We had a great time on Monday talking about setting up an Affiliate Program in 1ShoppingCart. The recording is now available; you can click the blue View Recording button at right, or visit http://www.toolie.com/links/icfmwrecording to sign up for the recording.

I’m in Orlando, Florida this for the next week, attending the National Speakers Association National Convention. I’m looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues, and gathering new ideas to share with you for your own businesses.

Toolie®

The recording from last week’s “Cool Features for Your Site” Webinar is now ready for viewing. Just click the big blue button at right to sign in and view the recording AND download all the demo files I created for the webinar.

This Thursday, I’m having one of my “I Can Fix My Website” Monthly Membership webinars, and we’re going to learn how to do 1-minute Video Ads for our websites and blogs. If you can sum up what your website is about in 60 seconds, then you have a good chance at making a sale. Half the problem websites and blogs have in attracting their target markets is that their owners aren’t clear as to what needs to be on the site.

So creating a 60-second ad is also a good exercise in being clear about what’s important. I hope you’ll join the ICFMW Community by signing up for membership. In addition to 2 webinars per month devoted just to members, you also get access to our technical support forum for websites and blogs. You can post a question and I’ll answer within hours on subject ranging from fuzzy photos to misbehaving websites to blogs out of alignment to Internet Marketing strategy. You can cancel anytime, but once you realize how helpful the forum can be, you won’t want to cancel!

Sign up at the link below, and you’ll immediately receive the GoToWebinar registration links for BOTH webinars (June 24 AND June 29th). The second webinar is an Open Q&A Session, so bring your website and blog issues, and I’ll try to solve them on the spot.

http://www.toolieforums.com/zmember/signup.php

See you on Thursday!

Toolie®

What kind of email list do you have? How did they find you? What caused them to sign up for your content? What are you saying to your prospects to turn them into customers? Is yours the kind of Internet business where the focus is on selling a product once, without follow-up contact?

I was listening to Bob Proctor’s Six Minutes to Success Videos last night, and in one of early lessons he said something that stopped me in my tracks: what inspires you? Without hesitation, I thought to myself, “working with people who are determined to succeed.” It’s that kind of tenacity I look for in my clients. Those are the people who come to me for coaching: those are the people I want on my email list. It’s a deliberate goal for my business to work with people who recognize the value of learning web skills that support their online businesses. And it is nothing short of thrilling to see them wrangle their websites and blogs with confidence. I’m just as happy about their success as they are!

When you first learn Internet Marketing (depending on who mentors you) it feels like you’re under pressure to build up the numbers in your database, without any filtering for “quality.” How do you “filter for quality?” By establishing up front that you deliver value, and that you are not going to rely solely on the delivery of free information to attract customers.

Yes, you’re going to create an opt-in bonus that delivers solid, usable, valuable content, but you’re also going to have half a dozen $7 Reports, and maybe some $27 products. Each and every one of those products for which you charge money must over-deliver on quality, of course. In the process of offering these low-cost purchase opportunities, you’re communicating that you have value to offer, and that you deserve to be compensated for your quality products. This is not an easy thing to do! It requires subtlety, some thoughtful planning (including a “sales funnel”), and the conviction of your own worth.

This point was dramatically demonstrated to me by a fellow Internet Marketer, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson. After being on his list for a while and attending a number of his free teleseminars and webinars, he suddenly announced a $7 webinar with content that interested me. Now, I like to attend free stuff as much as the next person, but I thought, “hey, I can afford the $7. He’s already given plenty, and I’m going to go for it.”

When the event started, he explained why he had charged for this particular event, and he said to us what I’ve explained above. He wanted us to think about our own lists, who we had attracted, and whether they were responsive and willing to compensate us for value received! It was a timely lesson for me, and I began changing the way I communicated with my own list.

