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

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

Bashing Success And Apologizing For Exceptionalism

You must have heard by now that Apple has a few issues with the iPhone unless you were living in a cave.  Well, by all accounts if you get your news from the LameStream media, you would think that every iPhone is terrible and that the Government should step in to help the poor hapless consumer.

Well, guess what.   I know of at least four people that have the new phone and try as they might, they can’t reproduce the issue.  And they have asked friends who have it and no joy on being able to create the issues with the phone going out when you touch a certain part of it.

What does this mean? Well, I think it is a commentary on the predatory nature of media towards tearing anyone down that is successful or for the gall of being Exceptional and that bad news sells.  I like to call them soul suckers … LOL .  They want to portray anyone that is successful as bad, be it an individual or a business and especially businesses.

It extends to also saying that no one is better than another.  My answer to that is poppy cock.  Of course there are many people better than others and we should hold that Exceptionalism up as a guiding light, not try and tear it down.  But this is always used by weak minds and souls.  It is always from someone that is not truly exceptional in their own heart or mind.  So, they want to tear Exceptional-ism down and have us believe that is does not exist.

This of course I have noticed started in DC recently and continues there every day.  Big business is bad,  rich people are bad, Wall Street is bad, or whomever they don’t agree with at that moment or they want to shake down, they are all greedy for looking out for themselves, their employees, their stockholders, etc.

However you will notice that we are supposed to believe that a all Government is good and the only way that we can possibly survive is to let them make all of our own decisions because we are not smart enough to use common sense.  We are supposed to also believe that Big Bad Business and Greedy Rich people and not the Government spending your great grand child’s money is the real cause of the mess we are in economically.  Does anyone really believe that who has an iQ higher than 10?

Some businesses are bad, but most are very good.  Some Government is good and it used to be that the majority was good although we may be nearing a tipping point here.   There is actually a proven mathematical model that proves how this happens.  But that is another post.

When point in fact, that many Americans work for those big bad businesses and rich people and if it was not for them and them being able to gather money, they would not hire people, there would not be stocks to invest your retirement money.  Rich people and people becoming successful are the solution to what is going on, not the cause.

But this is honestly nothing new and there is a lesson here for all of us.

Now this may be a bit controversial, but one of the most brilliant marketing minds out there was Joseph Goebbels the propagandist (marketer) for Germany.   The first sentence is the important part.  I give you the rest for context.  Goebbels said he learned his techniques from Woodrow Wilson ( a truly evil man in my opinion) and his man George Creel a journalist who headed up the US “Committee On Public Information”, or our first true Government propaganda office here in the US of A.  Edward Louis Bernays was in on this too and a lot of the ideas of shaping public opinion was his.  He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud who I believe denounced Wilson’s whole regime.

This whole group was a bunch of egotistical elitist progressive bastards to put it mildly. But, man did they know how to market!

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbls

Why You Have To Be Aware

There is an orchestrated attack who’s drum is beat everyday about business and free markets, and economic freedom in general.    The reason why this is important is that you need to watch and learn from this for you marketing and yet to be aware to tune these things out and to not believe these things from a propaganda stand point for your business.

There is a lot of propaganda being bandied about as facts on many fronts including financial.  And yet, you must make your decisions based on information, but only good information can lead to good decisions.

You can’t afford to run your business or your life for that matter based on erroneous information and you can learn from these techniques that they use because they do work!

Keep your message simple and keep repeating it.  These techniques can be used for good and not just evil.

Now back to the Success Bashing as I like to call it.  Don’t buy into it.  It is not true nor is it helpful to your mindset or success.  See my previous post on the Pygmalion Effect.

Have a Profitable Day! Have a Profitable Day! Have a Profitable Day! Have a Profitable Day! Have a Profitable Day! Have a Profitable Day! 

Cheers,

Andrew “Easy 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 To See
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  Click Here Or On Image
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  Click Here Or On Image To See
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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, an Affiliate Program, a Membership Program,and an Auto-Responder built in as well. Plus other great good surprises. (and yes, I will get around to putting in a fancy button here too, but the most important thing is to have a way for people to give you money. You can sign up for out Beta launch of LaunchBrain by going 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

I am talking about having a full blown custom design that does not look like it comes from the 80′s.  I am not talking about a Website that is not centered in your browser.  That is the surest sign I know of these days to quickly ascertain if a company has their act together on the web.  If it is left justified and not centered on your screen, be careful about doing business with them.    Just saying… 

Today, you really need to have the following.

