It was early September 2010. At over 225 pounds and sporting a size 40 waist, I decided it was time to make a change. After all, at 46-years old, I wasn't getting any younger. In order to hold myself accountable to my desire to get fit and lose weight, I went public with my goals. I wrote about the changes I would be making extensively on this blog. My first entry was posted 9/14/10. By... Continue Reading

(Written by guest contributor Joel Ownby) Accepting payment online for your products and services sounds like a pretty simple endeavor, and at a low level it is. Understanding what is happening behind the scenes is an entirely different proposition. Understanding the nuts and bolts of payment processing will grant you the ability to provide better customer service, generate more accurate cash flow and projection data, help you to better understand technical issues involving payment processing... Continue Reading

Providing your audience, customers, and potential customers with free, valuable information is a cornerstone of running an online business. If you give enough stuff away for free, and make sure that that stuff is high-quality and indicative of your high standards, then enough people are going to want to pay you to get to the rest of what you know that you will be able to make a nice living from your online income. One... Continue Reading

There's a lot of great information out there that will walk you through the nitty gritty details of copywriting. Things like how long to make your sales page, and what elements do the most to drive sales. Think of these things as the scaffolding of your copywriting. Whether or not you choose to use all or just some of them, they provide a general framework around which to write your copy. Continue Reading

So you've got your website up and running, complete with some key products and ads and maybe even a sales page. So now what, you just sit back and wait for the sales to roll in, right? Well, in your rush to get online, you may have overlooked the importance of a key task that just might be the single most vital thing you do as a marketer: split testing. This, in a nutshell, is... Continue Reading

While addressing the nuts and bolts might not be the most exciting part of a business, a sturdy, well-planned foundation is necessary to build great success. Here are some administrative items that we have believe are essential to any business: Continue Reading

How do you get people to want what you're selling? Sure you have a quality product or service, but most of the time people buy things for other, more intangible reasons. If a certain company is all class and professionalism, then people might buy because they want to appear classy and professional themselves. This, in a nutshell, is branding. It is cultivating consistency in the message you put out to the world about who you... Continue Reading

(Written by guest contributor Chris Harper) Have you ever seen a television commercial that just drives you nuts because of the spokesperson they use? I can think of at least two regional companies here in Colorado that fall into that category for me. In both cases, the "actor" has a close tie to the company being advertised. For one it's the owner, and for the other one it's the owner's kid that serves as their... Continue Reading

(Written by guest contributor Carrie Wilkerson) I know just enough to be dangerous. Seriously. Continue Reading

(Written by guest contributor Chris Harper) I'm going to be exploring the different kinds of video typically used in product launches. Obviously, you can add more along the way, but from my experience, these three are going to be key to your launch's success. In this article, I'll look at the elements of a compelling teaser video. Continue Reading

How did Facebook ever get to be so big? Honestly, the site is chock full 'o so much garbage that it has become the new MySpace. But beyond all the stupid vampire and zombie games, there is a solid social media site that can be useful for businesses. For over a year, I have peaked at my 5000 friend limit. However, people close their accounts or unfriend me from time to time. So I've always... Continue Reading

Christmas. Seems like we measure a good part of our year by the celebration of Christ's birth. I know. For many people Christmas is very much a secular holiday. A time for family and friends. A time for decorating and hanging pretty lights. A time for the wonder of Santa Claus and flying reindeer. And a time for gift-giving. And regardless of whether or not Target has the cajones to allow the nice Salvation Army... Continue Reading

Apart from Twitter's own terms of service which prohibit obvious things like harassment, transmitting viruses and spamming other members, there really aren't many rules to the site. You can essentially use Twitter however you like. However, for people and businesses who want to use Twitter successfully (eg: build a following and grow their circle of influence), there are a number of best practices that can be observed. I cover many of these in my book... Continue Reading

With Twitter becoming such a powerful force on the social media scene, there are those who get it and those who don't get it. There's a certain number of the "don't get it" crowd who will invariably take an outright aggressive posture and make a statement like this... "Twitter is a waste of time. Who cares what you had for breakfast?" Many on Twitter will hem and haw about the content of the question, almost... Continue Reading