Sophie’s Success Shortcuts

I did an internet marketing webinar that was a whole weekend with Socrates Socratous this past weekend. It asked a usual question differently and — surprise — the answer was different.

Socrates is a great teacher. In addition to the great content, what’s great about his webinars is that he allows the participants to brainstorm, so it is a natural continuation of things to form a mastermind group.

We had our first session, a conference call, and it was very useful to see where everyone is at.

One of the questions came up how can someone send people to another website through a redirect link instead of an affiliate link. The best free solution I have ever seen is at http://www.sophieslist.com/redirectvideo

It’s a site with about 48 videos that include this one, how to redirect without every revealing the affiliate link. I am a member on a lot of sites that offer how-to videos, but this is far the best, and it is free. I use it, refer to it all the time… and I’ve been a member for almost two years… but you forget things, so it is good that it’s there.

Another resource that I find invaluable and would not cancel if I had to eat beans and rice for a week is Jim Edwards’ membership site, at http://www.sophieslist.com/netr

It will be mandatory for anyone in my coaching/apprentice/incubator program to subscribe to that… a lot of what you need to build a successful and very profitable information business is there, in a clear, concise, visual way. Jim Edwards is the special marketing teacher who doesn’t believe in giving useful but incomplete information like most others. That’s why I stick with him, and that’s why I want to use his material to train others with.

His latest webinar was on brainstorming and it was the best in that topic. And it was effective: I have started to use the tools I have, and now I can see that I can launch this incubator program very soon… whereas without using the brainstorming tools I have been quite stuck… :-(

Tags: incubator program, jim edwards, redirect tool

I posted a “note” on my facebook profile today… on the universal law, The Law of Process, that is dismissed by millions of wannabees… and that may be the most important insight I have ever had with regards to why people don’t act in spite of their lofty dreams.

And then later today I heard Jim Edwards’ inspired rant about the same thing… using his own going-to-the-gym as an example of how one can actually take action on what they want… in his case, go to the gym and work out, seriously.

And I also heard his resigned “ehh” off camera at the end of the video.

We, coaches, all feel that way. We want you to succeed… we can take you to the water, but we can’t force you to drink.. And, it seems, you don’t, even though, you say, you are thirsty….

So my note, and my planned Internet Kindergarten may be a solution for some… I won’t kid myself that it is for everyone… but for the ones that if you put their snout into the water, they wake up, they say “water” and start drinking it…

Are you one of them?

Send me an email at mavencentral-339076@autocontactor.com
to get yourself on my notification list.

It will be fun.

Tags: igottatellyou.com, internet marketing kindergarten, jim edwards

I had an inspiration this morning: I woke up early. I made myself a cup of tea, went back to bed, and read a little.

About an hour later I woke up from a dream of writing THIS article. Here it is, just the way it came to me in my dream:

Each great thing that was ever built started with something that had the greatness, as a potential only.

Most didn’t look like the start of something great. Many times it was a comedy of errors and their correction that took someone to something big.

But, you say, we are always told to create with the big picture in mind… Oh yes, that one. I know that well. The misunderstanding of that notion has robbed me of many successes…

The misunderstanding of that principle has rendered me undecisive, unresponsive, tentative, or jumping from one sure thing to another.

Imagine if the tree thought that every seed it is producing must become a big tree… it would be so afraid of living, it would start to shrink and refuse to go to seed. The prospect of so many wasted seeds would kill the tree’s aliveness and creativity.

No, greatness is a potential, dormant in every little seed, and with enough great little seeds produced, one of them may become a big tree…

Let’s look at MY story.

Back in 1988 I found myself unemployed from architecture, and unemployable at the same time… don’t ask me why, I won’t tell.

I was spending quite a few months depressed, going to self help programs, 12-step, Werner Erhard and Associates, etc. … barely having 3-day worth of work a month to live on.

I couldn’t think of anything to do… I was too entrenched in being an architect. At some point, I did an exercise from the “What Color Is Your Parachute” and found that what I wanted to do, that caused me pleasure, is “put ink on paper and communicate.”

I took it literally at the time, and thought advertising or publishing.

I didn’t know much of either.

I went and apprenticed (free) with a small printer for a while, and learned some stuff, bought a letter press with some letters, wrote advertising in mail order magazines… to sell some pyramid schemes… and then when I really needed some money to earn, I wrote a letter to the two throw-away magazines in my area, asking if they had a job opening for publisher’s apprentice.

