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Now, I am not one to step in an bash companies for making mistakes as we all make them from time to time and for the most part, I really like PayPal. But…

I have recently been involved with a company that has had their PayPal account restricted without  warning.  When I mean restricted, PayPal is allowing money to go into the account, but won’t let them access it or pay bills out of it or have access to any of the money in the account and we are not talking about a few hundred dollars here but thousands.

Pretty jacked up I know. Now I had heard of things happening like this before, but never had been an eye witness to it.  Now these guys don’t sell anything on Ebay or offer digital downloads or anything and they have been paying $60 per month for Payments Pro and Virtual Terminal for over a year.

The thing that bothers me the most is that they have not been able to get a straight answer out of PayPal for days as to why the account was restricted or what is exactly needed to get it unfrozen.  And they have not been able to talk to an actual person that can tell them specifically what they need to unfreeze the account.  It seems that they had never manually processed a credit card up until now and that apparently triggered it.

What You Should Do

My advice is to use www. Squareup.com to process your credit cards an only use PayPal to take in subscription payments or set up payment buttons if that is the case.  You need to have more than one alternative for bringing in money.  Now this may seem like a pain in the ass, but trust me, it is far better than what I am seeing happening with this company.

Since they do a sizable portion of their business through PayPal, to say that it has hurt their business dramatically is an understatement.

If this can happen to them, trust me, it can happen to you and you need to have a back up plan for funding.  Make sure you look around at authorize.net and others.

While I have not had problems with my account, this does give me no small concern about what could happen.

To be fair, I will try and contact PayPal and see if I can get the full story.

I will also being doing some research on PayPal alternatives for you too and post them.  Now PayPal may indeed have a legitimate reason to request information from these guys and be that as it may, it is the worst case of customer service I have seen out of a company communications wise in some time.  They have spoken to at least 12 different people and spent hours on the phone trying to get to the bottom of things over the past week to no avail and all they keep getting is a form letter asking for the same info they have supplied several times.  They also got different information from different people about what they should and should not provide informaiton wise.  Like I said, jacked up.

Will keep you posted on this so that you can perhaps avoid this huge pot hole and keep your fingers crossed for them.

Cheers,

Andrew “Easy” Anderson

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson
Profit Consultant

This extends to all Internet “Xperts” as I like to call them. Same for offline ones too! And I am not just talking about the newbies here. Everyone is a clown when you first start out, even me. Yes, I blew up clients and myself several times. But you dust yourself off, repair the damage and learn and improve.

But the vast majority of the people in Social Media right now do not know their rear end’s from first base. And I am talking the Big Boy PR firms and the like.

Got to love Gary Vaynerchuk and I could not agree with him more.

And this is a continuation…

And finally this response to some of the feedback from the first video.

Cheers,

OK, I have been seeing many people including clients that are using products that I really do not care for and dislike using. Mostly because they are a pain in the ass to use, are outdated, don’t work well, are expensive, or will help them lose money. And if you really hit the jackpot, some of these products all of the aforementioned things.

I just happened to pick the names out that I see most bandied about as the greatest thing since sliced white bread and the ones that my clients seem to have the most trouble with and that ones that I hate to work on these days. The people that say they are great is because they usually have a vested interest or they don’t know any better.   But I am willing to be convinced otherwise. But, it is going to take a lot, and I do mean A LOT of convincing.

This is just my little old humble opinion from having knocked around the internet for going on two decades now. Wow, how is that possible? LOL

Here is the long and short of it.

What has happened is that WordPress has taken over as THE code to build profitable Websites with these days.

Groupon got started on WordPress. It is now over a 5 billion dollar a year company.

Joomla and Drupal became obsolete when WordPress came around. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. So therefore, most things that have anything to do with them have the same shortfalls.  You can go here to find out more information about WordPress.

As far as some of the other things such as Infustion Soft, AWeber, GetResponse, Constant Contact and others,  I will tell you why I don’t use any of them and try and wean my clients off of them as soon as I can.

Mostly because they are a pain in the butt to use, and overpriced in my book. There are custom solutions that you can get done for you for less than you pay for all of them. And soon, I know of an app that will replace all of them and cost pennies on the dollar compared compared to the apps mentioned and do a much, much better job, while being far more user friendly.

I asked one of my great partners who also happens to be the sharpest programmer that I know what his thoughts were about CMS or content management systems and some of the other things that I have mentioned. When I say he is sharp, that is saying a lot as I have worked with folks from Apple, IBM, and numerous start ups. He smokes all of them.

Here are some of Dan’s comments and mine.

1. VirtuMart is a module for Joomla so all the cons of Joomla are applied to VirtuMart

2. Joomla and Drupal are CMS’s (the classic version of the term). Each one is fat, hard to understand and consumes a lot of resources compared to WordPress. Trying to make a plugin or a theme for Joomla or Drupal is a pain in the ass. For example: they are using blocks for each widget inside the theme so you need to style each widget individually. Hooking an e-commerce plugin in this monster is like you driving a car while another car drives over you.

Andrew’s two cents. I cannot in good conscious, put anyone into Joomla or Drupal. It can ruin your business in my opinion.

3. osCommerce – is the father of all e-commerce solutions but it’s outdated. They have trying to create a new version for years. The osCommerce is based on the code wrote in ~2000. Customizing the osCommerce it’s not easy: you can’t create a custom theme easily or change the layout. In order to do that, you need to be a very good programmer with a ambition and patience

4. ZenCart – is based on osCommerce. The code is better but the theme system works the same. Instead of widgets, you have modules. Also, if you want to change some elements of the theme, you need some good php/html knowledge.

Plus, each one of those products have a plugin database but you can stuck with two situations: 1 the plugins are outdated and are not compatible with your current install; 2. The plugins are hard to install and maintain.

