New lenses and groups at Squidoo

September 29, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Blogging, Groups, Musings, Squidoo 

Over the last few days, there have been some big changes at Squidoo.com with the release of the new groups feature.

Now, your Squidoo lens is not a stand-alone page. You can join appropriate groups for cross promotion of similarly-themed lenses.

Don’t find a group you like? Start one of your own. Help all the members of your group find more readers and more success with Squidoo.

New Squidoo lenses

I just created a new Success With Blogging lens and I invite your feedback for resources that can be added to that lens.

New Squidoo groups

I have several lenses, websites, and forums related to North Carolina, so I created a new North Carolina Group and I invite you to add your lenses to this group as long as they relate primarily to a place, event, person, organization, or business that is in North Carolina.

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Melissa Fulwider interviewed me for the AdlandPro community

September 22, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Musings 

A few weeks ago, Melissa Fulwider asked if I would like to be interviewed and have the interview published on the AdlandPro community. Of course, I was flattered, and a bit puzzled as to why I was chosen.

She sent some questions and I took a bit of time to respond as well as I could.

I missed some of her follow-ups and left her hanging a couple of times until I could get back to my email and respond. (Thanks, Melissa, for understanding.)

I think she did an outstanding job of taking my scribblings and turning them into a coherent and interesting story.

You can read the interview on the Adland Forum or at TheWriteTimes.com.

In the future, the Adland interviews will also be seen on TheWriteTimes blog. A couple have been posted with more to come.

One of the great benefits of being interviewed by Melissa is meeting new people, making new friends, and getting so many compliments and good wishes.

I am humbled and grateful for the experience.

Why don’t you come on over and visit me at AdlandPro?

Don’t have an account? Register for free and start participating in this friendly and helpful community.

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CafePress Shopkeepers – Get a free lens on Squidoo to promote your products

September 19, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: CafePress, Squidoo 

A Little About CafePress

I’m sure you know by now that you can get a free account at CafePress where you can upload your custom designs onto about 80 products – free.

You can open your own free or premium shop at CafePress.com and sell your own designs. Whether you want to sell t-shirts with slogans, your own original books or CDs, or clothing, mousepads, calendars, and other products with your own original art, you’ll find CafePress an easy way to set up your online store and let them take care of the printing, processing, shipping, and customer service — and send your royalty checks for the sales you make.

I’ve been a shopkeeper at CafePress since 2002 and I heartily recommend the company. I love getting emails telling me that I just made a sale and then, a few weeks later, getting my commission checks in the mail.

If you are serious about selling your products on CafePress, I seriously recommend that you get a premium store. You can create multiple sections and offer your designs on more products. It is much easier to manage a single premium store than multiple free ones. I know. I also know that I am making more sales from my premium store than I ever did from my free stores.

I invite you to visit my CafePress shop at Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com. You will find an eclectic collection of products with a variety of designs.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have opened several themed premium shops and I am thinking about doing that next year. It is much easier to market a themed collection because you can target your market much easier and it is easier to describe what you are selling. Each premium shop costs only $7 per month (less if you pay annually), and I’m earning enough that my shop is basically free, since it is paid for out of my commissions earned.

A Little About Squidoo

You may not have heard about Squidoo, but you will.

Squidoo is becoming very popular. In the few months since it was introduced, nearly 41,000 lenses have been built.

You can open a free account at Squidoo and create as many lenses as you want for free.

In fact, you may even earn money from your lenses. I’m getting small commission payments each month, and they are growing. You can, too.

CafePress and Squidoo Co-Branded Lenses

Now, for the news I just learned about a few hours ago.

CafePress shop owners can now create a new CafePress co-branded lens by going to the CafePress headquarters on Squidoo and following the directions. It looks to me as if you must create a new lens to participate in the joint venture, so, in addition to my Custom T-Shirts lens, I just created a cobranded lens at John Dilbeck’s Shirts, Mugs, and Hats Store at CafePress.

Why go to the extra effort?

I believe in promoting my efforts as widely and as often as possible, so a new lens that links to my CafePress shop can’t hurt – and neither can linking to it from other lenses, websites, blogs, and so forth.

Additionally, I don’t know how CafePress and Squidoo are promoting lenses created through the CafePress Squidoo headquarters, but I did see a link to my new lens and to my list of lenses on the CafePress headquarters. So, I’m getting some additional promotion, at least.

