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Formatting Secrets for Kindle and Nook EBooks

Jim Newell — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:18:25 +0000

Are you a writer, do you have a story that needs to be told? It has never been easier or more economical to self publish your book or e-book than it is today. Selling your creation with the rapidly expanding marketplace is easier than ever before, You have instant access to many places to sell both print and digital copies of your masterpiece. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are just two of the many available, they are also the two largest markets for instantly downloadable e-books. The hardest part of putting your e-book online, other than the actual writing, is getting formatted correctly for the market you want to sell from. This excellent article, while bit long, covers everything you need to know to get your e-book loaded and ready to sell.

Formatting Secrets for Kindle and Nook EBooks

Formatting an eBook for use on a web site or for sending by email using the PDF file format is relatively easy. Most popular word processors and page design programs can export to the PDF file format and those exports usually accurately render the PDF to match the original created in Word, InDesign, or whatever. Formatting for the Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Nook is a completely different proposition. Some programs like InDesign have plug-ins that supposedly save to the eBook format, but these are notoriously inaccurate. So exactly how do you properly, and easily, format a file for Kindle or Nook?

The Kindle format and also the Nook format are based on HTML, so the obvious answer to the previous question is to do your formatting in HTML. Most word processors and page layout programs can save to HTML, so that is the first step. Then open the file in your favorite HTML editor, I like using Dreamweaver but all of these techniques are done at the code view so any standard HTML editor will work. You can even use a plain text editor like Windows Notepad if you like. The Kindle Fire can take some HTML 5 coding with CSS3, but we will be sticking with more basic formatting in this discussion.

What we want is basic HTML, with all excessive formatting removed. If you are formatting for the Kindle and there is a cover image, remove it. Kindle works best if you upload the cover image separately from the eBook file. In the Nook you can leave it attached. For a professional look you want to start the actual eBook with a Title Page, followed by a Copyright Page. You only need basic information on the Title Page, first of course the title of the eBook as text, don’t use a picture for the title, keep it text. You can follow this by a smaller picture similar to the cover of the book if you like, but don’t put a small image of the cover here. That just looks unprofessional. What I frequently do is to use the same art as the cover if it is interesting enough but without the text.

The copyright page can contain a lot of information but the most important part is a properly formatted copyright. This is in the form of “copyright date name”, here is an example: copyright 2012 George Peirson. You can replace copyright with the copyright symbol if you like. One more thing the copyright holder has to be either an individual or corporation (which are individuals as far as the US Government is concerned). Aside from corporations, companies cannot own copyrights. So either a person’s name, or a corporation name, no business names, no doing business as, no partnerships, etc.

Next you will have your table of contents, followed by the rest of the book. We will now look at more specific HTML level formatting techniques.

Start by cleaning out all of the extraneous coding, span tags, any font tags or CSS styling, etc. Leave in paragraph tags or div tags as needed, but pretty much take everything else out. We basically want to start from scratch and keep the formatting to a minimum for the widest compatibility. If you use a program like Dreamweaver you can use the Find and Replace function to speed up this task. Lets say that you have paragraph tags with some formatting in them like this [p], instead of looking through all of your code and removing each instance of [class="bodytext"], instead do a search for [p] and replace with [p]. Also remove any span tags and don’t forget to remove the closing tags as well, [/span]

We will next put in page breaks as needed, normally you would want each new chapter to start at the top of its own page, and of course the Title Page should be on one page and the Copyright Page should have its own page as well. To start a page at the top of the page on Kindle put in a page break in the code. Make sure you use a page break after the Title Page, after the Copyright page, after the Table of Contents, to give the eBook a professional look. The page break tag goes at the top of the new page in the code view, for instance at the beginning of each chapter before you start any text on that page. Here is the tag to use, this is a special tag that you will not find in normal HTML: [mbp:pagebreak /]. Just put it on its own line inside of tag symbols in the code at the beginning of each new chapter.

