Bringing you the best business building information on the web!

My most favorite thoughts from Seth Godin

Words cannot express how happy I was in finding this video. Seth Godin has influenced how I think and approach business and his words came at a time when the WOW Network was only a question in my mind.  Would it work, would people like it and can I really do this? Mr. Godin has given me permission to do business my way and know that it will work. This particular piece is very important because he speaks about tribes and what it can mean to us in life and business. If you have ever wanted to know how you can influence your bottom line just take a look at this video and see that it’s more than your bottom line that needs to be influenced.

Learn the lesson and move foward. Tell me what you think. ~De

Tweet This Post

How time flies. Michael Jackson Remembered…

Can you believe it? It has been 1 year since Michael Jackson left our world. ‘Can you feel it’ is one of my favorite get yourself pumped up songs. The first video shows the love and passion that Michael along with his brothers shared with one another and the world. I also have the original video below because it was ahead of its time and you can see the dawn of the Michael Jackson we all remember. Enjoy and MJ continue to rest in peace. You are missed!

ORIGINAL VIDEO – One of my personal favorites

Tweet This Post

Seven Keys to Building Customer Loyalty–and Company Profits

A personal bond with customers lets your company escape the commodity pricing wars and provides you with a powerful new marketing arm: loyal customers who will promote and defend your company online and off–for free. Here are seven tips for getting the process started of building customer loyalty in a big way.

1. Are your doorknobs sparkling brightly? Research proves that customers remember the first and last moments of a service encounter much more vividly–and for longer–than the rest of it. Make sure that the first and final elements of your customer interactions are particularly well engineered, because they are going to stick in the customer’s memory.

Example: Chris Cambridge’s gift shop in the tourist town of Bar Harbor, Maine puts customers on a good footing immediately with a cheery sign: “YES: Your Ice Cream Cones Are Welcome (just be careful of the drips) … And We Love Your Dogs, Too!” What a sharp contrast this offers to the buzzkill from “no food-no drink-no soliciting-no shoes-no shirts-no pets!” signs found everywhere else in town. Weary tourists who’ve been feeling scolded by all of those “no way!” signs are going to be uniquely disposed to whatever Chris is selling–from the moment they cross his threshold.

2. Set your clocks forward. Modern customers expect speedier service than did any generation before them. In this age of Blackberrys and iPhones, Twitter and Zappos, you might as well not be there if you’re going to be late.

Example: Think your latest Amazon.com order was handled at Amazon HQ by Mr. Bezos’ hand-picked crew? Maybe not! Amazon.com has partnered so closely with UPS that your order may have been transmitted instantly to Lexington, Kentucky, where UPS had the object of your desire already warehoused and ready to ship. This makes it possible for you to place your order well into the evening and–in a pinch–receive that item early the next morning with nearly 100% accuracy, a result that has amplified expectations of what “timeliness” means for customers nationwide.

3. Allow your customers to connect with a real person–online or off. Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it’s easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena.

Example 1: Instead of a Web-based chat window that blandly announces “You are now chatting with Jane,” try “You are now chatting with Jane Yang-Katzenberg.” The customers will treat your “Jane” better, they’ll take her advice more seriously–and they’ll be more likely to want a committed customer relationship with her company.

Example 2: Netflix has long had a superbly functioning Web site, and adequate self-help-style online support. So there’s probably no reason you truly need to talk with a real human being about your Netflix account. But that hasn’t stopped Netflix from trying to pull you into a phone conversation if you encounter even the briefest rough going online! Recently, Netflix has begun plastering their toll-free number all over their Web site and has even staffed an expensive new call center–in Portland, Oregon, not overseas–to handle the increased calls. Why go to these expensive lengths, for customers who hardly need any technical support in the first place? Simple. As competition for online video customers began tightening recently, Netflix realized that to maintain competitive advantage they needed to bind themselves to their customers. So they’re creating the warm, personal, human connections that produce customer loyalty. That’s bound to be money well spent.

