As I worked on that video and did some research, I found that beanie babies aren't something that you can make money from anymore. Unless you have one of the really really really rare ones then you're not likely to make any money.

Some of the ones you see in the video sell for as high as $4.99! And that's only if they're new.

Remember when the beanie babies craze was going on? People were spending hundreds of dollars looking for the "good ones" and then selling them for thousands. It reminds me of that PBS documentary The Botany of Desire. I recommend you watch it if you get a chance. It's interesting to see how things are valued depending on human desire and context.

To find the really rare beanie babies, you need to be a collector, a serious collector. Besides that, the rare ones aren't just the limited edition TY beanie babies, they are the ones that were limited edition AND have a defect.

For example, I found that one of the angel-looking ones, I think is called "Halo" can be worth a few hundred dollars, if and only if you have the one that came with a brown nose instead of the regular black nose.

Yeah, good luck finding one of those. Nonetheless, it was interesting going through the bin of stuff I found.

So it turns out, at the end of the day most of these were junk. A few worked out great as toys for Picasso and my kids wanted to keep a few of them. I guess I don't have a million dollar find in my attic this time around.

The post Found a Cash Cow! Can You Even Make Money From Beanie Babies? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

We have done four episodes and we are settling into a schedule. As of right now, we have scheduled Tuesday nights and you can join our group to get the episodes live.

We're also working on getting our Youtube channel up as well as developing our Facebook page.

Our first episode kicked off and we talked about AHA! moments in online entrepreneurship and affiliate marketing. The whole thing was a play on words with the content and the title. AHA Talks stands for After Hours Affiliate Talks, but episode 1 was literally about those "aha! moments" that we have as entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers.

Join our Facebook group here to catch the live shows, replays, and ask questions and learn more about affiliate marketing.
https://notagrouch.com/night/

The post AHA Moments Announcement appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've been battling with a lot in my head but I finally started picking myself back up.

One of the things that have helped me is reconnecting with the basics. Talking to people and just taking one step at a time.

Just going back to the basic premises of a business, keeping things simple yet effective.

Here is a simple premise for a business...

Provide a valuable service or product and find the audience that will pay for it. Then present it to them.

Or if you want to flip it around, you can find an audience that has a need and you can fulfill that need in the form of a product or service.

Seems simple enough, right?

But sometimes as a business grows, it becomes complex, full of extra stuff. In some cases the complexity is necessary, but many times it isn't.

I had a good reminder of that simplicity earlier today while watching my co-host Kim Dang interview Marcus Campbell.

I was blown away that during a part of the interview, Marc said that he uses FrontPage 2003 to build websites.

Still today. Yes, Frontpage 2003. He called it the best $200 he ever spent.

I even asked if he was just trolling us with that. I mean anybody today would almost laugh at that. I must admit that if I didn't know Marc and hadn't heard the beginning of the interview I would have closed the interview right there and then and laughed my way to refill my cup of coffee.

I mean who uses FrontPage 2003 in 2018?

But I ate a slice of humble pie when he said he wasn't trolling and he still builds sites this way and teaches with it.

But why?

Because it works. It's simple, effective and it gets the job done. And apparently, it makes him a great deal of money with niche affiliate sites and teaching about the whole thing.

But he was right, you know.

If it gets the job done, and you know how to use it, and you can be effective with it. Then use it.

I mean I remember using Frontpage back in the day, I think I started using it in like 1999?

I remember I built a site in 2003 with it and I was pretty proud of it because I made some custom buttons by hand which I then scanned and tweaked a bit. The good old days.

As Marcus talked about it for a moment or so I was also reminded of Joel Bauer. When I attended one of his training events I remember him using a pretty old camera to record his videos.

The training was like 5 years ago, but the camera was old even at that time, like 3 or 4 years old. For someone making several million dollars per year as a single person business, you would have thought that he'd have a nice state of the art camera.

But no, it was a simple point and shoot pocket sized camera. I want to say it was a canon but it might have even been Kodak.

But in a short group Q&A he explained that he used that specific camera because it produced an AVI file and this allowed him to quickly transfer the file and edit it on his Windows computer without any formatting, converting, rendering, etc.

As a Youtube content creator, I know how much time can be wasted in getting your file to the computer and then making sure your editing software can read it and then rendering it quickly.

He had simply eliminated as much wasted time from that process as possible. Keeping things simple, yet effective.

And this would be the end of the blog post if it was that simple, but no. He took it a step further, in order to create his "graphics" for slide decks and presentations he would use the very old school Microsoft Photodraw.

That's right. A piece of software that was already dead and unsupported. But his answer was the same. It gets the job done, it's quick and easy to use.

I'm pretty sure he has updated his stuff quite a bit by now, or at least I hope so but the point is that sometimes you don't need a lot of fancy stuff and complex systems and all that stuff.

You just need to get shit done, quickly, effectively and with as little friction as possible.

But my favorite story about simplicity is this one

I'll tell you one more story, that's of a client of mine that has an airplane parts company. Pretty unique business.

One day when I was still doing computer and network support, I went in to fix something on his local network.

I was already building WordPress websites for clients so I thought I'd pitch him an upgrade to his ordering and inventory system.

He said, Nah. Not interested, my system is great as it is right now.

I pressed him a little bit and he said, I'll tell you what let's finish this up and I'll show you something.

So I fixed the issues I was there to fix and then asked him to show me what happened.

So we walked over to this little cubicle thing in the middle of his warehouse.

As we walked there I told him he'd be able to get SMS alerts, inventory notifications, he would be able to order from his phone, have pictures of all the items and more.

And he wouldn't have to walk for 3 minutes from his office to this place in his warehouse.

Lots of shiny objects for him to salivate over and for me to make money on. Don't laugh, I was green and trying to make a buck.

So he stands over this dirty old keyboard, and when I say old, I mean OLD. The keyboard was connected to somewhere behind a pile of clutter and next it on the desk was an old monitor and a couple feet away an old dot-matrix printer.

I really mean, old.

The monitor came to life and it wasn't years old, it was decades old. It was not even a color monitor, my jaw dropped. It was an old monochrome monitor, not that bios-like blue-white color, not Windows 95 colors, not even that green on black Matrix colors, but orange. Orange on a dark gray background.

You could see lines of characters burned into the screen after so many years of service.

A few moments later he began frantically hitting keys on the old dirty keyboard, I could see different screens come up and flash away and I could see him checking boxes on and off, tabulating to the next field as fast as I can type.

He would pause briefly on some screens screen to review something and then continue on. About a minute later he said, ok I'm done. Moments before he said that,  the dot matrix printer came online and started spitting stuff out.

The printer ended up working for about 10 minutes while he explained a few things to me.

He said, when we're done talking I'll have the reports for the week and the reports for today. I also reviewed about half a dozen orders that needed to be completed. I placed all the orders and found out I was running low in a few items while I have an overstock of other parts that needed to be moved quickly.

He had notified the floor manager of this and was also printing a report for him.

He did all that in about one minute of keyboard work.

Everything he accomplished, he did so without a mouse, without waiting for a browser to load, without having to log into different systems and click here and there. Without typing an email, without hesitation.

Then he said, you know that system you're telling me about, tell me more, do you think I can do all that in a couple minutes also?

I had no choice but to say no.

I could have said, no, but I can get you pretty nice graphics and reports with interactive charts and projections automatically emailed you daily. I can tell you who ordered what and at what time. We can email all your customers on demand.

I could have said that I would provide visibility into his supply-chain.

I could have a 3d picture of each of the products --mind you he had over 16000 SKUs-- I could have said a lot of things and try to make the sale.

I mean, I should have said at least a couple of those things.  That system was old and had to be replaced, right?

Maybe.

I could have pointed out that the system could die at any time and he'd be stuck until someone could fix it or replace it. Then he'd really be in trouble.

But I didn't. I just said, nope, you are right.

There was no way I could compete with the simplicity and efficiency of his configuration. This was 2006 or 2007 and he had been using this since 1984. Old habits die hard, but this was a little more than that.

The company was highly profitable with revenues in the high 8-figure ranges, with a very lean staff.

So what business person in their right mind would muck with that system?

After seeing that little demo, there was no way I could introduce all this complexity I had in mind for the sake of using arguably a "better" system.

Sometimes, simplicity beats everything else because it's profitable. Strive to avoid complexity for the sake of complexity and K.I.S.S.

The post Business Success. It’s All About Simplicity appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've talked about Shareasale before, I told you about Refersion and they even interviewed me a couple times. I promote Peerfly even though I don't really make money from their products.

But I wanted to highlight another network that is starting to pop up in my radar more and more frequently.

That is GrowSumo.

I'm seeing a few of big names and new names using the GrowSumo affiliate system. Seems that they're making themselves a name in the affiliate space.

Maybe I missed the boat, but I just recently found out about them.

I think you should check it out and see if they have any vendors that might fit your niche.

They have a lot of companies and I'm sure they're adding more every month. Right now, the majority of the available merchants seem to be software based.

I'm partners with Evernote, Streak CRM, and recently a couple of new companies I'm learning more about. I'm trying to get some demos from these new companies so I can show you what they're all about.