What I don’t like about it

There are many positives to selling your products on CafePress and creating lenses on Squidoo. I’ve mentioned some in this post, and I’ve talked about others previously in different locations.

I’ll stipulate it as a given that you should do this if you are selling any designs through CafePress.

But, all is not perfect with this solution.

For example, on my new lens, I just wasted over an hour trying to use the automated tools provided for picking products from a particular CafePress store, in this instance, mine.

I know I have a white tshirt that says “Because I’m the Mommy, That’s Why!” and I can find it in about a minute on my site.

But, when I tried searching for it using the promote a store part of the CafePress module, I could not find it. I know it is tagged with both “johndilbeck” and “mommy”, but it never showed up in the search.

I know I have many products with “USA” on them and I tried to find them using the search. I found many of my other USA flag wear products, but never did find the USA tshirt or sweatshirt.

So, I manually linked to them in the introduction of the lens and deleted the promote a store module. I’ll replace it later, when I have more time.

Something for everyone

CafePress offers millions of products from hundreds of thousands of designers, so there is probably something there for everyone.

Not only that, but creative and artistic people can sell their own designs, and everyone who is willing to exert the effort can recommend their favorite designs through the affiliate program.

We all prosper by helping each other promote and sell our products.

It’s great to see Squidoo and CafePress working together to help us in our efforts.

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Kimberly Dawn Wells has been very busy lately!

September 19, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: CafePress, Marketing, Squidoo 

A week ago, I didn’t know who Kimberly Dawn Wells was, and now I’m running across her lenses and groups everywhere I look!

That’s a good thing.

About Kimberly Dawn Wells

Kimberly is very active on Squidoo, CafePress, MySpace, and probably other places, but I’ve been concentrating on those three for the last couple of days. She has an outstanding lens about herself on Squidoo and an equally impressive page about herself on MySpace.

Activities on Squidoo

Kimberly is a Citizen Squid at Squidoo and has been creating groups on Squidoo to make it easier for lensmasters to group a bunch of lenses together on a common topic. While this is a pre-release feature at the moment, it looks like it won’t be too much longer before it becomes at least a beta release.

I’ve added a couple of my lenses to the Country Music Fan and Totally Awesome Tees groups, and I’ll be participating in more groups as they become available. I think this is going to be a very important addition to Squidoo.

She offers helpful advice

Kimberly is very helpful and offers her advice on a number of topics.

For example, she offers some very helpful tips on her MySpace Made Easy lens to help us improve our experiences at MySpace.

Activities on MySpace

Kimberly has several groups at MySpace, including Success with Squidoo and Success with CafePress. Groups on MySpace include the ability to discuss topics of interest on forums associated with the group and the optional ability to post bulletins which seem to be used to post news or ads.

I’m new to MySpace, so my limited knowledge of the community may not allow me to fully appreciate the nuances of membership and participation there. I’m open to being educated on the subject.

I created two groups at MySpace for Murphy NC Business and Site Build It Webmasters, which was an outgrowth of my Site Build It lens at Squidoo.

Free to participate

You can participate free at Squidoo and MySpace and I think both are great places to create content and tell about your activities and interests.

On MySpace, this is done through conversations on the forums, posting of bulletins, blogging, and leaving comments on your friends’ pages.

On Squidoo, you participate by creating lenses (one page keyword focused pages with out-pointing links) and joining the groups as they become available.

Both of these sites work well with other communities where I participate, including Ryze.com, MySpace.com, and others.

I look forward to meeting you on one or more of these communities.

Feel free to tell me what you think. Correct me where I’m wrong and educate me where I’m ignorant.

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Find your small business

September 13, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Site Build It, Small Business 

I have read reports that the majority of Americans dream of owning their own small business and many would like to run that business from the comfort of their homes.

As someone who has been doing this for three decades, I can vouch for the convenience of working at home and I enjoy being my own boss, for better or worse.

Most people who dream of owning their own small business do not have any experience in owning and managing such a business.

If you have a job, you are responsible for just a tiny part of what it takes to run a business and you have coworkers who do the other jobs. When you own your own business, you either take on all these roles, hire employees to do part of it, or contract out parts to professionals and assistants.

When starting a new business, there is more than enough work to go around and you will find your days filled with many, many tasks. Most of them need to be done right now or yesterday.

What you cannot forget is that you have to find customers and provide service that will keep them coming back to you and, hopefully, referring friends and associates to you, too.