4. Remember each customer’s roles, goals, and preferences. No matter how large your company is–or is hoping to be–strive companywide for the emotional impact of the beloved neighborhood bartender, doorman, or hairstylist–the kind of person who would remember Bob’s special preferences, his schedule, the quirks of his lifestyle. For all sizes and types of companies, a superb client tracking system can provide this information instantly–so that you can create for returning customers the crucial feeling of being noticed and remembered.   – more -

Original post by: Micah Solomon

Tweet This Post

My exclusive interview with Biba Pedron, The Connection Queen

Yesterday, I had the honor of being interviewed by Biba  Pedron, The Connection Queen. We had a blast discussing the ins and outs of creating your very own online community. This also served as a great opportunity to talk about The WOW Network and all the wonderful things we have going on. Take a listen and let me know what you think. –> http://www.bit.ly/arqPJ6 

Tweet This Post

Monday Mind Test
How ready are you for the week? Test yourself below…

Tweet This Post

As an affiliate marketer one of the biggest parts of your job is finding good ideas for products to write about on your blogs, websites, and HubPages etc. Sometimes we kind of get what I call affiliate marketing writers block where we can’t come up with good product ideas for affiliate marketing. Well, there are actually NO excuses for not being able to find good niche ideas! In this hub I’ve put together a list of the best websites for finding good affiliate marketing products. As I use all of them for my online marketing I’m not going to put them into any sort of order. As an affiliate marketer it’ll be up to you to go through my list and see how you can leverage these sites to making money online. Please stay with me as the list is kind of long. If you find this hub useful or if you find I’ve left out any important websites please let me know in the comments section and thumbs up below!

Yahoo! Shopping
Yahoo! Shopping is one of my favorite sites for finding good ideas for affiliate marketing niches. Actually, in my opinion Yahoo! is doing a much better job than Google on this webpage. Here’s how to use this wonderful tool to find niche ideas. Scroll down to the middle of the page to Shopping Categories. Click on anything – Sports & Outdoors for example. Now on the right side of your monitor you’ll find Top-Ranked Products. This is your source for ideas. You’ll see you can click on sub-categories such as cycling, skateboarding and golf equipment. Click on any category and start browsing the products. This list will provide you with TONS of niche marketing product ideas. Pick a product and start writing your review and see how it goes!

Amazon Bestsellers List
Amazon Bestsellers is the grand-daddy of tools for finding niche marketing ideas. At the top of the page you’ll four amazingly helpful links: New Hot Releases, Most Gifted, Most Wished For and Movers & Shakers. Scroll down and you’ll find all of Amazon’s product categories. Click on any of them. For example, click on Watches at the bottom. You’ll find a huge list of popular watches within the watch category. Scan down these product lists and you’ll be sure to find a terrific affiliate marketing niche.

Shopping.com Top Searches
Shopping.com provides a wonderful tool for finding keyword niche ideas for affiliate marketing on its Top Searches page. Here you’ll find all of Shopping.com’s categories. Click on any of them and you’ll find the list of 100 most-searched keywords for each category. This list list is updated every two weeks so it’s always updated. Browse around and you’ll be sure to find a good affiliate marketing niche idea.

MySimon Top Searches
MySimon, a comparative shopping website, offers a great page for finding affiliate marketing niches on its Top Searches page. Click on any category and start browsing down the list of keyword niche ideas. This tool is very similar to Shoppng.com’s top searches page and is equally useful for finding niche marketing ideas.

eBay Pulse
eBay Pulse is an extremely useful tool for finding niche marketing ideas. Next to category on the left of your monitor you’ll find a drop-down menu. Click on that and choose a category. After that you’ll see a list of products. If you’d like to dig deeper into eBay’s categories just click on the drop-down menu and pick a sub-category. You’ll find even more niche ideas. Please note that a lot of affiliate marketers are already all over eBay Pulse as a tool for finding niche marketing ideas. So, for best results you might want to find ideas deep within the sub-categories.

eBay Want It Now
eBay Want It Now is an extremely powerful tool that you can use for finding affiliate marketing niche ideas. eBay’s Want It Now site is a place where buyers can come and key in specific items that they’re looking to buy online. At the same time sellers can come in and announce that they have a product meeting the buyer’s demand. You can enter broad keywords into the search box or browse by category. Personally, I prefer to browse by category. You’ll be sure to get lots of affiliate marketing ideas here.

Google Product Search
Google Product Search is another Google tool which can offer ideas for niche marketing. Check in on this page every day and sometimes you can find ideas here. It’s a very quick check as there’s nothing to click on. Just visit the page and you’ll see a list of items that were recently searched on Google Shopping. These are basically popular highly searched keywords. If you can write a good review around one of these keywords you’re sure to get lots of hits.

Google Trends
Goolge Trends is a list of the top most popular searched keywords on Google. It is updated every day. While this is a wonderful list of words that you can use just to see what’s going on in the world it can also serve as a good list for article and niche product review ideas. Check in every day and scan down the list. From time to time you’ll see names of products on the list. If you see one start researching and write your product review immediately.