I made a video about Streak a couple years ago, and it still gets traction so I thought it would be time to revisit that.

But back to GrowSumo.

They have a centralized dashboard to show you all the activity going on with your partnerships. And they are really staying in touch with me as an affiliate. I have been on the dashboard a few times and their chat bots keep popping up.

Speaking of, you should hear the interview I did with Heather Havenwood about chatbots, it's right here.

GrowSumo seems to make it really easy for the affiliate manager to send a quick message to their affiliates. That's pretty standard but I think GrowSumo does it the best right now.

Although the new UI for Shareasale is pretty slick too... I'll talk more about that later, in another blog post.

GrowSumo really takes out the problem where affiliates sign up and they forget about your product. I admit it, I've done it.

It goes a little bit like this: Your program caught my eye, your product seems good, it fits my audience so I sign up and then forget all about your program.

Growsumo has kept me coming back for more and just today was the latest little trick to keep me coming back. I've only started promoting a couple products from their marketplace, but I have one sale and a few installs.

But another notable thing is that GrowSumo just kicked over $5.00 just for getting clicks!

I looked at the dashboard and there are other tiers that will get you more bonuses. But that's refreshing.

Not only do I get commissions and stay in touch with my affiliate managers, but GrowSumo is encouraging us so that we promote the programs.

You can check out their marketplace right here.

I know that $5.00 is just whatever, it's $5.00. It's even gimmicky, but when did an affiliate network pay you to promote their vendors' links. And just to get some clicks. Not even sales yet! (well, just the one).

It's almost like getting paid just for clicks. I suspect this will be temporary as they ramp up their user base, so take advantage of it now while it lasts.

Check it out when you get a moment at GrowSumo.

The post GrowSumo Gave me Five Bucks Just Because appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Who's Stephan Spencer?

Stephan is an SEO authority expert, author, speaker and consultant helping some of the most prominent companies in the world.

Stephan is the author of The Art of SEO and he's one of the foremost experts in the field of search engine optimization. Stephan is also the host of two popular podcasts. The Optimized Geek and Marketing Speak. I'll tell you a little bit more about each podcast next, and you can find out everything else you need to know about Stephan at his website, stephanspencer.com

The Optimized Geek

I listened to a few episodes of The Optimized Geek when he first told me about the podcast, but it wasn't until recently that I started listening to every episode.

The Optimized geek talks about "life-hacks" for lack of a better term. Stephan interviews interesting people that have achieved high-level accomplishments and amazing personal transformations.

The podcast is about biohacking, personal transformations, I would say they're about self-optimization (is that even a real term?). Its official tagline is: Reboot and Improve your Life.

Stephan went through his own amazing transformation. If you knew him 6 years ago, you wouldn't recognize him today. I was flabbergasted when he first showed me and told me about his transformation.

I'd recommend it to anybody looking to learn how to master your body, your life, and relationships.

Marketing Speak

The other podcast, Marketing Speak is also a high-value podcast covering monologues and interviews with field and industry experts. I don't recommend it to everyone because it isn't for everybody.

If you're an entrepreneur, marketing geek like me, blogger, vlogger or business owner, then this is a must podcast to add to your subscriptions.

Both podcasts are available everywhere it matters: iTunes, Google Play, Sticher and probably other podcasting apps

So what did I ask Stephan Spencer During the Interview?

Our interview was about voice search and how it's changing the landscape of SEO.
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Imagine that in the future, actually... right now, Google will not be showing you 10 blue links to pick one you like. Instead, it will be reading the summary of the top one result.

I say reading it because we have a boom in virtual assistants being deployed in our homes. Google Home, Alexa, Cortana and others are listening to your commands and queries triggered by your voice commands.

Most of these devices take the top-most result on a search query and read it out loud. This is the featured snippet of search engines. You might have noticed these the last time you did a search online.
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Those little summaries in the search engines are called featured snippets and Stephan tells us the steps we can take to take advantage of those results so that our websites provide those results.

via GIPHY

If you can answer a question on your website, and your answer shows up on that spot, then Google Assistant in Google Home, Alexa, Siri, Cortana and other "smart" assistants will use your answer to give people searching with their voice.

The tricky part is making your blog or website the one that provides that answer. The interview is short, but packed with useful and actionable information to help you rank for featured snippets and start integrating voice search results as part of your overall SEO strategy.

The post How To Rank For Featured Snippets appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Have you ever stumbled, or even failed with a project or an enterprise in your business? It's a tough situation, I know. I have lived it first hand.

I know that we always suggest that you simply get up and try again when you fail. But that's a lot easier said than done. In fact, many businesses never recover from a failure, and at a personal level, as a business owner or operator, a failure can be devastating.

Even when we're talking about business or work, sometimes a failure can have serious consequences in our personal lives. But I bet you didn't know that a big source of the negativity that comes after a failure comes from within.

The cliché seems to be true: We are our own worst enemies.

As a reminder to you, and to myself, I made this video about how we tend to beat ourselves up when something goes wrong. Even worse than that, we tend to be tougher on ourselves when we are the ones that caused the failure. So take a moment to watch this and hopefully you can relate.

Maybe you've been through this already, and maybe you have some additional tips or advice; if so, let me know in the comments.

Apply for the 21 Step Training System: http://notagrouch.com/21steps
Attend a FREE live workshop to learn profitable Internet marketing near you: http://oglink.it/imfreedom

I've had my own share of failures, shortcomings and downright blunders. I would love to get some feedback on this post, I feel that I went a bit personal so I really want to know if it had any impact on you today.

The post Why Do We Fail and We Beat Ourselves up About it! appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I know I'm a salesman, everyone else is a salesperson too, some of you just don't know it, so this post should be helpful to you as well.

So I've been studying some sales techniques and methods. Today I'm breaking down a video I found that was extremely helpful and I think it might be useful for you if you want to improve your sales at skills.

See, selling is just about overcoming objections to convince the prospect that what you have is valuable and useful for them, today. Not tomorrow, not after they talk to their partner, not after they think about it, today. Now.

The first thing is to be sure and make sure that your product or service is, in fact, valuable and useful. Without that, even if you can convince someone to buy something, your results in the long term will be lackluster.

If you don't believe in your product or service, your prospect will feel it, and even if you sell it, you will have trouble sleeping at night, so don't do it. But if you know in your heart that the product is good, the service is good then the sale needs to happen.

Closing the Sale: 9 Common Objections by Brian Tracy

This video covers nine common sales objections. I've been studying this video and a few others on the same topic. I'll probably share those with you soon as well.

This video is by Brian Tracy. If you have never heard of him, you should learn a little bit more about him.

Before you watch this, and as you go through your own journey on learning to be a better closer, remember one of Brian's quotes:

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?' - Brian Tracy

This reiterates what I mentioned above about making sure the product or service you are offering is going to help your customer. On with the video, a few notes after the video below.

The nine common objections and how to recognize them and deal with them effectively are listed below with timestamps.

1. The unspoken sales objection  (0:24)
2. The excuses and impulse sales objection (1:03)
3. The malicious sales objection (2:00)
4. The request for more information sales objection (2:47)
5. The show-off sales objection (3:11)
6. The personal sales objection (3:54)
7. The factual sales objection (4:26)
8. The general resistance sale objection (4:58)
9. The last ditch sales objection (5:50)

The video is short and sweet and I wish it had some more guidance about the specific situations, but it's a great start. My main question is whether these objections have a relationship to each other, specifically I wonder if they come in a particular order.

Do you agree that these are the most common objections? How would you handle them differently?

The post How To Close the Sale: 9 Common Objections appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I'm more pragmatic than that and I believe that we are the architects of our own destiny. For better or worse, we are mostly responsible for where we are today.

This is the truth, but many don't like to hear it. Instead many people blame someone else, something else. And I get it, we are egotistical beings and generally we believe that our way is right, we can't be wrong so everyone else is wrong. They "just don't get it" or they simply are "out to get us."

It takes some effort to work against this and to really look inside, to look within and to know thyself as I call it. As I was thinking about this, I decided to post a proverb to Instagram. This was something that I heard years ago.

As you read this, remember the title of this post... If it changes you want, then change you must. Get out of your head, put your ego aside and try something different.

This is what I posted:

Sometimes we are stuck in our own head, our own ways. We feel that the world and everything in it is out to get us. Nothing works!

They're conspiring against me! But I invite you to look at things from a different perspective.

Perhaps it is that in these moments we need to put our egos aside and look outward for guidance, for a different way. They say that you can't solve a problem by doing the same things that created it, so maybe we need to learn something new, change pace, change scenery, change thinking.

As I was reflecting on this, this quote came back to me. Someone told me it a long time ago when I had an "aha moment," and I said "I get it now! tell me more!" to which my friend and mentor at the time replied: "When the student is ready the teacher will appear."

If you aren't ready to change, from within, you will never find the ways to change. Opportunities will pass you by unnoticed, and what could have been will remain obscured by your thoughts of how it should be.

A post shared by Oscar Gonzalez (@notagrouch) on May 25, 2017 at 4:26pm PDT

The post If It’s Change You Want, Then Change You Must appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

On this day (May 20) pretend to be a millionaire or start working on your plans that you think will make you a millionaire.