1. A Centered Website that lets people know how your product or service can help solve their problem or pain, or make their liver easier or more enjoyable.
2. You need to have an integrated design to the site which include a look and feel that is consistent throughout the site.
3. You must have a Blog, even if you don’t want to write in it, have someone else do it.
4. You must have RSS feeds and social media integration.  While I have not heard too much about this from the so called Gurus, your RSS feed can be your most important traffic source.  The same goes for your Social Media.
5. If you have products or services to sell, ( I mean why else would you be in business) then you need a way for your customers to purchase them. You need buttons and a shopping cart.   Here are some examples of some pretty cool buttons. Note the buy now button and the sign up for twitter button.

• Click Here Or On Image To See The Button In Action

Most companies can get a great looking Website, Blog, online Social Media Framework, and Shopping Cart/Way to collect money, Video Integration, and all done for your including graphics for $2,477. Where? Right here with www.21to21.com and www.MadFunMarketing.com.

So what are you waiting for? It does not matter if you are a just starting out, or need a serious rehaul of your Website. You don’t need to spend more in 85% of the cases.

In 99.99% of all of the sites that we have looked at, most can be done for under $10,000 using our new tools. 94% can be done for under $5,000 and of those, 88% can be done for under $2,500.

And putting money in your Web Presence is by far the best money you can spend for Marketing/Sales and in practically any other category you can think of for sure. Simply because in case you have not noticed, people go to your Website First!

Plus, you can keep it up-to-date and humming for less than $200 with hosting and fresh content for your blog. You don’t even have to write it yourself!

Why are we doing it so inexpensively?

Well, because we are tired of seeing crappy looking Websites for one. Secondly, we are tired of coming in after the fact when a client has spent $5,000 to $50,00 and still has a site the will not make them money and then having to convince them that it can be done form $2,400 or in the larger ones, for only $10,000 and that it can bring in 5 x the business they are bringing in now. It is painful to watch. And frankly, just silly and totally unnecessary.

If you would like to take advantage of this offer, and get access to our new tools, plus a whole lot of other bonuses such as marketing and SEO assistance then just click on the Button below to get started.

Oh, and you will be able to easily maintain, change, and update your site as well. Complete training on how to do this is provided as well.

This is an interview that I just did with Dave Olson over at HootSuite which is one of the best tools you can use for Social Media and your business.

They just released a team collaboration tool to manage a Businesses Social Media that frankly, just totally rocks and you need to get it.  I allows you to have several people use your Social Media and collaborate while limiting permissions.

Below the interview, I have  a video showing you what it can do.

If you are using not using this great Social Media tool (and it is free) and your competition is, at least you will now know why you are losing your customers to the them!    I am sure the blog will get hammered so be patient while the audio loads!

You can download the interview here in MP3 format.

Below is a raw transcript of the interview.  I wanted to get this posted ASAP.   HootSuite really gets it unlike so many companies out there.  Keep an eye on them for sure and go get HootSuite for criminy sakes.  Here is a link,  HootSuite.

Hope you enjoy this!

Cheers,

Interview of Dave Olson with HootSuite by Andrew Anderson.

AA is for Andrew and DO is for Dave of course.

A.A: I’ve got Dave with HootSuite on the line here, and of course this is Andrew Andersen. Dave, you want to introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do?

D.O: Yup. My name’s Dave Olson, and I work for HootSuite as the community director. I oversee all the marketing and support related task as well as spend a lot of time out just spreading the message to our passionate user-base.

A.A: I happen to be one of those passionate users, which is why we’re having this conversation today. I’ve noticed that you’ve got a really cool product that is honing in on businesses, which really need to use Twitter, and I’m just gonna kinda let you go off on your riff and tell us about HootSuite, and tell us why you think Twitter is good, and go for it.

D.O: What HootSuite tries to excel in is using Twitter and other social media platforms within groups – It’s all about the teams for us. And really, from the very first iteration, HootSuite was built to solve the problem of how do you manage multiple Twitter accounts with multiple editors. It kinda came out of that agency background. But as we built this product, we’ve listened to users and really saw where the future trends are leading, which is more social networks – people don’t just hang out on one. It’s not either or with Facebook and Twitter, it’s both in most cases, especially so in marketing. But now we’ve taken it a step further to create a context of owner and team members. Which allow groups to control their different social networks at a very granular level where they can have owners, advanced team members, and basic team members – they can all be created ad hoc so you can create a group around a topic, a project, a client account. All without revealing confidential password information which is really great especially considering the transitory nature of a lot of work environments where you might have interns or people moving on, people changing jobs, changing departments, and so on.

A.A: Right. And the value of that account is becoming higher and higher as more people depend on it too.