Tonight, Wednesday April 28th at 5 pm Pacific/8 pm Eastern, I’m sharing my methods for building and improving your email list based on my own 6 years as an Internet Marketer, plus work done on behalf of clients. I haven’t charged for a webinar for quite a while, but this is one topic that is so critical that I’m devoting 2 hours to the workshop. Plus I’m including a CD of the recording, a 14 Day Trial Membership I Can Fix My Website Support Forum, and other bonuses, all described at:

http://www.icanfixmywebsite.com/listwebinar/

Whether I see you tonight or at some future webinar, I strongly encourage you to reflect on your own email list strategies, and decide who you want to work with! I’ll be here to help.

Toolie®

P.S. You can also click the big red button at right to get to the salesletter page. Enjoy!

I truly believe that the Internet is a land of opportunity, that it IS possible to either supplement your income, or rely entirely on income from activities and sales over the World Wide Web. There are a lot of steps needed to set up the infrastructure for those activities, or as I described to a client recently, “a lot of moving parts.”

I think this is where the dream of making a living over the Internet breaks down; the realization that there are things you have to learn, and there are specific mechanisms that have to be in place before you can bring income into your business. This is precisely why I have set up MY business to address this particular need; to BE the someone who tells you HOW all this is done.

In recent webinars I showed my attendees how to create an HTML email template and how to create a salesletter template. I’ve been focused on “templates” because if you set them up well, you can do a lot of copying and pasting and reusing. This month in my 2-hour webinar on Building and Managing Email Lists, we’re going to put together the initial pieces as the start of the infrastructure I mentioned above. It’s based on actual work I’ve done with my clients plus my own 6 years of experience with marketing over the Internet.

Why am I charging for this particular webinar? Well, obviously because it’s good information, real-world stuff, not theory. But I am also throwing in 2 more webinars that I offer for members of my “I Can Fix My Website” Monthly Membership program. The first webinar, on May 6th, is where I will be teaching a New Technique based on member requests. The second webinar, on May 11th, is an Open Q&A webinar. We do critiques, we solve problems, we discuss strategy.

With your investment of $37 for the webinar, You’re also getting 14 days’ access to my website and blog support site where members get technical answers to their most pressing questions. Members can upload broken web pages or hurting blog posts (among other things), and I tell them how to fix them, usually within hours. You can also snoop through my personal list of favorite websites, tools, and other resources that I use to keep my business running.

Finally, I am throwing in a CD of the webinar recording which I’ll mail to you along with my Opt-In Reference Card that reminds you of the steps to setting up opt-in pages. You can refer to both the recording and the card when you need to set up for your next product to sell.

I’ve got a web page that describes the webinar in greater detail, and from there you can both invest in the webinar and get your 14 days’ access to the membership to try it out.

http://www.icanfixmywebsite.com/listwebinar

More tomorrow!

Toolie®

P.S. I think it’s a great value for the money, but do get all the details at http://www.icanfixmywebsite.com/listwebinar, or click the big red button on the right to get there.

On Wednesday night, April 28th, I’m having a webinar on setting up, building, and managing email lists. It’s a pretty comprehensive look at your most important online business asset, your email list. In preparation for that event, I want to talk about some of the more challenging aspects of building an email list. We’ll cover them in greater detail Wednesday’s talk.

Today I’m going to talk about the transition from emailing your business information to friends, colleagues and customers from your personal email account, to using some kind of email service that complies with US anti-SPAM laws.

In 2003, the United States passed a law whose acronym is CAN-SPAM. It is intended to require commercial email senders to comply with a specific set of steps when contacting prospects and customers, including providing an “unsubscribe” method, and not sending email again once that request has been made.

One of the hardest things I have to explain to clients who are ready to start marketing over the Internet is that they can’t just send email about their products and services without complying with anti-spam regulations. If they’ve been sending email to friends, colleagues, and customers from their personal email, then that’s got to stop! The law is pretty clear about what constitutes a “commercial” email. If you’re trying to sell something, or hope that your email will cause someone to buy, then that falls into the definition of commercial email.

The smart thing to do is to use some kind of email service that is set up to comply with the regulations AND which automates that process. So we set up an opt-in box, and ask people to sign up to receive emails about my client’s products and services.