Word on the street is that everybody would like to be a millionaire. That means you, right? And in jest, timeanddate.com suggests you should pretend to be a millionaire today, or start working on your plans to become one.

Let's not pretend

I want to talk about the second part of that. Being a millionaire can give you security. But it's difficult to make a million dollars, or so it seems. Here are some ideas:

Some people will tell you that all you have to do is visualize it, think about it, project it and it will become so. That's a bunch of baloney if you ask me.

Other people will tell you to invest in the stock market, or in options or commodities. I'd say that you have a chance of making a million dollars or more with that, but you have an equal or greater chance of going broke as well if you don't know what you're doing.

Maybe you want to find a new hot startup and invest some money into it, wait and hope that they become the next Uber, or Snapchat or Blue Apron; well, maybe not Uber right now, but you get the idea.

Instead of talking hypotheticals, I'm going to give you two practical ways of getting closer to being a millionaire, starting today.

Spend less than you make

Here's the first method to help you become a millionaire. It's not always about how much you make, but how much you get to keep so be thrifty and wise with your money. Will Rogers, the highest paid Hollywood actor of his time said this:

And it's true. The best way to accumulate wealth is to not spend your money. So next time you go out, next time you go shopping, next time you are browsing Amazon, remember this: spend less than you make.

If you're going to use credit cards, make sure you can pay the full amount all the time, so that if you're using a credit card, you're using it to accumulate rewards, get a better deal, or get some consumer protection. Do NOT use a credit card because you don't have cash in the bank.

From first-hand experience, I can tell you that using credit cards to purchase things for which you don't have the funds in the bank, is a recipe for disaster and financial enslavement.

Add multiple streams of income

The second way I'll suggest to becoming wealthy is to add another revenue stream. Most people make money from a single source; their job. You are probably in this group, and you may even have a good job that pays you well. You feel secure, don't you?

But the bottom line is that your job is the only source of income, if you become disabled, or if you get laid off, or if your employer goes out of business, you're shit out of luck. There goes your security!

Even with a job, you should have other streams of income. Not only will this help you generate money faster, but it will also give you real security and freedom. You'll feel less stressed, and you'll be happier overall.

Sell something online, start a blog, become a consultant, become a reseller, learn to invest, work on ways to get more money for the same amount of time and effort you spend every day!

Living proof

What I describe above is exactly how I work and live, my blog generates part of my income, I also consult and coach people on how to start businesses and how to improve their businesses.

The results are great because they allow me to spend time with my kids and wife and friends and still my blog makes money. I earn money while I'm at the park with my kids, out with my wife or having dinner with friends.

Sometimes one of my sources of income may dry up, as I talked about with Coco Jack, but I don't need to worry about it because I still make money with all the sources of income I have working for me.

You can see in the screenshot below, that I get paid various amounts from different sources, I also receive physical checks from a few companies, and as of the writing of this post, I am waiting for 3 checks adding another $1500 or so.

There are also about half a dozen other companies that owe me between 230 to 1000 for this month.

The post Be a Millionaire Day appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

"Know Thyself" would say Plato.

So... do you know what you're good at? What about what you're not so good at?

For me, it's time management and time commitments. I say yes to a lot of projects, then I end up having way too many things on my plate. This leads me to have a lot of stuff that clutters my mind and keeps me bouncing from one thing to another until I burn out.

Then I fire off a quick Youtube video to take a break, next thing you know, several hours have passed. It's easy to go down the rabbit hole of distractions online, then you look, and it's bed time! And a lot of stuff is still pending.

Where did all the time go? Can't you relate?

You still haven't started your online business, or you didn't start that campaign you wanted, or you didn't call your mother, and you still have laundry to do, and the oil change is overdue.

The list goes on.

Time is our most precious commodity. Not only is it gone once it passes, but we as humans don't know how much we have left.

No judgment here!

I'm not going to judge you if you like to binge-watch the latest in Netflix. I watched Stranger Things in one night. A dirty little secret is that I watched the entire remake of Battlestar Galactica in about 2 weeks a couple of years back.

So believe me I'm nobody to judge you on how you procrastinate!

But I do have something that will change everything for you. Something that can fix your productivity and time management woes.

As long as you use this tool, you will see an improvement in how you allocate your time. This is the app of the week and part of the spotlight feature series.

The app is called Time Doctor. I first started using it several years ago when my buddy Syed Balkhi recommended it as a way to manage productivity better.

Time Doctor tracks, it measures and holds you accountable

It's an app, you install it, and it tracks what you're working on. It keeps track of time, and it helps you stay focused on what you're supposed to be working. Its strength is on the desktop but it also works on your mobile device.

It holds you accountable, and it helps you measure your time. It's a godsend for freelancers, bloggers, social media geeks and anybody that needs to keep track of time spent on projects.

It is especially useful for companies that want to or need to give their employees a strong time-tracking tool. I'd venture to say that it is the strongest tool I've tried in its category. Better than Harvest, better than Freshbooks, and I looove Freshbooks.

But Time Doctor is also great if you just want to improve your time allocation and prioritization, or learn more about yourself. Here's a quick overview of the strongest features:

It gives you beautiful reports and graphs and points out where you've mismanaged your time. If you say you're working on a report, but click over to Facebook or Youtube, it will pop up a gentle question:

"Are you still working on that report?"

Just to remind you that you said you'd be working on it...

Time Doctor is awesome. It works for you, and it works for teams if you have one, check it out here and start using it, plans start at $5.00 and they have a limited version for free too. You can thank me later (or now by leaving a comment below).

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that Time Doctor integrates with your favorite project management and accounting tools.

It integrates with the tools you already use, like Basecamp, Slack, Quickbooks, Zendesk, Asana and many more.

Visit Time Doctor to learn more or try it out for yourself.

The post Are You in Control of Your Time and Productivity? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Unique domains are becoming increasingly scarce commodities as hundreds of thousands of new sites come online each year. With millions of websites already competing for real estate on the Internet and each with a distinct domain name, finding the perfect thing to call your site is now more important than ever.

Basic Concepts

Understanding what to consider when choosing a domain requires that you know what a domain really is. In simplest terms, the domain name is made up of two parts: the part you create from scratch (like “notagrouch”) and the part after the dot, known as the “Top Level Domain” or “TLD” (such as “.com,” “.biz,” “.org,” etc.).

You officially buy or lease your domain and register it on the web through a registrar. The registrar ensures that you are the only one who can use that domain while you own it and notifies computers all over the world that when a visitor types in your domain name into its browser it is your site they should reach.

Get a free domain from Inmotion when purchasing any web hosting plan here

5 Considerations for Choosing the Perfect Domain Name

Now that you understand what a domain is, what the parts of the domain name are called, and how to purchase one, it is time to make your choice.

You need to do more than just pick the first name that comes to mind and happens to be available. After all, this domain will have a huge impact on website moving forward. Let's answer the question: What should you think about when choosing your domain name?

1. Target Audience

Who will you be trying to convince to visit your website? Will you sell a product or service? Are the potential visitors young? Old? Male? Female? Do they live in a certain area?

When people use a search engine to find you, what sort of search terms will they use? Is your business online only or does it have a physical presence in the real world, too? All of these considerations should factor into your final decision.

You also need to think about the terms people will use when they search for your type of product or service. If you can incorporate one or more of those terms directly into your domain name, you may get a direct boost to your search ratings. For example, if someone searches for “teddy bears,” a company with a domain like “FluffyTeddyBears.com” will probably rank higher than something with a generic name like “JimsToys.com.”

Similarly, if your business has a physical location, and you want people in your area to find you, consider including your city or state name in your domain. If someone in your vicinity is searching for a place near them offering your type of product or service, they will likely start their search with the name of your city. So, “DetroitCarCareExperts” or “BestPizzaOrlando” will be more likely to show up in their results than just “A1Mechanics” or “MariosItalian.”

2. Don’t Use Your Own Personal Name

You may be very proud of your company or organization’s web presence, but you should probably avoid labeling it with your own name. While it might be a good idea to own and control the domain of your name for personal purposes, for business purposes, there is really no benefit. It is highly unlikely that you share a name with whatever it is your company does, so anybody who is not searching specifically for you may miss you in search results or not understand what they are seeing.

Of course, there are two notable exceptions to this suggestion. The first is if your name is your brand, such as a celebrity or famous athlete. In that case, it makes total sense to use your name for your domain name, because that is what people will be trying to find.

The other exception is for a business that already shares your name. Many industries like to use the proprietor’s name, like fashion designers, hairstylists, realtors, and others. In those cases, it might make sense to have a domain with your name in it.

But, for an added boost, if your business has your name in it, but you want to appeal to a broader audience, you could have a domain that describes your business, like “RockportHairDesigns,” but then incorporates the actual owner/business name in the content throughout the site.

3. Spelling Counts

Some may find it fun to include obscure words or intentional misspellings in their domain name as a way to set themselves apart. But, be careful doing so. This could exclude or reduce your site in the search results for common words, and it could confuse visitors.