Now for some basic paragraph formatting. Of course you will be putting your paragraphs in paragraph tags, [p] paragraph text goes here [/p]. You can put in basic paragraph attributes into the opening paragraph tag, the most commonly used one is the align attribute. Simple to use, it goes like this:

[p align="left"] for left alignment,

[p align="center"] for center alignment

[p align="right"] for right alignment

Another attribute is align=”justify” to force full justification, but eBooks fully justify by default so you can ignore this one.

The paragraph tag will leave a blank line between paragraphs, if you want your paragraphs to be continuous without blank lines then use a break tag instead, [br /]. Put one of these at the end of each paragraph break in your text and then begin the next line (no opening paragraph tag). To put a space between paragraphs use multiple break tags.

When you bump paragraphs together like this you will need a larger indent on the first line to easily spot the beginning of each paragraph, you can create the indent by using non-breaking spaces, here is the code “&” followed by “nbsp”, you can put as many as you need, each one is a single space. I have found that 5-9 of these at the beginning of a paragraph gives a nice looking indent. You can use spacing attributes in the opening paragraph tag for indenting the first line, but it is not as reliable as the non-breaking space, so I stick with that in most cases.

You can indent the text on the left and right by using Block Quotes, basically adding margins to the page. Be aware though that on the earlier Black & White Kindles the right margin may be ignored.

[blockquote] text [/blockquote]

You can put several paragraphs between one set of block quotes, and you can double up or triple up on the blockquotes to add larger margins, useful for poems and such.

Put in Bold and Italics as needed using standard tags, b for bold and i for italics

You can also use the different H tags for sizing your text, although I have found that only the larger H tag numbers work reliably. [h1] title text [/h1], [h2] not as large [/h2], etc. The H tags go from 1 to 6 but I have found that only h1 through h3 work reliably on all devices. So these are good for titles, page headings, and such.

Use H tags to size title and other large text like this:

[h1] title of eBook [/h1]

[h2] subtitle of eBook [/h2]

[h2] chapter titles [/h2]

You can put in alignment attributes into H tags, like this: [h1 align="center"].

Next position and format your images. I recommend sticking with left, right, or center alignment and keep your images on the smaller size. If the image is too large it will be resized by the eBook reader to fit the page and you will have one big image with no text. This is one spot where you may want to do some testing to get just the right size depending on your needs.

Once the basic formatting is in place you can set up the Table of Contents. Use anchor tags to create links for a Table of Contents. If you do this right after the title page and name it Table of Contents Kindle will know what it is and use this list for the Kindle TOC at the end of the book.

An Anchor tag looks like this: [a name="11" id="11"] (inside of tag symbols of course)

Place this at the top of each chapter, after the page break tag we included previously. You can name the anchor tags anything you want, but I find it easy to just number them. The example above is for chapter 11.

Now go up to your Table of Contents page and use standard links on that text to link back to your anchor tags. Here is how the link for chapter 11 looks in the TOC.

[a href="#11"] Chapter 11[/a] (again with the correct tag symbols surrounding the tag)

You can name your chapter anchor tags anything you like, maybe you have a collection of short stories and your Table of Contents lists the story titles instead of chapters, this is fine. But if you use the word Chapter in the Table of Contents Kindle will ignore any other links on that page when making the Kindle Table of Contents (in the Kindle controls and at the end of the eBook). So if you have this:

Forward

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Epilogue

The Kindle will only use:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

In your eBook’s Table of Contents, of course your TOC with all of your anchor tags will work correctly, but if someone uses the TOC control in Kindle they will not see the Forward or Epilogue links in this example. This does not happen if you don’t use the word Chapter. I am not sure why this is so and I discovered this by accident, but after a lot of testing it seems to be consistent. So either use all Chapters (chapter 1 – Forward, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4 – Epilogue) or don’t use the word Chapter in the TOC.

You can use standard links in the text and at the end of the book for links to web pages, etc. These will work fine, but to be safe keep any external links off of the Table of Contents page. If you want a list of links at the front of the book put them on their own page after the TOC.

One more tip on designing your book, make sure you have a good Forward or First Chapter. Amazon previews the first 10% of the book in their Look Inside tool in their Kindle Store, so you want the first 10% to grab the attention of the reader so that they will buy your book. Don’t fill the front of the book with advertising, save that for the end, and don’t put a bunch of pictures at the front of the book as well. Make sure you have some quality text in the first 10% to maximize your exposure and sales.