Technorati Popular Tags
While Technorati Popular Tags is not necessarily geared towards online shopping it offers an excellent overview of the most popular searched keyword items on the Internet. Technorati categorizes and provides updated lists of the top blogs and Internet searches. At the bottom of the page you’ll find top videos, top movies, top tags and Today in Pictures. Often in the bottom-left of your screen you’ll see a product tag which can offer an idea for affiliate marketing.

Yahoo! Buzz
Yahoo! Buzz is Yahoo’s in-house social bookmarking page. As far as social bookmarking and getting my links to come up in Google and Yahoo! search engine queries I’ve had mixed results. While Yahoo! Buzz isn’t the greatest for finding products for affiliate marketing it can serve as wonderful tool to inspire ideas for article writing. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a list of most popular searches. If you can write an informative and entertaining article on any of these keywords it will get lots of hits.

To your online marketing financial success!
I hope this list has helped you to find some good ideas for finding good affiliate marketing niche product ideas. With this list you have no more excuses to say I don’t know what to write about! Now go to it and go out there and make some money!

Original post by Dwei888

Tweet This Post

It’s Friday and time to wind down from a busy week. I generally like to have a fun or inspirational post on Friday since it is so important to stop to reflect and have a good laugh from time to time. Today, I’m combining work & fun with a great post I found. This appealed to me because I simply love music – especially dance music.  Anything that will get your heart pumping while allowing you the freedom to dance! (It has always bothered me that I was just too young for ’Disco’ in its prime) Anyway, I found this post purely by accident while checking out different videos of my favorite artists. As a lover of marketing and the art of the sale, I was especially intigued how this model has worked over and over again  for various entertainers and how with just a bit of out of the box thinking these same techniques can work for you. Check them out and see if you agree. Post your thoughts ~ De

** If you don’t know who Lady Gaga is, you are probably living under a rock… her rise to fame can only be paralleled to her use of wacky, outrageous costumes used on stage which leaves me ’speechless’…

Here are my top 10 ways to market yourself successfully like Lady Gaga:

(1) Use a weird stage name. People will remember your name because you are unique. Otherwise, make it easy for others to remember.

(2) Have an inspiration. Lady Gaga is heavily inspired by David Bowie, Freddy Mercury (Queen), Madonna and Michael Jackson. Do you have an Internet idol you can follow and emulate?

(3) Learn to JV with top marketers and leverage on their brand and credibility. You may have to do ‘more’ work on your part because your partner is already established, but it will launch you to success quickly.

Gaga has opened for acts such as New Kids On The Block and The Pussycat Dolls. That’s good ‘JV’ if you asked me…

(4) Do something crazy and outrageous in your business. Gaga worn a costume made out of an entire collection of Kermit the Frogs! (ooh… the poor Kermits murdered for fashion) People will remember who you are!

(5) You must constantly promote your products! Gaga promoted herself like crazy working in all kinds of projects and world tours. And she’s only 23. If you wanna make it big in Internet marketing, let others know who you are!

(6) Succeed by appealing to the crowds! You have to give the market what they want. Lady Gaga’s songs appeals to the dance and pop market – even though she is outrageous, she sings songs that people love to listen to. So should you.

(7) Make your products easy to slip into. If your products are NOT user friendly and requires rocket science knowledge, then you are not relating to your target market in a language they can understand.

Just take a look at Lady Gaga’s songs. She ain’t singing opera and most of her lyrics are so easy to sing and get into (imagine singing songs that goes ‘doo doo doo doop, just dance…’, ‘p-p-p-p-p-p-poker face…’ or ‘eh eh, nothing else I can say’ Don’t you think it’s easy for people to get into her music singing a lot of doo doo or eh eh?

(8) Be true to yourself! This one needs no explanation as most artistes are kings and
queens of expressing who they are – being authentic and letting people feel you. Do
your subscribers FEEL you?

(9) Use your creativity to BEAT the competition! Gaga has been compared to Madonna and Gwen Stefani. But that doesn’t stop her from making big bucks in her industry with others like her around…. In your Internet marketing business, do you out maneuver your competitors with your wit or are you drowning with them?

(A picture of a Malaysian dish called ‘Rojak’ – Means fusion, mixture or anything…)

(10) This is the MOST IMPORTANT point of all! Gaga is the queen of Fusionizing her music!

She combines her glam rock influence with techno/pop music to create a powerful fusion of outrageous, yet mainstream and listenable songs that ANYONE can get into!

You have to learn to combine HOT niche markets together and you will arrive at the
best product with maximum exposure and NO competition! 

Original post: Khai on 8 Jan 2010 (Check out his posts. He’s awesome)

Tweet This Post

Because identifying busyness may be relatively straightforward  but treating it can be much more difficult!