D.O: Oh, absolutely. We find, by listening to what people are talking about out there – and I spend a lot of time on the road talking to agencies and enterprises, and consultants and so on – they really think of HootSuite as a destination. This is their dashboard that they open up first thing in the day, even before their email, to listen to the pulse of what people are saying about their pertinent brand names out there. It’s tremendously important, and I would say, to businesses who aren’t using Twitter yet, even more so that talking to the people, it’s even more important to be listening to what people are talking about right now about. They’re talking about your brand even if you’re not listening. If you’re not involved in the conversation, you’re not getting in front of potential PR disasters, and you’re not out there prospecting and gaining more customers by being out there, listening to the people, and responding and reacting to their comments. [00:02:58] your own company, but certainly your competitors as well

A.A: And it can if you’re out in front of it, and I just wanna give a real brief example: I had made a Twitter comment, I’d used a product that I wasn’t happy with. They’re well known, I don’t wanna mention them in here. I made a Tweet about it, and I wasn’t being mean about it, I’ve learned never to do that because I have problems too, and I don’t know any company that has these issues but they had seen the Tweet, I had the CEO and their VP of marketing get a hold of me within 15 or 20 minutes of that and take care of the problem. I was amazed. And I’m not sure if that could have happened without Twitter and everything else

D.O: No certainly not, and I think where Twitter is really powerful is in its limitations. The whole ‘It has to be a short message’ allows you to digest these little dim sum sized morsels really quickly and respond and react to them. When sending an email, which just gets lost in the shuffle and people write an email and there’ll be 6 different topics in there – so it’s like “Oh geeze, I can’t respond to all of this”. But if you can fit something into 140 characters, usually it can be answered in a fairly straightforward manner. So it kinda creates this back channel into the offices all around the world of these people who [00:04:15] are very difficult to get a hold of.

A.A: Right. You’ve nailed it ‘round the head. What happens is it’s the ultimate in direct marketing. You have to be very precise, as you said, to get your message out there so that it’s understandable.

D.O: Yeah, and I think direct marketing sometimes has this connotation that it’s very indirect, it’s kind of spreading the message too far and wide. Now with Twitter by setting up a listening column and HootSuite for example, where you can listen for everyone talking about llama feed because you’re in the llama feed business, And every time you see someone saying ‘I have to go feed my llama’, or something to that effect, you can be chiming into them saying “Hey, I’m interested in your llama’s too. [00:04:56]. How many do you have?” When it comes time for feed, they’re more likely to contact you. Although I don’t know what the shipping cost is for llama feed across the country, so I should probably come up with a better example – maybe fly fishing.

A.A: It doesn’t matter what it is though. It doesn’t have to be a world away. That conversation could be taking place right in your community, and you would never know about it without twitter.

D.O: Yeah, absolutely. People do forget about the power of – and you see this a lot with tweetups and such where it’s local people. People that might be working just down the street from each other, or hanging out at the same coffee shop, all of a sudden are able to build relationships because they have this Twitter tool, this social media tool sort of bridging that divide of awkwardness that sometimes is between we human beings.

A.A: Yeah, absolutely. It’s obviously added a few zero’s to your guy’s bottom line. It can do that for anyone else too. I know it has in mine, in my consulting business, and everything else that I do. It’s absolutely added a complete zero to our profit this year.

D.O: Bear in mind too that HootSuite is a free tool. While there’s a premium version of the mobile versions for both Android and iPhone at $299. There’s also free versions for Android, iPhones, there’s the web version which is free, enjoy it. And there’s also three flavors of standalone applications that a lot of people don’t realize. People that are accustomed to using a standalone Twitter or social media tool, and they prefer that rather than running it in the web. There’s some versions that you can run it as a standalone application too, and at this point there’s no cost for any of those.

A.A: And $2.99, you don’t mean $299, right?

D.O: No, no. Although if you do want to pay $299, we’ll make sure that we spend the money to feed the developers tasty beverages on a Friday.

A.A: Ok. You’re talking about 2 dollars and 99 cents.

D.O: That’s correct.

A.A: Ok. Just wanted to make that clear for everyone else. What’s amazing Dave is, and we had this in our brief, previous conversation – I don’t know what your numbers are as far as penetration of people actually using Twitter for their businesses. But in my own experience in dealing with clients, I would say it’s really less than 3-4%, if that high, are really using it to their full advantage. It’s kind of amazing.

D.O: Yeah well a lot of companies get on and they don’t think of it holistically involved in their whole marketing and outreach in public media relations strategy. They think of social media as the red headed stepchild that’s sort of stuck in the corner. Sometimes within companies, they sort of randomly assign someone to manage this stuff. But really, this is just another tool in your marketing tool kit and once people start understanding the power of listening and talking in almost real time. It gets over that ‘Oh this is just a fad’ phase real quick if they do it right. The problem is a lot of people sign up for an account, they’re just using Twitter Web and they’re spending their time thinking about what to write rather than how to listen. When they do write, it’s talking about something like – maybe sending out a coupon offer, and they’re talking about themselves, when really you have to be out there building relationships which means talking about what other people are interested in. It’s not about being transparent; it’s about being translucent and sharing the interesting bits about you and your company.

