Should I end up forgoing a couple of small projects and focus on www.businessteligence.com, I’ll post samples of the Camtasia produced videos.

Cheers!

This is one of those cases where the problem I am sweating my mind over is really a good problem to have rather than having no projects at all. A Positive Problem.

From experience, the biggest mistake I can do right now is to haphazardly make a quick decision. I will sleep over it and make a final decision over the weekend. I am definitely sure I will finish www.businessteligence.com. I am just not sure if I do it now or after the 2 extra projects.

Cheers!

° Questions and Answers on 90 Days of StomperNet

I thought it was a big no no to go silent for a long time with Blogs as this would cause your readership to drop. Why the big hiatus?

You are absolutely correct. It is a big No No. Nothing kills readership more than long lay offs. In my case, I could have done that. But for me, it was a choice between juggling a couple of tasks within a 24-hour day and doing a less than good job on all of them. Or focusing on getting a single task done one at a time to the best of one’s ability. I chose the latter and had to make the call on which of the tasks get priority over the other.

Did you get the job done on your project?
It was a close shave but Yes!

Hmmm… now that I’ve sat down on it. All of the other questions are questions on when will I get back. I guess this post answers that effectively.

I’ve updated the timer to reflect current reality. And I’m going through my notes. Amazing how a month away from the task can suddenly make your own written notes seem like a stranger wrote them and the connections between concepts and ideas you’ve formed back then don’t come as easily as now.

Cheers!

Cheers!

A challenging December 15 deadline with my main consulting project has taken over most of my free time. Rather than give you half-baked postings, I choose to put this on hold till the 15th of this month. I’ll adjust the countdown timer accordingly.

Sorry guys, I’m going to go via the Blizzard route on this. Blizzard is the Gaming company that held back the release of a game title for a year just so they can get a quality product out. They ended up earning Millions each month from one of their releases, World Of Warcraft. It’s only a week, so hold on to your seats.

On the off chance that I finish the deadline earlier than the 15th of this month. I can inform you guys of the earlier restart of this Blog. Just send me a note through the Contact Us page under About on your upper-right.

Lastly, thanks for those nice messages on the image describing a road block on Day 48. I got it from www.morguefile.com. It’s a good place to get royalty-free images.

Cheers!

The Threats

The Holidays. So much of the holidays is family-oriented in nature. With my family being the main reason why I am pushing myself hard to complete this website, I am hard-pressed to say no to them when they ask for little escapes as a family. I really feel guilty that I have to call them escapes. But that is what they have turned out to be. I keep convincing myself that I am paying my dues to make this work.

The Videos. Undoubtedly, this is the task that is eating so much of my time the past several days. I am still not satisfied with the videos I am producing. They lack the professional feel to it. And it is so obviously a home-made video. I am starting to think maybe it is the equipment. I’m specifically looking at getting additional lighting equipment. I’m thinking its those shadows that don’t appear on professionally made videos that is the issue.

Writer’s Block. I’ve been having more of these lately. It might be related to the holidays. I am actually getting by on a technique I picked up from one of Ross Goldberg’s lessons on what to do when you have writer’s block. It oftentimes works. But on the really bad days of writer’s block, I don’t think even having someone over my shoulder dictating what to write will get me to write anything. On those days, what I do is take to bed early but then wake up earlier in the morning to write.

Farmville. Ach! Confession time. A friend of mine introduced me to Farmville. For a couple of days, I was hooked till I figured out how to have Farmville go on auto-pilot for 2-4 days without any interaction from me. Nowadays, an hour every 2 or 4 days is not a steep price to pay for the mental reset it gives me. Farmville actually gave me a small Eureka moment. But this is something I cannot apply to BusinessTeligence today. It is a futue application and totally dependent on BusinessTeligence being finished when the countdown timer reaches zero.

Complaints. Complaints… Complaints. So where is the much vaunted, turn-threats-into-opportunities that you try so hard to live by Chris?

The Opportunities

Farmville is the easiest to turn into an opportunity. But it is a future application as mentioned above.