This will take care of almost all of your formatting needs and make your book easily convertible to both the Kindle and Nook platforms. You can get a lot fancier if you need to, but this really is most of the formatting that most books use.

You should do a lot of testing to make sure that your formatting works, I recommend using a program named Calibre to convert your HTML to the MOBI format for the Kindle and the ePUB format for use on the Nook. You should use either the computer version of the Kindle Reader and the Nook Reader to check the formatting after conversion, or better still use an actual Kindle or Nook. Don’t rely on the Reader in Calibre as it is not accurate. One more tip, I have found that if I need to change or fix the formatting I need to remove the eBook from the Kindle Reader and also remove the eBook from Calibre, then re-import the fixed HTML back into Calibre, re-convert to MOBI or ePUB, and re-install in the Reader, otherwise I have found that the changes don’t always take.

George Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 60 multimedia based tutorial training titles covering such topics as Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. To see his training sets visit http://www.howtogurus.com Article copyright 2012 George Peirson

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Is there really gender discrimination in business?

Jim Newell — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:38:03 +0000

In a private Facebook group, I noticed a lot of people were looking for a tech person to work with. So, I introduced myself. Upon returning to check on the status, I saw a post at the very top of the wall from a guy who also introduced himself as a coder.

Now, I’m not that naive to think I am the only geek in a group. There are probably many people better at tech than me in any group. What gave me pause was, why this guy’s introduction got so many responses when mine hardly went noticed.

A horrifying thought flashed through my mind. It couldn’t be true. Did he get more attention because he’s… a man? Maybe you have experienced something similar. Something that made you stop to wonder if you didn’t win the bid, secure that client or get that exposure because you are a woman. Then, you look around and it looks like all the top dogs are men.

Image via Wikipedia The Glass Ceiling

Of course it depends on the industry you are in but I’m here to tell you, even in seemingly male-centric arenas, there are plenty of women quietly making serious coin. Sometimes, we aren’t seeing the ladies because women simply aren’t vocal about their successes. And, when we toot our own horn, we often express it in an entirely different manner.

For us, being able to support our families and being there when the kids get off the bus mean a whole lot more than ‘crushing it’ or making a million dollars in 24 hours. I’m not saying women don’t strive for that. I’d love to make that kind of money any day. It’s just, our goals are often more immediate and realistic.

That is why it’s always refreshing to hear stories about real women and how they broke through the barriers. If you need a little inspiration from authentic women just like you, head on over to SoloMasterminds. They are bragging on three ladies who turned their wildest dreams into reality while juggling homework, laundry, whiny children, soccer practices and meal plans.

As for that little incident I told you about earlier, after giving it more thought, I decided it had nothing to do with gender nor discrimination of any kind. There were plenty of logical and probably more accurate explanations like the timing of our posts and how quickly my post got buried under a flurry of activity.

What I learned that week – focus on being awesome instead of speculating about something that may not be true because when working for yourself, there is no glass ceiling. Especially with an Internet business. Don’t take my word for it. Check out the three case studies and let those women tell you their story.

— BIO —
Lynette Chandler helps small businesses leverage technology in their marketing. She is also the resident tech expert at SoloMasterminds and credits it for helping to turn her business around. Lynette would love to connect with you in this special community and invites you to come check it out.

When Will Gender Bias Ever End? (jenniferhanford.wordpress.com)
Forced Sterlisation in Sweden – Campaign (kractivist.wordpress.com)

Frustrated With Graphics Software Programs? Help is Here!

Jim Newell — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:26:46 +0000

If you have designed websites or produced digital products for online sale, you have more than likely had the need to procure or produce graphics for use on your website, in your sales letters, or in as part of your digital product.

There are many ways to obtain the graphics you need, and most involve spending money.

You can outsource production to graphics designers.

You may not get exactly what you want.
To get quality you will have to pay more.

You Can use PLR graphics.