5. Magento is a solution for enterprises and i think the only reason they offer an open-source version is for the beauty of open source. They have a module management integrated inside the product so you don’t need to work with files, but i never (and I tried for 100 times) succeed. The product is heavy and you need a dedicated server to manage a shop, even a smaller one (100 products)

6. PrestaShop is a french e-commerce script and it’s a good (not great) solution for low-budget sites. You can search for plugins in forums but you don’t have any kind of warranty because they are made by the community. Of course, you can buy other plugins made by the creators of Prestashop or third parties. Another thing that I don’t like in Prestashop are the unfinished features. For example, they have an affiliate module but you can’t use it because: 1. it lacks of functionalities; 2. you don’t have an affiliate manager interface, 3. it’s not working. After some research, i found that you need to buy an affiliate plugin in order to have the whole thing working. Also, their interface is a complete mess. It’s hard to follow options or to change basic options. A pro for PrestaShop: they have a nice and informative dashboard with Statistics (no. of sales, orders placed, no. of registrations and product pages viewed. They also have some statistics as an alternative of Google Analytics but the interface ruins everything.

Thank you Dan!

Now as far as AWeber, Constant Contact and Infusion Soft. It is not that they are terrible products, it is just that I never ever feel comfortable letting someone else keep my mailing list hostage. It is the one thing that is the heart and soul of any online business.

I feel that once you get rolling all of them are over priced and in the order I listed them, they become more expensive and harder and harder to use.

I want my customer list on my server, not someone else’s. I also do not want someone else dictating what I can do with my mailing list.

The key with all of them is that they have to keep very tight controls on the users because if anyone of them does something questionable, they can get shut down. So, they have to treat everyone like a 3 year old and not an adult Business person.

Plus true integration and customization into your site is a pain in the butt.

So there you have it for what it is worth.

WordPress is the only platform I can recommend and it is getting better and better all of the time.  As far as the rest, I will be giving you some alternatives that cost a whole lot less and work much better. At least I think so and perhaps you will too.

If you have an opinion, would love to hear it.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

This video is best viewed in full screen mode. Click on the icon to the right of the speaker icon above.

I will be doing another video going over the basics of what you need and of course, WordPress is the only content managements system that I recommend these days.

WordPress currently powers 8.7% of all Websites.
WordPress currently powers 56% of all Websites that have CMS or a Content Management System.

You need to be using CMS and WordPress. This should be your Website if you want to make money. If you don’t have a Blog and update your content on a regular basis, you are losing customers, money, and you are getting killed on Search Engine Placement.

Here is the link to the Tour Page with the Buttons That I speak about in the Video as well as a few other sites.

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  Click Here Or On Image
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And if you are willing to be a Guinea Pig, you can pre-order the Software that we used to build the sites for only $77 a month and you get a 30 day free trial. No contracts, no commitments. Not only that, but you will get a Shopping Cart, Up-sells, Coupon Codes, Split-Testing,an Affiliate Program, a Membership Program,and an Auto-Responder built in as well. Plus, other great surprises. You can sign up for our Beta launch of LaunchBrain by clicking on the image below. Make sure you put in 21 in the Invited By box.

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OK, I am going to go over some of the basics that you need to have no matter what, as well as a number of things that I see big companies and even well know Web Gurus are doing wrong with their Websites in the next video.

These are easily correctable and often overlooked.

Also, for those of you interested, if you don’t feel up to doing a site like the ones I show you in the video, we can do ones like them from turn key (you have to provide the content, although we can create it for a fee if you want) from $1,490 to about $4,900 for most small business sites. Larger sites are more of course. But typically, we are 1/2 to 1/3rd the cost of other solutions. We can also provide turnkey solutions on a monthly basis as well. If you are interested, just contact me and we will get you taken care of right away. Also, we can convert your existing Website to WordPress and LaunchBrain so that it is easy to use and maintain and help make it profitable.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

PS Here are about two dozen more design possibilities.

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For those of you that know the answer, it is easy and for those of you that do not, you really need to pay attention here.

It is simple. The answer is just two words, Social Media…

Because of Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites out there, good news and bad news is going to not only travel fast, but in volumes and with ease like has never been seen before other than perhaps when our grandparents lived in small towns and everyone knew what was going on almost immediately.

With the advent of mobile devices having instant access to the Internet, potential customers and customers alike will be able to instantly find out if you are worth spending money on.  And if you suck at customer service, you will not survive period.

Those businesses that do have great customer service, will thrive and wipe out their competition in a relatively short period of time as their competition dies on the vine wondering what the hell happened to all of their customers.

This is especially true for Brick and Mortar companies. And for those those that still don’t have a decent Website or a Social Media game plan, they are going to be history in short order.

While it is true that you may end up facing some undo pressure from the customer, who let’s all just say it out loud, is an Asshole from Hell when they go on a rant, most smart customers will recognize them for what they are and they will be ostracized and their opinions will not be held in high regard.

So, if you have not gotten off your duff and gotten your Social Media program together, then you really need to get your act together and quickly and beef up your customer service. Because good, bad, or indifferent, news really is going to travel like lightning and you need to keep an handle on what is being said about you and your company and respond to it and fast.

But the best defense is truly a good offense and that is simply treat your customers well!  If you have not seen this yet, here is a 5 minute introduction to Twitter.

Cheers,
Andrew

Here is a picture of Glenn and Tim Ferriss and Tim’s Launch of The 4-Hour Body which just made #1 on the New York Time’s best seller list. That is Glenn on the right and Tim Ferriss on the left of course.  I am following Tim’s book and it is awesome by the way. Lost about 10 pounds of fat and gained over 5 pounds of muscle in a little over one week.

Hope you enjoy the Interview. There is some great information in here. Just click on the arrow below to get started or you can download the MP3 for later.