For example, a company selling low-rider truck customization may rank lower in search results if they call their site something like “LowRyderz.” It may also make it difficult for users to find your site if they only hear the name and try to type it directly into the browser, not knowing how to spell it.

Go with something easy to spell for your domain name, and save the tricky and artistic misspelling or obscure naming ideas for individual products or accent points on your site.

4. Brevity is the Soul of Wit

It was true in Shakespeare’s day, and it is still true in our modern, digital age. What seems more likely for someone to remember: “DetroitCornerBakery” or “DanAndGlendasBestLittleDetroitCornerBakery?” The more words you add to your domain name, the harder it is to read and remember. Keep it as short as possible.

The perfect length domain name is a careful balancing act between brand identity and search engine optimization.  Great online brands like Google, Ebay, Yelp, and others have learned how to mix a strong brand presence in the marketplace with a very short domain name that people can easily remember. They have also spent millions in search engine marketing and optimization to make sure they rank highly in search results.

On the other hand, smaller businesses may need the boost of adding things like a product name and location in order to boost search results but have to avoid getting too wordy. A possible compromise may be using widely accepted abbreviations, like “auto” instead of “automobile,” “SoCal” instead of “Southern California,” or “NY” in place of “New York.”

Also, avoid using articles, like “a,” “an,” and “the,” such as “TheDenverRealtyCo.” People are likely to forget about these words when typing in your domain and may end up on a competitor’s website that has a similar but shorter name.

5. Avoid Mimicking Another (More Popular) Brand

Speaking of similarly named sites, many find it a pretty tempting pitfall to try to use a domain name that closely resembles someone else’s site name. Many have thought if they could use a major brand name in part of their domain, it might trick customers into visiting their site, driving up traffic.

This was actually a favorite trick of unscrupulous web developers in the early days of the Internet. But, with a deluge of trademark and copyright infringement lawsuits, and the purchase of many variations of popular brand names as domains, the practice has almost entirely fallen out of favor.

It is much more likely that using a variation of a more well-known brand in your domain will not generate any more business for you, but could anger site visitors looking for the other company, attract lawsuits, and create a number of other headaches you would probably prefer to avoid.

Use the Goldilocks Approach

Finding the right domain name may be tricky. But, keeping these ideas in mind should put you on the right path. Take your time, think it through, and find a domain that is just right for your business or organization. Want to try out more than one variation? Buy them all and see which generates the best results. In the end, choosing the right domain name will be a mix of careful strategy, intuition, and a dash of your own personality.

And remember, purchase a web hosting plan from InMotion Hosting and your domain is FREE for the first year. Click here for more info.

If you want to run your domain idea by me, feel free to get in touch with me. I'd be happy to hear your idea and give you feedback.

The post How to Pick a Good Domain Name. 5 Quick Tips to Consider. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Why so many posts about @starbucks recently, Oscar? Go read my blog post about it. That will explain it.

And did you see my stars? #starbucks #business #coffee #latte #cascara #socialmedia #marketing #businesssuccess #newblogpost #businesslessons #gamification #starbucksrewards

View on Instagram

The post Why so many posts about @starbucks recently? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It can be different for everybody, but there are some things that apply to everybody. My opinion is sometimes unpouplar but I know I'm right. The major social networks are: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, YouTube, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, not necessarily in that order, there's also Snapchat.

There are also dozens of other networks that are more focused or have a smaller user base but have a deeper reach into a specific niche. Sites like Reddit, Stumbleupon, Minds, Medium, Quora and others

So which ones should you join to help you promote your business? This video covers that.

Which one is your favorite and specifically for business, which other, let me know in the comments in the video or here on the blog.

Things are changing really fast now and as the youngest generation enters the workforce, new networks like Snapchat are becoming more and more influential. I have been spending a lot of time on Snapchat, if you want to join me there.

The post Which Social Networks Should I Join For My Business? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But the other problem people have with domains is that never ending quest for the perfect name. Some people will spend weeks or even months coming up with the perfect domain name then they find it's already taken.

In this episode I help you by talking about the thought process of picking a domain. It can be difficult, yes I know but it also shouldn't be as complex as some people make it seem.

Oh, by the way. When you buy a hosting plan from these guys, they give you a domain for free!

The post Driving with Oscar – Episode 6 – Picking a Domain Name appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you just need a refresher, then the topics we covered were all about the basics. We did a short intro about SEO, evergreen content and other things to consider as you begin your planning for a traffic strategy.

We'll revisit a second list of things to check for as you progress through generating traffic to your blog later in the series. Also, as we get more and more into this, the topics will get a bit more advanced. But now let's talk about part two of the series, the email list.

How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog - Part 2 - The Email List

So first things first and get your own email list.

Get an email list. You may think that the one with WordPress.com where people can subscribe to your blog and they get an email when you publish a new post is your email list.

Unfortunately it isn't. What isn't an email list?

Using the built-in service, you can only send them blog updates and you must allow wordpress.com to decide when to email them.

You can't send them an update that is not public on the blog, you can't send them a personal email. This option is not recommended for optimal results.

You need the freedom to email your subscribers whatever you would like when you would like.

Always remember to Own The List. Remember this always. As you start a blog, you will be tempted to use the built-in subscription service for people to join your email updates.

This is not recommended. Because you won't "own the list." if the subscription is all managed by the hosting provider.

Other "email updates" you may want to avoid are "feedburner" or "feedburner-style" WordPress.com provides updates, and Blogger/Blogspot also provides their own email subscription modules. Avoid these, even the Jetpack plugin for WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs should be avoided. Other ones that you may encounter along the way are Feedblitz, FeedCat, Rapidfeed, and similar ones avoid the as well.

In my opinion, they give your visitors the false sense that they are getting everything they signed up for from you but in reality, they are only getting the blog updates. What if you want to send them an email that doesn't have a blog update?

Set up a real email list

You need to own your email list. I recommend and use Aweber, they are transparent and their support is really good. Another favorite one out there is Mailchimp. One that seems to be cleaning up their act quite a bit is GetResponse and some people are very happy with them lately.

One thing to consider is that if you are lured to Mailchimp or Getresponse because they offer a free account, come back to reality and understand that you'll likely need their paid services sooner than later. Free is nice, but you need some of the paid services to make it work the way you want to.

And maybe you didn't know that you can get started with Aweber for free as well.

No matter which one you use, they all allow you to send manual and automatic updates to your subscribers (the paid ones). If you already started with a service like Feedburner, or WordPress.com, try to export a list of the subscribers and you can try to import that into your new email service provider.

All of the accounts allow for you to import your email list from another service provider as well, or if you have a list from a service like salesforce, or ACT!. You just need a CSV with First Name, Last Name, and Email.

Once you setup your email account with one of them, you'll need to create a list to hold your blog readers. You should name this list something related to your blog. Like mine, for this blog might be named something like "Notagrouch Updates."

Oh one more thing. If you sign up with Aweber or Getresponse through my link, I'll give you a 25 min email strategy session over Skype or Google Hangout for free. Just email me your receipt when you've signed up.

The description in the list should tell your readers why they are part of this list. It can say something like, "You joined this list when you visited and opted into my website notagrouch.com, if you unsubscribe you'll miss out on amazing updates and incredible opportunities" or something to that effect.

This description is usually visible to your subscribers so make it meaningful, memorable and make it clear that they want to stay in the list.

The next thing you need to do is integrate the email list into your blog.

Integrating the list to the blog

You'll notice you can sign up for updates on my blog on the sidebar. There are also other pages that may pop up  a different opportunity to join or to opt into a different list. Sometimes you'll see a bar show up at the top or you'll see another method for you to join one of my email lists.

No matter which email list service provider you use, you'll need to create a sign up form before you can get people in the list. The sign-up form will have the fields you intend to collect from the reader when they sign up. Standard stuff like name and email.

I recommend keeping the opt-in information you require from your visitors to only name and email.

That's all you need and all you really want to ask for. When you ask for more information, it decreases the chances that people will join.

Don't show or ask for any other information, like Zip Code, or phone number. Stick to two fields: Name (1 field) and Email (1 field).

Once you create the sign up form, you will have a chance to install that form into your WordPress blog. Each service does it differently, but Aweber lets you copy the Javascript code. During the last step of your form creating process, you'll have the option to copy it.

Copy that code and then in your WordPress blog, use the Widgets section in the Appearance, menu to add a new Text/HTML widget.

Add the widget to the most prominent sidebar on your blog, or wherever it makes sense. Then, paste the javascript from your Aweber form in this new widget and save it.

Once you refresh your blog, you should see the sign up form in your sidebar in the position where you inserted it in the previous step. You can customize it all you want via Aweber and repeat this process to update it to the latest code.

Leverage plugins to help you get more out of your list.

If you're using WordPress, or even if you aren't, you can use this service called Optinmonster. It lets you create intelligent pop-ups, floating bars, and sidebar widgets to invite your readers to sign up to your list or lists just at the right time. Using this in addition to their current efforts, some people see a sign up increase of up to 600%!

You may think. That's great, but now what? How are people going to sign up and, more importantly why are people going to sign up?

You have to give them a reason to sign up into the list. Let's talk about that next.

