Well it’s the middle of summer, and we here in Seattle are FINALLY enjoying summer weather. I found the top of my desk again (after digging through a week’s snail mail), and I am starting to put into motion the cool things I learned while I was at the NSA Convention.

It feels really good to know that whatever website, blog, or Internet Marketing-related ideas I get from a learning experience like that, I can implement them immediately. If it means I add more pages to a website, no problem. If it means I start a whole new blog, I can do that. If it means create a new email campaign, or add an opt-in box, NO PROBLEM. I’m not waiting for anyone else’s schedule; I can set things up now and benefit NOW.

At the core of my confidence is my knowledge of HTML and CSS (by the way, I learned most of it AFTER leaving Microsoft). Even if you decide to use software like Wordpress to set up your website, you’re going to bump into HTML and CSS over and over and over again! It’s time to stop hiding from them, and really learn the 20% of HTML and CSS that will get you 80% of the way.

My “I Can Fix My Website Monthly Membership” program is a low-cost, effective way to get started. In fact, on Tuesday, July 27th at 4 pm Pacific, we’re having the first of 2 webinars this week — an Open Q&A where you can bring your questions about ANYTHING related to websites, blogs, and Internet Marketing (yes, including Social Media).

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

Then on Thursday at 4 pm Pacific, I’m demonstrating how to create an Offline Marketing piece that can drive traffic to your website or blog. You get both of these calls PLUS access to our private Technical Support Forum for just $27/month. Both webinars are recorded and added to our soon-to-be-released how-to Video Library. Sign up today, and you’ll immediately receive the GoToWebinar registration links so you can join us for both calls.

Make this summer the one when you finally take charge of your websites and blogs. I’ll be here to help you succeed.

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

Have a great week!

Toolie®

Kickstart Cart/1ShoppingCart is a very powerful tool with lots of built-in features for Internet Marketing. One of the least implemented features and potentially most profitable ways to promote your business is through the use of the Affiliate Program module in 1ShoppingCart.

In answer to my clients’ requests, I’m conducting a no-cost webinar on Monday, July 12 at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern called “Setting Up Your 1ShoppingCart Affiliate Program.” I’ll walk you through each phase of the setup, and show you how you can encourage your affiliates’ participation by providing materials they can use right away.

Here are some of the topics we’ll cover:

• The single most important thing you can do to help your Affiliates get credit for their referrals
• Determining commission rates for your products and services
• Setting up individual Affiliate programs
• Creating “media” that your Affiliates can use
• Customizing the “boilerplate” text
• And much, much more.

Simply click on the big red button at right to go to the sign-up page.

I’ll be using Kickstart Cart (a private label brand of 1ShoppingCart) for my demonstrations. If you don’t have a Kickstart Cart account, I encourage you to sign up for or upgrade to their Professional Plan before the webinar begins so that you can follow along. Just click on the banner below to get started.

So sign up for the webinar by putting clicking the red button at right, and I’ll see you Monday, July 12th at 4 pm Pacific time, 7 pm Eastern time!

Thanks!

Toolie®

P.S. If you need help setting up your cart, you can use my Kickstart Cart/1ShoppingCart Setup and Training service. Remember, you can get 30% off that service if you sign up before my sale ends on July 14th.

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®

If you’ve ever studied what makes businesses successful, you may have encountered the concept of the “slight edge.” In the world of websites and blogs, that means it isn’t always the big flashy websites and blogs that get the business, but the smart, well-designed sites that anticipate what your visitors need and want, and supply it to them.

Sometimes that means a well-placed graphic, or text with highlights that make your point stand out, or subtly-placed credit card logos that reassure people that they’ll be able to afford your product or service.

This coming Tuesday night, June 15th, at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern time, I’m going to show you one of my web design secret weapons for placing these kinds of cool features where they will do the most good. Here are some things we’ll cover:

• Adding backgrounds and border to text with a simple set of instructions you create once, and use again and again.
• Adding hyperlinks to a newsletter or long web page that jump within a page and back again.
• Putting an image on a website, blog, or ezine someplace OTHER than the top left corner. It could be your photo, a set of credit card logos, a Copydoodle, a BUY button, or any other kind of image!
• Adding an opt-in box or a block of contact info to your website without having to copy and paste it 14 times.
• Placing audio buttons and video frames anywhere on the page and having the text wrap around them.
• Creating FAQ pages whose questions appear in a list while answers show or hide when you click the button. I have 2 versions to show you!

Simply click the red Register button at right, and you’ll be taken to the registration page. You’ll then receive an email with the GoToWebinar link. Complete the GoToWebinar registration form, to receive your customized Join link, and you’re done!

