Later this week, I’ll finally be launching the nickel sale for the nickel script itself.
I’ve added a few little tweaks to it since I used it last that I think you’re going to like. There’s one feature in particular that I know you’ll like a lot, and you can count on me to extend it with later versions.
In case you’re a new reader and you don’t know what a nickel sale is, I’ll explain.
The sale price of an item starts with a relatively low price, and with each sale it increases by a set amount, usually 5 cents, hence the term nickel sale. The sooner the item is bought, then the lower the price.
It’s an extremely powerful way of kicking up a lot of interest in a product, and pulling in a chunk of cash very quickly. As the starting price is usually low (much lower than the actual final release price of a product), a very nice bargain can be had when the item is bought in a nickel sale.
I’m still toying with the starting price and the final price after the sale is over, but I’ll announce more detail in the next day or so.
This week, feeling I’d lost my drive (it happens from time to time) I decided to try a little experiment. No email. Okay, not quite no email, I think I checked it Thursday, but even then, not all my email accounts, just a couple.
But I haven’t checked any of my email now for about 48 hours. The effect on me is I feel more relaxed, and I also feel as if I’ve become more productive and focussed, and I’ve even spent a little more time with the family.
Hmm…
What would happen if I only checked my email once or twice a week? Say Mondays and Thursdays? As long as everyone knew that was the only time I’d be checking my email, I guess it wouldn’t be a big deal for people.
Thinking back to about a decade ago, the only way we communicated with other people was either by phone, or by writing to them. There wasn’t any email (effectively) outside business, and did it matter?
Don’t get me wrong, email is a wonderful thing, but it really does take up far too much of my time that I could be spending on product creation and other “doing” things.
Okay then.
I’m going to try to only check email 3 times a week. Let’s start with Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and see how that works out. If I can manage that okay for a couple of weeks, I’ll trim it down to Mondays and Fridays. If that goes well for another couple of weeks, I’ll only check it out on one of those two remaining days.
On each day I check email, I’m going to allow myself fifteen minutes reading time and sixty minutes reply time. I’ll use Cool Timer to check my time usage.
I’ll report back as to how I get on and how it affects my internet business (positively or negatively) right here on my blog.
Jan Evensen has released a nice little ebook called “The Really Easy Web Building Guide” which gives you all the information you need to set up a web site and get your internet business started.
I attribute a good part of my success to attending seminars, and it was at one of these that I met Brad Lindsay. Brad loves going to seminars, and he uses them to find out what’s going on out there and what’s possible.
And of course he also learns some really cool things too, and this has a direct effect on how much money he earns.
He realised that for many reasons a lot of people don’t go to seminars, and after asking a few questions it boils down to money. Most people feel it’s a little bit expensive to pay $2,000+ for the seminar, and on top of that the flights and hotel bills.
So what Brad has done is bring the seminar to you at a fraction of the price.
What I have in front of me is this HUGE, and I mean HUGE set of 18 DVDs and 18 CDs which arrived on my doorstep with a thunk!
Look, I could go on and on about it, but the best thing to do is to check out what Brad has to say himself.
BEFORE you do that, there’s one IMPORTANT thing you should know.
The price for this set is already very good, what you’ll be getting is an incredible collection.
But TODAY is Brad’s birthday and he’s knocked a chunk of money off the full set. This is a ONE DAY ONLY deal.
Really REALLY go take a serious look at this, it’s something I want you to have, and I think you owe it to yourself to give your internet business your best shot.
I’ve done a little more work with Twitter, you can now see my latest witterings in the side bar of this blog.
And because I’ve done that, I’ve also at long last realised why I like it so much.
It’s a teeny tiny little blog, and I like blogs and blogging, I think they’re a good idea.
As an aside, I just ran a little test, and purely by spending around 3 hours on Saturday finding and commenting on other people’s blogs (which I enjoyed doing), I added 24 new subscribers to my mailing list - 17 on Saturday and 7 on Sunday.
If you’re not doing this already, why the blimming heck not? It’s easy. People regularly say they can’t build a mailing list, but I find it’s a fairly straight forward thing to do.
My experience with Twitter (while I’ve been using an anonymous test account the last few weeks) is that it will work for me in much the same way as blogging and blog commenting.
If you make an interesting post, then you’ll certainly get people signing up to find out what else you have to say. And the great thing is, the effect is cumulative.
Just like your internet business…
The more you work on it, the better it all gets. Amazing isn’t it?
People will be finding my ever increasing blog posts for years to come while doing searches. Every time someone lands on my site, they get the chance to sign up. Lots do.
This is because just by the mere act of writing, I’m creating sets of key words, either purposely or accidentally that people will be searching for.
Twitter works in much the same way. Just by using it (which takes seconds), things get better.
In the wake of the recent eBay slap at ebook sellers, it’s become apparent that us internet business owners now need to either use the eBay suggested classified ad format, or sell our ebooks on CDs and DVDs.
