I sit here shaking my head because I have been in this business for well over two years and well, I have learned a thing or two about how people operate.

Did you know some people just like to gripe?  They do!  Somehow they just think that everything is a scam or designed to steal money from their pocket.  Well, I am here to tell you no one is taking that credit card out of their wallet and entering it into the order form (now I am not talking about identity theft which I know is a problem).  I am talking about those who knowingly fill out the payment form and press buy it.

Then they get the e-book or e course and find out it won’t make them rich like the guy said in the ad.

Hmmm, I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that you are not that guy.  The person who wrote the ad most likely did make that kind of money in that short period of time.  They also said they would show you how to, too.

Now, think of this scenario:  Here is someone who doesn’t know how to swim.   He buys a book that says this is how to swim.  He jumps into the pool and well, drowns (nearly).  He jumps out of the pool, dries off, goes home and immediately tells everyone he knows that Sam’s Simple Swimming technique is a scam!

Silly, I know.  But really, how many of us read an ad, buy the product and jump into the deep end and nearly drown learning how to do it.  Then come out sputtering it’s a rip off.  Now I may be preaching to the choir here as most of us marketers know how to read the marketing hype and merely buy the product to add to our library [at least that is the excuse I make ]  But for those of you who are new to this game, just use common sense.

Internet marketing is a business and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything else.  You will not get rich overnight.  None of the people who wrote the sales letters got rich overnight.  They started in the shallow end of the pool and learned how to “swim” in this business.  Some take many months; some take longer.  Hey, it took me a year and a half to figure out that I like to write and then asked for my first ghostwriting job.

Tip of the day:  Use common sense.  There is nothing that is truly free.  Hey, I even ask for your email address to get my “free” report.

OK I am going to let you in on a “secret”.  I knew YouTube made an announcement on their new YouTube Sponsoring Ads almost the same day that they announced it.  I know what Google is doing or announcing on the same day that it happens to hit the news.  I even know, the same day, when big name marketers have made a blog post of momentous importance.  No, it isn’t in the main news but it is in their own news or on a blog.

And no, I am not privileged and get leaked info – but I do know where to look and then have my “virtual assistant” send it to my favorite reader – Google Reader.

You see, it pays to be a bit snoopy and poke around and listen.  Now I would never, ever advocate anything unethical here.  Everything  I am taling about is right there for all to see – if you know where to look.

The Secret here is to grab the RSS of the news feed or blog in question and have it sent to Google Reader.  No secret at all, really.

This is what I do:  First of all, I subscribe to the feeds of marketers I like to follow:  Tiffany Dow , Tony Shepherd, Ed Dale, Terry Dean, Michelle MacPherson, just to name a few.

Then when they make an announcement that hits them as important or point to a site that they have found useful, then I head over to take a peek.  If I like it, I grab the feed for that and then send it to – you guessed it  – Google Reader.

Well, Ed Dale and Michelle stay smack dab on top of the scuttlebutt in social marketing, so I pay attention to their blogs.  Thanks to them for the blast about YouTube!

Tiffany and Terry always share solid marketing advice, so it pays to subscribe to their blogs – big time.

But then I learned that Google has its “official ” blog, so I get it fed to Google Reader.  YouTube has a (you guessed it) blog, too!  And guess where these big players announce their new stuff!  Right there in their blog.

So, now you know the secret to staying informed in the IM industry.  There is just no excuse for being the last to know anymore.

Big news!  You Tube now has Pay per click ads.  Read more here at Michelle MacPherson’s site:

http://www.michellemacphearson.com/youtube-sponsored-video-how-to/

Video IS the future for Internet Marketers.

If you have been in Internet marketing for long, you have probably long since switched to Firefox as your internet browser of choice.  I know I took me a while to care about the difference between IE and FF but once I had to make the change for a coaching program I was on, I was sold on Firefox.

Well, I thought I was happy with Firefox and except for one thing i missed form IE, I think FF has far surpassed IE in EVERY way.  Till now!

Enter Flock.  Now before you pass this post by read with me a bit longer.  Flock takes all the best pints of Firefox and takes it 200% more.  Flock is actually built on the same Mozilla platform as Firefox so it really isn’t that different.  Only Flock has at least two features I squealed for joy when I saw them.

#1 favorites in the sidebar – I missed this in Firefox.  That is one thing IE had that Firefox didn’t.  Well, Flock has one upped even IE in this department.  It has a clean, color coded organized look to it with a nicely prominent search just for your favorites.  Now, Firefox does have a search but I never saw it before but in Flock it is right there right on top and ready to use.  Did you lose track of where you stuck a certain bookmark, well, here is the search you need!  I lost where I had tucked the Lego site way down in one of my files.  Search brought it up right away!  yes!

#2 social sidebar (!)  yup you can tweet and follow your friends right in you sidebar.  You can add Digg and Facebook, too.  It updates right along, too so out of the side of your eye while working on the main part of yor window you can see when someone updates in Twitter.  Now you don’t have to leave the Poeple sidebar up all the time but it is nice to have it up when you do want it.

#3 one touch add to your favorite Reader.  Now I know it is there is Firefox, but in Flock there is a bright orange RSS button in the address bar that lights when a site has RSS.  So, should you want to add the blog or news feed to your favorite reader, it takes just a touch (well, you do need to choose it as your default reader in Tools>Options>Applications and find Web Feed and choose your reader, mine is Google)  But once you have configured your default reader, just clicking that button adds the feed to Google.  Now all your feeds can be read in central place.

#4 more of a side note: You do have the option to read all your feeds in Flock in a sidebar.  While I don’t use this feature, you may find it useful.

You can use nearly all the Firefox add-ons with Flock, too.  I am a very happy customer.

How many times have you bought and read an ebook and lo and behold it is just basic “flat” text on a few pages?  I don’t know about you but I have “tasted” what it is like to use an eBook that is somewhat dynamic.  You know the ones that have a table of contents that you can jump right to the text you want to see.  Slick.

Now as a writer of eBooks and short reports I wanted to learn this trick to make my own books more user friendly.  I thought maybe you could use the tips too.

To create a linked ToC in Word 2003 (sorry, I like it better for this feature than 2007),  you need to select the Outlining toolbar from View>Toolbars.

Then just go through your text and click your cursor on the line (it selects the whole line even if you just put the cursor on there).

Go up to the Outline Toolbar and select the Level 1 through 9 (i think).  This is where you use your outlining skills from school.    You know, chapters are level one;  major points – level two; sub point – level 3, etc.

When you are done outlining, place your cursor in the doc right where you want the table to appear (right after your title page),  go to Insert>Reference>Tables and Indexes and choose Table of Contents tab.

You can choose a style of table, so mess around with it.  Make sure to select the number of levels if it is more than the default of 3 and click ok.

Ta da!  Hopefully you did a nice clean job of outlining or you may have a lot of unwanted text.  If you see stuff you don’t want, jump to that text; make sure to label it “body text” if you don’t want it included in the toc.   Then go back to the Outling toolbar and click replace entire table.  Keep at it till it is clean.

I like a uniform looking ToC so I highlight the whole thing, choose the font style, size and weight to all be the same.  I mess with it a bit but hey.

I know I wished someone taught me how easy it is to make a “jump to” ToC for my ebooks.  Hope this helps!