The Habits of the Top Internet Marketers – Summary!

Hi!
How are you doing?! 🙂

Today I am going to share with you some of the most interesting tips I’ve have read about Internet Marketing in the last couple of months.

I’ve been deeply studying this area in the last few months, trying extrapolate the best practices from many different experts or *guru’s* such as Rich Schefren, Jeff Walker, Yanik Silver, and many others. If you don’t know them yet, you should definitely check them out, I would categorize them as: Rich Schefren, the top Internet marketing guru; Jeff Walker, the product launches expert; and Yanik Silver, the copyrighting expert. Those are good references in order to do a good benchmark for your company in those areas.

For me, most of the times it’s more intresting to study how these *gurus* actually sell their products, and what strategies do they use, even more than the actual content they sell. I am not saying that they don’t have good products- they actually have content of extremely high quality- but a lot of knowledge can be gained by just analyzing what they do to build a bigger list, and how they attract you as a customer, how they do the their product launches, and how do they write their newsletters.

However, this time, googling the Internet I was surprised by a marketing expert called Todd M. Brown.

“Starting with a small $800 investment, Todd Brown, a self-proclaimed “former knucklehead” and “one-time underachiever”, has recently, over the last 3 years created several successful mid-six-figure Internet businesses – with no additional capital investment beyond his original $800, no employees, no joint venture relationships, no technical skills, no formal business education, and certainly no extraordinary intellect.”

But- Why was I really impressed? For me it was the first time I didn’t have to look at twenty cut videos to learn something new. Todd M. Brown presented very powerful concepts and material of very high quality, from beginning to an end, without asking me for an email, nor subscription, nor anything. Even more, he wasn’t even promoting me his products, nor selling me anything.

As it’s mentioned in his website, I found in this guru to be a real transparent person, someone that is actually honest, caring, very generous, and really willing to share many of his secrets with the online community without actually selling you something. I was surprised.

I liked the videos so much, that I even made a summary and added them to my marketing notes.

I now share with you, what is for me, a very valuable summary:

• Be a man of action: You don’t have to wait until you have a pick the perfect domain, build a perfect web-page, until you got the perfect product, until you get the perfect JV email- pitch, until you understand internet marketing perfect – cause it will NEVER happen. Instead be an action-oriented person, be a doer, be a person that learns how to implement that ideas as quickly as possible. At the end of the day it comes up to action.

You need to try and go for it, no matter how good or how bad, and get in the game, because when you get it up there it’s never going to get any worse. And it’s better to have a bad website than no website. It’s said ‘Success leaves tracks’ and it does. At the end of the day, what is left is action. Are you taking the actions you think you should or are you making excuses? Don’t over complicate it.

Are you really taking the actions every day that you think you should be taking to become a successful internet marketer or are you making excuses of why you aren’t taking those actions? (such as: it’s not good enough yet and should invest more time on them before implementing those actions).

• Self-Discipline: Doing the things you are supposed to do, when you’re supposed to them, REGARDLESS of how you feel.

Successful people do the things that they are supposed to do regardless of how they feel.

It takes a champion, a successful-individual to do the things they are supposed to do, when they have to do, regardless of how they feel.

Suppose a person decides not to check your email in the morning. Every time he sits in the morning at his computer for the first time he’s got a choice: he can decide if in that moment does he wanna check his email – is he going to get in into that temptation? – or is he going to be disciplined enough and not check his in the morning and check it later so he can get to the actions he knows he needs to do to be successful. It’s really a choice.

Successful internet marketers, when they are supposed to send an article, check visitors-stats, or execute any other action according to business plans, they do it regardless of how they feel.

Success is a choice. You can choose to do the actions that lead success to your business or you can really choose not to. It really comes down to a choice in every day.

Every time you’re faced with the choice (do what you’re supposed to do or not), will either straighten your self-discipline or straighten your non-self-discipline.

