Advice Network Founders Blog

I’m just as behind on reading my blogs as I am in writing this one. At writing I have 5,099 unread articles in my feed reader. I’ve heard of the concept of declaring blog bankruptcy, marking everything as “read” and starting fresh. Tempting, but if I had done that I would have missed this PERFECT article from Dawud Miracle. He said it so well: “Be in front of your audience when they need you.”

“But no one cares that you’re an expert until they need an expert. In other words, no one cares that you can solve a set a problems until they are faced with those set of problems. Then, they go out and look for a solution.”

This is the Raison d’être of Advice Network. Think of it. Nobody cares you sell real estate, or can help their business, or you will help them have a perfect wedding, until they need these things. Imagine it from their perspective.

Laura, our imaginary friend, is living her life just fine without you until Brad ask “Will you marry me?” She says “Yes” cries a little, and I’ll bet you the rent within 24 hours she is online researching how to plan a wedding. And that is when she should find your article “Picking a Photographer for your Wedding”

Or she gets a new job and has to move, that is when she should find your article “8 Things You Should Know About Your Home Inspection”

So thank you Dawud. Thanks for putting it so well!

I got a great email from my friend Dr. Clue (Dave Blum)

Hello All,

Dr. Clue is putting together a virtual/online treasure hunt and we are  wondering if you’d be interested in having your website featured as  one of the clue sites.  Basically, what this means is that one of the clues in the virtual treasure hunt would solve to your site’s address and teams would have to find a piece of information on your site.  You don’t need to do anything or change anything — it’ll be something that’s already part of your site.  All we’d ask is for you to let us know if you ever change that piece of information, so we can adjust the clue.  If sending Dr. Clue’s clients to your site sounds good to you, please let me know so we can count you in!  Free, motivated traffic to your site!

As soon as we have enough clue locations, we’ll write the game and let you know what piece of information we’re using from your site.  If you know anyone else with a business that might be interested in having their site featured as a Dr. Clue treasure hunt clue location, please feel free to forward this email along to them.

–
Dave Blum
President, Dr. Clue Treasure Hunts

www.drclue.com

| … — .-.. …- .. -. –. | – …. . | .–. ..- –.. –.. .-.. . … | — ..-. | – . .- — .– — .-. -.- |
(Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork)

Just a few comments.

1. He just reiterated that he wants other sites ASAP, so don’t be shy, jump right in and ask for a link

2. If you know what the morse code (I think it’s morse code) at the end of his email means, please post in comments!

-Alex

Hey everyone, I just wanted you to know, I’m leaving for a week. I’ll be back around the 21st.

Have a good week!

Alex

Now that Advice Network is launched, marketing has taken a front seat in my attention. I spend almost all of my time wondering how to get the word out there about Advice Network without spending every penny I have AND without compromising my values.

I’m investigating telemarketing this week, but not without serious trepidation.

The numbers look good promising, from a pure return on investment. It costs about $1,000 to have 30 to 50 hours of calling. The way I look at those numbers, if I offer a 50% discount on the $50 setup fee. (Please don’t be jealous; To my loyal readers, I offer you a 99.98% discount on the setup fee, right here and right now. If you are reading this and want to register as a deluxe vendor on Advice Network, use the coupon blogreader to get $49.99 off your $50 setup fee. Please note, coupon expires  on my birthday, August 31 2008) Where was I? Oh yes, if I offer a 50% discount on the setup fee, and they get 22 people to sign up as deluxe vendors, then I break even on the campaign, and in month 2, I can start investing in PPC to get leads to those vendors.

Everyone wins! The vendors get a great placement on the directory, they get leads, they get business. Users of Advice Network get matched with vendors, their lives are easier, and Advice Network will (gasp) make money. Win win win.

The downside? I hate receiving telemarketing calls. Tom Mabe is one of my heroes.

Sigh.

I’d love to hear your feedback on this one. Please email me or comment and let me know what you think.

As of May, 2008, Advice Network does not have any employees (besides myself). But maybe you have some employees at your company.

I just read an amazing article by Bill Taylor. It turns out that Zappos offers employees $1,000 at the end of their first week to quit. I highly recommend clicking over and taking a look at what Bill has to say.

I have to say, I got it right away. Having someone who doesn’t like their job, but they are sticking around because they need the money, how could that do anything but drain the company and team spirit.

I hadn’t heard of Zappos before, but apparently they are obsessive about customer service. That is the kind of company I want Advice Network to be.

My philosophy, if you are not making your customers happy, what is the point?

Many of you know besides being the founder and CEO of Advice Network I am a professional photographer.

I started doing professional photography in 2000, and at the time I lived in the Bay Area. For the entire course of my business, online marketing has been one of my biggest drivers of business. I’ve had a website since day one. I’ve bought qualified leads online since my first year. Every year more an more of my business comes from client referrals, but still most of my business comes from people finding me online.

Well, for the past few years, I’ve been putting those things together by inviting my clients to write reviews for me online. All those nice things they say about me, they can write it once, post it a few places, and people can read the reviews for years to come.

If you run a business and you are not already doing this, I recommend it strongly. There is a growing number of people who really trust and look to online reviews.

So where does this “tinyURL” come in? I wanted to email a link to review me on Google Local, but the link looked like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=schoenfeldt+photography&near=94117&jsv=111&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=37.735377,69.257812&ie=UTF8&latlng=37775034,-122430085,13992495282375185261&ei=UOcpSLuqNYq6jgPc1qyWCQ&sig2=slt5vvWo5UNHlL6zTz5I7w&cd=1

Yikes! And you know what the email program would do. It would break the URL into multiple lines, so they would end up clicking:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=scho

and the rest would be below in a separate line (or 3) like this:

enfeldt+photography&near=94117&jsv=111&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&

sspn=37.735377,69.257812&ie=UTF8&latlng=37775034,-122430085,

13992495282375185261&ei=UOcpSLuqNYq6jgPc1qyWCQ&sig2=slt5vvWo5UNHlL6zTz5I7w&cd=1

And when they clicked, they would get a “file not found.” and the review would not get written, and I’d have missed a great opportunity.

