A little bit of marketing

I did find one cool site among the static…

Internet Marketer Online Store

I thought the one thing I’ve never seen was clothing for the internet marketer.

I’ve seen a million (or less) offers for e-books, but never T-shirts, so I thought why not?

It’s the Internet Marketer Online Store and it features my designs, well one anyway.

After all, IMs need clothing, too. Not only that but it seems to me that internet marketing is a grim business, so some humor and levity seemed necessary.

By the way, the way to do the link thing is from the HTML tab in edit mode; clink on

link

and paste your link into the dialog box. Not really rocket science.

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Lots going on…

Well, people…

It turns out the road to internet marketing takeover is a lot like a combination of a garbage dump and a nuclear power station.

There is a ton of stuff out there that is pure garbage, for sure. On the other hand, there is a lot of powerful stuff going on, too.

The problem seems to be cutting through all the crap.

One big issue that seems to crop up is the zillion offers to buy some marketing plan but lacking the necessary instructions to make it work, combined with the obvious geekiness of it all.

php, MySQL, backlinks, SEO aren’t the average guy’s or gal’s language. Add the instant information overload that occurs the minute you sign up to some spammer’s email list, especially the ones who don’t have any intention of taking you off their list. By the way, if you signed up to a list, it may be possible to unsubscribe. But if you didn’t sign up, don’t bother clicking on the unsubscribe link; you’ll just be telling the spammer you’re really there.

They seem to have the idea that you’re actually going to go through your email trash looking for some crap to buy. Why email trash? Because that’s where you’re going to send anyone’s stuff if they send you more than one or two emails a month or if you didn’t ask for it.

Exceptions would be emails from people you know or emails you really want.

So, freebie #1…

Learn to use filtering, spam filtering or email rules in your favorite email program. Yahoo mail works well.  Click on the offending emails and then click ‘Spam.” Outlook and Exchange require some rule building. I haven’t tried every program out there.

Other programs require other techniques. Some ISPs have a tool or webpage which will allow you to set up common spam email sources so you never see them. That isn’t always the wisest method to use since the definition of spam may depend on a consensus of all of the ISP’s customers. You may not all agree on what is spam.

The key is to learn how to do all that.

That brings us to freebie #2…

Learn to use the help feature built in to almost every program.

The F1 key in Wndows and the Help key on the Mac or the Help menus are so easy to use. Generally speaking, the people who need help the most use it the least. (Someday, I may dig up some stats on that.)

Be bold, step out and get help. That doesn’t sound quite right, but you get the idea. Most help screens (not all) are actually fairly helpful.

Freebie #3…

Use throwaway free email addresses from Yahoo mail, Google mail or Hotmail.com, etc. when at risk for spam.

You can always stop using a disposable address when the spam load gets too heavy. Using a paid email service means that you will probably need to get very good at creating spam filtering rules.

Freebie #1+whatever the previous one was…

Use a paid, read more permanent, email address when signing up for Google, Yahoo and other accounts since the free accounts could get trashed during server glitches, etc. The paid accounts are more likely to get backed up, plus with less spam, important announcements are less likely to get missed.

Freebie one more…

Use something like McAfee SiteAdvisor and set up your browser to work with it to avoid really nasty stuff you might pick up on a website.

I think I’ll call it a day.

Thanks for tuning in.

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The journey starts with a single step…

Hello, how are you?

You may be wondering why I’m calling this the internet marketing takeover blog.

Or not.

Well, I’ve been using the internet for a few years now and I’ve noticed something funny on my journey.

It’s starting to look like the information superhighway is lined with billboards  everywhere.

Now, if you were to be driving down the road and billboards were all you saw, you might choose a different road.

On the other hand, if you found yourself driving down the road enjoying the scenery and thought of something you needed, you could simply go to the place that sells it.

If you wanted a high-priced item, you might want to do a bit of research first.

You probably wouldn’t actually want the “research” jammed in your face.

And you wouldn’t want it there all the time.

What I want to do is skip all the “Web 1.0” and “Web 2.0” stuff which basically amounts to billboards and sales pitches everywhere.

Marketing in Web 1.0 is just billboards, banners, ads.

Marketing in Web 2.0, aka “Marketing: Social Media” is basically saying, “Your friend saw my billboard, so buy my stuff.”

Add to that the fact that I have no, read zero, internet marketing experience.

Yet more is that most internet marketers would sell you air if they could.

That led me to thinking …

• driving around in the real world is free (except for the car, gas, and all that)
• all sorts of information, brochures, maps, etc. are available for free
• there are plenty of places to go for free

• So, what if I just collected the information it takes to go from knowing nothing, to knowing something about internet marketing
• put it here for free
• you could just drive around the internet marketing world basically for free

Come on, join me on my journey…

Tony

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