At least half, and maybe as much as three-fourths, of your efforts while starting your small business should be devoted to marketing. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you, and if they don’t buy from you, your business will never get off the ground.

I think that is one of the primary reasons so many new businesses fail within the first year – they fail to reach their target market.

Without new customers, your business will survive only as long as you can afford to pay the bills through your investments and other financing arrangements. At some point, you have to reach a breakeven point and start earning profits in order to provide your own living and to repay the money you have invested or borrowed to start your new business.

While I can’t tell you how to do all the things you need to do to get started, I have found a resource that gives you examples of how people have marketed a variety of different small businesses.

If you have read my scribblings for any length of time, you know that I believe blogs and websites are your best marketing tools, if they are done right. However, not all blogs and websites are created equal.

I’ve spent years testing different ways of building websites and the one thing that remains constant is that the people who develop their sites with Site Build It! consistently do better than people who build their sites in other ways.

I know from my own work that it can be difficult to build websites and to promote them. I’ve hosted sites on a dozen or more webhosting services and I’ve suffered the bitter disappointments of fixing hacked sites or trying to get sites running when the host did something that caused many sites to stop functioning correctly.

I have yet to have a single problem with my own site hosted by Site Build It.

I have a lot of experience with programming, HTML, and all the other things that are necessary to know before you can build an effective site using traditional hosting.

What I wonder, is this: Are you willing to take your time and efforts away from marketing your new, or existing, small business to learn all that you have to learn to build your website on a free, cheap, or inexpensive Linux or Windows webhosting service?

Do you have the money to pay someone to build your site?

Do you know others who have done this only to decide that websites are a waste of time and money?

Who will you turn to when you reach a snag, and how much will they charge you to help solve each problem?

Would you like to learn a better way to approach this and learn from others who have succeeded in building their own successful websites that build their businesses for them, without having to master all the technical skills or pay so much money to get someone to do it for you?

One of the best things, in my opinion, of building a website using Site Build It, in addition to all the tools and resources SBI provides, is the free access to the members-only forum where people of all levels of experience help each other to find the success we all want in building our businesses. I would pay the $300 per year it costs to have a Site Build It site just to have access to the forum and brainstorming tools that are part of the Site Build It community.

I’ve long said that Site Build It is the perfect way for beginning online marketers to have the best chance of success. You don’t have to waste all your time and money just to build a site that nobody finds and visits.

But, of course, you are free to approach this however you want.

I have sites built using a variety of approaches. Some get a million or more page views per year, some don’t get a thousand. Some I work on full-time, others I barely touch.

I’ve read, and tried, many approaches recommended by people who say they know what they are doing, only to be disappointed most of the time due to the lack of success in following their methods.

The one constant that I’ve found, is that Ken Evoy knows what he’s talking about when it comes to promoting your business online and he has continued to build Site Build It into the premier system for regular folks to build an online presence that works.

Sure, some people fail with Site Build It, but most people who follow the tried-and-proven techniques and methods built into the Site Build It approach have a much better chance of succeeding than they would using any other method. I’ve watched it happen.

I’ve watched people who had no experience at all build a business that provides a nice income in a year or two.

Sure, it still takes work, but I don’t know of anything outside of winning the lottery that doesn’t require work. And building your online presence using Site Build It has much higher odds for success than “investing” in another lottery ticket.

In fact, if you were to purchase a lottery ticket every day for the next year, the odds are high that you would see little or no return for your efforts.

If you were to invest less than that amount in purchasing a Site Build It account and following the SBI approach to building your online business, I am almost positive that you would see a much better return. Even if your site earned no money during the first year, you would have developed new skills and knowledge that will serve you well as you continue to promote and build your small business.

But, if you follow the plan provided with your Site Build It account, I feel highly optimistic that you will be doing even better than that. A year from now, you may have a site that is bringing in new customers and more revenue.

Still, it’s up to you to decide how you want to build your business, and the success or failure of marketing the business depends greatly upon your knowledge of marketing, providing good service to your customers, and successfully getting the word out about what you have to offer and why you can do it better than anyone else.

Even if you have no intention of buying Site Build It, let me urge you to find YOUR small business and see how others have approached marketing the same type of business using Site Build It.

If nothing else, you will see how it can be done successfully and you may learn new ways to market your business that you never thought of.

On the other hand, perhaps you will find that you are on the right track with your approach and don’t need to make any substantial changes in your plan.