Grow the email list

You need to grow the list now that you built it and set it up on your blog. It is known everywhere in marketing and even sometimes outside of marketing and sales, that the money is in the list. So your job isn't necessarily to sell one more thing, rather, your job is to get one more subscriber.

Then let the list do the selling! Let's cover the basics for the list to be able to grow.

First, make sure you get the person to complete the opt-in process. Especially if you're using a double opt-in method.

Here's one way of making sure a subscriber verifies their email address. Offer them an incentive to join the email list and make sure the incentive doesn't get delivered until they verify their email address.

Sometimes people don't confirm their email addresses and they never get new emails from you. You can help increase the opt-in rate and confirmation rate.

A way is to help with opt-in rates, and verification is to use a middle page to explain to them what comes next. Immediately after they put in their name and email, send them to a page to THANK them BUT explain to them that there's one more quick step they need to do to finish the sign-up process.

Let them know that they need to go into their email address inbox they used to sign up and look for your email so they can get the updates in the future. This step alone will increase double opt-in rates significantly. Don't assume the visitor knows how to join your list.

Once they click on the email message to confirm their request to join the list, then you can send them to a final thank you page and have something in the thank you page to direct them to new sections of your blog, the most popular articles, or just a new series of articles they may want to check out now that they're a little more committed to you.

That last step of the process is important, it solidifies the relationship and tells them that there is other content they might be interested in.

What do you do after you add new people to your list?

Send updates to the email list on a regular basis. I recommend and have experienced the best results when sending a regular set of emails after they join your list, and then send them updates on a daily basis. Maybe 5 to 7 times per week.

Some people don't recommend sending emails daily, but the most successful marketers I know send you one daily email for at least a couple of weeks after you join their list, or show interest in their program or business. This is to establish what they're about, tell you about their most important blogposts, showcase their expertise and so on.

Some may call this a "secret" but i don't think it is such a secret.

If you want to send a daily email then to do so in a way that is entertaining but also gives instant value. The readers know that each time they receive an email from you, they will receive a great deal of value in the message itself, immediately, even if you're going to ask them to click through to something. Hopefully, if you received an email from me to come read this post, you've found it valuable thus far.

Oh but,  everybody's sending emails nowadays, you think. So how can you make it different for them?

What more can you give to your readers so they decide unequivocally that they joined your list and they were smart when they joined? How can you make them happy to have found you and happy that they joined your list?

Give them a bribe of course!

So how do you invite new people to join, and have them love you for the opportunity to be part of your list? Well, an ethical bribe of course. Have you ever heard of this?I mentioned it briefly earlier, the incentive. Some people call it a lead magnet, or a free download offer. It's a bribe, a bit of an exchange.

You ask your visitor for his or her name and email, and because they are interested in your free incentive they sign up and agree to give you their name and email. This is basic and has been around for 100+ years. Except for the "email" part, people have been doing free trials, free samples, etc, just to get you in the door for a long time.

At this point, you can make a general assumption on three things about this person that subscribed to you.

You know their name, their email address and that they have an interest in a topic you write about. Or at the very least they're interested in the topic of your ethical bribe.

But EXACTLY what is the ethical bribe?

It can be whatever you would like it to be, like a download. A PDF document, maybe it's a 3 part series on how to get started in whatever topic your blog is about.

You could write the three parts into a nice PDF document. You could read the three parts into audio files and make the incentive be a 3 series quick-start audio guide for your industry.

Here I came up with 3 sample titles for three ethical bribes you could use for your business blog. These are completely hypothetical and the industry experts may laugh at them, but these are simple examples to give you an idea of things you could come up with that could be entertaining and of value.

• 3 Top Ways To Generate Your First Sale
• 3 Life-Saving Techniques To Practice With Your Kid at Pool Anytime
• 3 Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About Your Carpet
• Top 21 tips to pass the bar exam in Arizona

Write 800 - 1500 words about each one of the ways or techniques or whatever it is, in a nicely designed document, convert it to PDF and you should have like a 4 - 7 page PDF to give for free as soon as they join your list. Use a nice wide space format with a wide gutter and a thick margin. Maybe a large font.

Make it super nice and presentable, make sure you have a footer where your website is displayed there and it's clickable.

That is an ethical bribe, that's a lead magnet.

If you feel that the one you came up with isn't a very strong incentive for someone to sign up, that is okay. It's a start. Done is better than perfect.

Many people think they don't have much to offer when they first create their first lead magnet, but you'll be surprised how much you have to offer to people that started a similar journey as yours, but instead of starting 3 months ago or 6 months ago, or even longer, they started today.

To them, you are an expert!

Your free download could be life-changing for them. Think about that and let it sink in for a moment. You're an expert in their eyes.

Your ethical bribe could also be a service. If you feel like you can close sales on the phone better, then try this on for size. Offer a free consultation for whatever service you offer, then convert the free consultation into a sale. You can make it work.

The lead magnet model always works.

There's always something you can offer for free to somebody that is a potential investor or buyer in your business. Make sure the offer is clear and make sure you are ready to deliver on the promise and make sure you have outlined a path for that person to have the opportunity to purchase something else from you.

For example, I made you an ethical bribe earlier in this blog post. Did you catch that? I told you that I will give you a free email strategy consultation for free if you sign up for Aweber or GetResponse. This would be beneficial for both of us because I can give you some tips about your email marketing efforts and in exchange, you purchase the service with my link which gives me a small commission. 

If your company is a physical company, or a business to business type of company, then a small service may be the ethical bribe. If you're an accounting firm, maybe you offer a 15 to 30-minute account evaluation when they join for free to your newsletter.

Of course, the free gift, or ethical bribe, or evaluation should lead them through an education process that ends with them signing up for your service, making a purchase, or a measurable step towards a purchase.

Other examples are everywhere

You see attorneys give you a 30-minute call to evaluate your case and answer a few questions. Their goal is to spend 30 minutes right now and see if you would be a profitable client. But you also get to evaluate whether this person knows what they're talking and whether you want to hire them.

Your reader also needs to know how valuable your content is, so give them the best in your lead magnet. Make sure it is valuable and of high quality. This is your time to shine.

There are some industries that are regulated so make sure you're not violating andy legal boundaries with any of the things you decide to give away. I don't and can't give you legal or financial advice.

An ethical bribe is a marketing tool that needs to be refined constantly. Whatever you decide to use as a way to invite people to join your email list on your blog, you need to fine tune it on a regular basis.

Over time, maybe you change the title, or maybe expand it and instead of 3 items, you double it or triple it and make it a 9 part series. Continue to improve it.

Make sure you blog about it as well so you can integrate it into the daily feed of your blog updates too.

I covered now some of the technical aspects on how to build your list and add it to your blog. I also covered a few things that will help you grow your list, now there's the maintenance part.

Your list needs to be nurtured and groomed

As you add people to your list, take some time to get to know them a little bit and use tags, or groups in your email service to group your subscribers into various different groups.

All of the email providers let you customize information about your subscriber. It has been proven that you get better results if you send slightly different emails to different groups of people in your list.

Your email about your upcoming sale may be worded differently for people that are already customers vs people that aren't customers yet.

If an email you are sending is only relevant to people in a certain geographic area, then you should target only that area when you send that email. Aweber lets you do that as well.

Geography matters too, for example, some readers may be annoyed if you send them an invitation to an event that is local to you and it wouldn't make sense for them to travel half way across the world for it. They don't need to know about that.

The trickiest group to define and to use in your list, but will also give you amazing results is to identify what product each customer has bought or is interested in. Having this information and using it intelligently can skyrocket your conversions. It doesn't make sense for you to email someone that already bought the product you're emailing them about right? Instead, sell them something that is related but they don't have yet, or remind them how great the product they bought could be as a gift for someone else.

Aweber and most other services charge you by the number of subscribers, something else you should do to maintain your list in a regular basis is to remove people that have unsubscribed. Just delete them from the list and over time you may save a good amount of money.

Keep an eye on the list, but do not obsess over it

Checking your list every day is good. You should login to your Aweber account daily to make sure things are working fine and to see if you need to make any adjustments. But more importantly, you may want to log in just to schedule your next email.

Do not be too concerned with unsubscribe reports. You may see that in one week you get 10 subscribers and then the next week, a few of those people unsubscribe. Do not worry about it. Focus on those people that you have on your list now.

People unsubscribe all the time. Let it go.

Maybe they didn't like something you said, maybe they were offended or maybe they just aren't interested in your information anymore. Don't take it personally. Focus on maintaining a positive flow of subscribers.

Every month or so, go through the people that have unsubscribed in your account and remove them from the system altogether because they count towards your total subscribers (even if they chose to opt-out).

In closing, I have a few tips

Before I wrap it up

Having a list is one of the best things you can do for your blog and your business. But using the list is even more important. Also, the size of your list doesn't matter as much as what you're doing with the list. For example, I have a list that currently has about 30 people and I get 2 or 3 new members each week, but the list continues to make me over $1000/week! How?

Well, the people on the list are very active and the products I am working with are essential to their business so the conversion is going to be high.