I’ll see you Tuesday, June 15th at 6 pm Pacific time, 9 pm Eastern time!

Thanks!

Toolie®

Thinking about making changes to your websites or blogs, but not sure what might improve them? Got a gnarly issue that keeps popping up on your site that you’d like to get fixed once and for all? What about adding some new pages, a new widget, a new opt-in box? Need help figuring out how to squeeze in the changes and balance everything?

This coming Wednesday night, May 26th, at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern time, you can get answers to these questions on-the-spot during my free “Website and Blog Makeover Night.” Whether you just want a second opinion or you’d like me to look at code and offer suggestions, this is your chance to get technical help, so that you can have the websites and blogs you want.

Simply click the big red button in the box at right to go to the webinar sign up page. When you get to the GoToWebinar registration form, enter the URL of the website or blog you’d like me to review. If I can show you how to fix your issue during my review, I will be happy to do so. We can also meet later to discuss a plan to make the updates.

I will review as many websites and blogs as I can during the 90 minutes, in order of registration. I will also be revealing some new websites and programs of my own that are designed to further support your web-savvy education, so you won’t want to miss those details!

So sign up by clicking the big red button in the box at right, and I’ll see you Wednesday, May 26th at 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern time!

Thanks!

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!

Technology is a funny thing. At first we resist it; then we succumb to it, then we’re mildly interested, then we get involved, then we become passionate. I’ve seen this digital diversion take over my siblings, then my Dad (who STARTED with his first computer at age 77), then my clients, and now our culture as a whole.

The same thing happens when you first get involved with marketing over the Internet. You put up a website, then you realize that if people are coming to your website, you probably ought to be collecting email addresses and maybe sending an email or two. But you don’t want to spend money on a service, so you sign up for an autoresponder or low-cost email service that doesn’t include a shopping cart.

Then it occurs to you that could be selling an information product or handling registrations for your local workshops over the Internet. That’s when you realize that maybe having a shopping cart is a good idea. You put up a PayPal button but you don’t really have a sense of what sales you are making and whether your emails outbound are bringing traffic inbound.

It’s usually at this point that clients come to me and ask for help. We talk about their use of a non-cart email service and decide whether it’s time to move up to a single solution where they can start separating out their hangers-on from real prospects and real customers; where they can track their results from their email list in one place.

Tomorrow night, the core of my “Online Marketer’s Guide to Building and Managing Email Lists” webinar is about this critical point in the development of your Internet business. If you have a list of people and you want to move it to a shopping cart system, how do you do that?

Some of my clients used a closed loop (double opt-in) system prior to switching to a cart; most did not. They may have a lot of people on their lists who they have added manually, but who may not be truly “engaged” with the messages my client is sending. If you’re about to move to a new service, how do you keep from losing them in the transition?

Being able to have your email list and your shopping cart work together is a HUGE advantage. I’ve got the real-world strategies to share with you in my webinar: how to set up the transition, what to say in the emails to the old list, and how to get them to your new list.

So join me tomorrow night for this 2-hour workshop (don’t worry, we’ll take a break in the middle). If you’re thinking about making this transition, this webinar will answer all your questions. As usual, I’ll give you the demo files I have prepared, and above all, you will have a recording you can keep and refer to again and again.

The webinar is just $37, a bargain considering my usual consulting rates for this kind of strategic support. I’m also throwing in 2 weeks of tech support through my “I Can Fix My Website” Monthly Membership along with the next 2 Monthly Group Webinars.

Read all about it and sign up for both the webinar and the 14-day trial at http://www.icanfixmywebsite.com/listwebinar/ or just click the big red button at the top right.

See you tomorrow night!

Toolie®

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®

I can’t believe how quickly the last month has gone! My 30% Off Coaching Sale has kept me busy helping entrepreneurs improve their websites and blogs. What I learn from working one-on-one with clients gives me the opportunity to turn around and share with you new insights, shortcuts, and techniques that makes working on your websites and blogs much easier.

This month I want to talk about one-page salesletters. They can be a powerful tool in your Internet Marketing efforts if done well. The page itself can be very simple, and the best part is that you can reuse the design for different products. There’s no need to use a site-builder or install blog software just to have one page to work with. I’ve decided to set up a free webinar to show you how it’s done. We’re going to meet this coming Tuesday night, March 30th at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern.

We’ll see how to create the basic salesletter format, create a video frame, create a testimonial box, set up a stylesheet, and then learn how to change the appearance and layout with just a few clicks.

To sign up for the webinar, just click the big red button on the right! I’ll see you on Tuesday night, March 30th at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern!

Toolie®