One of them called and said that such a job didn’t exist but I could start selling advertising. No “draw” (salary), only commission. Does that put me closer to publishing, I asked, and the guy said yes. I took the job.

I was trained by another salesperson. We visited a few stores in my town–typical advertisers in that paper. We sold 5 small ads that day. I say “we”, but I think it was her. That day completed my training. Next day I walked back to the business area of my little town, and found that by the time I got there, the training salesperson had driven there and sold them, or attempted to. I had no wheels, and soon I had no hope.

I called the other magazine, and bragged that I had sold 7 ads my first week for their competitor… they were impressed. They gave me a 200 dollar advance, and a beat up car with a gas card.

I worked my butt off, sold ads, delivered magazines, partook in every office meeting, went to the printer, went to the typesetter, collected monies… two months later, I was put in charge of designing the ads and laying out the magazine. Two more months later I was offered a partnership in the magazine. Still, my best week I made $400… I didn’t have many good weeks.

I worked 20 hours a day 7 days a week… I was bossy, I was certain, I was “dynamic”, I was disrespectful… 5 months later I was offered the choice to resign, or… blackmail. I resigned. No-brainer.

That same evening I called all the advertisers in my care, the typesetting company and the printer with the same question: Would you take a chance on me for one issue? They all said yes, so next day there was a brand new magazine born, printed and delivered.

I made money with the first issue, and with every issue thereafter. More than $400 a week. :-)

That magazine, through the time, became 90-thousand circulation strong, and I published it for 11 years.

Now, there are two lessons in this story: 1. I first looked what it is that I love so much that I would do it for free (putting ink on paper and communicate) and 2. I was willing to fumble through phases that didn’t seem to go anywhere, and I was rewarded through small corrective steps, with a business I loved.

When I watch internet marketing, I see many thousands who never get started. They got attracted to the visions of greatness (millions of dollars) but are unable or unwilling to start where one needs to start in fear of starting at the wrong place.

I have had coaching clients that were so afraid of making the wrong move, that they never got started… that is until I made them do stuff…

I have had coaching clients that wanted to do internet marketing, but hated every aspect of it… and sucked at it too… of course.

I have had coaching clients that thought that without any skills they can make millions and they never actually learned anything…

Remember, childhood was to learn skills, without the significance. At least in most countries… of course, in the US kids must perform early on, sports are not skill builders, but opportunities to be big… which teaches us early on that we were supposed to be born with the skills we need, and if we weren’t, then we are doomed.

The same applies in business. You need to play first in the sandbox, and build some easy structures, without the significance. Write an article here, a blogpost there, a salesletter here, make a video there, copy and rewrite an ebook, just to practice the structure… Just to get a feel what you like to do. What you are good at.

Every guru you meet started that way.

My current favorite, Eben Pagan, wrote an ebook, full of typos, and that’s how he started his now 20 million dollars a year empire, 7 years ago. He wrote about something he knew something about: seduction. Something that he was personally very interested in… he desperately wanted companionship…

He has made it big. With a topic like that. He learned as he went. He had mentors, teachers, mastermind partners every step of the way. It wasn’t a straight path… not in the least.

You can do it too. Just start getting that every tree came from a seed sometimes as tiny as a pinhead, and then grew. It went through the phases… It didn’t come out a tree at once. It was a seedling for a long time.

Tags: Internet Marketing, jumping from one sure thing to another, significance, undecisive

One of my blogs got hacked a week or so ago.

When I opened it a warning came up, that a Trojan (worm… not a virus… but just as annoying) was on my site…

I made a screen shot of some of the popup… I just needed the data… to search on google or on wordpress… or whereever.

I didn’t find anything meaningful on the internet, so I decided to move the whole blog to another server. To my dismay, the popup warning me of the trojan was still there.

I decided that the trojan must be somewhere in my posts…

I searched all my posts, one by one, in “html” mode, and I found one instance of the trojan embedded in an iframe, and 7 instances of links to some gambling site.

I was searching for the word “iframe” and for the word “Noscript”

With that search I found all occurrences and now I have a healthy blog… though spent a few hours with moving and setting up on a new location… but all is well when it ends well.