ALWAYS offer value in every email, or don't send that email. Many people say that they don't send email frequently because they don't have anything important to say. While I am grateful for that because they're not cluttering up our inboxes, the question I would have in return is: Why don't you have something important to say, every day?

Key Takeaways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog with email

• Use an email service that lets you control everything, content, timing, addresses
• I use and recommend Aweber, get it here. The other two highly esteemed are: Mailchimp and Getresponse
• Integrate the email list service to your blog using the theme and Optinmonster.
• Offer a lead magnet or incentive like a PDF, mp3, movie, service, consultation or other.
• Email your list frequently but purposefully.

The post How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog – Part 2 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is part of my do once use many philosophy. But let's just focus on the part where you don't want to actually write your post. Because... you can't type fast enough, you don't know how to write, or just don't feel like sitting for hours on end typing away.

Maybe your ideas come when you're not able to type. You still have a few options.

Here they are:

Use a dictation system

You can use Dragon Naturally Speaking. It works great.

If you have a Mac, you can activate the native dictation (voice to text) system. Just press your Fn key twice rapidly and it will activate itself. If this is the first time you use it, you may have to setup a few options first.

You can use most new Android phones and iPhones as well. Simply open your favorite note taking app, or the blogging app and dictate your blogpost into it. With most dictation systems,  you'll have to say things like "comma","period","question mark", and other punctuation.

Or you could leave that for later and edit it by hand.

If you don't have a note taking app, or your blogging app on your mobile device, then just email it to yourself.

You can then finish it from your mobile device if that suits you.

Dictate and ask for transcription services.

If you aren't comfortable using any of the dictation systems because they doesn't recognize what you want to say, then maybe try this instead.

Use your voice recorder app on your mobile device. And record your blogpost, then find somebody that will transcribe it for you.

You'll find such services on Fiverr or Craigslist, or maybe if you have a company already, this is something you can ask an admin assistant or secretary to complete.

I have not found anybody personally on craigslist that would be worth referring you to.

But I have found a few on Fiverr. I usually pay about $5.00 for 20 to 30 minutes worth of it when I need it. The way to find good gigs is to look for rating, number of jobs and reviews.

The post How to Blog if You Don’t Want to Write or Type? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

You've heard it before and you'll hear it until you die or until you accomplish it. There are many variations of it but it goes a little something like this:

Find something you love to do and find a way to make a living out of it.

OR

If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

Maybe you've heard this quote:

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

often attributed to Confucius.

But, how do you find the work that you love? The holy grail of earning a living. It's a tough thing for most people. It's hard to even know where to start.

It's so tough to find, that I would recommend you don't even try. MJ DeMarco calls it guru nonsense.

But here's Scott Dinsmore with a really good video to show you how to find and do work you love. Hope you enjoy it.

The post Everybody Tells You To Do This One Thing and You Will Succeed appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Did you know you can add apps to Gmail? Well, if you didn't know now you know. You can in fact add apps to Gmail. The two I use the most are Rapportive and Streak.

Today I'm telling you about Streak. Streak is a CRM that sits on top of Gmail and it helps you manage your conversations. It's a CRM component that enhances Gmail. Find it at Streak.com

The way that it works is simple and it is better explained in video but I'll do my best at explaining it on text as well. When you decide to track the activity with one person or project, you can create a box that will hold notes, emails and other relevant activity.

You can review that activity at anytime, and this object, the box, can be moved along a sales funnel or recruiting funnel or any kind of funnel you want. Streak calls them pipelines. Enough of me talking, why don't you just watch the video. It'll make more sense.

You can find more about them at Streak.com and two features I want to highlight that you'll love about this app is the email tracking feature and the schedule for later feature. Really killer, really useful for running businesses online.

The post Streak, a CRM for Gmail Quick Video Tour appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is a pretty good movie. I enjoyed watching it. The preview will give you an idea of what to expect and I highly recommend it. Totally worth it, watch the preview below, then you can watch it if you want instant download. It's how I watched it because I hast to miss the red carpet event! @#^($)#*. After that then I give you a little more expanded review and with some spoilers. Beware.

Living Dot Com Trailer (Official - HD)

Now, one cool little tidbit I can share with you is that I was there while they filmed John's part. John invited me over to watch and hang out, it was pretty cool actually. I'll dig up some pictures and maybe behind the scenes video. It was fun. But also a little revealing, after watching the movie, I know they had to cut out so much for the final product. Just from John's part along, they cut out at least a couple hours of footage. I can't imagine how much we missed from the other featured entrepreneurs.

Featured in the movie are:
Zac Johnson, John Chow, Jeni Larson, Peter Nguyen, Andrew Warner, Chad French, Dr Edward Leamer (UCLA). All of them experts in their fields and extremely successful and besides making millions of dollars online, not much different than you and me. Yes, I'm talking multi-million dollar successful. Some even in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, seriously. All the money comes from online marketing of sone form or another. Crazy.

Watch the movie here or download it for later. And here are some screenshots from the movie itself:

living-dot-com-001 living-dot-com-002 living-dot-com-003 living-dot-com-004 living-dot-com-005

The post Living Dot Com appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

When you start your empire online, there are very few technical skills that you will need, but when you hear "no tech skills needed" or no "skills required" there is always still some skill level that you need to start with. No tech skills needed really means it is very simple and easy to do.

If that wasn't clear enough, let me be more forward. Let’s be clear and honest with each other, you need at least some basic skills.

If you have ever sent an email out, or if you have ever filled out a form online, that’s about all the skills you’ll need to be able to start with an online business.

The rest you’ll learn as you go. Don’t get me wrong! By the time you start making some money, you’ll have some really good tech skills under your belt. These newfound skills are not needed to start, but you’ll develop them as you go, that’s for sure.

And once you learn a few tricks, you will be able to continually learn more and improve. This will happen naturally, but as I discuss on the Hype vs. Facts section, you should have a desire to also continue and improve.

Always push yourself to find the next thing to improve, or work on after you overcome a challenge.

But that’s not enough, Oscar! You say!.

You’ve heard this before, you’ve heard “no tech skills needed” and it wasn’t true. It turned out to be really complicated and I quit!, you're going to tell me.

The truth is that you will need some technical skills but they’re very simple to attain and very simple to use on a regular basis so you learn them forever.

If you can write an email, search for something in Google and fill out a form like you do when you want to buy something, or answer a questionnaire online, you have all the basic skills you need to start a business online.

I know people that make great money online but started knowing less less about computers and the internet than my elderly neighbor. She’s 66, but they simply follow instructions and formulas and make several thousand dollars each month online.

Some people I know that make tons of money online can’t even touch-type! Really, hunting and pecking two-finger method is good enough to start.

If you say that you are not technical or techie-type, or any other excuse about having technical skills, after having read this post, then you are simply afraid and don’t want to be free, or maybe you're a duckliner.

If you still think you can't start a business online because of lack of tech skills, then  the desire isn’t there. Or the desire isn't strong enough to drive you through this silly misconception.

I know many people that are afraid of failing when they use WordPress, what if they chose the wrong theme? Give me a break, don't worry about it. Everything can be changed and fixed in WordPress. Just make sure you always have backups handy.

Or email marketing, what if you forget to include your signature? or email, or you're afraid of sending the wrong link on Aweber. You know what? all of the big marketers I follow have sent me a mistake at least once.

If the big guys are allowed to make mistakes and still run a successful business, then so are you, and this includes technical mistakes!

Really, it's not a huge deal. Do try to minimize these mistakes and learn from them when you make a mistake so it doesn't happen again, but it's not the end of the world by any means.

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s part of it. Deal with it. Move on and forward!

I once met this great lady named Peggy at an event in Long Beach. I have an interview I did with her and I love her spirit and enthusiasm, you should watch the interview, I'll give you a video link to watch in a moment. The thing I really like about Peggy is that she wasn't involved with anything online before she started.

She didn't know much about anything online really, she came from the healthcare field and didn't have any computer skills or even knew where to start. So she asked a few people what she should know, what she should learn, and where to start.

Can you guess where she went to learn most of the stuff she knows now?

By the way, considering that I teach technology for a living, I would say that Peggy is an advanced computer user at this point and she did it all on her own. And she learned most of it for free! She has even attended some of the free video training I provide.

Can you guess where she learned everything she knows?

Youtube.

Well, maybe not everything she knows, but like she says on the interview, she needed to know excel so she went to Youtube, when she wanted to learn word, she went on Youtube and she gave me many more examples even off-camera.

Update: I found her video and posted it on Youtube, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mje_Gcpcd0M

And it's true. I have created some tutorial videos out on Youtube and i know they help a lot of people. If you need help with something, a great place to look first is Youtube.

Simply use some of these special starting phrases and just add the topic you're interested in:

• how to + topic
• lessons + topic
• "for beginners" + topic
• tutorial + topic
• "video series" + topic

Like this: "how to" record a podcast. For more detailed examples and a full search guide and cheat sheet, don't forget to download the free workbook (Sorry my loyal readers at notagrouch.com the workbook is in progress as well, but if you stay tuned, you'll be the first to know when it's available for download).

