Issue # 51, 9-Sep-2003
ISSN 1447-4956
Copyright 2003 Jason Anderson. All rights
reserved worldwide
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/
IN THIS ISSUE
1. From the Editor
2. Interview - The Best Hints
And Tips from the last 5 months
3. Your Feedback
4. Resources - Info-Products
Talk Forum, E-Zine Check
5. Final Word
1. From the Editor
I hope everything is well for you this week.
Are your online business plans going to plan?
Have you made a start yet? Remember, if you
don't start, you won't succeed!
We're now just over half way through the
contest I've organized with several other
publishers. If you haven't had a look already I
urge you to do so - there are great prizes up
for grabs.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/contest/
There is also a second chance draw, where you
can win simply by telling others about the
contest. To find out more about the second
chance draw, just visit:
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/contest/referral-contest.html
At the moment you stand a REALLY good chance
of winning in the second chance draw - there
have been very few entries. Plus you can win
automatic prizes just by referring a minimum
number of people.
Best of luck in both competitions!
Speaking of the competition, it gave me a
good lesson recently that I thought I should
pass on to you today.
One of the rules of the competition is you
can't enter with Hotmail.com or Yahoo.com
addresses. Since this version of my mailing list
software doesn't allow you to bad certain
addresses, I have to manually search and delete
them. As a curtsey, I send an email to the
person saying that their entry has been deleted,
and why.
Late last week, I got a scathing letter back,
accusing me of being dishonest and running a
scam. To be honest, I was rather taken aback by
the letter. My first reaction was to blast them
back.
Luckily, I didn't. After I had cooled down a
bit, I thought about just deleting the letter.
In the end, I wrote back to the person
apologizing for the rule but explaining that
many people (not all of course) use Yahoo and
Hotmail addresses as throw-away addresses.
They wrote back again, obviously much calmer
themselves, and I thought nothing more of it
(just that their initial reaction had been a bit
excessive).
However, by chance I found the cause of the
reaction yesterday. It all came down to how the
competition is set up. Since there are two
competitions (the main one and the referral
one), there are two mailing lists. I had removed
their email from the main list, but hadn't
thought to look at the second list.
They had received the letter saying that
their entry was deleted, then a little bit later
they had got a second email from the referral
contest list. As a result, they had come to the
conclusion that something fishy was going on.
And to be honest, I probably would have wondered
myself.
It points out how easily it is to have
misunderstandings when you are online. Sometimes
we forget that the written word can be very
ambiguous (especially English). We rely heavily
on body language and tone of voice to determine
the true meaning of what is being said.
Email has neither. And the nature of email
means that it takes a lot longer to sort
something out than it would face to face, or
even over the phone.
So lesson one is to try and be as clear as
possible in everything your write. If there is
even a remote chance of something being taken
another way, try to rewrite it.
Lesson two is to keep your cool. If someone
abuses you via email, don't immediately respond
in kind. Let yourself cool down, then decide if
you are going to a) ignore it, or b) respond
calmly. Which you do really depends on what you
want the outcome to be.
Some people won't be happy no matter what you
do or say. My personal wish is that computer
access be taken away from these type of people
so we never have to hear from them again, but
alas that will never happen.
Others (like in this case) are just angry
because there has been a mix up. Usually you can
sort things out - and if you do, you will gain a
lot of respect from the other person.
It all comes down to something I wrote about
a few weeks ago. We are dealing with PEOPLE in
our business. People can misunderstand a
situation. People can overreact to a situation.
But if you remember that your business is built
on and by those people, you will do better than
all the others who are just in it for the
money.
Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now. ;-) Instead,
I'll tell you about this weeks newsletter.
This weeks interview is a compilation of the
best hints and tips from the various interviews
over the last five or so months (similar to the
ecourse you received when you subscribed). I
hope you find the tips useful.
The mini-survey this week is more a general
question. I want to know what area of running
your online business you wish to learn more
about (eg: affiliate marketing, using
autoresponders, etc). I intend to use this
information for picking people to approach for
future interviews.
The two new resources this week are both
helpful web sites. The first is a forum for info
products (ebooks, etc), and the second is a site
that will help you check your email for spam
triggers. What makes it different to most is
that it doesn't use Spam Assassin to rate the
email (so it offers a second check).
I hope you enjoy this weeks issue. Don't
forget that you can view all the past issues
online at
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/archive/
|
Is YOUR List Big Enough?