Regarding writer’s block, I’ve come to know myself as a writer better because of this experience. During those times that I am in the groove. I’ve started to write ahead. I started writing 3 or 4 postings ahead as a buffer for when the blocks come. When the blocks come, I don’t even waste time struggling to get something out anymore. I just get something from my postings buffer and immediately proceed to doing other tasks like the videos.

On Videos… My continual queries on how to do videos has opened a new network for me. When asked what I do for a living besides bug them about videos, I tell them about my BusinessTeligence venture and sometimes end up getting promises of their spreading the word about my work.

Finally the Holidays. It is all about mindset. I’ve stopped looking at it as a reason for me not to do the work. Instead, I look at it as a reason for me to keep working. Spending time with the most important people in your life during the holidays deposits fuel to my weary body.

Cheers!

For those who have not heard of Article Spinning, Article Spinning is getting an Article then changing some of its words with synonyms or whole sentences with similar sentences. The goal is to produce as many articles as you can from a single article. I know of some who produce over a hundred spun articles from a single original.

The main benefit of spun articles is the back link that one gets wherever a spun article is posted. The second benefit is that it is almost impossible for Google to identify a spun article especially if the spun article is still humanly readable. So Google would be hard pressed to penalize those who spin articles.

So does this mean that I don’t like spun articles?
Yes, before studying Internet Marketing, I was a regular Joe who searched the Internet for answers too. I’m sure you will agree to the fact that the Internet is full of clutter.

Will this keep my competitors from spinning articles?
Probably not. The lure of getting back links is too much.

Will I spin my articles?
If I had the funds for it, I will not spin articles. But because I am a one-man band right now, it is a daily struggle. I have not done any spinning so far. But believe me when I say that it is not only a struggle but a great temptation. If you look under the heading, “How We Help Businesses”, you will see Automated Intelligence Gathering. The skill set I use to provide this service can easily be used to automate Article Spinning. Like Barack Obama refusing to address Race issues early in his campaign, I too continue to refuse to address Article Spinning.

Will this cripple my business goals?
Yes.

Just because Google doesn’t currently penalize spun articles doesn’t make it right. I’m sure if Google could properly identify spun articles, they would penalize it. The worst part of it is that some article spinners even spin articles that they didn’t write. They get other people’s writings and spin it and pretend they are the authors. Don Crowther, a really good StomperNet faculty, had his article spun. It came out like this:

“I connote you could note a PhD dissertation on the area as well as 1000s pass through prior to now meaning this issue may well be 175,000 pages and as a minimum 25 suitable Promoting Book Books also 10,000 case studies in the whole lot Industries with sub-sectors. Except to Don’s credit he has been able to summarize this moderately nicely into a minute piece of writing.”

It is an extreme example. But the best way for me to convey why I don’t like spun articles.

Cheers!

Cheers!
Chris

Here is a list of the changes they suggested I make:

1. Make the font smaller for the Countdown clock.
2. Make the countdown more like a digital clock font.
3. Change Sun-Tzu’s Quote font to match the image of the two swordsmen fighting.
4. Add a Phone Number and if possible a timezone converter.
5. Remove the Captcha.
6. Just use Name instead of First Name & Last Name for the Newsletter signup.
7. Juggernaut is not understandable to everyone. Too bad, I really liked the wordplay of the J’s with the phrase, “Jumpstart The Juggernaut.”

So far, I have accomplished numbers 2, 6 and 7.

I have also consulted with the InfusionSoft representative assigned to me. She gave me 2 additional insights:

1. Put everything I can think of to entice the reader to sign-up.
2. The website targets business owners. But I can also target decision makers who are not owners to increase net I cast.

I’ll be working on all the other changes tomorrow. Besides the review on my website, we were given a quick lesson on time management.

I gave a good review for the first Masteminding session. And deservedly so.

But this is the second  session and is two weeks later. So there is a different level of expectations at this point. Time and again, I have stated that this will be an honest review of StomperNet. Some alarm bells rang while I was with my Mastermind Group. It is just that at this point, almost 2 months after they launched Stomper999 where the Incubator program falls under, the Masterminding module does not seem to have fleshed out yet. 2 weeks ago, we were told that each Mastermind Group would have their own private little area in the community forums so we can feel comfortable sharing our ideas. This has not materialized yet. Also accountability is one of the goals of Masterminding in addition to ensuring that we do things in the right order.