Again you may not find exactly what you want.
You may have to use a graphics software program to modify and change your graphic.

If you have a high end graphics program, and can use it well, you can produce your own.

High end graphics programs cost between $200 to $700 dollars.
Most while being very good, are also very complicated to learn how to use.
You may have to continually upgrade to keep up with added features.

You could use a high end ‘open source’ graphics software program. The 2 top rated programs in this group are free to download and use, they are upgraded and improved constantly still at no charge. The only proviso is that they are , like their commercial counterparts, complicated programs to learn and master. Once you do learn to use them you can do anything you could do with the expensive commercial programs. I use these programs almost daily.

First is Paint.net, available free at http://www.getpaint.net/ You will want to check for the availability of plugins for many features and be sure the download and add the ones you need. Many online tutorials are available from YouTube and other sources.
Next is Gimp, strange name, but a very powerful and capable program. Available free at http://www.gimp.org/. This program also utilizes plugins to add special features and many online tutorials are also available.

There is also a package of 35 very well done videos that will teach you also any function you will need including banners, header graphics, ebook covers, buttons, buy buttons, or almost anything else you can think of. Don’t be fooled by the Low pricetag, this is a very well done package and available at this link Gimp Videos

60+ High Quality Free GIMP Brush Packs (smashingapps.com)
Free Tools for Getting Started with the Mighty GIMP Graphics Editor (ostatic.com)

What Does how You Answer the Telephone Have to do With Marketing?

Jim Newell — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:13:23 +0000

By: Jim Newell

Have you ever called a business that you were unfamiliar with, and the person who answered sounded less than eager to help you with the information you were looking for? Did they sound too busy to help you, or under too much stress?

Maybe they answered with just one word that described their type of business, with no greeting, something like “garage”, “locksmith”, or “plumber”, leaving you a little confused as to who you actually called. Unless you are in a very small town, there may be more than one of that type of business in the area.

Many times the first contact a new prospect has with a business is a telephone call. This is especially true for “brick & mortar” businesses. It is therefore of paramount importance that this contact be positive for the caller.
That telephone call will usually be from someone who is totally unfamiliar with the exact products and services your business provides. They most likely need information. If they receive the information they need quickly, and in a friendly manner, they may very well make the jump from prospect to customer.

The first contact a prospect makes with any business sets in their mind an unconscious picture of how that business responds. If that contact was positive, great. However if it was negative, that prospect may be lost forever.
I have presented sales and marketing classes and seminars to many industry trade groups. I use as an example one of my customers who always answers their phone in a way that you can feel their enthusiasm to help you, it makes no difference who answers, because they all use the same enthusiastic greeting and you can “feel” the smile. I have even given out their phone number, so attendees could hear a good example.

So how do you convince your employees to answer the phone with enthusiasm? You should start with a short training program for all people who answer the phone.

• You need to let your employees know how big a part of how they answer the phone is to customer acquisition.
• Have them help you develop a script that everyone will use. They will feel a sense of ownership.
• Put a mirror at each phone station, so the person answering can see their smile. People on the other end of the phone
can “feel” that smile.
• It is very important that you monitor how the phone is being answered, if a particular person cannot learn and use the
script, they should be reassigned so they are not responsible for answering the phone.
• All persons answering the phone, including the business owner, senior managers, whoever must use the same script and
enthusiasm.

In closing, remember any contact with a prospect or existing customer needs to be treated as an opportunity to gain a new customer or help the existing customer decide to buy more products or services from you. In other words all prospect or customer contacts are part of marketing.

Auto responders, A Powerful Marketing AutomationTool for All Businesses!

Jim Newell — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:35:29 +0000

By: Jim Newell

One of the more powerful marketing automation tools for online marketers is the auto responder. Many “brick & mortar” business people are not aware of this amazing tool, however it is just as useful and powerful for them as well.

Read that first sentence again slowly…did you see “powerful marketing automation”, think about that for a moment, what could it mean for your “brick & mortar” business? Automation of repetitive tasks is one of the keys to running a successful business, either online or “brick & mortar”, especially when you have a small staff.