Do you have enough subscribers? I
didn't think so. Discover four
little-used methods for exploding your
subscriber numbers. I highly recommend
it.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/elb
|
2. Interview - The Best Hints And Tips from the
last 5 months
Sorry, this interview is no longer available in the archives. It has been moved to the membership site. You can find out more about the membership site (and how to join) by visiting here.
|
Find The Perfect PROFITABLE Idea
For Your Ebook
Discover 40 different ways to find a
profitable idea for your first ebook.
Get it right the first time! A superb
resource I highly recommend.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/idea/
|
3. Your Feedback
I have a very open question for you as far as
the mini survey is concerned this week. I want
to know what area of running your online
business you wish to learn more about. What sort
of thing that you are unsure about, and would
like more information.
Some obvious examples would be affiliate
marketing, using autoresponders, copywriting,
writing classified ads, and so on. I intend to
use this information for picking people to
approach for future interviews.
If you have specific people would would be
interested in having me interview, feel free to
include that too (along with a suggested
topic).
Please take a few moments and give me your
thoughts:
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/survey/
Last weeks survey was on the topic of
wrapping the text in email - should I do it?
There weren't a lot of responses to that survey
(not exactly an exciting topic I know!), but it
did have two surprises for me.
The first was that some people do still need
text to be wrapped. To be honest, I didn't think
that would be the case - even the mail programs
on Unix these days can auto-wrap text fine (some
can even handle HTML in a limited fashion).
The second surprise was that some people who
can handle unwrapped text fine, still prefer the
text to be wrapped. One comment I received
mentioned that they felt unwrapped text made
them perceive the writer as inexperienced. And
you know, I have to confess I've had that
thought a few times too when I've seen
newsletters where the text isn't wrapped.
So, as should be fairly obvious with this
newsletter, for the foreseeable future I will be
wrapping the text in the newsletter to 65
characters a line (unless I forget again ;-)
).
I was a bit surprised at the low number of
votes for Dr.Mani's interview last week on
blogging, but I guess the interview was on a
topic that not many people would be interested
in. Still, the interview was reasonably liked -
11 people voted, giving it a final score of 4.18
out of 5.
PLEASE, keep those responses coming. They
help me get a better idea of what you do and
don't want from this newsletter.
(Of course, feel free to email your thoughts
to me if you prefer - I always like to hear from
my readers.)
4. Resources - Info-Products
Talk Forum, E-Zine Check
I have two new resources for you this
week.
The first is a relatively new forum (about a
month old) where I am co-moderator. As the name
(Info-Products Talk) suggests, the focus of the
forum is on info-products. But to be honest
we've had all sorts of posts there. Why not drop
in and have a look?
The second resource is a web site I use to
check emails I really want to get past those
brain-dead filters. In general I don't worry
about filters too much - certainly not when I'm
writing this newsletter anyway.
But I do try to ensure that important
messages (like the welcome message and the
weekly announcement message for this newsletter)
are free of filter triggers.
Most message checkers use Spam Assassin to
check the messages. This site doesn't - it looks
for certain words in the message, and assigns a
final score based on which words are present and
how many times they are used.
From what I've seen, I think it would be
almost impossible to get a regular newsletter to
score well with this test. But small messages
can usually be modified to pass.
It's a good second test to apply to messages
that you really want to get through to
people.
Both of these links have been added to the
"members only" section, along with the existing
collection of ebooks, ecourses, and other useful
sites.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/members/
[Subscribers-only area. The password
was sent out in the annoumcement message for
this issue. If you aren't a Subscriber, the
password is also in the Welcome message when you
subscribe to this newsletter!]
5. Final Word
Marina and I got to have our 5 minutes (well,
20 minutes) of fame on the weekend. We're both
part of a medieval reenactment group (the SCA -
visit http://www.sca.org for the full blurb
about who we are and what we do), and our group
took part in a multi-cultural festival on
Saturday night.
Marina and I (along with 10 others) did a
demonstration of the types of dancing they had
back in the middle ages. Most of them were done
as a group, but there was one nerve wracking
dance where there were only the four of us on
stage (two couples). And we were doing this
dance in front of almost 2,000 people.
It's a very pretty dance to watch, but you
can probably imagine what I was thinking
throughout the entire dance - "I won't stuff up,
I won't stuff up, I won't stuff up..."
Especially since I'd made a few dumb mistakes
during practice.
Luckily for me, I didn't stuff up ;-)
Next week (assuming everything goes to plan)
I should have an interview with "Google Cash"
author Chris Carpenter. As you might guess, I've
been quizzing Chris with all sorts of questions
about Google AdWords. We've only just started
the interview (so anything might happen between
now and next week) but I'm expecting it to be
good.
Till next week, I wish you much success in
your online business.
"All greatness is achieved while performing
outside your comfort zone." -- Greg Arnold