Here is a link to Download the MP3 of the Interview Here.

Here is a link to Glenn’s Non-Profit  Inner Flame

Here is the transcript of the Interview.

Andrew Anderson: … Andrew Anderson and I have the pleasure today to interview a gentleman from across the pond in the UK, named Glenn Bridges. Glenn, how are you doing today?

Glenn Bridges: I’m doing exceptionally well. Andrew, after a couple of minor hiccups, I’m doing very well.

Andrew Anderson: Yeah. The subject for today’s interview is basically how a good website can give you a competitive edge even against the largest of multinational companies. And we wanna go over some of the things that you should and shouldn’t do to make sure that your website is useful, that you could actually make money and be profitable from which I would dare to say that most people want to do that. Although by some of the websites you and I have discussed recently, you’ve got to wonder that if they’re not trying to drive people away at times. Glenn, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you want, etc, etc,?

Glenn Bridges: Well, I’ve had a very interesting couple of years. The quick answer to that is I left college at 18 after studying English Language and Literature Music. Music technology, IT in Psychology, and decided I didn’t wanna go down the typical route of going to university. It just didn’t appeal to me. And I also didn’t wanna get a job. So I did, I fell into kind of like the passion and interest of mine, which I set up as a business. And at that time it was called… what was it called? Right Now, that’s what it was called. And I say that because we shortly changed the name to something called interflame. And the premise was, we would work with young people, helping them get access to personal __ of materials by running courses, some of the stuff that I’ve had access to and have helped me to make amazing changes in my life. Other things like, becoming an LP practitioner and one of those Tony Robbins courses, and lots of other __ around that and spent some thousands of thousands of pounds in my early teens. That sort of stuff

So we set up and again, everyone was saying it was gonna fail and telling us the experts in the area you know, those sorts of ducks that like to peck at you and tell you that you’re…

Andrew Anderson: There’s certainly a big flock of those out there.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, yeah. And very often, their opinion is just their opinion. And it’s nothing more than that. So we took the lonely road if you will and went against the grain and set something up which has been incredibly successful. It’s been running for over two years now. Just recently, we won a National awarded over 8000 organizations that work with the people. We came number one. And we had some pretty big sponsors. __ Global Companies sponsored us. People like nationwide. She’s a banker in the UK if anyone is listening outside of here as well as ____, you can Google. As well as a number of very successful entrepreneurs, adventurous mountaineers. And basically, how I kind of got on to this interesting area, I might find it fascinating on a website design optimization, online marketing. Whatever you wanna talk about. What we’re basically talking about is how you create something which people like and love and when exchanged the value of the cash is because I realized that to do what I want to do, I need to be earning an income from elsewhere which wasn’t reliant on the hours I put into things. And let’s start with what we call, The 4-Hour Work Week, which I absolutely love. I’m a huge, huge fan of Tim Ferriss. And…

Andrew Anderson: And I wanna interject. That’s how we actually end up meeting because we were both fans of it.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. Yes. It was very ___ wasn’t it, Andrew?

Andrew Anderson: Yes, it was.

Glenn Bridges: It was… I supposed you left and I actually thought ___. He’s not gonna reply or he’s not gonna be interested but I thought I might give it a go.

Andrew Anderson: Lo and behold, here we are.

Glenn Bridges: it’s a good lesson to anyone out there that you should always never put the books and the barriers inside your own head before actually giving it a go.

Basically, I started with a product which was then an information product which was about helping, it’s all about ____ and how, what you needed, some of the legal stuff that you needed to create digital products and physical products. And I got that because I was working with some __ entrepreneurs at the time. I was studying them and modeling them. And this time I was getting all the information from them when I was building a web map which we eventually took to Google and show them and say, this is what we want to do. And we went for eleven rounds of investment and saw eleven different investors. And unfortunately, we ended up pulling on it just because the space became so competitive and we were really, our USP had really kind of fallen out of it. So we decided the best thing to do was actually to…

Andrew Anderson: Can you stop a minute? Can you explain what a USP is?

Glenn Bridges: Oh, sorry Andrew. A Unique Selling Proposition. Or basically… sorry, I apologize there.

Andrew Anderson: We just had a lot of people that don’t have any idea what a USP is. And it’s basically the thing that’s gonna make you money and make you stand out in the market. What do you say?

Glenn Bridges: I’d say, yeah. It’s the single point of difference. And we went from proposition that we weren’t gonna be better than everyone else. We’re gonna be just different and I think that’s what I learned about marketing is, you don’t have to be the fastest, quickest, cheapest. And in fact, that’s not always a good thing. In fact, a lot of times that you ___ value what you’re doing by kind of trying to keep up with that constant rat race. Coz there’s always someone that will sacrifice cheaper profit margins. There’s always somebody that will just focus on being faster than you. Or is if you don’t ___, you’ll be different. And we basically lost our point of difference. And so, we decided it’s best to do other things. And I started to come back to some of the stuff I’ve been following up on. I’ve always had a lot of people pitching me products and ideas and business models. And it’s just kind of a never-ending thing. I mean, you must get tired all the time Andrew with kind of what your connections and what you do.

Andrew Anderson: Yes.

Glenn Bridges: I can imagine.

Andrew Anderson: There’s a bazillion out there but very few that are actually worthwhile.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, there are. And for me, it’s a very worthwhile in terms of just products that I’m so passionate about or so believe in so much. That’s why I’m so lucky about this stuff ______ I really, really believe in what it sets out to achieve and I’m passionate about kind of helping people to do that. So the 4-hour work has kind of been my single biggest kind of success in the sense of helping me to create passive income and develop that and learn about the lifestyle design of things and developing the lifestyle that you want to create. But also, it’s been my biggest pain because what Tim talks about is very achievable but through some of the chores and the mediums and the strategies that he suggests, it actually __ people to spend a lot more money, time and be a lot more frustrated about the way they go about things.