Auto responders first came into use as a way of alerting e-mailers that their message bounced, or did not get sent. Have you ever sent an email message to someone and got an immediate reply that they are on vacation? Those messages are sent by a basic auto responder system included in their email system.

As people saw how useful these auto responses were, and how quickly they were delivered, it just became natural that they be adapted to marketing. What is somewhat amazing however is how few businesses make full use of this automated and and very useful message delivery system. If you are reading this article in the one of my newsletters, that newsletter was sent to you via an auto responder, which points out another great attribute of this great tool, that being the ability to deliver specific communications on a predetermined schedule.

The real power of an auto responder is the users ability to preload the communications you want to send, and when you want them sent, ie; message number 1 could be sent immediately, then number 2 a few days later. number 3 two weeks after number 2 and so on.

When your subscriber signs up for your list, or when you enter them on your list the schedule stars, so that no matter when someone starts on your list they receive the same messages as everyone else and on the same schedule. You would also have the ability to send a special message to all subscribers at any time, without changing the original schedule. Some auto responder users have their communications scheduled a year or 2 into the future, kind of a set it and forget it procedure.

This is all part of the making money while you sleep magic that you hear about, you are marketing to your subscribers on auto pilot, all of the time, are you beginning so see the possibilities?

There are 3 basic ways to set up auto responders, the amount of work done by you and the amount done by the auto responder varies quite a bit depending on which method you choose.

Auto responder software on your site – a lot of work for you
- Pros
  - Open source software available, no cost
  - No monthly charges
- Cons
  - You handle subscriptions
  - You set up messages and schedules
  - You email messages as per schedule
  - You handle subscription cancellations
Auto Responder Service – some work for you
- Pros
  - They take care of subscriptions and cancellations
  - They send all emails, on your schedule
  - Easy set up of messages and schedule
  - Most guarantee all subscribers are double opt-in subscribers
- Cons
  - Charge a moderate monthly fee to manage
Full service email marketing management services
- Pros
  - More than just auto responders, they handle all of your email marketing
- Cons
  - Can be expensive

In my experience, most auto responder software loaded on your site, is to much work. It is very easy to get busy and forget to email messages on time, add subscribers to your list, remove cancellations from your list, not insure that all subscribers are double opt-in, etc.

Auto responder services offer excellent management of your list or multiple lists, they handle the double opt-in procedure, they all have tutorials to get you up and running quickly. Once you get your campaigns are up and running, they run on autopilot, occasional changes or tweaks are easy to make. My service costs me less than $20 per month and is worth every penny.

Full service email management services are well suited to larger businesses, do a fantastic job of handling all of your email issues, however cost can be higher.

Whichever method you choose remember than communicating with your prospects and customers on a regular basis is one of the best ways to increase customer retention and one of the easiest ways to add sales.

I recommend Aweber, for your Auto responder needs

You have gone to the effort to attract subscribers, if taken care of and offered information and the occasional product, these folks will stick with you and even be profitable. That said some people do very well with this method.

How to Attract Targeted, Organic Traffic to Your Website or Blog with no Added Cost

Jim Newell — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:40:15 +0000

By: Jim Newell

When building your marketing list do you consider what motivates a subscriber to sign up?

One of the biggest motivations is the hope that they are going to get information on something that interests them, or will solve a problem they are experiencing.

The marketing methods you are using, and how effectively you are using them dictate in large part how well targeted the group of prospects you are trying to entice will be. Popular methods of trying to attract subscribers, or buyers, include;

Pay Per Click advertising, also known as PPC. The main attribute of PPC advertising is that if not done correctly, and constantly monitored, these campaigns can become quite costly. They can however be very targeted.
Article Marketing is the activity of writing and distributing original article that you write or have written, with the express purpose of attracting readers and enticing them to become subscribers or customers. Well written, keyword optimized articles can be very targeted. Article Marketing can be very effective, and if you do you own writing and distributing, very low cost.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a way to dramatically improve the overall effectiveness of both of the above online marketing methods, and do it with no added cost. What could be better, supercharge your efforts be being sure your PPC, and Article Marketing campaigns are optimized, just by using a few techniques that should have been used anyway.