I had imagined that we would have something like, “Okay Chris… Two weeks ago, you presented these problems to us and we gave you the following recommendations. How did they work out?” Something along those lines to get accountability in there.

Or maybe a white board on screen where it will be shown that, “Chris, for your business model, this is the usual roadmap. You are right about here and these are the paths you can take. From experience, there will probably be forks in the road here, here and here. You have until this task before you have to decide which fork to take. By our next Masterminding, you should be around here already.”

Cheers!

Dear Jeff in case you are reading this. This is just me trying to pick up lessons from your emails as per request by a reader. I have never taken your Product Launch Formula Course. But in all honesty, I wish I could.

Dear Readers, since I didn’t take Jeff’s course, feel free to add your thoughts on Product Launching to help our asker.

OK, I’ve got to be quick… the midnight deadline
is just a few hours away. This is NEW and
something I’ve NEVER done…

This is the deal – over the last week (not to
mention years) I’ve published one Case Study that
I did with “regular” people who did successful
launches in “regular” businesses.

Unfortunately, due to the new FTC guidelines going
into effect tomorrow (December 1st), I’m going to
have to pull those Case Studies off my web site.

So this is the NEW… up to know I’ve allowed
people to watch those videos, but I haven’t put up
download links.

Well, I just CHANGED that policy.

You can NOW go ahead and DOWNLOAD the Case
Studies… but you’ve only got about 8 hours or
so. Here’s the link:

CLICK HERE to DOWNLOAD my Case Studies

REMEMBER: you have to download them before 12:00
midnight Mountain time TONIGHT (Monday, November
30th).

ONE MORE THING: If you want to register for
Product Launch Formula, well… the deadline is
fast approaching. I’m closing registration on that
TONIGHT as well. You’ve got about eight hours or
so. Here’s the link:

CLICK HERE for PLF registration page

best regards,
Jeff

P.S. I’m sorry to be so hardcore on this. But it’s
out of my control. The deadline was basically
created by the change in the FTC guidelines.

And to tell the truth, it’s hard to pull these
Case Studies down… they’re like old friends. In
fact, most of the people that I met through these
Case Studies have become friends… they often
send me updates about what they’re doing and how
their business is going.

Unfortunately, it’s time to move on…

P.P.S. In case you missed this, I added three new
bonuses to sweeten the deal for Product Launch
Formula:

1. The videos from my sold-out $5,000
per person Product Launch Live Workshop.

2. Front-of-the-Line Product Launch Software (used
in launches that did $3 million in sales.)

3. Your own custom hand-picked Mastermind Group
setup.

You get these extra bonuses if you register, but
you need to do it by midnight on Monday, November 30th:

CLICK HERE for PLF registration page

—pl20.nu2.3—

Internet Alchemy, Inc. P O Box 1854, Bayfield, CO 81122

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?rGyMLAxstCycnKyMHCxstEa0rBxMLEycDA==

Okay, here goes:

OK, I’ve got to be quick… the midnight deadline
is just a few hours away. This is NEW and
something I’ve NEVER done…

What is obvious here is the Expiry Date of the offer.

What is not so obvious here is that he is emphasizing that this is a truly unique offer by saying that it is new and never done before. How powerful is that? On the first 3 lines, he establishes a short but very unique window of opportunity for you. This powerful concept can be applied to any product even one’s that are very different to Product Launching.

This is the deal – over the last week (not to
mention years) I’ve published one Case Study that
I did with “regular” people who did successful
launches in “regular” businesses.

He establishes authority by mentioning that it has been years and Social proof that his system works for regular people.

Unfortunately, due to the new FTC guidelines going
into effect tomorrow (December 1st), I’m going to
have to pull those Case Studies off my web site.

Please read Day 38 of my Diary. You’ll see why I admire Jeff for his approach to the threat of new FTC Guidelines.

So this is the NEW… up to know I’ve allowed
people to watch those videos, but I haven’t put up
download links.

Well, I just CHANGED that policy.