A.A: Very well put. You guys definitely have a handle on it. It’s a powerful medium and I think that if a lot of companies would spend half the money that they spend on PR and advertising, and put in a social media like Twitter and everything else, they would get 10x return they’re getting now.

D.O: [00:08:46] return with spending 10% of the money. When I talk to people who are heavily invested in this kind of traditional advertising forms. I’m like how many people converted because of that billboard ad, or how many people converted because of that radio ad? And those numbers are really hard to quantify, whereas using Twitter and using HootSuite specifically with our onboard statistics, you can see immediately what Twitters generated clicks, how many clicks there where, where the people came from, and kind of the long tail of that – well there was a whole bunch here in the first couple hours, but look at that, it kept on going for another week. How many people re-tweeted that message – it’s real easy to find out. You can very quickly and efficiently generate metrics to justify the success and adjust your campaigns to fine tune them based on what you find is really working and what your audience is responding to. With a billboard once it’s up there, you can’t go in the next day and say “what we meant to do is”- you can’t do that.

A.A: Absolutely. As you said, you can track the links. If you set up your link to specifically deal with those people that were coming in from Twitter and the other social media, you can further leverage that as well and measure it. It just takes a little bit of common sense to get that put together.

D.O: Yeah, and if there’s some analytic stat geeks listening out there, they probably have discovered our custom URL parameters. It’s one of those features that we added, that we’re really excited about. This maybe 2-5% of our total user base understands or cares what this is. But this allows you to attach a whole bunch of information to your shortened URL that will tell you specifically what campaign, where it was sent from, who send it, and so on, so you can really slice and dice and compare – well what kind of conversions did we get from Twitter messaging as compared to Facebook messaging as compared to Myspace messaging, and you can slice and dice those statistics by campaign, which is a great way to turn in reports to your client. Or else for your internal use to hone your tactics. It’s a really powerful tool.

A.A: Can I rephrase what you just said? What he basically just said was “It’s gonna help you make more money”.

D.O: Yes. And spend less money to make more money.

A.A: Exactly.

D.O: And spend more time chilling out because rather than experimenting over and over and over again, you figure out real quick which platforms are working for you, which time of day is the best time to send messages out. You’re not caught in a spiral. You can adjust each campaign very specifically and very deliberately.

A.A: Very well said Dave. I know that you’re in on a tight schedule now. Do you guys track those metrics that you just spoke about? And do you guys have some ideas for that? You don’t have to give me all the information now, maybe perhaps we can talk again because I’m sure the audience is gonna be interested in this.

D.O: In other words, do we eat our own dog food?

A.A: Yes.

D.O: Absolutely. Like this morning when our new release came out, I had everything staged from yesterday to blog posts and the releases, and the videos and all the stuff goes out at a certain time. All of us here in the office, the developers included, released it, because it’s kind of a big deal, they’ll be able to keep an eye on all the conversation and all the chatter going on about HootSuite. Various terms about it, certainly we look at what people are clicking through, where people are coming from, and so on. Mostly the main thing that we look at is the sentiment. Who’s excited about it. Who’s talking about it. Who’s sharing it with their networks. What people are writing about it. We know about that kind of stuff in real time because we pay very close attention to it.

A.A: Good deal. As far as I can tell and as far as my use, it is the best social media product that I know from a business standpoint. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you guys, and I wanted to get the word out there. Great job on the new release there, it’s a fantastic tool. Everybody that’s listening or reading this definitely needs to go and get it. And the price is right, Dave.

D.O: The price is indeed right. And if anyone out there has ideas for features that they’d like to see added to HootSuite, we have a feedback channel: feedback.hootsuite.com

You can go there and put in your ideas for new features. Plus you’re allocated a handful of votes so you can go apply to other features that other uses have suggested that you’d really like to see on HootSuite as well. It’s another tool we use to pay attention to what the community cares about and where the passion is. I encourage you to use those tools.

If you need a little help getting started, check our help desk. There’s all sorts of ways to get in touch with us to get a helping hand to get you rolling with this tool.

A.A: I can attest that HootSuite is very responsive. I’m definitely impressed.

D.O: We try our best anyway.

A.A: Dave listen, I really appreciate you taking the time to have this chat. I know it’s gonna help a lot of people get their act together with social media, and hopefully get a bunch more users for an absolutely fantastic product that I can’t say enough about.

D.O: Appreciate the call and to all the HootSuite users out there, we truly appreciate your support of our product. And to all that aren’t out there using it, give it a try and I think you’ll be pretty happy.

A.A: Alright, thanks a lot Dave.

D.O: Bye for now.

A.A: Bye.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Cheers again,

All of the clutter and noise of the day is gone and it seems like my fore brain and subconscious meld.

