I’ve been at this business for almost 6 years now, and have accumulated a ton of useful knowledge. I’m grateful for that, and just absolutely LOVE learning stuff — new stuff all the time. And I’m very lucky because working for Overcome Everything gets me lots of cool info that I couldn’t afford myself. It’s really a super perk of the job.

So, with all this stuff in my brain, I’m asked to do teleseminars often.  I love that! Teleseminars are absolutely the best way to get people interested in who you are and what you know that can help them to move their businesses forward. You gain their respect, trust, and because of those things, you make money. People buy from people they know and trust.

The best of all situations, of course, if having your own teleseminar series. Here’s a link for you: http://easyseotricks.com/13th . I can attest to the fact that this system works, and that it gives you a MUCH bigger list than the one you have now.

The thing is that you can’t be shy. Shy will NOT work in business. So, get over yourself, right now! Anyone can use the strategies that the link above gives you… anyone.

So, last night, I did a teleseminar with someone who started out as a customer of mine and Telman’s and he quickly became a friend. His name is Rick Burdo, and he’s a disabled Veteran. He can’t even type because of his disability, and so does all of his pages with voice recognition software. It’s amazing! He’s really struggled through a LOT to put his whole system together, and now, he’s actually doing it.

What’s your hurdle?

You don’t have to know everything about your topic. All you have to do is assemble a group of experts who do. Then, you interview them. Simple, right? It’s not that tough getting experts in your niche, either, because they want to sell their stuff to your list and get all the cool respect, trust, etc. from new people that they’ve not met before.

Then, when you put all of the interviews together, you have a product, and… it’s a great product because of all the information that the experts have put forth. It has nothing to do with you or your expertise! It’s how Tellman built a multi-million dollar busines and then, he was able to hire me and 14 other folks! So, now, how enticing are teleseminars, huh?

I’m telling you… they’re the BOMB!

Want to know the particulars? Check this out: http://easyseotricks.com/13th Believe me… it’s amazing what one simple teleseminar series can do for your business and your wallet. Amazing.

Something that comes up time and again in calls, in email, on the phone with clients is that they can’t get started because there’s so much stuff coming at them all the time from people whose lists they’ve joined. They’re overwhelmed and unhappy and why aren’t they making all the big bucks they’ve been promised?

OK… I get that. I’ve been in this game for almost 6 years now, and I felt the same way at the beginning when I was a newbie. But I wanted to learn. I wanted to be the smartest and best damned Internet marketer on the planet, and I wanted to make all that money and have that Ferrari – Beachside – Buy Anything You Want, Anytime lifestyle, too. It was all so much fun and I figured it would all just gel in my brain one day.

And it did.

But though I knew a LOT of stuff (and still do, BTW), want to know how much good it did me?

NONE!

I was trying this and that. I had four blogs going. I was driving traffic ineffectively, and though I knew a ton of stuff, I wasn’t making ANY money! It was frustrating and time consuming and I couldn’t look away for an instant because well… I was sure that I would get the big break any second, and I really needed the extra money, and well… it just never happened.

In my case, I was lucky. Tellman happened, and my IM life was transformed.

Want to know how?… Come back on Monday and I’ll tell ya.

But, only if I get at least 10 good comments. (No “nice post” comments will do. Tell me your thoughts or what you’re feeling about all this right now!) Make a comment and the secret will be revealed. Otherwise…  Hmm… I guess you’ll just have to keep being overwhelmed.

The question that gets asked most by new Internet marketers is, “What niche should I be in?” I think. They have ideas about what they’d like to do, but are concerned about whether or not it will be a “good” niche, and rightly so. Selling clothes for racoons probably isn’t a great idea.

What to do?

Research.

The first thing to do is to think about what you really like to do and what you can work on for hours and hours without becoming tired or bored. What’s your passion? That’s really important. If your heart isn’t in it, guess what, neither will your mind be.