Andrew Anderson: Can I stop you for one second? For those of you who aren’t familiar with Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week, basically what his theory or what he has people put in practice is that you set up a business so that runs virtually and that you spend no more than four hours a week actually “working.” How’s that for a synopsis?

Glenn Bridges: That’s pretty much it. He goes on to say that The 4-Hour Work Week is kind of non-existing because very often he works more than that but then some weeks, he won’t work at all, even for months. But yeah, it’s pretty much, it’s the idea here of having a low input, low time input business, which you get maximum cash out. You can leverage that difference. So, minimum time in, maximum cash out. And he has a very systematic way of going about creating products and strategies for selling them. And I think everyone should read it coz it’s the most brilliant ten thousand fee overview into getting started online, whether you’re gonna bring an existing business online or whether you want to create your first business online or you wanna sell one of those products, or you wanna create your own products, it’s the best one to go to. And I know people that have developed their own products and just started on the 4-Hour Work Week. I know people who have taken existing ____ businesses online. I think The 4-Hour Work Week, alongside with Dr. Robert Cialdini’s influence, is the two most essential books that people should read if they wanna get started online. Would you agree, Andrew?

Andrew Anderson: Yeah. I could throw a couple more in but I’ll put them at the end of the interview. I do wanna go through some of the meat and potatoes. So you’ve been frustrated basically, from our previous conversations in actually following through and doing what Tim Ferriss says because it’s really easy to talk about in theory, but when you start getting into it, I know there’s technical hurdles and all kinds of other things that people run into especially if they’re not technically savvy.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. The single biggest assumption I made was incorrect. I though the hardest part of it would be creating the products. Actually, what I’ve realized is that the products are the easiest part. And in fact, Andrew, one of the things that we’ll be doing, I’ll be running later on this month or this January is actually a webinar on product creation strategies. Creating a product is so easy. And if you don’t wanna create one, you can sell someone else’s. There’s so many ways to go about doing that. The single biggest difficult part of it is the technical side of things. And the single biggest part is trying to get actually everything set up online to go into rock and roll. That’s what I’ve found. And that’s what I’m speaking to so many 4-hour weekers, people that are building an online business. That’s what I know they found as well. So that’s what I was kind of point out to people in the book is, putting in labels is a process of doing things. But things have moved on quite a bit. The book was written in, was it 2007?

Andrew Anderson: 2007 was the first version, yeah. And I totally agree. Things have dramatically changed.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah. And I think it’s just frustrating coz Tim says, do this, this. Very specific, clear actions. And that’s brilliant, brilliant that he’s provided that but the problem is with that is actually, a lot of those methods are outdated and you can’t go __ in the same way.

Andrew Anderson: Nope, you can’t. Let’s go into some specifics that people may not hear again. I don’t wanna get them, I love people that aren’t technically savvy and I’m sure we’ve got a lot of listeners around the block for a while. But let’s go, why don’t we go through three or four things that people can go do today to improve their website to make more money, to make them happier, and etc, etc. so why don’t we dive into that? What would you say the five key things are that people need to do with a website? Or to look out for.

Glenn Bridges: Wow. That’s a good thing. I mean, it’s a difficult question to answer coz it depends what people are doing and what market they’re in, and what angle they come out. They create their own products so the people’s products, it’s a different one to start with. But I think the first single biggest thing that you… there’s a couple of things. I think I’ll start with, the first thing I’d start with is you really need to have it very, very clear in your mind what benefit you’re adding to somebody who’s gonna buy this product. What value are you offering? You need to be very clear about how that relates to people’s emotions and the benefits and the solutions that you’re providing. So the question I’d like to ask is, what is it that if I imagine my mind going forward once this person has bought, used, or continues to use his product, when is the very end of that experience? If they, once they’ve completed that program or once they bought that, they’ve gone through that bottle or to the bottom of that box, what have they done? What is gonna be the end result that you are going to deliver? Or is at least you hope or wants to deliver to the best of your ability. What’s the end result? And how can you sell it to someone? So I think it’s really about getting clear because once you have that, I think if you really know in your heart of hearts what that thing is, you can really acutely describe it to someone than putting on a website. It’s actually very easy because you can provide a video of you doing it or a clip of the end result. Or you can provide a reading, like cutting and pasting message in your headline. So I’d say that’s the number one thing you gotta get started.

The number two, second thing is definitely has to be credibility and trust because this stuff if sort of going on unconsciously. This stuff is happening without you really knowing about it and it’s like, I think you’ve __ a couple of times, Andrew. You have to accumulate people’s trust because if you think of any relationship and your ability to persuade or influence someone whether it was a sales process or a coaching environment, or that was with your loved one, within a work environment, whether that was in any environment, people only change or people only make, take an action that you want them to do, or they want to take when they trust who they think they’re buying that from. So I think you need to do that. And to do that, I think it’s important that you have a good looking site design with good graphics and a good layout because that, first of all shows you’ve made an investment in your business and people wanna buy something they see that they’ve made an investment. The example I give to many people was, if I turned up in a pair of, if you turned up to a Ferrari showroom and you’re gonna buy that car that you wanted to buy your whole life, and I turned up in ripped jeans and a greasy t-shirt, you’d be suspicious. You’d be fearful. You’d be wondering what was up with the situation.

Andrew Anderson: If I was the buyer.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, if you were the buyer. Right. Because you’re expecting this, not only to appear the perfect car you’re buying but an experience which is full of pride, excitement depending on your own perspective on these things. You’d be going with those emotions. And so, once you have that, if you complete ___, it’d be… some of you might be thinking, something’s wrong here. So that’s what you have to get across with good site layout, good graphics and having those sorts of things in place.