The trick is, what do you say to get people to opt-into that first list? How exactly do you prepare that transition from just using your Gmail account to using 1ShoppingCart, for example? Do you convince friends and colleagues to opt-in — does it make sense to do so? How do you decide who to invite and who to leave out? Should you divide up the list into those who might refer you versus those who will actually buy?

On Wednesday night, I will have examples to show you of how I’ve done this with some of my clients. The webinar is a two-hour workshop, complete with demo files, a resources page, and a CD of the recording mailed to you. I’m charging $37 for those 2 hours. Plus, those who invest are also eligible for a 14-day Free Trial of my “I Can Fix My Website” Monthly Membership, which includes 2 additional training webinars, free technical support through the forum, and my personal list of resources, websites, blogs, and mentors I trust to keep my business going.

Read the rest of the details about Wednesday night here:
http://www.icanfixmywebsite.com/listwebinar

More tomorrow,

Toolie®

After last week’s free webinar (view the recording here) I was inundated by entrepreneurs with requests to help them learn how to start, fix, update, refine, and/or finish their websites and blogs. It’s so exciting to see these folks take the reins of these incredibly important business assets and make sure their websites and blogs are as bright and shiny as possible. And what’s even better is that they’re getting help at 30% off my usual hourly rate!

Discount Coupon Code: 09SUMMERSALE

It makes good business sense too, to understand how websites and blogs work, to be able to update them at any time of the day or night. Business on the Internet moves QUICKLY and you’ve GOT to be able to keep up with it.

So what about your project? What would you secretly like to have look better on your website or blog? What do you want to add or improve? The discounted rate lasts for another 23 days (expiring at 11:59 pm on 09/09/09) so now would be the time to make your appointment at http://www.ToolieCoaching.com. If you’re not sure where to start, I recommend a Basic Website/Blog Checkup to get you going. You can always click on the Live Chat icon on my websites to ask me questions.

Remember to use the discount coupon code when you go to pay for the session: 09SUMMERSALE

Let’s get started on YOUR project!

Toolie®

We had a great call last night, with lots of websites and blogs reviewed. The recording is now ready for viewing at:

http://www.fixmywebsiteplease.com/20090811/index.html.

What you’ll see in this webinar recording is coaching very much like what I do with clients, one-on-one. If we worked together, you could bring me your websites, blogs, opt-in (squeeze) pages, thank you pages, autoresponders, HTML ezine templates, aging logos, mangled menus, fuzzy photos, distressed graphics: anything involving a web page, (happy or not) and I would help you figure out what needs to be done.

On my www.ToolieCoaching.com website, you can choose a 1-hour checkup, a more detailed 2-hour checkup, or bring your own list and Design Your Own Plan. You can click on the session length of your choice, make your appointment online, and pay once you receive confirmation. It couldn’t be easier!

You and I would then meet via my GoToMeeting account (which includes a voice-over-Internet connection — no telephone toll charges), where we can see the same website or blog, talk about solutions, fix things immediately, and make plans for where to take your site from there.

My sessions on www.ToolieCoaching.com are 30% off until September 9th (09/09/09)! Now is the PERFECT time to take care of the updates you’ve been thinking of making but have been putting off.

Write this discount code down: 09SUMMERSALE

When you get to the check-out page, enter that coupon code and click Apply to see your savings.

Make 2009 your best year ever by taking ACTION. Click through one of the links above and make an appointment. I’ll be waiting!

The recording for Monday night’s webinar is now ready for viewing at:

http://www.fixmywebsiteplease.com/20090223/recording.html.

We had a good questions, creative ideas, and some good sites to review. Enjoy!

Toolie®

Monday night’s preview webinar called “Plan My Website Strategy Session” was full of great questions and interaction. The online-viewing webinar recording is now ready — I’ll have the downloadable version sometime Thursday.

View the Online Recording

Ever seen a website or blog feature that you liked but didn’t know how to get it onto your site? Next Monday, we’re going to get into details of how you can do exactly that. If you signed up for the webinar on Feb 16th, you already have the GoToWebinar registration link for Monday Feb 23rd’s webinar. If not, sign up here to get the GoToWebinar link:

http://www.snipurl.com/fmwppreview

See you on Monday!

Toolie