So, your first step is to sit down and to make a list of things you really enjoy doing, no matter what those things might be. It’s amazing that there are markets online for some things you’d think will never sell. And then again, things you think are a sure fit might totally suck. Or, they might be seasonal. Or, they might be so over.

Once you have your list, take your search for a niche over to http://SEOBook.com. Plug each word into the search bar and see how many searches a day are happening in Google. If you find that 3,000 to 10,000 searches are being performed each month, you’re on the right track. But that’s just the first step.

Move over to the column that says “G Trends,” and see whether the trend for whatever you’re searching is rising, falling or consistent. Rising and consistent is good. Falling isn’t.

Then, move over again to “Google TE” and see how much people are playing for clicks at Google AdWords. Anything over $1 is promising.  Anything under that is iffy.

So, there are some general rules of thumb. SEOBook, also has a great blog. Peter D, who  wrote “How to Spot Keyword Trends,”  pulls Twitter into the mix, and some other factors that you can track to decide on a good niche to be in.

The whole idea is… do it! Why waste a lot of time working on things that nobody is interested in? You’ll lose time and money chasing something that just won’t work.

Just got back into town after a whirlwind trip to New York City. Tellman took most of us up for the 2009 American Business Awards, affectionately known as the “Stevie Awards.”

It was pretty swanky. We stayed in the Marriot Marquis, which is right in the heart of Times Square. In fact, we could look out the window and see the whole corner… pretty nifty. (Click on the link to see our view.)

The sad part is that we didn’t win. <sniff> Oh, well… there’s always next year.

But the Internet was well represented. Among finalists such as AT&T and Delta Faucet were names like ConstantContact, SchoolDude.com, and even Matt Bacak was there, representing a totally different category from ours. Sorry to say that Matt’s company didn’t win either, but at least we got to hang out with him a little later that night,  in Koreatown.

Not winning was important. We were nominated as one of the fastest growing companies with under 100 employees in the country! That’s pretty huge, right? But what I’m thinking is that if that was so for 2008… we have a big  job ahead of us for 2009, and we’re toally up for the task.

The truth is, we’re a very dedicated bunch and we really do care. We all want folks to learn and earn that extra money they need from an online business, or to even start a new business of their own so they can stop buying all that gas commuting to a job they hate every day. Whatever people want to achieve, we want to make that happen for them. The money comes from that, sure, but the money really isn’t the goal. I’m just blessed to be part of such a great company.

And the OE gang is totally fun to hang with, too.  We did a whole walk of the city yesterday morning from Times Square to Central Park to Madison Ave., and let me tell you… my feet hate my guts. It’s not smart to wear new shoes when you’ll be walking like 15 blocks after an awards dinner, and then start all over the next morning and walk for like an hour and a half without stopping. Argh! We’re talking major blisters, people!

But it was still great fun. Wish you’d been there.

Ever have one of THOSE days? Well… I did today. Nothing seemed to have been done right… out of my hands… just a victim of getting others to do things for you and not following up. Who’s court is the ball in ultimately? Mine, of course.

Or, how about those days when you don’t see any sales, no optins, nothing working no matter how hard you try! I get that. Been there…

I have a friend who’s vlog will totally pick you up and set you on the straight road again. Energy and how to channel it is important. But that’s only one aspect of her vlog that I know you’ll enjoy…

http://www.reneevations.com/vlog

Make your day!

I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.

So, Wall linked to Danny Sullivan’s post “Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting,” which made me curious. So I went over to Danny’s blog, which explains the situation in much clearer detail.

Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.

What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.

I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.

Great.

If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.

Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.

Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.

Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.

OK, so I’m the project manager for The ListBuilding Club and totally love, love, love it. And why wouldn’t I? I’ve helped create it, have maintained it, and work on it 100% of my time for Overcome Everything. I’m prejudiced. But we have hundreds of people, if not thousands who would agree with me.