• Success-Consciousness: We become what we think about most.
  When we think about success we exhibit those behaviors. When you maintain a success-consciousness your performance will follow. Think and concentrate about your goals and the things that you want, and do not think about the things that you don’t want. Focus on the goals and the positive, not on the negative. Focus on the achievements of the most important goals not on how not to fail them. Believe in yourself, believe that you don’t need special skills, special knowledge, or geniuses, that with the right knowledge and understanding, if you just apply it and if you’re an action oriented, self-disciplined, and responsible-for-your-actions individual that you can do it!. Believe that and your success will sky rocket.. Make the commitment to be disciplined enough to block those thoughts (any failure related thought). They add no value and do you no good.
  
  
• View it like a business not hobby. Set up a schedule, manage times, be disciplined. Run it like Bill Gates would run it. Are you managing your time wisely. Are you focused enough? Treat it like a business, with integrity, with honesty and always over-delivery value.
  
  
• Over deliver value: to create an unbelievable line of following loyal customers over deliver value. Give unadvertised bonuses- and do not give just scrambled junk, give material just as good as the main course. Be a champion. So that people say : wow that’s a good person, that’s a good individual, that’s a good business owner, honest, transparent, a person with integrity, that person gives and I am going to invest an extra hundred dollars this month. They take care about their customers. Think about you can do for your customers. If you can help enough other people have what they want, you can have what you want. Give people value, over-deliver value, create trust.

I hope this becomes as useful as it was for me and that you enjoyed it!

If you liked it, I highly recommend you to check out Todd’s videos and his very interesting blog.

If you agree or disagree with any of the ideas presented here, or you would like to discuss a case study, or your own business, please place a comment here so we can all analyze it!

I’ll be working on a professional study of the latests trends of Internet marketing, so if you like this article let me know, and I’ll share more of this topics with you. ;o)

All the best! 🙂

Rod Schejtman

The 7 Tips to Becoming Super Productive

How good are your time-management skills?

Do you find yourself spending too much time on single tasks and never finishing early?!
I would like to share with you an article from an expert in the field, no one else than the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael S. Hyatt:

Almost everyone I know is working more time than they would like. That’s why a book like The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss has been such a big bestseller. This is a great book, but the promise is a little over the top. I don’t know of anyone, including Tim Ferriss, who really only works four hours.

But what if you could shave ten hours off your work week? In my opinion, that is much more do-able. Virtually anyone, with a little thought and effort can do it. Here’s how:

