News By Tom Brownsword

I recently joined Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K A Day membership site. I’m glad that I did. There’s a great forum there, lots of great support, and everybody is focused on helping you get your first $1,000 day — with many happy returns.

While I won’t go into details, I actually have had a $1,000 day, long before I joined, but I need more consistency in my business and finally decided to join about a month ago.

I’m glad that I did so when I did — because Dennis just announced that the price will soon go up. Dennis has recently brought on some people to help him run the site (a very good business continuity practice, by the way), plus signed the ink on a deal to provide yet another membership site free of charge (and this one makes 1K A Day good for even people who are new to online business building. Dennis has discouraged so-called “newbies” from joining in the past).

Here’s what’s included in your membership to Earn 1K A Day now:

• The superb (and active) member forum.
• Lots of free downloads courtesy of Dennis. And I do mean LOTS! Some are just for your use, but there are several that you can resell, depending on the license.
• Membership to Super Simple Marketing. This is the new addition and normally costs $27 a month if you purchase it on your own (you can click on these links to verify my claims). This is the membership that’s designed to help newcomers and helps fill out the gaps in Dennis’ site.
• Membership to Instant Cash Generators. This one will normally cost you $9.95 a month.
• Free access to Sell Your Writing Online. This also costs $9.95 a month on its own.

You can get all this, which would normally costs you $46.90 a month — PLUS access to Earn 1K A Day — for just $29.95 a month — IF you sign up before the pending price increase (which I think will happen sometime after the first of the month (July)).

If you decide to order using my links, please let me know by putting in a ticket at my Help Desk. While I can’t think of anything to add to Dennis’ excellent site, if you’ll put in a ticket with your forum userid, I’ll keep an eye out for you and do my best to help if you need it. I’ll also give you 30 days of no-cost access to my coaching site (which will be launching soon) — no credit card required (no forced continuity).

Again, if you want to get in on this incredible deal before the price increase, click here now to sign up. It will still be a great value after the price increase — but why pay more than you have to? And even if you cancel after a month, the materials that Dennis will give you (which includes his Five Dollars A Day Course) will be worth much more than the $29.95 you’ll pay for one month’s worth of access.

Thanks for listening,
Tom

P.S. — For blog announcement list subscribers: I’m not going to send an email on this post. While I strongly believe in the value and want to get the word out before the price increase to save you money, it is, in a way, a promotional post. If I should have sent it anyway, please leave a comment or send me an email (just hit “Reply” to my most recent blog announcement post email) to let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

I’ve been listening to Brian Tracy’s “The Psychology of Selling” for the past several weeks as I’ve been driving about. I’ve listened to the complete set at least ten times now and will continue to listen to them until I can either quote them in my sleep or the tapes fall apart (in which case I’ll send them back for replacements; Nightingale Conant offers a lifetime replacement warranty!).

One of the reasons for listening to these tapes so many times is that I often miss stuff the first time around. As you listen, you hear something that you want to think about for a while. Of course, while you’re doing this, you ignore what’s currently playing, so replaying the tapes can be quite valuable. You also need help with different things at different times in your life and career, so even if you think that you’ve obtained maximum benefit from something, dusting it off after a year or so can result in even more benefit from a tape set. In my case, it can take me many times before I realize something anyway, which is why I really want to practically memorize these tapes.

Another reason I’m obsessed with this tape set is that, as Brian says on the tapes, nothing happens until a sale takes place. That’s one reason why I don’t particularly care for the “Internet Marketing” term. It’s about business. It’s about sales. Marketing plays a role, but nothing happens until a sale takes place. So why do we put so much emphasis on marketing?

Internet Selling, anybody? Would that make me an Internet Selling-er?

People also have to like you and trust you before they’ll buy from you. So we need to communicate. They also usually don’t buy until after the fifth contact. Email is important, as is a blog. And so forth and so on. There’s just so much in this set that can help people like us as we work on our websites and business.

And these tapes are over 20 years old! Wonder if they have an updated version?

But moving on to the main point of this post, Brian also said on those tapes that people procrastinate in sales for one reason: fear of rejection. Instead of getting out in front of prospects, they’ll do anything and everything to avoid making contact because most people will reject their offer. They engage in non-selling “busy work” — checking email, checking messages, whatever — to avoid getting in front of a live human being who is qualified to make a purchase decision.

That’s the first thing that I want to point out. The reason for rejection is not what you might think it is. When people reject your offer, they are not rejecting you personally! Your offer is just “too” — too expensive, too complex, too unnecessary… In other words, your offer is not right for them.

But fear of rejection is the flip side of procrastination. Sales people procrastinate because they do not want to face the possibility of rejection, all the time ignoring the fact that the end result is the same: no sales. And if they did face rejection, somebody might actually say “yes”…

Of course, this also ties to those of us working to build an online business. In my opinion, we procrastinate because of fear of failure — but the difference between sales rejection and Internet business rejection is subtle yet distinct.

