Day 40: Product Launching Murphy’s Law

Murphy’s Law threw pie on my face on my 40th day of using StomperNet. Admittedly, there was a point there where I felt that I would not even make it halfway through my countdown. I’ll share to you what happened and how it got fixed.

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.

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Day 37: Product Launching Juggernaut

I’ve been working hard the past couple of weeks and I’m really excited to announce and welcome you to look at the changes I’ve made to the site. Of note is the introduction of Business Intelligence. It currently has an intro and a sign-up page. But this is going to be my product so expect major additions and changes in the next week or two.

A fellow Stomper gave me a lead to a lot of eye-opening tips on how best to launch my product. He says the biggest thing is to build anticipation and need instead of just coming out with the product with maybe a press release. He made a lot of good points. He didn’t give details on how to build the anticipation and need so I did a search on both StomperNet and Google about doing a Product Launch.

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Day 36: Incubator – Mostly on the SEOQast Webinar

Woke up and immediately buckled down to continuing the build work on the product. I’m really excited about doing this and I can’t wait to get feedback when I launch it next week. I won’t bore you with the details of the build work though.

Instead, let me tell you about that second StomperNet Webinar I attended the other day. It’s about the benefits of SEOQast by Ross Goldberg and Ryan Taylor. SEOQast is one of the Software tools that comes with StomperNet Membership. It semi-automates the process of letting people know about your newly published content whether it is an article, an rss feed, a video, etc. It displays a huge list of websites you can announce your new content on. You have the option of submitting to all of them or just to a few of them, say just the top 10. Here’s a screen cap of what SEOQast looks like so you get an idea of the amount of websites you can announce your content to. The pic shows these websites sorted by Page Rank. Clicking on the pic will take you to the SEOQast page if you need more info.

Today’s post will be one of the shorter ones as most of the activities today dealt on getting the product built by Monday. Have a great weekend.

Cheers!

Day 32: Incubator – The Last Lesson

The last lesson. Ross Goldberg closes the Incubator Lessons by giving final tips on what to do with what was given in the lessons and what to do next now that the lessons are over.

Now that the lessons are over, Days 33 up to Day 90 are all on me now. A Newbie no longer, I am a Rookie in Internet Marketing now. This blog will keep going till Day 90. Beginning tomorrow, this blog will have a running total of how much I have made starting at zero dollars. Hmmm… I’ll even include what and how much I spend. I will try to chronicle every step I take, every mistake I make and every success I get on my way to meeting my goal of getting a new cashflow stream. Wish me luck.

Day 31: Incubator – System Basics

Melanie Benson Strick identifies 5 must-have systems in order for you to grow quickly. Earlier, Melanie gave a lesson on Outsourcing which I was not able to review in an unbiased fashion. This is because I have almost the same expertise previously. Make no mistake though. This lady’s idea of fun is to go around and transform 6-digit earners into 7 and 8-digit earners.  I see her hold these special sessions with StomperNet Charter members thus, I look at her as a teacher of teachers. So it was with great excitement that I clicked on the play button of her video lesson.

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Day 30: Incubator – Mistakes

Today’s review will be very short. Ross Goldberg admits to and shares the mistakes he had made over the course of his Internet Marketing Career. This is a video that is deeply personal and very much appreciated. Few men ever man up to their mistakes in public. It opened my eyes to be more alert to the pitfalls that will become part and parcel of the world I want to go into. In honor of Ross’ request not to write too much about it, this review will only be a couple of paragraphs long.

Ross supplemented this lesson with a more detailed PDF file that lists down the Do’s and Don’ts on a personal level to the Internet Marketing Business. @Ross – Thanks dude. It wasn’t easy what you did online. Maybe one day, we’ll be doing business together and watch each others backs.

Day 29: Incubator – Sell More Stuff

Day 29 finds me paying attention to Ross Goldberg on the fine art of cross-selling, up-selling and down-selling without being annoying about it. Ross can’t emphasize perfecting this skill enough as you are interacting with your customer at the point where they have their credit cards out.

Ross further highlights this point by stating two supporting facts. One. It costs a lot less to keep a customer than it is to find a new one. And two. You only need to setup a system for this one-time upfront. It can then run with minimal supervision afterwards.

Ross then tackles something commonly seen with E-Commerce stores that are a big no-no with Internet Marketing. He drives the point home by asking you how you would feel if this was done to you in a real life store like say, McDonalds. Point well said and well taken.