Today, I spoke with members of my team scattered all across the globe.  From Europe, to America, and Canada, to the South Pacific and Asia.

I also did an interview with Dave Olson from HootSuite today as well.  Should have it posted later yet this morning.  Awesome interview with a super nice and cool guy who is with one of my favorite companies right now.  They know how to do software and services right.  Wait until you hear the interview.  They absolutely get it, it being Social Media.   Plus, they get Direct Marketing too, which most of the big boys don’t.  Hell, not only big boys, but, medium and small boys, and or girls for that matter do not get the fact that Social Media and the Web is nothing but direct marketing. 

Which reminds me, I am overdue for an update on Drayton Bird’s Common Sense Social Media Challenge.  OK, get that done later today there Anderson.  Yes, you know you are definitely tired when you start referring to yourself in the third person in a Blog post.

On top of that, I am working on some fantastically fun and exciting projects and working with some of the sharpest people I have ever had the pleasure to bump elbows with on a daily basis in my career.

It is because of these people that with all of the projects that are going on,  someone, somewhere in the World, 24 hours a day is working on one or more of the parts and pieces of the puzzle.

This has not only allowed me to finish projects so far ahead of estimates that I am flabbergasted, but even the ones that are running behind, are running behind because of the caliber of the team that has enables us to  increase the functionality, features, and usability of the project drastically beyond what we had first envisioned.

Because we are now truly plugged into the World, I am finding that mountains can be moved overnight.

If you ever get a chance to experience this, it is truly something to behold if you are a builder and creator of things.  I will be doing and in-depth examination of this process later on so that you can glimpse inside and I can explain how it was put together and hopefully recreate it yourself.

Now if I could only find an editor that kept the same crazy hours I do, or just maybe I will hire a few more to cover all of the shifts. 

Cheers,
Andrew (sleepy) Anderson

People that sign up to follow the Twitter Challenge will get the videos and updates at least a one or two days in advance. So, sign up and you will be given a special link to get them before everyone else!

OK guys, I am impressed. They wanted to go over the issues I was having and find out what the scoop was. While I am flat out booked on time to go back over everything with them on my issues today, the fact that they are monitoring their social media is a great lesson in how to use Social Media correctly for Brand Monitoring.

While the verdict is still out on the Software, and it really could be there was something hinckey going on, they have there shit together when it comes to brand monitoring and how they responded is a very good positive lesson on how powerful a tool Social Media can be when used correctly.

So, hats off to Dim Dim for jumping on this, and when I get a chance to go over things with them I will let you know the scoop.

Cheers,
Andrew

….

Don’t have a Blog? Why Your Competition Hopes You Never Get One

Updated March 12, 11:22 PM EST By Andrew Anderson

My advice for you is to get one today. Seriously, if you are spending money on any other media or advertising and you don’t have a Blog, STOP and get a Blog before you spend another dime.

It does not matter if you are a brick and mortar company or sell most of your products and services online, you NEED to have a Blog. I am surprised at the number of supposedly smart companies that have websites without a Blog.

Because of some recent conversations with clients I want to start from scratch here.  I actually have been working on this post for over two weeks now and it’s has even become more relevant since I started it. Here is a short video that encapsulates what this post is about.  I am running on about 3 hours sleep today.  You can probably tell from the video that I just shot.  Click and watch it before you go on if you can.

What is a Blog?

A Blog is basically a list of short stories that are called posts. They can contain text, graphics, audio, video, or a combination of them all. Typically it is updated fairly frequently.  It can be several times a day, to several times a month.

Subject matter varies depending on the owner and writers of the Blog. They can be about your personal life, a specific subject matter, or even a hobby.  The sky is the limit for what can be Blogged or written about.  In the case of a company, it would be information relevant to their clients or potential clients.  For instance, this Blog at 21to21.com is primarily about using and leveraging the Internet including Blogs and Websites for individuals and businesses so that their businesses become massively profitable.  I am interested in helping you make more money.  Which is what Profit Consultants do.

Why are Blogs important?

Blogs are important because they give give you, the owner of the Blog, the ability to communicate freely with your clients and potential clients.   The great thing about a Blog is people get to vote with a click of their mouse.  Meece Rule!  OK, so I made Meece up, but you know what I mean.  More on the importance after this next bit.

Both Online and Brick and Mortar companies need a Blog!

RSS Feeds and getting the word out

People are able to gather information in a non-threatening way.  It also provides you, as the owner of the Blog, to put out information immediately with virtually ZERO lag time.  Not only will people be able to find what you posted as soon as it comes out, but, through RSS feeds, it will pass that information along to subscribers immediately.