You can NOW go ahead and DOWNLOAD the Case
Studies… but you’ve only got about 8 hours or
so. Here’s the link:

CLICK HERE to DOWNLOAD my Case Studies

He needed another reason why he sent you this email besides the other reason which is sales.

REMEMBER: you have to download them before 12:00
midnight Mountain time TONIGHT (Monday, November
30th).

Emphasize Expiry Date.

ONE MORE THING: If you want to register for
Product Launch Formula, well… the deadline is
fast approaching. I’m closing registration on that
TONIGHT as well. You’ve got about eight hours or
so. Here’s the link:

CLICK HERE for PLF registration page

A quick, short sales insert. You might even fail to notice it but these are directions on what steps he hopes you take next. A longer, more detailed sales section is below.

best regards,
Jeff

P.S. I’m sorry to be so hardcore on this. But it’s
out of my control. The deadline was basically
created by the change in the FTC guidelines.

Jeff is reinforcing the expiry date and another reason why for this email. He is prepping for a more detailed sales section below – the other reason why.

And to tell the truth, it’s hard to pull these
Case Studies down… they’re like old friends. In
fact, most of the people that I met through these
Case Studies have become friends… they often
send me updates about what they’re doing and how
their business is going.

Four things here:

1. I’m not sure if there is an official marketing term for this. Let’s just call it Camaraderie. Jeff is indirectly giving the message once in, you become part of a select group.
2. More proof that Product Launch Formula works
3. He is asking for testimonials. Though admittedly, I am confused by this because the FTC guidelines are putting the choke on this.
4. He wants you to keep in touch or stay on his list.
   

Unfortunately, it’s time to move on…

P.P.S. In case you missed this, I added three new
bonuses to sweeten the deal for Product Launch
Formula:

1. The videos from my sold-out $5,000
per person Product Launch Live Workshop.

2. Front-of-the-Line Product Launch Software (used
in launches that did $3 million in sales.)

3. Your own custom hand-picked Mastermind Group
setup.

You get these extra bonuses if you register, but
you need to do it by midnight on Monday, November 30th:

The above gives you Jeff’s Unique Value Proposition. This is the Sales part.

Internet Alchemy, Inc. P O Box 1854, Bayfield, CO 81122

To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?rGyMLAxstCycnKyMHCxstEa0rBxMLEycDA==

If aweber is good enough for a successful person like Jeff, then it has to be good enough for us as well.

To the asker, all the best on your Product Launch.

Cheers!

° StomperNet’s Day 43 post is about my finally producing a video for this website.

° StomperNet’s Day 44 takes apart the Anatomy of a Pre-Launch Email .

The follower may have even read more about both paths and yet he questions or fears choosing one over the other. The leader takes stock of what he knows, maybe even asks the follower about what he knows about the two paths. He then makes the decision to choose which path to take and plunges head long by taking the first step. That’s the Essence of Leadership.

Where does Competitive Intelligence fit into all this? It fits into all of it.

The Dilemma

In the case of our simple story above, the dilemma is the fork in the road. Which one should they take if neither knows which path leads to?

In real world situations, these dilemmas can be anything from:

• How can we deliver our products quicker?
• What is my competitor up to?
• Should we purchase this company?
• Why are my products being returned?
• What do people say about my company and my products?

Gather Intelligence & Recommend

In the story, the leader takes what he knows about the 2 paths. He can opt to ask the follower what he knows. While he may have the Essence of a Leader, how he acts at this stage answers if he is a good leader or not.

In the real world, you might say that this is so obvious. The leader will always ask what he doesn’t know. That’s common sense. My answer is to repeat that this is a real world situation. Most people who start up are one-man bands or have at most 2-3 people including him. These 2 or 3 people do multiple roles for the start up company due to a limited budget. So this pressures them into not asking for people’s help simply because they don’t have the budget or the time for it.

Competitive Intelligence teaches that you should have knowledge of your company before knowing about your competitors. You will be surprised. Most actually proceed to knowing about their competitors first. In a low budget enterprise, knowing what you have should be first priority so you don’t expend resources getting answers from outside when you can get the answers freely from the inside.

