low and I am getting ready to launch an offline campaign and thought it would be good to …

Wow…A few months ago the FTC came out with a slew of new rules relating to blogging and marketing online, and now, just the other day a client sent me some new rules being laid down by Mastercard. Smack!
Now I get that these laws are meant to protect consumers from unwittingly being duped by fake reviews and bogus weight loss stories. Shameless opportunists are fucking things up for everyone.
Check these new rules sent over from Mastercard:

Billing Practices

Terms Disclosure

a. The terms of billing …

I just wanted to keep you updated. I am still working on my membership site but things are progressing slowly as I have been busy with copy, design, and consulting gigs lately.
Anyhow, a couple of things.
First, remember in part one I said that I was trying to find affordable video hosting. I have over a hundred videos and they take up about 8 gigs of space. I purchased a couple of years of Godaddy Grid Hosting but recently discovered an even better solution. Amazon’s S3 service offers incredibly low cost …

Well, I messed around with my membership site some more yesterday and had a frustrating time. More about that in a minute. If you’re just reading this you can find the rest over in part one.
Anyhow, like I said, I decided to use Wordpress to deliver my content. Because I feel a membership site should be simple and without a lot of distractions I chose a very simple Wordpress theme “Alibi“.
Alibi is a two column theme with tabbed navigation. My idea is to have the main categories on the top …

I have talked about the value of membership sites before on this blog. I have also discussed being a part of several successful membership sites. I may have even mentioned that I had a failed membership site that never got off the ground. Yup, I dumped $15k into it but it is still sitting on my server waiting to be finished. I’ve had bad luck with developers.
I also have another tattoo design membership site I built using Amember. This site was a little bit different than what I am putting …

Hey guys,
I know, I said the next post was going to be “How to create a membership site (part 2).” I want to get to that post but I have been really slammed with a lot of copywriting and consulting gigs lately. I have barely had time to catch my breath. But…in an effort to give you something good, I though I would do a short screencast about a couple of tools I use for researching niches and keywords for profitability.

I’ll try and do membership sites part 2 as soon …

I don’t usually like adding exclamation points to my writing but…today I felt one necessary. Why? Because losing money (Or your means of survival is important).
Today’s post is a sad one but it didn’t have to be.
For those of you who don’t know me, much of my income (aside from my own internet marketing and products) comes from copywriting, designing, and consulting.
I have been involved with marketing for over 10 years and have worked my ranks from designer, to copywriter, to creative director, to business development specialist, and marketing manager …

About a month ago I went to a social media seminar put on by a local  company Web Marketing Therapy.
The seminar was great and Lorrie Thomas is an excellent speaker but after thinking about it for a minute I realized that what I listened to only scratched the surface.
Hype and buzz are definitely important when it comes to creating a brand persona and building a following. Being authentic and providing value is also important and I talk more about that in the last post 10 Ways of Making Social Media …

I’ll admit, social media is one of my weak areas. That said, I’m not letting that hold me back. Instead, I am studying friends who are really good at social media. I have also invested a few dollars learning how to leverage my social media efforts for my business.
I have a good friend Dan. He isn’t into marketing at all. In fact he’s a carpenter. But…Dan is an incredible networker both online and off. I have been all over with Dan and remarkably on nearly every trip we’ve taken (as …

Personal development and business guru Jim Rohn died this past week on Thursday December the 5th. Throughout his lifetime Jim Rohn touched many peoples lives with his books, CDs, and Seminars including myself.
We all need people with good judgment, sound morals, discipline, and wisdom to guide us. Man cannot go far without the help of others who are better, more knowledgeable and wiser. We need others to raise us up to see what is possible.
Jim Rohn was one of those people with the gift of bringing out the best in …

I wanted to do a quick review of Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind course.  Whether you are an experienced blogger or just starting out you will undoubtedly benefit from blog mastermind.
I have purchased dozens of courses over the years and this one really over delivers.  From an info product creator’s standpoint I would recommend buying this product just to see how much it over delivers.  Yaro’s course really raises the bar for others out there creating info products.
Before I tell you more about what’s inside let me just give you my …

Let me tell you a story. Shortly after I published my books and people caught wind of what I was doing something happened. Everyone I talked to who learned that I had published a couple of books started telling me that all their lives they wanted to write and publish a book too.
Most people never got beyond the talking stage. But…one of my colleagues James put something together.
I remember talking with him one day and him telling me he had a friend who did…ballsack tricks. Wait…I know. I thought to …

Okay, if you aren’t using WordPress for your websites you are making things harder than they have to be. Wordpress is officially a blogging engine. But really Wordpress is a tool that lets you create whole websites on the fly.
Some people call WordPress a light content management system (CMS) but it can really be extended far beyond what most people would consider a light CMS. I have used all kinds of CMS over the years including Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, AlstraSoft, SocialEngine, Boonex Dolphin, and many more and as far as …

I have been on the buying end of a lot of business to business sales lately. Throughout this process I have been thinking about why I choose one company over another. These insights into my own behavior as a consumer remind me of qualities and traits I need to be conscious of when I am the one trying to make a sale.
Let me give you a little background on the situation. Over the past few months I have been working with a company that is developing a monthly online subscription …