Andrew Anderson: Let’s stop there because I don’t think people will, we’re throwing that term out there but I don’t think most people know what that is. And so, let me throw a couple of things out there and I know we’re on agreement on this.

Good site layout means that, hey, it’s centered in the screen, it doesn’t have ugly colors. Would that be one of them?

Glenn Bridges: Yeah. Absolutely.

Andrew Anderson: Also… and I know you just had this experience and if you wanna throw the name in there, you can now. But not being able to contact the site owner to ask them questions, phone number, easy email address, maybe instant messaging, etc, etc.

Glenn Bridges: I wanna see personally any site that is doing sales by phone. I wanna see the number in the top right hand corner or somewhere accessible like that on every page consistently. I do not want to search for that. So many people do not. I wanna give this example coz it’s really irritated me and I hate it. And I want people to learn from it.

I recently just booked a hotel in London at an event I’m speaking this weekend where I’m gonna be sharing with people more of this content. And I went to book into the hotel and they’ve been organized. They’ve been really lovely. That, hey, Glenn. We’re really glad you’re coming to town. We’re really grateful you gonna take some time out. One of the things I’ve done for you is I’ve set you up for that really nice, big chunky discount off of your room. So the last __, he’s given me a bigger room and he’s given me ___. All we need to do is call the hotel. So that seems like a pretty __proposition for anybody, right? You’d think.

Andrew Anderson: You would think. Yes.

Glenn Bridges: You’d think. So anyway, I go into this site. And first of all, I __ into Google, like most people do. If you haven’t heard of Google, you’re in for a treat. So I put in and nothing came out. And I had to search through that to like listing 8 or 9 or whatever. And I managed to find it. So __ the page, got park in, get to them. I search on the site. I’m __ at the site for five, seven, eight minutes. Now, if by that time, if you haven’t got normally what you want at a website, that person would be that they won’t hang around that long unless they’re absolutely desperate for what you’ve got to offer and your site seems to have an inkling there provided. People just don’t do that. So anyway, I managed to find it. And it had a contact us button, which was at the bottom of the page. And the page was pretty long, not too long for the __ site but pretty long. And it was about a size font 7. So it’s a tiny font in light gray against a light gray button in the bottom right hand corner. Now, that’s somebody who screams accessibility, right Andrew?

Andrew Anderson: Yes, yes.

Glenn Bridges: So I clicked on it. I go through and they’ve got international numbers. Haven’t got UK number, haven’t got even the number for the specific hotel I want to go into. And then they have the drop down file with the classic, you’re gonna love this, Andrew coz I know it’s something you mentioned on your blog __21.com a few times, is I have to scroll through the listing of every country starting from Afghanistan all through the UK.

Andrew Anderson: Lots of customers coming from Afghanistan, I’m sure.

Glenn Bridges: Of course. And I’m full ___ from Afghanistan all the time. And so, I scroll through, by the way I’m on a co.uk site so they could have it set up to a co.uk site to go through to UK. But anyway, I call the number. They’ve got three numbers. I called all the three numbers, didn’t get anything. I had to call through to the USA. They gave me another number. So I called the USA on my personal phone. It cost my mobile phone, it cost me __ so my home phone _____. I have to call back coz that number didn’t work. And finally, the USA managed to route me through to the UK. I then spent five minutes with the phone ringing. I have to get through to somebody who takes my sale and finally gets through.

Andrew Anderson: How long did this take you?

Glenn Bridges: This actually took me an hour and a half today.

Andrew Anderson: What’s the website again? Is it park…?

Glenn Bridges: I think it’s parkinn.co.uk. I can’t bring it up. I actually…

Andrew Anderson: Yeah, go ahead.

Glenn Bridges: It’s parkinn.co.uk. And you wanna find…

Andrew Anderson: Yeah, this is a great example. So you can see what not to do. And I think that’s as important as finding out what to do. I would venture to say this is probably causing them tens of thousands of dollars every month. Coz I’m sure that it’s more than a couple of pounds per evening to stay there.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. I mean, it’s _____ but it’s pretty pricey which we’re really glad to get a good chunk of change of it. But you know, it’s just simple things like that. One of the things that… I got a friend that runs a security company. She sold her company. But they’ve got a number of websites. And the first thing you get them to do is just put the number in big red text in big font in the right hand corner. It’s just simple stuff like that because if you’re taking phone orders, make it accessible to people. For me, I’m just sort of, I come from a strategy that I want to make money.

Andrew Anderson: Yeah, what’s up with that?

Glenn Bridges: What’s up with that?

Andrew Anderson: You’re pretty radical. For sure, people are really gonna get that concept though.

Glenn Bridges: I’m not sure, Andrew. It’s a hard pill to swallow. And one of the things that I just scream at people is, make it easy for people to contact you. In fact, one of the other things I’d say on coming back to this applying things is, the third thing, which I most see for people online is they put loads of call to actions on a splash page. And the splash page is nothing more than the page you land on, you can see within your browser from wherever destination you come from, whether that’s Google, or you clicked on an ad, or you can send a link in an email or you’re going on Facebook. Whatever. And they fill the page with call to actions and that’s just basically a __.it’s just basically an action that you want someone to take. So it’s like a button or a link to click or fill a form ___ there or whatever. Something that you want someone to do. So they have loads of buttons and they have loads of like opt-in forms and have loads of advertisements going crazy around the site. They have multiple ___ but then, when it comes to contacts, they have ___. They have like a contact us in email. And we said Andrew, it’s about making it successful and easy for your customers so you got at least __ which is phone if you’re gonna do phone orders. Or at least you got like a customer service line if it’s appropriate for your business. It’s not always necessary but it’s great to have. Email addresses, multiple email addresses so you can have __ to organize. If it’s possible, IM, instant messenger. You got a lot of this text boxes pop up and you can talk to someone…

Andrew Anderson: And there’s free services for that now that make it so easy it’s not even funny. And also Skype numbers too. I think you and I agree on that. If you don’t know what Skype is, you need to get on it. Now or yesterday if you wanna be on business. Right now, we’re doing this call on Skype and there are 23,573,232 people online using Skype right now. So if you wonder how, whether it’s acceptable or what it is. And you’re in London in the UK and I’m in the United States and this conversation is being recorded on it and it sounds crystal clear.