For one-man bands, identify your reach. What are the expertise of your friends. What communities do they belong to? That is your reach. Sometimes you would hear people say,

• “I could have helped you out on that if you had let me know”.
• “Sorry, I forgot you were into these things. I had a lot on my mind.”

Or

• “Why didn’t you tell me? I know this guy we could ask. He knows these things in his sleep.”
• “Oh man. That would have saved me a lot of time. I could have done more of something else.”

For two to three person start ups, the same conversation pieces above applies. Just substitute the both talkers with the members of the start up company. This actually hurts more as you are talking about your partners. But this still happens. This is because when you are already stressed about meeting a big deadline, these things understandably escape your mind. So having it in writing or stored in a computer file along their contact info would be a quick and easy investment of time at the beginning. When the company grows big enough, a more sophisticated Competitive Intelligence system could be implemented.

Recommend and Decide

When the information has all been gathered from himself and the follower. The leader analyzes and decides on which path to take and walks on.

In the real world, specially now with the Internet, Leaders or Managers often get stacks of reports. Information overload actually has the opposite effect to making a decision. It paralyzes.

Competitive intelligence doesn’t just collect information. It also calls for analysis and a recommendation. In the story above, since the follower has read more about the two paths, he should come out and recommend which path to take then give the reasons. If he just gives all the information to the leader, he will paralyze his leader or cause him to make the wrong decision. This is because the leader will not have the luxury of absorbing all the information at a comfortable pace. The follower had the luxury of absorbing the information so he must make the recommendation and justify then filter out all the rest. The leader listens, weighs the justification against what he knows and then decides which side to take.

The audio had an echo-filled, roomy feel to it. By roomy feel, it had background room noises. TV sound, my son doing his homework and even his asking me a question at one point when I paused thinking I had finished what I was doing. I have a lot of improving to do on this one but I got my feet wet and will know better next time.

I also got some feedback about attracting attention to key sentences within my paragraphs. The idea is to highlight those key sentences similar to us highlighting  important items in our books in school so we can easily find and read them. I did the highlighting by simply changing the text color to something other than the usual ash grey text in my website. The front page, the one with the countdown timer, has one as an example.

I’ve begun a blog on my product, Competitive Intelligence. The first post occured yesterday. I am still thinking if I am to post there daily or if I should wait till I finish Day 90 of StomperNet. It is my product so it should have more weight. I’m just starting to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish what I need done. There are just so many things to do.

The menu items have been completed except for sample reports. And I’ve added a What’s New section. Thank for this idea Peter. He suggested this because I have two blogs which will probably keep moving around and there are so many things happening to my website these days. A section to get readers up to speed quickly would be good compared to having them running around wondering where everything went.  More importantly, a big change like a new blog on my product might be missed altogether.

Tomorrow’s post will mostly be about a request on getting product launching tidbits from emails by Jeff Walker. The requester also finds the price out of reach so he is wondering if I can share what I can pick up out of Jeff’s emails.

Cheers!

° This What’s New Section itself only added today.

° The StomperNet Diary is on Day 42. The thought process behind videos as well as writing content for this website is shared.

° Except for Sample Reports, all other Menu Item links have been updated.

Benchmarking is a continuous process of measuring yourself against the best in order to improve. Author, Larry Kahaner best describes Benchmarking in 5 steps:

• Step 1: Identify what needs improvement in your company.
• Step 2: Identify best-in-class companies.
• Step 3: Measure your Company’s performance.
• Step 4: Measure the performance of other companies.
• Step 5: Use the information you learn to improve yourself.

Step 1: Identify what needs improvement in your company.

If you base it from a book, you would go out and get a picture of how things work within the company. Then get the thoughts of all the people involved on ways to maybe improve the operation.

From experience however, Competitive Intelligence should take into account that humbleness is an uncommon characteristic on most managers. Thoughts of, “I taught him everything he knows.” are human nature. While it is true that a manager trained or continuous to train the people under him, the manager and the trainee are two very different people so the insights they can arrive at are going to be different. While most insights maybe covered by the manager on account of his experience. It never hurts to get the insights of everyone under the manager as well.