It costs nothing to find YOUR small business and see other approaches for marketing it to an ever-more-fragmented world.

It has been a lot of work running my businesses over the last three decades, but it has been one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done.

If you truly want to break free and chart your own destiny, choose wisely how you will use your time, energy, and money. Make your plan and stick with it. The odds are against your success, especially if it is the first time you have started a business, but with each effort, you will learn things that will make your next effort more likely to succeed.

At the very least, give yourself the best chance to find success. Use the best tools available and don’t waste your time and efforts on things that just don’t work.

You deserve the best.

Act on your dream.

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Making your blog more inclusive

September 12, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Blogging 

Darren Rowse has an article about 9 ways to make your blog more inclusive.

Blogging, at its best, is a conversation with topics initiated by the person who owns the blog. Most blogs allow for comments, and this is where the conversation takes place.

However, sometimes, especially for people new to blogging, these conversations seem inaccessible for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the blog is rather technical and uses terms that don’t mean much to a new reader. Other times, the blog has a small group of regulars who are familiar with each other and the comments have private jokes and obscure references or other interactions that exclude anyone who is not a regular part of the conversation.

In 9 ways to make your blog more inclusive, Darren offers some suggestions to make it easier for new people to join the conversations and to understand more about what is being discussed.

Blogging, at its worst, is just one lone person typing away with no responses and can feel like yelling into a fog with no echo.

Some blogs are more technical than others. Some have topics that make conversations easier. Not all blog posts get many, or even any, comments.

I think it is a sign of a healthy blog when there are lively discussions, lots of feedback, different opinions, and a community where people feel free to express their opinions and experiences.

Darren has that kind of community at ProBlogger.net, and I applaud him for helping the rest of us find new ways to make our own blogs more inclusive and open to feedback.

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Chris Anderson – Long Tail Marketing Interview Transcript

September 11, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Niche Marketing 

On Saturday, September 9, 2006, I posted a note about Ken Evoy’s interview with Chris Anderson about his long tail marketing concept and book.

You can find the previous article here: Chris Anderson – Long Tail Marketing for Small Business.

I posted, “Ken Evoy, President of Sitesell, Inc., recently interviewed Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, at Long Tail Marketing For Small Business.”

I was going to suggest that Ken include a transcript of the interview, but, before I could do so, I learned that it is already there. The link is at Long Tail Marketing For Small Business, right below the link to the audio interview.

Thanks!

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Homegrown Philanthropy in Western North Carolina

September 9, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Nonprofits 

Foundation Hosts Friends Luncheon on September 25, 2006

Please join The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina in celebrating another year of promoting philanthropy and building mountain communities at their annual Friends Luncheon.

This year they are focusing on homegrown philanthropic efforts that are enhancing and preserving our way of life.

In the past year, CFWNC has distributed more than $7 million in charitable grants across our 18-county mountain region and beyond.

Come to the Renaissance Asheville Hotel at noon to hear about some of the most promising projects and innovative ideas that promote and preserve mountain culture, encourage economic development and markets one mountain community as “The Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree.”

They will be serving a special “homegrown” lunch made from food grown by local farmers.

The cost is $25 per person and $45 per patron. Tables of 8 are available.

Reservations will be accepted until September 20, 2006.

To register, contact Beth Semadeni or call (828) 254-4960.

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Chris Anderson – Long Tail Marketing for Small Business

September 9, 2006 by JD · 1 Comment
Filed under: Marketing, Products at Amazon, Small Business 

Ken Evoy, President of Sitesell, Inc., recently interviewed Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, at Long Tail Marketing For Small Business.

Chris Anderson is the executive editor of WIRED magazine and has a good overview of technology and marketing, as evidenced by the buzz that is building surrounding his book.

In the industrial selling model, corporations decided what was going to be sold and there was a limited number of items offered for a limited time. All companies that are involved in mass production and mass distribution are working within this model.

In the developing digital selling model, products don’t go out of production and you don’t have to sell thousands or millions of items to generate a profit. You can sell fewer items over a longer time interval. This is a simplistic explanation, and Ken goes into more depth at Long Tail Marketing For Small Business.

Additionally, there is an audio interview that you should listen to if you have any interest in small businesses and marketing to niche audiences, and I think that pertains to almost all small businesses.

Listen to the interview. If what you hear excites you about the possibilities of selling into infinite niches, buy the book and read it.

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