This is from Wikipedia…

RSS (most commonly expanded as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,^[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator“, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed’s URL or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved from as early as March 1999,^[4] it was between 2005 and 2006 when RSS gained widespread use, and the (““) icon was decided upon by several major Web browsers.^[5]

On my Blog here for instance, I have over 12,000 RSS feeds going out on everything that I post.  Good, bad, or indifferent.  So, as you can see, RSS feeds are an important part of your Blog.

This can also help with your SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

Social Media

Another reason you should Blog is Social Media.  Your blog can post to other Social Media sites including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Stumbleupon, Digg, and a whole host of others.

And I swear this is a true story I heard today, a member of a fairly well known non-profit organization that helps businesses become better, stated Social Media was becoming less important, or at least that is what they had read.   Well, all I have to say to that is I remember people saying the same thing about the Internet back in 1997.

Social Media is exploding and will continue to do so.  Embrace it, understand it, make use of it, and enjoy it!  It can be a great way to interact with your clients, potential clients, and your friends.

RSS and Social Media give you the ability to leverage and go viral like never before.  Even though I am busier now than I ever have been, readership for my blog has doubled in the past two months and it seems that trend could continue for the next year.  And, my Social Media Blueprint is less than 10% complete.  So, there is a lot of room to improve.

Between my RSS feeds and Social Media such as Twitter, I can potentially reach over 22,000 people in a flash anytime I like for about 1 cent.  Can you do that with any other communications tool you have?

That is why you need a Blog.  Twitter and Facebook are fine but you are only leasing those.   Make your Blog your focal point.

The Ability To Give Great Content To Your Clients And Prospects

Include Interactive Items

A Blog gives you the ability to get great content to your clients and prospects.  Like on this site, I give away a ton of great information to people that read it. In fact, some of my SEO  (Search Engine Optimization) information is worth thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to the people that make use of it.   And I give it away!  It freaks out a lot of the other more staid SEO companies that charge $5,000 to $10,000 a month for fewer results than what I provide for my readers in 30 minutes for free.

Why?  Because when I do have something to sell, they already have proof I know what I am talking about.   And guess what?  Good content is good SEO, period.

With a good Blog, you can engage your readers.  You can do cool stuff like what I am about to show you.

Click on the image below and watch what happens.

It is called a light box.  You may have seen them before.  Why do I like them?  Because I can put a lot of content in a small space, have you look or listen to something engaging, and yet keep you on my Blog and block out other distractions and have you concentrate on that one thing.  There is more, just wait.

You can also put in Google Maps like this

Make it easy for someone to find you!

Yes, this is a fun little Mind Map from Bubbl.us which I did a post on a bit back.

A Mind Map For A Profitable Blog And Website

This is what I consider necessary components if you want to have a really successful Blog / Website.

Go ahead and play with it using your mouse and scroll button. You can drag it around, recenter it, make it larger or smaller.

It is much easier to explain an idea like this don’t you think?

If you click on the picture below, you can see it larger and then click on the little icon in the top right corner to see it full size.

Build A Blog – Why WordPress Is The Only Game In Town Right Now

There are several programs or platforms you can use to build a Blog these days, but by far and away the best to use, if you want to make money from it, is WordPress.  With about 400 million installations, it dwarfs the other programs out there. Plus, the fact it is Open Source, meaning the code is open to anyone, means there are constant improvements going on with it by people all over the World.  But the best part is because it is Open Source, programmers can make what are called Plugins and Widgets to make it do some very, very cool stuff.

Now they can give these away for free or charge for them, while a lot of them do both. They put out a really cool free one and then have others you can purchase.

The Plugins and Widgets make it the most flexible Blog and Website building software out there.   The flexibility that WordPress offers and the fact that it is Open Source, has resulted in how it got so big, so fast.

A Plugin or Widget is an add on that can do some cool features like make a contact page, allow you to embed pictures or forms.  Most of the items to the right and left of this content are Widgets and Plugins.

Not only can you get WordPress to do some great things, like get good SEO or Search Engine Optimization, but it is easy to use.

While there is a learning curve, once the design is done, anyone who can check email can upload content and change it around. This includes not only text, but Videos, Audios, Polls and more really cool and engaging stuff for your readers.  This is an embeded video.  You can do this from virtually any video source in a matter of seconds.

What WordPress Can Look Like On Your Blog or Website

Here are some of the companies that now use WordPress for their Blogs and Websites.  You may have heard of some of thses.

Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The US Air Force, Nokia, National Geographic, Forbes Blogs, and hundreds of thousands of others!

Just click on the links below and you will see yet another neat feature you can do on your Blog.  This is a pretty good snap shot of what you can do with WordPress.  From complicated to a minimal approach to design.  I did Josh’s and I rather like it, even though it is not normally a style that I do.  It fits who he is and what he wants to represent.   You should have your own style too and WordPress allows you to express it.