In our case (for those of us working to build an online business), our fear is not so much one of rejection; instead, it’s a fear that what we’ve been taught won’t work. Why write those articles? Why build that website? Why create that product? Why attend those live events? Why join that membership site? Why do anything, we say? It won’t work!

This “thinking” is, in many cases, completely unfounded. How do we know it won’t work? On what do we base our opinions? Have we personally tried it? Do we have first-hand knowledge of somebody who tried it and failed? If we do, what factors led to their failure? Or does it simply seem to be so unbelieveable that we write it off as improbable?

(NOTE: Following a proven plan will work. Keep reading for a place to get some “proven plans” that have worked for others.)

At any rate, the end result is the same. Instead of doing the things that will put money in our pockets, we do stuff like hang out at forums, do “research”, and flit from one idea and system to the next, never completing a single thing and never giving ourselves the opportunity to learn that something will work. We are always seeking but never learning what truly works.

In other words, my theory (not very eloquently stated!) is that we procrastinate because we truly fear that what we are doing won’t work. Like the sales person who fears rejection, we fear working on ideas that we think won’t make us any money. As a result, we have guaranteed failure before we’ve even tried anything.

Is there a solution? Yes! As I mentioned above, simply follow a proven plan and your odds of success are grealy enhanced (but nobody can guarantee it).

I recently joined Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K A Day membership site. Now in my opinion, Dennis isn’t one of these flashy “Gee, look at me rake in the big bucks” kind of goo-roos. If anything, Dennis would qualify as a “do-ru”, but a flashy goo-roo?

Nope.

But the membership site is solid. Great ideas, lots of extras to help you build your business — and all at one affordable monthly price. It also includes a copy of Dennis’ Five Bucks A Day report. The goal of that is to get you think of ways that you can earn five dollars a day, then focus on one of those ideas each and every week. While the report itself is awesome, joining the Earn 1K A Day membership site will drop you smack dab in the middle of an incredibly supportive community that will make the job easier.

But the biggest part of the whole thing is focus, and by joining the membership site, you’ll be able to bounce ideas off of people who have journeyed down the road to success before you. Remember, these are people who, like Dennis, are too busy working and being successful to act like a flashy goo-roo — but isn’t that what you want? Wouldn’t you rather bounce your money making idea off of a bunch of people who, from experience, will have a good idea of whether your idea will work? While it won’t guarantee success, it can certainly help you avoid an obvious failure (if you are teachable and willing to listen), and if you know that something has a chance of winning, won’t you be more inclined to work on it instead of procrastinating?

So is Earn 1K A Day the cure for procrastination? I won’t go so far as to say that, but if you dump the other stuff you have and work on that, it most certainly can help — if you let it.

So I’m glad to add Earn 1K A Day membership site to the list of business building membership sites that I can recommend. And I’d love to see you on the inside, with Dennis and me (and a lot of other people).

Buy some “failure insurance”, so to speak, and take a positive step towards healing yourself of your fatal case of “procrastinationitis” today.

OK, I’m starting to sound like a copywriter, I’ll stop!

Thanks for listening,
Tom

P.S. — I don’t see anything about a guarantee on the sales page, but since you’ll be signing up for your subscription with ClickBank, YOU are in control and can cancel it at any time. At most, you risk one month’s worth of membership fees — and the forum is full of valuable downloads that are worth far more than that. So why not give it a try?

Here’s that link again: Click here to join Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K A Day membership site

NOTE: My eyes are doing weird things as I finish this post, making proofreading difficult… I reserve the right to later edit this post. Thanks for understanding!

I had the pleasure of meeting Eric Holmlund at Underground IV back in March. Thankfully, I was even able to share the bonus dinner and scavenger hunt with him on my team and had the opportunity to talk to him for a bit.

Eric is truly a nice guy. He showed up with his family (wife and children), which speaks volumes to a family guy like me (and it made me miss my children!). He’s also very soft-spoken and came across as humble to me and is willing to put up with a bit of abuse for a good reason (perhaps I’m revealing too much here…). I truly enjoyed talking to him and feel blessed that I was able to spend an evening of my life with people like him and Joel Comm.

I also appreciate Eric’s newsletter and blog. He’s definitely approachable and listens to people, and as a result, he’s changing the focus of his Internet business. As he puts it in a recent email to his list, he’s going to quit Internet Marketing.

Yes, Eric Holmlund is quitting Internet Marketing — and I’m looking forward to it. Why? Because he’s promised a series of lessons (free to his readers) to help them build their Internet business (so click on that link and sign up for his newsletter). Beyond that, I want to see the direction he takes to earn money to support himself and his family.

I also like his reasons for doing this (they are listed on his blog), and from my brief personal encounter with Eric and from being a long-time subscriber to his newsletter (and I actually do read his blog), I truly believe them to be sincere.

So I’m looking forward to watching you as you embark on a new road, Eric, and I definitely wish you the best. Just don’t disappear completely, please…

Best regards,
Tom

As I get deeper into the ebook I talked about in the last post, I realize that I need to make myself available to people. I listened to some bad advice and made myself “hard to find”, in a way. I think that this “run and hide” mentality is a part of “Internet Marketing-itis”, and part of the “cure” for that is to make myself available.