The insights you collect from this step can either be complaints or suggestions for improvement.

This early, a way to improve operations may already be available from the company’s own personnel. A faster way of doing things maybe lurking in the minds of some of the trainees. This is application of Competitive Intelligence procedures within the company. After evaluating the suggestions for self-improvement, the complaints are analyzed to identify what needs improving in your company.

Here’s a tip from experience: If you find that you can get neither suggestions or complaints, you maybe facing a stagnant system or an unhappy, uncaring or unsupportive workforce. If it is the latter, then you have already identified a problem. If it is the stagnant system, then this is a red flag in Competitive Intelligence. Being stagnant is a symptom of decline or complacency.

Step 2: Identify best-in-class companies.

You now apply Competitive Intelligence to find out what the best-in-class companies are. A good Competitive Intelligence practitioner doesn’t just box himself with the company’s competition. He looks at it from all angles. An example works best: Motorola wanted to improve how fast they can get to delivery from the time a customer makes an order. Who do they turn to? A Pizza company: Domino’s.

Step 3: Measure your Company’s performance.

Here, Competitive Intelligence quantifies company-specific metrics so that you can measure yourself up against similar metrics of the best-in-class companies you identified in Step 2.

Step 4: Measure the performance of other companies.

From experience, the greatest danger in this step is that it becomes a pleasure trip to those in the company who are asked to join or help out in this step. A great deal of preparation must be made for this step to ensure that the information you collect will be focused. The mindset must be etched in stone that this trip was made with the purpose to work and not to go on a holiday.

Step 5: Use the information you learn to improve yourself.

The point to emphasize at this step is that Benchmarking is not being a copy-cat of the other company’s way of doing things. Think Star Trek Borg. Assimilate and make it your own by combining it with systems that you feel are still better than the other company’s.

Conclusion:

What happens now? Competitive Benchmarking is a continuous process. The next step is to establish these 5 steps into an ongoing program within your company. Keep using Competitive Intelligence on the best-in-class companies until all of the systems in your business become best-in-class themselves.

I really want to put videos on the right side but as of now, the Newsletter sign-up should work as a stand in for now. Thanks for those who signed up. I’m really working hard to produce an informative Newsletter on Tuesday.

If I wasn’t writing content for the Menu items or Newsletter, I was researching how best to produce videos. I’m pushing myself hard on this because I already know that producing videos is not my expertise. I don’t want to make the situation worse by not doing it the proper way in addition to not having the creative genes to produce a video. For the most part, I referred to StomperNet Incubator’s Day 26 lesson on videos by Sherman Hu. I also referred a lot to Sherman’s website, http://www.shermanlive.com/.

I got Sherman’s 5 video styles and eliminated the ones I cannot do. The Music Video style got eliminated because of budget. The Live Video and Newscaster Video styles were eliminated because admittedly, I do not have the Voice to pull it off. I think rich, full voices are the norm for doing this kind of video. And some of you who have seen me live are smirking. Yes, I do not have the looks to put in front of a camera either. Genetics has seen fit to make me handsome in writing only.

That leaves Screen Casts and Slide Shows. I will probably do both. The screen casts will be for how to videos and the slide shows will be for everything else.

The last thing I wanted to share is about that Human Resources menu item entry under “Who BusinessTeligence is For”. I’ve decided to give it away for free but from the perspective of the job applicant. Basically job applicants will get to see what information Human Resources can get from the Internet about them given what they normally provide in their resume:  Name, Email Address, Home Address, Phone Number and Companies worked for. The purpose of which is to drive traffic to my website.

Cheers!

A friend, finding out I was on the look-out for any help on making videos, recommended this seminar very strongly. I won’t name the seminar or speaker anymore as it was just a one-day event. I do not doubt that the speaker was highly talented on all things video. The problem was he was neither a good speaker nor a good teacher. Out of respect for my friend, I tried to keep awake but she herself was dissappointed too and was pointing to someone else who strongly recommended the seminar to her.

Cheers!

I received feedback from a StomperNet veteran that my site had half the focus being stolen by this blog. It was staring me in the face and I missed this one. He is right. Even my menu had StomperNet Review coming right after Home. Since English is the language used. Almost all the people visiting my website would browse my pages from left to right. So on my Main Menu, StomperNet Review gets read first before Business Intelligence.