It would also appear from some reports that you need to make sure you don’t mention ebooks when selling your CDs and DVDs, or the eBay darlings will give you a more personal slap. It seems that “ebook” is a bit of a taboo word on eBay at the moment until the staff get more understanding of what the new rule actually means.
More on that in another post.
Going with the idea of creating “multimedia” CDs and DVDs I think appeals to most people (from what I’ve seen), only time will tell if this format is the one that is most popular.
So I’ve created a short report called “The POD Report” which you can find below as a PDF.
It’s a freebie, so please feel free to share the report with any other internet business owners you think might benefit from it.
Inside the report, you’ll find mention that SmartDD has Kunaki support built in. This is true of the latest version which isn’t quite ready for release yet. We have Kunaki working nicely within a test version of SmartDD, but we wanted to add in some extra features we’re long overdue on and so we decided to leave it another two weeks to finalise those.
I’ll be getting the final test version on the 11th May. After a little testing, I’ll do the videos showing how to use all the nice new features (including the database driven shopping cart), and then I’ll do the release.
There will be a small charge to upgrade to this new version, price to be decided. If you’ve bought in the last 60 days or so, then I’ll likely upgrade you for free.
Back to The POD Report.
Either left click to view it in your browser, or right click and choose “Save as…” or “Save link as…” to download it to your hard drive.
I’ve had a few people write to me over the last 6 months or so asking me what I spend my time on, and where I focus my energies.
It’s difficult to look back and say exactly what and where I spent my time, and then someone asked me if I had a Twitter account. Well, I’ve been playing a bit with Twitter the last few weeks using a test account (learning the ropes), and I finally decided to create a real live account in my own name.
The way Twitter works is, you get 140 characters to enter in just what you’re doing at that moment in time. So it’s not a lot of information, but it’s just enough to give people a taster of what you’re doing. It’s a nice idea.
I have to admit, I really didn’t like the concept of FaceBook when I heard about it, especially their actions with people’s private data, and their initial refusal to delete any of it (European Law changed that). I’m very glad I didn’t go any further than a test account to find out how much I really didn’t like it.
But as I said Twitter is a nice little idea, and it’s dead easy to use.
So now, if you want to see how I spend my time, you can just check my Twitter to see what I’m doing at that particular point in time. Hint - it’s not all work…
If you’d find peeking over my shoulder at all interesting, then please just go to my new account at http://twitter.com/FrankHaywood to see what I get up to. It would be good if you signed up to Twitter yourself and “followed” me to keep up to date with what I’m doing.
I do have to say I won’t keep it religiously up to date (I’m human and I forget stuff), but if there’s enough interest, then maybe I’ll post a little more detail and a little more often.
And maybe if it does become popular, you could tell me what kind of thing would interest you about what I do day to day in my internet business.
What do comedy improvisation and a successful internet business have in common?
Well… As unlikely as it may seem, quite a bit.
This is more of what you might think is “semi-religious self-improvement psycho babble” (let’s call it SSPB) - it definitely isn’t junk.
One of the things I was taught early on is that it’s important not to “block the flow” in order to be successful.
What the heck does that mean?
It all boils down to not being negative, and accepting whatever comes your way and using it to further your business or your career or whatever it is you’re pursuing.
I like to think of it as “every cloud has a silver lining”.
Example. The recent eBay slap. To read what some people were saying you’d think the sky was falling - what a load of old fuss about nothing.
I read the new rule, chuckled and thought “yee-haa!”
See, I knew it would get rid of all the junk on eBay and also get rid of a lot of people who were selling ebooks etc. without understanding what they were doing. Those people were just making it difficult for the real marketers. You couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
I sincerely hope you weren’t one of those people who didn’t know what they were doing…
eBay knows that people like to market on their site (and not just sell), and it seems that for now they’re okay about it, which is a refreshingly enlightened attitude for a corporation their size to take.
They’re not blocking the flow.
So eBay have now disallowed the selling of digital products as digital downloads. And what they’ve done is suggested that marketers use the classified ad format instead. That’s really cool of them and it opens up a whole wealth of opportunities.
But if you listen to the doomsayers, the golden age is over.
What nonsense. Things are just different. And better. Less competition for starters.
Let’s get back to the original thread. What about comedy improvisation?
If you’ve ever seen a group of comedians improvise, it can be something magical to watch.
You know how they keep it all going? They don’t block the flow.
They accept whatever premise the other comedians give them and they just add to it and pass it back. And forth. And so on…
The kiss of death to their act is to say no, or refuse to accept the current idea. They all know that if that happens, they will falter and stop. So all of them accept what they’re given and use it to their advantage.
It’s a simple rule to follow, and works just as well in business, in relationships, or whatever else you care to think of.
Accept what you’re given. Make it better. Put it out there. And keep the flow moving.
If you run a Wordpress blog (if not, WHY not?) I strongly suggest you go get this plugin and install it.
Why? Because it will encourage more people to make comments on your blog, and comments mean content, and we all love that don’t we?
You’ll also need to install a dofollow plugin too if you haven’t done so already, but you’ll find details of where to get one of those on the download page.