The site starts at the beginning with picking a niche, getting a domain name, setting up a blog and so on. I mean, it’s step-by-step video training that anyone can follow. It just rocks and we’re constantly working on what we have to offer to make it better and better. We really care that people love it and are able to use what they learn and take it to the bank.

But that’s not why I’m writing here.

I’m writing to tell you about our affiliate program. It’s awesome! I mean, where else can you get $20 – $29 a month from every customer you refer and pays for his or her membership? That keeps on coming! It’s an awesome site to promote, and something you can be proud to represent.

Want to join us?

http://EasySEOTricks.com/AA

Sell 50 memberships to the LBC and then, you can apply to be an affiliate for our high-end coaching programs that bring in MUCH bigger commissions. Show us you know your stuff and you stand to make a great deal of cash!

But here’s a cool thing:

Even if you’re new to this whole affiliate marketing environment, we’re there to help you. Every Friday, we’re putting on training teleseminars that will teach you what you need to know to promote and make money with our system. You’ll love it!

So, sign up now and be part of the team. We’re waiting to help you make the cash you need to get by in these tough times.

Oh wait???? What’s that? I mean, really. If you’re a good affiliate marketer, there is no recession. It’s awesome!

If you’re not a big name in the Internet marketing world, it may not be as easy as you like to get subscribers for your list. Here are some ways to encourage people to sign up…

I have a few cool plugins for Firefox, but one of my favorites is “Search Status.” Here are some things it does:

• It provides not just Google Page Rank, like the Google Toolbar does, but Alexa ranking of any page you land on as well. And these ranks sit in your lower toolbar and you can see it automatically. You can also see a compete rank and an mozRank, which measures the link juice coming into that site, as well.

When you right click on the Search Status symbol (an @, but with a q in the middle), it will show you the following about any site you visit:

• Highlights “no follow” links. Want to see if a blog is allowing spiders to follow links? Turn this option on and all “no follow” links appear in little pink boxes. You may want to use this when considering the site’s link potential.

• Gives you a link report on. How many are coming in/going out? How many of them are follow links?

• Shows the META tags and description

• Shows what the site looked like historically.

• Gives you robots.txt, whois, and sitemap

• Provides the keyword density and highlights any keyword you choose

• Shows all pages indexed in Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now bing.com)

• Shows the sites linking back in Google, Yahoo, and MSN

So, you can learn much of the SEO data just from this little plugin. Of course, some of it overlaps with the data you get from SEO Quake, but I think you really need both plugins to have a fully functional SEO browser. I mean, there are other SEO add-ons for Firefox, but these are 2 I couldn’t do without.

And if you want a firm foundation in SEO, visit http://SpiderLanguage.com

Have you seen Microsoft’s new (revamped) search engine “Bing” yet?

Pretty cool.

Every day, there’s a different picture when you start out, and when you rest your mouse on different parts of the picture, you can see little tags of information. Today, it’s Denali National Park, home to Mt. McKinley. If you want to see where it is, there’s a link to the map. If you want to know about dog sledding (because it’s how rangers patrol the park in winter), there’s a link for that. Pretty interesting, I think. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be tomorrow. That’s totally non-Google, eh? Nice!

When you do an actual search, it’s simplified. I did a search for “eye glasses” just because it was on top of my mind. I need new ones, and I got the usual results. Eyeglasses.com came up first. But over to the left-hand side, I get “Women, Men, Babies, Kids…” This engine gives you categories to make searching easier.

The usual tabs are at the top… “Web, Video, Images, News, Maps, More…” And the suggested searches, rather than being at the bottom of the page, like they are at Google, are in a left-hand sidebar.

I’m not sure that Bing will overtake Google anytime soon, but that remains to be seen. It’s just fun to play around with because it’s not the same old thang… ya know?