Another StomperNet veteran said that he didn’t get it. What was I selling really? Why should he sign up? What’s in it for him to continue looking through my site. He is a StomperNet veteran so he already knows what I am blogging about so that emphasizes how badly I am presenting my product.

Another veteran, not a Stompernet veteran, just a veteran of something I don’t think is appropriate for this audience. Anyway, he says I better be getting a medal from StomperNet because he can’t see anything else but the Blog about StomperNet.

So with those feedback in mind, the first thing I did was to rework the menu. It is now very Business Intelligence like for lack of a better description. I also trimmed the armada of StomperNet links and left just two and put them under “Request Information” amongst other Business Intelligence info that can be requested.

So far so good. Actually, I’ve had 39 days of being on the good side of old friend Murphy.

The next thing I attempted to do was to move the entire site from businessteligence.com/Blog/ to the main location businessteligence.com/. The idea is to remove the whole connotation of this being a blog about StomperNet and more about me using StomperNet to market the product I’ve chosen.

Boy, did Murphy do a number on me. I did all the precautions. I performed a backup of the database by following the steps itemized on this official looking WordPress document: http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress. I followed every step to the letter. It basically called for you to do precautions like backups. Then export the database to do some tweaks to reflect the new location before importing it back with the new location already updated on the entire database.

When I got to the very last step, I got the error, “could not create database. dbXXXXX already exists”. Murphy’s knocking on my door but I nonchalantly said, no worries. I have backups. When I undid everything along with loading the backups everything went smoothly but when I tried to open the website, it just said in big bold letters, Database Connection Failed. Murphy’s in the house!

Consultations with the Mighty Google yielded suggestions. But they did no good. Murphy is more powerful than Mighty Google.

In the end, I just re-installed WordPress and manually copy-pasted everything I could from the backup file. If you notice any images that don’t load or a dead link, I would appreciate being given the heads up. I’m sure I missed some thing that had to be copy pasted.

I’m stopping at this point. Murphy is still in the house. No sense ignoring Murphy when she wants to have drink.

Cheers!

No Widget Control

My front page with the Countdown Timer still had all those Blog categories and recent posts displayed on the right. They cause distractions from the focus I wanted to give to my Business Intelligence product. This website is built using WordPress and those categories and recent posts are called widgets. The solution is a free plug-in called Widget Logic. It lets me control which, where and when my widgets should appear.

The Front Page was Flat

Having just plain text in different font colors doesn’t cut it because most people are very visual. And while reading actual books is popular. Reading books on computers didn’t catch on as quickly as some people thought it would. So for computer content, visuals are a must. I added that Samurai pic up front in reference to the Sun Tzu quote. As a side note, the first thing that you see on the picture tells something of where you see yourself at right now. Did you see the samurai warrior on his back? Or did you see the samurai warrior standing over him?

I used a Bulk Email Service

I found out that Bulk Email Services are  associated with spam email that you can never get yourself out of.

I got to apply one of the veteran Stomper tips on this one. Don’t dive into all the Stomper topics all at once. Use only what you currently need. The rest will still be there when I need them. So today, I opened one of the Stomper tools that came with StomperNet – InfusionSoft. Within a few hours of registering to InfusionSoft, I got a call from one of their people asking how she can help. I have to give props for that. I wasn’t expecting this kind of service since I’m on their freebie program.

So to cut the long story short, I replaced the Sign-Up section with a simple Newsletter Sign-Up from InfusionSoft. I also placed it on the front page. When all the widgets were removed, I had all that white space up front. I am planning to put a video up there but until I can get the video done, I thought I’d put the Newsletter sign-up up front.

Why the newsletter? This is because I have also received a couple of facebook messages asking for more information on Business Intelligence. After reading the About section on the website, they feel like it is some form of Industrial Espionage. The quick answer is it isn’t. It adheres to industry established ethics in its practices of gathering Intelligence.

