Catching up on my blog reading this weekend. I thought I’d share a couple post I found interesting that you might have missed…

Set Dates with Yourself – How to Be Productive

Ricky Breslin gives some great advice on becoming more productive. You have to be ruthless with your time management. He is pretty upfront about who to blame for poor productivity. He hit the bullseye, and shows a simple plan to higher productivity.

Overcome Marketing Guru Confusion

With all the hoopla recently over Guru’s, Ray Edwards came up with a short but powerful plan to follow.

[edit - Ray’s blog post is not bashing anyone, or being negative in any way.  The following comment is my opinion… I think I’ll expand on this thought in the next few days. :)]

Remember one thing… even those folks who bash Gurus are selling products.

What it takes to succeed in business.

Jonathan Leger discusses what it takes to succeed in business. Mostly is what’s going on between the ears… the state of affairs in our own thinking.

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1950-2008

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I’m excited to tell you that the fire sale to help Mike Ambrosioa’s neice is live…

Check out by clicking on the 125X125 banner:

It’s a great way to get some quality products & and help a sick young women pay her medical bills all at the same time. Truly one of those rare “win/win” situations.

These are NOT the same tired products you see over and over again with PLR and Resell Rights on every membership site in the business…

No, these are valuable products that are begin sold online for a premium every single day, some for hundreds of dollars, and some of them are BRAND NEW.

I’ve personally used several of these products & even wrote the sales letter for one of them. Head on over there and check it out…

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Just finished up my new product yesterday. It was hard work to make it by the deadline… not as hard a digging ditches. But, still I was under a tight deadline.

My friend Mike Ambrosio has created a fire sale to help his niece with some of the medical costs her family will encounter in her battle with colon cancer…

*Love for Lauren

*Lauren is my 17 year old neice.
She is currently battling colon
cancer - a cancer which inflicts
less than 3 in 15 million children.
Partial proceeds from this sale will
go to help offset some of the
astronomical medical costs.

Mike asked me to contribute a product, and the decision was a no-brainer. My wife is a breast cancer survivor so it was an easy decision to help. We were lucky and had excellent insurance coverage. Even with such a great insurance coverage we only had to come out of pocket about $4,500.00. If you know anything about cancer treatments you’ll know that’s next to nothing.

Just to give you an idea of costs. The average Chemotherapy treatment starts at $3000.00, and goes up from there. And that depends on the type of chemotherapy drugs needed.

I decided to contribute a product exclusive to this fire sale, and have been working hard on it for the past couple weeks.

22 People have contributed to this project… some big names have stepped up to help. Here is a run down of the people who are involved:

1. Michael Ambrosio
2. Tom Beal
3. Tim Brocklehurst
4. Michael Cheney
5. Willie Crawford
6. Jeff Dedrick
7. Harris Fellman
8. Ross Goldberg
9. Keith Goodrum
10. John Hostler
11. Jason James
12. Lucius Kern
13. Ray LaFoy
14. Aaron Leighton
15. Eric Louviere
16. Fabio Marciano
17. Edward & Roberta Peters
18. Martin Salter
19. Nick Sanders
20. Howie Schwartz
21. Frank Sousa
22. Sterling Valentine

You will be able to get all 22 contributor’s products for one low price. I’ve used some of these products myself. I was even the copywriter for one of the products included when it was 1st released.

This fire sale kicks off tomorrow at 12 noon est. I’ll include a link when it’s live.

I can’t give a sneak peak of the product I’ve contributed, but I can give you a preview of the eBook cover:

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OK… if you are not over forty you probably don’t recognize these lyrics. They are from a song by the Go Go’s an ’80s band.

It was great to take a break and go on vacation…

I would like to thank Sharyn Essman the owner of FeeFiFoto.com for stepping in and guest blogging. I enjoyed the post and it looks like many others did also.

This year we went to the Outer Banks, NC for the week. And we really went to the outer banks. The only way you could get access to our cabin was with a high clearnence 4-wheel drive. We only had to drive 8 miles on the beach to get to our cabin.

It was a blast… a whole week without cell phone, internet, cable or even a land line phone. It very restful to get away from all of the modern conveniences of the world today.