Glenn Bridges: It does. It does.

Andrew Anderson: And it’s free. It is free.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. And in fact, Andrew, I looked at my phone bill just this month, my mobile phone, my cellphone and I realized that I had, I called maybe five or four numbers and those were all girls. They were all girls.

Andrew Anderson: Clients, of course.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, of course. Coz that’s proper market research when you understand who you’re calling. And I realized that do 95, 97% of what I do on Skype. And it is the best way to do it because for those people using it, you can do what is called a screenshot so you can basically show other people what you see on your screen and they could do the same. And you’ve got a choice, it’s not like you could remain privy to her. You can show it to her but if you want to, it can make things so much easier. And you got the web at hand. It’s just so helpful.

Andrew Anderson: It is. And you can do video calls too.

Glenn Bridges: Yes, absolutely.

Andrew Anderson: I guess we probably… I’m sure we talked for a couple of hours on this. What other salient points I mean, other than just making it… and it’s obviously not obvious because I would say, 90% of the sites do not have the contact information correctly and they don’t give you the ability to purchase either. You should be able to, you wanna buy it, you should be able to, from the very first page within one or two clicks, you should be able to figure out how to buy whatever it is that you’re selling.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. I think you’re right on that, Andrew in terms of it. I think to be honest, there’s so many, the elements that we could really pick upon. There’s a couple of, ones I’m really keen of the moment, I’m telling everybody about and you’re probably tired or hearing it but for me, I’m really sick of people constantly having their social media stuff, clogging up the website because most of the time you are, people struggle to generate traffic. They struggle to get traffic to their site. It’s an issue for a lot of people. And if you don’t struggle with it, you always want more of it. It’s more targeted and you want it to stay longer on your site and do all these different things with it. And traffic by the way is just people that are searching for your site or coming to your site and going around it. Visitors or users, these are people that __ are looking at your site. Now, we always put effort into it. And then, immediately like I say, people on the splash page, the first thing they __ upon, this huge big buttons that say, follow me on Twitter, become a friend on Facebook, __ my fan page and look at my LinkdIn profile. And by the way, have you looked at my YouTube channel? And have you looked at my Friendster? And they have this huge list. And so what you’re doing, is you’re just taking, you attempt to get people to your site only to send them back up to some other site and it just to me seems strikingly obvious that you would not do that. So I would say, when you do this stuff, be conscious of where you’re placing it. I personally think that the best place to put your social media stuff is on the page, on the bottom of what’s called a footer, at the bottom of your page or to sort of in the middle way down on the right hand side of your site. I think somewhere those two places are good. You got blog posts, have it at the end of the post. _ they’ve completed the action. They’ve read the blog or they’ve clicked through that link, then get them to share it. Don’t send them off. I think that, for me it’s ___. Sorry?

Andrew Anderson: A peeve, apparently.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, I know. I get passionate about it. I’m just, for me, it’s so strikingly ___ is that people put so much time into it and then they just fall down. The final thing I guess I’ll just say is, the video is not utilized enough.

Andrew Anderson: And that’s amazing. When I… I truly agree with you on that.

Glenn Bridges: It doesn’t always have to be you either.

Andrew Anderson: It could be just screenshots.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. One of the things we did with a __ site and we need to do some work on that. I say and listen, my business partner is very kind of closed about wanting to do anything with it coz he’s got very specific ideas. But I need to _____. One of the things we have definitely done with it is work on the first part page of the site and you actually see a video from those people from UK ____ Rachel __. She’s a very successful and famous entrepreneur in the UK. And she’s telling us, she’s on the front video for three minutes telling us how great Interflame is and how she’s involved with what she does. And if there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about who we’re doing with, we’ve got __ by associations that is incredibly cool and successful entrepreneur. And I didn’t have to sit in front of the camera. I didn’t have to do that. She’s done it all for us. She really sells the site. So simple things like that could make a huge difference.

Andrew Anderson: I wanna bring up, perhaps for the last point here something for people who are following the 4-Hour Work Week or even people who are starting their business, and it was the fact that a lot of people, and I’ve ran into this. I know you and I, you have well have as well the fact that they have a great product or service and then they go through when they get their website up and it doesn’t get the sales that they think that they expect. And they think it’s the product or the service when the point in fact, it’s the website that sucks. It’s not the product or service. And it’s such a key component in being successful in business because let’s face this, as Bill Gates said, if you’re not online, you’re not in business these days. And that’s, it’s becoming more and more true everyday. So can you kind of address that and give us the whole wrap up on it?