Here’s a video I hope you enjoy. We posted it to YouTube a while back, but I’m telling you… if you’re marketing online and you’re NOT writing articles, you totally need to start, and here’s why…

Want more? Lots of stuff on our channel… Check it out: ListBuilding Club Videos

Have you been to Google lately? (Who hasn’t, right?) Everyone seems to be talking about the new search item they call the “Wonder Wheel.” It puts me in mind of a couple of tools online. One is Personal Brain, which is mind-mapping software, and the other is Visual Thesaurus that will help you to brainstorm keywords or really just find synonyms if you’re a writer. Pretty neat, both have limited free versions that are worth checking out.

But what does Wonder Wheel do? It helps you to expand your horizons. When you do any search in Google, you’ll see a link above the horizontal paid ads, just under the Google search box, on the left-hand side of the screen that says “Show Options.” When you click on that, a right-hand sidebar opens.

You’ll notice that you can choose videos search, forum posts, or reviews. You can also decide how old you want the listings to be.

But the links at the bottom are the ones you want to pay closest attention to. The first link is for related searches, but the second is for the Google Wonder Wheel, which when clicked, opens just to the right beside the search results. You’ll see that circling the center search (what you typed into the search box,) are related terms.

For example, if you search for “search engine optimization,” you’ll see terms like “search engine submission,” “meta tags,” “search engine optimization pricing,” and so on for other terms related to SEO. When you click on “search engine optimization for dummies,” another wheel opens that’s linked to the original wheel, and you get new stuff to think about, like “google universal search,” “major search engines,” and “xml sitemaps.”

Pretty sweet. This can help you develop a pretty broad keyword base for any niche that you’re pursuing. That’s great for SEOs and Internet marketers, but it’s great for just plain searchers because it helps them to really get where they want to go. For example, if you click on XML Sitemaps, it takes you to places where you can learn what they are and to generators that will prepare them for you.

Anyway, it’s a cool new tool and you should check it out. It can be very valuable for your business or help you to search a whole lot smarter.

Email marketing is the most powerful tool you have! So, you need to improve the chances of converting with the people that do want to buy your stuff.

Join the ListBuilding Club

I can tell you what the wrong choice in terms of SEO is and that’s keeping the “http://yourblogdomain.com/?postnumber” that is the WordPress default. It doesn’t tell folks or search spiders anything about the post, except what number the post is.

Your SEO-friendly permalink will include your keyword rich title as well as the post number, and it should look like this:

/%post_id%/%postname%/

You can add the category (/%post_id%/%category%/%postname%/) in addition to or instead of the post ID #, but you should only do that if your categories are set up as your main keywords. A “General” category, for example, won’t help at all.

To change your permalink from your WordPress dashboard, you simply go to Settings, then Permalink.

You’ll see them right at the top of the page. Click on “Custom Setting,” and either fill in what you want or copy and paste the above.

However, this is something that should be considered when you start your blog. Do NOT alter your permalink structure if your blog is old or you’ll lose all SEO goodness that you have built up for ALL of your previous posts.

If your blog is new and you don’t have too many posts, change it now. It will be well worth the effort and help your SEO efforts.

To assure that your permalinks will be crawled and indexed, you should also have an XML Sitemap in place. You can get the XML Sitemaps plugin at http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins.

When I talk to people that are relatively new to Internet marketing, I’m astounded that they don’t see the value of building a list. Your list is the most important asset of your entire business! Without a list, you don’t make money, it’s just that simple.

Oh sure, there are some folks that have cracked the AdWords code, who know how to make AdWords pay off, but I guarantee that they’re also building a list around that activity. If they’re smart enough to conquer AdWords, they’re smart enough to know that the list will help them to make even more money, and not only that, but it will cost them far less cash. Emails are free, whereas we all know that AdWords is definitely not.

There are all kinds of ways to build a list, too. Obviously, you can put up a squeeze page and drive traffic to that. You can have an opt-in box on your blog. You can start a free site of some kind and pick up a huge list that way, or you can even buy a list through co-registration. But there are plenty of other ways to build a list, and if you aren’t doing it… good luck.

