Archive for September, 2007

One of the challenges I hear most often is that people *know* what they should be doing to run a successful online business, however they don’t have the time or the specific know-how or the skills to pull it off. My friend, Designer Extraodordinaire Michael Ehlert has put together an amazing program that is a systematic way of creating a sales based website and online marketing campaign. The best part is that while you’re learning how to do it, your production team is creating the actual marketing plan, niche profitability analysis, keyword list, two page web site, pay per click account for you and a whole lot more.

This is something you could walk away with as your company’s web site, or plug in to your existing web site to expand your revenue streams immediately.

Michael graciously invited me to be part of his team for the program and our first run was hugely successful. The second program begins on Tuesday, Oct. 2. There are several otpions - one of them will meet your needs wherever you are in your business development. Check it out here.

I am offering a 4-week training course on 1 Shopping Cart. We’ll cover the basic shopping cart set up, autoresponders, broadcasts and product setup.

No fancy sales letter - I’ve been working with 1SC for 6 years. I regularly charge $125/ hour for one-on-one training and want to move to a group structure. This is a beta training.
Class starts Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007 at 4 PM Eastern.

You must know HTML well enough to place code into your files.

If you’re interested, please email me at peggy_murrah [[ at ]] yahoo.com

I only have room for one more participant
No financial charge for the training, however I will greatly appreciate your feedback.

My husband recently attended a conference on Substance Abuse (he’s a therapist) and told me this story about a drug and alcohol treatment center…

Eric Clapton founded the Crossroads Centre on the Caribbean Island of Antigua back in 1997.

He sponsors a Guitar Festival to help fund the Centre. The Festival just about breaks even on the actual event, but Eric creates CDs and sells those. They tend to go platinum - and that’s the money he uses to fund his treatment center.

There’s a lesson to be learned for all of us - how many times do we tend to scrap an idea because it won’t make money right away? I met with a business strategist this past week and as I shared a couple of ideas with him, he reminded me to look at the bigger picture. It’s not always the most financially advantageous to collect the bucks on the front end - sometimes it makes more sense to introduce a new prospect to your services at a lower price point and then keep them around long term.

One thing that is critical to business building is tools. There are a lot of tools I use in my VA business, and some I simply couldn’t do business without. I thought I would share some of them with you.

In every business there are things that must be done, appointments to be kept, schedules to maintain… enter www.37signals.com and their Backpack system.

Backpack is a great place to store your To Do list, your calendar, set up reminders that can be sent to your email or mobile phone, upload photos, idea lists… and best of all, it’s free. (The Free version is free… you can always upgrade if you simply must spend money! )

So there you have it - an incredible tool to help you get organized. I’d love to hear some of your favorite tools that make running your business easier!

I’ll be at the ICF (International Coach Federation) Conference this year in Long Beach, helping speaker Suzanne Falter Barns with her booth. And I can’t wait!

The last ICF conference I went to was in Chicago in 2001 - and I met some really incredible people. I am definitely looking forward to this one. If you’ll be there, be sure to stop by and say hello!

My son is going with me for a couple of days as well. His plans are to hang out on the beach, but that’s okay. I’m happy that my 19 year old still likes to be with his mom. Too bad for him, he has to be back home that Friday for a zoology exam.

I’ve got a great team and would like to expand a little.

I need someone with specific skills…

Dreamweaver
1ShoppingCart
WordPress

Knowledge of these systems is a plus:
Aweber
Constant Contact
MemberGate
AMember
InfusionSoft

Interested? Please fill out the basic questionnaire here

Cheers!

The Mastermind group I belong to meets locally once a month. One of our members, Sean Marler, posted this on his blog. The Power of Collaborative Thinking - check it out. It’s good stuff.

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and the sales man at Fry’s this morning told me that was the case with most keyboards!

After working with computers since 1989, I have never spilled anything on a keyboard, but last night my (full, just-poured, piping hot) coffee cup was sitting too far over the edge of the coaster and spilled right into the keyboard. It caused an instant shut-down.

My keyboard was not a stock, cheap piece of plastic that came with my computer - it was a $200, wireless, Logitech diNovo Edge. Yes, I choked a little when I shelled out the money earlier this year. But I instantly fell in love with it. It’s sleek, has a great touch to the keys and has a built-in mouse.

Did I choke this morning when I replaced it? No - I happily paid the $200 to buy another just like it.

Are your customers as sold on your product or service? I’m sure you’ve had the experience of making a purchase and later regretting it. What can you do to help create raving fans?

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A few days ago I wrote about my Top 10 Wordpress Plugins. I just found another that deserves a top spot.

This plug in creates an area on the Write page for you to add tags (technorati, intrasite and others). If you’re stuck, just click on the Suggest Tags From Yahoo button and it will pull up a list for you to choose from. It also serves as a nice reminder to add tags to each post.

It’s appropriately named The Ultimate Tag Warrior

Check it out below! (And sign up for my RSS feed while you’re at it!)