Ross then gives a visual path to take to doing Up-selling in the Information Market complete with price estimates. He expands this further by adding Down-sells. Prices included as well. He then does the same thing for Products and for Consultancy.

Personally, after the detailed and lengthy videos the past couple of days, this video feels like an introduction to the topic of Up-selling, Cross-selling and Down-selling.

Day 28: Incubator – Twitter Be Nimble, Twitter Be Quick

Ah Twitter – Twitter – Twitter.  Admittedly, I started Tweeting during my first week as an Incubee. But for the life of me, I honestly couldn’t understand it. I don’t get it. I’m even amazed that people can communicate at all on Twitter… let alone make a business out of it. I mean think about it… People can communicate better with either a chat program or a blog. How Twitter got to be so BIG is a mystery to me. But since Twitter is this BIG already, it can’t be ignored.

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Day 27: Incubator – Social Media Basics

Dave Taylor presents a gem of a video lesson on my 27th day as an Incubee. This is probably the longest lesson by far and it gives lots of valuable insights. Watching this video gives you the impression that Dave spent some time preparing for this. The statistics he puts in the video are up to date. And his examples refer to recent events. The man’s intelligence shows in the way he prepares and presents his lesson.

First off, Dave presents what he calls his bullet points. It’s really his checklist on what he will present. I’ll share them with you below:

1. Social Networking (Facebook, LinkedIn)
2. Conversational Publishing (Blogging)
3. Microblogging (Twitter)
4. Social Bookmarks and Voting Sites (Digg, Delicious)
5. Online Videos (YouTube)
6. Reference Sites (Wikipedia, Squidoo, Hub Pages)
7. Creating “Home Run” Social Media Content
8. Tips for Success  & Productivity

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Day 26: Incubator – Attract, Engage, and Convert Customers Using Video

Up close. Facts. Experience, tips and a case study at the end. Again presented in the Sherman Hu style of showing website examples without sounding like a sales pitch for the sample website. This guy can teach. Today, I watched his StomperNet video lesson on using Video to help with the bottom line of your website.

Sherman identified 5 ways of using video to get traffic and to convert that traffic to business. Shermans first way is the Music Video. My first reaction was, “Come on Sherman, I don’t have a budget for that! What are you thinking asking me to make a music video?” Sherman didn’t disappoint though. He proceeded to share the ways and means to do this cheaply and effectively like a pro. One man can do it. Even me, the self-admitted UN-color-coordinated guy with 3 left feet, can do it. Sherman showed samples of the end-result if one applied his tips. They’re no push-overs. I can actually see myself being engaged by these samples.

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Day 25: Incubator – Article Marketing – An Important Key to Gaining Better Positioning in Google

Day 25 finds me checking if what I applied based on the StomperNet lessons a couple of days ago has any effect on my traffic.  So far, none.  Yes, I was told it may be 1 – 4 weeks before I see the results of my actions. But you can’t fault a guy for being excited right?

I got me some nice warm milk tea while I watch and review Ross Goldberg’s tips and lessons on Article Marketing. Ross warms up by giving the reasons why Article Marketing is important over some other types of content. He concludes this intro by stating that Articles have been around since the beginnings of the Internet and they are still around now. It was effective then for SEO and it is still effective today for SEO.

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Day 24: Incubator – Installing a WordPress Blog

Admittedly not too many things to pick up on this lesson for me. This is already a WordPress blog so this review on StomperNet’s video lesson for Installing a Blog will be a short one. I do understand that me and my classmates vary in what we already have at this point. Some have fully developed websites and just need to understand how to convert it. Others need to generate leads. Some want to have more traffic come in. In my case, I went ahead and already built this blog in Incubator’s earliest days just to force myself to go from notes to action. Not to worry. This is a nice problem to have.

Even though this is the second review for the day, I still have some extra StomperNet time so I focused on installing and using one of the tools offered by StomperNet for free to its members. This one is called SEOQast. It is a very straightforward tool. It guided me through making this blog more accessible to the public by submitting to blog engines and directories. The results of which I think I will see within the next 5 days as most of the blog submission engines are manually reviewed. I ran out of time though and will have to continue with another feature of SEOQast called Spinning tomorrow.

Cheers!

Day 24: Incubator – SEO using Press Releases