As I understand it you get a check int eh amil.

At the last Biznik event here in Portland a few weeks ago, Mark Silver mentioned that he got a check in the mail shortly after the event. Dan and Lara were there so I'm sure they would have corrected him if that wasn't the case.

Hi David,

Setting up eNewsletters is something I do a lot and I’ve used just about every service out there. Personally, I recommend iContact. It's the least expensive and has all the bells and whistles.

I used to use 1ShoppingCart. If you need a shopping cart and are trying to sell info products, they’re about the best thing for you but they're kind of expensive, hard to use and their deliverability rate isn't very good.

Constant Contact is pretty good but they start at $20 month whereas iContact starts at $10. Constant Contact has a newbie friendly user interface but they make it pretty hard to import your own HTML code. Plus, I don’t think they do auto responders.

I've used AWeber too but they require you to use double opt in which will reduce your sign up rate by about 25%. Plus their reporting is terrible and when I asked them about it, they blew me off. (It's not possible to have over a 100% open rate no matter how great your newsletter is.)

iContact enables you to do auto responders (which 1Shopping Cart and AWeber do too). It's also got a survey feature and you can archive your newsletter in their public community which has an RSS feed and could be a good way to easily get more subscribers.

Hope that helps,

Elge

Hey Jeff - Great example of the benefits of real human communication! Many people using the internet to send press releases do it in the hope that they won't have to actually call a journalist and risk rejection.

What they fail to realize is that if they follow Nancy’s advice, the likelihood of out-and-out rejection is slim. Journalists might not need your story but they’ll probably be nice about rejecting you because they’ve dealt with so many twits who didn’t do the basics before contacting them.

Well, that's been my experience.

Elge

Thanks Nancy! It's great to have this all in one place. I will definitely be printing this out and keeping as a cheat sheet for the next time I send a press release.

Okay. Typically the next task after "Define your target market" has been to "Describe your target market as clearly as you can." That's when topics like the repercussions of getting divorced come up.

What I think is different is the 'insight' about the target market. I've seen this concept recently in relation to writing compelling case studies but haven't seen it in relation to target markets.

In this case the insight might be the second sentence in the following statement. “Divorce might make you not trust the opposite sex. In my work I’ve found that when you come to understand that you can survive the loss of the relationship you become a better partner.”

So if my assumption is correct (and let me know if it’s not), the insight demonstrates your understanding of your target market as well as subtly saying “I can lead you to the solution to your problem.”

Hey Joe,

It's always interesting to read your perspective on things. Makes me stretch my brain a bit to wrap it around some new concepts.

Question for you: How is 'key consumer insight' different than 'define your target market'?

Elge

p.S. When's your book coming out? ;-}

Hi Joel - Yup. Totally agree. Having links that count is one of the benefits of hosting your own blog. But for folks who are commenting on a Blogger blog - and there's a lot of Blogger blogs out there - it's important to know that links in comments don't count.

Hey Barry - All right. Cough up the names of those plug ins! I totally agree about the SEO thing. After doing it for 5+ years, I've come to the conclusion too that social networking is a much better way to build relationships and ultimately sell products or services online. The funny thing is that when you do social networking right, your rankings improve!

Elge

Hmmm....Good food for thought.

I'd love to move away from hourly pricing but I'll have to think about it a bit. Part of the dilemma is that one of my main bread and butter services can vary widely from client to client in terms of my time investment based on the "ready to print-ness" of the content they send me. For some clients, their content is ready to go. For other clients, it needs some work! It's tough to know which camp a client is going to fall into until I've worked with them for a while.

It seems like it would be weird to change horses mid-stream (i.e. go from billing hourly to flat rate). Maybe it's a matter of asking better questions before writing the proposal?

Thanks,

Elge

Any advice on how to work this into writing proposals? The vast majority of the work I do is on a proposal basis. Part of the work is discrete projects and some is ongoing so billed hourly. Although I've gotten better at knowing what a job is going to take, the rapid changes in my industry make it a moving target and sometimes I wind up feeling like I'm making $5 an hour in order to really deliver results to clients.

Hi Joel,

Hate to break it to you but I've learned the hard way that the vast majority fo the time links in blogs comment don't count as a link to your site in the search engines because they are no follow links.

Elge

I once met a mortgage broker at a networking seminar and even after hearing all about the reasons to specialize she still introduced herself with "Oh I work wtih every one." You know what? I can't refer business to her. I don't know "everyone." I know inidividual people. If you want peopel to refer business to you, you have to specialize enough to be able to tell them who you work with.

I'd love to meet for coffee or lunch during the day.

Kaya and I have been messaging about having an infomral event to talk about future events. Maybe people who are interested in hosting an event or being more active in the Portland community can meet for coffee or something like that. Let me know if you're interested and I'll try to coordinate something.

Elge

Hey Mark,

I think we all learned that you OWN the Gandhi, Mandela, MLK + Marketing key phrases in Google! ;-]

Based in part on what I heard from the group that they're looking for, this morning I'm going to map out an event on the basics of eMarketing. What areas (websites, newsletters, blogs, SEO, etc.) you need to consider what questions you need to answer to use them to your advantage. I'm putting out a tentative date of June 11th.

If anyone is interested, let me know. I'll also put out a promotion when I have the copy for it worked up.

Elge

Hey Jeff,

I look forward to meeting you in person. Susan Rich and I had tea last Thursday and she mentioned you. I think I'll also see you at the SECP event in May. Correct?

Elge

The process you describe, aka reciprical link campaigns, is a huge time investment and has a terrible ROI. You'd be lucky to get one website out of 100 to agree to link to you and at the least you're going to need 100 links to make a difference. When you think about how long it will take to find 10,000 websites and contact them all, you quickly get an idea of the scope of the project you're taking on.

You're better off, creating link worthy content and leveraging online relationships to promote that content.

Hi Dan,

Really solid advice. If people follow the guidelines you describe, they will go a long way to finding an ethical SEO company. A point you touch on that I'd like to drive home to folks is that there are several "not so ethical" SEO companies out there.

My sister got caught up in a scam with a company that called her (red flag #1) and guaranteed first page rankings in Google (red flag #2). What my sister didn't realize, and most business owners don't, is that the way they keep their “guarantee” is to get you good rankings for phrases customers don't use and no other sites are trying to rank for. Lesson: When it comes to evaluating success, make sure it’s for key phrases customers actually use!

I'd recommend posting a job or on the forum of PDXMindshare (http://www.pdxmindshare.com/)

Hi Elsa,

Thanks for sharing your story. I do want to bring one thing to your attention. You write about your website: "The placement was enhanced by the provider, who in turn upgrades, and refreshes the site. They also link us back and forth with like sites under the House Cleaning Alliance umbrella. It's now the only advertising we use."

This is a danerous linking strategy. While this reciprocal linking approach has worked in the past, Google has changed and they WILL punish your site (and the other sites) for it. I strongly recommend that you or your web company work to get links outside the circle because you will see your rankings start to drop and they could drop by a lot.

Good job Brandi! This is a good primer for anyone working in marketing to show their clients. I'm not a graphic designer but I recognize good design when I see it. For someone like me who's focus is on stuff like SEO and copywriting, a good looking brand goes a loooong way to making my job easier.

While I completely agree with the points Bill makes, Biznik is not the appropriate place to post your press release. Just as your clothing articles convey a first impression, so do your written articles.

We want to hear from you, Bill. This “article” makes me think you've paid someone to create your profile and promise you online exposure which doesn't sit well in the online social networking world.