Here are few pictures…

There are wild ponies that roam the northern end of the Outer Banks. They are descendents of the Spanish Mustangs, and have lived here for 400 years.  It was so cool to see the magnificent animals living free.

Here is a great picture of the beach… notice the tire tracks.

Here are some more ponies up on the sand dunes grazing. You are suppose to stay 300 feet away… I had to use the zoom to get this shot.

Here is our daily beach setup with the Xterra. The best part with this is we could toss everything in the back, lock it up and go for a walk on the beach. The raised tail gate made for some nice shade… we don’t need no stinkin umbrella.

Here is a shot of the dune, and someone’s beach access. About every half mile there is a break in the dune. This is where you drive your vehicle over to get back to the cabins. It is the only place you can be on a dune. They want the rest of the dunes to stay free of any traffic, walking… to help protect erosion.

I’ll post some more pictures, and tell more about the trip later. It sure was great to get away for awhile.

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Today’s guest post is by Sharyn Essman is a recovering attorney and the owner of FeeFiFoto.com. You can find more about her or contact her through her blog.

Remember Mrs. Fisher, the miniskirted junior high typing teacher whose male students never seemed to improve despite their slavish attention to her every move thigh word?

Not technically Mrs. Fisher, but you get the picture

Anyway. Focus.

Remember her insistence that numbers less than ten (10 — or was it 20?) must be written typed out? Turns out Mrs. Fisher wasn’t 100% right.

After abandoning the practice of law I wrote resumes for 15 years, obsessing over design, language and font choice. Before too long I concluded that for a piece of sales-oriented writing to be impressive and memorable it must above all be easy to read and interpret; font choice was irrelevant. The intended audience resented having to play hide and seek; they wanted to be spoon fed and not forced to hunt for pertinent information. Unusual fonts or layouts would just annoy readers and send them on to the next piece in the Inbox.

Like it? It’s called “Gypsy Curse.” Great for a Halloween party invitation. For a resume? Not so much.

From Sinisterfonts.com

A key element of this rule was to use digits whenever possible, since the eye is drawn to anything distinct from the surrounding material. In other words, a “seventeen percent” increase in sales would catch the eye better written as “17%”.

Try it – skim the previous paragraphs and note how the digits catch your eye. I’ll wait.

Musical interlude: “Feelings! Whoa, whoa, whoa – feelings!”

Bet she got your attention, didn’t she?

Image from rocktownweekly.com

See my point? If you aim to stand out from tons of material similar to yours but you make it difficult to detect what’s important about you, your intended audience will abandon you and move on to the next candidate.

Why am I telling you this? Because I have nothing better to talk about Because it illustrates the importance of images in making your marketing and blogging memorable.

Remember Crazy Eddie? His prices were INSANE and he was too, but he sure was hard to forget.

Image from nextnetworks.com

As a blogger you compete for the attention of readers who are being pulled in eleventy million directions, kind of like moms but with a bit less spill wipage. If you aspire to retain your reader’s attention, you’d darn well better offer something interesting, useful and easily accessible or risk her stumbling on to someone else’s blog. One easy and effective way to make your blog memorable is to use images in your posts.

A picture’s worth – well, you know.

No matter what you’re selling, provide an image to help readers visualize your subject. I blog to promote my website, FeeFiFoto, which puts digital photos on all sorts of gift items. I’d be foolish to describe a personalized photo watch, for example, without providing a related image. The same goes for any other consumer item: selling your car, or camera, or computer, or anything on eBay is much easier if you provide an image along with the description.

You claim images are beneath your blog’s dignity? Well, bravo for dignity, but if you challenge your reader to trudge through your material on a scavenger hunt for what you’re selling, you’ll be like a tree falling in the forest and just maybe no one will hear you.

Always wondered how the Wall Street Journal created these portraits. I figured it was done with computers, but guess what: real people draw these! And admit it – it catches and holds your attention.

Image by Randy Glass

Even the Wall Street Journal, the embodiment of dignity, provides images. You should too.

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Ryan Healy answered a pricing question on his blog today. A regular reader asked his experience with pricing.

Here is his response…

Should Prices End in 7?

“…There are all kinds of opinions.

I’m not big on ending in the number 7.