Whether you have a website, a blog, or just write articles, Using basic SEO techniques in large part determines how easily your site or acticles are found, and thus how well they are ranked by the search engines. The good news for the astute online marketer is that a very large percentage of websites, blogs and article are not optimized at all, or at best very poorly, this gives a decided advantage to those who will take the time to learn and use these simple techniques.

tag – A relevant title tag, included in the <HEAD> section of your page will do more to improve page rank than just meta tags. The title tag should contain your main keywords, and may or may not read like or even resemble the title of your article or page. Title tags must be closed.</li> <li>Meta tags – Meta tags are not by themselves the “magic bullet” to page rank, they are however overlooked by a very large percentage of web publishers. They really just help search engines find information about you page, article and site. The most important Meta Tags for search engine standing are the description and the keyword tags, and are also the most misused. <ul> <li>The description tag describes what your page is about, search engines will use part of your description tag in listings for keyword searches. Your description needs to be enclosed in quotes, and should contain your main keywords.</li> <li>The keywords tag should contain very targeted, keywords, most search engines only allow a limited number of keywords, be sure yours are the most relevant to the page content.</li> </ul> </li> <li>There are more meta tags that are useful, do a search on “meta tags” for extensive information.</li> </ul> There are many more ways to optimize your pages, some of which will be covered in subsequent articles on this site. For more immediate extensive information and access to a product that can automate your SEO efforts, check out the premier SEO tool at this link <a href="http://a8db5b22z7z7g-iwwq33yt3mbc.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=CSM603" target="_top">Click Here!</a> </article> <article> <h1>The Online Marketers List is His/Her Most Valuable Asset, How You Grow it Dictates How Much it Costs!</h1> Jim Newell — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:07:29 +0000 By: Jim Newell You hear it everywhere on the Internet, the money is in your list. It seems that every other online marketing guru sells a program for building your list. Most of them lead you to some PPC scheme, this of course will cost money, in some cases a lot of money. If you agree that the money is in the list, and that you do not want to spend huge amounts of money to build it, where do you turn? Would you be interested if I told you that all you really need is a computer and a take charge attitude? You can be collecting email addresses for your own list within 48 hours. And you can do it without spending your money on paid traffic sources! If having an online business is your goal, finding new customers every day, without having your own list of opt-in prospects is a lot of hard work and near impossible. When you have and cultivate your own list you have a ready audience for each offer you create, each newsletter you send out, each blog post you make. Each of these items is being sent to someone who asked to be on your list, you already know they are interested in the subject matter on your blog, newsletter, or the products you promote. This kind of “targeted” traffic is priceless to the online marketer. Once you start building your own list you can even begin to automate your contacts with them by using an auto responder program, once you have the messages you want to send entered and scheduled, folks who subscribe to your list, or lists will begin receiving your messages on your schedule. You can start building your list on your own with an opt-in subscription form on your website or blog, with social marketing, article marketing or any of a dozen or so more methods. This will work, however without someone to guide you, someone who has already been through the “try & fail” gauntlet, who has perfected the methods that really work, you could be wasting valuable time and money. Let me introduce you to Carrie Wilkerson, The Barefoot Executive. Carrie has “been there done that” with list buiding, she has developed a fantastic list building training program that will have you up and running with building your list very quickly. Here is the program description directly from Carrie, check it out, if this would work for you, take action now! <a href="http://e24a6fu907uifxfgm6--uhhsa3.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=CSM602" target="_top">Click Here!</a> </article> <article> <h1>3 Approaches to Customer Acquisition, Which will the CommonSenseMarketer use?</h1> Jim Newell — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:56:01 +0000 By: Jim Newell I’ve always been impressed with businesses that can start up in an already crowded niche, and grow very rapidly. I’ve seen many examples of this, is it just luck, or is how they go after the customer? Businesses have different ways of attracting new customers and interacting with their existing customers. It may possibly be safe to say that no two businesses use exactly the same methods; however all use some combination of 3 basic approaches to acquiring customers or prospects.  