Also, I want this blog to be focused on generating income on the Internet for an Internet Marketing Newbie. So I will funnel all things Business Intelligence into the weekly Newsletter. It will run every Tuesday. I’ll gladly answer your questions there in addition to provide you with interesting thoughts and anecdotes on Business Intelligence. Sign-up is easy. I hate spam email too so you will only get emailed the newsletter from me. Period.

Hmmm.. the last sentence seems like something good to put on the Sign up page. I will add that after posting this.

Cheers!

I received some questions via Email and Facebook messages yesterday:

Exactly how out of reach is Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Course?

It is $5,000 out of reach. Well, the exact terms are $5,000 up front then another $5,000 when you make your first $100,000. If you thought that was steep, your jaw might drop all the way to the floor if you hear that before this, he taught Product Launching to a limited number of students for $25,000 per head. I heard that all seats were taken. If you are interested, here is his link: http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?gclid=CKq9k8KxpZ4CFRhfagodEQhWlQ

I thought this is a 90-day thing. Why does your countdown exceed 90 days?

I don’t do any heavy lifting on Sundays. So no StomperNet or BusinessTeligence work and no posting on Sundays. So the dates will indeed be off. It will also be Christmas and New Year. I’m spending that time with the main reasons why I am pushing myself hard on most days.

I also try doing what you did yesterday. Im not StomperNet but I did what you described doing on Google. How you pick up these things? The results are all people selling their own product launch. All sales talk and no real knowledge?

Yes, I noticed that too. But you can glean some information even from those websites doing selling. Not a lot but enough. You get some more info from other sales sites and at the end of an hour, you have a good handful of information you gleaned from several sales sites. It is a fair amount once they all add up.

Hmmm… let me show you how I do it. I Googled, product launch. Ignoring Jeff Walker results, I find this one, http://www.productlaunchautomator.com/. If you go to this website, you will see the usual sales stuff up top. If you scroll down a bit, you will see some tidbits of information already. The part where it says, “Social proof and scarcity marketing at work …”. The next few lines after this are tidbits you can take for yourself. He even gives an example. He gives his “5 words”. So from this website you already get 3 leads: Social proof, Scarcity Marketing and his 5 magic words. Not a lot but if you add this tidbit of information to all the other tidbits, it comes to a goodly number.

Hmmm… you also should not limit yourself to reading the text or hearing the words you hear if it is a video. You also have to observe what he is doing and try to understand his reasons for doing so. An example is Jeff Walker’s video on Product Launching. Here’s the link again:
http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?gclid=CKq9k8KxpZ4CFRhfagodEQhWlQ.

If you hear the words, a good portion of it is sales talk. But analyze what he is doing and why he is doing it. He mentions that the FTC has issued new guidelines so he is removing his case studies when the new guidelines take effect. He encourages you to get those free case study videos before he removes them. So what is he doing here? He is doing a take-it-while-it-lasts approach. There’s probably a proper marketing term for this. Let’s just call it Expiry Date. So this is one tidbit you can take with you.

Another is something I encourage a Stomper classmate of mine on. We haven’t met in person but I do try to pass this idea on to her on the forums. Anyway, whenever you encounter a Threat, there is almost always a way to turn it into an Opportunity. In this case, the threat to Jeff is the new FTC guidelines. He could easily have sulked in a corner about all the case studies going to waste because of these new guidelines. But no, instead Jeff Walker focused his energy to turning that threat into an Opportunity. I’m pretty sure people are going to sign up to get the free case studies he is giving away. More importantly he is building his email list with people who are really interested in Product Launching. He gains a quality list in this process on top of promoting goodwill, establishing authority and helping people out. So this is another tidbit you can take away from this video.

I’d like to end by saying that I haven’t met or talked to Jeff. I’m just part of the faceless crowd around him on StomperNet. So none of the links you see here on this article are affiliate links.

The Feedback:

I would also like to thank everyone who sent a good word my way. Seriously guys, those thoughts help keep me going. I appreciate it. I also received some suggestions. I will address them shortly. I thank you even more for suggesting those changes. I think this is the first time I had more than one interaction with my blog readers.  Today is a good day and hope you don’t shy away from sending your questions and feedback anytime. They are always welcome.

Cheers!