• H-Mag
• Live Strong
• Forbes
• Nikon Festival
• Pepsi
• Jo-sh
• LaunchBox Pro WordPress Business Builder
• KettleCornSecret.com
• CommonSenseMarketing.org

KettleCornSecret.com is an example of a Hobby site that once built can turn out money on auto-pilot and is fun! You can see just what type of variety you can have in how a Blog or Website looks and acts with WordPress.

Themes Or Designs And The Bottom Line

As you can see, the designs can be pretty much anything you like.  A design in WordPress is called a Theme.  There are thousands of themes to choose from, many of which are free. You can also buy pre-made ones, or you can get a custom Theme designed.

A fully customized Theme runs from about $250 to $10,000+ for a more involved one. While you can purchase some pretty good looking ones for about $25 to $100. If you have the cash though, I suggest you spring for a custom one. You want to stand out in the crowd.

But if you are just getting started out, a free one will work if you don’t have the cash. Getting started is the most important thing.  Check out the Products and Services page above if you would like some help from me and the crew. We can work with nearly any size budget.

Now, remember when I said that one of the reasons that make WordPress so powerful and that there are Plugins that allow you to do some really good things? Well one of the ones that my partners and I have been working on allow you to build your own customized Theme and change it anytime you like. Not only that, but is allows you to build Landing Pages, Sales Pages, and fully customized and integrated Blogs and Websites that gives you the ability to maximize profits.  It is the first complete system that enables you to run your online business using WordPress.

Normally this would take a really good Web designer a week or more to build a completely customized Blog and Website. We cut that time down by a factor of 10 and will be able to do it yourself.

OK, that is my unabashed plug. It is the best piece of software that I have ever worked with by far. My partner Ryan has been building Website and Blog building software that is being used by thousands of Web Design companies and individuals all over the world. His Landing Page design software has been copied by several companies recently and we decided to blow them all out of the water with LaunchBox Pro.

Craig who is my other partner and the dude that that had the bright idea, has been a marketing consultant and worked with some of the largest companies in the World and what we have put together is the combination of all of our knowledge and experience.

We wanted to make it easy for someone at home just starting out, to large Fortune 100 companies alike to be able to put together profitable Blogs and Websites for 1/100th of the normal cost just a month ago.

It won’t be ready for launch for another 10 days or so, but sign up for our notices.  There will be some very special deals when we launch and I do mean very special.

This whole site and Blog is running on LaunchBox Pro and everything in here you can do easily by yourself.  Even if you have no experience! You can check it out here.

• LaunchBox Pro

Regardless if you use us or you take advantage of the $3.95 a month WordPress hosting account with one Free WordPress installation or not, you should get your Blog up and running today.  There is no need to wait any longer.

Your business and your bank account will thank you for it.   The CEO of Marriott has measured that they get 5 Million dollars a year in sales from his blog.   Not to shabby for a little bit of typing now and then.  I actually figured out that they bring in approximately $50,000 to $75,000 for every blog post he does.

The bottom line is it really could come down to Blog or Die for many businesses.  But why go there?  Just do it!

The choice is yours though.  If you need help, call or email me and I will get you pointed in the right direction and make use of the FREE WordPress How-To-Video Series below.

We can also get you set up with a great looking Blog usually between $99 to $299 depending on what you want it to do and look like.  Call us up at 307-459-1092 or go here to contact us.

If you already have a WordPress Blog and just want to spiff it up and help it bring in more clients, we have great rates and can give it a tune up for $49!

Happy Profitable Blogging!

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

PS  I finished this up on about 3 hours of sleep as I mentioned and my editor has not looked at it yet. So, all of the typos and grammatical errors are mine.   Below is the link for the Hosting Special I mentioned in the video.

• WordPress Special Hosting For $3.95 per month and Free WordPress Installation if you need. Plus A whole bunch of other goodies. You must already have your domain name or order it have you grab this deal.

Also for Free Videos on how to use WordPress and to watch a WordPress site being built, you can go to www.StartOnMonday.com.

The Cobbler Who Wears Flip Flops

That is exactly how I feel these days.    Have you ever been there?  Have you just been so busy with clients and other people you don’t have time to work on your own projects?

While I have been mostly concentrating on some totally mind-blowing SEO / Traffic systems I am integrating into a new software project I am about to share with you,  I am slowly putting this site together so that it is an “appealing, take action kind of site” and not something the cat brought home.

If you have watched my Massive Online Profit videos, you are seeing a small sliver of the kind of things I am working on.

So is www.21to21.com better than a lot of sites out there? Sure, but it is only about 85% there and it will be much, much better.  What it does not do is really showcase any of the Web Design skills I have or that are in house.   But as I said before, I have been mostly using it for SEO / Traffic research and will continue to do so but, it will get better looking here shortly.