These 3 approaches to new customer acquisition are; 1) Passive – Some businesses are completely passive, waiting for the phone to ring or some other way of letting customers, both new and repeat find them. These businesses are taking a reactive approach to customer acquisition and retention. 2) Active – More successful businesses will engage in advertising, promotions and other forms of letting potential customers know what services they offer. These businesses are taking an active approach, and are by far with the vast majority. 3) Pro-Active – These are the businesses who if they do not find conditions that exist already to make them grow, they create their own. The superstars take a pro-active approach, they look for things they can change or markets they can create to attract new business. Here is a mythical example. A balloon manufacturer decides to start a new plant in a medium size mid-America city. While researching where to locate he decides to build his plant in the inner city area. He opens and sends his sales people out to flower shops, gift card shops, local restaurants etc., anyplace that might sell, or benefit from giving away balloons. He has some success, but knows there is more business out there. He discovers that his city has 2 annual parades that use the same route through the city and come within a few blocks of his business. He sends a few people out to the parade route to sell balloons to the gathering crowds. Again some success, he has created a new market for his balloons. A couple of years go by and he sees that the sales along the parade routes have tapered off. He decides to petition the city to route the parades past his place of business, which they agree too. He approaches many of the other businesses along the new parade route to advertise on his balloons, and sends more of his people out along the parade routes to give the balloons, with the advertising on them, away. Huge success, he has now created a flood of business customers who benefit from his advertising balloon giveaways and expands that idea to other venues. In this mythical example we see all 3 approaches, some businesses will progress through all 3, others will just start with the pro-active mindset. Any bets on which will become the super-stars? The CommonSenseMarketer will naturally start with the pro-active mindset. <ul> <li> Passive – If our balloon manufacturer had taken this approach he may not have survived his first year.</li> <li>Active – Back to our balloon entrepreneur, he recognized that the parades were drawing crowds of prospective customers into the inner city area and just put his balloons among them.</li> <li>Pro-Active – Our start up balloon manufacturer got the city to change the parade route bringing more exposure to his business, he approached the other businesses along the new parade route with a novel way of increasing their exposure. </li> </ul> It does not matter if you are an online marketer or a “brick & mortar” entrepreneur, the methods for employing these strategies are different, however they still follow the same 3 basic approaches. <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=148818&u=340156&m=17824&urllink=&afftrack=">212</a> </article> <article> <h1>4 Top Online Marketing Tools…”Brick & Mortar” Marketers Should Be Using</h1> Jim Newell — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:50:51 +0000 By: Jim Newell There’s an old saying that goes like this, “necessity is the mother of invention”, perhaps you’ve heard it. Let’s look at an example of it being used. Online marketing of products or information was in its infancy 10 years ago, and it had a huge disadvantage to overcome. How to attract, hold and sell to a market that you never met and your only tool was a computer screen. Take a look at online marketing today, how have they done? Actually very well, the tools that have evolved are very effective, they can be quite useful and cost effective for “brick& mortar” businesses as well. <ol> <li> Website – Try to imagine an advertising platform that can be changed and/or updated any time you want. Your company website can be changed or added to any time you want and at very little or even no cost. Your website can be used to provide information to your existing customer base, as well as new customers. Things such as store hours, maps, specials or even an e-newsletter subscription form. Directing people to your website may even save some phone time. </li> <li>Blog – Is a blog the same thing as a website, well it could be, however the typical blog platform is really good as a content management and reader communication platform. If your customers have questions about your services or products they can post their questions online. Some Blog platforms are easy to update, which makes them ideal for a small website.</li> <li>eMail – email marketing is the main tool online marketers use to keep in contact with their customers. Why would a “brick & mortar” business want to use email marketing? Think direct mail at no cost! Think putting your message directly on your customers/prospects computer! The only costs associated with email marketing, if done on a smaller scale are possible costs to prepare your message. Your email lists can usually be managed with your basic email program. For larger scale email marketing campaigns there are services available that will do everything except gather the email address. If you are a “brick & mortar” business owner, you should be asking every customer you come in contact with for their email address. To stay in compliance with “anti-spam” legislation be sure to ask permission to email them and have them sign a form authorizing the same. Most people will give you their email address, if you assure them that you will not give it to anyone else, and if you tell them what you are going to send them and how often.