The reason I like using "for beginners" and "video series" is because the results from these phrases tend to have more than one video to give you more information you may not even know you needed. This is when you start learning about how much you don't know you don't know. This is a great thing!

I bet you know more about the internet and how to use it than you realize. And I'm being literal there, you don't realize how much you already know.

The stuff you need to research will lead you to some technology based decisions. I bet you're not afraid of doing something like that. Or when you pick up a new hobby or take on new roles at work. You are often faced with technology based questions this thing we're talking about here, it's no different.

Don't be afraid of starting a business online because you think you don't know anything about computers or the internet. That's just plain nonsense.

The post No Tech Skills Needed to Start a Business Online appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Granted, sometimes people don't know that it costs time and money to learn what we know. To develop our skills to a point where we can answer any question related to our work.

All of us that have a technical skill often get used and abused when it comes to our expertise. People ask questions and advice and more questions and advice and then again.

It is no wonder that authors like Adrienne Graham have come up with entire reasons why you can't pick their brains. Seriously, she wrote a whole book on the matter, titled: No you Can't Pick my Brain, it Costs Too Much.

I don't mind anybody asking questions, but it's the expectation that I should answer them every time for free that bothers me.

Even worse than people displaying an obscene amount of entitlement, is when people ask you for a guiding light but they don't follow your advice. And they do this over and over again. By the way, I found from my buddy Justin aka Big Head Asian, that those people are called Askholes.

That inspired this ee card:

So I came up with a solution for everyone that would like to ask me questions. And I'll tell you what options there are to "picking my brain"  next.

One, ask me on Twitter. If I can answer a short question in a tweet or two and I have time, I will.

But help me, help you. The best way to get my attention or for me to answer a more involved question is for you to ask the question in the blogpost that inspired the question, just scroll to the bottom of the post and your question as a comment.

Once you post there, I will try to respond within 12 hours and it also helps other readers that may have the same or similar question.

When you post a question in a comment you not only get faster responses, but you actually help me by providing more information about the conversation on that particular blogpost to everyone else interested in the topic.

If you must, you can email me. By emailing me, you consent for me to use the email in any way which I see fit, whether for fun, profit, educational purposes, or any other purpose. You should email me when the question may be sensitive in nature or I've already asked you to email me personally.

More Bang for Your Buck

But the best option is for me to lend you a listening ear for an hour or two,  the best way for me to give you some feedback, help you brainstorm. The best way for me to answer your question or find some clarity is to spend some time together on the phone. And you can do that right now, simply head over to this site and schedule an appointment. I am usually available within 24 - 36 hours unless I'm traveling.

Here's a short video that explains how to make an appointment if you need some help with that.

Why should you pick My brain?

I have over 13 years of experience doing what I do. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I usually know what you need, why you need it and when you need it. In those cases I don't know the answer to your challenge, I will most certainly know where to find it and how to help you find what you're looking for. But don't just take my word for it. Check out some of these testimonials:

I had a consultation by Oscar and I am so glad I did. As I plan to focus more on my online business, I wanted to clarify the direction and the best strategies with my existing websites and social media presence. Oscar is very knowledgeable and clearly explained what to do and why I should do them. He is also very resourceful and I'm excited to implement the recommended tools that will help me save my time. He is highly recommended!

Source:Clarity Yasuko Kawamura

Hi Oscar! First of all I want to thank you for speaking with me. Second I want to say is that you gave me some valuable information. You sure do know what you're talking about. You were a big help. I would recommend your services to someone else without even hesitating. Thank you very much! I look forward to working with you and making 2014 my best year ever! Once again, thank you...

Source:Clarity Salvatore Lombardo

I just finished a one hour consultation with Oscar about the pressing issues in my business. He gave me the most useful advice I've ever gotten in a single hour this year. He explained to me in detail the specific steps I needed to take to help my business grow. He explained the concepts, processes, and how to actually apply them to make it all work. I would highly recommend anyone who needs help with an online business to ask Oscar for help. He's a true technical and marketing genius!

Source:Clarity Reid Yamamoto

There are also some video testimonials here. And some more related to my website services over here.

After all that, I'm different from the rest of the experts out there. I want to help you, so YES, you can pick my brain. Let's have a dedicated pick-my-brain session get started here.

Also, if you are in the Orange County area you can take me out to lunch or dinner and pick my brain over our meal. The cost of that is $450 up front + the cost of lunch or dinner.

The post Why, Yes! You Can Pick My Brain, Here’s How You Do It appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

That's why I go to Affiliate Summit, to learn, meet people and partner up. This is the premier event to talk affiliate stuff. But here are some things I wish I knew the first time around.

Affiliate summit is teeming with people looking for new business and partnerships. Bring your A game, be prepared and most importantly, be open to meeting potential clients, vendors or partners. These people are unlike any other group of people I've ever met or hung out with.

Tip #1

Never, ever, judge a book by its cover. Unlike other professional events I've been to, people here are comfortable with who they are. To you and me, they may appear to be something completely different than they are. One moment  you could be sitting next to a regular Joe like you, and the next minute you could have a millionaire blogger or a super affiliate on the seat next to you. During one of the parties you could be having a drink with the owner of a multi-million dollar company. I can't emphasize this enough, do. not. judge. Get to know everyone you can, and listen before you are listened to.

Tip #2

Take pictures. This may sound trivial, but if you are at Affiliate Summit, you most certainly have a website or a blog that will need content. Pictures are excellent source of material for blogposts and articles. Do not miss this chance to take pictures of, and with some really interesting people. Don't worry about your outfit, your hair, or the background too much. Take the picture and seize the moment!

Tip #3

Start listening and researching now. Start doing some google searches and finding out who is going to be there, who they are and what they do. Look for companies that may provide a product or service or potential clients or partners, but don't forget to just make friends. A good place to start is Google+ and Twitter by using the hashtag #ASW14. Here are a few good links to help you get more involved:

• Missy Ward is co-founder of Affiliate Summit. I highly recommend you check out her blog.
• Shawn Collins is the other founder for Affiliate Summit and you should also keep an eye on his blog.
• List of exhibitors coming to Affiliate Summit West 2014.
•  Tricia Meyer is a blogger and affiliate marketer very much in tune with the industry.
• #ASW14 on Twitter listen to what's going on Twitter about the event.
• #ASW14 on Google + If Google+ is your cup of tea then check this out.
• Shareasale, one of the big players at the event. They host a great party and you'll see their booth in the meet market.

Tip #4

Leave a little extra room in your luggage. If you like schwag, leave some room in your suitcase for it. Lots of vendors will have little giveaways or gifts for you. Some of these are actually useful or just plain cool. In some cases you could even win prizes and stuff.

Tip #5

Bring a backpack. If you're a girl, you may want something different but I would still recommend a backpack over anything else. You can put your laptop or ipad in there along with a bottle or two of water, some snacks and other stuff. You'll have room to put swag away too until you go back to your room to unload the loot! There is wifi connectivity for attendees and you should find a place to plug in your laptop & phone charger so bring those with you as well.

Tip #6

Must wear comfortable shoes! Whether you go from one session to the next or prefer to spend your time networking and meeting vendors at the meet market, you'll be doing a lot of walking. Just like any other big conference, the hallways are spread out throughout the convention center... but don't forget, this is Las Vegas. Everything is more in Vegas, including walking.

There are other tips that you can find throughout the internet, and here is a little video I asked my friend John to do for you. He's the first person that invited me to ASW back in 2013, and so I thought it would be fitting for him to give you some of his tips as he has attended every event since it started.

Tips from John Chow

So, are you ready?

The post Affiliate Summit Tips for New Attendees appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

A huge mistake I see by people trying out their e commerce shops is to offer discounts. They offer coupons, probably because shopping carts today have very easy ways of integrating coupons into their checkout systems. And people think that by offering coupons they'll attract more customers. And all of these reasons are probably partially true.

But the biggest mistake I see is that the coupons are crap. When you're offering something online, and you're not known, you've got no brand, you have to believe in what you're doing. So much so that you should almost give away your first product for free. After All, wouldn't you give away your first product if you knew that the customer will come back for more products after? That should be your mentality.

Give away a taste, a freebie then sell more products to that customer. Find out more about them, learn why they wanted your product, how can you make it better? The first product is often called a loss-leader. So why not go balls out and give a 50% off coupon? or a $60 off from your first $100.00 purchase? Now those would be coupons that get my attention! And I'd be happy to Tweet, Facebook, share and Google+ the crap out of that offer, bringing you more clients.

I'd even send an email out to my friends or family members that might be interested in that offer. And guess what? You have now attracted the attention of buyers willing to spend some money to get your product.

I believe another reason that people do the crappy 5% or 10% coupons is because they're too lazy to figure out how to market to them again. Here's the secret sauce to that... email marketing. Before you give away a product or offer a 50% discount like I am suggesting, make sure you have a sytem in place to help you promote more products or services to that customer. Get them to share their email address with you and then use it!

-- Believe me, this is cheaper than any advertising campaign you can concoct. Do it. Next time skip the bullshit 10% off coupons. Give them something to chew on, something substantial. And milk it. Ask them questions, ask them to share the amazing offer in social networks, and follow up with them by offering other products that will also benefit them. That's how you do business online and how you acquire new customers.