Glenn Bridges: Wow, yeah. You’re dead on. In fact, I was just with ___ Andrew which is with somebody who we worked with. ___ called Sean who has just got his products launching in for the ___ market. And got these big guys, these heavyweights ___ really quickly and do some ridiculous stuff. Just type it __to YouTube. It’s fun to watch. And he is a perfect example because he said to me, my product hasn’t really selled any. Sold one or two. And it was really exciting. One sale. But the system was not growing. And what not. And just really doubting his own product. And what I see is so many people that have really good, great business ideas and products and models. It’s not always the product but the business that they wanted to do is fantastic. But the way they deliver it, they doubt what they’re doing because… the way I look at it, marketing is just communication and influence. You’re communicating an idea and then there’s a side of that which you’re influencing people to basically say, to make it easier for them to buy stuff coz they’ve made up a decision in their mind to wanna buy this. So they’ve got a problem and then you’re just using your own influence to persuade them why you have the best opportunity to solve that problem. And there’s just so many peel that are stuck. If you don’t believe me, just go on to the 4-Hour ­__ form, and just look at how many people say what you think of my site. What do you think of my product? What do you think of this? I’ve not seen many sales. And you look at them. And what they’ve got is, they’ve got a good market, they’ve got a good product but the vehicle they’re using to test them is failing. And in fact, I was on a conference call with ____ a month or two ago before the book launch of his new book, The 4-Hour Buddy. And people were saying, why do so many people fail with their ­­­____? And he said it was __ down to testing. He said it was all about the testing in the sense that people have good products in most cases but they weren’t able to communicate that and get that across. And he didn’t say it was the vehicle they were using but I believe he was hinting at it. And in my experience, it is down to that. And I know you had exactly the same…

Andrew Anderson: It’s the website. Website will make you or break you. And I wanna throw something else out there and maybe you’ll agree with me. I have never seen a super, super successful business run on a free website. It just will not happen. And if you are successful, if you get your act together and get together a good website, you can be five, ten, a hundred times more successful and get more sales by having a well put together website.

Glenn Bridges: It comes back to the ___ idea I gave earlier that whether you are selling something or if you want someone to do anything. If they see that it’s a free site and they can see that little logo at the bottom that says, this is a free website built by X or they know it because they’ve used it. It’s such a popular, well-known, free brand, people just don’t want to put any energy into it. And people, the way I look at it is that, people like you to make decisions for them because it takes so much energy and thought process to make a decision that most people are terrible at making them. If you have the entrepreneur mindset, you’re only very good and quick and fast at doing that. But some people would do and they just want you to present something that is well put together and takes away all of their objections and just say, hey, this is what I’ve got to offer. Now, if you put a doubt in someone’s mind and say, hey, here’s my product for fifty pounds or fifty dollars, or five dollars or five hundred dollars. And then they see you’ve got a free site? Well, that puts a doubt because if you’re making money, why would you not pay for that site? And if it’s not a good enough ___, why is it not invested? You don’t believe in your product? Is it not valued? Does it not sell? All these doubts __ someone and the thing is, and I’m sure you’d agree with me, Andrew is that this stuff happens so quickly in such an unconscious level that people, they are putting these sites together, they don’t even think about it. I think all that is just nothing when in fact, it’s happening in your customer’s mind and something that they’re not even aware of. They cannot even describe it to you. They just get an uneasy feeling. Some people will. Some people will say, I didn’t buy from your site because it’s a free site. Most of the time, the people will go, I don’t know. I just had this uncomfortable feeling. Or I just didn’t want to. I went to this other site and I used it there. So you can’t be using free sites. And to be honest with you, with the stuff that’s coming along, you can get a site out there that’s rocking it and doing really well and pumps out cash day in, day out.

Andrew Anderson: Yeah. And if people were gonna do that and I mean, as far as the baseline goes, there’s a bunch of different types of sites and I don’t wanna confuse people but there’s Joomla, and ___, and WordPress. If you’re gonna do anything out there, wouldn’t you agree that WordPress is the only option for people these days or the smart option that’s the least expensive?

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, absolutely. I think I’ve signed up to about in the past two years, thirteen or fifteen different services both paid and free. And that probably doesn’t sound a lot to most people. It might be a huge amount to some people but I’ve pretty much used all of them just to see what’s available. And WordPress has to be where it’s at. It’s moved, for anyone who says it was just a blogging platform, it’s not. It’s CMS. It’s a Content Management System. Everybody __ will tell you that. Everybody that’s running successful businesses online will tell you that. The people that will tell you it’s a blogging system and not CMS, are the people not making money with it. So just ignore that. Coz I hate that. Oh, it’s just a blogging ___. No, it’s not. It’s CMS. It’s Content. And what ___ is it’s a content management system and that’s any content that you want to put online, you wanna manage it. And sorry to tear away a little, Andrew but I think a lot of people, I see this as a pitfall for a lot of people is that, they don’t have their own concept management system and they just like have a website designer or they outsource it. And to any time they wanna make even the smallest of changes, they just wanna __ that to you ___ or put an exclamation mark in. they have to then pay someone or they have to get on the phone or have to email someone to update it. And if you’ve ever done that, that is just a pain. It’s just a drain.

Andrew Anderson: And you know what? When we agreed to do this interview, we should’ve set up a page where they can get more information on this. But I think maybe we can use the one page that you’re gonna use this weekend at your speaking event. Do you think it’s a good idea to give that out or should we do something else? And we’re not trying to sell you anything here. Just wanna give you the benefit of the experience that Glenn has and get them on the webinar that you’re gonna put in this January.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. Absolutely. We got some webinars coming up. Actually, a series of webinars. We got two or three lined up, Andrew. And that’s gonna be covering stuff like, how you built a successful profit website, how you generate traffic and all that sort of different things to it. We can definitely do that.

Andrew Anderson: Why don’t you go ahead and give them the URL and then I’ll do it in American accent in case they can’t understand the wonderful accent you have.

Glenn Bridges: Oh, you put me on the spot now coz I need to find that URL.