Tags: 61.155.8.157, how-to information, iframe hack, iframe trojan, trojan downloader agent, tutorial, wordpress

If you can afford $97, you can go the the world internet summit in Dallas TX, May 22- 25. The speaker lineup is tremendous, you’ll get products for resale so that you can start a brand new business with the new knowledge you have after the seminar.

Share hotel rooms. Find someone to share with at http://www hotelroom-rideshare.com

Tags: 2008, dallas, hotel room, world internet summit

I know I have been publishing a veritable mish-mash of content… it is not because I am eclectic, not even because I am a renaissance woman, it is because I am trying to find my path, and you can only do that effectively if you actually commit to a path and walk on it for a while. Pam Ragland said in a “purpose reading” to me, that her pals told her that my path is to find ways to fight the dark side and win, and to help her in her fight in the addiction community. I think this video is an excellent funful wakeup call… or could be, for many.

Enjoy.

visit video on youtube

or watch it here

Did you miss me? :-)

I haven’t posted on this blog in a while. Not because nothing was going on… au contraire… too much was/is going on.

I don’t know about you, but just like no one is a prophet in their own land… you are never going to be able to see the value of your stuff like other people do.

Even if you think a lot about yourself, familiarity breeds contempt, and your work is going to be “just what you do”, even if it is/would be of tremendous value to others.

This is why I value what has happened in the past 2 weeks.

You may not know, but the bulk of my income comes from marketing affiliate products.

One of the things I have been marketing, ever since I first started to use it some 2 years ago, is the Healing Codes package, a unique energy product where you use your innate energies to heal the cause of disease… I had a cancerous growth fall off my right arm after a few days of using The Codes… so I am a believer.

I signed up to be an affiliate. I made a few sales here and there, but every month I learned a little bit more about marketing, google adwords, etc. and every time I learned something, I immediately put it into practice with the Healing Codes affiliate program. I watched a webinar 5 months ago, and the rest happened:

The past 4 months the commission, grew $400 every month. Why always 400? Beats me. So I have gotten accustomed to the income, they paid directly to my checking account… until the 8th of this month, when, instead or the money, I got an email telling me that my affiliate status was withdrawn and I wasn’t even going to get my last commission.

Why, you would ask. The answer came right in the email: I violated the affiliate agreement: I did not get my ads reviewed by the 3 people assigned to review marketing material… But the email said, my violation was that I used the product name in my advertising… hmmm. How am I supposed to sell something I can’t name?

I made a quick calculation, and saw that I lost $35K just in the first year (calculating the growth trend also). They lost 140K net, for the first year. Interesting. I wonder if they have heard of the expression: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be rich? Choose!”

Anyway, let’s see what I have learned from this incident that is worth for you to read:

1. Before you invest so much time and energy into marketing a product, check if the company really wants you to market their product, or secretly they hope that you will share with everyone, but they will buy from the company directly, cutting you out of the loop.
2. The processes I employed to go from zero to substantial income could help a lot of people out there… so maybe I should find a way to tell people. If I had had a roadmap like that two years ago, I could have started to make money much sooner, and that would have been worth for me to buy. I forgot to say that I used exclusively PPC advertising, my return on my investments was consistently 10-fold, i.e. with a $3500 a year budget I could turn a 31,300 dollar profit. And some of my keywords ran at $5 a click. Which means: this market is competitive, baby.
3. It will be interesting to watch how the Boomerang Principle will play out.
4. I’d love to train an army of affiliates for the Healing Codes company… if I could do it, anyone can do it.

Another thing that happened since I last wrote, is that I did my first “Craft Your Public Persona” presentation. It needs more work, but I am over the hump. I have worked with a client today, who was praising the knowledge he gleaned from our session, and that felt really good.

I am just wondering how to reach all the people who would be interested in that: coaches, consultants, bloggers, marketers, realtors… anyone, who makes a living selling themselves first, an product second. Everyone, who need repeat clients, repeat sales, etc. Everyone, who needs to influence people. Any ideas? If so, please write a comment. I would appreciate it.

And a 3rd thing: I have built a small video sharing site on blogging but you can put the topic in a search box and it finds videos for you… really great… want to check it out? It is at http://www.mavencentral.com/videos

That’s it for now. Please give me your ideas about how to reach my target audience, and if you have any idea what to do with my lost affiliate position story, so that it can make a difference for others.

So long.