I spent the first couple of years online thinking that a list didn’t matter. I wasn’t making any money, either. It wasn’t until I connected with Tellman that he smacked me upside the head (virtually, of course), and said… “Start NOW!” And so, I did. And I have to say that my list means more to me than all the tea in England. Really. And my life is very different from what it was three years ago, too. It’s all because of my list.

Your LIST is your bread & butter. If you’re not building it… Start TODAY!

And if you need help with that, if you’re not sure how to begin… there’s always the ListBuilding Club. I assure you, it’s worth every single penny. Yes, I”m prejudiced, but I also know that you can’t find better training anywhere. We have thousands of satisfied customers, and I know that because they send us wonderful testimonials every single day. It’s really great to be part of that.

And it’s great for members because every single one of us at Overcome Everything cares. That’s our edge. We’re not just in it for the money. We want every single person that comes to us for help to succeed in a BIG way, and many have.

If you’re drowning out there and feel like you’re overwhelmed and don’t know where to start… Click Here and STOP the frustration. We really can help. And when your list is growing and you start making regular, steady money from it every day… you’ll “get” it, and be totally glad you did.

I’m always looking for interesting sites, and sometimes when I join here or there, I’m asked for a logo.

Well… I don’t have one.

At least I didn’t, until Now!

What d’ya think? It goes with the whole SEO theme, right?   It’s colorful and fun, and oh yeah… it was free to make.

I stumbled on a stie called “Logo Creator” at http://creatr.cc/creatr/

You can choose from 5 different preset designs, add your own colors and styles, and voila! You’re logofied.

But… Maybe you’ll like this one better:

It’s got my blog colors, and a little “wheelie” thingy that indicates a techy feel.

I made this one at SimWebSol Logo Generator and you can find it at http://www.simwebsol.com/ImageTool/Default.aspx

So, now I have too many logos…. What to do?

I’d love your opinion.

Vote!

Tell me which logo I should use, and I’ll give you access to the first lesson of Spider Language. You’ll love it so much that I’m betting you’ll want to stick around.

So, let me hear your comments, even if you only want to say that they both suck.

When I went over to Google Reader to check on my feeds today, I had no idea that I was about to BUY a plugin, but I did. My friend, Brian Terry from ListHero, had shared a cool post from Michel Fortin’s blog about all the plugins Michel uses.  He has a TON of them, and frankly, I’m impressed that his blog still loads so quickly. But anyway…

One of the plugins caught my eye.

It’s called “Action Comments,” and it asks people who comment on your blog if they’d like to also join your list. A checkbox shows up under the comment form and is automatically checked for them, if you want it to be, or it can be open. It’s pretty sweet, and so for $17 I bought it.

It’s easy to install with WordPress 2.7.1 because after you download the .zip file, you just ask the blog to install it for you. Then, you fill in your autoresponder code, and voila! You’re done.

If you want to check it out… Click Here to Get All the Details About Action Comments.  After you buy it, there’s even a video that shows you how to install it and use it. Even the newest newbie on the planet can do it.

Are you building a good following at Twitter? I am. I love hanging out there. Don’t post a TON like some folks, but I manage to get a blog post and a link or two in a day and love #followfriday. Total fun stuff.

But if you’re building a list at Twitter to market to the people on your list, well… you can, but for how long? I mean, Twitter is awesome, and though I’m hoping it will be around a long, long time, I’ve been on the Internet a long, long time, and…

Stuff that was HUGE way back then, like Usenet (bulletin board type spaces that are more like today’s forums) or IRC (Internet Relay Chat, like today’s chatrooms except you can get to them from the Word Wide Web), for example are so used to was now.

An email list is permanent, at least until your subscribers decide that they don’t want to be on your list anymore. But their loyalty will stand the test of time.

