Marketing No Brainers

Is Your Email Address Professional?

September 26th, 2007Rants, Strategy 1 Comment

One thing that always gets me is what people call themselves online. At one of my offline jobs, it was my duty to field all email inquiries. I’d get emails from “badd*sscop (a real county sheriff,) cutesexyjulie (actually over 60,) etc. I got to know some of these people when they became customers, so these are real examples.

So here’s an earth shattering revelation for you. If you have an email address that you named in order to attract members of the same or opposite sex, or strike fear in the hearts of others, perhaps it isn’t the best thing to use as a business email address.

I shouldn’t have to elaborate, but for the sake of the clueless I will. If your email address is bigbadboy at whatever. com this isn’t professional. If your email is hotlittlechick or bighotmama at wherever. com this isn’t professional either.

Besides sex, other email handles to avoid - anything relating to games, your parenting status, bad habits, violence, religion, or politics. I know I’m missing some other no-nos, but the point is to have a professional sounding email address, as people will judge you by it.

So what’s a simple and professional email address? How about your name at your domain? How simple is that? Of course if you have a hate mongering or porn site you’ll need an alternative.

If you want to use a free web based email provider like Yahoo, Hotmail (urk!) or GMail (Yeah!) then you can still have your name at your domain forwarded into your webmail account. That way you can keep that hunky or babe-like email address for more personal use.

Or at the free email providers a little creativity (like inserting periods in your name) will get you a professional sounding name. Perhaps if it’s not too common, even your own name might be available.

If you just don’t want to put your real name online for some reason there’s always the defaults: webmaster, admin, siteadmin, etc.

As always, in your online business, my advice is to keep things on a professional basis, unless or until the person on the other end is your friend. Your friends may not judge you, but almost everyone else online certainly will. So if you don’t already have one, get yourself a professional email address. And use it.

John Reese’s BlogRush

September 15th, 2007Blogging, Traffic No Comments

John Reese has just released a free tool called BlogRush. It’s a traffic getting tool for those of us in the blogosphere. You can see it in the sidebar.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of how it works, there’s plenty of info at John’s BlogRush page.

John has pushed the envelope of what’s possible to do with a traffic enhancer for blogs, while keeping it free. It’s a simple Javascript copy and paste to get this working. It took all of a couple of minutes.

Get on over to John Reese’s BlogRush and get this code on your blog ASAP.

Unbelievable Internet Marketing Income Claims

September 7th, 2007Rants No Comments

Have you read an infoproduct sales letter recently that promised outrageous amounts of income, but only if you buy the product in question? It seems like I get a new one of these every day, not to mention the repeats and follow up emails that jam my inbox.

What really gripes me is the infoproduct sellers’ income claims. Just recently there is a super-affiliate how-to product (hasn’t even launched yet but is being pre-promoted) that is claiming that the person in question made over a million dollars in affiliate income last year. And maybe he did.

But there is one key thing missing from this claim. The costs of making the money. But you say, there are really hardly any costs associated with affiliate marketing. Not so in this case, as the almost entire cost for traffic is from Pay Per Click (PPC) traffic.

I don’t know about you, but I have had plenty of PPC campaigns that lost money before I deep-sixed them. That said, given that our affiliate marketer in question is a PPC expert, I have no doubt that most of his campaigns were profitable.

So perhaps he doubled his money on every click. Now we have something more believable, income in the $600,000 or so range. That’s really enough to impress me. But the million dollars plus income is smoke and mirrors. Learn to see through this so you don’t get sucked into believing the hype.

It really is pretty simple. Any business has sales, expenses, and net income. Most overhyped internet marketing sales copy concentrates on the sales, as if that is what the infoproduct seller actually made, not what the seller made after all expenses were paid.

This is really business 101 type stuff. Never in these income claims do you see the actual NET PROFIT that the infoproduct vendor actually made. You see the GROSS SALES! Now you can’t have healthy net profits without healthy gross sales, but it is possible for expenses to eat into most or all of the gross sales, resulting in little or no net profit.

Don’t believe me? Consider those product launches that pay 75% (and higher) commissions. Say, with a lot of affiliate help, a marketer grosses $100,000. He ends up with $25,000 after paying affiliates. Then he pays $5,000 or so in top affiliate prizes. And he pays out $5,000 or so for a great sales letter, maybe another $1,000 for outsourcing his content. Payment processor fees account for another $3,500 or so.

Now that $100,000 income claim has been whittled down to $11,500. And that’s the reality of most of these over-hyped launches. It’s still great money. And the marketer has a great list of proven buyers that he can sell to over and over and over.

So the next time you get pitched by someone touting unbelievable internet marketing income claims, take a look at it like it was a real business. Because your internet business IS a real business. And so is theirs. Cash flow and accounting principles don’t stop applying just because it’s the Internet.

Is Your Email Address Professional?

John Reese’s BlogRush

Unbelievable Internet Marketing Income Claims

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