Most of us are sure we can. We make decisions based on what we see, and our decisions and actions take us to live the life we live.

Most of us live a life of quiet desperation. It was true at the turn of the last century, and it is true now.

There was a discipline and coaching paradigm I studied and used about 9 years ago. It is based on axiology, the Nobel Prize nominated work of Robert Hartman.

Axiology is the study of value or quality. It is the science that deals with what is good and what is not. Beyond and independent of subjective judgment.

The test (Value Profile) we ran in axiology had 4 parameters by which we could map out the potential for success of any individual.

One of them relates to the title. The parameter is called “clarity”.

We all think we are clear. Yet we can be a lot less than clear if our life is not a symphony and a victory of the human power and spirit. (Got it? That means you and me and even many of the so called demi-gods of our times.)

Clarity is the relationship between your view and reality (like a percentage) or how well what you see and what you think you see overlap.

I like to use an analogy from my publishing/printing background: In order to print a continuous tone, like a photograph, you need to break up the original to dots. The measure is called dot per inch, which means how many dots, each direction, you can print on a paper without the dots touching each other and therefore causing a blotch instead of a clear picture. Newsprint paper is porous, so the density of of dots on that type of paper is maximum 75 dots per inch. Semi glossy magazines and brochures are printed at about 105-120 dots per inch. Playboy is printed at 150 dots per inch.

When you look at a newspaper picture, sometimes you are not sure if the person has a mole or just there is a shadow or maybe a blotch of ink where you thing the mole is. Glossy brochures are better, Playboy is really really really good.

I use this dot per inch analogy to show that we normally see the world in certain level of clarity (dots per inch). In order to be clearer, one thing we can do, is to add dots where there are not dots.

Another is to remove the blotches, that in clarity’s terms are the misconceptions: societal, familial, or personal.

Adding dots is a simple learning process coupled with friends of colleagues that can help you with. (Critiquing is an important tool, though most people hate it… sorry to say.)

Removing blotches is harder, and this is my specialty. Distinctions are the major tool for tha. Distinctions are those invisible things that once they become visible, lots of blotches disappear. Read my other posts an sites on that http://www.squidoo.com/distinctions or http://www.sophieschoice.org/new-site-on-squidoo-just-for-distinctions/

And come back for more… I am the Distinctions Queen, so all my posts will take you deeper into this rabbit hole.

I have a friend that asked me to post for her a few times a day on Craigslist. Not my favorite activity, but it meant the difference of her being able to work or not, so I decided to help her.

The few days became a month…

Now, if you don’t know Craigslist the way I know Craigslist, here are a few interesting facts: people that post (for themselves or others) on that site are very competitive and live in a scarcity mentality.

Craigslist does not police its boards, it is left to the visitors to “flag” inappropriate content, or spam. And flagging they do.

For one, that site is a spammers’ paradise. The spam ads, thinly disguised as regular ads, some days, take up as many as 80% of the ads.

But guess what? those are NOT the ads that get removed, oh no, what gets removed are the competitors’ ads. Boggles the mind.

Some advertisers have even smartened up, and they copy the format of the spam, so that they don’t get removed.

In the first week I got sucked in, big time. I am not telling you this because I am proud of it, I am telling you because I’ll need this for the punchline of this letter :-)

At the beginning of this week, my friend’s ads were all flagged, all the way back 45 days earlier. I only wonder how long it took for someone to go back and seek out her ads that far back.

My first reaction was to go and flag THEIR ads… whoever THEY were… and then it occurred to me: If and when I do that, I become just like them.

Instead I prepared a post with the title: “The Boomerang Principle”

Here are the first two paragraphs:

Hi Guys! Whoever is removing ALL my ads,
even taking the time to go back to the
beginning of November to find them all…

The Boomerang Principle says that what
goes around comes around.

And then I just continue with her ad copy, as if nothing happened.
This was 4 days ago… the ad is still there.

But the real lesson to learn is what happened to me:

First off, since I first posted for this friend, my income had dropped about 40%… not good.

Since I posted The Boomerang Principle, I have recouped my losses. In 4 days…

There is truth in The Boomerang Principle.

PS: If you haven’t figured: The Boomerang Principle is just one name of the famous Law of Attraction.

…And the Law of Cause and Effect… the law underlying Karma. The law supremely important in Kabbalah. And as we see, the law extremely important to my finances and my well being.