Twitter may be a passing fancy, and if you spend a lot of time trying to build an enormous following without building your email list at the same time, well… I don’t think you’re looking very far into the future.

Remember how everything was so MySpace a couple of years ago? Or, how about when Yahoo was the premiere search vehicle? Alta Vista doesn’t even exist anymore, and we used to think it was pretty great until Google came along. And so…

It’s the Internet. Prepare for it. Get the people who are enjoying your Tweets today onto your email list. That’s the only way you’ll be able to keep them as your customers for a long time to come.

Just sayin’…

Have you ever had a great idea for a website, but just couldn’t find a great domain? I have. When I opened Blogging4Boomers, well… every freakin’ domain with “blog” in the universe has been taken. Even Tellman couldn’t help me to come up with something awesome and he’s like the most creative person I’ve ever known. We even got Jodi into it and nothing. She’s just as creative as Tellman, but even with all that incredible brain power behind me, it was really hard.

One of our ListBuilding 411 customers asked about buying domains today for a very special project that he’s doing, and I had to tell him to buy a bunch of domains. Coming up with those could be really hard, and as I thought about it, I realized that there had to be some sites online that would help do the job.

What happened?

In messing around with these, I actually found a domain I wanted and bought it. Be looking for WeirdNewsWeblog.com in the near future. I’ve always wanted to do a blog like that because that’s my specialty. When I was writing, I was always coming up with these obscure facts that nobody much knew and loved to use them for the WOW! factor in writing. I want people to go, “Wow! That’s an interesting tidbit.” So, this will be a lot of fun for me.

But back to these sites that will make domain naming a bit easier for you:

Dot-o-mater.com

This site will allow you to choose terms from column “A”  and terms from column “B.” Then, the site mashes the words together in their various forms. You select the domain potentials you like and it sends you to Dotster.com to check the availability. Kind of kicky.

Bust a Name

Here, you put in a bunch of words germane to your niche. I tried horses, bridles, tack, and it came back with horsebridles.com. Not bad! Then, it sends you right to GoDaddy to buy it. Sweet! Hmm… a great way to be a GoDaddy affiliate. Hope they are.

Stuck Domains

This is where I picked up my new domain just testing the site out. VERY cool. You put in a word and it comes back with a pile of expired domains. Many of them already have backlinks.  This is great because you could find a cool domain with a bunch of backlinks and have SEO traction before you even set up the site. Woo-hoo!

Anyway, those are some sites where you can create domains you might not think of on your own. Have fun… Just don’t buy too many!

What happens in an Internet marketer’s life when he doesn’t know what to do? I mean, what content can you create that will sell like hotcakes? What do people want to learn more about? And how do you find out?

Simple, run a survey or what Alex Mandossian calls an “Ask” campaign.

There are many ways to do this, and it really depends on the kind of survey you want to use to get the information. There are “fill in the blank” surveys and there are voting polls, right?

If you’re creating a new course, then the “fill in the blank” method is usually what works best. “What’s your most burning question about…” whatever it is you’re interested in promoting in your niche. But before you even get to that point, you probably want to take a poll.

MicroPoll is great for this. It’s a free service, and you can run a bunch of polls on your site for nada. You tell it what the topics are and it creates a radio-button widget for you where people can vote for their favorite topic.

Once you know what their favorite topic is, then you run the content survey. You can use services like ASK Database, Survey Monkey, or Survey Gizmo. These are all great for that type of campaign. The last two resources are free, ASK Database is not.

But what if you want to run a campaign that is more social? Then, you want User Voice, which gives you buttons that look much like Digg buttons for your site.

There are also many other ways to do this, and some of them involve installations. But for the simplest way to find out what your audience wants… these resources truly rock!

Love this interview with Sir Richard Branson. He’s so down to earth, even though he’s so highly respected and wealthy. He’s real. We would all do well to follow his example…

So, I was on a call today for the ListBuilding Club Ferrari Contest with Shawn Casey and he gave some really fantastic information about joint ventures.