I am not sure if I mentioned this, but I am using the Beta Version of  LaunchBox Pro software that my partners and I have been working on for about 8 months now.    While it may not be apparent yet, it is by far the easiest, most powerful Website / Blog building platform I have ever used, with nothing even coming close.

It allows you to basically build out custom themes and layouts within the WordPress Dashboard without ever leaving it.  Plus you can have totally customized squeeze pages, optin pages,  and sales pages built in about 25 minutes. So you will never have to purchase a customize theme or wait a week or two and drop $700 to $3,000 dollars or more, let alone having someone build out a new sales, squeeze, or optin pages every time you need one.  And then once again, wait a week or two and spend a bunch of money.

We are putting in every SEO / Traffic getting tool that we know of.  Even those tools we don’t normally share with anyone except clients that pay us big bucks.

It allows anyone with ZERO tech skills to build professional looking blogs and sites that make money.  You do not need to know how to program.  Just cut and paste. Although, our primary clientele have been Web Designers and they will be using this in droves because it will cut down design time by a factor of 5. It is so easy though, anyone can use it.

You can end up with a site on par with sites like the New York Times, National Geographic, Nokia, Wall Street Journal, or a host of other big name sites that have moved to WordPress as their Web application, all on your own.

If you are interested in finding out more and getting the inside scoop when we make it public, go here and do a quick sign up.  You will be glad you did and I will give you a hint, you will be able to get a 75% discount off of the regular price, which is so low already, you will just have to go look.

Anywho…  I am slowly getting my products and services page together and I should have one of my other programmers or Virtual Assistants do this. But… I usually don’t let them mess with this site because I have so darn many experiments and tests going on at any given moment.  Plus, it is kind of my own playground.

But for the time being, it looks like this cobbler will be wearing Flip Flops for a while longer but I actually had time to play with some design work today for a whole 15 minutes. Did I mention I got to bed at 4:00 AM.    I love it!

And I am picking up more SEO and Social Media Clients.  Boy, are they in for a pleasant surprise as I just tested out some very cool systems.

Hope you are having fun out there and making tons of profit.  They usually go hand in hand.

Cheers,

Flip Flop wearing Andrew Anderson

In this video I examine the results from our first video upload which started only 32 hours earlier.  We ended up with 7 first page Google Listings. I think the results speak for themselves.  But see for yourself.  If you have not watched the other two videos please do so below.

Sorry, but I have removed these videos. I don’t want everyone using these techniques as it will ruin it for everyone, including my clients and myself.  I am sure you understand.

Here are the links:

www.goo-00.org

CamStudio.org

And the size you want to grab is 1280 pixels by 720 pixels.

I will post a video on how to use Cam Studio later.

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

In this follow up video, I show you the proof of what I did in the previous video “Massive Online Profitablity With SEO That You Can Do Today”.

This all happened in less than 24 hours and it is something that you can do today. I will be showing you more of the tools, tips, and shortcuts  that I used to accomplish this in the next video.

You might want to view this in full screen mode. Just click down there in the corner.

Sorry, but I have removed these videos. I don’t want everyone using these techniques as it will ruin it for everyone, including my clients and myself.  I am sure you understand.

You can do this.  I you liked this video, I will show you some more great  info in the next one.   And as always, think for yourself.  Go Google:   Massive Online Profits yourself and see what I am talking about. I think that I actually got another listing since I posted this.  Hope you sign up to be a Test Rabbit.  And would like to hear your comments or drop me an email in the contact page.

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

Not only that, but we will be showing you these techniques and features on a regular basis, thereby allowing you to stay several steps ahead of your competition and putting profit on your bottom line.  Go ahead and play with it. Zoom in, get directions. Google maps are the only ones I use.

Let’s face it, do you really want an even playing field when with a little work and some smart thinking on your part along with the help of your team at 21to21.com you can have the whole field tilted in your favor at all times? The big question is, would you rather have the playing field of your business niche tilted your way or toward your competition? Very soon, you will get to decide.

Okay… So Why Does Google Maps Rock the World?

This is a great tool if you have a brick and mortar business and want to make it easy for people to find you and get specific informaiton about your business or even if you are a virtual one! Go ahead and click on the red pin. Kind of cool huh? Go ahead and play with the map, if you like. You can zoom and even get directions. Now what if you had these pins for each one of your locations. What happens is that people see that you have your act together right off the bat. Plus, when you make it easy for customers to find you, they will show up at your door. Can you imagine just picking up and extra 10 or 15 customers a month. a week, or day this way? Well, with tools like this, you absolutely can. Plus, this tool can really help with your SEO.

Now just imagine having your contact information with instructions on how your customer can buy your product or service in the block.

When you put together tools like this into a cohesive fashion in my latest and greatest project which will be coming out in Beta shortly. It is like having your own oil well that keeps working for you 24/7 at putting money in your bank account.