As promised, I am going to record my progress here on the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course.  I won’t go into specific details as to what is in each lesson, per se, simply because Tony and Sara do a better job of explaining than I do.  So I won’t reinvent the wheel, as they say.

But I will tell you that instead of getting one lesson a week I have gotten 5 in the past two weeks!!

Week 1 is a general overview and picture of things to come just to get the creative juices flowing.  Even they say that those of us who are familiar with Internet Marketing can get going sooner than, say, a total newbie which I found to be the case with me.

The Week 2 lesson helped me to get a good idea of what to focus my niche on and for the first time I have a very really confidence to attack my plan.  The smaller steps and guidance were/are just the very thing I needed to see this thing through.

A surprise bonus report came  a few days later.  Worth the price of the course just by itself.  “How to make your report outsell the competition!!!”  Folks, it just doesn’t get any simpler and more straight forward than this!

What I did was to buy some really awesome PLR, as they advised.  I did some tweaking and reformatting so it is ready to “go public” ASAP.

By now I am putting my plan into action and while waiting for the next lessons I kind of get a jump on it by subscribing to Aweber and preparing my autoresponder series.   Then came lesson 3 AND 4!!

Do you want to know the one thing that made all the difference in my own business so far?  it’s this:

TAKE ACTION!

Stop planning and analyzing and just do it.  Get it done and fix it later.  Now some of you perfectionists are squeamish on that one.  I know I was.  But here is the sound reasoning behind it.

The sooner you get your product done “good enough” and then published, the sooner you will know if you have a winner or a dud.  Believe me, if it is done “good enough” your customers will let you know how you can add to or “fix” your product.  If something isn’t clear or thoroughly explained, they will let you know and you now can “update” your product which makes it even more valuable. But f it is a dud, then you will know not to spend anymore time on it.

Well, I am getting on with it – how about you?  See you next week when I tell you how I am coming with the next lesson #5!

Take a look at the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course here.

I am here to point the way to one of the best lists of List Building Ideas at Terry Dean’s Internet Marketing Coach.  Head on over for some inspiration:

http://www.terrydean.org/21-ways-to-add-more-subscribers/

There are only a handful of marketers that I keep subscribed to for solid, useful advice and Terry’s is one of them.

Have you been floundering in your online business, not knowing where to go… what to do?  Yes?  Well, so have I.  True confessions time.  I have been in the IM game for over two years now.  I call them my “learning” years.  I dabbled and designed and sold a few things.  But never really got a good ripping start.

At the same time, I had been eyeing Tony Shepherd’s and Sara Brown’s Internet Marketing Kickstart Course.  But I put off joining as I thought, “I know what to do; I just need to do it!”  So, I didn’t join.  But then I didn’t “just do it, either”.

I finally knew what I had to do.  You see, even we creative entrepreneurial types need a mentor – someone who will direct you and advise.  And I knew  Tony and Sara would do just that.

I “joined” over two weeks ago and have never regretted it!!  It was just the “kickstart” I needed.  Already I have gone through the first 4 lessons and am chomping at the bit to get on with the next ones.  This is nothing but solid gold.

So, I thought I would record my progress here for anyone else who is thinking about trying out the Course. Just look for the category to see what I have been doing.

For you totally new to Internet Marketing, a resounding YES you will never regret your choice.  I have participated in a half dozen courses and webinars before and, well, Tony and Sara’s course is the most user friendly.  I would not hesitate to recommend it if you are new and want to see progress on a regular steady pace.

But if you are like me, and really need that kick in the pants, this is perfect.  While many of the lessons are stuff we already know, the simple progressive layout offers the nudge and guidelines I needed.

Yes, I am a Tony and Sara fan but for good reason.  They are “real” – no false fronts with them.  Head on over to the Internet Marketing Kickstart Course and meet them today!

Are you ready to toss in the towel on your Internet business?  Do you see your dreams of succeeding fading.  Are you tempted to think,  “I’m too old;  I am too plain, fat or past my prime…”

Have you come to the end of your hopes to ever come out on top?   Well, think again.  This story is inspiring for anyone in any pursuit that you just keep your dream and see it through.

Who is it that I am talking about?  Susan Boyle who recently shocked the judges and audience of Britain’s Got Talent (their version of American Idol) with her stunning performance.  The faces of all who saw her as she first walked on stage was to say the least, unimpressed, even cynical.

Did she make the house “rock”?  Watch the video.  And think again — I don’t know who said it first, but, may I say, JUST DO IT!  Ignore the scoffers and pursue your dream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

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!

OK.  I admit I am a late bloomer.  I takes some a while to catch on, you know.  But I have the excuse that I am still relatively new to Internet marketing.  What am I driving at?

Social networking.  Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and such.  For someone like me who has been steadily chunking away at learning the ropes of marketing basics like writing, web design, basic graphics design, writing copy; this is just one more feather to add to my very feathered cap!

Well, I have been learning this game and as the saying goes, “When the student is willing, the Teacher appears”  I have to blame Tiffany Dow and now Ed Dale for getting me into this “game”.  But in it, I am!

Even heard of immersion learning?  Well, that’s what I have been up to this past week or so.  Learning Twitter, signing up in Facebook, figuring out Google Reader, and other social stuff.  But what has really occupied my time is FriendFeed.

Have you looked at it?  Now, I am a total newbie to the social thing anyway, but FriendFeed just makes sense!  Having all your social feeds going to one center place where your friends can find you is really the future of the Internet.  I think I heard Web 3.0 mentioned in the same breath with Friend Feed simply because is takes Twitter and ramps it up to the next level.

Anyway, I am throwing together a free how-to guide for FriendFeed that I’ll be making available pretty quick.  As a matter of fact, it will be re-brandable for you folks who like to get in on this thing.

In the meantime, see my FriendFeed at: http://friendfeed.com/hinessite

See you there!