His main point was, don’t just contact people to ask them to do something for you… Do something for them first, which is great advice, of course. And he went on to tell listeners everything about joint venturing like how to approach people, how to know if they will be good partners, how to get information about partners, and how to make joint ventures work well. Killer stuff. But then, who didn’t know that, right?

But then, he asked if I had anything to add, and well… how can you possibly improve on Shawn’s advice, right?

But then, I remembered what Tellman told me a long time ago, and that was that all joint ventures don’t include people with bigger lists mailing out for you, though that’s usually what new marketers think that joint venturing is all about.

The other side of that coin is where you joint venture because you need help. Maybe you aren’t a technical person and need help setting things up. Or, maybe you suck at copywriting, while someone else might be killer. I mean, there are so many reasons why you can partner up with people.

As Shawn mentioned today, a joint venture is where two or more people partner in business to achieve a mutual goal.

Sure, ad exchanges are joint ventures, or holding teleseminars for each other is a joint venture, or finding a business where you can help them to improve sales because of something you do better is a joint venture, too. But bonding with other folks to get your launch done is another cool way to JV. Don’t overlook it.

Anyone who’s anyone in social marketing knows about Ping.fm . It’s a site that will post to multiple social sites for you, and you design the setup. You can hook into Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. For micro-blogging there’s Twitter, Plurk, and Jaiku.  And there’s regular blogging if you have Blogger, WordPress.com or TypePad. And a whole bunch of sites that you may or may not belong to.

Imagine how much time you’re going to save because you don’t have to go from site to site, posting the same danged information. It’s really sweet!

If you don’t yet have a Ping.fm account, you need to get one today. Just post to Ping.fm and you’re done!

I have to admit that I’ve been lazy (= no time) to set it up. I don’t belong to all of the around 40 social sites that it supports, but that’s my bad.  Like everyone, I’m often thinking, why bother, if you don’t have time to be an active participant.

So… I’m kicking myself.

There are lots of important sites that I never mess with just because of the lazy (= not time) situation. It’s kind of like buying in bulk. You know it’s a good idea but you hate to spend that much at one time, eh?

Well… I managed to get my sites set up today, so look out. I’ll be posting to Ping.fm from now on! Lots more updates. And maybe…

Even a little more time.

So… yesterday, I had to do some scrambling. I got everything fixed at my site, and offered my customer a different bonus. And today, she was happy. She complimented me on my speed of action and professionalism, which was very nice of her.

So, what’s the point?

I’m not tooting my own horn here. I just want to show you how important it is to show your customers that you really do care about them and about their satisfaction.

Customers are the lifeblood of your business. No matter how great your product is, if you don’t satisfy your customer, what’s the point? If there are no customers buying, you’re not in business, right?

I have another kind of great story about this…

I got some customers from a recent IM giveaway, and you know how that is… they forget who you are. Or, they wanted your gift, but not the email that goes along with it. I get that. I was new at this once, too.

So, I got an email from a guy who was pretty incensed that I was mailing him offers (and yes, I mail to my list almost daily as Tellman & Shawn have taught me). I mean, he was downright rude. (And you know you were, if you’re reading this. )

I could have just ignored him.

I could have blasted him back.

Instead, I took the time to write a response that I hoped would be helpful.

Guess what? He appreciated the fact that I even wrote back. Now, he writes to me often and asks my opinion or just chats or whatever. He’s really a pretty nice guy and I think we’re forming a good working relationship, which pleases me no end.

But…

You can’t do that with every customer you have, obviously. I try to answer all of my emails, like Ken McArthur (who I respect enormously, and who never ceases to amaze me), and have gotten some pretty good customers, relationships, and business partners from it.

Never think that your customers are cranks.

Never think that they’re stupid newbies.

Make them your friends, and your business will grow a lot faster. They’ll tell other people who will make your dreams come true.