Just test it and see what works best…”

Wait a minute… Are you saying that we should test pricing points?!?

That’s CRAZY talk!!!

Aren’t we suppose to follow the herd, and not question the mighty “7″?

All kidding aside… I’ve tested pricing with my off line business. There were some interesting results.

But first a little background…

My offline business was residential window cleaning. So, I would go in and give an estimate. They would book on the spot, call me for an appointment or not have us clean their windows.

When I first started out only 1 in 3 would book a window cleaning appointment. That was a lot of estimates to give out, and a lot of time spent running around town.

Finally A Customer Came to The Rescue…

This went on for 2 months, and it was tough earning a living. I couldn’t figure it out. I was establishing good rapport with the customers. I looked professional with a nice clean truck, clean clothes with an embroidered polo shirt… I looked the part.

Finally a customer took me aside and told me what the problem was. My prices were too low! She said that my pricing lack credibility. It seemed to good to be true. I was shocked to hear this… I thought I was giving a good value for my services.

I went out on the next estimate and raised my pricing by 25%. Over the next few months my closing ratio jumped to 84%. My calender stayed booked out for 6 weeks… it was great.

Another Valuable Piece of Advice

This time Dan Kennedy said in his newsletter if you are up to your eyeballs with customers then it’s time to raise your prices. I was afraid to follow this advice. I thought all my customers would jump ship.

I finally decided to give it a try…

It took almost a year of thinking about this to give it a try. I timidity inched my prices up by 10%. No one said a word?!? So, I kicked it up another 10%… no one noticed.

Now I got bold.

I decided to see how far I could go with this… I kept raising my prices 20% at a time. Now, my closing ratio started falling. But I kept raising my prices.

I kept going until my closing ratio fell to 47%. And I was thrilled. Why? Because I was making more money while cutting back on my hours. It was nice not working sunup to sundown.

Well, Ryan that’s one of my experiences with price testing. Maybe I write about another one next week.

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This Post has an ulterior motive for me. I’d like to introduce the many benefits of guest posting. Hopefully you’ll see the benefits & get excited about the of guest posting… Then take me up on my offer to guest post on this blog next week…

Guest Posting is a great way to get yourself in front of targeted traffic…

One of the best methods of marketing is finding targeted traffic. Birds of a feather flock together… and that is so true with blog readers. They are interested it the same subject, and are a sympathetic ear.

Steven Snell at Pure Blogging makes a great point about how guest posting is get past the advertising defense by demonstrating your expertise…

The Best Blog Advertising is Free - Are You Using It?

Despite the title of this post, I do realize that guest posting is not really advertising. However, it allows you to accomplish many of the same objectives that an advertisement would, and in most cases it’s even more effective. …

Darrin Rowe over at Problogger makes a powerful case why guest posting is a effective way to find new readers…

Finding New Readers for Your Blog with Guest Posting

Perhaps one of the most powerful ways of exposing your writing to a new group of people is to put some of your best content on other peoples blogs - and not your own …

Jason at The University Kid goes over how to make sure you are putting out quality guest posting content. You can get a leg up on your competition if you remember to follow these steps with your guest posting…

How To Annihilate Your Competition With A Guest Post

A lot of people get sucked into the whole guest posting spree and churn out posts for various blogs in their niche… and then neglect their own website. Remember, people are notoriously fickle – their views about how good a writer you …

So, how can you take advantage of what you’ve learned at these blogs?

Simple… I’m taking a week’s vacation starting Sunday. I’m looking for some guest posters. If you would like to guest post for me next week head on over the my about me page. fill out the contact form, and submit it. I’ll get back to you, and see if we can make arrangements.

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Happy birthday to Wordpress. This awesome blogging platform was started 5 years ago today. They are having a party tonight at 9pm…

WordPress Birthday Party — 3 days ago

On Tuesday, May 27th, WordPress will turn 5 years old. We’ve come a long way from that original 0.7 release. To celebrate we’re throwing a party in San Francisco at 111 Minna, starting at 9PM. You can get the full details and RSVP on Upcoming.org or on Facebook. I hope you see some of you there, should […]

If we still lived in San Francisco we would attend. Hope they have a great time.

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