</li> <li>Auto-responder – Automation of your email marketing messages or newsletters makes your campaign more consistent and much easier to manage. So what does an auto-responder do? It sends your pre entered messages to all of your customers on the schedule you set up. Imagine you send a monthly newsletter, you can write as many issues as you need, enter them into your auto-responder and they will be mailed automatically as scheduled. You can email a special message to all of your list members any time between scheduled messages, without upsetting your schedule. Auto-responder software can be had at no cost and can be installed on your computer, or for time savings you can use an auto-responder service, usually for a monthly charge.</li> </ol> Check this website for a example of an customer information site, <a href="http://www.secureyourstuff.com/">http://www.SecureYourStuff.com</a>, just copy and paste the url into your browser address bar. <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=148752&u=340156&m=17824&urllink=&afftrack=">Finish Strong</a> </article> <article> <h1>5 Ways to apply the Pareto Principle in Common Sense Marketing</h1> Jim Newell — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:17:08 +0000 By: Jim Newell There has to be a reason that some part of a business does better than other parts, why some employees are more productive than others, why some sports team dominate their sports etc. There really is a logical explanation, and once you understand what it is and how it works, your business in fact your life will never be the same. The Pareto Principle, or sometimes referred to as the 80-20 rule, applies to almost every facet of business operation, every management function, in fact it is applied to and holds pretty much true to almost anything in life. The rule was developed from observations made in the early 1900′s by Vilfredo Pareto who had an engineering degree, was an economics lecturer and philosopher in Italy and Switzerland. His 1906 observation was that 80 percent of the property and wealth in Italy were held and controlled by only 20 percent of the population. He also observed that 20 percent of the pea pods in his garden produced 80 percent of the crop. The names Pareto Principle or 80-20 rule were not coined by Pareto but actually credited to him by noted management expert Joseph M. Juran and others who became familiar with Pareto’s work and observations and determined that they could be applied to almost any problem or procedure and seem to always work out to the 80/20 ratio. <ol> <li>80 percent of your profits will come from 20 percent of your products or services. The key is to identify which of those products and services are in the top 20 percent. Those are the products you never want to be out of, those are the services you want to continually improve on or expand. These services and products are the ones you want to advertise the most heavily. You will want to be sure which of the remaining 80 percent of your products and services are really needed and that they support the top 20 percent. </li> <li>80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your customers. After you have identified which of those customers are in the top 20 percent, they are the ones you want to be sure are always catered to, they are always made aware of specials and new products, that they are always given to opportunity to become repeat customers. These are the ones you want to solicit testimonials from. </li> <li>80 percent of complaints will be generated by about the same 20 percent of problems. Tracking your complaints will allow you to see and focus on the specific problems and areas that generate the most complaints. Finding those specific problems will allow you to identify and fix them. Of course you should never stop tracking complaints, because as soon as you fix one another will take its place. </li> <li>80 percent of your successful campaigns will come from only 20 percent of your advertising. Identify your successful campaigns and duplicate or build on them. Use similar delivery methods for your message; some will work better than others with a particular audience. Knowing which methods and campaigns actually work will save o lot of money in your advertising budget. </li> <li>20 percent of your sales force will produce 80 percent of your sales. Nurture, grow and reward that top 20 percent, they are the superstars who will make your business successful. One of the attributes you will find in this group is that they will be the self starters who will always find a way to get the business. This will allow you to put more resources into developing the other 80 percent. </li> </ol> As stated earlier, the Pareto Principle or 80-20 rules works almost anyplace you apply it, the percentages will not always add up to 100 percent, however the ratio will be very close. The 80-20 rule works with online as well as “brick & mortar” businesses. This is truly a Common Sense Marketing tool that you should make part of your decision making and evaluating arsenal. <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=148827&u=340156&m=17824&urllink=&afftrack=">What It Takes to Be Number 1</a> </article> </main></body></html>

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