But at “TinyURL” you enter in the big long monster link, and it gives you: http://tinyurl.com/5zle86. Simple, safe, and email friendly.

And best of all, TinyURL is free (they do have a “donate” button.)

So go ahead and ask the clients who love you to write a review.

Alex

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Let’s face it, business isn’t always easy especially if you’re going in all alone. Times can get tough, sales can slump, and there will be days you wish you were a 9-5er.

You might blame yourself, you might blame those around you, or you might blame something else. You’re angry and you don’t know where to turn…

…but anger doesn’t change situations, action does!

Here are five useful tips to flip a negative situation into a positive one. I hope they are as useful to you as they have been to me.

1. Grab Hold of the Situation: Too much worrying won’t do anything. Instead, it will block any creative ideas you would otherwise come up with. By taking action and working hard to resolve the situation, you’ll (at least) taking steps in the right direction. Five feet from the finish line is closer than ten…the more action you take the sooner you’ll fine relief. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take” – Wayne Gretzky.
2. Adapt: One thing that separates the best from the rest is their ability to consistently adapt to the world around them. Nothing remains the same forever. If you don’t change along with your customer’s expectations, technology, or business environment then you’ll quickly find yourself without a business at all. By adapting to your surroundings you’ll always remain relevant.
3. Be Confident: Sometimes people can get down on themselves when things aren’t going their way. However, it’s times like these that you need your confidence more than ever! By trusting your instincts and believing that you made the best decisions every step of the way with the information that you had at the time, you’ll have more confidence in the decisions you make in the future. Your confidence will also spread to those around you, providing a much more positive atmosphere than if you were drowning in your own misery.
4. Get Creative: Sometimes you need to think outside the box to find the answer. Consider new ways to approach your business that will not only help you get back on track, but also give you an edge on your competition. Use this time to set yourself apart!
5. Back to Basics: Many times people fail because they strayed from the system that delivered them success in the first place. Maybe you became curious of new strategies or perhaps you just got bored. Whatever the case, reverting back to your most successful days and applying them to your present situation will often produce immediate results.

Instead of taking a bad situation and making it worse, take a setback as an opportunity to learn and grow. By analyzing what went wrong and discovering a way to overcome it, you’ll provide yourself with a method of overcoming similar difficulties in the future.

Don’t be the person that never learns from their mistakes. Take charge today!

Advice Network wants to help you grow your business and boost your results. Sign up today!

If you’re selling a product or service online, you’ve probably heard 100 different ways to do it…

…landing pages, newsletters, long sales letters, short sales letters, video sales letters, blogging, vlogging, viral marketing, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, eZines, pay-per-click, article marketing, posting on forums, affiliate marketing, and so on.

You see the big time success stories and you think to yourself, “I want to be just like that person.” So you start your eZine, you develop your blog, and start publishing your articles. But the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months and you realize…

…nothing is happening.

The thing you’re missing, however, is that you’re more focussed on the medium instead of the market. You see that blogs and newsletters are working for other people, so that’s what you’re doing. But is it working as much as you’d hoped? Probably not.

To be truly successful, you need to focus 100% of your attention on your market!

That doesn’t mean you can’t blog, write articles, or publish a newsletter – in fact you’ll probably need to do all those things – but with a different mindset!

You’re shouldn’t be blogging to become famous, you shouldn’t be writing articles to get well-known, and you shouldn’t be dishing out newsletters to gain recognition.

No, no, and no.

You should be doing all these things to reach your target market and to solve their problems!

The medium is always necessary, but the market is the difference maker. Find out ways you can tweak your message to help your market more and discover how you can reach more people in your market. By making it your dream to help your target market, you’ll accomplish the financial and ego-driven dreams you’ve been searching for all along.

Advice Network wants to help you accomplish more. Sign up for our RSS Feed today!

Like I mentioned yesterday, I’m making my way through a book by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin called “NeuroMarketing: Understanding the ‘Buy Buttons’ in Your Customer’s Brain.”

These guys really know what they’re talking about – so let me share with you the four steps that they say are needed to trigger decisions in the old brain.

1. Diagnose the Pain – In order to trigger a sale, the customer first needs to feel the need. How do you do this? Find their pain and then offer the solution. Like cavemen, our minds are still set to find the cure to our problems. Hungry? Buy Food. Thirsty? Drink water. Hate the process of buying a house? Get a great realtor.
2. Differentiate Your Claims – Set yourself apart. If you’re one of the best in the industry, don’t mention it. You want to be the best in what you do with reasons to back up your claim. Does this mean that you have to be the best photographer in the world? No, but it does mean that you need to pride yourself in one aspect of the position and emphasize it’s importance and your ability to uniquely offer such a service.
3. Demonstrate the Gain – Promote the benefits that you provide to your clients. “Great photography” is weak. “Capturing the moments most precious to you” is better. Show what the customer will be gaining by choosing your services. If you demonstrate the before and after, you’re set.
4. Deliver to the Old Brain – The old brain loves emotional and visual stimuli. If you provide enough eye candy while capturing your potential customer’s feelings, then you’ll be on your way to a sale.

Come back for more promotional tips and useful advice – and please feel free to submit advice of your own!