The post Giving out coupons? Don’t be a cheap ass. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die.
You gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, try

-Pink

Before you go any further in your business, let me warn you. Sooner or later, you will fail. Probably sooner than later, but it's alright. A failure makes you better, stronger, smarter. That's if you get up...

Trust me. It's alright to fail, but if you want to succeed, you gotta get up and try again. This is the key to success, this is the key to life. It took me quite a while to embrace this when it came to online marketing and making money online. It's easy to say and profess this philosophy, but it's much harder to follow it, to live it, to embrace it.

Like Pink's Try from The Truth About Love, you have to get up and try. It's a simple as that. Sometimes you'll make mistakes that you can't explain. Other times you'll do everything right, but maybe you have the wrong product and nobody cares to buy.

Even worse, you may find yourself in Tyler Cruz' position of losing it all overnight! Can you imagine making 6 figures each month and then overnight, you wake up to nothing! How about that!?

And you think your failure was big? Are you devastated? What are you going to do about it? Cry about it? Whine about it? Blame the vendor? Blame the product? Blame the buyer?

What do you think Tyler did?

Before you complain that it isn't working. Before you blame the vendor for not explaining it. Before you accuse your audience of not getting it. Own your failure, learn and pivot. Get up and try again. Then, rinse and repeat. The faster you fail, the faster you can correct that mistake and eliminate the problem from your process or your system.

Remember that in business, like in life, nobody owes you anything by default, you don't deserve it if you don't want it. It's up to you, your perseverance, your system, your efforts and that will be the case from here on now. Ever since I came out openly as a marketer and started sharing some of the success I've had people have been telling me things. They tell me that it doesn't work, or they make excuses why the thing they did didn't work and how this isn't for them.

All these people always fail to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe they didn't do something right and they gave up too easily, too soon. They fail to acknowledge that maybe they didn't get it. That maybe they didn't follow instructions. It's always someone else that takes their blame. This makes them feel better about failing and not trying again, because it is easier to blame something else instead of owning the failure, studying it and trying again with a pivotal approach.

This is what separates the dabblers from the success stories. Get up and try again, and again, fix your approach, fix your system, get a mentor, ask questions, maybe get something like this. You don't need to go at it alone. But you must get up and do.

The post You will fail. I promise this much. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The getaway comes with amazing stuff. You get to hang out with the App Sumo guys (ubersuccessful company) and a lot more. Check out the list of goodies in this amazing package:

• 5 nights in a huge mansion.
• Flights to/from Seattle.
• Libations for a week.
• Meals cooked by a private chef.
• Access to a designer, sales and development experts.
• 1 week consultation with Noah: He doesn't normally do this

So if you're an entrepreneur and want some good advice and tips and help from the pros, check it out. This is an all expenses paid trip to Seattle.

AppSumo has been recognized by TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Cnet, and many others as a leader in their industry. AppSumo is more or less a marketplace for apps that benefit entrepreneurs and startups and even established companies, the apps usually come in bundles or at really deep discounts. You can think of it more or less like a groupon for apps. I love their offerings and have bought a couple of things in the past. Once in a while they have free stuff as well.

So how do you win? Well, they're going about it the new giveaway route. You have to go here and enter. You have many ways of entering to win, you can do it through Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and even pinterest. The giveaway will be short lived because the event is in June July, so you have a chance to win because not everyone will hear about it in time. I've already entered but if they allow additional daily entries, I'll be going back each day. This would be an awesome trip to attend.

The post Win a Spot in the Ultimate Entrepreneur Getaway by AppSumo appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Many of these seem common sense, but we know there is no common sense. So I'll highlight a few of my favorites; the ones I've been living for a while now. These are also a reminder for me to stay focused on my goals, dreams and achievements.

John's list says:

#1 The 99% focus on saving. The 1% focus on earning.

I say:

I must be part of the 1% at least in spirit, because my one goal in mind when I'm working, or developing a business is earning, not saving.

#12 The 99% believes the road to riches is paved with formal education. The 1% believes the road to riches is paved with specific knowledge.

Aha! I have specific knowledge. Do you?

#22 The 99% has a lottery mentality. The 1% has an action mentality.

Good things come to those that work for them.

#29 The 99% plays it safe with money. The 1% takes calculated risks.

#42 The 99% thinks small. The 1% thinks big.

These are in the same boat. Making it big requires big thinking and taking risks; some people agree to this but can't bring themselves to actually do it. It's a constant struggle. Most people don't get it, that's why the 99% exists.

#60 The 99% loves to be comfortable. The 1% is comfortable being uncomfortable.

Couldn't have said it better, we are comfortable when under some pressure, when things aren't working out well, etc. Why? Because we see the big picture, and the hardships, trouble, stress or other factor that make your life uncomfortable right now will be worked out and you'll see the sunny side of the hill. We will fix these things that make it uncomfortable.

#63 The 99% plays not to lose. The 1% swings for the fences.

Go big or go home, rehashed. DO it.

And back around for #21.

The 99% earns money doing things they don’t like to do. The 1% get rich doing what they love.

All these are critical when thinking about money, about your business and your dreams as they relate to financial goals.

Is your mind thinking in the right track? Or are you still thinking small?

The post How do you think about money? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I first used a Blackberry back in 1999, it was the 850 model. And back then, damn it was cool. You still had to carry around a phone... the blackberry was strictly e-mail or you could also add paging capabilities. It was an oversized pager with e-mail. But e-mail in real time, and you could reply, and synchronize to your computer. Best of all, it worked.

Over the next few years I managed a fleet of about 250 of these devices for a company at one point. Since this was a company tool, I got to test out the new ones all the time and I had the latest. You know I had to because I needed to support them.

It was a breeze maintaining them. Especially considering the other ugly alternatives at the time, --all things considered, RIM & their Blackberry were awesome.

That was 1999, now fast forward to 3 years ago, the "pda" market was pretty much defined by Blackberry, maybe a little bit of Palm, but mostly Blackberry; especially on the enterprise.

Anytime anyone asked me or advice in regards to a do-it-all device, I would recommend the latest blackberry. I had it. I went from model to model up to my beloved Curve which I bought last summer.

Then the iPhone came out, and it pretty much earned a top spot in innovation and design. In usual Apple style, the launch of iPhone and the iPod touch opened a whole new market. Quietly Apple also became a top player on cell phone devices as well. See what they do? Those sneaky bastards!

They make a new product, which develops a whole chain of new markets to support it, enhance it, and ultimately profit from it, but at the same time they enter already established markets and quickly take a significant slice of the pie. That's why they're genius.

Six months ago, hell, six weeks ago I would still think to myself how the Blackberry "can do that too" or "pssst, blackberry has been doing that for years... zzzz" in response to blurbs I would read online about how great the iPhone is, or I would hear someone rave about the latest update during the usual water cooler conversations at the office, or Starbucks, or Wahoos, or on the radio, or on the web, seriously WTF! Something was up with all this buzz about the iPhone.

Seriously, the blackberry Curve, is probably one of the best phones ever made. It works, it kicks ass and I know it inside out and can make it do great things, why would I need an iPhone?

Then the iPhone 3G came out, and as their commercials says now... "This is going to change everything" it began changing everything. I still didn't buy in, I thought, whatever.

Blackberry has Thunder (that name deserves its own discussion!) coming out and all this "new" stuff is in the works; due out soon. Surely they will have a great answer to the iPhone. But the new blackberry isn't due out just yet, and Apple has now taken the mobile device world by storm.

One day, a few weeks ago my blackberry began having problems. It would go into this SOS mode and not receive or send anything. I tried it all, the usual backup, wipe, reload, start over. I went to the store, no help. Called support, they sent a new SIM card; same problem.

After a long bike ride a few weeks later, I thought I had lost my phone, I must have dropped it. The following day during lunch, I decided to go and buy a new one. So I did, I went out and bought a new phone, I got a new iPhone, shinny 16GB of pure awesomeness in a little tiny box.

The contents of the box, simple as usual, a power "lego", a usb cable, the phone and the headphones.

I couldn't be happier about my phone now. Like I said earlier, I almost feel bad that I no longer use the crackberry. If you're a hardcore Blackberry fan, as I once was, trust me the iPhone is worth a look.

It does all that the Blackberry did, and it does it better, faster and more elegantly. The one thing that is a shortcoming is the battery life. If you're a heavy user and keep the 3G constantly on, the battery will not last very long. seriously.

The iPhone is not quite ready for the enterprise for this one reason. The need to charge it so often. This prevents any true road warrior from being able to ditch the trustworthy 2+ days of Blackberry battery life.

Otherwise, you have it all... GPS, camera, a full Qwerty keyboard, in which I can now type as fast if not faster on it than I did on my Curve. Over the air sync for calendar and contacts. Enterprise e-mail, your personal e-mail, the list goes on. Not to mention the full universe of apps available out there.

Trust me, they nailed their current marketing campaign. "this is going to change everything." It will. I highly recommend that you take a look at this phone, its not just a phone though.

The post Hasta la Vista Blackberry. It’s been good. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.