1. Limit the time you spend online. In my experience, the Web is most people’s #1 time suck. Yes, I know it is a wonderful tool for research, blah, blah, blah. But I often catch myself and my family members mindlessly surfing from one page to another with no clear objective in mind. Before you know it, you can eat up several hours a day. The key is to put a fence around this activity and limit your time online. Set a timer for yourself if you have to.This is true for Web surfing and it is also true for email. Unless you are in a customer service position where you have to be “always-on,” you should check email no more than two or three times a day.
2. Touch email messages once and only once. Okay, let’s be honest. How many times do you read the same email message over and over again? Guess what? The information hasn’t changed. That’s right. You are procrastinating.I have a personal rule: I will only read each message once then take the appropriate action: do, delegate, defer, file or delete it. I describe these in more detail in a post I made last week.
3. Follow the two-minute rule. My to-do list is very short. It never gets longer than about thirty items. This is because I do everything I can immediately. If I need to make a phone call, rather than entering it on my to-do list, I just make the call.If I can complete the action in less than two minutes, I just go ahead and do it. Why wait? You will be amazed at how much this “bias toward action” will reduce your workload.Conversely, when you don’t do it promptly, you end up generating even more work for yourself and others. The longer a project sits, the longer it takes to overcome inertia and get it moving again. The key is to define the very next action and do it. You don’t have to complete the whole project, just the next action.
4. Stop attending low-impact meetings. If there’s one thing we can probably all agree on, it’s that we go to too many meetings. Either the meeting organizer isn’t prepared, the meeting objective isn’t defined, or you can’t really affect the outcome one way or the other.Every meeting should have a written objective and a written agenda. If you don’t have these two minimal items, how do you know when the meeting is over? Could this also explain why meetings seem to drag on and on until everyone is worn out?If the content of the meeting is irrelevant to you and your job or if you don’t feel that you really add that much to the discussion, ask to be excused.
5. Schedule time to get your work done. This is crucial. As the saying goes, “nature abhors a vacuum.” If you don’t take control of your calendar, someone else will. You can’t spend all your time in meetings and still get your work done.Instead, you need to make appointments with yourself. Yes, go ahead and actually put them on your calendar. Then, when someone asks for a meeting, you can legitimately say, “No, I’m sorry, that won’t work. I already have a commitment.” And you do—to yourself!
6. Cultivate the habit of non-finishing. Not every project you start is worth finishing. Sometimes we get into it and realize, “This is a waste of time.” Fine, then give yourself permission to quit.I do this all the time with reading. It’s why I am able to read so many articles and books. Here’s publishing’s dirty little secret: most books are not worth finishing. Most books could be cut in half and you wouldn’t miss a thing. The key is to read as long as you are interested and then stop. There are too many great books to read without getting bogged down in the merely good ones.
7. Engage in a weekly review and preview. Part of the reason our lives get out of control is because we don’t plan. Once a week, you have to come up for air. Or—to change the metaphor—you have to take the plane up to 30,000 feet, so you can see the big picture.I generally do this on Sunday evening. I review my notes from the previous week and look ahead to my calendar. I have written elsewhere on this topic, so I won’t repeat myself here.

You may not be able to reduce your workweek to four hours—and honestly, who would want to?—but you can certainly scale it down to a manageable level by cutting out the wasted motion and developing a few good habits.

I hope you enjoyed the article!

Share your experiences with us!
Do you spent your time efficiently?!

Cheers!

Questor

Will Google destroy Microsoft?

Who thought Google was ever going to get into the gaming industry… and even challange the all mighty Microsoft Flight Simulator?

What I am going to tell you next, is just a hint -the peak of the iceberg- of what Google can do combining some of it’s technologies.

Imagine a Flight Simulator that lets you travel across the real Earth… fly over the Statue of Liberty, swirl around the Great Wall of China, visit The Pyramids, and then… even land next to your 3D home apartment. Sounds surreal?

Well, now Google is giving us a taste of what may come next… hidden in your own installed version of Google Earth!

Users feel this like a dream come true… however, developers and competitors are beginning to delve into an nightmare wandering how long the ‘monster’ Google will take to get away with their rapacious plans…

I offer you the following secret unraveled by our friends from TechCrunch:

We’ve always known that Google has wanted to challenge Microsoft’s desktop dominance in a number of areas, but to date we didn’t know that extended to gaming.

Hidden inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine.

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways.

Overall the game play is fairly simple in terms of control, but the striking difference is flying over real pictures of locations. I took a quick flight from San Francisco International, headed North to the Golden Gate then turn back over the city before heading towards the Valley. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good visually as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in terms of actually presenting real objects it was better.

Useful Shortcuts:

Exit flight simulator

Ctrl + Alt + A, Escape

Open flight simulator options

Ctrl + Alt + A

Display flight simulator help

Ctrl + H

Increase thrust

Page Up

Reduce thrust

Page Down

Toggle HUD

H

Pause simulation

Space

More details can be found here.

Tips to make it work:

– Ctrl+Alt+A on PC.

-Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) on a Mac.

-“Make sure you’re focused on the main window or the shortcut doesn’t seem to work. ”

-“Very happy that this actually works… you have to wait about 2 minutes before it does.”

-“Works on Mac”

Remember to tell me about your voyages across the Earth!
Special prize for anyone that can get through the Golden Gate!

Cheers and Enjoy!

Questor!
Know Spanish?! Check out Edutainment in Spanish.

Looking for Challenges?