Andrew Anderson: It is www… And if you don’t know that by now, ___ you really should be on this call. But it’s launch as in launch a rocket and then brain as in what’s inside your head. Launchbrain.com/private. So it’s launchbrain.com/private. And there’s a sign up form, just put your email in there and we’ll send you out the info for the upcoming webinars. And there’ll be tons of free content in there. This is not gonna be a sales fest at all. I’m just sick and tired of a lot of the gurus out there that they con people into signing up for something and it ends up becoming nothing but a pitch fest and there’s no real value there. And I’m just sick of it. We’ve got the chance to really change people’s lives. Just the information that you and I talked about today, I don’t really see it being spoken about on the web anywhere. And it’s a shame because it can really make a difference from someone being successful, following their dreams, and having a wonderful life and not. It’s pretty serious stuff.

Glenn Bridges: It is. I’d really encourage everyone just to go to that website. Thanks for remembering what it is. There’s so many websites __ of my head, it’s important to ____ there. I think you’re absolutely right, Andrew. It’s provided there the event I’m going to and I’m speaking at tomorrow.

Andrew Anderson: And today is what, December 10^th so that everybody knows. So that’ll be December 11^th, 2010, right?

Glenn Bridges: Yep. Absolutely. ____ in the future. Hello, future ___. We know I’m providing an hour and plus web content for free and then no pitch, I’m not selling a single thing and then we’re throwing in some webinar for you just because it’s important to get this out there. I think you’re right, Andrew. There are so many people that are, I don’t see them talking about it. And sometimes that concerns me coz I think, well, am I missing something? The fact that no one talks about it, I think that there’s so many people that are profiting off of people’s ignorance. And there are website builders out there that are ___ they can just put something out there and send it and hope it works. And there’s that good old phrase goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. And you don’t know that.

Andrew Anderson: Where are you speaking tomorrow?

Glenn Bridges: I’m speaking at the Entrepreneur’s Boot Camp Xmas Bash. That’s the most snappiest name I’ve come across.

Andrew Anderson: Wow. Ok.

Glenn Bridges: I’m gonna ___.

Andrew Anderson: And where is it?

Glenn Bridges: It’s at ___.

Andrew Anderson: Don’t try and call them.

Glenn Bridges: You don’t really ever wanna come to this man. Don’t do it.

Andrew Anderson: You wanna come to the event but you may not wanna stay there. And then what time does it start?

Glenn Bridges: It started today at nine. And it runs for about nine till six daily. Starts today, tomorrow and on Sunday. So they got some people speaking but you’ve definitely heard of people like Reed ___, _____, Johnny G., Nick James, the list goes on. There’s about thirty…

Andrew Anderson: Glenn Bridges?

Glenn Bridges: Oh, yeah. And you definitely know who I am now.

Andrew Anderson: What time are you speaking again or where is it. I ___ to repeat it.

Glenn Bridges: I’m speaking at 6 pm tomorrow.

Andrew Anderson: So everyone’s got a chance to stop off a pint before they come see you. And that’s a civil time.

Glenn Bridges: It is. It’s a civil time. And I’m gonna be at the bar afterwards with my gorgeous girlfriend, Amy and a couple of her friends. So if you wanna come along and join me, I’d love to buy you a non-alcoholic beverage.

Andrew Anderson: Glenn, listen. I really appreciate the interview. This is long overdue. And we’ll have to pop off and do a couple more on this because it just got my mind going and on so many different fronts on this. And the basics are just too hard to find and there’s no reason for, because it’s just simple. Not that making money online is super duper easy, but it’s not as hard as everyone makes it out to be either.

Glenn Bridges: And the most important thing is, if you’re not covering those basics, just ___ stuff you’ve learned, you’re sabotaging yourself from the start. So it’s important out there for fundamentals.

Andrew Anderson: Yep. You’re shooting yourself in the foot. I know you gotta go get ready. Glenn, I appreciate the interview here. And hopefully everyone else got some content out of it. We’ll do another one shortly. And break a leg tomorrow on your presentation. I’m sure there will be some great stuff. And everyone, listen to this. If you can get a chance to… Now, this is in London, correct?

Glenn Bridges: This is in London, yes.

Andrew Anderson: I forgot to put it out there. It’s in London, England, December 11^th at the park in which you can’t call but Glenn will be speaking at 6 pm London time. And go check him out and afterwards he will buy you a non-alcoholic beverage if you’re nice to him. And what is really smart, I would buy him an alcoholic beverage and pump his brain because you’re not gonna be able to pay him enough to get the information that he’s got stuck in __ that we haven’t even gone over yet. Thanks a lot. I appreciate this and we’ll chat with you soon.

Glenn Bridges: Thank you so much, Andrew. And best luck to everyone on the call.

Andrew Anderson: Thank you. Bye.

Glenn Bridges: Bye.

This is Part 1 and I go over what Adobe, UPS, and DHL are doing wrong on their sites so that you don’t make these same major blunders. This is best viewed in Full Screen Mode.

And that is just for starters…

Let me know what you think!
Cheers,
Andrew “Easy” Anderson

Let’s face it, 98% of the Websites out there are not configured correctly for Maximum profits, including this one to be perfectly honest. However, in the next six weeks I am going to be changing my site to reflect and show you how to squeeze every last penny out of your site.

It will actually only take me a couple of hours to change it because of the tools that I use (no, they are not available to the public yet, but I will show you where to get them).

But I want to make the changes to the various components so that you can follow along. I must tell you that I was Ignorant of a lot of these things when I first started. So, no matter what your Marketing or Technical expertise or lack there of, you will be able to make these changes to your site using the tools I will show you all by yourself as long as you have enough computer knowledge to read this post. Or, you can have one of our minions do it for you if you so desire. Yes, I know it is a TV, but I like the pic. 

I am going to point out some big mistakes that even many Fortune 500 companies make! This is going to be fun!

And we are not talking about using a crappy free builder or using Yahoo, or anything from 1&1 and the like that can kill your business and you won’t even know it.

So, just wanted to set you up for that.

Cheers,
Andrew “Easy” Anderson