This is a great article I found and believe would be quite helpful to you as you are grow within your career. I know that I was guilty of this ’busyness’ thing and only broke free once I realized that I wasn’t making any money! lol 

We see it around us. Maybe a co-worker or employee who always looks like their doing something but really has nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Sometimes it can be used as an excuse to not become part of the system – a form of rebellion.  It can easily serve as a  way to feel you do have control within a crazy life. 

Read below and let me know what you think and if it applies to you. Also, share any tips you have to help improve the lives of those afflicted with ‘busyness’ ~De  

In our article: Time Management at Work, we defined busyness and discussed ways to identify it in the workplace. Busyness, or “time spent doing unnecessary or unproductive work”, is a real drain on any organization’s resources.

This article offers our top tips on time management, to help you reduce busyness in your workplace. Because, as Peter Drucker said:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Recognising Busyness?
Firstly, let’s briefly remind you what busyness looks like. Our common features of busyness included:

Doing well what doesn’t need to be done;
Allowing other people’s agendas;
Doing “nice” work;
Confusing fat for muscle;
Displacement activity;
Doing bits and pieces;
Meetings!;
Procrastination;
Indecision;
Cluttered work;
Lack of priority not lack of time.

Replacing Busyness With Real Work

Whilst diagnosing busyness may be relatively straightforward, treating it can be much more difficult. However, time spent dealing with the waste generated by busyness is an invaluable investment.
People may be engaged in busyness for several reasons. It may be because they feel obliged to. Perhaps busyness is the inevitable result of routine, or custom and practice, especially in a culture which doesn’t encourage change or constructive criticism in its workforce. Or it may be a reaction to negative or authoritarian management practices. Eradicating busyness in these instances will require a change in management attitude.

Arguably a more serious problem may arise if removing busyness requires a change in staff attitude. Employees may have become accustomed to busyness through (bad) habit, or through laziness (it’s easier than thinking and changing). However busyness may also hide underpinning issues such as poor morale, inadequate or under-developed skills or a mis-match between the job requirement and staff ability. Either way, line managers need to find a way to discourage busyness and replace it with effectiveness, and this may not be easy.

Those who prefer the comfort of busyness to the challenge of effectiveness may be resistant to change. Some people can actually be very effective at being busy. Strategies for preserving busyness include:

Camouflage it! – hiding the true nature or (poor) value of work being done.
The buck starts here! – blaming other people for what’s being done, or what’s not being done.
Obstruct it! – stopping other people from effective working to protect the culture of busyness.
Maintain the status quo! – managing change by discouraging it.
Fudge it! – managers who set vague targets, give vapid feedback, or sanitise unpalatable results are encouraging busyness in themselves and their staff.

Do you find that you struggle with boss imposed activities which create busyness rather than effectiveness? We discuss this difficult but crucial area in our article: Boss Time Management: 10 Ways To Help Protect Your Own Time.

Our 10 Tips on Time Management: Replacing Busyness With Real Work
So, how do we deal with busyness? Before you can manage it in others you must first consider your own time management at work. Ask yourself four questions to clarify your own working practices:

Are your objectives clear, unambiguous and SMART? – specific, measurable, achieveable, relevant, time-bounded.

Is it clear which activities deliver results? – in relation to your objectives.

Does the task/activity need to be done? – does it add value to your organisation?

Does the activity do anything meaningful for your customer? – do they value it?

Then, when you are clear about the nature of the work, think about our remaining tips on time management. Put some practical steps in place to combat busyness:

Be clear about what you are doing – so that you can be clear about what you don’t need to do.

Ask “why”?, (nicely and often) – both of others asking you to do something, and of yourself in what you do.

Say “no”! – as often as is needed to keep busyness under control.

Prune and review regularly – stop busyness creeping in by remembering: anything run by human beings will tend towards complexity.

Don’t get too busy! If the day is filled with activity then it is too full.

Don’t confuse activity with productivity – or allow others to do so either.

Happiness Tips on Time Management
Another thing to remember is the importance of encouraging positive behaviour in the workplace. Replacing busyness with effectiveness in our own work practices is only the first step. Good managers will try to ensure this best practice is fostered thoughout the organisation. Read through this article again, but this time try focusing on busyness in relation to your colleagues, rather than in yourself. Then consider how you can change this by remembering the basics of happiness.