Are you looking forward to challenge yourself, innovate, create?!

I wanted to share with you a business and innovation contest that was recommended to me and caught my attention: Tendencias Digitales of Grupo Telefónica.

Like my friend Juan Carlos Lucas comments in his blog Espíritu Emprendedor, the program’s primary objective is to bring digital technologies closer to universities. It is conformed by three important initiatives:

1. SEMINARS: Assist seminars on recent and upcoming technological trends; and learn from recognized speakers, prestige scholars around the world, specialized in technology and the entrepreneur world.
   

2. INNOVATE: Become part of a flexible Project Contest targeted at students and graduates that can present both innovation projects or business plans.

3. BECOME KNOWN: Your project will be read by a jury of experts, and your talent and effort will be recognized with prizes granted by Grupo Telefónica.

 

The community and the virtual environment were created by the Consulting Agency Innova Consulting, directed by my ex-teacher of Training for Entrepreneurs from Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, Dr. Juan Carlos Lucas; consultant and coach of business organizations, expert in everything related to Web 2.0 and technological innovations.

Tendencias Digitales includes a blog as an identity creating space and a closed learning community of collaborative work for the members of the contest. The last one becomes a very convenient way for interaction among other colleagues, tutors, and consultants in a fast and effective way.

From my point of view, this contest resembles an opportunity to learn new and exciting knowledge -related to new technological trends and emerging business models- and represents a great opportunity to meet people and establish new contacts.

If you are interested in becoming part of this contest or finding out some more information, check out: Project Contest.

 

I must warn you that one of the requirements is that you must know Spanish fluently to enter the contest.

I would love to receive your comments!

Cheers!

Rodrigo Schejtman

You know Spanish!? Check out Edutainment in Spanish

Designing your own Business Card

Do you have a business card?! NO?!

Then you should :o) : and your card should be unique as the service or product you represent :o) .

These are some neat ideas for designing your new stylish card or replacing your old one, presented by our friend Ivan:

You want a new business card, don’t you? Of course. This is the most important element of your visual identity. It’s the first thing people see when they meet you.

Here is a collection of cool business cards to inspire you. Most of them are from the Business Cards flickr pool, some of them from Ads of the World.

Make your partner work for your contact details. Let them scratch.

Let them find your easier. Make a mini map.

Decorate your card with a bit of fluff.

Cute fold out. Brings back old childhood memories.

Make it look like the product you’re selling.

Ooops. It’s an impression from my notes.

Add a bit of class and expense. Have gilded edges.

Add teeth impressions if you’re a dentist. Thumb prints for a detective. You get the drift.

Spoof a famous logo.

Use shiny metal surface.

Write fun copy.

Pay extra for stylish embossing.

Use metallic ink and a metallic hole.

Teeth floss? Gross!

Combine different papers.

Stay minimal and positive.

Use a thread.

Make an 3D plastic card.

Come up with a fun die-cut.

Dog tag theme.

Cat tail theme.

Use office scrap.

Use fun typography.

Blind date theme.

Simply square with no ink.

Funky shape.

Interchangeable insert in a generic cover.

Free one way ticket to the moon.

Demonstrate your skill.

Forensic evidence?

Metal card. Doubles as a cake cutter.

Is this scratch and sniff or just generous use of white space.

Try the retro look.

Elegantly long and thin. Reminds me of a card I designed for a perfume shop that looked like a scent tester.

Transparent thin.

Transparent thick.

Camera obscura. In case the Nikon breaks it comes handy to get the job done.

Folded and playful.

Expandable rubber to test your strength. One more time. And, one more. One last time. Good job. Now, what was the number again?

Reuse old cards for a second hand shop.

Get rid of the evidence you ever met the headhunter.

Finally, clear message from a debt recovery agent. If you don’t pay I’ll break your bones. Here’s the x-ray of my last client broken finger as proof.

Tell us what you think of the designs!

I had a lot of fun looking at them!

Cheers!

Questor