Real business owners don’t run and hide when a customer walks into their store, do they? Well, if I’m going to run an Internet-based business, I need to be available.

So here’s what you can do if you want to ask me a question: simply go to my Help Desk at Protector Support and open a ticket. We can talk there. And I’ll deal with abuse if and when it becomes abuse.

If you want paid consultation or some type of coaching (or as I put it, “answers requiring thought or research”), I’ll soon have a solution for that available, too.

I’ll add the link to my help desk / contact system, as well as the link to the “paid” solution, to the main page of my blog soon. You can get there from any page on my blog by simply clicking on the big headline at the top of the page that says, “News By Tom Brownsword“.

One more thing: Scott describes a way to cut through the garbage when dealing with a guru. Without going into details, I’ll simply say that it looks like he practices what he preaches. I put him to a little test and he came through with flying colors… So get that ebook, OK (and help children in the process; see my previous post)?

http://www.theinternetmarketingcure.com/go.php/93303

Now back to the book again…

Thanks for listening,
Tom

P.S. — Correction to my previous post; Scott Boulch isn’t using aWeber; he’s using some other system — but based on my past experience, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t honor unsubscribe requests. And all of this is “initial reaction” — this whole thing could turn out to be a business model I can’t endorse — but it is kind of fun just blogging by the seat of my pants, isn’t it?

As a user of Google Mail, I have a Spam folder. Google does a pretty good job of putting the spam there while delivering the good stuff to the right place. They are also constantly tweaking it and do make the occasional goof, but tend to learn very quickly. As an example, an email that Mike Filsaime sent to his lists recently went into the Spam folder, but a simple click on the “Not Spam” button took care of that (and presumably let Google know that I asked for email from Mike).

One quick side note: If you asked for email from somebody, it’s not spam. If you no longer want email from that person, click on the unsubscribe link or follow the instructions to be removed from the list. If they refuse to honor your request, THEN it is spam.

But back to the topic at hand… The Profit Prophecy.

Another email just popped into my spam box that was entitled, “Dear Fellow Profit Seeker”.

That person isn’t going to be around for long in this business, and it’s EXACTLY that kind of attitude that will ensure your eventual failure in business.

First, it’s spam, plain and simple. That person did not have permission to email me; in fact, I think I feel like doing a spam slap today…! That person either scraped my email address somewhere along the line or some unscrupulous marketer violated their own terms of service by selling my email address as a “verified opt in” or some such nonsense. I know of at least one person who does this and it’s in his terms that he does this; however, when I signed up for his list, it wasn’t.

Read those terms of service. I even go so far as to save a copy and have pulled them out to complain before. There was even one case (Dr. Andy Williams) where I said that I wanted to purchase something from him but wouldn’t because his terms were too one-sided — and he changed his terms. I’m now his customer (and he makes some great stuff, too… Look him up sometime!). On the other hand, I’m in the midst of another situation right now where an individual whom I respected and admired has chosen to use some very sharp terms on one of his sites and is now using them to slap me in the face when I need help. The result? He’s no longer allowed in my Inbox and I’ve also canceled another membership site of his that had decent Terms. And I’ll be talking about that once the situation is cleared and I have the final word.

So the first problem with this spammer was the fact that it was spam. But the second reason was even more insidious…

“Dear Fellow Profit Seeker”. THAT is a sure road to business failure.

Your goal in business shouldn’t be to solely get profits. In fact, I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t SEEK profits at all.

So what should you be doing? You should be seeking to provide value, and in the process exchange value for value.

In in Internet-based business that sells digital products, this is extremely easy. For example, let’s say that I create a video course that shows you how to back up your WordPress blog’s database automatically and how to upgrade WordPress software in less than a minute. If you were to hire a consultant to set this up and teach you how to do it, you’d probably be facing at least a $200 fee (for two hours of service).

Would a video like that be worth, say, $25 of your cash?

You get the information for 12.5% of what it would otherwise cost you (IF the consultant knows my system; otherwise it might cost you more for fancy software). You get at least $200 worth of value for a fraction of the cost. And because I can sell it to more than one person, I’ll also win because I delivered value. And instead of having to perform $200 installs until the cows come home, I can do the video course once and sell it many times, freeing my time to do other things.

Will I profit? Yes. So will you if you choose to purchase the course (incidentally, this isn’t a hypothetical exercise; I will be releasing such a course soon). But my goal isn’t JUST to make a profit; my goal is to provide an incredible value to you that will help you protect your blog, your website, and your business.

My purpose is to help you succeed by protecting what you’ve worked hard to build. In the course of doing so, I can make a profit. But simply seeking a profit isn’t looking out for you, and those who get into the “make money online” racket without understanding that you MUST offer something of value in exchange for value aren’t going anywhere. Instead, they’ll just find their wallets being sucked dry by others who are better at it than they.

So that’s my Profit Prophecy: If you’re just after profits in your online activities, you aren’t going to go anywhere but down. Instead, offer value so that you’ll get value in return.

Thanks for listening,
Tom