There are other tips on time management hidden in the field of positive psychology. Martin Seligman, considers that happiness and life satisfaction are achieved by attaining a balance between the pursuit of pleasure, engagement in relationships, and living a life of meaning or significance. In our opinion, removing entrenched attitudes to busyness can be achieved by fostering happiness in the workplace:

Promote pleasure – make work a pleasurable experience;

Encourage relationships – get to know your colleagues as people, not just employees;

Emphasise meaningful work – better time management at work can be achieved by stressing the benefits to be gained by doing meaningful work.

The dangers of meaningless work are well illustrated in this article from Timesonline: Forget Burnout, Boreout is the New Office Disease.

Finally, you might like to read a great story in our article: Benefits of Time Management. This may help you think about the real value of time, and whether this is reflected in the way you spend yours. It might be a good article to read after working through Time Management at Work. Perhaps it will help you identify where busyness has crept into your home life too.

We need to get busy in eradicating busyness, and releasing time and energy for the real work that delivers the real results. The rewards can be significant. Think about our tips on time management or you may just end up like Jerome K Jerome when he said:

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.”

Original Article on The Happy Manager… a better way to manage…

Tweet This Post

As I grabbed for a shampoo in aisle three of my local grocery store, my eyes rested on the label. Using words like “gentle,” healthy” and “normal,” this shampoo promised me balance.

Balance.

Must be good, right?

I continued down the aisle, with my promise of balance safely inside the wagon, thinking:
But…what is it?

Not literally what is it (“a state of equilibrium”), but when it comes to our lives, our work, our realities–what does balance look and feel like? And, would we know it if it hit us in the face?

From our businesses to our lives to our hair–yes, our hair!–we are working quite hard to find, achieve and harness (in a bottle, even) this elusive balance.

Yet, the most successful people I know, work with, talk to and connect with are actually pretty darn imbalanced.

Yes, imbalanced.

As an entrepreneur, your life is your work and your work is your life. And your work is part of one big, sometimes-messy, generally imbalanced collage whose pieces work most beautifully together.

Here, then, is what you can consider your five-step plan for doing away with the pursuit of balance from your work, from your life and maybe even from your vocabulary:

1. Stop the Madness

Admit it, you spend a lot of time seeking balance or something related to it. (By “seeking balance,” I mean anything from adjusting your schedule to telling your kids to stay out of your home office
to desperately wishing for a vacation even to eating healthier and exercising.)

So work with the tide, not against it. Once you lose attachment to perfect balance, you’ll find that you’ve freed up a whole lot of time and energy you can now use for more productive, realistic, satisfying and/or profitable pursuits. 

2. No More Pretending

Here’s the thing: If you pretend you are all balanced and perfect, your clients will feel the need to do the same. As your clients feel the need to do the same, so too will your colleagues feel the need. Then your friends, your spouse, your kids, your next-door neighbor, the lady in the grocery store….and so on. 

Pretty soon, everyone is working pretty darn hard to pretend they have something that doesn’t exist. Lots of manpower, man hours and man-just-about-anything-else is being devoted to the pursuit of something that can’t be pursued because it isn’t real. 

Imagine a child (maybe yours) spending time looking for the actual human forms of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. What you would tell them about finding the meaning of those ideals, in real life, right here, right now?

3. Look Within

Look around. Do people seem frazzled and stressed out or calm and balanced? The ones who are out of sorts are generally the ones trying to be, do and manage the impossible.

The ones who seem satisfied and smooth; they are the ones who have the most realistic expectations of themselves and of others. They understand what is possible, and what is impossible. Your perfect state of imbalance will come from within, not from modeling yourself after what or whom you think you should or need to be. 

4.   Welcome Yourself Back to Reality

Reality is right here. It is what exists in this moment–on your balance sheet, in your email, on your website, on your “To Do” list.

Focus on that reality. When you think about “balance,” get clear on what the result of that balance would be. You can have that, whether “it” is more money, a more efficient business, additional free time or anything else. Once you start looking at things as they really are, you will begin to get and have more of what you want.

5. Pat Yourself on the Back

The unsaid but underlying idea of seeking something you don’t have (like balance) is that you are lacking in some area, that you need to catch up, that you aren’t making the grade.

With this mindset, surely you will get more of the same. So instead of this theme of failure to achieve something like balance, why not remind yourself often that you are doing a great job? Instead of wondering why you haven’t achieved something that may not really exist, embrace what you have accomplished continue making amazing things from the “raw material” that is you.

Original Article By Allison Nazarian/Entrepreneur Magazine 

Tweet This Post

Check out these inspiring words. They may be just what you need as you push through the day. (Forgive a couple of adult terms & embrace the passion behind the message) Have an awesome weekend! ~De

Posted on YouTube

Tweet This Post